Читать книгу The Opened Letter - Lindsay O'Neill - Страница 9

Chapter 1

The Perils of the Post Office

In 1662, during the depths of winter, John Davys found himself pelted by letters from his employer, Lucy Hastings, Countess of Huntingdon. On the night of 16 February a letter arrived from the Derby post, the next morning the carrier delivered a second one, and then Mr. Strong of Sutton handed him a third.¹ Obviously the countess did not find it difficult to send her letters the hundred miles from London to Leicestershire where her estates lay under the watchful eyes of John Davys. Her predecessors would not have found it as easy. Carriers had long taken letters for eager correspondents, as had trusted hands like those of Mr. Strong, but use of the postal system was new.² While the government had attempted to open the post to the public previously, it was not until after the Restoration that its bags were permanently held open to the general population.

The late seventeenth century was a time of postal possibility for the English. The government opened the royal post to the public permanently in 1660, the Penny Post began circulating letters around London multiple times a day for just a penny in 1680, and the government established packet routes to the Dutch Republic, Spain, Portugal, and the West Indies between 1669 and 1702.³ Scholars have investigated the institutional workings of British postal systems from the Roman period to today and historians of the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries have cast the post as emblematic of the state’s growing power.⁴ However, looking at when individuals used the post, and when they did not, broadens the field of play and reveals how the British still relied on personal networks to send their letters.⁵

This chapter examines how letter writers sent their epistles and why they chose that mode of delivery. The decision hinged on many factors. Exchanging letters within the geographic boundaries of London differed substantially from the experience of sending a letter from London to Leicestershire, let alone Virginia. The further one traveled from the postal center of London the more important informal means of exchange became. The postal system was but one strand in a complex system of letter exchange and to understand the place of the post other forms of delivery require inspection. Writers like the Countess of Huntingdon used messengers, carriers, friends, and acquaintances alongside the post. The way letters circulated depended on place, personal preference, and opportunity. Furthermore, their circuits of exchange outline the shape of their writers’ social networks and illustrate how they functioned.

Figure 2. Letters were not always meticulous creations. This letter, composed by John Davys for his employer, the Countess of Huntingdon, on 19 February 1662, shows the hurried nature of some letters, especially business letters. The ink alters, he scribbles in changes, and squeezes additions into the margins. But he is also sure to add, right under the date-line, “I thank your honour for havinge mee in your mind.” This is also the letter in which he mentioned that he had received letters by the Derby Post, the carrier, and Mr. Sutton.

John Davys to Lucy Hastings, Countess of Huntingdon, 19 February 1661/2, HEH HA 2006.

This item is reproduced by permission of The Huntington Library, San Marino, California.

By the Post

The existence of a postal system was not new to the English. One had been in use, on and off, since the Romans, but access to it and government control of it increased in the mid-seventeenth century. Charles I officially opened the royal post to the public, but growing unrest and eventually the Civil Wars curtailed the sending of letters by official means.⁶ However, after peace arrived it became clear that a public postal system was too important to the security of the nation and too lucrative a business for the government to allow it to slip out of their control.⁷ In 1660 the Convention Parliament passed an act “for erecting and establishing a Post Office” that reaffirmed actions taken previously by other regimes. The government shut out competing systems and thus established a government-run postal system opened to the public.

Historians have seen in the establishment and development of the postal system a force for change. In their eyes, its expansion allowed the British to make full use of their letters.⁸ To James How it was behind the creation of “epistolary space,” described as “spaces of connection, providing permanent and seemingly unbreakable links between people and places.”⁹ For Jürgen Habermas it helped push forth the bourgeois public sphere.¹⁰ For Konstantin Dierks control of the postal system explained the difference between victory and defeat in war.¹¹ For these scholars the postal system was important indeed.

In many ways they are correct. Between 1685 and 1715 the volume of correspondence greatly increased and between 1686 and 1710 the number of letters processed by the Penny Post increased by 300,000 letters, from 624,575 letters to 954,283.¹² As the countess’s letter illustrates, members of the Hastings family used the post as a matter of fact. Between 1718 and 1730 they, and their relations, used the post to send at least 43 percent of their letters and the true amount was probably much greater since this number is based only on the number of surviving postmarks.¹³ Nicholas Blundell, a member of the northern gentry, also used the post and often referred to visits to the Post Office in an offhanded manner in his diary. On a snowy day in December 1702 he sent off seven letters and during the next eight years he visited the office at least thirteen more times.¹⁴

The postal system reconfigured the epistolary landscape for English letter writers. Possessing the option of delivering a letter by the post made letter sending more of a constant in writers’ lives. Previously writers depended on carriers and personal letter bearers, but carriers stuck to their established routes and bearers were not always easy to find. Many letters sent by personal bearers were the product of chance. A friend or acquaintance had to be going to the exact location where the recipient resided and had to let the writer know of his or her journey. The Post Office eased this element of chance and rendered epistolary networks more permanent. It provided the British with another, more constant, mode with which to connect with those around them. As one correspondent told another, when his expected bearer canceled his trip: “I am resolv’d to make use of the common Post rather than not carry on so agreable a correspondence.”¹⁵ His decision sums up the situation: writers preferred trusted hands, but if necessary they turned to the post. Being able to use the post to send letters gave letter writers a choice.¹⁶ They were no longer bound to bearers or carriers; now, they could turn to a government-run system. But was it an option they wanted to choose?

Painting the post as a transformative system ignores the difficulties that plagued it and places too much emphasis on its ability to open epistolary doors. Just as print technology itself did not cause a print revolution and singlehandedly create the public sphere, the expansion of the postal system did not instantly transform the epistolary world.¹⁷ Its use depended on the needs and beliefs of its users and they knew that turning to the postal system was usually difficult, often dissatisfying, and could be dangerous since the information held within letters could be seen by prying eyes. Scholars have noted the troublesome aspects of the postal system, such as government censorship of letters, but they have not investigated the larger consequences of these problems.¹⁸ The dangers posed by the post and its less than stellar functioning require examination, but even more attention needs to be paid to the basic difficulties faced by those sending letters, especially for those who lived far from established postal routes.¹⁹ An understanding of these difficulties reveals that alternate modes of letter delivery were just as, if not more, important.

Sending letters by the post could be dangerous as the British were well aware. Senders knew their seals were not sacrosanct and that those running the Post Office often cracked them open and perused their contents.²⁰ The opening of letters was no secret. One correspondent calmly told John Perceval, the Anglo-Irish landlord and future Earl of Egmont, “To give a general opinion of things is to guess at Random, & not altogether safe by letter as times go, and the Posthouse is managed.”²¹ Other writers let out a sigh of relief when they realized an opened letter held no politics.²² While there was no public outcry against the opening of correspondence, it did curtail what writers placed in letters and it annoyed many of them.²³ One irate writer grumbled “the Ministers of the Post-Office … had an evil eye to my Epistolary Correspondence.”²⁴ To avoid the danger a few simply wrote in code. They replaced names and places with a series of numbers or with terms agreed upon by the correspondents.²⁵ These correspondents truly found safety in numbers.

