The Time Mark Twain Wrote to Walt Whitman

Enjoy.

A Love Letter to the Christmas Card

The Telegraph waxes poetic.

From the piece...

This year the Christmas card celebrates its 170th birthday. Its beginnings were based on a personal malaise we increasingly acknowledge in our own lives: the concept of being “time poor”. In 1843, a man called Henry Cole found himself overwhelmed with work, and reasoned that he wasn’t alone in this predicament. But perhaps few were as busy as Cole. You may recognise his name as a founder and director of the Victoria and Albert Museum, but, as a trusted favourite of Prince Albert, he also appeared to be engaged in almost every other major arts, design and progressive educational project in London. He was practical too, helping to design everything from new teapots to universal penny postage (he was postal reformer Rowland Hill’s chief assistant). The notion of sending messages at the close of the year dates back to pagan times, but in the first years of Queen Victoria’s reign it was a custom predominantly practised by elaborate letter.

Lost Letter Project

Mark David Chapman Letters Go to Auction

John Lennon's killer wrote letters from prison to police officer detailing obsession with J.D. Saligner's The Catcher in the Rye.
From a piece in the Guardian...

The letters are typed and signed by Chapman. They were written over several months in 1983, after he had pleaded guilty and been sentenced to 20 years to life in prison.

In the first letter, from 15 January 1983, Chapman says his reason for writing, besides wanting to be Spiro's friend, is to ask for help in locating his copy of The Catcher in The Rye, which he was reading at the time of his arrest.

"Have you read The Catcher in the Rye yet?" Chapman asks. "I would like you to read it and tell me what you think of it. As you remember, in the copy that was taken from me I had written 'This is my statement.'"

Spiro said he received the first letter at the Manhattan precinct where he worked and wrote Chapman back because he was hoping to get evidence on a possible hit list of other victims and people acting with Chapman.

The Love Letters...of LBJ?

Indeed.

From an AP story...

Unlike brief and instantaneous Twitter or Facebook posts or cryptic phone texts, the letters — most multiple pages — reflect a time when the handwritten note was the chief form of communication.
"Dearly Beloved," Taylor begins one, before reconsidering her salutation. "This sounds like a sermon — it isn't."

He signs them, "Lyndon," or "Lyndon Baines." She signs, "Bird." One closes, "Do you still love me? Devotedly, Bird."

Her stationery carries that name, given to her by a caretaker nurse who described her as "pretty as a lady bird." Her handwriting is very neat in thin black script.

His, also in script with thick dark black ink, is on letterhead from Washington's Dodge Hotel, where he lived while working as an aide to U.S. Rep. Richard Kleberg of Texas. Other letters are on Kleberg's office stationery, sent simply to "Miss Bird Taylor, Karnack, Texas," where her home didn't have a telephone. The envelope carries 6 cents postage, but some he sent by air mail or special delivery.

The 1st Christmas Card Was Sent in 1843

Mental Floss has the details, here.

From the piece...


The commercial Christmas card as we know it originated in London in 1843. That winter, Sir Henry Cole, a civil servant who helped organize the Great Exhibition and develop the Victoria and Albert Museum, decided he was too busy to write individual Christmas greetings to his family, friends and business colleagues. He asked his friend, the painter John Callcott Horsley, to design a card with an image and brief greeting that he could mail instead.

Horsley designed a triptych, with the two side panels depicting good deeds (clothing the naked and feeding the hungry) and the center panel showing a family Christmas party. The inclusion of booze at this party got Cole and Horsley an earful from the British Temperance Movement. At the bottom of the center panel was the inscription “A Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to You.”

Have $50,000?

Bid on a poignant letter written by Marilyn Monroe.

5 Letters of Fatherly Advice from History’s Greatest Public Dads

The list, including letters by F. Scott Fitzgerald and Ronald Reagan, care of Brain Pickings.

Napoleon Letter Auctioned

A letter written in English by Napoleon is about to hit the auction block.

From a piece in the Independent...


He may have conquered most of Europe but the Emperor Napoleon never quite managed to conquer the language of the nation of shopkeepers.


One of only three surviving letters written in English by Napoleon while exiled on the island of Saint Helena will be auctioned this weekend. The note, written in March 1816 as an exercise for his companion and secret English teacher, Emmanuel de Las Cases, is scarcely intelligible.

The emperor begins: "Count Las Case. It is two o'clock after midnight. I have enow sleep, I go then finish the night into cause with you..."

Write One Letter, Get Five Back

When is the last time you wrote someone a letter? That long, eh? The Rumpus is wanting to change that with a new campaign.

From a piece on Media Bistro...

You send in a letter, single page (double sided OK) and include a regular size #10 self addressed stamped envelope. We’ll make copies of all the letters and send five letters back to you in the stamped envelope you provided. Please include at least $2 to cover the cost of copying, pizza for envelope stuffers, etc. Easy peezy. Send one letter, get five letters back.

Thom Steinbeck Interviewed

Thom, the son of John Steinbeck, discusses his dad, letter writing and his own career as a writer.

From the interview on Hairpin...

