Men who have trained themselves in habits of accurate observation often

have a difficulty in realizing the confused mental condition of those who

simply receive impressions without comparison and classification. A fine

field for confused tourists is architecture. They go to France and Italy,

they talk about what they have seen, and leave you in bewilderment, until

you make the discovery that they have substituted one building for

another, or, better still, mixed two different edifices inextricably

together. Foreigners of this class are quite unable to establish any

distinction between the Houses of Parliament and Westminster Abbey,

because both have towers; and they are not clear about the difference

between the British Museum and the National Gallery, because there are

columns in the fronts of both.[25] English tourists will stay some time in

Paris, and afterwards not be able to distinguish between photographs of

the Louvre and the Hôtel de Ville. We need not be surprised that people

who have never studied architecture at all should not be sure whether St.

Paul's is a Gothic building or not, but the wonder is that they seem to

retain no impressions received merely by the eye. One would think that the

eye alone, without knowledge, would be enough to establish a distinction

between one building and another altogether different from it; yet it is

not so.

I cannot close this chapter without some allusion to a crafty employment

of words only too well understood already by those who influence the

popular mind. There is such a natural tendency to confusion in all

ordinary human beings that if you repeatedly present to them two totally

distinct things at the same time, they will, before long, associate them

so closely as to consider them inseparable by their very nature. This is

the reason why all those branches of education that train the mind in

analysis are so valuable. To be able to distinguish between accidental

connections of things or characteristics and necessary connections, is one

of the best powers that education bestows upon us. By far the greater

number of erroneous popular notions are due simply to the inability to

make this distinction which belongs to all undisciplined minds. Calumnies,

that have great influence over such minds, must lose their power as the

habit of analysis enables people to separate ideas which the uncultivated

mingle together.

Insufficient analysis leads to a very common sort of confusion between the

defectiveness of a part only and a defect pervading the whole. An

invention (as often happens) does not visibly succeed on the first trial,

and then the whole of the common public will at once declare the invention

to be bad, when, in reality, it may be a good invention with a local

defect, easily remediable. Suppose that a yacht misses stays, the common

sort of criticism would be to say that she was a bad boat, when, in fact,

her hull and everything else might be thoroughly well made, and the defect

be due only to a miscalculation in the placing of her canvas. I have

myself seen a small steel boat sink at her anchorage, and a crowd laugh

at her as badly contrived, when her only defect was the unobserved

starting of a rivet. The boat was fished up, the rivet replaced, and she

leaked and sank no more. When Stephenson's locomotive did not go because

its wheels slid on the rails, the vulgar spectators were delighted with

the supposed failure of a benefactor of the human species, and set up a

noise of jubilant derision. The invention, they had decided, was of no

good, and they sang their own foolish _gaudeamus igitur_. Stephenson at

once perceived that the only defect was want of weight, and he immediately

proceeded to remedy it by loading the machine with ballast. So it is in

thousands of cases. The common mind, untrained in analysis, condemns the

whole as a failure, when the defect lies in some small part which the

specialist, trained in analysis, seeks for and discovers.

I have not touched upon the confusions due to the decline of the

intellectual powers. In that case the reason is to be sought for in the

condition of the brain, and there is, I believe, no remedy. In healthy

people, enjoying the complete vigor of their faculties, confusions are

simply the result of carelessness and indolence, and are proper subjects

for sarcasm. With senile confusions the case is very different. To treat

them with hard, sharp, decided correction, as is so often done by people

of vigorous intellect, is a most cruel abuse of power. Yet it is difficult

to say what ought to be done when an old person falls into manifest errors

of this kind. Simple acquiescence is in this case a pardonable abandonment

of truth, but there are situations in which it is not possible. Then you

find yourself compelled to show where the confusion lies. You do it as

gently as may be, but you fail to convince, and awaken that tenacious,

unyielding opposition which is a characteristic of decline in its earlier

stages. All that can be said is, that when once it has become evident that

confusions are not careless but senile, they ought to be passed over if

possible, and if not, then treated with the very utmost delicacy and

gentleness.

ESSAY XXI.

THE NOBLE BOHEMIANISM.

Amongst the common injustices of the world there have been few more

complete than its reprobation of the state of mind and manner of life that

have been called Bohemianism; and so closely is that reprobation attached

to the word that I would gladly have substituted some other term for the

better Bohemianism had the English language provided me with one. It may,

however, be a gain to justice itself that we should be compelled to use

the same expression, qualified only by an adjective, for two states of

existence that are the good and the bad conditions of the same, as it will

tend to make us more charitable to those whom we must always blame, and

yet may blame with a more or less perfect understanding of the causes that

led them into error.

The lower forms of Bohemianism are associated with several kinds of vice,

and are therefore justly disliked by people who know the value of a

well-regulated life, and, when at the worst, regarded by them with

feelings of positive abhorrence. The vices connected with these forms of

Bohemianism are idleness, irregularity, extravagance, drunkenness, and

immorality; and besides these vices the worst Bohemianism is associated

with many repulsive faults that may not be exactly vices, and yet are

almost as much disliked by decent people. These faults are slovenliness,

dirt, a degree of carelessness in matters of business, often scarcely to

be distinguished from dishonesty, and habitual neglect of the decorous

observances that are inseparable from a high state of civilization.

After such an account of the worst Bohemianism, in which, as the reader

perceives, I have extenuated nothing, it may seem almost an act of

temerity to advance the theory that this is only the bad side of a state

of mind and feeling that has its good and perfectly respectable side also.

If this seems difficult to believe, the reader has only to consider how

certain other instincts of humanity have also their good and bad

developments. The religious and the sexual instincts, in their best

action, are on the side of national and domestic order, but in their worst

action they produce sanguinary quarrels, ferocious persecutions, and the

excesses of the most degrading sensuality. It is therefore by no means a

new theory that a human instinct may have a happy or an unfortunate

development, and it is not a reason for rejecting Bohemianism, without

unprejudiced examination, that the worst forms of it are associated with

evil.

Again, before going to the _raison d'être_ of Bohemianism, let me point to

one consideration of great importance to us if we desire to think quite

justly. It is, and has always been, a characteristic of Bohemianism to be

extremely careless of appearances, and to live outside the shelter of

hypocrisy; so its vices are far more visible than the same vices when

practised by men of the world, and incomparably more offensive to persons

with a strong sense of what is called "propriety." At the time when the

worst form of Bohemianism was more common than it is now, its most serious

vices were also the vices of the best society. If the Bohemian drank to

excess, so did the nobility and gentry; if the Bohemian had a mistress, so

had the most exalted personages. The Bohemian was not so much blamed for

being a sepulchre as for being an ill-kept sepulchre, and not a whited

sepulchre like the rest. It was far more his slovenliness and poverty than

his graver vices that made him offensive to a corrupt society with fine

clothes and ceremonious manners.

Bohemianism and Philistinism are the terms by which, for want of better,

we designate two opposite ways of estimating wealth and culture. There are

two categories of advantages in wealth,--the intellectual and the

material. The intellectual advantages are leisure to think and read,

travel, and intelligent conversation. The material advantages are large

and comfortable houses, tables well served and abundant, good coats, clean

linen, fine dresses and diamonds, horses, carriages, servants, hot-houses,

wine-cellars, shootings. Evidently the most perfect condition of wealth

would unite both classes of advantages; but this is not always, or often,

possible, and it so happens that in most situations a choice has to be

made between them. The Bohemian is the man who with small means desires

and contrives to obtain the intellectual advantages of wealth, which he

considers to be leisure to think and read, travel, and intelligent

conversation. The Philistine is the man who, whether his means are small

or large, devotes himself wholly to the attainment of the other set of

advantages,--a large house, good food and wine, clothes, horses, and

servants.

The Philistine gratifies his passion for comfort to a wonderful extent,

and thousands of ingenious people are incessantly laboring to make his

existence more comfortable still, so that the one great inconvenience he

is threatened with is the super-multiplication of conveniences. Now there

is a certain noble Bohemianism which perceives that the Philistine life is

not really so rich as it appears, that it has only some of the advantages

which ought to belong to riches, and these not quite the best advantages;

and this noble Bohemianism makes the best advantages its first aim, being

contented with such a small measure of riches as, when ingeniously and

skilfully employed, may secure them.

A highly developed material luxury, such as that which fills our modern

universal exhibitions and is the great pride of our age, has in itself so

much the appearance of absolute civilization that any proposal to do

without it may seem like a return to savagery; and Bohemianism is exposed

to the accusation of discouraging arts and manufactures. There is a

physical side to Bohemianism to be considered later; and there may,

indeed, be some connection between Bohemianism and the life of a red

Indian who roams in his woods and contents himself with a low standard of

physical well-being. The fair statement of the case between Bohemianism

and the civilization of arts and manufactures is as follows: the

intelligent Bohemian does not despise them; on the contrary, when he can

afford it, he encourages them and often surrounds himself with beautiful

things; but he will not barter his mental liberty in exchange for them, as

the Philistine does so readily. If the Bohemian simply prefers sordid

idleness to the comfort which is the reward of industry, he has no part in

the higher Bohemianism, but combines the Philistine fault of intellectual

apathy with the Bohemian fault of standing aloof from industrial

civilization. If a man abstains from furthering the industrial

civilization of his country he is only excusable if he pursues some object

of at least equal importance. Intellectual civilization really is such an

object, and the noble Bohemianism is excusable for serving it rather than

that other civilization of arts and manufactures which has such numerous

servants of its own. If the Bohemian does not redeem his negligence of

material things by superior intellectual brightness, he is half a

Philistine, he is destitute of what is best in Bohemianism (I had nearly

written of all that is worth having in it), and his contempt for material

perfection has no longer any charm, because it is not the sacrifice of a

lower merit to a higher, but the blank absence of the lower merit not

compensated or condoned by the presence of anything nobler or better.

Bohemianism and Philistinism are alike in combining self-indulgence with

asceticism, but they are ascetic or self-indulgent in opposite directions.

Bohemianism includes a certain self-indulgence, on the intellectual side,

in the pleasures of thought and observation and in the exercise of the

imaginative faculties, combining this with a certain degree of asceticism

on the physical side, not a severe religious asceticism, but a

disposition, like that of a thorough soldier or traveller, to do without

luxury and comfort, and take the absence of them gayly when they are not

to be had. The self-indulgence of Philistinism is in bodily comfort, of

which it has never enough; its asceticism consists in denying itself

leisure to read and think, and opportunities for observation.

The best way of describing the two principles will be to give an account

of two human lives that exemplified them. These shall not be described

from imagination, but from accurate memory; and I will not have recourse

to the easy artifice of selecting an unfavorable example of the class with

which I happen to have a minor degree of personal sympathy. My Philistine

shall be one whom I sincerely loved and heartily respected. He was an

admirable example of everything that is best and most worthy in the

Philistine civilization; and I believe that nobody who ever came into

contact with him, or had dealings with him, received any other impression

than this, that he had a natural right to the perfect respect which

surrounded him. The younger son of a poor gentleman, he began life with

narrow means, and followed a profession in a small provincial town. By

close attention and industry he saved a considerable sum of money, which

he lost entirely through the dishonesty of a trusted but untrustworthy

acquaintance. He had other mishaps, which but little disturbed his

serenity, and he patiently amassed enough to make himself independent. In

every relation of life he was not only above reproach, he was much more

than that: he was a model of what men ought to be, yet seldom are, in

their conduct towards others. He was kind to every one, generous to those

who needed his generosity, and, though strict with himself, tolerant

towards aberrations that must have seemed to him strangely unreasonable.

He had great natural dignity, and was a gentleman in all his ways, with an

old-fashioned grace and courtesy. He had no vanity; there may have been

some pride as an ingredient in his character, but if so it was of a kind

that could hurt nobody, for he was as simple and straightforward in his

intercourse with the poor as he was at ease with the rich.

After this description (which is so far from being overcharged that I have

omitted, for the sake of brevity, many admirable characteristics), the

reader may ask in what could possibly consist the Philistinism of a nature

that had attained such excellence. The answer is that it consisted in the

perfect willingness with which he remained outside of every intellectual

movement, and in the restriction of his mental activity to riches and

religion. He used to say that "a man must be contentedly ignorant of many

things," and he lived in this contented ignorance. He knew nothing of the

subjects that awaken the passionate interest of intellectual men. He knew

no language but his own, bought no books, knew nothing about the fine

arts, never travelled, and remained satisfied with the life of his little

provincial town. Totally ignorant of all foreign literatures, ancient or

modern, he was at the same time so slightly acquainted with that of his

own country that he had not read, and scarcely even knew by name, the most

famous authors of his own generation. His little bookcase was filled

almost exclusively with evangelical sermons and commentaries. This is

Philistinism on the intellectual side, the mental inertness that remains

"contentedly ignorant" of almost everything that a superior intellect

cares for. But, besides this, there is also a Philistinism on the physical

side, a physical inertness; and in this, too, my friend was a real

Philistine. In spite of great natural strength, he remained inexpert in

all manly exercises, and so had not enjoyed life on that side as he might

have done, and as the Bohemian generally contrives to do. He belonged to

that class of men who, as soon as they reach middle age, are scarcely more

active than the chairs they sit upon, the men who would fall from a horse

if it were lively, upset a boat if it were light, and be drowned if they

fell into the water. Such men can walk a little on a road, or they can sit

in a carriage and be dragged about by horses. By this physical inertia my

friend was deprived of one set of impressions, as he was deprived by his

intellectual inertia of another. He could not enjoy that close intimacy

with nature which a Bohemian generally finds to be an important part of

existence.