But writers worried more about the rather lackluster performance of the post than they did about its dangers. Letters echo with the sighs of frustrated senders. When a letter did not arrive correspondents took it for granted that it had miscarried at some point.²⁶ They accounted for delayed letters by assuming that postal officials let them sit unsorted at the Post Office or simply overlooked them.²⁷ Such beliefs nicely shifted the blame of a late letter from the writer to an impersonal system, but it was also true. Often postal officials sent letters to the wrong place. An estate agent in Ireland complained to his employer that postal officials in Dublin often misdirected his letters because they assumed Cork meant the city of Cork rather than the county.²⁸ Things did not even go smoothly for the popular Penny Post. Charges of incompetence caused William Dockwra, its founder, to print a pamphlet defending his system. He reminded his readers that such miscarried and delayed letters were not necessarily the fault of the Penny Post; they could stem from human error as well: a correspondent might choose not to respond, servants could forget to deliver a letter, or a letter writer could scribble an incomprehensible address.²⁹

Beyond the well-recognized snags of institutional incompetence and governmental prying stands the less frequently acknowledged fact that it was not always easy to send a letter. After the Restoration, mail still mainly flowed along six roads that started in London and went south to Yarmouth, southeast to Dover, northeast to Berwick and then Scotland, northwest to Chester and then Ireland, west to Bristol and southwest Plymouth.³⁰ As long as writers wished to send letters along these roads corresponding was relatively easy, but many Britons lived far from these major routes. For these individuals sending a letter and receiving one were more difficult. Nicholas Blundell, who we know went to the Post Office often, assured a correspondent he would have written sooner but “being I live some distance from Leverpoole it oft happens that letters lye some time before I recive them.”³¹ Even if one lived close to a Post Office, the undeveloped nature of the system caused problems. The lack of cross posts between major roads meant that a letter sent from Bristol to Portsmouth, a distance of one hundred miles, had to pass through London first, which added extra postage and an additional hundred miles to the journey. The major postal reforms implemented under the watchful eye of Ralph Allen, the postmaster of Bath who ran the bye and cross posts, revolved around the establishment of new postal routes such as these, so that by 1756 the number of cross posts had increased and there were at least two hundred Post Offices in England.³² But even with these reforms, sending a letter by the post was not easy and many, especially those far from London, found they had to seek out alternative means.

Searching Letters

Letter writers often expressed a hope that their letters would “find” their receivers. John Perceval hoped his correspondent was up to date when “this letter finds you” and Cassandra Brydges worried that she knew not “where a letter would find” the recipient.³³ One of Peter Collinson’s correspondents was more confident in her letter’s abilities. After stating that Collinson was “quite lost,” she expressed her belief that “this letter will find him out.”³⁴ With such phrasing these writers gifted their letters with agency and created a picture of dogged letters intrepidly searching out their receivers like bloodhounds on a scent. Examining exactly how letters found their recipients shows how complex and difficult that process could be and how it altered according to one’s geographic location. Even with an address firmly written, letters often had to pass through multiple hands to make it to their intended destination. Following four searching letters sent to or by John Perceval from London, Ireland, the Netherlands, and Virginia reveals this complexity.

With the General Post Office stationed on Lombard Street and the presence of Penny Post offices throughout the city, London was the British world’s postal heart. Letters flowed in and out again, and sending a letter within London was done with greater ease than in any other area in the British world. With access to the Penny Post, Londoners could send a letter by post as easily as by messenger and many did so interchangeably. One of Hans Sloane’s correspondents simply asked Sloane to send him a few lines by the Penny Post if his servant did not find him at home.³⁵ But even using the Penny Post could be tricky.

Between 4 and 6 November 1723 Henry Newman, secretary of the Proselyte Society and London resident, wrote four letters to John Perceval who, at the time, was living in Charlton about ten miles away. The Proselyte Society was in crisis due to the death of its treasurer, John Chamberlayne, on 2 November, which gave those who wished to reform the society an opening for change. Perceval was among those who favored reform and Newman wanted him at the Society’s next meeting.³⁶ Luckily for Newman, sending a letter from his lodgings in Middle Temple to Perceval in Charlton near Greenwich was seemingly simple. On 4 November he sat himself at his desk, sharpened his pen, and wrote a quick letter to Perceval informing him of Chamberlayne’s death and the other issues facing the Society. Once finished he probably shook some pounce on the letter to keep the ink from smearing, folded it up, wrote Perceval’s address on it, sealed it with a dab of wax, and then sent it off to a nearby receiving station for the Penny Post, accompanied with two pennies to pay for its conveyance.³⁷ If Newman was lucky his servant would have instantly dropped off the letter, unlike some less responsible messengers whom Penny Post officials accused of destroying their letters and pocketing the money or loitering at alehouses before dropping off their letters.³⁸

Once the letter was in the hands of the Penny Post, employees marked it with the two official Penny Post stamps that noted what office it left from and the time it left the office. From the receiving station the letter was sent to the Penny Post sorting house across the river in Southwark, near the Church of St. Mary Overy, from whence letters were carried twice a day, at 8 a.m. and 1 p.m., the ten miles or so down the river to Charlton.³⁹ Once an official carried the letter to its place of delivery in Charlton it sat waiting for collection by one of Perceval’s servants, who probably checked often, or, if Newman paid a bit extra, it was delivered by a messenger to Perceval’s home.⁴⁰

In an ideal world this letter would have made it into Perceval’s hands the day Newman sent it, with a response making its way back to Newman the same day if he was lucky or if he was not by the following morning. However, judging from Perceval’s response penned on November 6, the system rarely achieved such rapid turnover. Perceval informed Newman that he would attend the meeting if he knew of it two or three days in advance, but Newman needed to be quick “for the letters that are put in the penny Post at London do not arrive here the same day, nor frequently the 2nd but on the 3rd.”⁴¹ The rapidity of the post pleased Newman, however, since he declared on 6 November: “I was this morning surprised to receive your Lordship’s letter, when I thought it scarce possible that mine of yesterday shou’d have reach’d your hands.”⁴² The exchange reveals the complexity of using even the Penny Post. The writer needed to know how to address his letter and where to deliver it. He had to hope his receiver knew to look for letters or have them delivered. And all knew that the system was slower than desired. But these obstacles did not keep them from using it and London letters arrived much more quickly and regularly than those sent to other areas of the British world.

