'It is a little plaything-house that I got out of Mrs. Chevenix's shop, and it is the prettiest bauble you ever saw.
…..the Chevenix's have tricked it out for themselves; up two pair of stairs is what they call Mr. Chevenix's library, furnished with three maps, one shelf, a bust of Sir Isaac Newton, and a lame telescope without any glasses. ...
….For the rest of the house, I could send it to you in this letter as easily as the drawing, only that I should have nowhere to live till the return of the post."
Letters Horace Walpole to Horace Mann, June1747
Showing posts with label letter. Show all posts
Showing posts with label letter. Show all posts
Thursday, 4 December 2014
Thursday, 31 July 2014
Holiday correspondence
"July 31st:
The beginning of the holidays signalled, as usual, by the making of appointments with dentist and doctor. …
Spend much time writing to, and hearing from unknown mothers whose sons have been invited here by Robin, and one grandmother, with whose descendant Robin is to spend a week. Curious impossibility of combining dates and trains convenient to us all, renders this whole question harassing in the extreme. Grandmother, especially, sends unlimited letters and telegrams, to all of which I feel bound to reply -- mostly with civil assurances of gratitude for her kindness in having Robin to stay.
Very, very difficult to find new ways of wording this -- moreover, must reserve something for letter I shall have to write when visit is safely over."
Diary of a Provincial Lady E.M. Delafield
The beginning of the holidays signalled, as usual, by the making of appointments with dentist and doctor. …
Spend much time writing to, and hearing from unknown mothers whose sons have been invited here by Robin, and one grandmother, with whose descendant Robin is to spend a week. Curious impossibility of combining dates and trains convenient to us all, renders this whole question harassing in the extreme. Grandmother, especially, sends unlimited letters and telegrams, to all of which I feel bound to reply -- mostly with civil assurances of gratitude for her kindness in having Robin to stay.
Very, very difficult to find new ways of wording this -- moreover, must reserve something for letter I shall have to write when visit is safely over."
Diary of a Provincial Lady E.M. Delafield
Wednesday, 30 July 2014
Cecil Beaton's diary
"Friday, 30th July
...At 5.30 I went to tea with Emerald……The Princess de Polignac came in and said to Emerald, 'This charming young man came to dinner with me, and wrote me a beautiful letter. Then, if you please, he sent me Tom Jones--but in a rare edition of two volumes of priceless value.' This frightened me stiff for I asked myself how much that villainous Nancy would charge me for this book.
I joined Jamesey at Rule's restaurant… I said that more people ought to keep diaries, but the trouble was that the most unscrupulous diarists were too scrupulous when it came to putting personal truths on paper. James said that Cecil [Beaton's] diary would be the chronicle of our age, that we would only live through it. I said Eddy Sackville West kept one. James said, 'We could not be hoisted to posterity on two spikier spikes.' "
Ancestral Voices James Lees-Milne
Sunday, 20 July 2014
'Across space and time'
"Letter to Peter Claire from Countess O'Fingal
My dear Peter,
I do not know if my letter ever reached you.
That any letter -- which is so insubstantial a thing -- reaches its destination, when I consider what routes it must take and what weather may fall upon its bearers, does make me marvel.
When Johnnie O'Fingal once read to me the sad drama of Romeo and Juliet and I understood that all was lost because that Friar Lawrence's letter to Romeo was lost, I remarked to Johnnie that we are ever and always searching for ways by which we can be joined to those we love across the immensity of space and time, but that these ways are fragile and surely on the winds and tides must move a great quantity of lost things that will never be found?"
Music and Silence Rose Tremain
My dear Peter,
I do not know if my letter ever reached you.
That any letter -- which is so insubstantial a thing -- reaches its destination, when I consider what routes it must take and what weather may fall upon its bearers, does make me marvel.
When Johnnie O'Fingal once read to me the sad drama of Romeo and Juliet and I understood that all was lost because that Friar Lawrence's letter to Romeo was lost, I remarked to Johnnie that we are ever and always searching for ways by which we can be joined to those we love across the immensity of space and time, but that these ways are fragile and surely on the winds and tides must move a great quantity of lost things that will never be found?"
