Handwritten Letters: Surviving the Digital Age

We’ve been handwriting letters for thousands of years, but in recent times it has become a lost art as many of us use emails and text messages instead. A loss for us and possibly also for future historians, as not only have letters often revealed intimate thoughts and details of life in the past, but they enable us to touch a piece of history. Emails are unlikely to do that, and text messages certainly won’t!

So why not join Ellie as she talks to Dinah Johnson, founder of The Handwritten Letter Appreciation Society, and discover why sending and receiving letters is a special and unique way to connect with each other and our past.

For more information, including a transcript and further information, go to out website: https://www.winchesterheritageopendays.org/introduction-histbites

Transcript

Handwritten Letters: Surviving the Digital Age


Intro: Hello and welcome to Hampshire HistBites. Join us as we delve into the past and go on a journey to discover some of the county's best and occasionally unknown history. We'll be speaking to experts and enthusiasts and asking them to reveal some of our hidden heritage, as well as share with you a few fascinating untold tales.

Ellie: Hello, and welcome back to another episode of the Hampshire HistBites Podcast. I’m Ellie and I am here today with Dinah Johnson, founder and creator of the Handwritten Letter Appreciation Society. Hello Dinah.

Dinah: Hello, Ellie. 

Ellie: Thank you so much for joining me.

Dinah: Thank you for having me.

Ellie: We're going to do a quick chat on letter writing, which may not seem so important these days, but thanks to the recent pandemic, it's kind of made a comeback. And before then, Dinah, you were a big fan of letter writing anyway, weren’t you? 

Dinah: I was, yes. The pandemic, it's been a bit bittersweet in terms of shining a light back on letter writing. But I almost think it’s a silver lining in, all amongst the sadness of it. But yes, I've always loved writing letters. And before the pandemic we were trying to start a handwritten letter revival. So I set up the society back in October 2017, and it's just been the most lovely time meeting so many likeminded people and just finding out that people do still really like writing letters. 

Ellie: Please tell me a little bit more, for our listener, what does the Handwritten Letter Appreciation Society do? How does it work and what do you end up with? 

Dinah: Well, it started off as a bit of fun, really. Just to do something with all this enthusiasm for letter writing. It's just a really simple idea to encourage, inspire people to keep writing letters to each other. That's the premise of the whole thing. 

Ellie: Yeah. 

Dinah: So, we're not a pen pal club. I mean, obviously people can write to me if they want to, but it's more about getting people to write to their friends and family and spreading the word. We do have membership. Obviously, you don't have to be a member to write letters, but if you wanted to be a member, we have 363 members from 21 countries. All seven continents. 

Ellie: Wow.

Dinah: I had to gift membership to the Penguin Post Office in Antarctica, because nobody lives there, so it’s the only continent we couldn't get anyone. And I did get a letter back from there that was written on a piece of barometer paper from the museum there. I don't know if I should be telling you that. I'm not sure if you should have taken it out. So if you want to join it's, from the UK, it's £5 for life membership and you get a personalized certificate, you get a little badge and you get a postcard, which you can keep or send, it comes with an envelope and a little letter from me that goes with it.  

Ellie: So we kind of got involved with this thanks to the new postbox movement on Twitter, didn't we? 

Dinah: So I had been missing getting out and about as we all have in lockdown and through the Postal Museum, they'd done something about a postcard that had possibly had a pillar box on it, and I said: ‘Oh, I’d would love to see pillar boxes or post boxes in remote places.’ Started the Postbox Saturday hashtag, and then bumped into the Postbox Challenge in Hampshire and Winchester. It was just lovely to know that there were other people who, equally, were a little bit nerdy about post boxes. Although I'm not so much the nerd, but I just love them. 

Ellie: Yeah. So it started with the postboxes and then we kind of turned our attention to the actual art of letter writing and thinking about why it was such an important - is past time the correct word?

Dinah: Well, I know people see it as a sort of hobbyish thing, but for me, it's just always been something I've done. And I think people who do write letters, it's just part of their life but it's trying to get other people to do that as well.

