Читать книгу The Opened Letter - Lindsay O'Neill - Страница 10

Chapter 2

Mapping the Epistolary World

In a letter written in 1697, John Perceval’s tutor sent his two young charges on a hypothetical journey around the world to spread the news of the Treaty of Ryswick, which settled the War of the League of Augsburg. Philip Perceval was to go southeast across the British Channel, along the coasts of France, Portugal, and West Africa until he reached the Cape of Good Hope, where, after breakfast and “a short dance with the Hottantots,” he would continue on to the Spice Islands and “bid good morrow to the Japanners.” John however “wou’d never endure the fatigues of so tedious a Voyage since he is so well acquainted with the short cut of the North East passage.” After coasting along the shores of Denmark, Sweden, and Norway he would rent a boat and some wind from the Laplanders to take him to Peking and thence to California by way of the Juan Fernandez Islands. Their tutor ended by reminding the boys that they could easily chart their routes on the “Map of the World hanging by their bedside in Town” if they needed “to revive their Ideas of the country.”¹ This playful exercise was to teach the young gentlemen about their wider world and it was a lesson well learned. While neither Philip nor John ever traveled to China or danced at the Cape of Good Hope, John did receive letters from both locations. From his vantage point in London or Dublin, he kept track of connections who traveled across the vast world described to him by his tutor.

Exotic locations beyond British shores often surfaced on the margins of Perceval’s epistolary world and often piqued his interest, but he received more letters from locations closer to home: from Bath, Dublin, and Paris. Bringing together these wider connections and those closer to home reveals the true scope and purpose of the epistolary world, as well as the variations within it. It is well known that letters were the product of the need to connect over a distance, but what distances and how they differed remains unclear.² Following letters to their destinations and examining their writers’ motivations for producing them allows us to explore the different experiences letter writers had depending on where they lived and how easy it was for them to shift locations. For besides mapping out this world, this chapter also explores the importance of mobility for these letter writers.³ While most of them would never make it to the Juan Fernandez Islands, few remained at home.

Looking at exactly where letters originated from produces a basic outline of the shape of the epistolary world of their writers. It was this map of human connections with its hubs and peripheries that defined the world of letter writers rather than national boundaries. However, dots on a map only reveal so much; the composers of these letters experienced and expressed their sense of distance differently depending on their coordinates and their ability to change those coordinates. This map needs to be put into motion and the values of mobility and stability examined. Doing so forces us to look at the British world as a whole: to examine London alongside Lancashire and Dublin alongside Virginia.⁴ It reminds us that for the British elite one’s geographic origin mattered, but one’s ability to maintain social connections in urban centers mattered more. For these letter writers it was mobility, or lack thereof, that determined the nature of their network, not just the specific place where they resided.

Centers and Peripheries

At the top or bottom of their letters correspondents usually noted where they composed their letters. This was a rather new development. Neither the Paston letters of the fifteenth century nor the letters written by the Hastings family early in the seventeenth century note the location of origin on a separate line. However, by the eighteenth century it was becoming increasingly important to let your correspondent know where you were. It helped ground the letters in space and provided receivers with an idea of where to send their response. This new habit allows us to map where letters were coming from, which produces a map of the geographic makeup of these writers’ epistolary worlds (Figures 4–6).⁵ These maps show the number of letters sent from specific locations as noted on the letters examined: on over 2,000 letters the correspondents had scrawled their location as London, 229 had placed Paris next to the date on their letters, and sixteen had noted that they wrote from Spanish Town, Jamaica. Every map of an epistolary network would look subtly different from these, since these maps reflect the lives of these specific correspondents. For example, the concentration of letters in county Munster in Ireland is due to John Perceval’s estates near Cork. However, by layering the networks of twelve correspondents on each other, the concentrations that they produce reflect the general geographic proclivities of most British letter writers of their social status during the period.

