HENRY TILNEY: “As far as I have had opportunity of judging, it appears to me that the usual style of letter-writing among women is faultless, except in three particulars.”
CATHERINE MORLAND: “And what are they?”
HENRY: “A general deficiency of subject, a total inattention to stops, and a very frequent ignorance of grammar.”
—NORTHANGER ABBEY
* Add extra pages if it will not increase the recipient’s cost.
If a kind neighbor offers to carry a letter to a distant friend, take him up on it, because then you can write as much as you like.
* Always write when news is expected, whether it is good or bad. It is unkind to leave friends in suspense, and when they have no news to impart to the neighborhood, the neighborhood may make up unkind news to fill the void
* Send a half crown under the seal. This will help the recipient defray the cost of postage when a letter is not franked.
* Have a care with the direction. You would not want your friends to miss important news. Even if you are upset, take the time to write carefully!
* Write bad news only when it is definite. Do not make conjectures that will alarm your family with premature apprehension.
* Speak of more than just money. Do not make an application for financial assistance the obvious point of the letter. Ask after the folks back home, and tell them a little bit about what’s going on in your life.
* Bear in mind the consequences of your words. Do not write anything unflattering about someone you may want to impress later-such letters can be saved and produced at inconvenient times.
* Do not end a courtship via letter. No one ever looks good doing so.
OF BILLETS-DOUX
It was exceedingly improper for unmarried, unrelated persons of the opposite sex to correspond. Nonetheless, there are examples of such correspondence in almost all of Jane Austen’s novels.
* In Sense and Sensibility,Marianne Dashwood wrote several letters to Willoughby, and her acquaintances therefore assumed they were engaged. Even Elinor, who one would expect to know her sister’s secrets, began to think so.
* Pride and Prejudice’s Mr. Darcy writes a letter to Elizabeth Bennet to correct her misapprehensions about him. He seeks her out at a time when he knows she will be alone and hands her the letter, though he is uncomfortable seeing her, rather than sending a servant who might spread gossip.
* Edmund Bertram writes to Fanny Price in Mansfield Park, but she is his cousin, and he is in love with Mary Crawford at the time in any event.
* Jane Austen hints that Northanger Abbey’s Henry Tilney and Catherine Morland exchanged letters while they waited for General Tilney to change his mind about giving his blessing to their marriage. Catherine’s parents “looked the other way” because they knew that Henry and Catherine considered themselves as good as engaged and trusted that the general would change his mind eventually.
* In Persuasion, Captain Wentworth pours out his heart to Anne Elliot in a letter, which he cannot hand to her openly, but with true naval fervor he finds a way to get it to her nonetheless.
