This paper would be suitable and in perfect style in any portion of the civilized world, and on any occasion, and no one with any pretensions to good breeding should be found unsupplied. This is an item in which we cannot afford to economize, for one judges a lady or gentleman, unconsciously, by the contents of his or her writing desk, as exemplified by the letters sent from their hands.
Monograms are not entirely “out,” but they are only used by those to whom their own especial design, through long use, has come to seem almost a part of themselves. All fleeting fancies in stationery should be passed by on the other side, or, at most, left to the wayward tastes of “sweet sixteen,” or to some few whose very eccentricities are part of their fame. Sarah Bernhardt, for instance, uses blue paper framed in a pale gray line on the top of the page, and the flap of the envelope is a tragic mark, above which her initials are traversed by a scroll bearing her motto, “Quand méme.” She is as exact, however, in the formulas of her letters as any dowager of the old school. The Royal Highnesses of England use the paper and square envelopes before described; initials, monograms and crests are left to foreigners and outsiders, and the Orleans family, of France, are severely plain in their choice of stationery.
Given the correct paper and envelopes and plain, jet-black ink (no other tint should ever be used), the penmanship must next be considered. It is very well for Madame Bernhardt to write an elegant, graceful hand that is absolutely impossible to decipher, and for General Bourbaki to indite his epistles in a microscopically minute script, but less important people will do well to render their chirography as perfect and legible as possible, and not to flourish.
Avoid always too near an approach to the clerkly, commercial hand. A talented foreigner once remarked to the writer upon his astonishment at the predominance of this hand in America. “I do not like it,” he said; “the clerk sends me in my rates, the landlord my bill, and the young lady her reply to my invitation, all in that same commercial hand. There is no individuality, no character, in such writing.” And there was too much reason in his remonstrance. We are not quite “a nation of shopkeepers,” and there is no reason why this business handwriting should so permeate all classes of society.
The lines should be straight, and as ruled paper is not permissible in formal notes, invitations or punctilious correspondence, savoring too nearly of the schoolroom and the counting-house, some little practice may be necessary to keep the lines even. Should this prove impossible, let a sheet of paper with heavily ruled black lines that will show through the writing paper, be kept in the desk and slipped beneath the page as a guide. It may also be inserted in the envelope to keep the superscription or address perfectly straight.
PROPER POSITION OF
A LADY IN WRITING.
The lines should be rather far apart, and the fashionable hand just now is not the pointed English style, but somewhat verging on the large, round hand of the last century; the ladies, as a rule, indulging in a rather masculine style.
Thin foreign note paper may be used for letters abroad, unless the most formal. This is usually ruled. So is the commercial note used for business letters.