Music and Silence Rose Tremain
Saturday, 10 May 2014
'Mercury'
"I was half-way through the belt of trees above the water-meadow when automatically my hand went to my pocket, encountering the sharp edge of the flap of the unsealed envelope. With no further intention in my mind I pulled it out and looked at it. There was no address (or direction, as Mrs Maudsley called it, why I could not imagine) on the envelope: there never was. But the open flap disclosed some writing which, at the moment, was the wrong side up.
Among the complexities of our school code was a very wholesome respect for the Eleventh Commandment. But we also had a strong sense of justice, and if we were found out we did not expect to be let off.
…
The rules about reading other people's letters were fairly well defined. If you left your letters lying about and somebody read them, then it was your fault, and you were not justified in retaliation, If somebody rifled your desk or locker and read them then it was their fault, and you were justified in taking vengeance…
...I had often passed round notes at school. If they were sealed I should not have dreamed of reading them; if they were open I often read them -- indeed, it was usually the intention of the sender that one should, for they were meant to raise a laugh. Unsealed, one could read them, sealed one couldn't: it was as simple as that. The same rule applied to post-cards: one read a post-card that was sent to someone else, but not a letter.
Marian's letter was unsealed and therefore I could read it. So why hesitate?
….
But I would not take the letter out of the envelope: I would only read the words that were exposed, and three of them were the same, as I could see from upside down.
'Darling, darling, darling,
Same place, same time, this evening,
But take care not to---'
The rest was hidden by the envelope."
The Go-Between L.P.Hartley
Among the complexities of our school code was a very wholesome respect for the Eleventh Commandment. But we also had a strong sense of justice, and if we were found out we did not expect to be let off.
…
The rules about reading other people's letters were fairly well defined. If you left your letters lying about and somebody read them, then it was your fault, and you were not justified in retaliation, If somebody rifled your desk or locker and read them then it was their fault, and you were justified in taking vengeance…
...I had often passed round notes at school. If they were sealed I should not have dreamed of reading them; if they were open I often read them -- indeed, it was usually the intention of the sender that one should, for they were meant to raise a laugh. Unsealed, one could read them, sealed one couldn't: it was as simple as that. The same rule applied to post-cards: one read a post-card that was sent to someone else, but not a letter.
Marian's letter was unsealed and therefore I could read it. So why hesitate?
….
But I would not take the letter out of the envelope: I would only read the words that were exposed, and three of them were the same, as I could see from upside down.
'Darling, darling, darling,
Same place, same time, this evening,
But take care not to---'
The rest was hidden by the envelope."
The Go-Between L.P.Hartley
Saturday, 29 March 2014
The Purloined Letter
"I paid especial attention to a large writing table near which he sat, and upon which lay confusedly, some miscellaneous letters and other papers, with one or two musical instruments and a few books. Here, however, after a long and very deliberate scrutiny, I saw nothing to excite particular suspicion.
At length my eyes, in going the circuit of the room, fell upon a trumpery fillagree card-rack of pasteboard, that hung dangling by a dirty blue ribbon, from a little brass knob just beneath the middle of the mantelpiece. In this rack, which had four or five compartments, were five or six visiting cards and a solitary letter. This last was much soiled and crumpled. It was torn nearly in two, across the middle -- as if a design, in the first instance, to tear it entirely up as worthless, had been altered, or stayed, in the second. It had a large black seal, bearing the D---- cipher very conspicuously, and was addressed, in a diminutive female hand, to D----, the minister, himself. It was thrust carelessly, and even, as it seemed, contemptuously, into one of the uppermost divisions of the rack.
No sooner had I glanced at this letter, than I concluded it to be that of which I was in search. ...
…I protracted my visit as long as possible….I kept my attention really riveted upon the letter….and fell at length upon a discovery which set at rest whatever trivial doubt I might have entertained. In scrutinising the edges of the paper, I observed them to be more chafed than seemed necessary. They presented the broken appearance which is manifested when a stiff paper, have been once folded and pressed with a folder, is refolded in a reversed direction, in the same creases or edges which had formed the original fold. This discovery was sufficient. It was clear to me that the letter had been turned, as a glove, inside out, redirected, and re-sealed."
