But the stupid world will not accept, cannot even understand, these fine sayings. It looks at the question with very different eyes from those of lovers, boarding-school misses, and persons in the first moon of a first marriage. The peculiar relations between them may supply inspiration and vitality to such correspondence. But would Dean Swift have put the daily record of his life upon paper for another than Stella to peruse? Would Leander have swum the Hellespont for the sake of meeting any girl but Hero upon the distant shore? As it was, he was drowned for his pains. The rest of us cannot swim Hellesponts, keep diaries, nor correspond, as foolish young people have done and do. We have books to read, business to attend to, duties to perform, tastes to gratify, ambition to feed. Who could bear to have his correspondents always upon his hands? Who could endure such a tax upon his patience as they would become? Who would send for his letters? Who would not rather run away from the postmen, for fear of the next discharge?
In the analogy between conversation and correspondence may, perhaps, be found a key to the problem. Those of us who are not lovers, school-girls, or spinsters are not desirous of keeping up a colloquy, day in and day out. Nor are we in the habit of resuming a subject, in the next interview, at the precise point where we left it. A "regular" conversation, after the fashion of a regular correspondence, is, as between two individuals mutually unknown, or as among a number, invariably a failure. However recently persons may have parted company, at meeting they commence de novo; a new talk grows out of the circumstances and thoughts of the moment, which ends as naturally as it began, when the talkers get tired or are obliged to stop. Sometimes but one of two or three opens her lips, but conversation, nevertheless, goes on; since an open ear is the most pointed question, and sympathy is the same, whether or not put into words.
To conversation carried on at a distance of space and time, through the pen, not the lips, the simple and obvious principles upon which people act in the drawing-room or the fireside-circle are easily applied. Between those who really wish to talk together letters should fly as rapidly as the post can deliver them. If only one feels like writing, he should pour forth his heart to his friend, although that friend remain as silent as the grave. It would be as absurd to say that either party "owes the letter," as to charge him who had the penultimate word in a dialogue with the duty of making the first remark the next time he encounters her who had the last word. When the topic of immediate interest has been disposed of, a correspondence is over. It matters as little who contributed the larger proportion to it, as who contributes the most to a dialogue. When the end is reached, the story is done. It is for the party who is first in the mood of writing, after an interval of silence, to open a new correspondence, in which there shall be no reference to previous communications, and which may die with the first letter or be protracted for a week or a month.
Thus we are brought to a position not very far from that taken by my eccentric friend. General or regular correspondence is useless, baneful, and in most cases impossible; but special correspondence, born of the necessities of man as a social being, and circumscribed by them, may be from time to time possible. There can be no harm in an occasional exchange of bulletins of health and happiness, like the "good morning" and "how d'ye do" of the street and the parlor, or in making new-year's calls, as it were, annually upon one's distant friends. I know two ladies who have done this as respects each other for twenty years. But, as a rule, the shorter epistles of this description are, the better. Some simple formula, which might be printed for convenience's sake, would answer the purpose, and complete the analogy with the practice of paying three-minute visits of ceremony or of leaving a card at the door.
The employment of a printed formula in all cases, indeed, where one feels not impelled, but obliged to write, would save both time and temper. We lay down nine out of ten of our letters with feelings of disappointment. Were we to imitate the Scotch servant who returned hers to the postmaster, after a glance at the address had assured her of the writer's health, we should be quite as well off as we are now. My correspondent often begins with the remark, that he has nothing to communicate. Then why in the world did he write? Why has he covered four pages with specimens of poor chirography, which it cost him an hour to put upon paper, and us almost as much time to decipher? He sends me news which was in the papers a week ago; or speculations upon it, which professional journalists have already surfeited me with; or short treatises, after the fashion of Cicero's epistolary productions. He talks about the weather, past, present, and to come. He serves up, with piquant sauce, occurrences which he would not have thought worthy of mention at his own breakfast-table. He spins out his two or three facts or ideas into the finest and flimsiest gossamer; or tucks them into a postscript, which alone, with the formula, should have been forwarded. He writes in a large hand, and resorts to every kind of device to fill up his sheet, instead of taking the manly course of writing only so long as he had something to say, or, if nothing, of keeping silence. A kindly sentence or two may redeem the epistle from utter condemnation; for love, according to Solomon, makes a dinner of herbs palatable. But "LOVE," written beneath a formula, would have answered as well.
I should not dare to describe the productions of my female correspondents in detail. Suffice it to say, that most of them contain a smaller proportion of useless information, and a larger proportion of sentiment, vague aspiration, and would-be-picturesque description, than those of the men who pay postage on my behalf. They are longer, and sometimes crossed; it is therefore a greater task to read them.
My "fair readers"—as the snobs who write for magazines call women— have not, I trust, misapprehended my meaning and lost patience with me. I would not be understood as expressing a preference for one description of letters over another. Every person to his tastes and his talents. But a letter, which does not represent the writer's real mood, reflect what is uppermost in his or her mind, deal with things and thoughts rather than with words, and express, if not strengthen, the peculiar ties between the person writing and the person written to,—a letter which is not genuine,—is no letter, but a sham and a lie. A real letter, on the other hand, whatever its topic, cannot fail to be worth reading. Great thoughts, profound speculations, matters of experience, bits of observation, delicate fancies, romantic sentiments, humorous criticisms on people and things, funny stories, dreams of the future, memories of the past, pictures of the present, the merest gossip, the veriest trifling, everything, nothing, may form the theme, if naturally spoken of, not hunted up to fill out a page.
No reason for modifying my conclusions occurs to me. It may be said, that, after all, a poor letter is better than none, because advices from distant friends are always welcome. But would not a glance at the well-known handwriting supply this want as fully as the perusal of a lengthy epistle, written with the hand, but not with the heart? Does not our chagrin at finding so little of our friends in their letters more than counterbalance our gratification that they have been (presumably) kind and thoughtful enough to write? Would we not gladly give four of their ordinary letters for one of their best? But the instant they strike off the shackles of regular correspondence, and despatch letters only when they feel inclined, replies only while they are fresh, and formulas at other times, if need be, we have our wish; the miles between our friends and ourselves shorten, they are really with us now and then, and we take solid pleasure in chatting with them.
Am I told, that, until these ideas find general acceptance, it is dangerous to act upon them? that for an individual here and there to go out of the common course is only to make himself notorious, a stranger or a bore to his friends? Were such statements true, they would still be cowardly. We should be faithful to our convictions of what is due to truth and manhood and self-respect, be the consequences what they may. Because a few are so, the world moves. The general voice always comes in as a chorus to a few particular voices. As for friends who cannot appreciate independence of character or of conduct, the fewer one has of them, the better.
Such suggestions as have been thrown out are too obvious to have escaped any one who has given the subject a moment's thought. But who has time for that? People live too fast, in these days, to pay such attention as should be paid to those who are more valuable as individuals than as parts of the great world. The good offices of friendship, which are the fulfilment of the highest social duties, are poorly performed, and, indeed, little understood. Not many of those who think at all think beyond the line of established custom and routine. They may take pains in their letters to obey the ordinary rules of grammar, to avoid the use of slang phrases and vulgar expressions, to write a clear sentence; but how few seek for the not less imperative rules which are prescribed by politeness and good sense! Of those who should know them, no small proportion habitually, from thoughtlessness or perverseness, neglect their observance.