18th Century Letter Writing

The Instructor, or American Young Man's Best Companion Containing Spelling, Reading, Writing, and Arithmetick
Fisher, George
1786
Published by Isaiah Thomas, Worcester
Location of original: Massachusetts Historical Society, Boston, Massachusetts

Letter Writing

I discovered some facts about writing in the 18^th century which I found to be of particular interest.

First when researching letter writing on ECCO the amount of manuals dealing in epistolary etiquette was staggering. Manuals included example letters, and rules for writing in various situations all published at the same time as Clarissa. In addition these letter manuals were, for the most part, geared towards men. However, other research suggested that much of the 18^th century population could write by the end of the century however not all could read and write. Many people were able to copy letters or words from other documents yet needed help reading or creating letters. Without the aid of individuals to help with writing letters many would remain incoherent.

Also, there were specific styles of writing which were used in different types of letters. Women most often used a style called Italian Hand of which I have provided an illustration. There was no standardized spelling at the time so there might have been multiple spellings for any given word. However the letter Y was often used in place of an E as in the word THY but it would be pronounced the same as the.

http://homepages.ihug.co.nz/~awoodley/crossedletter.html -source

Letters were written in a very different way than they are today. For one thing, they were what we now call "cross-letters" thanks to the style in which most letters were written. The reason for this is that the recipient of a letter paid a fee based on the letter's size and the distance it travelled. Smaller letters were cheaper; therefore, a cross writing style would better conserve space and allow more to be said for a smaller fee.

The letter shown on the right can be deciphered in this manner:

My Dear Herb

I have treated you very badly in not writing but the truth is I have been so hard put for time that I have not been able to do so. Your letter reached me, about a month after it was written. I hope this will find you in Rome. Will you tell Samuel that I have not got time to write and that I am sorry to say I shall not be able to get abroad this year after all and so unless he can get to England, I shall not have the pleasure of seeing him. I suppose we shall see you up here next term at least at Oxford. You already know my eyes have been bad and have thrown me back considerably, I am very much.......

the crossed lines continue from the other side of the letter....

feet deep here and I very nearly killed myself the other day up et....

Every quill pen was unique, and some took to the task of writing better than others (Letter-writing, 1). It could be hard to find a well-cut quill pen, and it took a skilled hand to do it right.

Letters & Seals (Images)

Letters & Seals

Here is a description of the writing practice of the military in 1775, from a website:

http://www.hmsrichmond.org/writing.htm

It describes letter writing details that they apparently still engage in today as a form of 'living history.' In particular, the issues relating to postage and black sealing wax are discussed. Black wax was used in matters related to death, and assured expedient service through the post.

"There were no envelopes (or postage stamps), and any mention of an "envelope" is merely another sheet of paper folded around the rest (there could be writing on one side of the "envelope", as well as on the part of the other side that didn't end up on the outside of the letter).

It did not bode well to have handwriting as being too large, -- at the time, letters were charged according to the number of sheets of paper, so the smaller you could make your writing, the more you could fit in. To save postage, letters were frequently "crossed": i.e. after a sheet of paper had been written on, it was turned 90°, and further lines were written crossing the original writing. It was the recipient, rather than the sender, who paid the postage. Some original references to this matter are lifted from actual letters below:

"I will endeavour to make this letter more worthy your acceptance than my last, which was so shabby a one that I think Mr. Jones could never charge you with the postage."
"Your letter was a most agreeable surprise to me to-day, and I have taken a long sheet of paper to show my gratitude."
"Do not be angry with me for not filling my sheet, and believe me yours affectionately,..."
"I thank you for yours, though I should have been more grateful for it if it had not been charged 8d. instead of 6d., which has given me the torment of writing to Mr. Hall on the occasion."

Franking (Frank) was a term applied to the superscribed signature of a person, such as a member of Parliament, entitled to send letters free of charge. A Frank was a letter bearing such a superscription.

Each quill feather pen, hand cut as it were, was like no other, and some reacted to the task much better than others. Cutting a pen properly is still an art, and good ones are difficult to find today.

Laid paper was the most common for letter writing, especially for formal correspondence. Parchment was reserved for certificates, &c.

As there were no envelops to be had, sealing wax was used to hold the letter's pages intact. This was usually a red wax, although examples of blue is to be found, as other colours more rare. The seal was likely the initial of the Surname, or in the case of a title holder, government or Crown seal, the engraved symbol of that entity. The use of Black wax was reserved for the notification of death in the family, more so to speed the letter in the postal system than to give the receiver advanced notice upon receipt."

Letters & Seals

As Clarissa considered her own letter writing to be a form of "compact", it is interesting how letter writing itself in the eighteenth century had issues with identity and tampering. Seals were not only attached to envelopes, but the pages themselves. According to the Wikipedia article on "Seal (device)," the process was complicated by the addition of cords and knots to the wax. Also below is an image of a seventeenth century seal. I am currently looking for more images to add to the blog.

"The use of seals, in wax, in lacquer or embossed on paper, to authenticate documents, is a practice as old as writing itself. Seals of this nature were applied directly to the face of the document or attached to the document by cords in the owner's, or to a narrow strip of the document sliced and folded down as a tail but not detached from the document. This helped maintain authenticity by not allowing the reuse of the seal. If a forger tried to remove the seal in the first case, it would break. In the other cases, although the forger could remove the seal intact by ripping the cords from the paper, he'd still have to separate the cords to attach it to another document, which would destroy the seal as well because the cords had knots tied in them inside the wax seal. Most governments still attach seals toletters patent. While many instruments required seals for validity (i.e. the deed or covenant) it is rather uncommon for private citizens to use seals anymore."