Anyway, I'd done something off the wall, I can't remember what it was, I'd gotten bad grades or something. It doesn’t really make a lot of difference. But my father sent me this very long letter, and he had very tiny handwriting — he wrote by hand — and it was like an 18-page letter. It took me a week to decipher this thing, because of his handwriting, primarily. And when I got to the very end of it, I noticed at the very bottom, he said, “Son, I want to apologize. I would’ve sent you a note but I didn’t have the time!”

Meaning, that ultimately, the greatest amount of time in all writing is spent editing. My father said there's only one trick to writing, and that's not writing, that's writing and rewriting and rewriting and rewriting. Like sculpture. I mean, the first thing off the top of your head isn't the most brilliant thing you ever thought of. And then when you're writing about it, when you want others to understand what you’re still talking about, then it really requires that you edit yourself really, really well, so that other people can comprehend it.

But even he could get carried away. When he didn’t have time to edit it, I would get these 18-page letters. They were essays. And not as many always aimed at me. One and two makes three. Add four makes nine. It was sort of like, this is the process, and this is how it happens, and this is what you should observe in the process of it happening. He was very linear in his understanding of how these things went.

Former Queen's Love Letters on Display

Love letters from the Tudor period have been unveiled for the first time at Sudeley Castle in Winchcombe.

From a story in This Is Gloucestershire...

A new exhibition about the life of Katherine Parr reveals how she felt obliged to marry the king against her own will and rekindled her romance with an old flame, possibly while Henry was still alive.

Within months of Henry's death, Katherine Parr married Sir Thomas Seymour in secret and moved to Winchcombe. News of their marriage caused scandal in the royal court.

In one of the letters, Katherine Parr asks Sir Thomas to come and see her.

She wrote: "When it shall be your pleasure to repair hither you should take some pain to come early in the morning, that you may be gone again by seven o'clock."

Steinbeck in Vietnam

The last piece of published writing from one of America's greatest writers was a series of letters he sent back from the front lines of war at the age of 64.

John Steinbeck's reports shocked readers and family so much that they've never been reprinted — until now.

Unknown Poe Manuscript Unveiled at Exhibit

Newly discovered Edgar Allan Poe manuscripts will be revealed in a major exhibit at Richmond, Virginia's Edgar Allan Poe Museum from April 26 to July 11, 2012.

From a piece on the Wall Street Journal's Market Watch...

According to the Poe Museum's Curator Chris Semtner, "This is the kind of exhibit that comes around only once in a generation. Because Poe's manuscripts were not highly valued during his brief life, many have been lost or dispersed over time, making them very rare today. Given that, it is remarkable that this show will feature such items as the only complete Poe short story in private hands, the earliest privately owned Poe manuscript, and even a letter from Poe to Washington Irving." 

One of the show's highlights will be the recently discovered manuscript for "To Helen," which represents a unique and previously unknown version of poem's first stanza. The piece was written in the album of Poe's cousin Amelia Poe of Baltimore, which was given to the Poe Museum in 1930 by Mrs. Stewart Woodward, but the poem was not found until last month during a recent cataloging and digitization project.

The Origins of Peter Rabbit

It all started here.

C.S. Lewis on Writing

A few tips, care of Letters of Note, here.

What Happens When a Boy Writes a Letter to Frank Lloyd Wright?

He gets a design for a new dog house. The blog, Architizer, has more, here.

Alas, the Love Letter is No More

The Telegraph laments at how emails and Twitter posts are killing off hand-written love letters.

From the article...

“What makes them compelling is the emotional bond between sender and recipient,” says Dr Andrea Clarke, curator of Early Modern Historical Manuscripts at the British Library, who looks at other people’s letters every day. She has put together a collection, Love Letters: 2000 Years of Romance. The idea for the book came when she worked on the archive of the relatively unknown Yorkshire poet and playwright Gordon Bottomley.

“When I joined the library 12 years ago, the first archive I worked on was his,” Dr Clarke explains. “He was a sick man, incapacitated by crippling ill-health for most of his life, who poured out his heart in hundreds of love letters to the artist Emily Burton. They touched me deeply.” In one letter, written in 1899, Bottomley finally declares his love for Emily: “I love you: I do not know how to say anything else!” He begs her to burn the letter if she cannot reciprocate his feelings. Luckily for us she could, and the declaration is preserved.

Other highlights include what is believed to be the oldest valentine in the English language, written by Margery Brews to John Paston III in February, 1477, in which she addresses him as “my right well beloved Valentine”.

Curious about the 10 best love letters in history? Look no further.

And if you want to take a stab at writing your own love letter, take some advice.

Curious about the love letters between Elizabeth Barrett and Robert Browning? No longer!

The Month of Letters Challenge

Can you send out a letter every day in the month of February?

From a piece on Mary Robinette Kowel's blog...

When was the last time you got a letter in the mail? December sees a lot of mail and you remember that sense of delight when the first card arrives. You can have that more often.

I have a simple challenge for you.

In the month of February, mail at least one item through the post every day it runs. Write a postcard, a letter, send a picture, or a cutting from a newspaper, or a fabric swatch.

Write back to everyone who writes to you. This can count as one of your mailed items.

All you are committing to is to mail 24 items. Why 24? There are four Sundays and one US holiday. In fact, you might send more than 24 items. You might develop a correspondence that extends beyond the month. You might enjoy going to the mail box again.

"I Know What Love Is"

Read a beautiful letter written by Ansel Adams, here.