The recent production of A.R. Gurney’s Love Letters at the library set me to thinking about other works of literature that are composed exclusively of letters. (I didn’t get too far.) Then I thought about works of fiction in which a letter plays a pivotal role in plot development or character relationships. (A bit better here.) This led me to reflect on the diminished role that letters play in our society today. (Abundant proof here.) I’m talking about real letters, not “I luv u 4ever nd want nvr 2 part.” I imagine Shakespeare and his fellow sonneteers doing a collective rollover in their graves at the idea of love via text message.
I did think of one delightful work all in letters. Helene Hanff’s 84
Charing Cross Road chronicles a relationship between a man and a woman over a span of years, though in this case it’s 20 years, not 50. Helene is a writer living in New York City who, like Gurney’s Melissa, is spontaneous and outspoken. A self-described recluse, she has an “antiquarian taste in books.” Andy’s counterpart is Frank Doel, a reserved English gentleman who works in London for Marks and Co., which specializes in out-of-print books. He answers Helene’s first inquiry by addressing her as “Madam,” to which she retorts, “I hope ‘madam’ doesn’t mean over there what it does here.” He changes his salutation to “Miss Hanff” and, after three years, to “Helene.”
Most of Helene’s letters begin directly, often with a rant: “I could ROT over here before you’d send me anything to read.” “All right, that’s enough Chaucer-made-easy.” But before too long she is calling him Frankie. In each letter Helene declares her need for Pepys’ Diary (why on earth???) or The Pilgrim’s Way or “Frank! Go find me Tristram Shandy!” And in each reply Frank politely tells her he will send it immediately or that they do not have it but he will make every effort to find it for her. The letters speak directly for the characters and reveal their personalities, unfiltered by narrative voice. Over the years Frank loses his stiffness and becomes more warm and personal. Helene communicates with increasing candor and disregard for niceties, both proof of her fondness for Frank.
In Jane Austen’s best-known novel, Elizabeth and Darcy are blind to their affection for one another because of their pride and prejudice. It is in the long letter at about mid-point in the book that Darcy reveals the truth behind his actions and shatters Elizabeth’s pride in her own good judgment.
“Until this moment I never knew myself,” she declares.
From that point on, their relationship becomes wholly different from what it had been. It’s hard to imagine a young adult today either writing or reading a three-page letter—hard copy, with all the words spelled out. Harder still to imagine a dawning self-awareness prompted by a letter.
In a society where letter-writing is a lost art, there can be no practical jokes played with a false letter, such as in Shakespeare’s
Twelfth Night. The prideful Malvolio is the butt of a joke in which he believes the woman of his affection has written him the letter he finds on the ground. Some of the letters of the addressee are missing, but Malvolio fills them in to be his own name. (No such chance of imaginative interpretation with an e-mail address.) He convinces himself that it is indeed the handwriting of his lady. (Do you recognize whose font this is?) The letter urges the recipient to appear before his love wearing yellow stockings cross-gartered—items the pranksters know the lady loathes. The joke is cruel, but one occasionally wishes for such a means of putting someone in his place.
The image of a young woman clasping to her bosom a letter from her beloved or, conversely, crumpling in her hand an epistle from an undesirable suitor, is a thing of the past. The modern equivalent—a young woman hugging her cell phone to her breast, its screen alight with “I luv u,” or throwing the metal object on the ground in a fit of pique, just doesn’t cut it. Even if her cell phone is in a pretty pink case.