Sending a letter got harder the farther one moved away from London. Using the post was not easy or especially rapid for those residing in Scotland. Postmen traveling from Edinburgh to Glasgow went by foot rather than horse until 1717, as did those traveling to Aberdeen until 1740.⁴³ In 1726 one letter writer in Kent chose to send a letter by a friend to Aberdeen because “you was removed to a great Distance [and] I knew not how to send a letter to you.”⁴⁴ He knew that his friend could search out his correspondent in a way the postal system could not. However, many a letter went through the Scottish post and many letters arrived in Edinburgh faster than those sent to Dublin.⁴⁵

John Perceval’s estate agent Berkeley Taylor, who watched over Perceval’s estates near Cork, knew the difficulties of sending a letter from Ireland to England. On 9 December 1720, three years before Newman penned his letter, Taylor sat down to write a letter to his employer in London.⁴⁶ Since landlords wanted their letters up to date, Taylor probably acted as a future agent did and wrote his letters on the eve of post days, so Mondays and Thursdays.⁴⁷ Keeping his employer promptly informed was difficult and on this occasion Taylor was responding to letters from 10, 15, 17, and 26 November because delayed Irish packet boats had kept the letters longer than usual. Taylor began by addressing the tardy nature of the letters and then proceeded to comment on the exact items his employer had mentioned in his past letters. In fact, the last matter Taylor addressed was the final issue Perceval had noted in his last letter of the 26th: a tenant’s wish to hold the church’s glebe.⁴⁸ After the post boy came calling at Ballymacow he took the letter to the Post Office in a smaller town like Kinsale, two miles away, or Mallow, twelve miles away. Next, the letter traveled to Waterford or Dublin, over on a packet boat to Milford Haven or Holyhead, and thence to London.⁴⁹ However, Taylor was often suspicious of the Post Office. He knew they often sorted his letters from Perceval erroneously, sending them to the city of Cork rather than to Mallow in the county of Cork. Taylor was justified in many of his gripes, but what could one expect from an office with only a dozen employees?⁵⁰

Taylor often tried to lower the cost of letters for his employer by enclosing them in letters to Perceval’s relative who could “frank” his letters or send them free due to parliamentary privilege. This practice ended in 1721 when the corner of a letter ripped and the enclosed epistle became visible. An annoyed Perceval paid the postage.⁵¹ Perceval franked his own letters when he was a member of Parliament, but this too caused problems. As another of Perceval’s agents informed him in 1735, when Perceval asked if his letters came free, there was a complaint made in the Irish House of Commons that the Post Office in Dublin was charging for franked letters from England.⁵²

However, Taylor’s unfranked letter, if it was a single sheet, cost 10d.⁵³ Perceval bore the charge since it was usually the receiver who paid the postage. Where he paid the postage on this letter is unclear. Unbeknownst to Taylor when he wrote his letter, Perceval was no longer in London but in Bath or on his way there.⁵⁴ Luckily for Taylor, Perceval still wanted his letters directed to London. But somehow this letter did make it to Bath, for Perceval answered it from there on 28 December, nineteen days after Taylor wrote it.⁵⁵ It could have come to Bath through the post (with another 3d added to the postage) or it could have arrived with a friend or relative; Perceval does not say. On another occasion he did have his letters directed to the Post Office in Bath, and on his trip back he had Taylor enclose them to his cousin in London and direct them to St. James Coffee House.⁵⁶ When in London Perceval could receive his letters in many ways. He picked them up at the Post Office itself, at coffeehouses, or had them delivered to his Pall Mall residence.⁵⁷ Simply to send a letter to his employer Taylor had to know the ins and outs of the postal system. He had to know when the post days were, account for delayed packet boats, and keep an ear cocked to pick up on the movements of his always mobile employer.

In many ways Taylor had it easy. He and Perceval kept up a constant correspondence and Perceval attempted to inform him of his movements and provided him with directions on where to send his letters if travel intervened. This was not always the case. Many aspiring and established correspondents did not know where to send a letter: they did not know where their correspondent was or they simply did not have their address. As correspondents moved from their estates to London to Bath and to the Continent or simply between London addresses, how to address a letter became complicated. When John Perceval traveled on the Continent he moved every couple of days, making it hard for his letters to find him, and even when in England he often shifted from his house in London to his place in Charlton and to the waters of Bath, which is why he usually told Berkeley Taylor to send his letters to his cousin Daniel Dering in London whom he kept up to date on his movements. Others did the same. The Duke of Richmond told Peter Collinson to simply direct his letters to Whitehall and from there they would be sent to him.⁵⁸ However, a letter from Peter Collinson almost missed Lord Petre as he was on his way to London, which prompted him to tell Collinson that “Sir Hans had wrong intelligence in relations to my motions.”⁵⁹ Collinson had obviously attempted to keep track of Petre’s movements by asking his friend in London. Sometimes writers simply did not know where to send their letter until another correspondent informed them. A relative apologized to Perceval for his lax letter writing by stating, “I had given you the trouble of a line or two before now had I known what part of the world to have directed to you: My Spouse in her last letter gave me the account of your being [in] London as did my friend Mr. Wogan.”⁶⁰ It was difficult to keep track of such mobile networks. At one point John Perceval simply threw up his hands and declared, “I don’t know where this will find you.”⁶¹

How one directed a letter also mattered, and with the expansion of the postal system addresses became more standardized. Gone were the personalized directions that dripped with complimentary phrasing like that gracing an early seventeenth-century letter from the Dowager Countess of Derby to the fourth Earl of Huntingdon, which read: “Right Honorable my very good L[ord] and deare frend the Erle of Huntingdon geve these.”⁶² In their wake came addresses that were more detailed and clear, like that written on the cover of a letter to the ninth Earl of Huntingdon in 1734: “To The Rt. Honorable the Earl of Huntingdon at Donington Park Leicestershire.”⁶³ Sending a letter by the Post Office could strip its address of a personal touch. By the eighteenth century the bare bones of an address consisted of the correspondent’s name, their estate if they had one, the closest town, and the county. Urban addresses, especially London addresses, were more detailed. A correspondent of Hans Sloane, perhaps in jest, told him to direct his letter for him “at the sign of the Cham of Tartary’s Slipper in York Buildings, next door to the Yorkshire Cushion, over against the Cinnamon Broom-stick.”⁶⁴ Such a detailed address was necessary. The officials at the Penny Post insisted London writers needed “to mention the Trade and Sign, or near what Place, Lane, Church, Remarkable Public House, or Tavern, &c. which is altogether Necessary every where; but especially in long Streets, and large Places, such as are in this great City and Suburbs.”⁶⁵ In the densely populated and heavily built-up city a correspondent had to include a detailed address to get a letter to its intended destination.

