The Opened Letter. Lindsay O'Neill

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СКАЧАТЬ 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 СКАЧАТЬ