The Opened Letter. Lindsay O'Neill

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СКАЧАТЬ 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.

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