I wonder if it ever occurred to him to reflect, in the tedious hours of

too tranquil age, how much of what is best in the world had been simply

_missed_ by him; how he had missed all the variety and interest of travel,

the charm of intellectual society, the influences of genius, and even the

physical excitements of healthy out-door amusements. When I think what a

magnificent world it is that we inhabit, how much natural beauty there is

in it, how much admirable human work in literature and the fine arts, how

many living men and women there are in each generation whose acquaintance

a wise man would travel far to seek, and value infinitely when he had

found it, I cannot avoid the conclusion that my friend might have lived as

he did in a planet far less richly endowed than ours, and that after a

long life he went out of the world without having really known it.

I have said that the intelligent Bohemian is generally a man of small or

moderate means, whose object is to enjoy the _best_ advantages (not the

most visible) of riches. In his view these advantages are leisure, travel,

reading, and conversation. His estimate is different from that of the

Philistine, who sets his heart on the lower advantages of riches,

sacrificing leisure, travel, reading, and conversation, in order to have a

larger house and more servants. But how, without riches, is the Bohemian

to secure the advantages that he desires, for they also belong to riches?

There lies the difficulty, and the Bohemian's way of overcoming it

constitutes the romance of his existence. In absolute destitution the

intelligent Bohemian life is not possible. A little money is necessary for

it, and the art and craft of Bohemianism is to get for that small amount

of money such an amount of leisure, reading, travel, and good conversation

as may suffice to make life interesting. The way in which an old-fashioned

Bohemian usually set about it was this: he treated material comfort and

outward appearances as matters of no consequence, accepting them when they

came in his way, but enduring the privation of them gayly. He learned the

art of living on a little.

"Je suis pauvre, très pauvre, et vis pourtant fort bien

C'est parce que je vis comme les gens de rien."[26]

He spent the little that he had, first for what was really necessary, and

next for what really gave him pleasure, but he spent hardly anything in

deference to the usages of society. In this way he got what he wanted. His

books were second-hand and ill bound, but he _had_ books and read them;

his clothes were shabby, yet still they kept him warm; he travelled in all

sorts of cheap ways and frequently on foot; he lived a good deal in some

unfashionable quarters in a capital city, and saw much of art, nature, and

humanity.

To exemplify the true theory of Bohemianism let me describe from memory

two rooms, one of them inhabited by an English lady, not at all Bohemian,

the other by a German of the coarser sex who was essentially and

thoroughly Bohemian. The lady's room was not a drawing-room, being a

reasonable sort of sitting-room without any exasperating inutilities, but

it was extremely, excessively comfortable. Half hidden amongst its

material comforts might be found a little rosewood bookcase containing a

number of pretty volumes in purple morocco that were seldom, if ever,

opened. My German Bohemian was a steady reader in six languages; and if

he had seen such a room as that he would probably have criticised it as

follows. He would have said, "It is rich in superfluities, but has not

what is necessary. The carpet is superfluous; plain boards are quite

comfortable enough. One or two cheap chairs and tables might replace this

costly furniture. That pretty rosewood bookcase holds the smallest number

of books at the greatest cost, and is therefore contrary to true economy;

give me, rather, a sufficiency of long deal shelves all innocent of paint.

What is the use of fine bindings and gilt edges? This little library is

miserably poor. It is all in one language, and does not represent even

English literature adequately; there are a few novels, books of poems, and

travels, but I find neither science nor philosophy. Such a room as that,

with all its comfort, would seem to me like a prison. My mind needs wider

pastures." I remember his own room, a place to make a rich Englishman

shudder. One climbed up to it by a stone corkscrew-stair, half-ruinous, in

an old mediæval house. It was a large room, with a bed in one corner, and

it was wholly destitute of anything resembling a carpet or a curtain. The

remaining furniture consisted of two or three rush-bottomed chairs, one

large cheap lounging-chair, and two large plain tables. There were plenty

of shelves (common deal, unpainted), and on them an immense litter of

books in different languages, most of them in paper covers, and bought

second-hand, but in readable editions. In the way of material luxury there

was a pot of tobacco; and if a friend dropped in for an evening a jug of

ale would make its appearance. My Bohemian was shabby in his dress, and

unfashionable; but he had seen more, read more, and passed more hours in

intelligent conversation than many who considered themselves his

superiors. The entire material side of life had been systematically

neglected, in his case, in order that the intellectual side might

flourish. It is hardly necessary to observe that any attempt at luxury or

visible comfort, any conformity to fashion, would have been incompatible,

on small means, with the intellectual existence that this German scholar

enjoyed.

Long ago I knew an English Bohemian who had a small income that came to

him very irregularly. He had begun life in a profession, but had quitted

it that he might travel and see the world, which he did in the oddest,

most original fashion, often enduring privation, but never ceasing to

enjoy life deeply in his own way, and to accumulate a mass of observations

which would have been quite invaluable to an author. In him the two

activities, physical and mental, were alike so energetic that they might

have led to great results had they been consistently directed to some

private or public end; but unfortunately he remained satisfied with the

existence of an observant wanderer who has no purpose beyond the healthy

exercise of his faculties. In usefulness to others he was not to be

compared with my good and admirable Philistine, but in the art of getting

for himself what is best in the world he was by far the more accomplished

of the two. He fully enjoyed both the physical and the intellectual life;

he could live almost like a red Indian, and yet at the same time carry in

his mind the most recent results of European thought and science. His

distinguishing characteristic was a heroic contempt for comfort, in which

he rather resembled a soldier in war-time than any self-indulgent

civilian. He would sleep anywhere,--in his boat under a sail, in a

hayloft, under a hedge if belated, and he would go for days together

without any regular meal. He dressed roughly, and his clothes became old

before he renewed them. He kept no servant, and lived in cheap lodgings in

towns, or hired one or two empty rooms and adorned them with a little

portable furniture. In the country he contrived to make very economical

arrangements in farmhouses, by which he was fed and lodged quite as well

as he ever cared to be. It would be difficult to excel him in simple

manliness, in the quiet courage that accepts a disagreeable situation or

faces a dangerous one; and he had the manliness of the mind as well as

that of the body; he estimated the world for what it is worth, and cared

nothing for its transient fashions either in appearances or opinion. I am

sorry that he was a useless member of society,--if, indeed, such an

eccentric is to be called a member of society at all,--but if uselessness

is blamable he shares the blame, or ought in justice to share it, with a

multitude of most respectable gentlemen and ladies who receive nothing but

approbation from the world.

Except this fault of uselessness there was nothing to blame in this man's

manner of life, but his want of purpose and discipline made his fine

qualities seem almost without value. And now comes the question whether

the fine qualities of the useless Bohemian may not be of some value in a

life of a higher kind. I think it is evident that they may, for if the

Bohemian can cheerfully sacrifice luxury for some mental gain he has made

a great step in the direction of the higher life, and only requires a

purpose and a discipline to attain it. Common men are completely enslaved

by their love of comfort, and whoever has emancipated himself from this

thraldom has gained the first and most necessary victory. The use that he

will make of it depends upon himself. If he has high purposes, his

Bohemianism will be ennobled by them, and will become a most precious

element in his character; and if his purposes are not of the highest, the

Bohemian element may still be very valuable if accompanied by

self-discipline. Napoleon cannot be said to have had high purposes, but

his Bohemianism was admirable. A man who, having attained success, with

boundless riches at his disposal, could quit the luxury of his palaces and

sleep anywhere, in any poor farmhouse, or under the stars by the fire of a

bivouac, and be satisfied with poor meals at the most irregular hours,

showed that, however he may have estimated luxury, he was at least

entirely independent of it. The model monarch in this respect was Charles

XII. of Sweden, who studied his own personal comfort as little as if he

had been a private soldier. Some royal commanders have carried luxury into

war itself, but not to their advantage. When Napoleon III. went in his

carriage to meet his fate at Sedan the roads were so encumbered by wagons

belonging to the Imperial household as to impede the movements of the

troops.

There is often an element of Bohemianism where we should least expect to

find it. There is something of it in our English aristocracy, though it is

not _called_ Bohemianism here because it is not accompanied by poverty;

but the spirit that sacrifices luxury to rough travelling is, so far, the

true Bohemian spirit. In the aristocracy, however, such sacrifices are

only temporary; and a rough life accepted for a few weeks or months gives

the charm of a restored freshness to luxury on returning to it. The class

in which the higher Bohemianism has most steadily flourished is the

artistic and literary class, and here it is visible and recognizable

because there is often poverty enough to compel the choice between the

objects of the intelligent Bohemian and those of ordinary men. The early

life of Goldsmith, for example, was that of a genuine Bohemian. He had

scarcely any money, and yet he contrived to get for himself what the

intelligent Bohemian always desires, namely, leisure to read and think,

travel, and interesting conversation. When penniless and unknown he

lounged about the world thinking and observing; he travelled in Holland,

France, Switzerland, and Italy, not as people do in railway carriages, but

in leisurely intercourse with the inhabitants. Notwithstanding his poverty

he was received by the learned in different European cities, and, notably,

heard Voltaire and Diderot talk till three o'clock in the morning. So long

as he remained faithful to the true principles of Bohemianism he was happy

in his own strange and eccentric way, and all the anxieties, all the

slavery of his later years were due to his apostasy from those

principles. He no longer estimated leisure at its true value when he

allowed himself to be placed in such a situation that he was compelled to

toil like a slave in order to clear off work that had been already paid

for, such advances having been rendered necessary by expenditure on

Philistine luxuries. He no longer enjoyed humble travel but on his later

tour in France with Mrs. Horneck and her two beautiful daughters, instead

of enjoying the country in his own old simple innocent way, he allowed his

mind to be poisoned with Philistine ideas, and constantly complained of

the want of physical comfort, though he lived far more expensively than in

his youth. The new apartments, taken on the success of the "Good-natured

Man," consisted, says Irving, "of three rooms, which he furnished with

mahogany sofas, card-tables, and bookcases; with curtains, mirrors, and

Wilton carpets." At the same time he went even beyond the precept of

Polonius, for his garments were costlier than his purse could buy, and his

entertainments were so extravagant as to give pain to his acquaintances.

All this is a desertion of real Bohemian principles. Goldsmith ought to

have protected his own leisure, which, from the Bohemian point of view,

was incomparably more precious to himself than Wilton carpets and coats

"of Tyrian bloom."

Corot, the French landscape-painter, was a model of consistent Bohemianism

of the best kind. When his father said, "You shall have £80 a year, your

plate at my table, and be a painter; or you shall have £4,000 to start

with if you will be a shop-keeper," his choice was made at once. He

remained always faithful to true Bohemian principles, fully understanding

the value of leisure, and protecting his artistic independence by the

extreme simplicity of his living. He never gave way to the modern rage for

luxuries, but in his latter years, when enriched by tardy professional

success and hereditary fortune, he employed his money in acts of fraternal

generosity to enable others to lead the intelligent Bohemian life.

Wordsworth had in him a very strong element of Bohemianism. His long

pedestrian rambles, his interest in humble life and familiar intercourse

with the poor, his passion for wild nature, and preference of natural

beauty to fine society, his simple and economical habits, are enough to

reveal the tendency. His "plain living and high thinking" is a thoroughly

Bohemian idea, in striking opposition to the Philistine passion for rich

living and low thinking. There is a story that he was seen at a

breakfast-table to cut open a new volume with a greasy butter-knife. To

every lover of books this must seem horribly barbarous, yet at the same

time it was Bohemian, in that Wordsworth valued the thought only and cared

nothing for the material condition of the volume. I have observed a like

indifference to the material condition of books in other Bohemians, who

took the most lively interest in their contents. I have also seen

"bibliophiles" who had beautiful libraries in excellent preservation, and

who loved to fondle fine copies of books that they never read. That is

Philistine, it is the preference of material perfection to intellectual

values.

The reader is, I hope, fully persuaded by this time that the higher

Bohemianism is compatible with every quality that deserves respect, and

that it is not of necessity connected with any fault or failing. I may

therefore mention as an example of it one of the purest and best

characters whom it was ever my happiness to know. There was a strong

element of noble Bohemianism in Samuel Palmer, the landscape-painter.

"From time to time," according to his son, "he forsook his easel, and

travelled far away from London smoke to cull the beauties of some favorite

country side. His painting apparatus was complete, but singularly simple,

his dress and other bodily requirements simpler still; so he could walk

from village to hamlet easily carrying all he wanted, and utterly

indifferent to luxury. With a good constitution it mattered little to him

how humble were his quarters or how remote from so-called civilization.

'In exploring wild country,' he writes, 'I have been for a fortnight

together, uncertain each day whether I should get a bed under cover at

night; and about midsummer I have repeatedly been walking all night to

watch the mystic phenomena of the silent hours.' He enjoyed to the full

this rough but not uncomfortable mode of travelling, and was better

pleased to take his place, after a hard day's work, in some old chimney

corner--joining on equal terms the village gossip--than to mope in the

dull grandeur of a private room."

Here are two of my Bohemian elements,--the love of travel and the love of

conversation. As for the other element,--the love of leisure to think and

read,--it is not visible in this extract (though the kind of travel

described is leisurely), but it was always present in the man. During the

quiet, solitary progress by day and night there were ample opportunities

for thinking, and as for reading we know that Palmer never stirred without

a favorite author in his pocket, most frequently Milton or Virgil. To

complete the Bohemian we only require one other

characteristic,--contentment with a simple material existence; and we are

told that "the painting apparatus was singularly simple, the dress and

other bodily requirements simpler still." So here we have the intelligent

Bohemian in his perfection.

All this is the exact opposite of Philistine "common sense." A Philistine

would not have exposed himself, voluntarily, to the certainty of poor

accommodation. A Philistine would not have remained out all night "to

watch the mystic phenomena of the silent hours." In the absence of a

railway he would have hired a carriage, and got through the wild country

rapidly to arrive at a good dinner. Lastly, a Philistine would not have

carried either Milton or Virgil in his pocket; he would have had a

newspaper.