I would like to say about the irony about meeting people on Twitter and people would be like, ‘Well, how does that work, if you're into handwritten letters?’ So I've always said that I'm not against the digital world, I love it as much as everybody else. I text people, you know, I email, I do all of that. It was just, to set the society up was because it was enthusiasm for writing letters, and it was to put letters back on the map for people as much as anything. And the postboxes, yeah, they’re these little portals, you can send a little bit of you and goes in an envelope and it, you pop it in this, red pillar box, post box and then usually the very next day it's got to its destination in the UK and that I found amazing. And they're just iconic, our post boxes. 

I have been trying to say to people take a photo but put a letter in one otherwise you might end up losing them as well.  

Ellie: Absolutely. So of course letter writing became more available when Queen Victoria set up what was then the Royal Mail. Possibly the first recorded letter being written, is from 500 BC, from Queen Atossa in Persia. You’ve got a picture, I love it. And then of course, Queen Victoria brought in the first stamped letter in 1840, which made the hobby, past time activity possibly far more available to a lot more people because before, to my knowledge, the letter was delivered by hand and was paid for on receipt depending on how long the letter was and how long the journey was.

Dinah: And so if you didn't have the money, you might not be able to accept it, would you?

Ellie: No, absolutely. 

Dinah: And you were saying about it being a hobby or a pastime, but in those days, that was the only way of communicating. And partly, this was why I set up the society as well, because from the 1990’s, it obviously has dropped off with the birth of the internet. It's all very exciting and texting each other is brilliant but it’s kind of stopped then. So before, that was the way we communicated. Depending when you were born, I obviously remember when that was the only way to get a message to somebody. I mean, obviously we could telephone, we did have telephones as well, but I went on an expedition to Belize and we didn't have mobile phones. We were out in the jungle and we did get aerograms, prepaid. You know, I've kept the ones that I got then. I couldn't have kept a phone call. So to keep that letter, it's like a museum exhibit. Obviously, people who didn't have the internet before the 1990’s, that was a way of communicating. So once the internet came in, people sort of stopped and actually it was much more convenient. You knew whether somebody got your message or not. And it's only now we’re sort of thinking of this handwritten letter revival and with coronavirus, how people have gone, ‘Oh yeah, actually when you're stuck at home, on your own, getting a letter, I've got this time now to write letters. I'd forgotten how lovely that was.’  

Ellie: With social media and things now, life is so open and you are essentially very vulnerable to a lot of people's opinions. With letter writing, do you find that people are more closed off or is it a different kind of openness, vulnerability?

Dinah: Well, the other thing that I've been trying to encourage is a quiet revolution in the art of intimacy. So, I'll tell you something in my letter and that's solely for you. I'm on Twitter and Facebook and all of those with the society to get the message out there, and it's nice to share with millions. But, also, something really special about knowing that your letter is just to one other person. It's an audience of one. And I don't know if people know that a lot of children won't have, or adults as well, won't have even had one letter that's purely for them. And that's really sad. I feel that’s up there with never seeing the sea or seeing a cow. So that intimacy, that one to one that we're going to miss if we don't do this. You have to be quite resilient [with social media], whereas you don't in a letter. And I always joke with my society that I'm not the letter police, so you don't have to ask me, just write what you want. I'm not stickler for beautiful cursive handwriting or the right formats. Obviously if you want a letter in return, put your address on. If you want it to get there, research the address that you want to send it to, but it's the fact that it's from you. Fancy paper, fancy pens - beautiful, but that's not the message behind it. It is about actually writing to that person. I'd say the only golden rule we have for the society is to say to people not to share them on the internet - maybe quotes, I think quotes are fine. And obviously you can share it with loved ones in the house or friends and go, ‘look at this letter that I got’. But putting the whole letter without permission - if it’s an open letter that somebody wants you to put on the internet, that's fine. But it's that little bit of trust. 

Ellie: And I think that's what the lovely thing is in my experience of writing letters and having that kind of communication with family members is there's always a little detail in there that is solely for you.

