by Shaun Usher
Now I have told you all I know about myself. I know you from your works and your photograph, and if I know anything about you I think you would like to know of the personal appearance of your correspondents. You are I know a keen physiognomist. I am a believer of the science myself and am in an humble way a practicer of it. I was not disappointed when I saw your photograph—your late one especially. The way I came to like you was this. A notice of your poems appeared some two years ago or more in the Temple Bar magazine. I glanced at it and took its dictum as final, and laughed at you among my friends. I say it to my own shame but not to my regret for it has taught me a lesson to last my life out—without ever having seen your poems. More than a year after I heard two men in College talking of you. One of them had your book (Rossetti’s edition) and was reading aloud some passages at which both laughed. They chose only those passages which are most foreign to British ears and made fun of them. Something struck me that I had judged you hastily. I took home the volume and read it far into the night. Since then I have to thank you for many happy hours, for I have read your poems with my door locked late at night, and I have read them on the seashore where I could look all round me and see no more sign of human life than the ships out at sea: and here I often found myself waking up from a reverie with the book lying open before me.
I love all poetry, and high generous thoughts make the tears rush to my eyes, but sometimes a word or a phrase of yours takes me away from the world around me and places me in an ideal land surrounded by realities more than any poem I ever read. Last year I was sitting on the beach on a summer’s day reading your preface to the Leaves of Grass as printed in Rossetti’s edition (for Rossetti is all I have got till I get the complete set of your works which I have ordered from America). One thought struck me and I pondered over it for several hours—”the weather-beaten vessels entering new ports,” you who wrote the words know them better than I do: and to you who sing of your own land of progress the words have a meaning that I can only imagine. But be assured of this, Walt Whitman—that a man of less than half your own age, reared a conservative in a conservative country, and who has always heard your name cried down by the great mass of people who mention it, here felt his heart leap towards you across the Atlantic and his soul swelling at the words or rather the thoughts.
It is vain for me to try to quote any instances of what thoughts of yours
I like best—for I like them all and you must feel that you are reading the true words of one who feels with you. You see, I have called you by your name. I have been more candid with you—have said more about myself to you than I have ever said to any one before. You will not be angry with me if you have read so far. You will not laugh at me for writing this to you. It was with no small effort that I began to write and I feel reluctant to stop, but I must not tire you any more. If you ever would care to have more you can imagine, for you have a great heart, how much pleasure it would be to me to write more to you. How sweet a thing it is for a strong healthy man with a woman’s eyes and a child’s wishes to feel that he can speak so to a man who can be if he wishes father, and brother and wife to his soul.
I don’t think you will laugh, Walt Whitman, nor despise me, but at all events I thank you for all the love and sympathy you have given me in common
with my kind.
Bram Stoker
* * *
March 6, ‘76.
My dear young man,
Your letters have been most welcome to me—welcome to me as Person and as Author—I don’t know which most—You did well to write me so unconventionally, so fresh, so manly, and so affectionately, too. I too hope (though it is not probable) that we shall one day meet each other. Meantime I send you my friendship and thanks.
Edward Dowden’s letter containing among others your subscription for a copy of my new edition has just been received. I shall send the books very soon by express in a package to his address. I have just written E. D.
My physique is entirely shattered—doubtless permanently, from paralysis and other ailments. But I am up and dressed, and get out every day a little. Live here quite lonesome, but hearty, and good spirits.
Write to me again.
Walt Whitman
Letter No. 071
WHAT DO YOU TAKE ME FOR?
NANNI TO EA-NASIR
1750BC
Sitting behind a sheet of glass at the British Museum in London, inscribed on a clay tablet in an ancient script known as cuneiform, is solid proof of two things: firstly, that poor customer service – an affliction that somehow feels like a modern phenomenon – has actually been a plague on societies for at least 3775 long years, and secondly, that humans will never really change. For this is in fact a letter of complaint, sent by a furious man named Nanni to a Babylonian copper merchant called Ea-nasir, in which said customer makes very clear his dissatisfaction with the service experienced by his messengers. The letter was discovered in Southern Iraq, in a place then known as Ur.
Clay tablet; letter from Nanni to Ea-nasir complaining that the wrong grade of copper ore has been delivered, 1750BC
Tell Ea-nasir: Nanni sends the following message:
When you came, you said to me as follows : “I will give Gimil-Sin (when he comes) fine quality copper ingots.” You left then but you did not do what you promised me. You put ingots which were not good before my messenger (Sit-Sin) and said: “If you want to take them, take them; if you do not want to take them, go away!”
What do you take me for, that you treat somebody like me with such contempt? I have sent as messengers gentlemen like ourselves to collect the bag with my money (deposited with you) but you have treated me with contempt by sending them back to me empty-handed several times, and that through enemy territory. Is there anyone among the merchants who trade with Telmun who has treated me in this way? You alone treat my messenger with contempt! On account of that one (trifling) mina of silver which I owe you, you feel free to speak in such a way, while I have given to the palace on your behalf 1,080 pounds of copper, and umi-abum has likewise given 1,080 pounds of copper, apart from what we both have had written on a sealed tablet to be kept in the temple of Samas.