The Purloined Letter Edgar Allan Poe
At length my eyes, in going the circuit of the room, fell upon a trumpery fillagree card-rack of pasteboard, that hung dangling by a dirty blue ribbon, from a little brass knob just beneath the middle of the mantelpiece. In this rack, which had four or five compartments, were five or six visiting cards and a solitary letter. This last was much soiled and crumpled. It was torn nearly in two, across the middle -- as if a design, in the first instance, to tear it entirely up as worthless, had been altered, or stayed, in the second. It had a large black seal, bearing the D---- cipher very conspicuously, and was addressed, in a diminutive female hand, to D----, the minister, himself. It was thrust carelessly, and even, as it seemed, contemptuously, into one of the uppermost divisions of the rack.
No sooner had I glanced at this letter, than I concluded it to be that of which I was in search. ...
…I protracted my visit as long as possible….I kept my attention really riveted upon the letter….and fell at length upon a discovery which set at rest whatever trivial doubt I might have entertained. In scrutinising the edges of the paper, I observed them to be more chafed than seemed necessary. They presented the broken appearance which is manifested when a stiff paper, have been once folded and pressed with a folder, is refolded in a reversed direction, in the same creases or edges which had formed the original fold. This discovery was sufficient. It was clear to me that the letter had been turned, as a glove, inside out, redirected, and re-sealed."
The Purloined Letter Edgar Allan Poe
Sunday, 16 February 2014
Time and tide
"February 14th: Have won first prize in Time and Tide competition, but again divided. Am very angry indeed, and write excellent letter to the Editor under false name, protesting against this iniquitous custom. After it has gone, become seriously uneasy under the fear that use of false name is illegal. Look through Whitaker, but can find nothing but Stamp Duties and Concealment of Illegitimate Births, so abandon it in disgust.
Write to Angela -- under my own name -- to enquire kindly if she went in for the competition. Hope she did, and that she will have the decency to say so.
February 16th: Informed by Ethel, as she calls me in the morning, that Helen Wills has had six kittens, of which five survive.
Cannot imagine how I shall break this news to Robert. Reflect -- not for the first time -- that the workings of Nature are most singular.
Angela writes that she didn't go in for competition, thinking subject puerile, but that she solved 'Merope's' Crossword puzzle in fifteen minutes.
(N.B. This last statement almost certainly inaccurate.)"
Diary of a Provincial Lady E.M. Delafield
Write to Angela -- under my own name -- to enquire kindly if she went in for the competition. Hope she did, and that she will have the decency to say so.
February 16th: Informed by Ethel, as she calls me in the morning, that Helen Wills has had six kittens, of which five survive.
Cannot imagine how I shall break this news to Robert. Reflect -- not for the first time -- that the workings of Nature are most singular.
Angela writes that she didn't go in for competition, thinking subject puerile, but that she solved 'Merope's' Crossword puzzle in fifteen minutes.
(N.B. This last statement almost certainly inaccurate.)"
Diary of a Provincial Lady E.M. Delafield
Tuesday, 24 December 2013
St Nicholas arrives for Louise
"Albany, N.Y.
Dear St. Nicholas: I have scarlet fever at present and cannot write this to you with my own hand. It has to be read to Mother through the sealed door of my room, and she writes it down and reads it over the telephone to my father's office, to his secretary.
You may be interested to know that this is the second time I have had scarlet fever at Christmas time. Last year like this year I was in quarantine, and Father carried my gifts up in a bag like a Santa Claus, and came up a ladder to the roof under my window; and all the family came, too, except the cook, who was afraid to climb the ladder. Several of our neighbours came too, to see me and my presents. I got many beautiful things, but I think I like you as well as any of them.
….of all the stories in St Nicholas, The Lost Prince is my favourite. I have liked all of Mrs. Burnett's stories ever since I first read Little Lord Fauntleroy. You keep me very happy until I have read you all through. I always gobble you up at my very first chance.