And when we use letters as primary sources in academic study or research, we cross those little lines and in the same way, looking at somebody's Twitter account, we look far deeper into their lives and understand people on a different level. 

Dinah: I think, like you're saying you're finding a deeper insight into the people that you're researching in a historical context, you only have to do that with your own friends writing to each other. So I've got a friend who lives in Wareham, we've known each other 10/15 years, but because I set up this society, I guess to humour me, my friend would write me letters. We started to write more letters to each other and just see a side to them. My own children have sent letters to me in my own house and again, there's sides of them. I thought I knew my children really well, but also, that’s really funny, a funny sense of humour or an insight. And that is obviously the same for famous people in the past that you're researching. So it's being respectful of that information, I suppose as well, isn't it? In terms of historical referencing.

Ellie: Yes, absolutely. So there's a couple of projects going on at academic level currently with letter writing and sharing letters. Does that then pose a problem for historians? Should we be looking at these letters? Should we be researching them as we do and referencing them in works? Or do we leave the letters to lie? Because they are such personal artifacts. Where does the fine line go? 

Dinah: It is a fascinating question and I'm not sure I know the answer. I mean, everybody feels voyeuristic reading other people's letters, but if you're passionate about history and the people in it, you wouldn't miss that opportunity to read them, would you, and find out? So, I don't know. I guess if they're long gone, you know, they're not going to come back and haunt you.

I brought in a book that a friend gave me, Jane Austen's letters. A famous Hampshire resident.

Ellie:  Yes, absolutely

Dinah: There's one written on the 14th of September in 1804, and it is really interesting to see what she's written. I mean, it's all typed out. I love the fact that you see somebody’s handwriting, knowing – a lot of people don't know their loved ones handwriting, that's part of the charm of letters and the magic of them, to see your loved ones handwriting or see a past person's handwriting because it says so much about them. It's just so unique to that person. I'm a sort of collector of my family's handwriting as well. I want a bit of everyone's handwriting.  

I think people are always going to publish people's letters if the family are in agreement. So a letter, the physical letter belongs to the recipient, but the words in the letter belong to the person who wrote it. Copyrights - that was quite interesting. 

So there's a big project, the Prize Papers from the National Archives. That's a big ongoing thing. So these letters that were taken off boats that were captured, so 250 years ago, that were prizes. And so they're just working out and archiving what to do with them. So letters that were going across to America, there's thousands of them. They've invented this technology so you can read them, I sort of think, part of me is like, ‘Well, if you were going to do that, you might as well just open it.’ But from a historian’s point of view, I don't know whether it's best to keep it like that. 

Ellie: It's a tricky one, but it sounds like a fascinating project. I had no idea that, that was even going on, or that the library held those artifacts. 

Dinah: It was to do with when they captured the boat, it was evidence that the boat was theirs, so they kept all the contents and a lot of them were the letters that were on there as well.

Ellie: So there's 160,000 undelivered letters. Still in their mailbags. And the letters document the experience of ordinary people during the American and French Revolutionary Wars, and even the Napoleonic conflicts and they date from 1652 to 1815. That's brilliant. That they still survive and they're still there. 

Dinah: It's still unread, people's news and some of it will be mundane probably, but it meant so much more then, didn't it? Sending that letter because you couldn't just ring ahead and go ‘Did you get my letter? Did you get my news?’ That bit of news in there, it might have contained exciting news, might have contained declarations of love or death, any of those things and they never got there, which I guess people might say, well, that happens these days as well, but there's other ways of getting a message, isn't there?

The writing the letters now, I mean, I always think that letters are in the here and now, it's about in the moment you get it and people do tend to keep letters. So for historians in the future, there's going to be a gap, isn't there? For about 30 years when only a few hardcore letter writers carried on writing letters. So encouraging people to do that now, it means there will be a more varied view of the world.

Ellie: With the art of letter writing sort of dying over the last 15 to 20 years, 30 years, there'll be a lack of oral history on the time. I recently found my great uncle's diary from the Blitz when he was 14 and we've transcribed that and typed it up, but it's just another opinion on what was happening of somebody living through it, a voice that is now gone. Are we losing that aspect of history and of sources?