How have you treated me for that copper? You have withheld my money bag from me in enemy territory; it is now up to you to restore (my money) to me in full.
Take cognizance that (from now on) I will not accept here any copper from you that is not of fine quality. I shall (from now on) select and take the ingots individually in my own yard, and I shall exercise against you my right of rejection because you have treated me with contempt.
Letter No. 072
REMEMBER?
BREECE D’J PANCAKE TO JOHN CASEY
March 25th, 1979
Breece D’J Pancake’s promising career had only just begun to take off when he took his own life aged 26, with just six of his short stories published, all to great acclaim. It was no surprise to those around him that the posthumously published The Stories of Breece D’J Pancake was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize; even the great Kurt Vonnegut called him “the best writer, the most sincere writer I’ve ever read”. The last letter Breece ever wrote, seen here, was to a close friend and mentor who had championed him from the beginning: Breece’s writing teacher at the University of Virginia, John Casey.
* * *
One Blue Ridge Lane
Charlottesville, Va.
John D. Casey
c/o Jane Casey
Department of English
Wilson Hall
University of Virginia
Dear John,
When you read this it really won’t matter anymore, but I offer these thoughts the way a fossil comes back to haunt a geologist—but haunt isn’t the right word, and I’m too stupid to think of another. But anyway . . .
Remember May, 1975? “God, why didn’t you tell me . . . if I’d known you were this good, I’d have offered you a fellowship.” I hadn’t told you because I knew I wasn’t. Then the summer of bad times
when I pounded on doors, got fed-up, went fishing, and bingo they offered me a job sight unseen from Staunton, and bingo my father and my best friend croaked within a week of each other, and bingo I held on for dear life. I held on because of me, but I held on with the help of you. The night we went to see Ali murder Frazier in Manila, that night I nearly knocked your brains out with my driving into the parking-lot abutement. I was trying to think of some way to thank you for going with me to the gifts, and I forgot to hit the breaks.
Remember L_____? “I know you want me to tell you I’ve had a great time, but well, I’ve had a good time.” And there were breakfasts with wheat cakes and lemon curd and spring mornings when I’d drive the VW from Staunton. I hit a “tree-rat,” as Jane called it, but nobody was up to that for breakfast with lemon curd. And I drove home thinking what a wonderful day it had been, and how my father would want me to stop for coffee at least twice on the way home. I stopped three times for coffee, but when I got home my mother called to tell me Cousin _____ had dispatched his brains by a NY lake that morning. I wasn’t all that sorry for Cousin _____
Remember May, 1976? Jane said: “We got the house of my father—it has many bathrooms.” I came over loaded in the VW for home, left you things one needs for long stays away—salt, coffee, whiskey, and a blanket. I spent the summer writing what would become “Trilobites,” you wrote hopes of “Liberty.” Later I came to Charlottesville, worked up the story, read a good novel in galley, met one Rod Kilpatrick. L___ died and went to heaven on somebody else’s cross. I died over a girl who was dry as bean in bed but full of lush on the phone. She moved. I stayed.
Remember May, 1977? I wrote to say a story was sold. I got no answer. I worked frying hamburgers, selling golf balls. Richard had dinner with me before late Mass. I remembered you coming all the way here to welcome me to the Catholic faith. I missed you. I went home and started a story, then I found I would teach next year, so I started my lesson-plans. I finished the story and the lessons when you returned. The story wasn’t good enough, and you helped me—soon it was good enough.
Remember Emily Miller? “Then Kerrigan said there weren’t any virgins left in this day and time—but—I’m afraid—well he was wrong.” So I decide she was right. I wanted to marry her, but later, when it became clear I would have no work, I wanted to become a padre. Me a padre? I loved this girl. Still, I had work, and you told me I’d get none. Still, I love this girl, and time flew its course. I sold another story: I called you on a winter’s night and you were happy. Still, I love the girl.
Alright—maybe not.
Remember July, 1978? I went to the Southwest, and you went to Jane’s Father’s house. I loved the girl. I wrote several cards to you but the Post Office was on strike. I loved the girl. I went to a woman I knew in South Phoenix (blacks and Mexicans), but she told me I loved the girl. I went to a woman I knew in North Phoenix (lilly white), but she told me I loved the girl. I wrote you from a Big Boy counter on Central Ave., and I had no money, had no place to sleep, had no nothing. And “John, this is the last I’ll ask.” And it was. You were good enough to give me a clean bill of health with my dentist and then some.
