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To Justine

A slit in the door: a novel concept in 1849.

‘We lay aside letters never to read them again, and at last we destroy them out of discretion, and so disappears the most beautiful, the most immediate breath of life, irrecoverable for ourselves and for others.’

– Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

‘In an age like ours, which is not given to letter-writing, we forget what an important part it used to play in people’s lives.’

– Anatole Broyard

‘There must be millions of people all over the world who never get any love letters . . . I could be their leader.’

– Charlie Brown

An early pillar box, circa 1853: ‘Not a single letter has been stolen’.