The maps these letters create reveals a British world centered and embedded in England with numerous anchors on the European continent, deep ties to the North American colonies, and a smattering of connections throughout the rest of the globe. The majority of letters, 85 percent to be exact, hailed from the British Isles themselves (Figure 4). These letters deeply bespeckle the south of England and cluster around urban centers like Bristol and Bath, with an especially dense showing around London. The letters then climb their way north, clustering in places like Lancaster, and then finding their way over the border into Scotland. Westward the letters make their way to Ireland, especially to Dublin and Munster, where over a quarter of the letters originated since the group of correspondents examined had strong ties to that isle. Moving in the other direction, across the English Channel, we find that another 10 percent of the letters came from the European continent (Figure 5). These letters hailed from multiple European countries: Portugal, Spain, Sweden, the Papal States, and even Russia, but they cluster around the Low Countries and France. Fewer letters, only 5 percent, came from beyond Europe, but as we will see in many ways these links were stronger than many closer to home (Figure 6). Writers penned most of these distant letters, 79 percent, from the North American colonies, and almost 90 percent of the letters sent from beyond Europe arrived from British-ruled colonies or outposts of British trading companies. This epistolary world reached across the globe, but as the maps reveal it had its own centers and peripheries.

These letters cluster around urban centers. About 30 percent of all the letters examined originated from cities of over 100,000 inhabitants and 40 percent from cities of over 40,000.⁶ Europe as a whole was not becoming increasingly urbanized during this period, but the nature of that urbanization was changing. Urban inhabitants were living in larger cities and those cities were increasingly located in the north of Europe with London, Paris, and the Dutch Randstad leading the way.⁷ The distribution of letters reflects this shift. The letters cluster around London, Paris, and the Dutch Randstad, and then surface around the larger cities of the Italian Peninsula: Milan, Venice, Florence, Rome, and Naples. Letters also came to and from other centers, such as Madrid, which was a growing administrative center, and Lisbon, an Atlantic port. In fact, letters originated from 68 percent of the forty-four cities on the Continent with populations of over 40,000.

Figure 4. Number of letters originating from locations in the British Isles from the sets of correspondence examined. This map shows where the correspondents examined dated their letters from within the British Isles, allowing for larger circles around locations where many letters originated.

Figure 5. Number of letters originating from locations in Europe from the sets of correspondence examined. This map shows where the correspondents examined dated their letters from within Europe, allowing for larger circles around locations where many letters originated. Those emanating from the British Isles only show places from where more than twenty letters originated.

Figure 6. Number of letters originating from locations worldwide from the sets of correspondence examined. This map shows where the correspondents examined dated their letters from all over the globe, allowing for larger circles around locations where many letters originated. Only locations with more than twenty letters originating from the British Isles and the Continent are shown for those areas of the globe.

This pattern holds in the British Isles as well. As the largest city in Europe and the lodestar of the British world, London dominated this epistolary world. Every correspondent sent or received a letter from the city on the Thames and half of their English letters came from there. Letters from the capital helped their receivers keep track of political occurrences, their economic well-being, and the social whirl of the season. Urban life was becoming intensified for the British elite: most spent some time in the West End of London, participated in activities that nurtured elite ties, and remained in contact with their urban connections after they left.⁸ These letters also reveal England’s growing polycentric nature. Social, commercial, administrative, and industrial centers were all expanding and letters flowed in from these locations.⁹ Seventy-five percent of the correspondents received or sent a letter from Bath, “the queen of the spas.”¹⁰ Over half the correspondents sent or received letters from Dublin and Bristol, cities that owed their expansion to the British state’s need to rule Ireland, in the case of Dublin, and the expansion of Atlantic trade, in the case of Bristol.¹¹ Having urban connections was important to most Britons and letters provided them with a way to keep track of these bustling centers.

These maps reflect the view contemporaries had of their own world. Writers complained when they were far from urban centers. William Byrd II of Virginia declared, “Tis a mighty misfortune for an Epistolizer not to live near some great city like London or Paris, where people play the fool in a well-bred way, & furnish their Neighbours with discourse.”¹² A correspondent of Hans Sloane harrumphed that he was “buried alive” in Castle Rising, Norfolk, about one hundred miles from London.¹³ Often they described their position in relation to the traditional country and city divide, popular in literary works, where the vibrant, but dangerous city was contrasted with the dull, but innocent country.¹⁴ Authors sending letters within England put this literary device to work by referring to their residence as being generally in the city or the country. John Perceval’s cousin compared John’s letters to a beneficial tonic and reminded his London relative not to “neglect your Country Patient,” and when Perceval resided in London his tutor hoped that he and his brother or the “court Politicians” would “have pitty on the Country ones” and provide him with news.¹⁵ Others simply referred to their location as “the Country” rather than mentioning the specific place. When complaining about a lack of news and an excess of time, they knew that referencing their position in “the Country” was enough to explain their slim letters.¹⁶ Thus, in their letters, writers constructed an England divided into two zones: the urban, which buzzed with people and conversation, and the rural, which only echoed with lone birdcalls. However, besides a few laments about distance and a few comments about the problems and benefits related to being in the country, place is not discussed very often in letters that stayed within English borders. The distance between rural England and urban England was not great, and it was, especially for the elite, easily traversed.