Some practical experience of the higher Bohemianism is a valuable part of

education. It enables us to estimate things at their true worth, and to

extract happiness from situations in which the Philistine is both dull and

miserable. A true Bohemian, of the best kind, knows the value of mere

shelter, of food enough to satisfy hunger, of plain clothes that will keep

him sufficiently warm; and in the things of the mind he values the liberty

to use his own faculties as a kind of happiness in itself. His philosophy

leads him to take an interest in talking with human beings of all sorts

and conditions, and in different countries. He does not despise the poor,

for, whether poor or rich in his own person, he understands simplicity of

life, and if the poor man lives in a small cottage, he, too, has probably

been lodged less spaciously still in some small hut or tent. He has lived

often, in rough travel, as the poor live every day. I maintain that such

tastes and experiences are valuable both in prosperity and in adversity.

If we are prosperous they enhance our appreciation of the things around

us, and yet at the same time make us really know that they are not

indispensable, as so many believe them to be; if we fall into adversity

they prepare us to accept lightly and cheerfully what would be depressing

privations to others. I know a painter who in consequence of some change

in the public taste fell into adversity at a time when he had every reason

to hope for increased success. Very fortunately for him, he had been a

Bohemian in early life,--a respectable Bohemian, be it understood,--and a

great traveller, so that he could easily dispense with luxuries. "To be

still permitted to follow art is enough," he said; so he reduced his

expenses to the very lowest scale consistent with that pursuit, and lived

as he had done before in the old Bohemian times. He made his old clothes

last on, he slung a hammock in a very simple painting-room, and cooked his

own dinner on the stove. With the canvas on his easel and a few books on a

shelf he found that if existence was no longer luxurious it had not yet

ceased to be interesting.

ESSAY XXII.

OF COURTESY IN EPISTOLARY COMMUNICATION.

The universal principle of courtesy is that the courteous person manifests

a disposition to sacrifice something in favor of the person whom he

desires to honor; the opposite principle shows itself in a disposition to

regard our own convenience as paramount over every other consideration.

Courtesy lives by a multitude of little sacrifices, not by sacrifices of

sufficient importance to impose any burdensome sense of obligation. These

little sacrifices may be both of time and money, but more of time, and the

money sacrifice should be just perceptible, never ostentatious.

The tendency of a hurried age, in which men undertake more work or more

pleasure (hardest work of all!) than they are able properly to accomplish,

is to abridge all forms of courtesy because they take time, and to replace

them by forms, if any forms survive, which cost as little time as

possible. This wounds and injures courtesy itself in its most vital part,

for the essence of it is the willingness to incur that very sacrifice

which modern hurry avoids.

The first courtesy in epistolary communication is the mere writing of the

letter. Except in cases where the letter itself is an offence or an

intrusion, the mere making of it is an act of courtesy towards the

receiver. The writer sacrifices his time and a trifle of money in order

that the receiver may have some kind of news.

It has ever been the custom to commence a letter with some expression of

respect, affection, or good will. This is graceful in itself, and

reasonable, being nothing more than the salutation with which a man enters

the house of his friend, or his more ceremonious act of deference in

entering that of a stranger or a superior. In times and seasons where

courtesy has not given way to hurry, or a selfish dread of unnecessary

exertion, the opening form is maintained with a certain amplitude, and the

substance of the letter is not reached in the first lines, which gently

induce the reader to proceed. Afterwards these forms are felt to involve

an inconvenient sacrifice of time, and are ruthlessly docked.

In justice to modern poverty in forms it is fair to take into

consideration the simple truth, so easily overlooked, that we have to

write thirty letters where our ancestors wrote one; but the principle of

sacrifice in courtesy always remains essentially the same; and if of our

more precious and more occupied time we consecrate a smaller portion to

forms, it is still essential that there should be no appearance of a

desire to escape from the kind of obligation which we acknowledge.

The most essentially modern element of courtesy in letter-writing is the

promptitude of our replies. This promptitude was not only unknown to our

remote ancestors, but even to our immediate predecessors. They would

postpone answering a letter for days or weeks, in the pure spirit of

procrastination, when they already possessed all the materials necessary

for the answer. Such a habit would try our patience very severely, but our

fathers seem to have considered it a part of their dignity to move slowly

in correspondence. This temper even yet survives in official

correspondence between sovereigns, who still notify to each other their

domestic events long after the publication of them in the newspapers.

A prompt answer equally serves the purpose of the sender and the receiver.

It is a great economy of time to answer promptly, because the receiver of

the letter is so much gratified by the promptitude itself that he readily

pardons brevity in consideration of it. An extremely short but prompt

letter, that would look curt without its promptitude, is more polite than

a much longer one written a few days later.

Prompt correspondents save all the time that others waste in excuses. I

remember an author and editor whose system imposed upon him the tax of

perpetual apologizing. He always postponed writing until the delay had put

his correspondent out of temper, so that when at last he _did_ write,

which somehow happened ultimately, the first page was entirely occupied

with apologies for his delay, as he felt that the necessity had arisen for

soothing the ruffled feelings of his friend. It never occurred to him that

the same amount of pen work which these apologies cost him would, if given

earlier, have sufficed for a complete answer. A letter-writer of this sort

must naturally be a bad man of business, and this gentleman was so, though

he had excellent qualities of another order.

I remember receiving a most extraordinary answer from a correspondent of

this stamp. I wrote to him about a matter which was causing me some

anxiety, and did not receive an answer for several weeks. At last the

reply came, with the strange excuse that as he knew I had guests in my

house he had delayed writing from a belief that I should not be able to

attend to anything until after their departure. If such were always the

effect of entertaining friends, what incalculable perturbation would be

caused by hospitality in all private and public affairs!

The reader may, perhaps, have met with a collection of letters called the

"Plumpton Correspondence," which was published by the Camden Society in

1839. I have always been interested in this for family reasons, and also

because the manuscript volume was found in the neighborhood where I lived

in youth;[27] but it does not require any blood connection with the now

extinct house of Plumpton of Plumpton to take an interest in a collection

of letters which gives so clear an insight into the epistolary customs of

England in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. The first peculiarity

that strikes the modern reader is the extreme care of almost all the

writers, even when near relations, to avoid a curt and dry style,

destitute of the ambages which were in those days esteemed an essential

part of politeness. The only exception is a plain, straightforward

gentleman, William Gascoyne, who heads his letters, "To my Uncle Plumpton

be these delivered," or "To my Uncle Plumpton this letter be delivered in

hast." He begins, "Uncle Plumpton, I recommend me unto you," and

finishes, "Your nephew," simply, or still more laconically, "Your." Such

plainness is strikingly rare. The rule was, to be deliberately perfect in

all epistolary observances, however near the relationship. Not that the

forms used were hard forms, entirely fixed by usage and devoid of personal

feeling and individuality. They appear to have been more flexible and

living than our own, as they were more frequently varied according to the

taste and sentiment of the writers. Sometimes, of course, they were

perfunctory, but often they have an original and very graceful turn. One

letter, which I will quote at length, contains curious evidence of the

courtesy and discourtesy of those days. The forms used in the letter

itself are perfect, but the writer complains that other letters have not

been answered.

In the reign of Henry VII. Sir Robert Plumpton had a daughter, Dorothy,

who was in the household of Lady Darcy (probably as a sort of maid of

honor to her ladyship), but was not quite pleased with her position, and

wanted to go home to Plumpton. She had written to her father several

times, but had received no answer, so she now writes again to him in these

terms. The date of the letter is not fully given, as the year is wanting;

but her parents were married in 1477, and her father died in 1523, at the

age of seventy, after a life of strange vicissitudes. The reader will

observe two leading characteristics in this letter,--that it is as

courteous as if the writer were not related to the receiver, and as

affectionate as if no forms had been observed. As was the custom in those

days, the young lady gives her parents their titles of worldly honor, but

she always adds to them the most affectionate filial expressions:

_To the right worshipfull and my most entyerly beloved, good, kind

father, Sir Robart Plompton, knyght, lying at Plompton in Yorkshire,

be thes delivered in hast._

Ryght worshipfull father, in the most humble manner that I can I

recommend me to you, and to my lady my mother, and to all my brethren

and sistren, whom I besech almyghtie God to mayntayne and preserve in

prosperus health and encrese of worship, entyerly requiering you of

your daly blessing; letting you wyt that I send to you mesuage, be

Wryghame of Knarsbrugh, of my mynd, and how that he should desire you

in my name to send for me to come home to you, and as yet I had no

answere agane, the which desire my lady hath gotten knowledg.

Wherefore, she is to me more better lady than ever she was before,

insomuch that she hath promysed me hir good ladyship as long as ever

she shall lyve; and if she or ye can fynd athing meyter for me in this

parties or any other, she will helpe to promoote me to the uttermost

of her puyssaunce. Wherefore, I humbly besech you to be so good and

kind father unto me as to let me know your pleasure, how that ye will

have me ordred, as shortly as it shall like you. And wryt to my lady,

thanking hir good ladyship of hir so loving and tender kyndnesse

shewed unto me, beseching hir ladyship of good contynewance thereof.

And therefore I besech you to send a servant of yours to my lady and

to me, and show now by your fatherly kyndnesse that I am your child;

for I have sent you dyverse messuages and wryttings, and I had never

answere againe. Wherefore yt is thought in this parties, by those

persones that list better to say ill than good, that ye have litle

favor unto me; the which error ye may now quench yf yt will like you

to be so good and kynd father unto me. Also I besech you to send me a

fine hatt and some good cloth to make me some kevercheffes. And thus I

besech _Jesu_ to have you in his blessed keeping to his pleasure, and

your harts desire and comforth. Wryten at the Hirste, the xviii day of

Maye.

By your loving daughter,

DORYTHE PLOMPTON.

It may be worth while, for the sake of contrast, and that we may the

better perceive the lost fragrance of the antique courtesy, to put the

substance of this letter into the style of the present day. A modern young

lady would probably write as follows:--

HIRST, _May 18_.

DEAR PAPA,--Lady Darcy has found out that I want to leave her, but she

has kindly promised to do what she can to find something else for me.

I wish you would say what you think, and it would be as well, perhaps,

if you would be so good as to drop a line to her ladyship to thank

her. I have written to you several times, but got no answer, so people

here say that you don't care very much for me. Would you please send

me a handsome bonnet and some handkerchiefs? Best love to mamma and

all at home.

Your affectionate daughter,

DOROTHY PLUMPTON.

This, I think, is not an unfair specimen of a modern letter.[28] The

expressions of worship, of humble respect, have disappeared, and so far it

may be thought that there is improvement, yet that respect was not

incompatible with tender feeling; on the contrary, it was closely

associated with it, and expressions of sentiment have lost strength and

vitality along with expressions of respect. Tenderness may be sometimes

shown in modern letters, but it is rare; and when it occurs it is

generally accompanied by a degree of familiarity which our ancestors would

have considered in bad taste. Dorothy Plumpton's own letter is far richer

in the expression of tender feeling than any modern letter of the

courteous and ceremonious kind, or than any of those pale and commonplace

communications from which deep respect and strong affection are almost

equally excluded. Please observe, moreover, that the young lady had reason

to be dissatisfied with her father for his neglect, which does not in the

least diminish the filial courtesy of her style, but she chides him in the

sweetest fashion,--"_Show now by your fatherly kindness that I am your

child_." Could anything be prettier than that, though the reproach

contained in it is really one of some severity?

Dorothy's father, Sir Robert, puts the following superscription on a

letter to his wife, "To my entyrely and right hartily beloved wife, Dame

Agnes Plumpton, be this Letter delivered." He begins his letter thus, "My

deare hart, in my most hartily wyse, I recommend mee unto you;" and he

ends tenderly, "By your owne lover, Robert Plumpton, Kt." She, on the

contrary, though a faithful and brave wife, doing her best for her husband

in a time of great trial, and enjoying his full confidence, begins her

letters, "Right worshipful Sir," and ends simply, "By your wife, Dame

Agnes Plumpton." She is so much absorbed by business that her expressions

of feeling are rare and brief. "Sir, I am in good health, and all your

children prays for your daly blessing. And all your servants is in good

health and prays diligently for your good speed in your matters."

The generally courteous tone of the letters of those days may be judged of

by the following example. The reader will observe how small a space is

occupied with the substance of the letter in comparison with the

expressions of pure courtesy, and how simply and handsomely regret for the

trespass is expressed:--

_To his worshipful Cosin, Sir Robart Plompton, Kt._

Right reverend and worshipful Cosin, I commend me unto you as hertyly

as I can, evermore desiring to heare of your welfare, the which I

besech _Jesu_ to continew to his pleasure, and your herts desire.

Cosin, please you witt that I am enformed, that a poor man somtyme

belonging to mee, called Umfrey Bell, hath trespased to a servant of

youres, which I am sory for. Wherefore, Cosin, I desire and hartily

pray you to take upp the matter into your own hands for my sake, and

rewle him as it please you; and therein you wil do, as I may do that

may be plesur to you, and my contry, the which I shalbe redy too, by

the grace of God, who preserve you.

By your own kynsman,

ROBART WARCOPP, of Warcoppe.

The reader has no doubt by this time enough of these old letters, which

are not likely to possess much charm for him unless, like the present

writer, he is rather of an antiquarian turn.[29]

The quotations are enough to show some of the forms used in correspondence

by our forefathers, forms that were right in their own day, when the state

of society was more ceremonious and deferential, but no one would propose

to revive them. We may, however, still value and cultivate the beautifully

courteous spirit that our ancestors possessed and express it in our own

modern ways.

