Original: “Female Stability, or, the History of Miss Belville, In a Series of Letters”, London 1780 by “The Late Miss Palmer”. The author is apparently not the better-known Charlotte Palmer.
Possible sources include The London magazine, or, Gentleman’s monthly intelligencer (Vol. 50, July 1781, pg 316ff).
Notes: A contemporary review in the London Magazine called the book “instructing and entertaining”. Another contemporary, Frances Hamilton, called it “sentimental, badly structured, pointless”.
NEGLIGENCE
IN EPISTOLARY CORRESPONDENCE.
I have no patience with those who apologize for not writing letters to their friends or acquaintances, by saying they have not time enough. Few people are so much pressed for time, as not to be able to spare half an hour, or an hour, in any day, for a particular avocation; a space quite sufficient for writing a letter. Most of those who make this silly excuse, are frequently, during the day, at a loss for filling more time than would suffice for this purpose. The true reason of the neglect seems, therefore, to be want of inclination rather than of leisure; and he who says—“I have not time for writing,” might in general say, with more honesty—“I am too indolent.”
But here it may be alledged, in favour of this neglect of correspondence, that it is not worth while, merely for the sake of amusement, to write letters; that it is irksome to sit down and be obliged to compose an epistle without possessing any subject of real and necessary business; and that the efforts of invention give to this employment the fastidious nature of a task. These objections, strictly taken, are undeniable: but it is most evident, that whoever makes them, must bind himself never to engage in any correspondence, or write a single letter that is not absolutely and indispensably necessary. And if this principle, which flows from the objections, be allowed, then epistolary correspondence must be left entirely to the concerns of business; and the communications of separated friendship, of love, and all other degrees of social affection, are at an end.
Many people sit down to write a letter as to perform a displeasing imposition, which they anticipate with reluctance, and defer as long as they can with decency. I have no objection to that reluctance, provided they would at first---whether requested to correspond, or spontaneously offering---ingenuously confess, that they consider all correspondence, which is not absolutely necessary, to be unworthy of regard: for by this explicit declaration of their sentiments, they would at once rid themselves, and others, of all trouble and expectation on the subject. The people should acquiesce in preserving correspondence, and then attempt to justify the neglect of it, by reasons which should have been offered before it was entered into, is the matter of complaint.
To such as consider that correspondence by letter is but another sort of personal communication, it will appear strange, that to compose an epistle, should be esteemed by those who possess any of the social affections, as a labour and hardship. Every person, it may be supposed, has some intimacy or acquaintance which he would wish to preserve, and if so small a portion of time might be made subservient to that agreeable purpose, is it not astonishing that so much reluctance should accompany the performance? The most indolent scruple not to confess their absent connections in terms of affection or attachment, but yet cannot induce themselves to accomplish that frequent interchange of sentiment, which constitutes the essence of friendship, and the nature of correspondence.
It should seem that those who acknowledge the existence of their absent attachments, but are yet too supine to preserve regular correspondence with them, are either under the dominion of an habitual and inveterate indolence, or else they do not feel the power of those attachments so strongly as they would have us imagine. For will the person who feels a real and undeniable pleasure in correspondence, excuse himself from it by such frivolous objections? Will the affectionate wife, separated from her faithful husband; will the ardent lover, debarred from the object of his adoration; content themselves for omitting this delightful duty, by alledging that they have not time? If the occupation employed ten times the space, they would contrive to accomplish it. And why is this? Because they take an unfeigned pleasure in the employment.