For those who saw themselves as members of a wider British elite, but lived in Scotland and Ireland, such descriptions of place surfaced more often. While both locations had flourishing urban centers, when their writers spoke of their location they usually detailed their rural isolation. While the idea of the virtuous and bucolic countryside surfaces at times, as when John Boyle declared Ireland “the land of ignorance, but at the same time, the land of milk and honey,” for the most part writers derided the rural lifestyle.¹⁷ Rural Ireland and Scotland were dirtier and duller than England. John Boyle described Cork by stating, “The Butchers are as greasy, The Quakers as formal, & the Presbyterians as holy & full of the Lord as usual: All Things are in status quo: even the Hogs and Piggs gruntle in the same cadence as of yore.”¹⁸ A similar view of Scotland emerges from a letter Perceval wrote about his brief stay there. After entering a tavern so smoky that, even though it masked “the stink,” he could not see the proffered glass of wine, and after avoiding the butter, which “was of 20 colours, & Stuck with hair,” he kept his gloves on to avoid the lice, ate, and promptly recrossed the border.¹⁹ Such depictions allowed Boyle and Perceval to show their correspondents that this was certainly not a world that they belonged to; the comedy comes from the incongruity of their presence.

The world these individuals did belong to, however, was not strictly an English world, but rather one defined by a group of people usually centered in London. What concerned Boyle about Cork was its lack of excitement: everything is “as usual,” “in status quo,” and “in the same cadence of yore.” It was “dull, insipid, and void of all Amusement.”²⁰ Similarly, one of Hans Sloane’s Scottish correspondents declared that in Dundee he was “living in a corner of the world” and that Coupar Angus was “a Country place without Converse.”²¹ These correspondents wanted the amusement and converse they knew flourished in London. This was a world where cultural and social distance mattered more than specific geographic coordinates. They also knew that letters were a way to reconnect with that world. They mentioned their isolation and the dullness of their surroundings to explain the lack of content in their letters, to enliven them, and to remind their correspondents of their need for letters; they were their connection to the bustling centers of elite sociability.

The fact that the same tropes surface in letters from the European continent supports the idea that letter writers saw themselves as connected by networks of sociability. Like writers in Britain, those who lived outside urban centers on the Continent worried what distance could do to their social or intellectual networks. Uppsala might have been a flourishing university town, but for Karl Linnaeus it limited his ability to join in the more lively and fast-paced intellectual discussions occurring in places like London and he envied those, like Peter Collinson, “who have a free & frequent Intercourse with your World.”²² British travelers also found the continental countryside less congenial than continental centers. On his trip to France in 1725, John Perceval and his brood went to Blois, but the dullness of the place soon sent them hurrying back to Paris.²³ These men valued ties to urban centers because they connected them to wider networks and centers of discussion.

Worries about specific geographic origins remained, however. Superficially, members of the Scottish and Irish elite faced the same situation as their English counterparts. Both groups lived in their great houses when at their estates and all were spending less time on these estates and more time in London, and both were allowing power to flow into the hands of the local inhabitants.²⁴ Those with lands and titles in Scotland and Ireland found their ways to the centers of elite sociability. John Boyle, an Irish lord himself, declared that Bath was “full of Poetry, of Pamphlets, of Lords and of Irishmen.”²⁵ However, there is a reason he mentions the Irish separately. Their situation was different and much less secure than those with land in England. John Perceval continuously griped about the way the English treated Irish absentee landowners and constantly justified his English residency.²⁶ Men like Boyle and Perceval attempted to increase their sense of belonging by emphasizing their sense of disconnect from their location; they were not Irish or Scottish landlords, but rather members of a larger elite whose values and concerns were the same as those in London.

