It is believed that most people who are engaged to be married receive anonymous letters recommending them to break off the match. Not only are such letters addressed to the betrothed couple themselves, but also to their relations. If there is not a doubt that the statements in such letters are purely calumnious, the right course is to destroy them immediately and never allude to them afterwards; but if there is the faintest shadow of a doubt—if there is the vaguest feeling that there may be some ground for the attack—then the only course is to send the letter to the person accused, and to say that this is done in order to afford him an opportunity for answering the anonymous assailant. I remember a case in which this was done with the best results. A professional man without fortune was going to marry a young heiress; I do not mean a great heiress, but one whose fortune might be a temptation. Her family received the usual anonymous letters, and in one of them it was stated that the aspirant’s father, who had been long dead, had dishonored himself by base conduct with regard to a public trust in a certain town where he occupied a post of great responsibility towards the municipal authorities. The letter was shown to the son, and he was asked if he knew anything of the matter, and if he could do anything to clear away the imputation. Then came the difficulty that the alleged betrayal of trust was stated to have occurred twenty years before, and that the Mayor was dead, and probably most of the common councillors also. What was to be done? It is not easy to disprove a calumny, and the onus of proof ought always to be thrown upon the calumniator, but this calumniator was anonymous and intangible, so the son of the victim was requested to repel the charge. By a very unusual and most fortunate accident, his father had received on quitting the town in question a letter from the Mayor of a most exceptional character, in which he spoke with warm and grateful appreciation of services rendered and of the happy relations of trust and confidence that had subsisted between himself and the slandered man down to the very termination of their intercourse. This letter, again by a most lucky accident, had been preserved by the widow, and by means of it one dead man defended the memory of another. It removed the greatest obstacle to the marriage; but another anonymous writer, or the same in another handwriting, now alleged that the slandered man had died of a disease likely to be inherited by his posterity. Here, again, luck was on the side of the defence, as the physician who had attended him was still alive, so that this second invention was as easily disposed of as the first. The marriage took place; it has been more than usually happy, and the children are pictures of health.
The trouble to which anonymous letter-writers put themselves to attain their ends must sometimes be very great. I remember a case in which some of these people must have contrived by means of spies or agents to procure a private address in a foreign country, and must have been at great pains also to ascertain certain facts in England which were carefully mingled with the lies in the calumnious letter. The nameless writer was evidently well informed, possibly he or she may have been a “friend” of the intended victim. In this case no attention was paid to the attack, which did not delay the marriage by a single hour. Long afterwards the married pair happened to be talking about anonymous letters, and it then appeared that each side had received several of these missives, coarsely or ingeniously concocted, but had given them no more attention than they deserved.
An anonymous letter is sometimes written in collaboration by two persons of different degrees of ability. When this is done one of the slanderers generally supplies the basis of fact necessary to give an appearance of knowledge, and the other supplies or improves the imaginative part of the common performance and its literary style. Sometimes one of the two may be detected by the nature of the references to fact, or by the supposed writer’s personal interest in bringing about a certain result.
It is very difficult at the first glance entirely to resist the effect of a clever anonymous letter, and perhaps it is only men of clear strong sense and long experience who at once overcome the first shock. In a very short time, however, the phantom evil grows thin and disappears, and the motive of the writer is guessed at or discerned.
The following brief anonymous letter or one closely resembling it (I quote from memory) was once received by an English gentleman on his travels.
“Dear Sir,—I congratulate you on the fact that you will be a grandfather in about two months. I mention this as you may like to purchase baby-linen for your grandchild during your absence. I am, Sir, yours sincerely,
“A Well-wisher.”
The receiver had a family of grown-up children of whom not one was married. The letter gave him a slight but perceptible degree of disquietude which he put aside to the best of his ability. In a few days came a signed letter from one of his female servants confessing that she was about to become a mother, and claiming his protection as the grandfather of the child. It then became evident that the anonymous letter had been written by the girl’s lover, who was a tolerably educated man whilst she was uneducated, and that the pair had entered into this little plot to obtain money. The matter ended by the dismissal of the girl, who then made threats until she was placed in the hands of the police. Other circumstances were recollected proving her to be a remarkably audacious liar and of a slanderous disposition.
The torture that an anonymous letter may inflict depends far more on the nature of the person who receives it than on the circumstances it relates. A jealous and suspicious nature, not opened by much experience or knowledge of the world, is the predestined victim of the anonymous torturer. Such a nature jumps at evil report like a fish at an artificial fly, and feels the anguish of it immediately. By a law that seems really cruel such natures seize with most avidity on those very slanders that cause them the most pain.
A kind of anonymous letter of which we have heard much in the present disturbed state of European society is the letter containing threats of physical injury. It informs you that you will be “done for” or “disabled” in a short time, and exhorts you in the meanwhile to prepare for your awful doom. The object of these letters is to deprive the receiver of all feeling of security or comfort in existence. His consolation is that a real intending murderer would probably be thinking too much of his own perilous enterprise to indulge in correspondence about it, and we do not perceive that the attacks on public men are at all proportionate in number to the menaces addressed to them.