The Opened Letter. Lindsay O'Neill
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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