I have already observed that the essentially modern form of courtesy is

the rapidity of our replies. This, at least, is a virtue that we can

resolutely cultivate and maintain. In some countries it is pushed so far

that telegrams are very frequently sent when there is no need to employ

the telegraph. The Arabs of Algeria are extremely fond of telegraphing for

its own sake: the notion of its rapidity pleases and amuses them; they

like to wield a power so wonderful. It is said that the Americans

constantly employ the telegraph on very trivial occasions, and the habit

is increasing in England and France. The secret desire of the present age

is to find a plausible excuse for excessive brevity in correspondence, and

this is supplied by the comparative costliness of telegraphing. It is a

comfort that it allows you to send a single word. I have heard of a letter

from a son to a father consisting of the Latin word _Ibo_, and of a still

briefer one from the father to the son confined entirely to the imperative

_I_. These miracles of brevity are only possible in letters between the

most intimate friends or relations, but in telegraphy they are common.

It is very difficult for courtesy to survive this modern passion for

brevity, and we see it more and more openly cast aside. All the long

phrases of politeness have been abandoned in English correspondence for a

generation, except in formal letters to official or very dignified

personages; and the little that remains is reduced to a mere shred of

courteous or affectionate expression. We have not, it is true, the

detestable habit of abridging words, as our ancestors often did, but we

cut our phrases short, and sometimes even words of courtesy are abridged

in an unbecoming manner. Men will write Dr. Sir for Dear Sir. If I am

dear enough to these correspondents for their sentiments of affection to

be worth uttering at all, why should they be so chary of expressing them

that they omit two letters from the very word which is intended to affect

my feelings?

"If I be dear, if I be dear,"

as the poet says, why should my correspondent begrudge me the four letters

of so brief an adjective?

The long French and Italian forms of ceremony at the close of letters are

felt to be burdensome in the present day, and are gradually giving place

to briefer ones; but it is the very length of them, and the time and

trouble they cost to write, that make them so courteous, and no brief form

can ever be an effective substitute in that respect.

I was once placed in the rather embarrassing position of having suddenly

to send telegrams in my own name, containing a request, to two high

foreign authorities in a corps where punctilious ceremony is very strictly

observed. My solution of the difficulty was to write two full ceremonious

letters, with all the formal expressions unabridged, and then have these

letters telegraphed _in extenso_. This was the only possible solution, as

an ordinary telegram would have been entirely out of the question. It

being rather expensive to telegraph a very formal letter, the cost added

to the appearance of deference, so I had the curious but very real

advantage on my side that I made a telegram seem even more deferential

than a letter.

The convenience of the letter-writer is consulted in inverse ratio to the

appearances of courtesy. In the matter of sealing, for example, that seems

so slight and indifferent a concern, a question of ceremony and courtesy

is involved. The old-fashioned custom of a large seal with the sender's

arms or cipher added to the importance of the contents both by strictly

guarding the privacy of the communication and by the dignified assertion

of the writer's rank. Besides this, the time that it costs to take a

proper impression of a seal shows the absence of hurry and the disposition

to sacrifice which are a part of all noble courtesy; whilst the act of

rapidly licking the gum on the inside of an envelope and then giving it a

thump with your fist to make it stick is neither dignified nor elegant.

There were certain beautiful associations with the act of sealing. There

was the taper that had to be lighted, and that had its own little

candlestick of chased or gilded silver, or delicately painted porcelain;

there was the polished and graven stone of the seal, itself more or less

precious, and enhanced in value by an art of high antiquity and noble

associations, and this graven signet-stone was set in massive gold. The

act of sealing was deliberate, to secure a fair impression, and as the wax

caught flame and melted it disengaged a delicate perfume. These little

things may be laughed at by a generation of practical men of business who

know the value of every second, but they had their importance, and have it

still, amongst those who possess any delicacy of perception.[30] The

reader will remember the sealing of Nelson's letter to the Crown Prince of

Denmark during the battle of Copenhagen. "A wafer was given him," says

Southey, "but he ordered a candle to be brought from the cockpit, and

sealed the letter with wax, _affixing a larger seal than he ordinarily

used_. 'This,' said he, 'is no time to appear hurried and informal.'" The

story is usually told as a striking example of Nelson's coolness in a time

of intense excitement, but it might be told with equal effect as a proof

of his knowledge of mankind and of the trifles which have a powerful

effect on human intercourse. The preference of wax to a wafer, and

especially the deliberate choice of a larger seal as more ceremonious and

important, are clear evidence of diplomatic skill. No doubt, too, the

impression of Nelson's arms was very careful and clear.

In writing to French Ministers of State it is a traditional custom to

employ a certain paper called "papier ministre," which is very much larger

than that sent to ordinary mortals. Paper is by no means a matter of

indifference. It is the material costume under which we present ourselves

to persons removed from us by distance; and as a man pays a call in

handsome clothes as a sign of respect to others, and also of self-respect,

so he sends a piece of handsome paper to be the bearer of his salutation.

Besides, a letter is in itself a gift, though a small one, and however

trifling a gift may be it must never be shabby. The English understand

this art of choosing good-looking letter-paper, and are remarkable for

using it of a thickness rare in other nations. French love of elegance has

led to charming inventions of tint and texture, particularly in delicate

gray tints, and these papers are now often decorated with embossed

initials of heraldic devices on a large scale, but that is carrying

prettiness too far. The common American habit of writing letters on ruled

paper is not to be recommended, as the ruling reminds us of copy-books and

account-books, and has a mechanical appearance that greatly detracts from

what ought to be the purely personal air of an autograph.

Modern love of despatch has led to the invention of the post-card, which,

from our present point of view, that of courtesy, deserves unhesitating

condemnation. To use a post-card is as much as to say to your

correspondent, "In order to save for myself a very little money and a very

little time, I will expose the subject of our correspondence to the eyes

of any clerk, postman, or servant, who feels the slightest curiosity about

it; and I take this small piece of card, of which I am allowed to use one

side only, in order to relieve myself from the obligation, and spare

myself the trouble, of writing a letter." To make the convenience

absolutely perfect, it is customary in England to omit the opening and

concluding salutations on post-cards, so that they are the _ne plus

ultra_, I will not say of positive rudeness, but of that negative rudeness

which is not exactly the opposite of courtesy, but its absence. Here

again, however, comes the modern principle; and promptitude and frequency

of communication may be accepted as a compensation for the sacrifice of

formality. It may be argued, and with reason, that when a man of our own

day sends a post-card his ancestors would have been still more laconic,

for they would have sent nothing at all, and that there are a thousand

circumstances in which a post-card may be written when it is not possible

to write a letter. A husband on his travels has a supply of such cards in

a pocket-book. With these, and his pencil, he writes a line once or twice

a day in train or steamboat, or at table between two dishes, or on the

windy platform of a railway station, or in the street when he sees a

letter-box. He sends fifty such communications where his father would

have written three letters, and his grandfather one slowly composed and

slowly travelling epistle.

Many modern correspondents appreciate the convenience of the post-card,

but their conscience, as that of well-bred people, cannot get over the

fault of its publicity. For these the stationers have devised several

different substitutes. There is the French plan of what is called "Un Mot

à la Poste," a piece of paper with a single fold, gummed round the other

three edges, and perforated like postage-stamps for the facility of the

opener.[31] There is the miniature sheet of paper that you have not to

fold, and there is the card that you enclose in an envelope, and that

prepares the reader for a very brief communication. Here, again, is a very

curious illustration of the sacrificial nature of courtesy. A card is

sent; why a card? Why not a piece of paper of the same size which would

hold as many words? The answer is that a card is handsomer and more

costly, and from its stiffness a little easier to take out of the

envelope, and pleasanter to hold whilst reading, so that a small sacrifice

is made to the pleasure and convenience of the receiver, which is the

essence of courtesy in letter-writing. All this brief correspondence is

the offspring of the electric telegraph. Our forefathers were not used to

it, and would have regarded it as an offence. Even at the present date

(1884) it is not quite safe to write in our brief modern way to persons

who came to maturity before the electric telegraph was in use.

There is a wide distinction between brevity and hurry; in fact, brevity,

if of the intelligent kind, is the best preservative against hurry. Some

men write short letters, but are very careful to observe all the forms;

and they have the great advantage that the apparent importance of the

formal expressions is enhanced by the shortness of the letter itself. This

is the case in Robert Warcopp's letter to Sir Robert Plumpton.

When hurry really exists, and it is impossible to avoid the appearance of

it, as when a letter _cannot_ be brief, yet must be written at utmost

speed, the proper course is to apologize for hurry at the beginning and

not at the end of the letter. The reader is then propitiated at once, and

excuses the slovenly penmanship and style.

It is remarkable that legibility of handwriting should never have been

considered as among the essentials of courtesy in correspondence. It is

obviously for the convenience of the reader that a letter should be easily

read; but here another consideration intervenes. To write very legibly is

the accomplishment of clerks and writing-masters, who are usually poor

men, and, as such, do not hold a high social position. Aristocratic pride

has always had it for a principle to disdain, for itself, the

accomplishments of professional men; and therefore a careless scrawl is

more aristocratic than a clean handwriting, if the scrawl is of a

fashionable kind. Perhaps the historic origin of this feeling may be the

scorn of the ignorant mediæval baron for writing of all kinds as beneath

the attention of a warrior. In a cultured age there may be a reason of a

higher order. It may be supposed that attention to mechanical excellence

is incompatible with the action of the intellect; and people are curiously

ready to imagine incompatibilities where they do not really exist. As a

matter of fact, some men of eminent intellectual gifts write with as

exquisite a clearness in the formation of their letters as in the

elucidation of their ideas. It is easily forgotten, too, that the same

person may use different kinds of handwriting, according to circumstances,

like the gentleman whose best hand some people could read, whose middling

hand the writer himself could read, and whose worst neither he nor any

other human being could decipher. Legouvé, in his exquisite way, tells a

charming story of how he astonished a little girl by excelling her in

calligraphy. His scribble is all but illegible, and she was laughing at it

one day, when he boldly challenged her to a trial. Both sat down and

formed their letters with great patience, as in a writing class, and it

turned out, to the girl's amazement, that the scribbling Academician had

by far the more copperplate-like hand of the two. He then explained that

his bad writing was simply the result of speed. Frenchmen provokingly

reserve their very worst and most illegible writing for the signature. You

are able to read the letter but not the signature, and if there is not

some other means of ascertaining the writer's name you are utterly at

fault.

The old habit of crossing letters, now happily abandoned, was a direct

breach of real, though not of what in former days were conventional, good

manners. To cross a letter is as much as to say, "In order to spare myself

the cost of another sheet of paper or an extra stamp, I am quite willing

to inflict upon you, my reader, the trouble of disengaging one set of

lines from another." Very economical people in the past generation saved

an occasional penny in another way at the cost of the reader's eyes. They

diluted their ink with water, till the recipient of the letter cried,

"Prithee, why so pale?"

The modern type-writing machine has the advantage of making all words

equally legible; but the receiver of the printed letter is likely to feel

on opening it a slight yet perceptible shock of the kind always caused by

a want of consideration. The letter so printed is undoubtedly easier to

read than all but the very clearest manuscript, and so far it may be

considered a politeness to use the instrument; but unluckily it is

impersonal, so that the performer on the instrument seems far removed from

the receiver of the letter and not in that direct communication with him

which would be apparent in an autograph. The effect on the mind is almost

like that of a printed circular, or at least of a letter which has been

dictated to a short-hand writer.

The dictation of letters is allowable in business, because men of business

have to use the utmost attainable despatch, and (like the use of the lead

pencil) it is permitted to invalids, but with these exceptions it is sure

to produce a feeling of distance almost resembling discourtesy. In the

first place, a dictated letter is not strictly private, its contents

being already known to the amanuensis; and besides this it is felt that

the reason for dictating letters is the composer's convenience, which he

ought not to consult so obviously. If he dictates to a short-hand writer

he is evidently chary of his valuable time, whereas courtesy always at

least _seems_ willing to sacrifice time to others. These remarks, I

repeat, have no reference to business correspondence, which has its own

code of good manners.

The most irritating letters to receive are those which, under a great show

of courtesy, with many phrases and many kind inquiries about your health

and that of your household, and even with some news adapted to your taste,

contain some short sentence which betrays the fact that the whole letter

was written with a manifestly selfish purpose. The proper answer to such

letters is a brief business answer to the one essential sentence that

revealed the writer's object, not taking any notice whatever of the froth

of courteous verbiage.

Is it a part of necessary good breeding to answer letters at all? Are we

really, in the nature of things, under the obligation to take a piece of

paper and write phrases and sentences thereupon because it has pleased

somebody at a distance to spend his time in that manner?

This requires consideration; there can be no general rule. It seems to me

that people commit the error of transferring the subject from the region

of oral conversation to the region of written intercourse. If a man asked

me the way in the street it would be rudeness on my part not to answer

him, because the answer is easily given and costs no appreciable time,

but in written correspondence the case is essentially different. I am

burdened with work; every hour, every minute of my day is apportioned to

some definite duty or necessary rest, and three strangers make use of the

post to ask me questions. To answer them I must make references; however

brief the letters may be they will take time,--altogether the three will

consume an hour. Have these correspondents any right to expect me to work

an hour for them? Would a cabman drive them about the streets of London

during an hour for nothing? Would a waterman pull them an hour on the

Thames for nothing? Would a shoe-black brush their boots and trousers an

hour for nothing? And why am I to serve these men gratuitously and be

called an ill-bred, discourteous person if I tacitly decline to be their

servant? We owe sacrifices--occasional sacrifices--of this kind to friends

and relations, and we can afford them to a few, but we are under no

obligation to answer everybody. Those whom we do answer may be thankful

for a word on a post-card in Gladstone's brief but sufficient fashion. I

am very much of the opinion of Rudolphe in Ponsard's "L'Honneur et

l'Argent." A friend asks him what he does about letters:--

_Rudolphe._ Je les mets

Soigneusement en poche et ne réponds jamais.

