Ohé la Renaissance! for this is to be the Age of Humour. We travail for the blithe rebirth of joy into the world. The Decadence, with its morbid personalities and accursed analysis of exotic emotion, is over, please God; yet we may adopt its methods and refine the simplicity of primary impulse, thus increasing the whole sum of pleasure with the delicate nuances that amplify the waves of feeling. Hark, O my reader! Do you not hear them, rising like overtones and turning the melody into a divine harmony?
The Game of Correspondence
The receipt of a letter is no longer the event it was in the old stage-coach days; railways and the penny postage have robbed it of all excitement. One expects now one's little pile of white, blue and green envelopes beside one's plate at breakfast, along with one's toast and coffee, and one tastes its contents as one opens the matutinal egg. We have forgotten how to write interesting letters as we have forgotten how to fold and wafer a sheet of foolscap or sharpen a quill. Some of our missives are not even worth a cursory glance, many by no means deserve an answer, and most are speedily forgotten in the columns of the morning journal.
Yet, at times, on red-letter days, we find one amongst the number which demands epicurean perusal; it is not to be ripped open and devoured in haste, it insists on privacy and attention. This has a flavour which the salt of silence alone can bring out; a dash of interruption destroys its exquisite delicacy. More than this, it must be answered while it is still fresh and sparkling, after which, if it be of the true vintage, it can afford still another sip to inspire your postscript.
To your room then with this, and lock the door, or else save it for a more impregnable leisure. Open it daintily and entertain it with distinction and respect; efface any previous mood and hold yourself passive to its enchantment. It is no love message, and need depend upon no excited interest in the writer for its reception, for it has an intrinsic merit; it is the work of an artist; it is a fascinating move on the chess-board of the most alluring, most accessible game in the world.
Though the fire of such a letter need have neither the artificiality of flirtation nor the intensity of love, yet it must both light and warm the reader. It is not valuable for the news it brings, for if it be a work of art the tidings it bears are not so important as the telling of them. It must be sincere and alive, revealing and confessing, a letter more from the writer than to the reader, as if it were written in face of a mirror rather than before the photograph of the receiver; and yet the communication must be spelled in the cypher of your friendship, to which only you have the key. We have our separate languages, each with the other, and there are emotions we cannot duplicate. This missive is for you, and for you only, or it ranks with a business communication. It is minted thought, invested, put out at loan for a time, bringing back interest to stimulate new speculations. There are no superfluous words, for the master strikes a clean sharp blow, forging his mood all of a single piece, welding your whim to his, and, fusing his sentences, there glows a spirit, a quality of style that bears no affectation; it must not, of all things, become literary, it must be direct, not showing signs of operose polish. It must be writ in the native dialect of the heart.
If it be a risk to write frankly, it is one that gains interest in the same proportion; it makes the game the better sport. But after all, how many letters, so fearfully burned, so carefully hid away, but what, in after years, would seem innocuous? You are seduced by the moment, and your mood seems, and impulses seem, dangerous, incendiary. You grow perfervid in your indiscretion, not knowing that the whole world is stirred by the same recklessness, and that each one is profoundly bored by all save his own yearnings. Not many of our epistles will bear the test of print on their own merit, expurgate them as you will; you need only fear, rather, that the letter will grow dull even before it reaches its destination. The best of them, moreover, are written in sympathetic ink, and unless your correspondent has the proper reagent at hand, the sheets will be empty or incomprehensible even to him. Answer speedily as you may, too, it will be hard to overtake your correspondent's mood; he has overburdened his mind, precipitated the solution, and is off to another experiment by the time his stamp is affixed. But you must do your best in return; reflect enough of his ray to show him he has shot straight, and then flash your own colour back.
There are virtues of omission and commission. It is not enough to answer questions; one must not add the active annoyance of apology to the passive offense of neglect. One must not hint at things untellable; one must give the crisp satisfaction of confidences wholly shared. Who has not received that dash of feminine inconsequence in the sentence, "I have just written you two long letters, and have torn them both up"? What letter could make up for such an exasperation? Your master letter-writer does not fear to stop when he is done, either, and a blank page at the end of the folio does not threaten his conscience.
If one has not the commonplace view of things, and escapes the obvious, it matters little whether one uses the telescope or the microscope. One may deal with the abstract or concrete, discuss philosophy and systems, or gild homely little common things till they shine and twinkle with joy. Indeed, the perfect letter-writer must do both, and change from the intensely subjective to the intensely objective point of view. He must, as it were, look you in the eye and hold you by the hand. Two masters whose letters have recently been printed may illustrate these two different phases of expression, though each could do both as well. And this first, from Browning's love letters, describes what the perfect letter should be:
"I persisted in not reading my letter in the presence of my friend.... I kept the letter in my hand, and only read it with those sapient ends of the fingers which the mesmerists make so much ado about, and which really did seem to touch a little of what was inside. Not all, however, happily for me! or my friend would have seen in my eyes what they did not see."