It is to be hoped that the privacy of vivâ voce conversation will ever remain sacred: but it is known that that which ought to be as holy, that of epistolary correspondence,—(the private conversation of distant friends,) is constantly and deliberately violated, where there are certain inducements to do so. The press works so diligently and beneficially for society at large, that there is a tendency to commit everything to it, on utilitarian considerations of a rather coarse kind: and the moment it can be made out that the publication of anything will and may do some ostensible good, the thing is published,—whatever considerations of a different or a higher sort may lie behind. If the people of note in society were inquired of, they would say that the privilege—the right—of privacy of epistolary correspondence now exists only for the obscure;—and for them, only till some person meets them whose zeal for the public good leads him to lay hold on all material by which anybody may be supposed likely to learn anything. As for people of note,—their letters are naturally preserved by the recipients: when the writer dies, these recipients are plied with entreaties and remonstrances,—placed in a position of cruel difficulty (as it is to many) between their delicacy of affection for the deceased, and the pain of being made responsible for intercepting his fame, and depriving society of the benefit of the disclosure of his living mind.
Under this state of things, what happens? Some destroy, through life, all the letters they receive, but those on business. Some, with an agonising heart, burn them after the writer’s death, to escape the requisitions of executors. Many, alas! resign their privilege of freedom of epistolary speech, and write no letters which any one would care to preserve for an hour. Some call in their own letters;—a painful process, both to writer and receivers. Of such as do not care what becomes of their letters, there is no need to say anything. Their feelings require no consideration, for their letters cannot be of a private,—nor, therefore, of the most valuable kind. The misery of the liability is in regard to letters of affection and confidence,—letters which the writer could no more bear to see again than to have notes taken of the out-pourings of his heart in an hour of confidence. It is too certain that many such letters are now never written which crave to be so: and it is much to be feared that some letters, purporting to be private, are written with a view to ultimate publication; and thus the receiver is insulted, or there is a sacrifice of honesty all round.
I do not see any probability of a dearth of biographies. I believe that there will always be interest enough in human life and character to secure a sufficiency of records of individuals:—that there will always be enough of persons whose letters are not of a very private kind,—always enough of provided and exceptional cases to serve society with a sufficiency of biography, of a duly analytical kind. But if I did not believe this,—if I believed that the choice lay between a sacrifice of the completest order of biography and that of the inviolability of private epistolary correspondence, I could not hesitate for a moment. I would keep the old and precious privacy,—the inestimable right of every one who has a friend and can write to him;—I would keep our written confidence from being made biographical material, as anxiously as I would keep our spoken conversation from being noted down for the good of society. I would keep the power of free speech under all the influences of life and fate,—and leave Biography to exist or perish.
And pretty sure it is of existence. It has, for its material, the life and actions of all men and women of note;—their printed and otherwise public writings and sayings;—the recollections of those who knew them; and, in no small number of cases, material which, however we may wonder at, we have only to take and be thankful for. A Doddridge keeps a copy of every letter or note he ever wrote, labelled and put by for posthumous use. A D’Arblay spends her last hours in elaborating her revelations of the transactions, private and public, of her day; and revises, for publication, the expressions of fondness and impulse, written to sisters and other intimates, long dead. A Rousseau here and there gives more. One way and another, the resources of biography are secure enough, without encroachment on a sacred process of intercourse. Biography will never fail. Would that we were all equally secure of a higher matter,—our right of freedom of epistolary speech!
“But when all are dead,—and nobody concerned remains to be hurt?” remonstrates one. The reply is, that as long as people of note, who love their friends, remain, there are some left to be concerned and injured.
“But,” says another, “would you object to do good, after your death, by your letters being published?” The reply is that, in the supposition, I see an enormous sacrifice of a higher and greater good to a lower and smaller. No letters, in any number and of any quality,—if they exhibited all the wisdom of Solomon, and all the graces of the Queen of Sheba, could do so much good as a single clear and strong protest against the preservation of strictly private letters for biographical material.
“But,” says another, “had you not better leave the matter to the discretion of survivors? Surely you can trust your executors;—surely you can trust the friends who will survive you.” The reply is—when this critical state of our morals is past, no doubt executors may be trusted about letters, as about other matters. But the very point of the case is that its morality is not yet ascertained by those who do not suffer under the liability, and have not fellow-feeling with those who do. My executors may very sincerely think it their duty to publish my most private letters,—and even to be now laying them by in order for the purpose: while I feel that, once aroused to a view of the liability, I could more innocently leave to the discretion of survivors the disposition of lands and money than that of my private utterances to my friends. In a case of differing or opposing views of duty,—if my own is clear and stringent, I cannot innocently leave the matter to the chance of other persons’ convictions. There cannot be a more strictly personal duty, and I must do it myself.
I have, therefore, done it. Having made the discovery of the preservation of my letters for purposes of publication hereafter, I have ascertained my own legal rights, and acted upon them. I have adopted legal precautions against the publication of my private letters;—I have made it a condition of my confidential correspondence that my letters shall not be preserved: and I have been indulged by my friends, generally, with an acquiescence in my request that my entire correspondence, except such as relates to business, shall be destroyed. Of course, I do as I would be done by. The privacy I claim for myself, I carefully guard for others. I keep no letters of a private and passing nature. I know that others are thinking and acting with me. We enjoy, by this provision, a freedom and fulness of epistolary correspondence which could not possibly exist if the press loomed in the distance, or executors’ eyes were known to be in wait hereafter. Our correspondence has all the flow and lightness of the most secret talk. This is a present reward, and a rich one, for the effort and labour of making our views and intentions understood. But it is not our only reward. We perceive that we have fixed attention upon what is becoming an important point of Morals: and we feel, in our inmost hearts, that we have done what we could to guard from encroachment an important right, and from destruction a precious privilege. This may appear a strange statement to persons whose privacy is safe in their obscurity. Those who know in their own experience the liabilities of fame, will understand, and deeply feel, what I have said.
I have mentioned above, that, to us in seclusion, History, Life, and Speculation, assume a continuity such as would not have been believed possible by ourselves in former days, when they appeared to constitute departments of study as separate as moral studies can be. It would be curious and interesting to an observer of the human mind, to pass from retreat to retreat, and watch the progress of this fusion of objects; to see the formerly busy member of society—“the practical man,”—growing speculative in his turn of thought; the speculative writer nourishing more and more of an antiquarian taste; and the antiquary finding seclusion serve as well as the passage of ages, and viewing the modes and instruments of the life of to-day with the eye and the gusto of the antiquary of ten centuries hence.
And not only in their studies would men of such differing tastes be found to be brought together under the influences of sequestration from the world. There are matters of moral perception and taste in which they would draw near no less remarkably. The one conspicuous, undying humanity, which is the soul of all the forms of life that they contemplate, must be, to all, the sun of their intellectual day, beneath whose penetrating light all adventitious distinctions melt into insignificance. Distinctions of rank, for instance, become attenuated to a previously inconceivable degree. To the antiquary, as well as to the most radical speculator, there would be little more in the sovereign entering the sick-room than any other stranger whom kindness might bring. It requires that we should live in the midst of the arrangements of society, that our conventional ideas should be nourished by daily associations, in order to keep up even the remembrance of differences of hereditary rank, so overpowering in our view are the great interests of life which are common to all,—Duty, Thought, Love, Joy, Sorrow, and Death.