THE SHADES OF CORRECTNESS

Evening Post, Volume CXXV, Issue 148, 25 June 1938, Page 27

THE SHADES OF CORRECTNESS

A delicate situation seems to have developed in Burma, where a member of the House of Representatives, in defiance of all official propriety, has addressed a letter to the Governor beginning "My Dear Cochrane," says the "Manchester Guardian." The nearest parallel to that enormity whiclvone remembers -Was that of a certain Captain Phillimore, R.N. At one time the Lords of the Admiralty had a kindly way of closing letters addressed to post captains on distant duty by describing themselves ■ as "Your affectionate friends." Phillimore thought that he could no no better than reply in the same way, so bringing down on him a rebuke from Whitehall. This he acknowledged as follows:— "I have received your Lordships' dispatch, and can assure you that I will never again sign myself.—Your affectionate friend. Phillimore." At the other end of the scale might be quoted Horace Walpole's pathetic

complaint against a friend who had outraged the proprieties of intimacy by a formal address. "My dearest Harry, how could you write me such a cold letter as I have just received from you, and beginning 'Dear sir'?" It is true that the shades of correctness in this respect were studied more carefully l in the past than now. At the age of twenty the. elder Pitt always wrote to his mother as "Honoured Madam." Once he was of age the form became "Dear Madam," as if a man in the twenties might be allowed a little liberty. With his sister he seems to have progressed in the opposite direction, from "My dear Nanny" to "Dear Sister." In Victorian times people addressed their servants without any prefix— "John" or "Jane," which nowadays looks a little bleak. But when giltedged paper was essential in writing to an Archbishop there were almost innumerable shadei.