So,
I was saying yesterday about how I’ve been looking through old letters,
right? Well, one of the reasons they've been on my mind is because a book I wrote last year has just come out. It’s called Kind Regards and is
basically an anthology on the lost art of letter-writing.
Yes,
I love letters. Real letters. Hand-written letters. Ideally letters that have been
written from the heart, rather than from duty. Honestly, how can you not love
them? I have, not just the one box that I showed you yesterday, but
a fair few boxes of old letters. I can throw
away most things without a backward glance but not letters, and not photos. Reading old letters is like time travelling –
it takes me back to the person I once was, with all my insecurities and
anxieties and hopes and dreams. It reminds me of people who are no longer in my
life. It’s a record of the loves and losses I have enjoyed and suffered over the
years – my own personal history captured in ink.
Researching
the book was a revelation. At times it
was quite emotional. I knew many of the
great letter-writers, but others came as delectable surprises. Tender and passionate love letters stole my heart. Tragic
last letters from people facing death brought a lump to my throat. The
correspondence between parents of sick or dying children made the mother in me
weep.
Psychotherapists
believe that writing letters – honestly and from the heart – acts as a powerful
form of self-therapy; that it can bring clarity and a means of expressing
emotions. Somehow the act of putting pen to paper gives a further depth and
meaning to the words – one that an email can never quite duplicate. Do you have
to send the letter? No. J
“Sir,
more than kisses, letters mingle souls; for, thus friends absent speak.” John
Donne
I
have many beautiful letters in my collection and many that make me laugh out
loud. For years my best friend
Jane and I used to write long long letters to one another – looking over them
makes me smile so much. We were so damn pretentious as teenagers – writing to
one another in Latin, and quoting left, right and centre. But the one that really cracks me up is where
she carefully transcribed all the lyrics from several Black Sabbath songs. Only downside? Her writing is atrocious!
Sadly
there are no beautiful love letters in my collection. Maybe I never had poetic lovers. Maybe I just didn’t inspire beautiful letter
writing. I do have one curious declaration
of adoration from a guy who wrote me a (very long) short story about how I couldn’t love
him because I loved my cat too much – and then went on to describe how the cat
was stolen and had experiments conducted upon him and lost his mind (the cat, this is). Yeah, nice one, fella. And nope, he never got into my knickers! J
Then there were the weird sex psalms from this
musician who had a wicked imagination and wonderful handwriting. I tell ya, I nearly fell into bed with him
over the shape of his Ss alone. And,
hilariously, the letter sent from a boyfriend when he was abroad and
drunk. Followed (apparently the moment said letter had slipped from his fingers into a mail box in Paris) by a frenzied email begging me
to ‘Burn it! Throw it away! Please. Don’t read it.’ Umm, yeah…well, what would you have done?
But love letters? Real true love letters? That stuff that scorches your soul? Nah. Nary the one. L
I
mean…not letters like Katherine Mansfield wrote to John Middleton Murry… Not like those
from John Keats to Fanny Brawne. Vita Sackville-West to Virginia Woolf. Oscar
Wilde to Lord Alfred Douglas. Anais Nin to Henry Miller. Zelda to F. Scott
Fitzgerald. Flaubert to Louise Colet. The list goes on and on. The kind of
letters you would read again and again, hunting for yet more nuances, more
levels of meaning.
But
anyhow. J Modern lovers, mainly - it has to be said - the young (whose idea of romance is a quick text) could learn a bit. All I'd say is this: if
you love, write a letter. Of course, it's not just about romance. A letter doesn't have to be about soul-rending love: write newsy letters, thank-you letters, "I'm thinking about you" notes, a "Hello" card...whatever... Write, not just to your lovers, but to
your friends, your children, your parents. If you can’t bring pen to paper, then yes, an email will suffice but the
thing is – you can’t unfold an email; you can’t smell an email; you can’t trace
your finger over an email and know that the other person's hand has moved over the
selfsame paper. Can you? A letter is a direct psychic link with
another person – it’s way beyond physical.
Okay,
so that’s a bit tangential and Kind Regards covers all manner of things to do
with letters, not just soul attachments and so forth.
There is a little bit of history, some snippets about stamps and
envelopes and anecdotes about this and that, and even a few hints on how to write
letters, for those who may have forgotten.
And,
if the name on the cover looks unfamiliar?
Well, what can I say? I used a
pen-name. J
Kind Regards is published by Michael O'Mara Books. It's available now in the UK and on Kindle - released in the US in December.
