To the Letter

by Simon Garfield

  Almost two months later she wrote to her daughter again, this time with news of her son Charles. ‘And now a word or two about your brother,’ one paragraph began, revealing a comical case of sexual malfunction. That she would betray such a personal confidence only just told to her by one of her children is astonishing; she clearly couldn’t help herself with such powerful stuff. And for all our qualms, it is still hard to look away. Her son had just broken off one relationship and begun another, this time with the actress Mademoiselle de Champmesle, a favourite of Racine.

  Yesterday your brother came from the other end of Paris to tell me about the accident that had befallen him. He had found a favourable opportunity [with Miss De C], and yet, dare I say it? His little gee-gee stopped short at Lérida. It was an extraordinary thing; the poor damsel had never found herself so amused in her life. The unhappy knight beat a retreat, thinking himself bewitched. And what is better still is that he couldn’t wait to tell me about his fiasco. We laughed heartily, and I told him I was very glad he had been punished in the place where he had sinned. He then turned it on me and said I had given him some of the ice in my composition, and that he could well do without that inheritance, which I would have done better to pass on to you . . . It was a scene worthy of Molière.

  The first of Madame de Sévigné’s letters appeared in print less than a year after she died of what may have been pneumonia in 1696. The collected correspondence of her cousin, the Count de Bussy, brought 100 letters between the two of them to a readership beyond the court, sparking what may be called, if not a mania for her letters, then at least a ravenous appetite. It was as if a collective girdle had been untied; the gossip that was once only exchanged behind the flutter of patterned fans was now hooked up to a loudspeaker. The first short collection of de Sévigné’s letters to her daughter appeared in 1725, and another selection was published the following year to meet demand. Many were expurgated, her granddaughter increasingly convinced that they reflected unflatteringly on her family. The collections kept on coming: eight volumes of 770 letters in 1754, ten volumes in 1801, 14 volumes in 1862, each with new translations and new discoveries. The most noteworthy find came in 1872, when a collection known as the ‘Capmas manuscript’ turned up, after auction, in the window of a shop in Dijon, and was subsequently hailed as a discovery as great as Pompeii and Herculaneum. This it wasn’t, but it was an eye-opener. We had seen many of these letters before, but not in this form. The 319 letters newly discovered by Charles Capmas, a law professor at Dijon University, were a true copy of the originals de Sévigné had composed two centuries before – uncut and untampered with. It was as if the bride had raised her veil, the difference between an individual’s true voice and that of an impersonator, something that would later inspire Virginia Woolf to claim that de Sévigné ‘seems like a living person, inexhaustible’.

  In 1868, an American edition of de Sévigné’s letters published in Massachusetts suggested: ‘We are a letter-writing people; and no better models for letters exist than Madame de Sévigné’s. We are a practical and energetic people; and no better complement to such virtues can be found than the tender affection and delicate refinement of Madame de Sévigné.’

  But surely there were other models? In 1686, a decade before de Sévigné died, a man called Philip, second earl of Chesterfield, wrote a book of instruction for Lady Mary Stanhope, his eldest daughter by his third wife. It was a one-off, handwritten publication of about 40 pages, and it resembled the sort of almanac popular as a Christmas present in the twentieth century before the Internet. There was guidance on mathematics, on syntax, on the parables of Aristotle and Cicero, a disquisition on astronomy, a sampling of Descartes and other modern luminaries, and the meaning of 175 words that every nimble lady should know, including Affinity and Ambrosia. There was even a skewed poetical treatise on love: ‘Is a pleasant evill, a concealed poison, a frenzical feaver, an infirmity that is not easily cured, a pleasing death, and some times a great misfortune.’

  When these instructions were privately printed in 1934, its editor, a certain W.S. Lewis, described its author as having pursued ‘a career dedicated to wickedness’, by which he meant debauchery and the possible murder of his second wife (by adulterated sacramental wine, presumably the ‘concealed poison’ he referred to in his considerations of love). Which would lead one to wonder precisely what this man could possibly teach his daughter, who was 22 at the time she received his manuscript. By the far the largest element of his instruction concerned letters, and he took a particular approach (‘Date your letters at the bottom of your paper . . . for it is much more respectful.’) Elsewhere, his guidance relied much on the size of one’s hand.

  If you write to a Queen . . . begin your first line within three fingers breadth of the bottom of the paper . . . If you write to a Dutches, begin your letter in the middle of the paper. If you write to one of your own quality, leave the space of three or four fingers breadth between Madam and the first line. And if you write to any mean body begin ‘Mrs’ and write in the same line or just beneath it.

  Chesterfield was strict about sign-offs. Writing to a person ‘of your own quality or above you’ you should end with ‘most obedient humble servant’; but when you write to any ordinary person ‘your most affectionate friend’ will suffice. As a general rule he advised his daughter to make at least two drafts: ‘Write it at first foul, and blot out such words as are writ twise or thrise . . . mend thy spelling by a Dictionary, and consider that some words (tho the sense be good) doe not sound well coming after other words, and your eare must be judg.’ And there was one parting shot: ‘It is a very great incivilitie not to answer all the letters wee doe receive, except they come from our servants or very mean persons.’

