To the Letter

by Simon Garfield

  There are a great many musings on aging and death, and several on suicide. In ‘On the Proper Time to Slip the Cable’ there can be no doubting Seneca’s view of aging as a natural process to be welcomed, nor his careful advocacy of euthanasia when the process is no longer bearable.

  We have sailed past life, Lucilius, as if we were on a voyage . . . On this journey where time flies with the greatest speed, we put below the horizon first our boyhood and then our youth, and then the space which lies between young manhood and middle age and borders on both, and next, the best years of old age itself. Last of all, we begin to sight the general bourne of the race of man. Fools that we are, we believe this bourne to be a dangerous reef; but it is the harbour, where we must some day put in . . .

  Every man ought to make his life acceptable to others besides himself, but his death to himself alone.

  Dramatically, Seneca took his own advice. Implicated in the assassination plot against Nero, he was ordered to kill himself (which he did, although his bloodletting took slightly longer than expected, and his friends were encouraged to carry him into a warm bath to complete the ordeal).

  His passing cleared the way for one more great letter-writer of the age. Pliny the Younger, born four years after Seneca’s death, did more than anyone to establish the letter in its modern form, and to rescue it from the byways of inconsequence, pomposity, rhetoric and philosophical instruction. His letters from the turn of the first century, arguably the most buoyant period in the life of the Roman Empire, continue to entertain and inform the reader more than 2,000 years later.

  Before the form is put back in the box by an early Christian world more interested in religious stricture and instruction, Pliny’s letters serve as a beacon for what secular letters will become as they emerge in the twelfth century and beyond into the early Renaissance: commonplace, personal and indispensible.

  We have 247 personal and professional letters from Pliny collected in nine books that were published in his lifetime, and 121 further official letters to and from the Emperor Trajan published posthumously. The letters were written when Pliny held some of the highest offices in the Treasury and legal profession, and many of his correspondents are also influential lawyers, philosophers and literary men, the majority of them in Rome, some also in his home town of Como (known then as Comum; Pliny owned several houses overlooking the lake). He writes generously and maintains consistent friendships, and his letters reflect wide cultural interests. His main value for us is historical, as a documenter of the times; that this is conveyed not through rhetoric, but through a natural, easy and expressive style renders it not only more accessible but also more authentic. The fact that he is often a vividly descriptive and aesthetic writer is a rare attribute for any Roman man of letters, and may explain why his correspondence has weathered so well.

  Here are four letters. Written several decades apart, all are descriptive; the first (to a friend at Lake Como) is nostalgic and instructive, the second (about a failed dinner party) is woeful and comic, and the last two (about the eruption of Vesuvius) are famous and vital. All of them – in these translations from 1909 and the 1960s – could have been written yesterday, were it not for the fact that Lake Como is now a European fixture for the Hollywood A-list, and Pompeii a magnet for the international flip-flop brigade.

  To Caninius Rufus (a former school friend and neighbour):

  I wonder how our darling Comum is looking, and your lovely house outside the town, with its colonnade where it is always springtime, and the shady plane trees, the stream with its sparkling greenish water flowing into the lake below, and the drive over the smooth firm turf. Your baths which are full of sunshine all day, the dining rooms large and small, the bedrooms for night or the day’s siesta – are you there and enjoying them all in turn, or are you as usual for ever being called away to look after your affairs? If you are there, you are a lucky man to be so happy; if not, you do no better than the rest of us.

  But isn’t it really time you handed over those tiresome petty duties to someone else and shut yourself up with your books in the peace and comfort of your retreat? This is what should be both business and pleasure, work and recreation, and should occupy your thoughts awake and asleep! Create something, perfect it to be yours for all time; for everything else you possess will fall to one or another master after you are dead, but this will never cease to be yours once it has come into being. I know the spirit and ability I am addressing, but you must try now to have the high opinion of yourself which the world will come to share if you do.

  The following, to his friend Septicius Clarus (a leader of the Praetorian Guard at the beginning of the second century), carries a rebuke as delicious as the food it describes.

  Oh you are a pretty fellow! You make an engagement to come to supper and then never appear. Justice shall be exacted: you shall reimburse me to the very last penny the expense I went to on your account; no small sum, let me tell you. I had prepared, you must know, a lettuce apiece, three snails, two eggs, and a barley cake, with some sweet wine [chilled with] snow (the snow most certainly I shall charge to your account, as a rarity that will not keep). Olives, beetroot, gourds, onions, and a thousand other dainties equally sumptuous. You should likewise have been entertained either with an interlude, the rehearsal of a poem, or a piece of music, whichever you preferred; or (such was my liberality) with all three. But the oysters, sows’-bellies, sea-urchins, and dancers from Cadiz of a certain _______ I know not who, were, it seems, more to your taste. You shall give satisfaction; how, shall at present be a secret.

  And finally this, to the historian Tacitus, written some 20 years after the eruption of Vesuvius and the destruction of Pompeii and Herculaneum in AD 79. Pliny was 17 at the time, and his eye-witness account (described in two letters, here slightly edited) carries its loaded portent and scorching intensity to the present day. Tacitus had requested a description of the death of Pliny’s uncle, the writer, philosopher and naval commander who had been Pliny’s mentor.