Those living in the colonies attempted to reaffirm their sense of belonging by expressing a desire for urban life as well. While, as a whole, the North American colonies were becoming more urbanized, Virginia and other colonies still lacked urban centers and letter writers settled there lamented the fact.²⁷ William Byrd II hoped that shifting the capital from Jamestown to Williamsburg would “give people a relish for cohabitacion.”²⁸ But during his lifetime urban life in Virginia remained mostly a dream and he continued to depend on letters for urban news. From another corner of North America another correspondent in Rhode Island complained, “We have passed the Winter in a profound Solitude on my farm in this Island, all my Companions having been a lured five or six months ago to Boston, the great place of pleasure and resort in these parts where they still continue.”²⁹ Just as writers in Norfolk, Cork, and Dundee sighed over their lack of amusement and converse, colonial writers longed for cohabitation and “places of pleasure and resort.” William Byrd II attempted to close the gap by sharing the gossip of Virginia as he would have shared that of London. In one letter he delighted in telling the story of a Venetian courtesan who caused a scandal at a Virginia ball when her artificially inflated breasts deflated. However, he prefaced the story by admitting that due to the lack of gossip he often had to “lard a little truth with a great deal of fiction” when sending stories back to England.³⁰ The lack of urban sociability in the colonies, especially in Virginia, made it harder for the colonists to participate in a culture that defined status and belonging by one’s social performance and polish.

One way to counter this concern was to make rural existence a positive trait. William Byrd II, especially, drew an idealized picture of rural Virginia.³¹ He sighed over his lack of gossip and confessed, “But alas what can we poor hermits do, who know of no intrigues, but such as are carry’d on by the amorous turtles, or some such innocent lovers?”³² Unlike Irish correspondents, Byrd could paint Virginian dullness as a positive attribute. Virginians might live like hermits, but they were innocent of many of the follies that enveloped urban dwellers. More often in Byrd’s letters it was London that was the dirty and dangerous spot. He exclaimed to a correspondent there, “Tis miraculous that any lungs can breath in an air compounded of so many different vapours and exhalations, like that of dirty London.” Virginia on the other hand had “pure air.”³³ It was in this same letter that Byrd famously declared, “Like one of the patriarchs, I have my flock and my herds, my bond-men and bond-women, and every soart of trade amongst my own servants, so that I live in a kind of independence on every one, but Providence.” Here was the ultimate pastoral retreat, detached from the pressures of the modern world and from the dependence on others that so marked the lives of Englishmen at home. The Irish could not follow suit. When John Boyle attempted to declare himself a patriarch, his friend in England replied, “Contend, my dear Lord, as much as you please for the justness of your simile, yet you are not at all like one of the old patriarchs.”³⁴ Byrd’s British correspondents lived so far distant from Virginia that they could not puncture his images as easily.

Byrd pushed the old city and country divide farther by layering colonial rhetoric about the age of America on top of it. Virginia was an untouched virgin landscape, new and innocent. The age of the Americas was long debated, but there was a sense that even if the land itself was as old as that of Europe, it had not faced intense cultivation and that the society itself was in its infant state.³⁵ Peter Collinson believed that in 1762 the colonies were just starting “to Walk alone.”³⁶ Forty years earlier, Byrd insisted in his letters that if his correspondent could but smell the ground he would see it was “as if it newly came out of it’s makers hands.” On the other hand, English ground “has been tortured, and torn to pieces some thousands of years.” In his account no one in Virginia got consumption, the water was sweeter, the fire clearer, the plants more digestible, and the fruits “more sprightly flavoured,” the meats “more savoury,” and he declared that when they found them he was sure that the metals would “prove all ripened into gold and silver.”³⁷ He pushed his lavish praise to the point that Virginia became another Eden where colonists even avoided the curse of hard labor.³⁸ All this was hyperbole. The death rate in Virginia was high, they never found gold and silver, and Byrd’s slaves certainly did not think they had escaped the curse of hard labor.³⁹ But Byrd’s purpose was not to sell a true portrait of Virginia but to entertain his correspondent, and he also knew that since very few of them would ever come out to Virginia “larding the truth with a little fiction” was a safe venture. Due to the distanced and stylized communication provided by letters, Byrd could emphasize the better and, perhaps unconsciously, smooth over the differences between his two worlds.

When Irish letter writers used the same images, the optimistic spin was missing. When one of Perceval’s correspondents declared that Ireland was a nation “in its nonage” he did not declare its land sweeter, rather he used the metaphor to bitterly portray the English as guardians “who do every thing for us, and leave us the liberty of transacting nothing material our selves … yet for all that we are not free from faction and discord any more than our neighbours.”⁴⁰ This was not an image meant to draw souls to Ireland. Virginia was distant enough and shrouded in enough colonial rhetoric to allow Byrd to use his distance to his advantage, but doing so in Ireland was more difficult.