Your interested reader,
Louise van Loon (age 10)"
St Nicholas: an illustrated magazine for Young Folks 1915
Dear St. Nicholas: I have scarlet fever at present and cannot write this to you with my own hand. It has to be read to Mother through the sealed door of my room, and she writes it down and reads it over the telephone to my father's office, to his secretary.
You may be interested to know that this is the second time I have had scarlet fever at Christmas time. Last year like this year I was in quarantine, and Father carried my gifts up in a bag like a Santa Claus, and came up a ladder to the roof under my window; and all the family came, too, except the cook, who was afraid to climb the ladder. Several of our neighbours came too, to see me and my presents. I got many beautiful things, but I think I like you as well as any of them.
….of all the stories in St Nicholas, The Lost Prince is my favourite. I have liked all of Mrs. Burnett's stories ever since I first read Little Lord Fauntleroy. You keep me very happy until I have read you all through. I always gobble you up at my very first chance.
Your interested reader,
Louise van Loon (age 10)"
St Nicholas: an illustrated magazine for Young Folks 1915
Friday, 23 August 2013
Letters from the Windward Islands
[The dressing-room] "seemed crowded after the emptiness of the rest of the house. There was a carpet, the only one I had seen, a press made of some beautiful wood I did not recognize. Under the open window a small writing-desk with paper, pens, and ink. "A refuge" I was thinking when someone said, 'This was Mr. Mason's room, sir, but he did not come here often. He did not like the place.' ...
.... I sat on the soft narrow bed and listened. Not a sound except the river. I might have been alone in the house. There was a crude bookshelf made of three shingles strung together over the desk and I looked at the books, Byron's poems, novels by Sir Walter Scott, Confessions of an Opium Eater, some shabby brown volumes, and on the last shelf, Life and Letters of... The rest was eaten away.
Dear Father, we have arrived from Jamaica after an uncomfortable few days. This little estate in the Windward Islands is part of the family property and Antoinette is much attached to it. She wished to get here as soon as possible. All is well and has gone according to your plans and wishes. I dealt of course with Richard Mason. ..... This place is very beautiful but my illness has left me too exhausted to appreciate it fully. I will write again in a few days' time.
I reread this letter and added a postscript:
I feel that I have left you too long without news for the bare announcement of my marriage was barely news. I was down with fever for two weeks after I got to Spanish Town. Nothing serious but I felt wretched enough. I stayed with the Frasers, friends of the Masons.... It was difficult to think or write coherently. In this cool and remote place it is called Granbois (the High Woods I suppose) I feel better already and my next letter will be longer and more explicit.
A cool and remote place... And I wondered how they got their letters posted. I folded mine and put it into a drawer of the desk.
As for my confused impressions they will never be written. There are blanks in my mind that cannot be filled up."
Wide Sargasso Sea Jean Rhys
.... I sat on the soft narrow bed and listened. Not a sound except the river. I might have been alone in the house. There was a crude bookshelf made of three shingles strung together over the desk and I looked at the books, Byron's poems, novels by Sir Walter Scott, Confessions of an Opium Eater, some shabby brown volumes, and on the last shelf, Life and Letters of... The rest was eaten away.
Dear Father, we have arrived from Jamaica after an uncomfortable few days. This little estate in the Windward Islands is part of the family property and Antoinette is much attached to it. She wished to get here as soon as possible. All is well and has gone according to your plans and wishes. I dealt of course with Richard Mason. ..... This place is very beautiful but my illness has left me too exhausted to appreciate it fully. I will write again in a few days' time.
I reread this letter and added a postscript:
I feel that I have left you too long without news for the bare announcement of my marriage was barely news. I was down with fever for two weeks after I got to Spanish Town. Nothing serious but I felt wretched enough. I stayed with the Frasers, friends of the Masons.... It was difficult to think or write coherently. In this cool and remote place it is called Granbois (the High Woods I suppose) I feel better already and my next letter will be longer and more explicit.
A cool and remote place... And I wondered how they got their letters posted. I folded mine and put it into a drawer of the desk.
As for my confused impressions they will never be written. There are blanks in my mind that cannot be filled up."