From two sides of the room

I really loved the scene in which Clarissa was finally introduced to Lovelace's acquaintances. Especially since Lovelace had been corresponding with John Belford for so long, it was intriguing to finally have him described by an outsider, someone who had just met him. What I found even more interesting, though, was the problem of representation that arises when the scene is described from two points of view--Clarissa's and Lovelace's. The evening seems to be a generally unpleasant one for both parties, but it's interesting to see where the blame falls in both accounts. I've included snippets from the two letters (161 and 167) below.

Clarissa on the evening:
"I have just escaped from the very disagreeable company I was obliged, so much against my will, to be in. As a very particular relation of this evening's conversation would be painful to me, you must content yourself with what you shall be able to collect from the outlines, as I may call them, of the characters of the persons, assisted by the little histories Mr Lovelace gave me of each yesterday." (542)

Lovelace on the evening:
"To the pure, every little deviation seemed offensive, yet I saw not that there was anything amiss the whole evening, either in your words or behaviour. Some people could talk but upon one or two subjects: she upon every one: no wonder, therefore, they talked to what they understood best; and to mere objects of sense. Had she honoured us with more of her conversation, she would have been less disgusted with ours." (552)

Body and Mind

I have been interested, in the course of my reading, how often Clarissa--and other characters for that matter--refer to the relationship between mind and body.

When referring to the scathing letter from Arabella, Clarissa tells Anna:
"I think is has touched my head as well as my heart." (512)

Clarissa seems to credit something greatly when it touches both intellectual and emotional chords. As to Lovelace, she chides:

"For pride, as I believe I have heretofore observed, is an infallible sign of weakness; of something wrong in the head or heart" (561)

Clarissa asserts: "that a fine person is seldom paired by a fine mind" (601)

There is a disconnect, then, between mind and body, and yet a togetherness of the two entities that creates a sublime harmony. Clarissa bemoans the absence of a sound mind in the agreeable "person" or body/appearance of Lovelace, suggesting that one often appears without the other (ie, a beautiful person with little intellect or integrity, or an ingenious person with little physical appeal).

Belford: "For why, in short, should not the work of bodies be left to mere bodies"?
(555)

This quote really interested me. Belford is persuading Lovelace not to constrict Clarissa to the chains of motherhood and domesticity. Because she is of sound mind and wit, he believes her body should be kept in tact. The use of the phrase "mere bodies" suggests that manual work is below the work of the mind, and thus childbirth is ignoble and base.

Lovelace: "Oh Belford! she is a lion-hearted lady...Yet her charming body is not equally organized...But had the same soul informed a masculine body, never would there have been a truer hero." (647)

This is a very strange sentiment of the part of Lovelace toward Clarissa. It seems that he is both praising her and wishing her more masculine. Her temperament, he seems to think, is ill-suited to her body. It seems her "charming body" cannot contain the wrath that he inspires within it.

I would think that discussion of the body was taboo in 18th century aristocratic circles. Particularly the bodies of women were most likely not spoken about, but rather ignored in the light of common decency. It intrigues me to hear Clarissa use the word "body," even in a non-sexual sense in regular writing, and to use it in a dichotomoy with "mind."

Theories of the Self: Judith Butler

I referenced Judith Butler in seminar this past Tuesday, so instead of a post on letter writing, I wanted to post the passages I had in mind. They're from Giving an Account of Oneself (Fordham, 2005), which is actually a compilation of the Spinoza Lectures she gave for the Department of Philosophy at the University of Amsterdam in Spring 2002. Butler draws from Nietzsche, Freud, Foucault, Hegel, Hannah Arendt, and Adriana Cavarero...

"The opacity of the subject may be a consequence of its being conceived as a relational being, one whose early and primary relations are not always available to conscious knowledge. Moments of unknowingness about oneself tend to emerge in the context of relations to others, suggesting that these relations call upon primary forms of relationality that are not always available to explicit and reflective thematization. If we are formed in the context of relations that become partially irrecoverable to us, then that opacity seems built into our formation and follows from our status as beings who are formed in relations of dependency
This postulation of a primary opacity to the self that follows from formative relations has a specific implication for an ethical bearing toward the other. Indeed, if it is precisely by virtue of one's relations to others that one is opaque to oneself, and if those relations to others are the venue for one's ethical responsibility, then it may well follow that is is precisely by virtue of the subject's opacity to itself that it incurs and sustains some of its most important ethical bonds" (20).

*is Clarissa only defined by others? what are the ethical implications of her flight from her family, both in terms of how she sees herself and how others see her?*

Butler goes on to highlight the frustrations of giving a narrative account of oneself:
"There is (1) a non-narrativizable exposure that establishes my singularity (she is referring to a bodily experience), and there are (2) primary relations, irrecoverable, that form lasting and recurrent impressions in the history of my life, and so (3) a history that establishes my partial opacity to myself. Lastly there are (4) norms that facilitate my telling about myself but that I do not author and that render me substitutable at the very moment that I seek to establish the history of my singularity. This last dispossession in language is intensified by the fact that I give an account of myself to someone, so that the narrative structure of my account is superseded by (5) the structure of address in which it takes place" (39).

*Butler's comments were particularly applicable, I thought, to the passages we looked at in Clarissa--pages 483 and 460...