If a correspondent did not provide an address or if the address was not specific enough the exchange could come to a screeching halt. John Perceval complained to Berkeley Taylor that “some ordinary person” left a letter at a coffeehouse for him but included no return address so he had no way to contact him.⁶⁶ A more conciliatory Cassandra Willoughby assured her correspondent that “Had I known where to make a Letter find you, Dear Madam, you should have been thus troubled sooner, & since you are so kind as to send me a direction now, you need not doubt of such a Correspondent.”⁶⁷ Even having an address was no guarantee. A friend of Hans Sloane doubted that his letter reached its destination for “it had only a loose & generall description of him in Mark Lane.”⁶⁸ Others found that their address was out of date or simply wrong. One of Perceval’s correspondents missed a number of his letters because he had sent them to Mr. Tooks “a bookseller near Temple-Bar” rather than to Mr. Ropers “at the black boy in Fleet Street.”⁶⁹ Sometimes the sender simply forgot the address. Poor William Fisher had to admit to his employer, John Perceval, that he had forgotten what street a correspondent lived on for “he told me by Word of mouth how I should direct to him.”⁷⁰ Such a danger is probably why Nicholas Blundell kept a list of addresses at the back of his letter book and why John Perceval jotted down the locations of some acquaintances at the end of one of his journals, along with the days the post left for France.⁷¹ Many other letter writers were proactive and concluded their letters with directions on where to send a response.⁷²

Writers often needed access to personal networks to send a letter by the post. When letter writers mentioned bad or forgotten addresses it was usually because they wanted their correspondent to help them to the correct one. The Duke of Richmond sent Peter Collinson a letter to forward because he was unaware of the post town near Lord Petre’s estate of Thorndon. He left a space for Collinson to fill in, but he also speculated that the estate “must be known at the post office as it is an old family seat.”⁷³ He depended on Collinson to finish the address for him because he knew Collinson was a close friend and correspondent of the Petre family. William Fisher admitted that he had forgotten the street of his correspondent because he wanted Perceval to forward the enclosed letter. These correspondents relied on personal networks to get their letters to their destinations when their postal knowledge failed them. They also used their knowledge of their correspondents’ personal habits to get letters to them. When a clergyman in Kent forgot the street his correspondent lived on, he simply sent it to another address that he knew his correspondent frequented.⁷⁴ This reliance on personal knowledge serves as a reminder that the establishment of the postal system allowed those who knew the addresses of their correspondents to send letters more consistently, but it did not make it easier for those outside a network to insinuate themselves into it. The development of the postal service itself did not make the epistolary world a more open space.

Figure 3. Letters were carefully addressed. Here Lady Francis Hastings was sure to note that Donnington Hall was in Leicestershire and that the letter should go by the Loughborough Bag. The lack of complexity of this address also shows how sending a letter to an aristocrat’s estate in the countryside was easier than sending one into the maw of metropolitan London. Furthermore, Francis’s scribbles on the flaps of the letter (which would have been folded inward) show her need to make use of all available space. The postal service also left its mark, which lets us know that it received the letter on 29 January, two days after Francis wrote it.

Francis Hastings to Selina Hastings, Countess of Huntingdon, 27 January 1728/9, HEH HA 4984.

This item is reproduced by permission of The Huntington Library, San Marino, California.

Addresses became less standardized the farther one traveled from established postal routes and personal networks became increasingly important. A correspondent of Hans Sloane who traveled to the East India Company’s settlement on the island of Poulo Condor off the coast of what is now southern Vietnam told him: “If you direct for me at this Island it will come safe to hand wherever I am.”⁷⁵ Perceval’s good friend in Rhode Island told him to simply direct his letters to “Dean Berkeley at Rhode Island near Boston.”⁷⁶ This is true of many letters sent to the Continent as well. When John Perceval traveled to Paris in 1725 he told Berkeley Taylor to simply direct his letters to “Mr Arbuthnot Banker in Paris.”⁷⁷ The British populations in these locations were small compared to those of the teeming metropolis and the networks of acquaintances were often smaller. Furthermore, these writers could rarely depend on the post; they looked to merchant networks and the hands of friends.

Sending a letter to the Continent could take many hands and multiple posts. It could also take a lot of time. When a letter took over six weeks to reach him, John Perceval, who was residing in France, told his brother in Ireland on 19 September 1725, “Your Letter of 3rd August the only one I have received since my leaving England came late to hand having two Seas and a foreign Country to pass.”⁷⁸ To a degree, Perceval was lucky. An acquaintance of his found himself in Barcelona in 1711 during the War of the Spanish Succession and instructed Perceval to send his letters via Genoa where a merchant friend had connections and could send them to Barcelona.⁷⁹ Perceval was familiar with the difficulties of getting letters from the British Isles when traveling on the Continent. Years before, on the first of July 1718 he was especially frustrated when he sat down to pen letters from The Hague. On this day he wrote to his cousin and brother-in-law, Daniel Dering, who was watching over his affairs from London and to his brother, Philip, who was also in London. In both letters, after addressing business concerns and giving an account of his travels (he had bought lace for both of them and found Lord Cadogan surprisingly civil), he mentioned he was sorry and troubled that he had not heard from anyone.⁸⁰ He then folded the letters, addressed them, sealed them, and sent them on their way to London.

These two letters could have made their way to London through public or private hands. As many correspondents did, he could have used a friendly messenger or a bearer to get the letter to England. However, he probably turned to the packet service operating out of Helvoetsluis (now Hellevoetsluis) in the Netherlands.⁸¹ Helvoetsluis was about thirty miles from The Hague, so Perceval could have hired a messenger to bring his letters to the port or perhaps he used the postal system of the Netherlands.⁸² Once they arrived in Helvoetsluis the letters would have sailed the next Wednesday or Saturday when the packet boats left for Harwich. Once in England the British Post Office embraced them and they made their way back to London and into the hands of Dering and Philip Perceval.

John appears to have been wary of trusting his letters solely to the public postal systems when on the Continent even though the postal system there was more mature than the English system. The family of Tour and Tassis had run the post in the lands ruled by the Holy Roman Emperor since the end of the fifteenth century, but for men like Perceval the Continental posts were unfamiliar and they often relied on personal connections to collect their letters and provide them with a central location for the delivery of letters.⁸³ Perceval was sure to instruct Daniel Dering to send his letters for Amsterdam to Sir Alexander Cairns in London who would forward them to an Amsterdam merchant firm.⁸⁴ Cairns, an Irish baronet and MP, had continental and mercantile connections and Perceval also sent a letter and a box through Cairns’s brother Henry, a London merchant, four days before he wrote his letters from The Hague.⁸⁵ The death of the merchant in Amsterdam threw these plans into slight disarray, but while postal problems persisted throughout the trip, by 8 July, a week after his letter of complaint, Perceval appears to have begun to receive his letters, most probably because he had arrived in Amsterdam, a larger metropolis and the location where he had told Dering to forward his letters.⁸⁶ Perceval knew that letters to the Continent could easily be lost and that known hands increased the likelihood of a smooth delivery. In fact, he even had his Irish estate agent send his letters to Dering in London who summarized them in his letters to his cousin, streamlining the process.⁸⁷

