Since I was nine, I have been far away from close friends, and have intermittently expended great energies in feeling guilty for not writing, or for not writing often enough. Since I first learned that Germans set the table and use silverware differently than Americans do, I have also been a little frightened of manners.
I was delighted, therefore, when I discovered that an authoritative person had written about etiquette, and this many decades ago, back before standards went all to pot. Upon acquiring an early edition of her book for two dollars at the Ithaca Library Booksale (thick, with pages the color of an old person’s teeth back before dental bleaching, and a stiff navy blue cover stamped ‘ETIQUETTE’ in fading gold), I opened at random and found myself in a chapter on proper letter-writing.
When I began reading, I found Mrs. Post entertainingly pompous, but also startlingly human and wise. Here she is, for example, on letters of condolence:
Intimate letters of condolence are like love letters, in that they are too sacred to follow a set form. One rule, and one only, should guide you in writing such letters. Say what you truly feel. Say that and nothing else.
Those are instructions for good friendship, for humanness, and (as I find is often the case) for good writing.
Here she is on general letter-writing:
HOW NOT TO BEGIN
Even one who ‘loves the very sight of your handwriting’ could not possibly be expected to find pleasure in a letter beginning:
‘I have been meaning to write you for a long time but haven’t had a minute to spare.’
Or:
‘I suppose you have been thinking me very neglectful, but you know how I hate to write letters.’
Or:
‘I know I ought to have answered your letter sooner, but I haven’t had a thing to write about.’The above sentences are written time and again by persons who are utterly unconscious that they are not expressing a friendly or loving thought. If one of your friends were to walk into the room, and you were to receive him stretched out and yawning in an easy chair, no one would have to point out the rudeness of such behavior; yet countless kindly intentioned people begin their letters mentally reclining and yawning in just such a way.
What strikes me among other things is her total lack of irony. The phrase “friendly or loving thoughts” makes me want to giggle, or roll my eyes. (Not to mention the reclined yawn.) And yet what else is a letter between friends for, really? She goes on:
If you are going to take the trouble to write a letter, you are doing it because you have at least remembered some one with friendly regard, or you would not be writing at all. You certainly would like to convey the impression that you want to be with your friend in thought for a little while at least—not that she through some malignant force is holding you to a grindstone and forcing you to the task of making hateful schoolroom pot-hooks for her selfish gain.