The flowing Italian hand, used by educated women early in the last century, changed with fashion into the freer style of the succeeding generation; this in the third generation had further developed into the bold, decisive, almost masculine writing adopted by the more strong-minded females of the latter end of the nineteenth century.
Of course, school-teaching is responsible to a certain extent for handwriting. Our University men of to-day all, with few exceptions, use a neat scholarly form of writing, free from flourishes, and with simple capital letters and the small broken-backed Greek letter ε. Compared with the scholar’s, the soldier’s writing is bolder and rounder, while the clerk’s is still more distinct in type in its open lettering, interspersed with curls and twists. So with most professions it will be found that each has special characteristics; but these are liable to change according to circumstances; thus, the clerk will form his letters less distinctly after the need of great legibility no longer compels him to carefulness. Self-education will often alter a vulgar, ill-formed writing to a better, more studied style; and writing is the clearest proof of both bodily and mental condition, for in cases of paralysis or mental aberration the doctor takes it as a certain guide. The writing of feeble-minded persons is like that of a scarcely-educated child.
Looking back to the days when writing was a profession of itself, it can easily be understood how it is that we find less variety among old writings. For in those days, before printing was discovered, or at least but imperfectly executed and understood, all books had to be produced by hand, and were the work either of paid scribes, whose duty it was to reproduce copies of well-known authors; or else copied out by clerks or private secretaries at the dictation of the authors themselves, who could seldom spare the time to commit their ideas to paper, or, even if they did so, it was customary to have additional copies made by professed scribes. Unacquainted with the subjects of the books, and copying merely from verbal dictation, it is no wonder that mistakes and misunderstandings often occurred, especially in the spelling of place and personal names; for one man reading aloud to several scribes, each would write down the names and words as they sounded to his individual sense of hearing, for the constant interruption necessary to ensure complete accuracy would cause the process to be tedious and very lengthy.
Private correspondence, even, was carried on as a profession; writing shops existed up to a comparatively late period; at present, in out-of-the-way streets in London, one reads the notice ‘Letters written here,’ though this generally means that letters may be sent to that address.
Authors who indited or dictated their own books had them afterwards transcribed neatly for preservation, and probably destroyed the original notes, for of these comparatively few, if any, exist.
All the earliest scribes had a special education for their profession, being sent to some monastery for that purpose; hence they were either foreigners, or educated under foreign monks, either French or Italian, and the effect of this teaching is clearly demonstrated by the similitude which exists all over Europe between manuscripts of the early Middle Ages.
In England the Norman Conquest overruled most of the previous customs and styles. Vast crowds of Normans emigrated continuously to our shores. This went on more or less for at least three or four centuries, and then prejudice against foreigners asserted itself, and the Saxon element, which still remained among the lower classes of the people, gained the ascendant. In the reign of Henry V. alien priories were suppressed, and foreign monks and priests no longer travelled backwards and forwards from the Norman abbeys to the junior houses or cells in England. The rich merchants, who resorted here from the Low Countries and Germany, brought with them their own customs and fashions; and at this time will first be noticed the use of a written character, like the modern German, which steadily came more and more into use until the end of the seventeenth century, when it died out and the style altered to a rounder, freer hand.
So long as education was almost entirely monastic, or at least conducted by teachers trained in monastic institutions, we find (as we should naturally expect to do) a regularity, carefulness and formality in the handwriting of the period; but so soon as England had shaken off the authority of Rome and the educated communities had been scattered and disbanded, a marked change took place in the quantity and quality of all kinds of writing. The monks and nuns, rendered homeless by the Reformation, returned to their native villages, thus spreading education among all classes and creating a desire after learning. But the primary cause of the alteration in handwriting, so very marked in the sixteenth century, was perhaps attributable to the introduction of the art of printing, which naturally was fatal to handwriting as a profession. The scribe was no longer required to multiply the author’s productions; so that lawyers and public office clerks only remained out of the large class who had formerly earned their living as professional writers. In the actual writing, also, a change took place. The old elaborate letters were supplanted by the simple capitals copied from the printer’s blocks. Some day, maybe, writing will die out altogether; every year fresh improvements and inventions are increasing; now type-writers and multiplying machines are used in place of handwriting in many offices, while sooner or later typing by machine will be universal.
A hundred years ago, very few if any of the labourers could either read or write; even now, in out-of-the-way country places, there exist people ignorant of these (to us) necessary arts. The marriage registers of the eighteenth century prove to us the ignorance of the country folk; frequently neither the contracting parties nor their witnesses could write their names, using instead either some eccentric monogram bearing a faint resemblance to initials—a memory perhaps of a bygone and very slight amount of teaching—or oftener still we find in lieu of name the old Christian cross, which has been in use by the illiterate from Saxon times as a pledge of good faith and consent.
Previous to the nineteenth century, education in country places was either altogether absent or provided out of the bounty of the squire or parson, the teacher being some old ignorant person prevented by age or bodily infirmity from pursuing active labour, and whose qualifications were merely a smattering of the ‘three R’s,’ which, with plain sewing, was the whole of his or her useful though scanty répertoire. Children then were sent out to work at the age of nine or ten years, and earlier if anybody could be found to employ them in service. When once placed out, they had no opportunities of gaining further book knowledge, and soon forgot the little they had learnt for want of practice or stimulation, nor had they sufficient mental capacity to study by themselves, except in very exceptional cases of natural genius.