  The following century saw more moderate, less judgemental, more widely read guidance from so many sources that it was difficult to keep track. How to account for the mid-eighteenth-century wonders The Complete Letter-Writer; Or, Polite English Secretary and A New Academy of Compliments; Or, The Lover’s Secretary? and The Polite Lady; Or, A Course of Female Education, In a Series of Letters, from a Mother to her Daughter, or even Familiar Letters on Various Subjects of Business and Amusement, Written in a natural easy manner; and published principally for the Service of the Younger Part of Both Sexes? Certainly growing literacy and a more reliable postal service had something to do with this, but so did the further establishment of the letter-writing manual as a literary genre in its own right; the London bookshops were heaving under the weight of new guides, and although many were anonymous it was deemed a branch of writing respectable enough for Daniel Defoe and Samuel Richardson to have a shot.

  But they were more than the guides we have read before. Because there was only a limited number of times one could instruct a reader as to the correct opening or closing addresses and the correct application of spacing, it was crucial that the manuals entertained, amusing those who could already write well. But they were not parodies: they were hefty practical examples and templates for almost every conceivable situation. And they were, more often than not, directed at women.

  One of the most varied and amusing, stretching to 275 pages, appeared in 1763. The Ladies Complete Letter-Writer clearly had its sights on a broad market; its subtitle promised the teaching of The Art of Inditing Letters on every Subject that can call for their Attention, as Daughters, Wives, Mothers, Relations, Friends or Acquaintance, Being a Collection of Letters Written by Ladies, Not only on the more important Religious, Moral and Social Duties, but on Subjects of every other kind that usually interest the Fair Sex: the Whole Performing A Polite and Improving Manual for their Use, Instruction and Rational Entertainment, with many other Important Articles. Brevity, one imagines, not being the consistent message.

  The situations were indeed multiple, a greatest hits compilation gathered from many other letter-writing manuals and newly ordered into efficient themes. Among the most alluring were letters about the
lasting impact of scandal, the dangers of over-flirtatious behaviour, a consolation to one who had lost her beauty to smallpox, and the plight ‘of a lady who had gone home late after a visit’. But the most readable were surely those regarding infidelity. One letter in the middle of the volume was written from a woman to a man she suspected of misconduct the night before.

  Sir,

  The freedom and sincerity with which I have at all times laid open my heart to you ought to have some weight to my claim to a return of the same confidence. But I have reason to fear that the best men do not always act as they ought. I write to you what it would be impossible to speak; but before I see you I desire you will either explain your conduct last night or confess that you have used me not as I have deserved of you.

  It is in vain to deny that you took pains to recommend yourself to Miss Peacoc. Your earnestness of discourse also showed me that you were no stranger to her. I desire to know, Sir, what sort of acquaintance you can wish to have with another person of character, after making me believe that you wish to be married to me. I write very plainly to you because I expect a plain answer. I am not apt to be suspicious, but this was too particular, and I must be either blind or indifferent to overlook it. Sir, I am neither, though perhaps it would be better for me if I were one or the other. I am,

  Yours, & c.

  And then the scenario was flipped: a woman, herself accused of dalliance, responds:

  Sir,

  Whatever may be the end of this dispute, for I do not think so lightly of lovers’ quarrels as many do, I think it proper to inform you that I never have thought favourably of anyone but yourself. And I shall add that if the fault of your temper, which I once little suspected, should make me fear you too much to marry, you will not see me in that state with any other, nor courted by any man in the world.

  I did not know that the gaiety of my temper gave you uneasiness; and you ought to have told me of it with less severity . . . I desire you will first look carefully over this letter, for my whole heart is in it, and then come to me.

  Yours & c.*

  One further letter is worthy of note. A woman writes to her mother upon discovering she should be compelled to marry a man she abhors named Andrugio:

  Most dear and honoured Madam,

  . . . I am emboldened once more to pour out the fullness of my soul before you, to beseech you to have compassion on my forlorn condition, . . . this terrible dilemma that, whichever way I turn, affords nothing but the prospect of eternal ruin.

  My aunt has just now shown me a letter she received from my father, wherein he desires her to prepare our return to London. But, O heaven, to what end! To be the wretched bride, the victim of a man I can have no taste for as a husband, a man who, were my heart entirely free from all attachment to another, I never could be brought to love! How can I assume a tenderness it is not in my power to feel!

  To be sincere in all my words and actions was the first precept of my early youth, I have ever since held it sacred . . . But I am now told that reason ought to guide inclination, that the softer passions should give way to the confederations of interest and the world’s esteem, and that these plead strongly in favour of Andrugio. Alas, how different are my thoughts!

  . . . Punish me by any other means provoked authority can invent; condemn me to pass the whole remainder of my days in lonely solitude; shut me from all society, or banish me where only lions and tigers dwell. Fate cannot reach me in any shape so horrid as the embraces of Andrugio.

