Now, in 2025, the number of letters being written are very few. In Denmark a decision has been made to stop collecting and delivering letters because the cost is now so prohibitive and there has been a 90% drop in the us of letter delivery. Given the annual and sometimes sharp increases in postage in the UK, it will not surprise me if we go the same way. Yet, letter writing by those who still know how to write them, is one of the most satisfying activities for communicating that I know. The simple reason being is that it is personal, can be funny, always informative and cheers the recipient up, usually.
My local postman often jokes with me that I am probably the only person in our street that continues to write a letter and receive them. Although I don’t always get a reply. My recipient will either phone or email me.
It was not always like that. When I was a child, I was taught at school how to write a letter. Address in the top right corner, date beneath and the beginning on the left-hand side with an endearment, usually ‘Dear….’ to begin. I don’t remember my first letters which were probably thankyou letters of one kind or another, but I do remember when I was 13 and had moved home for the second time in my life, my mother encouraged me to have a pen pal. In 1960 that was quite a common thing and there were organisations set up in a lot of countries that arranged pen pal matchings. I wrote to one in London and after being asked to tick a few profile boxes I was automatically allocated someone of my own age who lived in Canada. We did exchange letters, about two, I think. Then it just didn’t continue. I’m sure that was the case for many.
When I left school, letter writing was essential for all sorts of activities. It was not just for keeping in touch with distant relatives and friends but also for purchases that are now all done online. My most memorable purchase were for tickets to see Bob Dylan at the Royal Albert Hall on his first tour of the UK in May 1965. I applied for two tickets priced at seven shillings and sixpence each (35 pence in new money). The process of getting tickets was by ballot. My letter had to include a postal order for the price of the tickets and a stamped addressed envelope for the return of the tickets, if I was successful, or the return of the postal order if I was not. I was successful. There is nothing more exciting than receiving a letter through the letter box that you had been looking forward to. Unless it was a letter to disappoint you, such as when you had applied for a job or a position that was not going to be successful.
Letter writing was also a lifeline to and from the people who are most close to you.
I left home when I was nineteen and moved from Surrey to Nottinghamshire. I had joined a large, Anglican, religious community to test my vocation in the church. From this point on, every week without fail, my mother wrote to me and continued to do so, but not weekly, wherever I went to live during my life. First in Kent, then in London, then in Scotland.
Grace Carver was a member of the last generation of the Walker family who were a very successful dynasty of provision merchants who had originated from Rotherhithe, on the River Thames. Her Great Grandfather eventually became a Cheese Merchant importing cheeses from the world with his office near London Bridge. Two of his sons went into the trade but not with their father. Grace’s Grandfather was so successful, it seems, that he lived most of his life in the village of Offord D’Arcy in Huntingdonshire, as a Man of Independent Means. That is according to all the records that I have been researching on him.
Grace’s mother married a Dairyman, a trade that enabled her parents to bring up four daughters and leave an estate that benefitted those daughters and sixteen grandchildren. Grace Wilcox wrote many letters to her daughters, but she was better known for her witty humorous verse, usually describing her recent visit to somebody’s house in the family.
Returning to my mother, Grace Carver, although her letter writing was prolific, it was always brief, informative and always with cheer and optimism. Initially, her letters to me, they were also a life saver. She always sent me copy of our local newspaper, folded into a square, wrapped in brown paper, and nearly always containing a packet of cigarettes. For some reason, they were nearly always Capstan Full Strength. They were not my usual smoke, but I think my mother had seen me with the brand once and it just stuck in her mind that it was my chosen brand. Her letters told me all that she had done that week and who she had seen in the family.
In 1969 I moved to Kent to start a new career. My mother’s letters followed me. They were no longer a lifesaving parcel, we had moved on. Her letters were never less frequent but had reduced possibly to two a month. I was close enough to visit home three or four times a year.
I never saved the letters that she wrote to me until I moved to Scotland much later, in the 1980’s. All the letters that she wrote to me after I left home and for the many years after, would have gone into the wastepaper basket. Not immediately, but after the occasional clear out of my desk or table. I cannot remember saving any letters that I received from my friends during this time either.
I have always been impressed by those writers and academics that retained all their correspondence which were then later, posthumously, published for everyone to read. A favourite of mine is a book of letters to and from Lord Bertrand Russell, the philosopher and antiwar campaigner, appropriately titled “Dear Bertrand Russell…” This book was not published posthumously because he wrote a preface to it. Published in 1969, its first letter was from someone living in Formosa, now Taiwan, and the writer simply asks, “Dear Lord Russell, how are you, Lord Russell?”. To which he replies, “Dear Mr. Lin, Thank you for your letter. I am fine. I am struggling against nuclear warfare which I feel is important. I hope you are well also. With good wishes, – and thanks for your photo, Yours sincerely, Bertrand Russell.”
Russell’s correspondence in this book was mostly fan mail from people who admired him and wanted to discuss important issues such as peace and politics.
When I moved to Scotland in 1987, I continued to write letters and receive them. I also started to keep them. Not everything has been saved but I was quite surprised when I started looking through my folders and boxes at what I had saved.
My mothers’ letters are heartwarming to read again. One thing she was not always good at doing was putting the date on them. She probably wrote so many and felt that they were a way of connecting rather than recording. I have managed to work out a few where I can recognise the year that they were written. They always told me about her most recent activities which later in her life centred around the Women’s British Legion, and walking the promenade at Eastbourne in Sussex where she moved to in the 1990’s.
Grace Carver mostly wrote about her zest for life and living and seizing every day that she stayed alive. One letter that is particularly poignant was written during the last weeks of my father’s life in 1996. It described the challenges of visiting him in a hospice and how she was overcoming them.
Grace was born on 11th April, 1915, 110 years ago this week.
Next week I shall write about her letters and sample some of them to illustrate her character and personality.
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