  Seneca, radical self-improver.

  My uncle was stationed at Misenum, in active command of the fleet. On 24 August, in the early afternoon, my mother drew his attention to a cloud of unusual size and appearance. He had been out in the sun, had taken a cold bath, and lunched while lying down, and was then working at his books. He called for his shoes and climbed up to a place which would give him the best view of the phenomenon. It was not clear at that distance from which mountain the cloud was rising (it was afterwards known to be Vesuvius); its general appearance can be best expressed as being like an umbrella pine, for it rose to a great height on a sort of trunk and then split off into branches, I imagine because it was thrust upwards by the first blast and then left unsupported as the pressure subsided, or else it was borne down by its own weight so that it spread out and gradually dispersed. Sometimes it looked white, sometimes blotched and dirty, according to the amount of soil and ashes it carried with it. My uncle’s scholarly acumen saw at once that it was important enough for a closer inspection, and he ordered a boat to be made ready, telling me I could come with him if I wished. I replied that I preferred to go on with my studies, and as it happened he had himself given me some writing to do.

  As he was leaving the house, he was handed a message from Rectina, wife of Tascius whose house was at the foot of the mountain, so that escape was impossible except by boat. She was terrified by the danger threatening her and implored him to rescue her from her fate. He changed his plans, and what he had begun in a spirit of inquiry he completed as a hero. He gave orders for the warships (5) to be launched and went on board himself with the intention of bringing help to many more people besides Rectina, for this lovely stretch of coast was thickly populated. He hurried to the place which everyone else was hastily leaving, steering his course straight for the danger zone. He was entirely fearless, describing each new movement and phase of the portent to be noted down exactly
as he observed them. Ashes were already falling, hotter and thicker as the ships drew near, followed by bits of pumice and blackened stones, charred and cracked by the flames: then suddenly they were in shallow water, and the shore was blocked by the debris from the mountain. For a moment my uncle wondered whether to turn back, but when the helmsman advised this he refused, telling him that Fortune favoured the brave. [The] wind was of course full in my uncle’s favour, and he was able to bring his ship in.

  Meanwhile on Mount Vesuvius broad sheets of fire and leaping flames blazed at several points, their bright glare emphasized by the darkness of night. My uncle tried to allay the fears of his companions by repeatedly declaring that these were nothing but bonfires left by the peasants in their terror, or else empty houses on fire in the districts they had abandoned. Then he went to rest and certainly slept, for as he was a stout man his breathing was rather loud and heavy and could be heard by people coming and going outside his door. By this time the courtyard giving access to his room was full of ashes mixed with pumice-stones, so that its level had risen, and if he had stayed in the room any longer he would never have got out. He was wakened, came out and joined Pomponianus and the rest of the household who had sat up all night. They debated whether to stay indoors or take their chance in the open, for the buildings were now shaking with violent shocks, and seemed to be swaying to and fro, as if they were torn from their foundations. Outside on the other hand, there was the danger of falling pumice-stones, even though these were light and porous; however, after comparing the risks they chose the latter . . . As a protection against falling objects they put pillows on their heads tied down with cloths.

  Elsewhere there was daylight by this time, but they were still in darkness, blacker and denser than any ordinary night, which they relieved by lighting torches and various kinds of lamp. My uncle decided to go down to the shore and investigate on the spot the possibility of any escape by sea, but he found the waves still wild and dangerous. A sheet was spread on the ground for him to lie down, and he repeatedly asked for cold water to drink. Then the flames and smell of sulphur which gave warning of the approaching fire drove the others to take flight and roused him to stand up. He stood leaning on two slaves and then suddenly collapsed, I imagine because the dense fumes choked his breathing by blocking his windpipe which was constitutionally weak and narrow and often inflamed. When daylight returned on the 26th – two days after the last day he had seen – his body was found intact and uninjured, still fully clothed and looking more like sleep than death.

  A few days later, Pliny wrote to Tacitus again, amplifying his account. He expected the historian ‘to select what best suits your purpose, for there is a great difference between a letter to a friend and history written for all to read.’ But it is only the letter to a friend that survives.

  After my uncle’s departure I spent the rest of the day with my books, as this was my reason for staying behind. Then I took a bath, dined, and then dozed fitfully for a while. For several days past there had been earth tremors which were not particularly alarming because they are frequent in Campania: but that night the shocks were so violent that everything felt as if it were not only shaken but overturned. My mother hurried into my room and found me already getting up to wake her if she were still asleep. We sat down in the forecourt of the house, between the buildings and the sea close by. I don’t know whether I should call this courage or folly on my part (I was only seventeen at the time) but I called for a volume of Livy and went on reading as if I had nothing else to do . . .

  ‘Sometimes it looked white, sometimes blotched and dirty’: Abraham Pether reinterprets Pliny.