Wide Sargasso Sea Jean Rhys
Thursday, 22 August 2013
African correspondence
"There was nobody in the kitchen. A glorious pheasant lay unplucked on the table. Dark alcoves yawned back into the walls. High, huge, and Gothic, a framed text hung above the loaded dresser,
I AM THE BREAD OF LIFE. The capital letters were blue and red and gold, under years of smoke and dust and grease. I put my hand on the pheasant's breast, a stone under the fiery feathers. I looked out of the windows to the stars. Tomorrow there would be a letter for me. Or perhaps not. He was moving round Africa. He had never had my letter about Papa. I saw a native running to nowhere with my letter in the cleft of a forked stick, or it might be his letter to me. The idea cheered me."
Good Behaviour Molly Keane
I AM THE BREAD OF LIFE. The capital letters were blue and red and gold, under years of smoke and dust and grease. I put my hand on the pheasant's breast, a stone under the fiery feathers. I looked out of the windows to the stars. Tomorrow there would be a letter for me. Or perhaps not. He was moving round Africa. He had never had my letter about Papa. I saw a native running to nowhere with my letter in the cleft of a forked stick, or it might be his letter to me. The idea cheered me."
Good Behaviour Molly Keane
Sunday, 11 August 2013
The fashionable novel
"I shall not be satisfied unless I produce something which shall for a few days supersede the last fashionable novel on the tables of young ladies."
Letter to Macvey Napier, 5 Nov. 1841 Thos. Babington Macaulay
G. M. Trevelyan's Life and Letters of Macaulay
Letter to Macvey Napier, 5 Nov. 1841 Thos. Babington Macaulay
G. M. Trevelyan's Life and Letters of Macaulay
Thursday, 25 July 2013
Delivering the letters
..."So I went to Carlisle (eleven miles away) that would be in 1934, and I biked..... off I would set on the bike to Carlisle to be there at six. Well I was always there before six.
Then I had to bike back [to Wigton at the end of the day]. Well, I started at six o'clock and we sorted the letters into postman's walks and then after we had finished sorting into postman's walks we used to go out to our own postman's walk and clear the boxes, prepare them and about an hour after seven o'clock we would be packing our bags and going out to deliver the letters we had got ready. And we would be back about somewhere about half past nine and ten o'clock in the morning. And then we used to have half an hour for a meal and then we went back again and did another delivery of letters and parcels. And in those days there were three deliveries of letters in the town area of Carlisle, there were three on Monday to Friday and on Saturday there were two deliveries. Now there's two deliveries Monday to Friday and on delivery on Saturday and it's quite possible as time goes by that there will only be one delivery Monday to Friday -- but I don't think I'll be in the Post Office when that happens. I think it will come because of the telephones. People are using the telephone more now if their friends have got telephone and they have telephone, well they're not writing letters. And the people that are writing letters are mostly oldish people that haven't the use of the phone. They're dying off very quickly and if it wasn't for bills and circulars well I don't know what a postman would find to do."
Henry Fell, Carlisle postman.
Speak for England Melvyn Bragg
Then I had to bike back [to Wigton at the end of the day]. Well, I started at six o'clock and we sorted the letters into postman's walks and then after we had finished sorting into postman's walks we used to go out to our own postman's walk and clear the boxes, prepare them and about an hour after seven o'clock we would be packing our bags and going out to deliver the letters we had got ready. And we would be back about somewhere about half past nine and ten o'clock in the morning. And then we used to have half an hour for a meal and then we went back again and did another delivery of letters and parcels. And in those days there were three deliveries of letters in the town area of Carlisle, there were three on Monday to Friday and on Saturday there were two deliveries. Now there's two deliveries Monday to Friday and on delivery on Saturday and it's quite possible as time goes by that there will only be one delivery Monday to Friday -- but I don't think I'll be in the Post Office when that happens. I think it will come because of the telephones. People are using the telephone more now if their friends have got telephone and they have telephone, well they're not writing letters. And the people that are writing letters are mostly oldish people that haven't the use of the phone. They're dying off very quickly and if it wasn't for bills and circulars well I don't know what a postman would find to do."
Henry Fell, Carlisle postman.
Speak for England Melvyn Bragg
Wednesday, 24 July 2013
Whose letter?