Dinah: Well, I think it obviously will exist. It's all on the internet and people's hard drives, it’s whether we'll be able to access that. I guess people will always keep old technology and be able to access it, but it won't be quite the same. 

Ellie: And that's what's so brilliant about history is that so much of it you can hold still.

Dinah: Yes.

Ellie: You know, when you find a letter from grandparent to grandparent from 60 years ago, or a relative’s letter from 150 years ago it’s that, ‘Oh my goodness. This is real. They held that.’

Dinah: They wrote this. And it's a different way of communicating, isn't it? We do share all our lives on the internet, but it’s not the same medium, is it? You sit down and write a letter. You take the time to do it. You think, you document almost, in a way – you’re not doing it to document, you're doing it to write a friendly letter, hopefully, but – it’s there isn't it. Now everything’s all sort of fragmented, sort of ‘Oh, we went to this barbecue and here's some pictures of it’ and pulling all that together to make a story of somebody will be much harder.

Whereas a letter is this thing that, it's travelled through time, hasn't it? And it's from that moment. We will be able to piece people's lives together, but it just wouldn't be the same as having somebody's thoughts on paper. 

Ellie: Possibly not as honest. Through my family photos and things like that, there's always a postcard. Postcards, are they at risk of going as well?

Dinah: There's an argument that postage is quite expensive. If you send lots and lots of postcards, then you've got one little tiny bit to write on, haven't you, to send, it can be quite expensive, but the joy that gives somebody, when you get a postcard and the fact that you can send that all the way to Scotland and it would get there in a day or two. So I don't begrudge the cost of postage, but postcards I think there has been a bit of a revival. People collect postcards, don’t they? I understand, like, people who collect stamps and postcards, but I always feel they're kind of made for sending. So, those stamps there, I should keep those, those lovely anniversary stamps, but I can't help myself but send them, because I always think the person that gets this will be really excited to get this and it's the same with a postcard. I've got a whole box full of old postcards and they're so fascinating. I sort of feel like I should keep them, but I'm going to send them. They need to be sent.

Ellie: Do you go out and do talks or events? Have you got anything planned that people could get involved in? 

Dinah: Well, obviously in the current climate, there's nothing this year. We were meant to be going to the Thomas Hardy Victorian Fair in Dorchester to take letter writing. So all the celebrations will be happening next year for that because obviously Thomas Hardy was an avid letter writer, wasn't he, much like Jane Austen. But I will say actually, when you write letters, don’t get hung up and think you've got to be as good as those, just, you know, just go for it. The first year we had a shepherd's hut from Plankbridge, I think it was, it was in a Chelsea Flower Show garden. And that was amazing, just because I'd written to them and said, ‘Would you mind bringing that?’ And then the second year we had two gypsy caravans, which brought a lot of people over, but yeah, it was really lovely.

We have our third birthday coming up. I was hoping to get to the Postal Museum up in London to do something with the Prize Papers. I wasn't entirely sure what, but we were going to meet the Keeper of the National Archives. Hopefully, some things will be on there but it, it will always be on the websites. I put the events up there. 

Ellie: Perfect. Isuppose what my final question then is, what are the perfect conditions for writing a letter? 

Dinah: If you're very good at blocking out noise, it doesn't matter, anywhere. I always like to see where people write letters from. I have my little letter writing shed at the garden, which I've commandeered. Family not allowed in it. I like to unplug, leave all the internet stuff, phones, down in the house and go in. But I went out on the coast the other day and sat and wrote some cards just sitting on a stone.

Ellie: Well, brilliant. Thank you so much, Dinah. This has been so interesting and to any listener, let us know where you write your letters and if you're interested in having a look at the Handwritten Letter Appreciation Society, we'll include all the links on our blog page. Thank you.

Outro: We hope you enjoyed listening to today's episode. If you'd like to find out a little bit more about what we've been talking about, then please visit the website, winchesterheritageopendays.org, click on Hampshire HistBites, and there you'll find today's show notes as well as some links to more information. 

Thank you for listening.