_Premier Ami._ Oh! vous raillez.

_Rudolphe._ Non pas. Je ne puis pas admettre

Qu'un importun m'oblige à répondre à sa lettre,

Et, parcequ'il lui plaît de noircir du papier

Me condamne moi-même à ce fâcheux métier.

ESSAY XXIII.

LETTERS OF FRIENDSHIP.

If the art of writing had been unknown till now, and if the invention of

it were suddenly to burst upon the world as did that of the telephone, one

of the things most generally said in praise of it would be this. It would

be said, "What a gain to friendship, now that friends can communicate in

spite of separation by the very widest distances!"

Yet we have possessed this means of communication, the fullest and best of

all, from remote antiquity, and we scarcely make any use of it--certainly

not any use at all responding to its capabilities, and as time goes on,

instead of developing those capabilities by practice in the art of

friendly correspondence, we allow them to diminish by disuse.

The lowering of cost for the transport of letters, instead of making

friendly correspondents numerous, has made them few. The cheap

postage-stamp has increased business correspondence prodigiously, but it

has had a very different effect on that of friendship. Great numbers of

men whose business correspondence is heavy scarcely write letters of

friendship at all. Their minds produce the business letter as by a second

nature, and are otherwise sterile.

As for the facilities afforded by steam communication with distant

countries, they seem to be of little use to friendship, since a moderate

distance soon puts a stop to friendly communication. Except in cases of

strong affection the Straits of Dover are an effectual though imaginary

bar to intercourse of this kind, not to speak of the great oceans.

The impediment created by a narrow sea is, as I have said, imaginary, but

we may speculate on the reasons for it; and my own reflections have ended

in the somewhat strange conclusion that it must have something to do with

sea-sickness. It must be that people dislike the idea of writing a letter

that will have to cross a narrow channel of salt-water, because they

vaguely and dimly dread the motion of the vessel. Nobody would consciously

avow to himself such a sympathy with a missive exempt from all human ills,

but the feeling may be unconsciously present. How else are we to account

for the remarkable fact that salt-water breaks friendly communication by

letter? If you go to live anywhere out of your native island your most

intimate friends cease to give any news of themselves. They do not even

send printed announcements of the marriages and deaths in their families.

This does not imply any cessation of friendly feeling on their part. If

you appeared in England again they would welcome you with the utmost

kindness and hospitality, but they do not like to post anything that will

have to cross the sea. The news-vendors have not the same delicate

imaginative sympathy with the possible sufferings of rag-pulp, so you get

your English journals and find therein, by pure accident, the marriage of

one intimate old friend and the death of another. You excuse the married

man, because he is too much intoxicated with happiness to be responsible

for any omission; and you excuse the dead man, because he cannot send

letters from another world. Still you think that somebody not preoccupied

by bridal joys or impeded by the last paralysis might have sent you a line

directly, were it only a printed card.

Not only do the writers of letters feel a difficulty in sending their

manuscript across the sea, but people appear to have a sense of difficulty

in correspondence proportionate to the distance the letter will have to

traverse. One would infer that they really experience, by the power of

imagination, a feeling of fatigue in sending a letter on a long journey.

If this is not so, how are we to account for the fact that the rarity of

letters from friends increases in exact proportion to our remoteness from

them? A simple person without correspondence would naturally imagine that

it would be resorted to as a solace for separation, and that the greater

the distance the more the separated friends would desire to be drawn

together occasionally by its means, but in practice this rarely happens.

People will communicate by letter across a space of a hundred miles when

they will not across a thousand.

The very smallest impediments are of importance when the desire for

intercourse is languid. The cost of postage to colonies and to countries

within the postal union is trifling, but still it is heavier than the cost

of internal postage, and it may be unconsciously felt as an impediment.

Another slight impediment is that the answer to a letter sent to a great

distance cannot arrive next day, so that he who writes in hope of an

answer is like a trader who cannot expect an immediate return for an

investment.

To prevent friendships from dying out entirely through distance, the

French have a custom which seems, but is not, an empty form. On or about

New Year's Day they send cards to _all_ friends and many acquaintances,

however far away. The useful effects of this custom are the following:--

1. It acquaints you with the fact that your friend is still

alive,--pleasing information if you care to see him again.

2. It shows you that he has not forgotten you.

3. It gives you his present address.

4. In case of marriage, you receive his wife's card along with his own;

and if he is dead you receive no card at all, which is at least a negative

intimation.[32]

This custom has also an effect upon written correspondence, as the printed

card affords the opportunity of writing a letter, when, without the

address, the letter might not be written. When the address is well known

the card often suggests the idea of writing.

When warm friends send visiting-cards they often add a few words of

manuscript on the card itself, expressing friendly sentiments and giving a

scrap of brief but welcome news.

Here is a suggestion to a generation that thinks friendly letter-writing

irksome. With a view to the sparing of time and trouble, which is the

great object of modern life (sparing, that is, in order to waste in other

ways), cards might be printed as forms of invitation are, leaving only a

few blanks to be filled up; or there might be a public signal-book in

which the phrases most likely to be useful might be represented by

numbers.

The abandonment of letter-writing between friends is the more to be

regretted that, unless our friends are public persons, we receive no news

of them indirectly; therefore, when we leave their neighborhood, the

separation is of that complete kind which resembles temporary death. "No

word comes from the dead," and no word comes from those silent friends. It

is a melancholy thought in leaving a friend of this kind, when you shake

hands at the station and still hear the sound of his voice, that in a few

minutes he will be dead to you for months or years. The separation from a

corresponding friend is shorn of half its sorrows. You know that he will

write, and when he writes it requires little imagination to hear his voice

again.

To write, however, is not all. For correspondence to reach its highest

value, both friends must have the natural gift of friendly letter-writing,

which may be defined as the power of talking on paper in such a manner as

to represent their own minds with perfect fidelity in their friendly

aspect.

This power is not common. A man may be a charming companion, full of humor

and gayety, a well of knowledge, an excellent talker, yet his

correspondence may not reveal the possession of these gifts. Some men are

so constituted that as soon as they take a pen their faculties freeze. I

remember a case of the same congelation in another art. A certain painter

had exuberant humor and mimicry, with a marked talent for strong effects

in talk; in short, he had the gifts of an actor, and, as Pius VII. called

Napoleon I., he was both _commediante_ and _tragediante_. Any one who knew

him, and did not know his paintings, would have supposed at once that a

man so gifted must have painted the most animated works; but it so

happened (from some cause in the deepest mysteries of his nature) that

whenever he took up a brush or a pencil his humor, his tragic power, and

his love of telling effects all suddenly left him, and he was as timid,

slow, sober, and generally ineffectual in his painting as he was full of

fire and energy in talk. So it is in writing. That which ought to be the

pouring forth of a man's nature often liberates only a part of his nature,

and perhaps that part which has least to do with friendship. Your friend

delights you by his ease and affectionate charm of manner, by the

happiness of his expressions, by his wit, by the extent of his

information, all these being qualities that social intercourse brings out

in him as colors are revealed by light. The same man, in dull solitude at

his desk, may write a letter from which every one of these qualities may

be totally absent, and instead of them he may offer you a piece of

perfunctory duty-writing which, as you see quite plainly, he only wanted

to get done with, and in which you do not find a trace of your friend's

real character. Such correspondence as that is worth having only so far

as it informs you of your friend's existence and of his health.

Another and a very different way in which a man may represent himself

unfairly in correspondence, so that his letters are not his real self, is

when he finds that he has some particular talent as a writer, and

unconsciously cultivates that talent when he holds a pen, whereas his real

self has many other qualities that remain unrepresented. In this way humor

may become the dominant quality in the letters of a correspondent whose

conversation is not dominantly humorous.

Habits of business sometimes produce the effect that the confirmed

business correspondent will write to his friend willingly and promptly on

any matter of business, and will give him excellent advice, and be glad of

the opportunity of rendering him a service, but he will shrink from the

unaccustomed effort of writing any other kind of letter.

There is a strong temptation to blame silent friends and praise good

correspondents; but we do not reflect that letter-writing is a task to

some and a pleasure to others, and that if people may sometimes be justly

blamed for shirking a _corvée_ they can never deserve praise for indulging

in an amusement. There is a particular reason why, when friendly

letter-writing is a task, it is more willingly put off than many other

tasks that appear far heavier and harder. It is either a real pleasure or

a feigned pleasure, and feigned pleasures are the most wearisome things in

life, far more wearisome than acknowledged work. For in work you have a

plain thing to do and you see the end of it, and there is no need for

ambages at the beginning or for a graceful retiring at the close; but a

feigned pleasure has its own observances that must be gone through whether

one has any heart for them or not. The groom who cleans a rich man's

stable, and whistles at his work, is happier than the guest at a state

dinner who is trying to look other than what he is,--a wearied victim of

feigned and formal pleasure with a set false smile upon his face. In

writing a business letter you have nothing to affect; but a letter of

friendship, unless you have the real inspiration for it, is a narrative of

things you have no true impulse to narrate, and the expression of feelings

which (even if they be in some degree existent) you do not earnestly

desire to utter.

The sentiment of friendship is in general rather a quiet feeling of regard

than any lively enthusiasm. It may be counted upon for what it is,--a

disposition to receive the friend with a welcome or to render him an

occasional service, but there is not, commonly, enough of it to be a

perennial warm fountain of literary inspiration. Therefore the worst

mistake in dealing with a friend is to reproach him for not having been

cordial and communicative enough. Sometimes this reproach is made,

especially by women, and the immediate effect of it is to close whatever

communicativeness there may be. If the friend wrote little before being

reproached he will write less after.

The true inspiration of the friendly letter is the perfect faith that all

the concerns of the writer will interest his friend. If James, who is

separated by distance from John, thinks that John will not care about what

James has been doing, hoping, suffering, the fount of friendly

correspondence is frozen at its source. James ought to believe that John

loves him enough to care about every little thing that can affect his

happiness, even to the sickness of his old horse or the accident that

happened to his dog when the scullery-maid threw scalding water out of the

kitchen window; then there will be no lack, and James will babble on

innocently through many a page, and never have to think.

The believer in friendship, he who has the true undoubting faith, writes

with perfect carelessness about great things and small, avoiding neither

serious interests, as a wary man would, nor trivial ones that might be

passed over by a writer avaricious of his time. William of Orange, in his

letters to Bentinck, appears to have been the model of friendly

correspondents; and he was so because his letters reflected not a part

only of his thinking and living, but the whole of it, as if nothing that

concerned him could possibly be without interest for the man he loved.

Familiar as it must be to many readers, I cannot but quote a passage from

Macaulay:

"The descendants of Bentinck still preserve many letters written by

William to their master, and it is not too much to say that no person

who has not studied those letters can form a correct notion of the

Prince's character. He whom even his admirers generally accounted the

most frigid and distant of men here forgets all distinctions of rank,

and pours out all his thoughts with the ingenuousness of a schoolboy.

He imparts without reserve secrets of the highest moment. He explains

with perfect simplicity vast designs affecting all the governments of

Europe. Mingled with his communications on such subjects are other

communications of a very different but perhaps not of a less

interesting kind. All his adventures, all his personal feelings, his

long runs after enormous stags, his carousals on St. Hubert's Day, the

growth of his plantations, the failure of his melons, the state of his

stud, his wish to procure an easy pad-nag for his wife, his vexation

at learning that one of his household, after ruining a girl of good

family, refused to marry her, his fits of sea-sickness, his coughs,

his headaches, his devotional moods, his gratitude for the Divine

protection after a great escape, his struggles to submit himself to

the Divine will after a disaster, are described with an amiable

garrulity hardly to have been expected from the most discreetly sedate

statesman of his age. Still more remarkable is the careless effusion

of his tenderness, and the brotherly interest which he takes in his

friend's domestic felicity."

Friendly letters easily run over from sheet to sheet till they become

ample and voluminous. I received a welcome epistle of twenty pages

recently, and have seen another from a young man to his comrade which

exceeded fifty; but the grandest letter that I ever heard of was from

Gustave Doré to a very old lady whom he liked. He was travelling in

Switzerland, and sent her a letter eighty pages long, full of lively

pen-sketches for her entertainment. Artists often insert sketches in their

letters,--a graceful habit, as it adds to their interest and value.

The talent for scribbling friendly letters implies some rough literary

power, but may coexist with other literary powers of a totally different

kind, and, as it seems, in perfect independence of them. There is no

apparent connection between the genius in "Childe Harold," "Manfred,"

"Cain," and the talent of a lively letter-writer, yet Byron was the best

careless letter-writer in English whose correspondence has been published

and preserved. He said "dreadful is the exertion of letter-writing," but

by this he must have meant the first overcoming of indolence to begin the

letter, for when once in motion his pen travelled with consummate

naturalness and ease, and the exertion is not to be perceived. The length

and subject of his communications were indeterminate. He scribbled on and

on, every passing mood being reflected and fixed forever in his letters,

which complete our knowledge of him by showing us the action of his mind

in ordinal times as vividly as the poems display its power in moments of

highest exaltation. We follow his mental phases from minute to minute. He

is not really in one state and pretending to be in another for form's

sake, so you have all his moods, and the letters are alive. The

transitions are quick as thought. He darts from one topic to another with

the freedom and agility of a bird, dwelling on each just long enough to

satisfy his present need, but not an instant longer, and this without any

reference to the original subject or motive of the letter. He is one of

those perfect correspondents _qui causent avec la plume_. Men, women, and

things, comic and tragic adventures, magnificent scenery, historical

cities, all that his mind spontaneously notices in the world, are touched

upon briefly, yet with consummate power. Though the sentences were written

in the most careless haste and often in the strangest situations, many a

paragraph is so dense in its substance, so full of matter, that one could

not abridge it without loss. But the supreme merit of Byron's letters is

that they record his own sensations with such fidelity. What do I, the

receiver of a letter, care for second-hand opinions about anything? I can

hear the fashionable opinions from echoes innumerable. What I _do_ want is

a bit of my friend himself, of his own peculiar idiosyncrasy, and if I get

_that_ it matters nothing that his feelings and opinions should be

different from mine; nay, the more they differ from mine the more

freshness and amusement they bring me. All Byron's correspondents might be

sure of getting a bit of the real Byron. He never describes anything

without conveying the exact effect upon himself. Writing to his publisher

from Rome in 1817, he gives in a single paragraph a powerful description

of the execution of three robbers by the guillotine (rather too terrible

to quote), and at the end of it comes the personal effect:--

"The pain seems little, and yet the effect to the spectator and the

preparation to the criminal are very striking and chilling. The first

turned me quite hot and thirsty, and made me shake so that I could

hardly hold the opera-glass (I was close, but was determined to see as

one should see everything once, with attention); the second and third

(which shows how dreadfully soon things grow indifferent), I am

ashamed to say, had no effect on me as a horror, though I would have

saved them if I could."

