The Lost Art of Letter Writing

One of my favorite books is a tiny bound volume of the "Collected Letters of Abraham Lincoln", printed over a century ago.  Its value as a collector’s item probably should prevent anyone intelligent from using it as I do:  carrying it in the outer pocket of my jacket to read during funerals, weddings, or the innumerous school functions where my attendance was mandatory while my attention was not.  While sitting through graduation ceremonies, I would pull out my little copy of Lincoln’s letters to the frowning disapproval of my colleagues, only to later hear them whisper to me not to turn a page yet as they were reading over my shoulder.

Another century from now, I have no idea what historians will do, since it seems unlikely that there will be a publication of “The Collected Tweets, Text Messages, and Social Media Posts of President Whose-It”.  The art of letter writing is dead, dead, dead.

The joy of taking the time to write a real, ink-and-paper letter is exceeded only by the gift of having a letter arrive in your real-not-virtual mailbox.  It is more than simple communication—it is a sign that the writer has cared enough to connect with you.  A letter is always an expression of love (Well, except for “poison pen” letters and those from lawyers and bill collectors).

Technology is to blame for the death of letters, of course.  I think about half of the communications I have from my sons, What’s-His-Name and the The-Other-One, consist of short messages they’ve rapidly composed with their thumbs.  While I love hearing from my sons, those messages are not exactly prose.  The short, abbreviated texts read like telegrams from a century ago, when the sender was charged by the word.  

I believe that the quality of a letter’s content is linked with the speed with which the message is created.  I’ve noticed that the quality of my own writing improves when I compose by hand instead of using a computer.  In short, the faster you write, the less time you have to think about the words you are putting on paper.  If Thomas Jefferson had used one finger and a cell phone to compose the Declaration of Independence, the entire document would consist of: “George,  we be gone, bro—deal with it”.  Tom would probably include a couple of emojis—perhaps the purple eggplant or something.  (Don’t ask me about emojis, the only one that I use is the thumbs up one, which according to the New York Times is a symbol of toxic masculinity.  Hey, New York Times, if it wasn’t for toxic masculinity, your whiny ancestors would have been eaten by wolves.)

If my theory (the one that is completely untested and lacks any confirming data) is correct, perhaps the best letters were written back when writing required a quill pen to produce the content.

Quill pens were not the first implements to be used in writing, but I think we can skip the history of pointed sticks.  Somewhere between the 5th and 7th century, someone discovered that the larger wing feathers of a large bird (say a goose), could be used as an improved pen.  The English word pen comes from the Latin word penna, meaning feather.  The tip of the feather was scraped clean, the end cut off and then the vanes are removed from the first five or six inches, creating the pen’s grip.  

The feather then had to be cured.  The easiest way was to heat a pan full of loose clean sand, fill the hollow quill with the heated sand and then submerge the pen into the hot sand up to the top of the grip for roughly a minute, then remove the quill and allow it to cool.  The shaft of the pen should now be hardened.  Using a sharp knife (your ‘pen knife’), the top of the shaft was split for about an inch, then cut at an angled diagonal so that the top of the shaft was about three quarters of an inch long.  The top end was sharpened so that the pen quickly narrowed to a point, then the point was carved into a chiseled tip for writing.  The slit in the tip separated the tip into two tines, and the allowed the ink to flow while writing.  The harder the pressure on the tip, the wider the slit became, allowing more ink to flow.

While several different types of feathers could be used, the most common types used were goose, turkey (after about 1700 when the American turkey became more common in Europe), crow and raven (the last two were more commonly used for finer and more decorative work).  Since feathers are slightly curved, right-handed users selected feathers from the left wing of a bird, while left-handed writers used the feathers from the right wing.  

Note.  When I learned about which birds provided the best feathers, I immediately wondered if Edgar Allen Poe preferred to write with raven feathers.  My wife, The Doc, on the other hand, wondered if Shakespeare preferred crow feathers to compose his plays and this is why his envious rival, Robert Greene insultingly called the playwright an ‘upstart crow’.  Despite spending more time on these questions than is rational, the answer to the first question is that no one has any idea what kind of pen Poe preferred to use, so we can only hazard a guess.  

In 1592, Greene published a pamphlet called "A Groatsworth of Wit" in which he criticized Shakespeare and other emerging playwrights of the time.  In the pamphlet, Greene referred to Shakespeare as an "upstart crow," suggesting that he was an ambitious and presumptuous newcomer to the theatrical scene.  The term "upstart" implied that Shakespeare was an up-and-coming figure who had risen to prominence relatively quickly, while "crow" was likely a play on words, possibly alluding to Shakespeare's physical appearance or his bold and attention-seeking nature.

Supposing that you wanted to write a letter and had a supply of suitable feathers, you would sit for a few minutes thinking about what you wanted to write while you sharpened your quill pen.  Then carefully selecting the ink, you placed your paper on a desk with an angled top and carefully wrote your letter.  A flat desk would have meant that, as the pen fit your hand, it would be almost vertical, causing the ink to flow too fast.  Every two to three letters, you would have to pause and reflect while you dipped your pen into the ink, tapping the pen against the side of the bottle to remove the excess, before resuming your letter.  The pen had to held lightly and used carefully to allow just the right amount of ink to flow onto the paper. 

The result of all this careful deliberation and slow writing produced a letter that did more than communicate—it could connect emotionally with the reader.  No wonder, then, that such letters were so frequently treasured and carefully stored away. 

Unfortunately, technological progress began to ruin this process.  First, steel-nibbed pens were invented in both America and Europe at the start of the nineteenth century.  By the 1880’s, the steel pens that held enough ink for the writer to write several words before re-inking had almost completely replaced the use of quills.  By the dawn of the twentieth century, fountain pens with reservoirs of ink and steel nibs were all the rage. The newfangled pens held enough ink so that even the most committed letter writer had to refill his pen only once a day.  This pen was, in turn, made obsolete at the end of World War II by the ballpoint pen, that could hold enough ink to last for weeks.

Today, of course, we have computers and tablets and writing has been replaced by word processing, and our processed prose—much like processed cheese—has lost all flavor and charm.  By the time the average student graduates from high school, they can type between 40 and 60 words a minute, producing drivel that no one ever reads.

Lewis Carrol said that the “proper definition of a man was an animal that writes letters.”  What then is the definition of an animal who communicates with emojis and tweets?