Considering events and relationships as the substance of both diaries
and letters thus helps us explore more specifically how both kinds of
texts are built from a kind of writerly tension between the chosen form
(letter or diary) and the way each individual writer is able to "bend"
the form to serve his purposes. The form adopted by the writer allows
him to draw on tradition and inventiveness both — to speak not
as an isolated individual but as a dutiful or loving correspondent,
as a perceptive or incisive or ironic diarist. Using the form, then,
the writer takes on a social identity and speaks with the particular
authority or emotional intensity conferred by embracing the form as
his own. Consider the way Abream Scriven, an African American man living
in bondage in Georgia, began a letter to his wife in 1858: "Dinah
Jones My Dear wife I take the pleasure of writing you these few [lines]
with much regret to inform you that I have been sold....I am here yet
but I expect to go before long." At first, Scriven’s "pleasure"
at telling his wife such bad news seems paradoxical. On second look,
though, it is clear that Scriven was not voicing his personal happiness,
but relying on a letter’s conventional opening phrase to give appropriate
substance to what he had to say. The phrase "I take the pleasure"
cushions the bad news, but just as importantly it gives the news the
weight it deserves.*
At the same time, most writers have an irrepressible urge to express
themselves beyond the limits of any given form, fitting the form to
their own intentions, arguments, or mood as they struggle to give expression
to the relationships and events of their lives. A young man named Campbell
Bryce, courting Sarah Henry in 1840, after writing many classic courtship
letters to her filled with "elevated" thoughts and verse,
at last attempted to break out of the form, which he began to see as
forcing him to "labour too much in attempting to write faultlessly."
He urged them both to find instead "an easy style [which] can only
be attained by ease and freedom of thought." Diarists, too, pushed
the limits of the diary form, though not without worries. Beatrice Webb
experimented with giving her thoughts free rein in her diary in the
1880s, and yet she backed away from saying certain things, comparing
unwelcome thoughts to a "ruffianly-looking vagrant" who should
not be allowed into her pages. To "dwell on" certain kinds
of thoughts, "even with disapproval," she decided, "might
give [them] an ugly significance." In any case, the historian’s
strategy in reading is to keep in mind that writers constantly bend
the expressive forms which both entitle them to speak and think, but
also impose subtle limits.*
In the main, then, letters may generally be seen as a less elastic form
of expression than diaries because more open to judgment from readers;
letter-writers often apologize for a "poor letter," whereas
diarists are not so tied to acknowledging "good" form (though
many become frustrated the limits of all written language to express
what "really" needs saying). By the same token, because diaries
permit writers to go more deeply into events and relationships, they
have a greater potential than letters both to reveal and conceal more
about the writer’s self and world. There is more potential for
insight, but also more potential for puzzlement and obscurity —
theirs and ours. With these things in mind, the historian’s task
is to follow the interpretive path opened up by the creative tension
between form and using the form.
Here are
two examples from a typical letter-writing manual from the mid-nineteenth
century, which gave general instructions about the importance of correct
letter-writing and included model letters. Manuals of this type were
quite popular and issued in numerous editions, and parents and school
teachers also reinforced the kind of writing advice offered in them.
This first passage from an 1847 Guide to Good Manners explains the
importance of letter writing:
An acquaintance with the common forms of letter writing is of such universal
necessity, that no person can transact business with satisfaction or
decency, without some knowledge of them. Elegant letter writing is one
of those accomplishments, which is not only desirable for men of science,
but for every lady and gentleman, whatever may be their situation in
society. It is the great auxiliary in all our various duties and relations....The
negociation of the heart, the plighting of the affections — the
tenderest emotions of the soul — are often introduced by a familiar
correspondence....Letters should be easy and natural, and convey to
the persons to whom we send them, just what we would say to those persons
if we were present with them.
This second passage is a model love letter from the manual, supposed
to be a man’s first confession of love to a woman:
Madam, Those only who have suffered them, can tell the unhappy moments
of hesitating uncertainty which attend the formation of a resolution
to declare the sentiments of affection; I who have felt their greatest
and most acute torments, could not, previous to my experience, have
formed the remotest idea of their severity. Every one of those qualities
in you which claim my admiration, increased my diffidence, by showing
the great risk I ran in venturing, perhaps before my affectionate assiduities
have made the desired impression on your mind, to make a declaration
of the ardent passion I have long since felt for you.
This doesn’t seem like a very effective love letter—the prose
is convoluted and it’s difficult to understand what the author
is trying to say. It helps to paraphrase and simplify the sentences
— translate them into modern prose. If you do that, you can see
that the male author is saying that: only people in love can know how
hard it is to declare it; he had no idea how hard until he fell in love
with her; everything he loves about her made him more shy to tell her;
he feared that he would blurt out his feelings and drive her away. What
does this "elevated" prose suggest about the place of courtship
and the courtship letter in relations between the sexes? In the first
passage, the manual advises that "letters should be easy and natural,"
but also that letter writing is a "universal necessity" and
thus not to be taken lightly. How could letter writers manage the tension
between being natural and taking the task of letter writing seriously?
Read and
roll your cursor over these two letters from Campbell Bryce to his sweetheart
Sarah Henry and consider how they do and do not conform to the advice
manual’s model, and how Bryce negotiates the tension between using
natural language and conveying the seriousness of his purpose.