How accurately this experience is described with no affectation of

impassible courage (he trembles at first like a woman) or of becoming

emotion afterwards, the instant that the real emotion ceased! Only some

pity remains,--"I would have saved them if I could."

The bits of frank criticism thrown into his letters, often quite by

chance, were not the least interesting elements in Byron's

correspondence. Here is an example, about a book that had been sent him:--

"Modern Greece--good for nothing; written by some one who has never

been there, and, not being able to manage the Spenser stanza, has

invented a thing of his own, consisting of two elegiac stanzas, an

heroic line and an Alexandrine, twisted on a string. Besides, why

_modern_? You may say _modern Greeks_, but surely _Greece_ itself is

rather more ancient than ever it was."

The carelessness of Byron in letter-writing, his total indifference to

proportion and form, his inattention to the beginning, middle, and end of

a letter, considered as a literary composition, are not to be counted for

faults, as they would be in writings of any pretension. A friendly letter

is, by its nature, a thing without pretension. The one merit of it which

compensates for every defect is to carry the living writer into the

reader's presence, such as he really is, not such as by study and art he

might make himself out to be. Byron was energetic, impetuous, impulsive,

quickly observant, disorderly, generous, open-hearted, vain. All these

qualities and defects are as conspicuous in his correspondence as they

were in his mode of life. There have been better letter-writers as to

literary art,--to which he gave no thought,--and the literary merits that

his letters possess (their clearness, their force of narrative and

description, their conciseness) are not the results of study, but the

characteristics of a vigorous mind.

The absolutely best friendly letter-writer known to me is Victor

Jacquemont. He, too, wrote according to the inspiration of the moment, but

it was so abundant that it carried him on like a steadily flowing tide.

His letters are wonderfully sustained, yet they are not _composed_; they

are as artless as Byron's, but much more full and regular. Many scribblers

have facility, a flux of words, but who has Jacquemont's weight of matter

along with it? The development of his extraordinary epistolary talent was

due to another talent deprived of adequate exercise by circumstances.

Jacquemont was by nature a brilliant, charming, amiable talker, and the

circumstances were various situations in which this talker was deprived of

an audience, being often, in long wanderings, surrounded by dull or

ignorant people. Ideas accumulated in his mind till the accumulation

became difficult to bear, and he relieved himself by talking on paper to

friends at a distance, but intentionally only to one friend at a time. He

tried to forget that his letters were passed round a circle of readers,

and the idea that they would be printed never once occurred to him:--

"En écrivant aujourd'hui aux uns et aux autres, j'ai cherché à oublier

ce que tu me dis de l'échange que chacun fait des lettres qu'il reçoit

de moi. Cette pensée m'aurait retenu la plume, ou du moins, _ne

l'aurait pas laissée couler assez nonchalamment sur le papier pour en

noircir, en un jour, cinquante-huit feuilles_, comme je l'ai fait....

_Je sais et j'aime beaucoup causer à deux; à trois, c'est autre chose;

il en est de même pour écrire._ Pour parler comme je pense et sans

blague, _il me faut la persuasion que je ne serai lu que de celui à

qui j'écris_."

To read these letters, in the four volumes of them which have been happily

preserved, is to live with the courageous observer from day to day, to

share pleasures enjoyed with the freshness of sensation that belongs to

youth and strength, and privations borne with the cheerfulness of a truly

heroic spirit.

This Essay would run to an inordinate length if I even mentioned the best

of the many letter-writers who are known to us; and it is generally by

some adventitious circumstance that they have ever been known at all. A

man wins fame in something quite outside of letter-writing, and then his

letters are collected and given to the world, but perfectly obscure people

may have been equal or superior to him as correspondents. Occasionally the

letters of some obscure person are rescued from oblivion. Madame de

Rémusat passed quietly through life, and is now in a blaze of posthumous

fame. Her son decided upon the publication of her letters, and then it

became at once apparent that this lady had extraordinary gifts of the

observing and recording order, so that her testimony, as an eye-witness of

rare intelligence, must affect all future estimates of the conqueror of

Austerlitz. There may be at this moment, there probably are, persons to

whom the world attributes no literary talent, yet who are cleverly

preserving the very best materials of history in careless letters to their

friends.

It seems an indiscretion to read private letters, even when they are in

print, but it is an indiscretion we cannot help committing. What can be

more private than a letter from a man to his wife on purely family

matters? Surely it is wrong to read such letters; but who could repent

having read that exquisite one from Tasso's father, Bernardo Tasso,

written to his wife about the education of their children during an

involuntary separation? It shows to what a degree a sheet of paper may be

made the vehicle of a tender affection. In the first page he tries, and,

lover-like, tries again and again, to find words that will draw them

together in spite of distance. "Not merely often," he says, "but

continually our thoughts must meet upon the road." He expresses the

fullest confidence that her feelings for him are as strong and true as his

own for her, and that the weariness of separation is painful alike for

both, only he fears that she will be less able to bear the pain, not

because she is wanting in prudence but by reason of her abounding love. At

length the tender kindness of his expressions culminates in one passionate

outburst, "poi ch' io amo voi in quello estremo grado che si possa amar

cosa mortale."

It would be difficult to find a stronger contrast than that between

Bernardo Tasso's warmth and the tranquil coolness of Montaigne, who just

says enough to save appearances in that one conjugal epistle of his which

has come down to us. He begins by quoting a sceptical modern view of

marriage, and then briefly disclaims it for himself, but does not say

exactly what his own sentiments may be, not having much ardor of affection

to express, and honestly avoiding any feigned declarations:--

"Ma Femme vous entendez bien que ce n'est pas le tour d'vn galand

homme, aux reigles de ce temps icy, de vous courtiser & caresser

encore. Car ils disent qu'vn habil homme peut bien prendre femme: mais

que de l'espouser c'est à faire à vn sot. Laissons les dire: ie me

tiens de ma part à la simple façon du vieil aage, aussi en porte-ie

tantost le poil. Et de vray la nouuelleté couste si cher iusqu'à

ceste heure à ce pauure estat (& si ie ne sçay si nous en sommes à la

dernière enchere) qu'en tout & par tout i'en quitte le party. Viuons

ma femme, vous & moy, à la vieille Françoise."

If friendship is maintained by correspondence, it is also liable to be

imperilled by it. Not unfrequently have men parted on the most amiable

terms, looking forward to a happy meeting, and not foreseeing the evil

effects of letters. Something will be written by one of them, not quite

acceptable to the other, who will either remonstrate and cause a rupture

in that way, or take his trouble silently and allow friendship to die

miserably of her wound. Much experience is needed before we entirely

realize the danger of friendly intercourse on paper. It is ten times more

difficult to maintain a friendship by letter than by personal intercourse,

not for the obvious reason that letter-writing requires an effort, but

because as soon as there is the slightest divergence of views or

difference in conduct, the expression of it or the account of it in

writing cannot be modified by kindness in the eye or gentleness in the

tone of voice. My friend may say almost anything to me in his private

room, because whatever passes his lips will come with tones that prove him

to be still my friend; but if he wrote down exactly the same words, and a

postman handed me the written paper, they might seem hard, unkind, and

even hostile. It is strange how slow we are to discover this in practice.

We are accustomed to speak with great freedom to intimate friends, and it

is only after painful mishaps that we completely realize the truth that it

is perilous to permit ourselves the same liberty with the pen. As soon as

we _do_ realize it we see the extreme folly of those who timidly avoid the

oral expression of friendly censure, and afterwards write it all out in

black ink and send it in a missive to the victim when he has gone away. He

receives the letter, feels it to be a cold cruelty, and takes refuge from

the vexations of friendship in the toils of business, thanking Heaven that

in the region of plain facts there is small place for sentiment.

ESSAY XXIV.

LETTERS OF BUSINESS.

The possibilities of intercourse by correspondence are usually

underestimated.

That there are great natural differences of talent for letter-writing is

certainly true; but it is equally true that there are great natural

differences of talent for oral explanation, yet, although we constantly

hear people say that this or that matter of business cannot be treated by

correspondence, we _never_ hear them say that it cannot be treated by

personal interviews. The value of the personal interview is often as much

over-estimated as that of letters is depreciated; for if some men do best

with the tongue, others are more effective with the pen.

It is presumed that there is nothing in correspondence to set against the

advantages of pouring forth many words without effort, and of carrying on

an argument rapidly; but the truth is, that correspondence has peculiar

advantages of its own. A hearer seldom grasps another person's argument

until it has been repeated several times, and if the argument is of a very

complex nature the chances are that he will not carry away all its points

even then. A letter is a document which a person of slow abilities can

study at his leisure, until he has mastered it; so that an elaborate

piece of reasoning may be set forth in a letter with a fair chance that

such a person will ultimately understand it. He will read the letter three

or four times on the day of its arrival, then he will still feel that

something may have escaped him, and he will read it again next day. He

will keep it and refer to it afterwards to refresh his memory. He can do

nothing of all this with what you say to him orally. His only resource in

that case is to write down a memorandum of the conversation on your

departure, in which he will probably make serious omissions or mistakes.

Your letter is a memorandum of a far more direct and authentic kind.

Appointments are sometimes made in order to settle a matter of business by

talking, and after the parties have met and talked for a long time one

says to the other, "I will write to you in a day or two;" and the other

instantly agrees with the proposal, from a feeling that the matter can be

settled more clearly by letter than by oral communication.

In these cases it may happen that the talking has cleared the way for the

letter,--that it has removed subjects of doubt, hesitation, or dispute,

and left only a few points on which the parties are very nearly agreed.

There are, however, other cases, which have sometimes come under my own

observation, in which men meet by appointment to settle a matter, and then

seem afraid to cope with it, and talk about indifferent subjects with a

half-conscious intention of postponing the difficult one till there is no

longer time to deal with it on that day. They then say, when they

separate, "We will settle that matter by correspondence," as if they could

not have done so just as easily without giving themselves the trouble of

meeting. In such cases as these the reason for avoiding the difficult

subject is either timidity or indolence. Either the parties do not like to

face each other in an opposition that may become a verbal combat, or else

they have not decision and industry enough to do a hard day's work

together; so they procrastinate, that they may spread the work over a

larger space of time.

The timidity that shrinks from a personal encounter is sometimes the cause

of hostile letter-writing about matters of business even when personal

interviews are most easy. There are instances of disputes by letter

between people who live in the same town, in the same street, and even in

the same house, and who might quarrel with their tongues if they were not

afraid, but fear drives them to fight from a certain distance, as it

requires less personal courage to fire a cannon at an enemy a league away

than to face his naked sword.

Timidity leads people to write letters and to avoid them. Some timorous

people feel bolder with a pen; others, on the contrary, are extremely

afraid of committing anything to paper, either because written words

remain and may be referred to afterwards, or because they may be read by

eyes they were never intended for, or else because the letter-writer feels

doubtful about his own powers in composition, grammar, or spelling.

Of these reasons against doing business by letter the second is really

serious. You write about your most strictly private affairs, and unless

the receiver of the letter is a rigidly careful and orderly person, it may

be read by his clerks or servants. You may afterwards visit the recipient

and find the letter lying about on a disorderly desk, or stuck on a hook

suspended from a wall, or thrust into a lockless drawer; and as the letter

is no longer your property, and you have not the resource of destroying

it, you will keenly appreciate the wisdom of those who avoid

letter-writing when they can.

The other cause of timidity, the apprehension that some fault may be

committed, some sin against literary taste or grammatical rule, has a

powerful effect as a deterrent from even necessary business

correspondence. The fear which a half-educated person feels that he will

commit faults causes a degree of hesitation which is enough of itself to

produce them; and besides this cause of error there is the want of

practice, also caused by timidity, for persons who dread letter-writing

practise it as little as possible.

The awkwardness of uneducated letter-writers is a most serious cause of

anxiety to people who are compelled to intrust the care of things to

uneducated dependants at a distance. Such care-takers, instead of keeping

you regularly informed of the state of affairs as an intelligent

correspondent would, write rarely, and they have such difficulty in

imagining the necessary ignorance of one who is not on the spot, that the

information they give you is provokingly incomplete on some most important

points.

An uneducated agent will write to you and tell you, for example, that

damage has occurred to something of yours, say a house, a carriage, or a

yacht, but he will not tell you its exact nature or extent, and he will

leave you in a state of anxious conjecture. If you question him by letter,

he will probably miss what is most essential in your questions, so that

you will have great difficulty in getting at the exact truth. After much

trouble you will perhaps have to take the train and go to see the extent

of damage for yourself, though it might have been described to you quite

accurately in a short letter by an intelligent man of business.