Still, those residing in Ireland and those settled in the colonies often saw the links between their situations. When an acquaintance of John Perceval’s aired his ideas on colonial policy (he thought that the ignorance of the inhabitants, religious or otherwise, was “Englands Security”) he lumped the Irish in with the Americans, but what incensed Perceval was not his linking of the two, but his condemnation of learning.⁴¹ In fact, one of the threads that tied Byrd to Perceval was their peripheral origin. After congratulating Byrd on his success with the Council of Trade and Plantations, Perceval sighed, “How happy are you in your World compared with the Inhabitants of Ireland,” as he reflected on the recent loss of the right of appeal by the Irish House of Lords.⁴² Both Byrd and Perceval wanted to be enmeshed in elite social networks, but each saw themselves as protectors of the lands of their birth.⁴³ Byrd and Perceval were not internally torn between their colonial and English identities; they emphasized both in their letters. They saw themselves as members of a broader British elite even if they feared that they sat upon its periphery. To a degree this was a product of the greater Anglicanization of the British elite, but rather than simply a story of colonial acculturation it should be seen as one of elite formation that encompassed the entire British World.⁴⁴ Regional identity mattered, but how their location affected their relationship within larger networks mattered more. Belonging to the “world” had more to do with presenting urban polish and maintaining active social networks than with the exact location of one’s residence. This is why most correspondents emphasized the city and country divide when discussing place. They knew their world was one of urban centers and rural peripheries and that letters allowed them to reconnect with the heart of their social circle.

Stability and Mobility

Urban centers and rural peripheries defined how letter writers saw their world, but their stability or mobility defined the nature of their networks. Being a stable epistolary link on the periphery could give one power in a network, even if mobile correspondents maintained more connections. Examining the stability and mobility of ties reveals the differences between most kinds of colonial connections and most types of continental ties. The majority of letters from those in the colonies came from individuals who had settled on distant shores, purchased estates, and remained tied to that place. Their letters to England nurtured constant ties. William Byrd II expected letters yearly from John Perceval and his other English correspondents. Here quality trumped quantity. Twice as many letters came from and went to those across the English Channel, but usually these letters were the product of mobile British correspondents rather than constant continental connections. Letters to the Continent usually reveal the need to maintain British connections rather than an attempt to sustain deep ties to other Europeans.

Colonial correspondents found power in their distance and stability. Members of the British elite were becoming increasingly entangled in the wider world, but few ever traversed it. The two William Byrds of Virginia and Hans Sloane, who spent time in Jamaica, were the only letter writers examined who ever crossed the Atlantic or visited the world beyond the well-worn grooves of the continental tour. Other Atlantic sojourners lay hidden within the sets of correspondence, though, for most of the letter writers had colonial ties and interests, even if they lacked colonial experience. Every correspondent examined either sent or received a letter from the North American colonies and many received letters from those in the West Indies, India, and Africa.⁴⁵ Some of these connections were family ties, like Nicholas Blundell’s with his brother in the Chesapeake. Some were links with friends, like Cassandra Brydges’ correspondent in Antigua. Others were of a scientific bent, like those between Hans Sloane and William Byrd II or Peter Collinson and Cadwallader Colden of New York. Correspondents back in England were interested in the colonies. John Perceval wanted to know about Bermuda because his good friend was attempting to establish a college there. He even vaguely contemplated moving there for his wife’s health and the whole Perceval family had lengthy conversations about it.⁴⁶ This interest manifested itself again when Perceval became involved in the establishment of the colony of Georgia. Cassandra and James Brydges never considered a move to the colonies, but they did have an Indian king and queen from Georgia over for dinner on 18 October 1734.⁴⁷ Writers concerned with natural history and botany wanted to know more about the colonies: Hans Sloane wrote a natural history of Jamaica, Peter Collinson placed a description of North Carolina in his commonplace book, and the Royal Society was happy to receive the curiosities Byrd sent from the colonies.⁴⁸ These colonial connections were distant ties that writers wished to nourish, and colonists played on this. They, more than other travelers, used their distance to their advantage.