When writers sent letters across the Atlantic they followed many of the same procedures as continental correspondents. They often placed letters in the hands of merchants, and at times these letters fed into a distant postal system. While a colonial post was established later in the seventeenth century, no permanent packet service from England to the American colonies existed until the late eighteenth century. A number of individuals had attempted to develop packet services to the West Indies and New York, but none lasted.⁸⁸ Instead, some correspondents looked to government connections to get their letters across the Atlantic, but most colonial correspondents depended on merchant ships and their seasonal voyages.⁸⁹ Those living in the West Indies used the sugar ships to send letters, those in Virginia looked to the tobacco ships, and those to the north used the many merchant ships in and out of Boston or New York.⁹⁰ Once they arrived in Britain these letters could be delivered by hand or by the post to their receivers. Those living in Britain, who sent letters to the American colonies, simply reversed the process. Perceval’s friend Henry Newman sent one of Perceval’s letters to Rhode Island by a ship’s captain bound for Boston and assured him that it would find its way to its recipient within a day by the colonial post.⁹¹

Like Henry Newman, Berkeley Taylor, and Daniel Dering before him, William Byrd II of Virginia sat down to write a letter to John Perceval. Byrd and Perceval had met in 1701 when Byrd accompanied the young Perceval on a trip around England and Byrd himself had almost joined Perceval on his trip through Holland and France in 1718.⁹² But by 10 June 1729 Byrd was back in Virginia, dipping his quill into his ink and giving Perceval his opinion on a colonial project and telling him of his rambles through the backcountry of Virginia as he assisted in determining the border between Virginia and North Carolina. He then folded the letter, addressed and sealed it, and probably gave it to the captain of a tobacco ship docked off his plantation, Westover, along the James River.⁹³

Writing a letter was a different experience for those in the colonies. The deficiencies of the postal system frustrated many a London user, but they also knew they could send a letter at almost any time of day and expect a response from anywhere in England within five days. Colonists could use the intercolonial post for local letters, but to send letters to England they depended on seasonal ships that ferried their letters across 3,000 miles of ocean.⁹⁴ For this reason colonists often wrote multiple letters at a time so they could send them by the same ship. Byrd’s father wrote ten letters on 8 March 1686 and sent them all by the same ship’s captain.⁹⁵ Perceval did the same when traveling on the Continent, although writing two letters on the same day pales in comparison to the ten composed by Byrd. Merchant ships, not unlike visitors, provided a convenient opportunity to send letters that many writers could not refuse. Thus it should not come as a surprise that Byrd wrote his letter to Perceval in June, a time when many tobacco ships were probably headed to London.⁹⁶ Correspondents in England with colonial connections felt a similar pressure. A loving and concerned brother living near Liverpool was “not willing to let many Ships pass with out a line or two” for his brother in the colonies.⁹⁷

The postal pace felt slower for colonists. All their letters from England came by ship and Byrd appears to have received few letters from those in the colonies or, at least, he rarely recorded them. English correspondents, on the other hand, only waited for the few Atlantic letters that flowed into their larger pool of British letters. The Byrds did not receive letters from Britain frequently, building up a sense of anticipation for incoming letters. As William Byrd II informed a distant correspondent, “Our Lives are uniform without any great variety, til the Seasons brings in the Ships. Then we tear open the Letters they bring us from our Friends, as eagerly, as a greedy Heir tears open his Fathers Will.”⁹⁸ Byrd also stated that if letters came in late in the day he would hide them from his wife so that she would sleep through the night.⁹⁹

Once William Byrd II handed letters to ships’ captains things did not always go smoothly. While neither he nor Perceval voiced any complaints about this voyage, once the ship hit the high seas a whole host of problems could hold it up, from bad weather to war to pirates. Byrd usually directed his rants at the sea captains who delivered his letters. In one letter to Perceval, almost ten years later, he blamed a ship’s captain for not delivering his letter, stating, “These Tritons do now and [then p]lay us such slippery tricks, and are no more to be depended up[on than] the faithless element which they converse with.”¹⁰⁰ While it turned out that the captain had sent the letter on, he had not gone to Perceval looking for an answer, which in Byrd’s mind still made him the culprit.¹⁰¹ Sometimes captains were simply slow at delivering their letters. One kept letters for six weeks after his ship docked.¹⁰² Perceval was aware of these many dangers and made sure to send duplicates of his letters to Rhode Island, a practice embraced by many corresponding with distant locations.¹⁰³

This particular letter, however, seems to have made it to Perceval without incident. Once in London the ship’s captain might have delivered it himself to Perceval, placed it into the hands of the merchants at Perry and Lane who were Byrd’s factors, or he might have sent it by a messenger to Perceval’s residence, placed it into the Penny Post, or left it at a local coffeehouse where letters from Virginia accumulated. By whatever means, the letter did make it to Perceval’s hands and on the third of December, six months after Byrd wrote it, he responded, declaring, “Nothing could give one greater pleasure than to hear from an Old friend of theirty years standing.”¹⁰⁴ However delighted he was with the letter, it is likely that Perceval allowed Byrd’s letter to sit a while before answering it. In the next set of letters they exchanged, he waited two months after receiving Byrd’s letter to respond.¹⁰⁵ This rarely bothered Byrd since he usually expected only one letter a year from English correspondents. Those in the colonies delayed responding immediately as well. When Perceval’s friend George Berkeley was living in Rhode Island he allowed Perceval’s letter to sit three weeks before responding.¹⁰⁶ Unlike Perceval’s letter from Newman, that from Taylor, or even that expected from Dering, these colonial letters did not require an instant response. Their purpose was to nurture a social connection and Byrd’s letter did not ask Perceval to do anything but write in return when it suited him and in this he obliged.

Byrd made sure that Perceval knew how to send a response. He told Perceval to address his answer to his factor, Mr. Perry, in Leadenhall Street.¹⁰⁷ As Perceval was living in Charlton downriver from the city he probably sent his response via the Penny Post to Mr. Perry who then forwarded it by a ship to Virginia. If Perceval was in town he could have also left it in a coffeehouse where ships’ captains often stopped to pick up letters.¹⁰⁸ Correspondents living in England often needed guidance in the ways of colonial correspondence. That is why both Byrd and Berkeley gave Perceval directions. An address on a letter bound for the colonies might have been simpler and less specific, but knowing what merchants or officials to turn to and when to send a letter mattered more. One London correspondent hurriedly wrote a letter to a friend in Kent, who had a daughter in the colonies, telling him that ships bound for South Carolina were leaving in less than three weeks and he should forward his letters quickly.¹⁰⁹ Other writers gave such notices for destinations further afield. A correspondent in Dublin reminded another that January was “the time of year for writing letters to India” and that he should forward him any he wished to send.¹¹⁰ Just as using the postal system within the British Isles and from the Continent required a deep knowledge of its functioning, sending letters to the colonies required a complex understanding of the workings of Atlantic or Indian Ocean shipping. The forms of knowledge were different: users of the British post required an understanding of the institutional system, while those who sent letters further needed to understand a less centralized system, but both needed to use personal networks and knowledge to get their letters delivered.