Nothing is more wonderful than the mistakes in following written

directions that can be committed by uneducated men. With clear directions

in the most legible characters before their eyes they will quietly go and

do something entirely different, and appear unfeignedly surprised when you

show them the written directions afterwards. In these cases it is probable

that they have unconsciously substituted a notion of their own for your

idea, which is the common process of what the uneducated consider to be

understanding things.

The extreme facility with which this is done may be illustrated by an

example. The well-known French _savant_ and inventor, Ruolz, whose name is

famous in connection with electro-plating, turned his attention to paper

for roofing and, as he perceived the defects of the common bituminous

papers, invented another in which no bitumen was employed. This he

advertised constantly and extensively as the "Carton _non_ bitumé Ruolz,"

consequently every one calls it the "Carton bitumé Ruolz." The reason here

is that the notion of papers for roofs was already so associated in the

French mind with bitumen, that it was absolutely impossible to effect the

disjunction of the two ideas.

Instances have occurred to everybody in which the consequence of warning a

workman that he is not to do some particular thing, is that he goes and

does it, when if nothing had been said on the subject he might, perchance,

have avoided it. Here are two good instances of this, but I have met with

many others. I remember ordering a binder to bind some volumes with red

edges, specially stipulating that he was not to use aniline red. He

therefore carefully stained the edges with aniline. I also remember

writing to a painter that he was to stain some new fittings of a boat with

a transparent glaze of raw sienna, and afterwards varnish them, and that

he was to be careful _not_ to use opaque paint anywhere. I was at a great

distance from the boat and could not superintend the work. In due time I

visited the boat and discovered that a foul tint of opaque paint had been

employed everywhere on the new fittings, without any glaze or varnish

whatever, in spite of the fact that old fittings, partially retained, were

still there, with mellow transparent stain and varnish, in the closest

juxtaposition with the hideous thick new daubing.

It is the evil of mediocrity in fortune to have frequently to trust to

uneducated agents. Rich men can employ able representatives, and in this

way they can inform themselves accurately of what occurs to their

belongings at a distance. Without riches, however, we may sometimes have a

friend on the spot who will see to things for us, which is one of the

kindest offices of friendship. The most efficient friend is one who will

not only look to matters of detail, but will take the trouble to inform

you accurately about them, and for this he must be a man of leisure. Such

a friend often spares one a railway journey by a few clear lines of report

or explanation. Judging from personal experience, I should say that

retired lawyers and retired military officers were admirably adapted to

render this great service efficiently, and I should suppose that a man who

had retired from busy commercial life would be scarcely less useful, but I

should not hope for precision in one who had always been unoccupied, nor

should I expect many details from one who was much occupied still. The

first would lack training and experience; the second would lack leisure.

The talent for accuracy in affairs may be distinct from literary talent

and education, and though we have been considering the difficulty of

corresponding on matters of business with the uneducated, we must not too

hastily infer that because a man is inaccurate in spelling, and inelegant

in phraseology, he may not be an agreeable and efficient business

correspondent. There was a time when all the greatest men of business in

England were uncertain spellers. Clear expression and completeness of

statement are more valuable than any other qualities in a business

correspondent. I sometimes have to correspond with a tradesman in Paris

who rose from an humble origin and scarcely produces what a schoolmaster

would consider a passable letter; yet his letters are models in essential

qualities, as he always removes by plain statements or questions every

possibility of a mistake, and if there is any want of absolute precision

in my orders he is sure to find out the deficiency, and to call my

attention to it sharply.

The habit of _not acknowledging orders_ is one of the worst negative vices

in business correspondence. It is most inconveniently common in France,

but happily much rarer in England. Where this vice prevails you cannot

tell whether the person you wish to employ has read your order or not; and

if you suppose him to have read it, you have no reason to feel sure that

he has understood it, or will execute it in time.

It is a great gain to the writer of letters to be able to make them brief

and clear at the same time, but as there is obscurity in a labyrinth of

many words so there may be another kind of obscurity from their

paucity,--that kind which Horace alluded to with reference to poetry,--

"Brevis esse laboro

Obscurus fio."

Sometimes one additional word would spare the reader a doubt or a

misunderstanding. This is likely to become more and more the dominant

fault of correspondence as it imitates the brevity of the telegram.

Observe the interesting use of the word _laboro_ by Horace. You may, in

fact, _labor_ to be brief, although the result is an appearance of less

labor than if you had written at ease. It may take more time to write a

very short letter than one of twice the length, the only gain in this

case being to the receiver.

Letters of business often appear to be written in the most rapid and

careless haste; the writing is almost illegible from its speed, the

composition slovenly, the letter brief. And yet such a letter may have

cost hours of deliberate reflection before one word of it was committed to

paper. It is the rapid registering of a slowly matured decision.

It is a well-known principle of modern business correspondence that if a

letter refers only to one subject it is more likely to receive attention

than if it deals with several; therefore if you have several different

orders or directions to give it is bad policy to write them all at once,

unless you are absolutely compelled to do so because they are all equally

pressing. Even if there is the same degree of urgency for all, yet a

practical impossibility that all should be executed at the same time, it

is still the best policy to give your orders successively and not more

quickly than they can be executed. The only danger of this is that the

receiver of the orders may think at first that they are small matters in

which postponement signifies little, as they can be executed at any time.

To prevent this he should be strongly warned at first that the order will

be rapidly followed by several others. If there is not the same degree of

urgency for all, the best way is to make a private register of the

different matters in the order of their urgency, and then to write several

short notes, at intervals, one about each thing.

People have such a marvellous power of misunderstanding even the very

plainest directions that a business letter never _can_ be made too clear.

It will, indeed, frequently happen that language itself is not clear

enough for the purposes of explanation without the help of drawing, and

drawing may not be clear to one who has not been educated to understand

it, which compels you to have recourse to modelling. In these cases the

task of the letter-writer is greatly simplified, as he has nothing to do

but foresee and prevent any misunderstanding of the drawing or model.

Every material thing constructed by mankind may be explained by the three

kinds of mechanical drawing,--plan, section, and elevation,--but the

difficulty, is that so many people are unable to understand plans and

sections; they only understand elevations, and not always even these. The

special incapacity to understand plans and sections is common in every

rank of society, and it is not uncommon even in the practical trades. All

letter-writing that refers to material construction would be immensely

simplified if, by a general rule in popular and other education, every

future man and woman in the country were taught enough about mechanical

drawing to be able at least to _read_ it.

It is delightful to correspond about construction with any trained

architect or engineer, because to such a correspondent you can explain

everything briefly, with the perfect certainty of being accurately

understood. It is terrible toil to have to explain construction by letter

to a man who does not understand mechanical drawing; and when you have

given great labor to your explanation, it is the merest chance whether he

will catch your meaning or not. The evil does not stop at mechanical

drawing. Not only do uneducated people misunderstand a mechanical plan or

section, but they are quite as liable to misunderstand a perspective

drawing, as the great architect and draughtsman Viollet-le-Duc charmingly

exemplified by the work of an intelligent child. A little boy had drawn a

cat as he had seen it in front with its tail standing up, and this front

view was stupidly misunderstood by a mature _bourgeois_, who thought the

animal was a biped (as the hind-legs were hidden), and believed the erect

tail to be some unknown object sticking out of the nondescript creature's

head. If you draw a board in perspective (other than isometrical) a

workman is quite likely to think that one end of it is to be narrower than

the other.

Business correspondence in foreign languages is a very simple matter when

it deals only with plain facts, and it does not require any very extensive

knowledge of the foreign tongue to write a common order; but if any

delicate or complicated matter has to be explained, or if touchy

sensitiveness in the foreigner has to be soothed by management and tact,

then a thorough knowledge of the shades of expression is required, and

this is extremely rare. The statement of bare facts, or the utterance of

simple wants, is indeed only a part of business correspondence, for men of

business, though they are not supposed to display sentiment in affairs,

are in reality just as much human beings as other men, and consequently

they have feelings which are to be considered. A correspondent who is able

to write a foreign language with delicacy and tact will often attain his

object when one with a ruder and more imperfect knowledge of the language

would meet with certain failure, though he asked for exactly the same

thing.

It is surety possible to be civil and even polite in business

correspondence without using the deplorable commercial slang which exists,

I believe, in every modern language. The proof that such abstinence is

possible is that some of the most efficient and most active men of

business never have recourse to it at all. This commercial slang consists

in the substitution of conventional terms originally intended to be more

courteous than plain English, French, etc., but which, in fact, from their

mechanical use, become wholly destitute of that best politeness which is

personal, and does not depend upon set phrases that can be copied out of a

tradesman's model letter-writer. Anybody but a tradesman calls your letter

a letter; why should an English tradesman call it "your favor," and a

French one "_votre honorée_"? A gentleman writing in the month of May

speaks of April, May, and June, when a tradesman carefully avoids the

names of the months, and calls them _ultimo_, _courant_, and _proximo_;

whilst instead of saying "by" or "according to," like other Englishmen, he

says _per_. This style was touched upon by Scott in Provost Crosbie's

letter to Alexander Fairford: "Dear Sir--Your _respected favor_ of 25th

_ultimo_, _per_ favor of Mr. Darsie Latimer, reached me in safety." This

is thought to be a finished commercial style. One sometimes meets with the

most astonishing and complicated specimens of it, which the authors are

evidently proud of as proofs of their high commercial training. I regret

not to have kept some fine examples of these, as their perfections are far

beyond all imitation. This is not surprising when we reflect that the very

worst commercial style is the result of a striving by many minds, during

several generations, after a preposterous ideal.

Tradesmen deserve credit for understanding the one element of courtesy in

letter-writing which has been neglected by gentlemen. They value legible

handwriting, and they print clear names and addresses on their

letter-paper, by which they spare much trouble.

Before closing this chapter let me say something about the reading of

business letters as well as the writing of them. It is, perhaps, a harder

duty to read such letters with the necessary degree of attention than to

compose them, for the author has his head charged with the subject, and

writing the letter is a relief to him; but to the receiver the matter is

new, and however lucid may be the exposition it always requires some

degree of real attention on his part. How are you, being at a distance, to

get an indolent man to bestow that necessary attention? He feels secure

from a personal visit, and indulges his indolence by neglecting your

concerns, even when they are also his own. Long ago I heard an English

Archdeacon tell the following story about his Bishop. The prelate was one

of that numerous class of men who loathe the sight of a business letter;

and he had indulged his indolence in that respect to such a degree that,

little by little, he had arrived at the fatal stage where one leaves

letters unopened for days or weeks. At one particular time the Archdeacon

was aware of a great arrear of unopened letters, and impressed his

lordship with the necessity for taking some note of their contents.

Yielding to a stronger will, the Bishop began to read; and one of the

first communications was from a wealthy man who offered a large sum for

church purposes (I think for building), but if the offer was not accepted

within a certain lapse of time he declared his intention of making it to

that which a Bishop loveth not--a dissenting community. The prelate had

opened the letter too late, and he lost the money. I believe that the

Archdeacon's vexation at the loss was more than counterbalanced by

gratification that his hierarchical superior had received such a lesson

for his neglect. Yet he did but imitate Napoleon, of whom Emerson says,

"He directed Bourrienne to leave all letters unopened for three weeks, and

then observed with satisfaction how large a part of the correspondence had

disposed of itself and no longer required an answer." This is a very

unsafe system to adopt, as the case of the Bishop proves. Things may

"dispose of themselves" in the wrong way, like wine in a leaky cask,

which, instead of putting itself carefully into a sound cask, goes

trickling into the earth.

The indolence of some men in reading and answering letters of business

would be incredible if they did not give clear evidence of it. The most

remarkable example that ever came under my notice is the following. A

French artist, not by any means in a condition of superfluous prosperity,

exhibited a picture at the _Salon_. He waited in Paris till after the

opening of the exhibition and then went down into the country. On the day

of his departure he received letters from two different collectors

expressing a desire to purchase his work, and asking its price. Any real

man of business would have seized upon such an opportunity at once. He

would have answered both letters, stayed in town, and contrived to set the

two amateurs bidding against each other. The artist in question was one of

those unaccountable mortals who would rather sacrifice all their chances

of life than indite a letter of business, so he left both inquiries

unanswered, saying that if the men had really wanted the picture they

would have called to see him. He never sold it, and some time afterwards

was obliged to give up his profession, quite as much from the lack of

promptitude in affairs as from any artistic deficiency.

Sometimes letters of business are _read_, but read so carelessly that it

would be better if they were thrown unopened into the fire. I have seen

some astounding instances of this, and, what is most remarkable, of

repeated and incorrigible carelessness in the same person or firm,

compelling one to the conclusion that in corresponding with that person or

that firm the clearest language, the plainest writing, and the most

legible numerals, are all equally without effect. I am thinking

particularly of one case, intimately known to me in all its details, in

which a business correspondence of some duration was finally abandoned,

after infinite annoyance, for the simple reason that it was impossible to

get the members of the firm, or their representatives, to attend to

written orders with any degree of accuracy. Even whilst writing this very

Essay I have given an order with regard to which I foresaw a probable

error. Knowing by experience that a probable error is almost certain if

steps are not taken energetically to prevent it, I requested that this

error might not be committed, and to attract more attention to my request

I wrote the paragraph containing it in red ink,--a very unusual

precaution. The foreseen error was accurately committed.

ESSAY XXV.

ANONYMOUS LETTERS.

Probably few of my mature readers have attained middle age without

receiving a number of anonymous letters. Such letters are not always

offensive, sometimes they are amusing, sometimes considerate and kind, yet

there is in all cases a feeling of annoyance on receiving them, because

the writer has made himself inaccessible to a reply. It is as if a man in

a mask whispered a word in your ear and then vanished suddenly in a crowd.

You wish to answer a calumny or acknowledge a kindness, and you may talk

to the winds and streams.