Byrd’s distance allowed him to set himself up as an authority on colonial issues and as a reliable colonial connection. When John Perceval was pondering the establishment of Georgia he described the project to Byrd and Byrd replied with his opinions, agreeing that excluding slaves and rum would be a good idea.⁴⁹ He did not always concur, however. When Perceval informed him of the plan to build a college in Bermuda to convert the indigenous people, Byrd remained skeptical, asking him where he expected to find any Indians to convert since “There are no Indians at Bermudas, nor within 200 leagues of it upon the Continent, and it will need the gift of Miracles to persuade them to leave their Country and venture themselves upon the great Ocean, on the temptation of being converted.”⁵⁰ Here Byrd’s greater knowledge about the region shines through. Byrd made sure his correspondents called on him when they needed colonial assistance. When a friend of his had a difficult time settling in Virginia Perceval called on Byrd to help him and Byrd gladly obliged.⁵¹ This was the positive side of distance and stability, for while it strained connections, it also made those links special.

William Byrd II repeatedly used his colonial status to make himself and his letters more attractive. When writing to friends in England he used colonial references to spice up his correspondence. He included phrases like “I am with a true Indian sincerity, your humble and obedient servant” or “The many favours I was so happy as to receive from your Lordship in England, stick fast in my memory in all climates, and I believe I could go thro’ the ceremony of husquenawing without forgetting them.”⁵² Byrd then spent the next paragraph describing husquenawing, an initiation ceremony for young boys when they were to forget their youth. The description intrigued the receiver and he wrote in the margin of his letter book: “The Ceremony of husquenawing (among the Indians) described.”⁵³ In another letter, Byrd threatened to haunt his sister-in-law with the help of an Indian magician.⁵⁴ When he found that the Royal Society had not listed him as a member in 1741, he reminded them that “I am alive, and by the help of ginseng hope to survive some years longer.”⁵⁵ When forgotten, Byrd promoted colonial products such as ginseng to remind his correspondents of his colonial knowledge and thus of his importance. These kinds of descriptions did find an audience in England. Years later John Eliot’s cousin wrote, “I have heard it said of the Indians in America that they always put up the first offense from the Whites, attributing it either to Mistake or Ignorance, we should do well to follow their example herein.”⁵⁶ Interest in the Americas allowed colonists to slip small rarities into their letters to strengthen their epistolary connections.

However, many letter writers did not need to depend on their distant origins to maintain connections because they were but ephemeral visitors to these locations. A number of correspondents who wrote from beyond British shores were mobile correspondents, such as army officers, government officials, or traveling intellectuals who journeyed around the globe for shorter periods of time. Their residence in these strange places was finite and they could hope to reconnect with those who made up the centers of their world soon. These more mobile correspondents were like those who spent time on the Continent. For many, travel to the Continent was easier and more common than trips to the wilds of Ireland and Scotland or voyages across the Atlantic. Many members of the British elite were familiar with its social centers. Nicholas Blundell, a Catholic, had a continental education and strategically lived in Flanders during the aftermath of the 1715 Jacobite Rising. William Byrd II spent some time training at a merchant’s firm in Rotterdam and James Brydges lived in the Dutch Republic for a time when he served as paymaster to the queen’s forces. Both John Boyle and John Perceval traveled throughout Europe. Hans Sloane studied in Montpellier and the only time Peter Collinson left English shores was to travel to the Dutch Republic. However, none of these correspondents settled on the European continent. They were not stable connections.

Many of the letters that hailed from the European continent were from British travelers. The Grand Tour was gaining in popularity as the eighteenth century progressed and continental countries provided British gentlemen with a counterpoint to their own society.⁵⁷ To a degree, this desire to travel to the Continent was a British acknowledgment that they did not necessarily sit at the center of the European world. As late as 1755 Londoner Peter Collinson declared Nuremburg “the Fountain of Ingenuity & Art, which flows on Every Side through your neighboring Countries” and sighed that “its Circulation is Stop’d to poor remote England.”⁵⁸ Collinson was certainly flattering his correspondent, but his comment shows that many Britons still saw the Continent as a center of learning and culture and valued connections to it. British gentlemen traveled across it to gain the ability to judge their own homeland. John Perceval’s early travels around the Continent were to allow him to meet and judge “Men of all Countrys, & Degrees, their Tempers, modes of living, and Employments.”⁵⁹ He was to see other places, meet new acquaintances, and gather ideas he could employ when he returned. For many Britons this meant seeing all the Continent had to offer and then judging England superior or equal. As George Berkeley, Perceval’s dear friend, declared in the midst of an extended trip: “I have seen enough to be satisfied that England has ye most learning, ye most riches, ye best Government, ye best people, & ye best religion in ye world.”⁶⁰ In many ways, the Continent remained a troublingly alien place. There was always a frisson of danger reflected in letters from the Continent; travelers carried guns with them in their carriages and superstitious rites were always just around the corner.⁶¹ Many travelers kept the expected journals of their movements, which signaled that they were experiencing the Continent, but were not part of it.⁶²