So remember May, 1979? I can’t. But as I see it, you’ll go on as you have before I came. You’re an honest man John Casey—honest at your heart—but what will you do for those who come after? Will you take a clean and simple writer like _______, and by giving him funds turn him into the slop ______ is made of? I could stay, I know, John, were I to beg—I might even have a job were I to stay one more year. Johnny, and you’ll have to take a drink now, would you love me if I did? I love you. I love you because when my father and friend were dead you helped me hang on for dear life, told me I could write (and me damned if I hadn’t done a passing job). Alright then, the bargain is settled, I can write, now, and nothing else matters. You’ve fought hard for me John—fought hard for five years, and please don’t think that by my gruff manner and early temper I am any less the man for you. And by your fight, I hope something comes of me worthy of calling your own name to. I’m not good enough to work or marry, but I’m good enough to write.
Can you find a tear or two in these lines they are mine, and I will hope you shed them in Ireland this summer. Maybe we’ll neither of us see Heaven, but if you can bring yourself to it, say a prayer for me (not in any church) under an Irish sky.
May God Bless and Go with You and Yours Always, John Casey.
(Signed, ‘Breece’)
Letter No. 073
I HOPE YOU DON’T FEEL TOO DISAPPOINTED
ERIC IDLE TO JOHN MAJOR
January 12th, 1993
One would imagine that Eric Idle, one-sixth of beloved comedy troupe Monty Python, and John Major, Prime Minister of the UK from 1990 to 1997, have nothing in common – but you would be wrong, for both Idle and Major were born on the same day: March 29th, 1943. In 1993, as their 50th birthdays approached, Idle took the opportunity to send the Prime Minister a brief letter.
The Rt.Hon. John Major M.P.
10 Downing Street
London SW1A.1AA
12th January 1993
Dear John Major,
On the 29th March you and I will both be fifty.
Has it ever occurred to you that, but for a twist of fate, I should be Prime Minister and you could have been the Man in the Nudge Nudge sketch from Monty Python?
I hope you don’t feel too disappointed,
Happy birthday anyway,
Eric Idle
Letter No. 074
AN INSTRUMENT OF JOY
MARGARET MEAD TO ELIZABETH MEAD
January 11th, 1926
Margaret Mead was for many years the leading anthropologist on the planet, thanks largely to Coming of Age in Samoa, a groundbreaking and controversial book she wrote after a research trip in 1925 in which a light was shone on the previously alien lives and relaxed sexual attitudes of adolescent Samoan girls. Although since contested, Mead’s findings were a revelation, and in fact have been credited with influencing the sexual revolution of the 1960s. In 1926, a year after setting foot on the Samoan island of T’au, Mead learnt of a sexual awakening much closer to home: that of her younger sister, Elizabeth. This letter of advice was her response.
American anthropologist Dr Margaret Mead, 1928
Elizabeth dear, I’ve a good mind to punish you by writing back in pencil. You’re a wretch to write in pencil on pink paper just when you’re writing something very important that you particularly want me to read. Don’t do it again.
I am glad you told me about the moonlight party, dear. It’s the sort of thing that had to happen sometime and it might have been a great deal worse. As it was, it was a nice boy whom you like, and nothing that need worry you. There are two things I’d like to have you remember--or in fact several. The thrills you get from touching the body of another person are just as good and legitimate thrills as those you get at the opera. Only the ones which you get at the opera are all mixed up with your ideas of beauty and music and Life—and so they seem to you good and holy things. In the same way the best can only be had from the joys which life offers to our sense of touch (for sex is mostly a matter of the sense of touch) when we associate those joys with love and respect and understanding.
All the real tragedies of sex come from disassociation—either of the old maid who sternly refuses to think about sex at all until finally she can think about nothing else—and goes crazy—or of the man who goes from one wanton’s arms to another seeking only the immediate sensation of the moment and never linking it up with other parts of his life. It is by the way in which sex—and under this I include warm demonstrative friendships with both sexes as well as love affairs proper with men—is linked with all the other parts of our lives, with our appreciation of music and our tenderness for little children, and most of all with our love for someone and the additional nearness to them which expression of love gives us, that sex itself is given meaning.
You must realize that your body has bee
n given you as an instrument of joy—and tho you should choose most rigorously whose touch may make that instrument thrill and sing a thousand beautiful songs—you must never think it wrong of it to sing. For your body was made to sing to another’s touch and the flesh itself is not wise to choose. It is the spirit within the body which must be stern and say—”No, you can not play on this my precious instrument. True it would sing for you. Your fingers are very clever at playing on such instruments—but I do not love you, nor respect you—and I will not have my body singing a tune which my soul cannot sing also.” If you remember this, you will never be filled with disgust of any sort. Any touch may set the delicate chords humming—but it is your right to choose who shall really play a tune—and be very very sure of your choices first. To have given a kiss where only a handshake was justified by the love behind it—that is likely to leave a bad taste in your mouth.
And for the other part—about being boy crazy. Try to think of boys as people, some nice, some indifferent—not as a class. You aren’t girl crazy are you? Then why should you be boy crazy? If a boy is an interesting person why, like him. If he isn’t, don’t. Think of him as an individual first and as a boy second. What kind of a person he is is a great deal more important than that he belongs to the other sex—after all so do some hundred million other individuals.