"I sent a letter to my love, and on the way I dropped it;
One of you has picked it up and put it in your pocket.
It's not you, it's not you, it's not you........ It's You!"
Children's round game, (anon).
One of you has picked it up and put it in your pocket.
It's not you, it's not you, it's not you........ It's You!"
Children's round game, (anon).
Wednesday, 10 April 2013
The strangeness of English
"...we could see the soldiers pike their bayonets among the heather, which sent a cold thrill into my vitals; and they would sometimes hang about our rock, so that we scarce dared to breathe.
It was in this way that I first heard the right English speech; one fellow as he went by actually clapping his hand upon the sunny face of the rock on which we lay, and plucking it off again with an oath.
'I tell you it's 'ot,' says he; and I was amazed at the clipping tones and the odd sing-song in which he spoke, and no less at that strange trick of dropping out the letter h. To be sure, I had heard Ransome; but he had taken his ways from all sorts of people, and spoke so imperfectly at the best, that I set down the most of it to childishness. My surprise was all the greater to hear that manner of speaking in the mouth of a grown man; and indeed I have never grown used to it; nor yet altogether with the English grammar, as perhaps a very critical eye might here and there spy out even in these memoirs."
Kidnapped Robert Louis Stevenson
It was in this way that I first heard the right English speech; one fellow as he went by actually clapping his hand upon the sunny face of the rock on which we lay, and plucking it off again with an oath.
'I tell you it's 'ot,' says he; and I was amazed at the clipping tones and the odd sing-song in which he spoke, and no less at that strange trick of dropping out the letter h. To be sure, I had heard Ransome; but he had taken his ways from all sorts of people, and spoke so imperfectly at the best, that I set down the most of it to childishness. My surprise was all the greater to hear that manner of speaking in the mouth of a grown man; and indeed I have never grown used to it; nor yet altogether with the English grammar, as perhaps a very critical eye might here and there spy out even in these memoirs."
Kidnapped Robert Louis Stevenson
Saturday, 9 March 2013
Persuasion
"Captain Wentworth was folding up a letter in great haste, and either could not or would not answer fully....
Mrs Croft left them, and Captain Wentworth, having sealed his letter with great rapidity, was indeed ready, and had even a hurried, agitated air, which shewed impatience to be gone. Anne knew not how to understand it....He had passed out of the room without a look!
She had only time however, to move closer to the table where he had been writing, when footsteps were heard returning; the door opened; it was himself. He begged their pardon, but he had forgotten his gloves, and instantly crossing the room to the writing table, and standing with his back towards Mrs. Musgrove, he drew out a letter from under the scattered paper, placed it before Anne with eyes of glowing entreaty fixed on her for a moment, and hastily collecting his gloves, was again out of the room, almost before Mrs Musgrave was aware of him being in it -- the work of an instant!
The revolution which one instant had made in Anne, was almost beyond expression. The letter, with a direction hardly legible, to 'Miss A. E.--,' was evidently the one which he had been folding so hastily. While supposed to be writing to Captain Benwick, he had been also addressing her! On the contents of that letter depended all which this world could do for her!"
Persuasion Jane Austen
Mrs Croft left them, and Captain Wentworth, having sealed his letter with great rapidity, was indeed ready, and had even a hurried, agitated air, which shewed impatience to be gone. Anne knew not how to understand it....He had passed out of the room without a look!
She had only time however, to move closer to the table where he had been writing, when footsteps were heard returning; the door opened; it was himself. He begged their pardon, but he had forgotten his gloves, and instantly crossing the room to the writing table, and standing with his back towards Mrs. Musgrove, he drew out a letter from under the scattered paper, placed it before Anne with eyes of glowing entreaty fixed on her for a moment, and hastily collecting his gloves, was again out of the room, almost before Mrs Musgrave was aware of him being in it -- the work of an instant!
The revolution which one instant had made in Anne, was almost beyond expression. The letter, with a direction hardly legible, to 'Miss A. E.--,' was evidently the one which he had been folding so hastily. While supposed to be writing to Captain Benwick, he had been also addressing her! On the contents of that letter depended all which this world could do for her!"
Persuasion Jane Austen
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