Читать книгу The Wedding Game - Christine Merrill - Страница 4

Author Note

This book gave me an excuse to use one of my favourite bits of Regency research. In the days before the advent of telephone and telegraph, written communication was the only way to stay in touch, and everyone was a master of correspondence. They found methods beyond word-choice to get a big message into a small space.

Since the recipients were the ones to pay postage on their mail, it was rude to make them pay for a long and heavy letter. To this end, there were no envelopes. The paper the letter was written on was folded and sealed with wax, and addressed on the blank side.

To cheat a second page into a one-page letter writers turned the paper ninety degrees and wrote the second half over the top of the previously written first page. It was up to the reader patiently to decipher the crossed words.

It made a sharp pen nib and good handwriting all the more important. I think of my own unreadable penmanship and stand in awe.