According to their letters, British travelers spent most of their time with other Britons. When Perceval returned to England after his first trip he corresponded with Lorenzo Magnolfi, a Florentine deeply involved in the Italian art world, and the Grand Duke of Tuscany, but when he received news of his circle of friends in Florence or Rome it consisted mostly of news relating to English gentlemen.⁶³ On a later trip, he mixed with a number of French acquaintances, most of whom were relatives of his wife, but the majority of his letters detail his English connections in France, such as the Marquis of Blandford and the Duke of Beaufort.⁶⁴ Letters from the Continent contained travel reports on what the writers had seen and done, but the main purpose of these letters was to keep that writer in contact with his or her social world at home. The point of the epistolary links these British writers maintained with those across the Channel was not to monitor continental contacts, but to keep track of British correspondents who were at present residing on the other side of the English Channel.

Those traveling through the Continent were eager to keep track of their social network back home. They wished to know how family members fared and whether their business affairs flourished, and in return they sent welcomed continental news. When John Perceval traveled to France in 1725, he kept a journal recording what he saw and what he thought about what he saw, but his letters contain the true journal of his social world.⁶⁵ He mostly corresponded with his cousin and brother-in-law, Daniel Dering, his brother, Philip Perceval, and his cousin, Edward Southwell, three of the strongest nodes in his social network. He told them of his travels, of French news, of those he visited, and he plied them with questions about his social circle at home. The mobility of his wider network is brought home by the fact that his cousin’s son, Edward Southwell the younger, was traveling in Italy at the same time. Perceval reported back on his progress to his anxious father back in England.⁶⁶ These two members of the Perceval-Southwell clan enjoyed their European travels, but the point of their letters was to maintain their larger social network centered in Britain. John Perceval knew he had little to say from Rome that would interest his aunt back in England and so he declared she should not expect many letters from him for it was “unreasonable to enact from me brick where there is no straw.”⁶⁷ British letter writers had many ties to the Continent: they traveled there, fought there, and were deeply concerned about occurrences there, but rarely were their social networks centered or embedded there. The Continent mattered to the British, but it was not part of the wider British world.

As maps of the epistolary world reveal, letters poured in from all corners of the globe. But different distances called for different types of connection because the British population experienced locations differently. Colonial letter writers noted distance the most often because they were simply farther away and thus possessed strained networks, but also because distance provided them with power. It made them valuable correspondents for those with Atlantic interests but few Atlantic ties. Colonists, due to their geographic stability, were also more likely to be constant and long-lasting correspondents. Continental ties were ever present and continued to affect British life as much as colonial affairs. It was across the Channel that the British traveled, fought, and looked for news. But the epistolary ties between the two were more ephemeral since, for those traveling, keeping their networks at home taut was more important than creating new Continental ties. They were dealing with the challenges of mobility rather than those of stability. Recognizing the importance of mobility for the British elite highlights the limitations of simply mapping the locations of origin of letters to show the way the British experienced their geographic world. Such maps are too static and undifferentiated. They need to be set into motion.

Mobile Networks and Epistolary Anchors

Places of origin can, however, gesture to the mobility of these writers. Letters sent from the Downs, a sheltered area off the Kentish coast where ships safely anchored, usually came from individuals aboard a ship.⁶⁸ Many from Chester and Bristol were from those awaiting transport to Ireland.⁶⁹ The letter noted from the Cape of Good Hope was from a correspondent on a voyage to eastern Africa.⁷⁰ One of Hans Sloane’s correspondents dated his letter “From on Board the Eaton Frigatt at anchor near Banjar on Borneo July 29, 1700” and noted that his last letter had been from the tip of Africa.⁷¹ These were men and women on the move.