These epistolary exchanges between different locations reveal the complex nature of communication by letter. Within London the system worked relatively smoothly. Letters might be delayed and a few might miscarry, but with the employees of the Penny Post ferrying them from the office to recipients communication was usually successful and usually completed within the fold of the postal system. The central importance of the postal system decreased and creative postal solutions increased the further from London a writer lived. When in Bath, Perceval continued to have his letters sent to London to be forwarded by his cousin who watched over his London concerns. His cousin might have forwarded them by the post or he could also have used a messenger, but he had the option to do either. Still Perceval knew he could not simply expect his letters to find him without providing them with an easier path. Similarly, he sent many of his Irish letters to his estate agent to distribute.¹¹¹ Since he kept up a constant correspondence with his agent Perceval knew his employee would watch for letters in a way others might not. By sending letters for others through his agent he guarded against such letters lying forgotten at the Post Office. This strategic use of the post colored his continental correspondence as well. He knew it was safer to have Taylor send his letters to Dering in London, rather than directly to him when he was traveling. Postal routes were only useful where they were well established and when postally savvy individuals lived on the other end. The expansion of the post created a reliable channel for postal exchange, but it frayed around the edges. This was true for correspondence beyond the British Isles as well, except that the channels were more informal. Letter writers with Atlantic correspondents knew merchant networks and used them as those in Britain used the post. Once, when Perceval’s correspondent in Rhode Island wished to send letters to England, he enclosed them to Perceval, who then distributed them.¹¹² Sadly one of the correspondents had died, but Perceval forwarded the other one to Durham.¹¹³ The growth of the postal service and the expansion of shipping helped deepen these dependable channels of communication, but beyond these routes personal networks mattered more.

Careful Hands

When John Perceval’s Rhode Island correspondent forwarded him the letters previously mentioned he entreated him to “send [them] by a carefull hand.”¹¹⁴ The careful hand turned out to be that of Perceval’s only brother, Philip. Careful hands or personal bearers made the epistolary world turn: they helped the official postal system function and they increased the social meaning of a letter. To a society used to face-to-face interaction the option of a bearer was attractive. Most letter writers preferred to wait on a correspondent in person rather than to do so by letter. John Perceval’s cousin apologized for a late epistolary response, but explained that he had delayed writing for he “was in hopes to have waited on you in person.”¹¹⁵ Sending a letter by a bearer spoke to this preference. Before the expansion of the Post Office, Britons had usually depended on bearers to deliver their letters.¹¹⁶ When the Paston family sent letters in the fifteenth century they sent them by family members, trusted servants, neighbors, or hired men.¹¹⁷ But the use of bearers was not just a legacy from a previous age that became irrelevant as the Post Office flourished.¹¹⁸ John Eliot, a London merchant, continued to use bearers late into the eighteenth century.¹¹⁹ He and other writers turned to bearers because they were easier to send a letter by, they deepened the emotional worth of the letter, and they allowed for more immediate forms of interaction. Personal postal intermediaries were an integral component of the postal process.

Many writers were seemingly unable to pass up a convenient bearer. As late as 1765 John Eliot could not resist taking, as he put it, “the opportunity” proffered by a traveling acquaintance to send a letter to his estate agent in Cornwall.¹²⁰ But it was Peter Collinson who, according to his letters, could not let a convenient opportunity pass. In 1739 it was his friend Dr. Filenius who gave him “so convenient an opportunity,” in 1741 it was Mr. Biork, and in 1754 it was Mr. Smith.¹²¹ All these hands were convenient because they were carrying letters to correspondents off the major postal routes of the world. Filenius and Biork carried their letters to Karl Linnaeus in Sweden and Mr. Smith to a friend in Connecticut. Like sending a letter across the Atlantic, the opportunity to send a letter to Sweden, as one correspondent stated, “don’t occur often.”¹²² In many ways, these convenient bearers were merely that, easy means for getting a letter from one point to another where the postal system failed.

As they surface in Collinson’s letters these bearers appear to be the product of kismet. To an extent this was probably true, but letter writers and letter bearers also created these convenient opportunities because they strengthened the web of social connection that bound them all. William Byrd II asked his friend to call on an acquaintance to see if he had a letter for him because he “is such a Philosopher that he needs a Moniter to put him in mind of his Friends.”¹²³ By sending a prospective bearer Byrd reactivated a correspondence that had seemed to stall. Traveling friends often acted as informal postmasters and collected letters before their departures. They would come to take their leave and gather letters for brothers, sisters, and friends.¹²⁴ Here the increased mobility of the British elite helped since they had more opportunities to deliver letters. Collecting letters demonstrated a polite concern for the postal needs of a friend or acquaintance. It offered their letter a safe conveyance, saved them a trip to the Post Office, and made their letters free of charge. When the writer could not depend on the postal system a bearer who came for a letter was doubly appreciated. William Byrd II waxed poetic about the bearer of his letter to Mrs. Pitt in Bermuda who was “so very kind as to call for it, which few of his Countrymen can be perswaded to do.”¹²⁵ Sending a letter by a bearer was convenient, but it was also a valued service.

Bearers fell into three categories: servants, individuals already known to the receiver, and those wishing to be known to the receiver. Servants usually received little from the exchange except perhaps a bit of change in their pocket. Unknown bearers often gained the most for they did not remain unknown for long. Bearing a letter allowed one to enter into a charmed circle of acquaintances. Often the writer was attempting to unite two individuals of similar interests. A correspondent of Hans Sloane in Amsterdam sent a letter by an “Ingenious Gentleman” who looked to Sloane for entrance into the world of London intellectuals.¹²⁶ This writer was not just looking to assist the bearer, but to help Sloane by connecting him with an individual who might serve him at a later date or enrich the quality of his intellectual conversation. But such letters most certainly also helped the bearer, especially those looking for assistance. Bearers were not shy in using letter delivery as a gateway to greater opportunity. John Perceval just happened to receive a letter from the hands of the brother of one of his agents when that young man was looking for a vicarage, and another of his acquaintances sent a letter by a young man who was looking to become Perceval’s secretary.¹²⁷ Bearing a letter provided these individuals with a reason to wait on their prospective patron, giving them access that might otherwise be denied. One of Sloane’s correspondents playfully admitted in a letter that he “dread[ed] the severitie of yr censure” for not responding sooner, but that his good friend Mr. Sherard had the “earnest desire to kiss yr hand, [and] desired me to favour him with some occasion of waiting on you.”¹²⁸ By delivering a letter, bearers were able to serve the recipient before requesting assistance for themselves.

The sender of the letter also benefited by placing their letter in the hands of a bearer. John Boyle, Earl of Orrery, wished to write to the bishop of Oxford, but rather than simply slipping his letter in the mail, he wrote to a friend to see if he was acquainted with the bishop. To Boyle’s delight he was and he convinced him to deliver the letter to the bishop for him. Sending the letter in this fashion allowed the letter to come free and it meant that this friend could tell him of the bishop’s response since “a letter from him would be adding an unnecessary trouble to the liberty I have taken.”¹²⁹ Boyle showed real concern for the bishop’s postal welfare by not requiring him to respond. On other occasions the favor was the choice of bearer. A correspondent of Hans Sloane found that he could “not but count myself more especially ingaged to you for your last of June ye 7th which you oblidgingly contrived should be delivered me by Sir Andrew Fountaine; whose acquaintance I highly value.”¹³⁰ By sending a letter by a close friend Sloane gifted him not only with his own letter but with a visit by a treasured friend. This favor increased the correspondent’s sense of connection to Sloane himself. Sloane also demonstrated a deep knowledge of his correspondent’s social circle. He knew by whom a letter would be welcome, and this showed the receiver how entangled in his own social network Sloane was, increasing or at least reaffirming his importance.