  Pardon, I beseech you Madam, the wildness of these expressions, which nothing but the most poignant anguish of the last despair could have forced from me. And be assured that, though I have said much more than you think I ought to have done, I have said little in comparison to what is felt by, Madam,

  Your unhappy but obedient daughter.

  The author of these epistolary fictions is unknown. But could it be that it is here, in these 120 clear-headed and strong-willed letters, that we glimpse the early stirrings of eighteenth-century feminism?

  Young men had their own behavioural templates. For one man in particular, early life was governed by a sequence of letters that set a moral compass so particular and refined that, almost three centuries later, the guidance may still be regarded as relevant; like letters, the manners they promote are also vanishing from modern life. As with the letters of Madame de Sévigné, it wasn’t a textbook that raised the cultural bar, but a contemporary collection of genuine letters.

  Famous for his letters and his sofa: the fourth Earl of Chesterfield by Thomas Gainsborough.

  In 1774, the London bookseller James Dodsley offered a new two-volume publication in his Pall Mall shop. Letters written by the Earl of Chesterfield to his son, Philip Stanhope was widely and well reviewed, and, even at the price of one guinea per volume, proved popular with Dodsley’s clientele. (We are already familiar with his grandfather, the Second Earl of Chesterfield, who had composed the letter-writing manual to his daughter.) The fourth earl’s letters were never intended for a wide public. But in the weeks after he died, Stanhope’s widow realised that his thoughtful words to his son would benefit all potentially wayward offspring; and she realised too that the hefty £1,500 she received for this foresight would come in handy.

  The earl’s letters were composed between 1739 and 1765. His son Philip was illegitimate, and, living apart from his father, stood the risk of pursuing a life of ‘inexactitude’ (which is to say, a life lived beneath the exacting standards of his father). Composed several times each month, his letters served as an educational correspondence course. Chesterfield was attempting a task not witnessed in scale since Seneca: the development of character and career by epistolary instruction. In May 1751 he wrote candidly to his son of how he considered him his ‘work’. ‘There is, I believe, room for farther improvement before you come to that perfection which I have set my heart upon seeing you arrive at; and till that moment I must continue filing and polishing.’

  What qualified him for this role? The fourth earl was both more sagacious and more modern than his grandfather, and he had more diplomatic experience upon which to draw: he was a highly effective orator in the Lords, the British ambassador at the Hague, lord lieutenant of Ireland, and secretary of state under Prime Minister Newcastle. His most enduring legacy, alongside his letters, was that he was the chief political instigator of the British adoption of our Gregorian calendar,* and (although this is disputed) the first to commission the indestructible and uncomfortable dimpled leather sofa that bears his name. He was generous both with praise and financial assistance; when he learnt that his son had established a secret family, he swiftly offered to pay for his grandchild’s entire upbringing. His literary talents were advanced; his letters were sweetened with humour, which rendered them cajoling rather than hectoring, and he clearly had his son’s interests at heart, even when administering firm guidance about looking after his teeth or cultivating his fashion sense. Beyond all this, he had postal form: the fourth earl of Chesterfield was descended from John Stanhope, the master of the king’s posts in the sixteenth century; and he was the grandson of the second earl of Chesterfield above, the suspected wife-murderer and purveyor of letter-writing advice to his daughter.

  One of the earliest letters, written in July 1739 when his son was seven, set a tone from which he never wavered.

  My Dear Boy,

  One of the most important points in life is decency; which is to do what is proper and where it is proper; for many things are proper at one time, and in one place, that are extremely improper in another; for example, it is very proper and decent that you should play some part of the day; but you must see that it would be extremely improper and indecent if you ere fly your kite, or play at nine pins, while you are with Mr Maitaire [his tutor; the young Philip would shortly attend Westminster]. It is very proper and decent to dance well, but then you must dance only at balls and places
of entertainment; for you would be reckoned a fool if you were to dance at church or at a funeral.

  I hope, by these examples, you understand the meaning of the word Decency, which in French is Bienseance, in Latin Decorum . . .

  As young Philip entered his teens, his father concerned himself increasingly with public conduct, arming him with a set of social skills designed to gain him friends and influence. ‘There is nothing that people bear more impatiently, or forgive less, than contempt,’ he wrote in October 1746,

  and an injury is much sooner forgotten than an insult. If, therefore, you would rather please than offend, rather be well than ill spoken of, rather be loved than hated, remember to have that constant attention about you, which flatters every man’s little vanity . . . Most people (I might say all people) have their weaknesses; they have their aversions and their likings, to such and such things; so that, if you were to laugh at a man for his aversion to a cat, or cheese (which are common antipathies), or, by inattention and negligence, to let them come in his way where you could prevent it, he would, in the first case, think himself insulted, and, in the second, slighted, and would remember both. Whereas your care to procure for him what he likes, and to remove from him what he hates, shows him that he is at least an object of your attention; flatters his vanity, and makes him possibly more your friend.