To the Letter by Simon Garfield

Author:Simon Garfield
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Penguin Group, USA
Published: 2013-11-13T16:00:00+00:00

For all her preoccupation with longing and loss, the loss of Emily Dickinson’s own letters didn’t concern her unduly; the fact that a small percentage of mail wouldn’t make it through was a disagreeable but accepted feature of giving oneself up to the post, an occupational hazard. Where did they go, these lost or abandoned letters? Some may have been stolen, while a few perhaps are still awaiting delivery in a buried sack somewhere in the mud, anticipating their Vindolanda moment.

The postal reforms had improved the cost, efficiency and the geographical reach of deliveries without fuss, but when Dickinson’s letters hit upon the winds and didn’t find their way home, there was another place they could go, a venue in Washington DC that did a roaring and romantic trade from 1825: the Dead Letter Office. Put simply, this was an office where post went not to die but to be resuscitated. But it was also an office wracked with uncertainty. Was what happened in this place acceptable? Was it right to open other people’s mail?

In England, as we’ve seen, such a state practice was regarded as an obligation, a dark art, particularly for letters that were not lost or badly addressed. But in the United States such an action would keep those with a conscience awake at night.

Yet what romance was to be had in an undelivered or undeliverable letter! And what mystery and sadness too. As the New York Times reported in Shakespearian tones in September 1852, the most hopeless letters met the most conspicuous end, ‘transported for the last time to a place without the city, and there solemnly burned, no human being but their writers knowing how much of labor and of pain has been expended upon them, thus to perish by fire and be exhaled in smoke.’

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.