The use of bearers also eased the strains of epistolary distance by allowing for more immediate interaction. Writers had long used bearers to send verbal messages as well as to deliver letters.¹³¹ As Boyle demonstrated with his letter to the Bishop of Oxford, sometimes receiving a verbal response was as desired as a letter. It cost less and, in a way, it was more personal. A young John Perceval delivered a letter and present to his guardian’s friend who, rather than write a letter in return, sent his thanks and services through the protégé.¹³² This was not only easier but Perceval was a physical being to whom he could extend his thanks, making the exchange feel more personal and immediate. Perceval then sent these thanks on through a letter. Having a letter delivered by an interested bearer also allowed for greater communication. Often the sender had the bearer read the letters they carried because the deliverer could then discuss the information inside with the recipient, which could lead to a more rapid resolution of the issues involved.¹³³ In this fashion three voices echoed in a room with only two discussants. Such an action could give the deliverer the advantage because he knew his own directions from the writer and what the writer had disclosed, or not disclosed, to the recipient. Thus he would have an idea of what to say and what not to say. The presence of the bearer also allowed the recipient to ask the questions left unanswered by the letter itself. A correspondent in Antigua thanked Cassandra Brydges for her letter by a ship’s captain because it gave her “an opportunity of knowing by him more particularly your state of health.”¹³⁴ Sending a letter by a bearer easily got a letter to its destination, but it also enhanced the level of interaction between the letter writer, the letter bearer, and the letter receiver.

However, there were times when receivers wished the exchange was not quite as immediate because the physical presence of the bearer was also more difficult to ignore. When one of Perceval’s tenants fell on hard times after the death of her husband she did not send a letter by the post to her landlord; she sent it by her youngest son.¹³⁵ She hoped that by making her suffering visible through the person of her son she might win more leeway from Perceval. Such tactics greatly annoyed Perceval and he once declared to his agent, “when Tenants take that Course, tis only to surprize me into some concessions and impose on me by some melancholy representation of their case, of which I cannot be a competent judge,” but later letters imply that he did talk to the son about the state of the farm.¹³⁶ As frustrating as Perceval found such tactics, they could work and, on the whole, welcomed bearers outnumbered the unwelcomed.

Sending a letter by a personal bearer was a necessary complement to the developing postal system. In many ways it was the more important system. It was bearers who often got letters to their intended destinations, even those sent through the post originally, and in doing so they increased the sense of personal connection between the sender and the receiver and even the bearer. Charting the way letter writers actually sent their letters insists on the importance of personal networks. Writers depended on networks to uncover addresses, to follow the movements of their correspondents, and to know who was the correct bearer to send. They also personalized the letter. These epistles flowed along deeply worn grooves of connection that held long-standing networks together. James Brydges, the eventual Duke of Chandos, received a letter from one cousin via another; John Eliot sent a letter by his sister to his uncle; and Sloane received one from his Oxford acquaintance via another intellectual connection.¹³⁷ These letters circulated through these dependable networks to reach their final destination. But to truly understand the functioning and shape of the networks that undergirded postal exchange, the way individuals circulated letters after their arrival requires examination.

Trusted Networks

Arriving at an initial destination was only the start of many letters’ journeys. Bearers show the importance of personal networks in the dynamics of letter delivery and an examination of their continued circulation reveals what networks individuals depended upon.¹³⁸ After letters arrived they passed from hand to hand within a household. When discussing an affair of the heart John Perceval declared to a correspondent, “I imparted your letter to my wife, & we are at a loss what to think of the Lady’s behaviour.”¹³⁹ Obviously the tale puzzled Perceval and he passed the letter on to his wife and they discussed it. At times permission had to be given for such sharing. Perceval’s brother told him in a letter that he could show it to their cousin. In fact, he sent the cousin over to see it and receive its news.¹⁴⁰ Writers knew the networks of others well enough to use them: Perceval’s brother knew their cousin came by Perceval’s house on a regular basis and that by sending a letter to Perceval he could also include the cousin. The sharing of letters was an acknowledged fact. Letter writers knew that the entire family read the letters sent to a single member.¹⁴¹ The extended Perceval family read letters out loud among themselves. Perceval’s cousin, who often watched over his children, told Perceval, “Your Proverb made us laught heartily.”¹⁴² It did not just amuse his cousin; it amused us. One can almost picture him sitting around the fire with his wife and Perceval’s two children laughing at the proverb Perceval had sent them.

Letters were often the creations of many hands. Husbands and wives would sign a single letter to a correspondent.¹⁴³ If there was room at the end of a letter, a writer would allow another to add to it. Peter Collinson’s correspondent eagerly accepted the opportunity of adding a few lines to the end of a friend’s letter.¹⁴⁴ Some writers even thanked correspondents for these short notes of remembrance, even if they preferred a longer letter.¹⁴⁵ Close correspondents, especially family members, were the most frequent practitioners of joint letters. Since they saw each other frequently or lived together they had the most access to each other’s letters. Daniel Dering and his wife often wrote letters together to John Perceval and his wife. Many conclude with Dering stating, “I leave my Letter open for my Wife to give an Account of her self.”¹⁴⁶ The Derings and the Percevals were a deeply interconnected family. Daniel was John’s cousin and his wife was John’s wife’s sister and the couple often lived with the Percevals. Thus, it seems natural that they would share communal letters.

Often correspondents simply assumed that an acquaintance’s letter would stand in for their own. It was understood that close friends, family members, and other trusted eyes had access to letters. Writers would ask a correspondent to assure an acquaintance that they did not send them a letter because they knew they had access to the other letter.¹⁴⁷ Dering often took this route and put off writing to Perceval when he knew his wife had written either of the Percevals a long letter.¹⁴⁸ Perceval’s other cousin assumed that one letter to the family was sufficient. She told Perceval, “I thought reading one letter at a time from one so dull as my self was a sufficient penance for the whole Family.”¹⁴⁹ Letters were communal possessions of certain circles, especially family circles, and a letter to one was seen as a letter to all. Thus sending them by members of this circle only seemed natural and often extended the conversation.

