THE POSTMAN’S KNOCK.
‘A foot post doth come from Bury, in Suffolk, to the Green Dragon, in Bishopsgate Street, every Wednesday, by whom letters may be conveyed to and fro.’ So writes the water poet, John Taylor, in his ‘Carrier’s Cosmography,’ A.D. 1637. In like manner we learn that a foot post from Wasingham came every second Thursday to the Cross Keys, Holborn; and one from York, to the Rose and Crown, in St. John Street. Letters, however, could be sent every Monday to Scotland, ‘by the post that doth lodge at the King’s Arms, at the upper end of Cheapside.’ Letters did not travel then as fast as a certain general made one travel, by enclosing it in a cannon ball and firing it into a besieged town, for the purpose of conveying a message. Between the time when the first letter was written and that signalled by the postman’s knock this morning there never was a more singular mode of despatch.
The first letter ever written! Where is it? Let us be content to know, as beyond dispute, that the earliest sample we have of a letter is that of David to Joab. When we remember the contents and the purpose of that letter we may be honestly ashamed of the writer. We could have wished this letter had not been preserved; and we turn from it readily to consider the letters of more recent and less sacred kings.
The earliest royal sign manual existing of our own kings is that of Richard II. The grandest and firmest is that of Richard III. There exists a document of this king’s which was begun under dictation. Richard seems to have grown impatient with his secretary, snatched the pen from his hand, and finished the document with his own hand. His signature, Ricardus Rex, is written with wonderful boldness. The cross line of the ‘x’ looks like a pike-staff, and has a wickedly threatening air with it. There are letters of a far more interesting quality than the above, also written by Richard, in the collection of letters of the time of that king, with others of the later time of Henry VII. The work is one of the series published under the sanction of the Master of the Rolls. Richard’s letters are those of a kind-hearted man, who considers no subject to be too trifling for consideration. Several letters prove that he was an affectionate husband to Lady Anne. When she was Richard’s queen and had fallen sick, her husband wrote to Louis XI., civilly requesting him to send over some Burgundy and wines of Haute France, for the comforting and strengthening of that august lady’s stomach. On another occasion, when the governess of his little son Edward (that boy-prince of Wales whose unexpected death at Middleham nearly drove his father mad) was likely to lose some property through the dishonesty of a kinsman, Richard looked into her affairs and energetically set about seeing her righted. In details like these he comes before us, like a good-natured head of a family, sympathising with all who live under his roof. It is quite curious, too, to see that matters of dress were not beneath his notice. One of his many Irish favourites—favourites because they had supported the cause of Richard’s noble father, the Duke of York—was the Earl of Desmond. Richard was not only generous to the earl, he was desirous of seeing him dressed in the fashion which prevailed in England, but which had not yet reached Ireland. Richard requests Desmond to ‘renounce the wearing and usage of the Irish array, and to use the manner of apparel for his person after the English guise.’ The king sent patterns of dress to Ireland by the hands of a bishop. The right reverend modiste carried with him samples of ‘gowns, doublets, hose, and bonnets,’ of the latest taste, with a fac-simile of the king’s livery, a collar of gold of Richard’s device, and, finally, a neat assortment of ‘hats, kerchiefs, tippets, and shirts.’ In connection with such articles, and with the above household details, we hardly recognise the dark Richard of history and the drama. But light and shade prevail throughout. Richard could stoop to invent the fashion of a coat, and could climb through murder to a throne. Whatever may be his guilt with regard to the young princes in the Tower, he showed his wisdom when he took for wife Lady Anne, the daughter of the fierce Countess of Warwick, by immediately locking up his uncomfortable mother-in-law!
This series of letters is worthy of being studied. Richard appears quite another manner of man than we have been accustomed to take him to be. Henry VII., on the other hand, remains unaltered—mean, cruel, treacherous, and crafty. We will only allude to a letter of James IV. of Scotland to show his intelligence. In one of them, written to the King of Denmark, James announces that a band of Gipsies, pretending to be Christian pilgrims, had been in Scotland, and that he had sent them to Denmark, the latter country being, as he believed, in the vicinity of Egypt, from whence the wanderers had started.
In dealing with old letters, as much caution is necessary as in dealing with old pictures. All are not ancient masters that are called so. Some years ago there was an aged man in a German capital, who, throughout a long life, had made a decent income by painting pictures by any great artist of any time or place. If a rich amateur, travelling that way, wanted a work by some renowned painter of the early times he went to a dealer, and the dealer, undertaking to find him one, went to the old painter of other men’s pictures, who in a week produced a Da Vinci, a Raffaelle, or a Del Sarto, a Rubens, a Claude, or a Wouvermans—it mattered not what; and each party was satisfied. Once the old fellow tried to paint a picture of his own, but there was such a confusion of styles in it he could not offer it for sale, and in order to live respectably he was obliged once more to resort to forgery.
As for forged letters, they are thick as leaves in Vallambrosa. A few years ago a writer in the ‘Athenæum,’ referring to this fact, remarked, ‘In no age has literature been free from the intrusion of spurious records into the domain of truth. One man forges for the pure love of sport, throws his forged papers into a collection, to be found a hundred years later, merely to perplex the pundits. Another forges to sustain a crotchet or a principle. But the most industrious and the most facile are those who forge for profit. Everyone familiar with old papers is aware that the publication of historical documents—letters, plays, poems, maps, charts, and cylinders—has now ceased to be a learned profession, and has become a manufacture. As the Old Bailey had its tribes of rascals ready to witness against anybody and anything for money, so literature has its race of outcasts ready to furnish any document that may be wanted, from a Wardour Street pedigree, derived from scrolls in a Cheshire muniment room, up to a copy of Homer from a monastery at the summit of Mount Athos.’ Of the above there is no doubt. We may add that, in some cases, letters have been authentic and yet have been no more genuine than if they had been forged. That is to say, they misrepresented the feelings of the writers themselves. We have one sample of something intended in this way, though not carried out, by Crebillon and Sterne. Fun, profit, and mystification were at the bottom of it. Sterne, writing to Garrick in April 1762, says: ‘Crebillon has made a convention with me, which, if he be not too lazy, will be no bad persiflage. As soon as I get to Toulouse he has agreed to write me an expostulatory letter upon the indecorums of “Tristram Shandy,” which is to be answered by recriminations upon the coarseness of his own works. These are to be printed together—Crebillon against Sterne: Sterne against Crebillon. The copy to be sold, and the money to be equally divided. This is good Swiss policy!’ Nothing came of this design, but it illustrates how a letter may be authentic and yet not be genuine.
Widows’ letters are rudely said to be sometimes of this quality. This is, no doubt, untrue. The idea, however, is as old as Massinger. That dramatic poet makes his Hilario, in ‘The Picture,’ remark:
There be some
That in their husband’s sicknesses have wept