  By now it was dawn, but the light was still dim and faint. The buildings round us were already tottering, and the open space we were in was too small for us not to be in real and imminent danger if the house collapsed. This finally decided us to leave the town. We were followed by a panic-stricken mob of people wanting to act on someone else’s decision in preference to their own (a point in which fear looks like prudence), who hurried us on our way by pressing hard behind in a dense crowd. Once beyond the buildings we stopped, and there we had some extraordinary experiences which thoroughly alarmed us. The carriages we had ordered to be brought out began to run in different directions though the ground was quite level, and would not remain stationary even when wedged with stones. We also saw the sea sucked away and apparently forced back by the earthquake: at any rate it receded from the shore so that quantities of sea creatures were left stranded on dry sand. On the landward side a fearful black cloud was rent by forked and quivering bursts of flame, and parted to reveal great tongues of fire, like flashes of lightning magnified in size . . .

  Soon afterwards the cloud sank down to earth and covered the sea; it had already blotted out Capri and hidden the promontory of Misenum from sight. Then my mother implored, entreated and commanded me to escape the best I could – a young man might escape, whereas she was old and slow and could die in peace as long as she had not been the cause of my death too. I refused to save myself without her, and grasping her hand forced her to quicken her pace. She gave in reluctantly, blaming herself for delaying me. Ashes were already falling, not as yet very thickly. I looked round: a dense black cloud was coming up behind us, spreading over the earth like a flood. Let us leave the road while we can still see, I said, ‘or we shall be knocked down and trampled underfoot in the dark by the crowd behind.’ We had scarcely sat down to rest when darkness fell, not the dark of a moonless or cloudy night, but as if the lamp had been put out in a closed room. You could hear the shrieks of women, the wailing of infants, and the shouting of men; some were calling their parents, others their children or their wives, trying to recognize them by their voices. People bewailed their own fate or that of their relatives, and there were some who prayed for death in their terror of dying. Many besought the aid of the gods, but still more imagined there were no gods left, and that the universe was plunged into eternal darkness for evermore . . . I could boast that not a groan or cry of fear escaped me in these perils, had I not derived some poor consolation in my mortal lot from the belief that the whole world was dying with me and I with it.

  At last the darkness thinned and dispersed into smoke or cloud; then there was genuine daylight, and the sun actually shone out, but yellowish as it is during an eclipse. We were terrified to see everything changed, buried deep in ashes like snowdrifts. We returned to Misenum where we attended to our physical needs as best we could, and then spent an anxious night alternating between hope and fear. Fear predominated, for the earthquakes went on, and several hysterical individuals made their own and other people’s calamities seem ludicrous in comparison with their frightful predictions. But even then, in spite of the dangers we had been through, and were still expecting, my mother and I had still no intention of leaving until we had news of my uncle.

  Of course these details are not important enough for history, and you will read them without any idea of recording them; if they seem scarcely worth putting in a letter, you have only yourself to blame for asking them.

  ‘Of course these details are not important enough for history,’ he wrote. In fact, Pliny’s accounts are the only contemporary document of the eruption, preserving in words what the volcano preserved beneath ash. Pliny thought the memorial was to his brave uncle – who snored as Vesuvius roared – but history had grander intentions. He considered the details of his letters superfluous, the way letter-writers often do at the time of writing, but we now may argue against this.

  Letters from Abroad

  14232134 SIGNALMAN CHRIS BARKER

  H.C., BASE DEPOT, ROYAL SIGNALS,

  MIDDLE EAST FORCES

  Somewhere in North Africa

  5th September 1943

  Dear Bessie,

  Since Auld Acquaintance should not be forgot, and I have had a letter to Nick and yourself on my conscience for some time, I now commence some slight account of my movem
ents since arrival here some five months ago, and one or two other comments which will edify, amuse or annoy you according to the Britishers’ war-time diet or whatever you had for breakfast.

  The ‘security’ advice of a Signals officer that in our travels we should keep our bowels open and our mouths shut seemed not to have been heard by the populace en route for our port of disembarkation. The behaviour of the troops on board ship was bad. They shouted, shoved, swore and stole to their black hearts’ content. I lost about a dozen items of kit, and was able to replace most of it from the odds left about on the disembarkation date by chaps who had first pinched for the fine fun of it. I cannot include my razor in this lot. That was removed from the ledge I had placed it on, as I turned to get a towel to wipe it.

  A letter to Signalman Barker tries to get through.

  Chris Barker, 29, was born and grew up in Holloway, north London. He left school at 14 to join the Post Office, working initially as a messenger boy and then a counter clerk, becoming an active trade union member. His training as a teleprinter operator, a ‘reserved’ occupation, kept him out of the war until the end of 1942, and after army training in Yorkshire he enlisted as a keyboard operator with Middle East Command. After a long sea voyage via the Cape, he arrived in Cairo in May 1943.

  Four months later, serving with the Royal Corps of Signals in Tobruk, on the Libyan coast, he was looking after communications for the RAF in the southern Mediterranean. With time on his hands, he began writing to friends he missed back home.