Letters circulated beyond the family fireside as well; receivers mailed them to others who might be interested in their contents. Writers often mention returning letters composed by others and forwarding amusing or intriguing letters to other correspondents.¹⁵⁰ Peter Collinson sent Hans Sloane a letter “from a Curious Gentleman at Plymouth” as a present.¹⁵¹ While such exchanges were an accepted practice they did cause problems, especially when receivers forgot to return letters. Collinson had to remind Sloane to return his letter from a Russian doctor on crabs’ eyes because “I must write to the Doctor answer.”¹⁵² He needed the letter by his side to compose the correct response. Sloane returned the letter with thanks and enclosed a letter for the doctor.¹⁵³ Collinson inserted this reminder not because of unauthorized sharing, but because of the logistics of sharing. In fact, such an exchange increased Sloane’s own network since he added his own reply and let Collinson deliver it.

There were limits to letter circulation, however, and letter passing was more prevalent within certain networks. Identifying these networks pinpoints what groups letter writers trusted and what networks they depended upon. The three that surface most prominently are family networks, estate networks, and intellectual networks. One of the main purposes of this book is to explore the functioning and interaction of these webs of connection. Family members were quite casual about passing each other’s letters around and about depending on a letter to one to account for the whole. They often lived together, socialized together, and sympathized together, so the bonds of affection, duty, and support were strong. The result of this close proximity, economic and social dependence, and affection was trust. Letters could be passed among family members and be sent by family members because they could be trusted to put letters into careful hands.

Members of the British elite had long trusted and utilized family networks, but as the circulation of letters suggests other networks were rising in importance during this period. Landlords, their agents, and their tenants often circulated letters among themselves as well. These correspondents did not inherently trust one another, but letter circulation helped create trust or at least the appearance of transparency. It also made the business of running an estate from afar function more smoothly. The same held true for absentee colonial plantation owners. The only way the increasing number of absentee landlords could keep in touch with their estates, whether they were in Ireland or Virginia, was through letters from their agents. Enclosing and passing letters helped landlords and agents stay on the same page in estate affairs: Perceval wanted to be sure that his agents in Ireland knew exactly what he wrote to his tenants so the tenants could not take advantage of the agent.¹⁵⁴ Agents would often show tenants their landlord’s letters to prove they were not twisting his words and tenants often insisted that landlords saw their original letters, not just the agent’s interpretation of them. As Perceval’s slightly aggrieved agent wrote to him regarding a tenant’s letter, “he desires me to forward the orginall thinking I suppose that no extract cou’d do his request justice.”¹⁵⁵ The letters sent, passed, and enclosed by landlords, agents, and tenants illustrate the trust, strained but extant, between them: tenants had to believe that agents would pass on letters and landlords had to trust that agents would give them a fair picture of affairs on their land, a belief that was often tried by untrusting tenants. While estate letters circulated in a different fashion and for a different reason than family letters, there was a sense that such passing was allowable because the extent of circulation was known and letters could help this strained community function.

The practice of exchanging letters was even more common among members of intellectual networks like the Royal Society who, to promote their scholarly interests, were constantly circulating each other’s letters. Together two members might peruse a single letter by another member and then send it on to a third.¹⁵⁶ At times they even lost track of who had seen a letter it had been passed around so much.¹⁵⁷ This kind of exchange would reach its fullest extent with the publication of Philosophical Transactions, the journal of the Royal Society, which drew on letters sent to the Society. Scholars had to depend on one another’s knowledge and this sense of trust extended beyond experiments to include a more personal kind of trust: a belief that other scholars would treat letters, and the information in them, honorably.¹⁵⁸ The exchange of letters by the intellectual elite of Europe was not a new phenomenon, but it altered during the eighteenth century as intellectual thought became tied to the growth of clubs and societies, which changed the way ideas flowed and information circulated.

While letters were passed among trusted friends and networks, there were certainly places letters should not go. When a letter strayed from a trusted circle, senders worried.¹⁵⁹ Nicholas Blundell once recorded in his diary, “Lady Dowager Webbs Letter was given to a Rong hand by mistake and made great uneasiness.”¹⁶⁰ This incident must have caused Blundell great consternation because usually he filled his diary only with his daily activities, not his reflections on such happenings. The way the British sealed their letters reveals the careful manner in which they guarded their privacy and from whom. Writers only sent unsealed letters to known and trusted correspondents; once trusted eyes viewed them, careful hands sealed them. On multiple occasions writers reminded their correspondents to seal enclosed letters before they sent them on. They insisted, “after you have read it pray clap a little wax to it” or “clap a Bit of Wax to the Seal.”¹⁶¹ Even if the letter was not going by the post it was important that it arrive sealed.¹⁶² Usually, this emphasis on sealing stemmed from letter writers’ suspicion of the Post Office, but it was also a way to keep out all prying eyes, which could be found outside the Post Office as well as in it.

Authors usually displayed mortification if their letters drifted from these trusted networks without their consent, especially if they landed in the hands of a printer. Scholars have noted that unlike on the Continent, the printing of letter collections and personal letters was infrequent in England until the later seventeenth century, with a few notable exceptions.¹⁶³ Even in the eighteenth century the publishing of personal letters could be a risky endeavor. Alexander Pope took Edmund Curll to court for publishing his letters. However, it was probably Pope himself who anonymously sent the letters to Curll so that in retaliation he could publish his “true” letters.¹⁶⁴ Such worries caused one correspondent to declare: “God forbid that any more Papers belonging to either of you especially such sacred Papers as your familiar Letters should fall into the Hands of Knaves and Fools.”¹⁶⁵ The overwhelming fear was that letters could land in unknown hands. The public reading of personal letters would, in the words of one correspondent, “expose me to the misconstruction of many, the malice of some and the censure perhaps of the whole world.”¹⁶⁶ Passing letters among known correspondents was acceptable; they knew how to interpret them, but unknown hands did not share the same skills and could cause the writer grief. Thus, while letters were communal objects, that community did not include the world at large. In many ways, this reflects Michael Warner’s view of the public world before the construction of the public sphere in the later eighteenth century, where political debate occurred ideally in private and was founded on a trust in the hierarchical order of society.¹⁶⁷ In this world, authority was more personal and anonymity frowned upon. This view of the political realm reinforces the valuation of these personal networks; the world that mattered was small and personal.

Letters flowed through personal networks and sending them through these trusted webs solidified those networks. Scholars have recently placed more emphasis on the importance of the personal as a concept that softens the harsh division between private and public worlds.¹⁶⁸ Investigating letters, and the networks through which they circulated, reaffirms this need. Rather than examining the growth of the public or private sphere, it is more beneficial to think about the importance of smaller personal networks. The personal, with its more flexible lines of inclusion and exclusion, echoes the functioning of networks, which were neither private nor public. It was these personal networks that made the postal system work. The Post Office could not deliver letters on its own; Britons depended on their established personal networks to send and receive their letters. Allowing these networks to surface and examining how they functioned serves as a reminder that while the establishment of governmentally run systems, like the Post Office, changed the way Britons sent letters, they still relied on older modes of interaction to serve new needs. Like the Countess of Huntingdon, they knew a carrier and a careful hand were as trustworthy as the post.