Anonymous letters of the worst kind have a certain value to the student of

human nature, because they afford him glimpses of the evil spirit that

disguises itself under the fair seemings of society. You believe with

childlike simplicity and innocence that, as you have never done any

intentional injury to a human being, you cannot have a human enemy, and

you make the startling discovery that somewhere in the world, perhaps even

amongst the smiling people you meet at dances and dinners, there are

creatures who will have recourse to the foulest slanders if thereby they

may hope to do you an injury. What _can_ you have done to excite such

bitter animosity? You may both have done much and neglected much. You may

have had some superiority of body, mind, or fortune; you may have

neglected to soothe some jealous vanity by the flattery it craved with a

tormenting hunger.

The simple fact that you seem happier than Envy thinks you ought to be is

of itself enough to excite a strong desire to diminish your offensive

happiness or put an end to it entirely. That is the reason why people who

are going to be married receive anonymous letters. If they are not really

happy they have every appearance of being happy, which is not less

intolerable. The anonymous letter-writer seeks to put a stop to such a

state of things. He might go to one of the parties and slander the other

openly, but it would require courage to do that directly to his face. A

letter might be written, but if name and address were given there would

come an inconvenient demand for proofs. One course remains, offering that

immunity from consequences which is soothing to the nerves of a coward.

The envious or jealous man can throw his vitriol in the dark and slip away

unperceived--_he can write an anonymous letter_.

Has the reader ever really tried to picture to himself the state of that

man's or woman's mind (for women write these things also) who can sit

down, take a sheet of paper, make a rough draft of an anonymous letter,

copy it out in a very legible yet carefully disguised hand, and make

arrangements for having it posted at a distance from the place where it

was written? Such things are constantly done. At this minute there are a

certain number of men and women in the world who are vile enough to do

all that simply in order to spoil the happiness of some person whom they

regard with "envy, hatred, malice, and all uncharitableness." I see in my

mind's eye the gentleman--the man having all the apparent delicacy and

refinement of a gentleman--who is writing a letter intended to blast the

character of an acquaintance. Perhaps he meets that acquaintance in

society, and shakes hands with him, and pretends to take an interest in

his health. Meanwhile he secretly reflects upon the particular sort of

calumny that will have the greatest degree of verisimilitude. Everything

depends upon his talent in devising the most _credible_ sort of

calumny,--not the calumny most likely to meet general credence, but that

which is most likely to be believed by the person to whom it is addressed,

and most likely to do injury when believed. The anonymous calumniator has

the immense advantage on his side that most people are prone to believe

evil, and that good people are unfortunately the most prone, as they hate

evil so intensely that even the very phantom of it arouses their anger,

and they too frequently do not stop to inquire whether it is a phantom or

a reality. The clever calumniator is careful not to go too far; he will

advance something that might be or that might have been; he does not love

_le vrai_, but he is a careful student of _le vraisemblable_. He will

assume an appearance of reluctance, he will drop hints more terrible than

assertions, because they are vague, mysterious, disquieting. When he

thinks he has done enough he stops in time; he has inoculated the drop of

poison, and can wait till it takes effect.

It must be rather an anxious time for the anonymous letter-writer when he

has sent off his missive. In the nature of things he cannot receive an

answer, and it is not easy for him to ascertain very soon what has been

the result of his enterprise. If he has been trying to prevent a marriage

he does not know immediately if the engagement is broken off, and if it is

not broken off he has to wait till the wedding-day before he is quite sure

of his own failure, and to suffer meanwhile from hope deferred and

constantly increasing apprehension. If the rupture occurs he has a moment

of Satanic joy, but it _may_ be due to some other cause than the success

of his own calumny, so that he is never quite sure of having himself

attained his object.

It is believed that most people who are engaged to be married receive

anonymous letters recommending them to break off the match. Not only are

such letters addressed to the betrothed couple themselves, but also to

their relations. If there is not a doubt that the statements in such

letters are purely calumnious, the right course is to destroy them

immediately and never allude to them afterwards; but if there is the

faintest shadow of a doubt--if there is the vaguest feeling that there may

be _some_ ground for the attack--then the only course is to send the

letter to the person accused, and to say that this is done in order to

afford him an opportunity for answering the anonymous assailant. I

remember a case in which this was done with the best results. A

professional man without fortune was going to marry a young heiress; I do

not mean a great heiress, but one whose fortune might be a temptation.

Her family received the usual anonymous letters, and in one of them it was

stated that the aspirant's father, who had been long dead, had dishonored

himself by base conduct with regard to a public trust in a certain town

where he occupied a post of great responsibility towards the municipal

authorities. The letter was shown to the son, and he was asked if he knew

anything of the matter, and if he could do anything to clear away the

imputation. Then came the difficulty that the alleged betrayal of trust

was stated to have occurred twenty years before, and that the Mayor was

dead, and probably most of the common councillors also. What was to be

done? It is not easy to disprove a calumny, and the _onus_ of proof ought

always to be thrown upon the calumniator, but this calumniator was

anonymous and intangible, so the son of the victim was requested to repel

the charge. By a very unusual and most fortunate accident, his father had

received on quitting the town in question a letter from the Mayor of a

most exceptional character, in which he spoke with warm and grateful

appreciation of services rendered and of the happy relations of trust and

confidence that had subsisted between himself and the slandered man down

to the very termination of their intercourse. This letter, again by a most

lucky accident, had been preserved by the widow, and by means of it one

dead man defended the memory of another. It removed the greatest obstacle

to the marriage; but another anonymous writer, or the same in another

handwriting, now alleged that the slandered man had died of a disease

likely to be inherited by his posterity. Here, again, luck was on the

side of the defence, as the physician who had attended him was still

alive, so that this second invention was as easily disposed of as the

first. The marriage took place; it has been more than usually happy, and

the children are pictures of health.

The trouble to which anonymous letter-writers put themselves to attain

their ends must sometimes be very great. I remember a case in which some

of these people must have contrived by means of spies or agents to procure

a private address in a foreign country, and must have been at great pains

also to ascertain certain facts in England which were carefully mingled

with the lies in the calumnious letter. The nameless writer was evidently

well informed, possibly he or she may have been a "friend" of the intended

victim. In this case no attention was paid to the attack, which did not

delay the marriage by a single hour. Long afterwards the married pair

happened to be talking about anonymous letters, and it then appeared that

each side had received several of these missives, coarsely or ingeniously

concocted, but had given them no more attention than they deserved.

An anonymous letter is sometimes written in collaboration by two persons

of different degrees of ability. When this is done one of the slanderers

generally supplies the basis of fact necessary to give an appearance of

knowledge, and the other supplies or improves the imaginative part of the

common performance and its literary style. Sometimes one of the two may be

detected by the nature of the references to fact, or by the supposed

writer's personal interest in bringing about a certain result.

It is very difficult at the first glance entirely to resist the effect of

a clever anonymous letter, and perhaps it is only men of clear strong

sense and long experience who at once overcome the first shock. In a very

short time, however, the phantom evil grows thin and disappears, and the

motive of the writer is guessed at or discerned.

The following brief anonymous letter or one closely resembling it (I quote

from memory) was once received by an English gentleman on his travels.

"DEAR SIR,--I congratulate you on the fact that you will be a

grandfather in about two months. I mention this as you may like to

purchase baby-linen for your grandchild during your absence. I am,

Sir, yours sincerely,

"A WELL-WISHER."

The receiver had a family of grown-up children of whom not one was

married. The letter gave him a slight but perceptible degree of

disquietude which he put aside to the best of his ability. In a few days

came a signed letter from one of his female servants confessing that she

was about to become a mother, and claiming his protection as the

grandfather of the child. It then became evident that the anonymous letter

had been written by the girl's lover, who was a tolerably educated man

whilst she was uneducated, and that the pair had entered into this little

plot to obtain money. The matter ended by the dismissal of the girl, who

then made threats until she was placed in the hands of the police. Other

circumstances were recollected proving her to be a remarkably audacious

liar and of a slanderous disposition.

The torture that an anonymous letter may inflict depends far more on the

nature of the person who receives it than on the circumstances it relates.

A jealous and suspicious nature, not opened by much experience or

knowledge of the world, is the predestined victim of the anonymous

torturer. Such a nature jumps at evil report like a fish at an artificial

fly, and feels the anguish of it immediately. By a law that seems really

cruel such natures seize with most avidity on those very slanders that

cause them the most pain.

A kind of anonymous letter of which we have heard much in the present

disturbed state of European society is the letter containing threats of

physical injury. It informs you that you will be "done for" or "disabled"

in a short time, and exhorts you in the meanwhile to prepare for your

awful doom. The object of these letters is to deprive the receiver of all

feeling of security or comfort in existence. His consolation is that a

real intending murderer would probably be thinking too much of his own

perilous enterprise to indulge in correspondence about it, and we do not

perceive that the attacks on public men are at all proportionate in number

to the menaces addressed to them.

As there are malevolent anonymous letters intended to inflict the most

wearing anxiety, so there are benevolent ones written to save our souls.

Some theologically minded person, often of the female sex, is alarmed for

our spiritual state because she fears that we have doubts about the

supernatural, and so she sends us books that only make us wonder at the

mental condition for which such literature can be suitable. I remember one

of my female anonymous correspondents who took it for granted that I was

like a ship drifting about without compass or rudder (a great mistake on

her part), and so she offered me the safe and spacious haven of

Swedenborgianism! Others will tell you of the "great pain" with which they

have read this or that passage of your writings, to which an author may

always reply that as there is no Act of Parliament compelling British

subjects to read his books the sufferers have only to let them alone in

order to spare themselves the dolorous sensations they complain of.

Some kind anonymous correspondents write to console us for offensive

criticism by maintaining the truth of our assertions as supported by their

own experience. I remember that when the novel of "Wenderholme" was

published, and naturally attacked for its dreadful portraiture of the

drinking habits of a past generation, a lady wrote to me anonymously from

a locality of the kind described bearing mournful witness to the veracity

of the description.[33] In this case the employment of the anonymous form

was justified by two considerations. There was no offensive intention, and

the lady had to speak of her own relations whose names she desired to

conceal. Authors frequently receive letters of gently expressed criticism

or remonstrance from readers who do not give their names. The only

objection to these communications, which are often interesting, is that it

is rather teasing and vexatious to be deprived of the opportunity for

answering them. The reader may like to see one of these gentle anonymous

letters. An unmarried lady of mature age (for there appears to be no

reason to doubt the veracity with which she gives a slight account of

herself) has been reading one of my books and thinks me not quite just to

a most respectable and by no means insignificant class in English society.

She therefore takes me to task,--not at all unkindly.

"DEAR SIR,--I have often wished to thank you for the intense pleasure

your books have given me, especially the 'Painter's Camp in the

Highlands,' the word-pictures of which reproduced the enjoyment,

intense even to pain, of the Scottish scenery.

"I have only now become acquainted with your 'Intellectual Life,'

which has also given me great pleasure, though of another kind. Its

general fairness and candor induce me to protest against your judgment

of a class of women whom I am sure you underrate from not having a

sufficient acquaintance with their capabilities.

"'_Women who are not impelled by some masculine influence are not

superior, either in knowledge or in discipline of the mind, at the age

of fifty to what they were at twenty-five.... The best illustration of

this is a sisterhood of three or four rich old maids.... You will

observe that they invariably remain, as to their education, where they

were left by their teachers many years before.... Even in what most

interests them--theology, they repeat but do not extend their

information._'

"My circle of acquaintance is small, nevertheless I know many women

between twenty-five and forty whose culture is always steadily

progressing; who keep up an acquaintance with literature for its own

sake, and not 'impelled' thereto 'by masculine influence;' who, though

without creative power, yet have such capability of reception that

they can appreciate the best authors of the day; whose theology is not

quite the fossil you represent it, though I confess it is for but a

small number of my acquaintance that I can claim the power of

judicially estimating the various schools of theology.

"Without being specialists, the more thoughtful of our class have such

an acquaintance with current literature that they are able to enter

into the progress of the great questions of the day, and may even

estimate the more fairly a Gladstone or a Disraeli for being

spectators instead of actors in politics.

"I have spoken of my own acquaintances, but they are such as may be

met within any middle-class society. For myself, I look back to the

painful bewilderment of twenty-five and contrast it with satisfaction

with the brighter perceptions of forty, finding out 'a little more,

and yet a little more, of the eternal order of the universe.' One

reason for your underrating us may be that our receptive powers only

are in constant use, and we have little power of expression. I dislike

anonymous letters as a rule, but as I write as the representative of a

class, I beg to sign myself,

"Yours gratefully,

"ONE OF THREE OR FOUR RICH OLD MAIDS.

"_November 13, 1883._"

Letters of this kind give no pain to the receiver, except when they compel

him to an unsatisfactory kind of self-examination. In the present case I

make the best amends by giving publicity and permanence to this clearly

expressed criticism. Something may be said, too, in defence of the

passages incriminated. Let me attempt it in the form of a letter which may

possibly fall under the eye of the Rich Old Maid.

DEAR MADAM,--Your letter has duly reached me, and produced feelings of

compunction. Have I indeed been guilty of injustice towards a class so

deserving of respect and consideration as the Rich Old Maids of

England? It has always seemed to me one of the privileges of my native

country that such a class should flourish there so much more amply and

luxuriantly than in other lands. Married women are absorbed in the

cares and anxieties of their own households, but the sympathies of old

maids spread themselves over a wider area. Balzac hated them, and

described them as having souls overflowing with gall; but Balzac was a

Frenchman, and if he was just to the rare old maids of his native

country (which I cannot believe) he knew nothing of the more numerous

old maids of Great Britain. I am not in Balzac's position. Dear

friends of mine, and dearer relations, have belonged to that kindly

sisterhood.