epistles

I dipped into an old favourite this past week when I read Dear Enemy, the sequel to Daddy-Long-Legs. Although it is the sequel, I read it before I had discovered DLL and whether it is for this reason or not, I prefer it to its predecessor. Both these novels are written in an epistolary mode and (although it renders their endings slightly awkward) I thoroughly enjoy the result. I think it's a form that is under-used.

On finishing the book I also found myself longing for that time when letter writing was a common part of life. In my youth I had several pen-pals and always enjoyed writing and receiving letters. I found that the process of posting the letter was the biggest hold-up to my sending out the missives. I used to dream of the ease with which the charaters in books would simply write the letter and let a servant worry about the posting end of it.

In the past few years I have lost my pen pals and had forgotten how much I was missing in this fact until I read that book. Oh to be back in the time when such a remark as "This is where Mrs Darcy used to write her letters every morning" would be commonplace. I suppose were I to have a showcase home and have my housekeeper give tours she could use a similar line when passing the computer room but it still has not the same impact as passing through a rich library by a writing desk in the same way that an e-mail is a poor washed-out cousin to the almost out-dated letter.