POLITE POSTCARDS.

Thames Star, Volume LVII, Issue 14727, 4 August 1921, Page 7

POLITE POSTCARDS.

IN PLACE OP LETTERS.' BY WARD MUIR. The postcard has. almost killed the "chatty" letter. Few people of the present generation in any case write the long, gossipful letters which were customary in Early Victorian times. Those letters were carefully kept, 'and much historically important literature has been based on them.

Theoretically they were due to the leisured habits of the day. Actually their cause was dear postage.

It was held that a letter was an extravagance; and the person ;who wrote one felt that he might as well write at length while he was abou£ it.

Penny postage diminished the face value Of all letters, and the "chatty" letters of our mothers and grandmothers (for men seldom wrote them) was'a kind of faint endeavour to maintain a custom already moribund.

The postcard has almost killed the "chatty" letter—because experience shows that news is the only thing that matters in a friendly correspondence. And all the .news can be squeezed on to a postcard's, back.

Are "chatty" letters likely to come in again now that the postcard is to be made dearer? "*

, It is to be hoped not. The "chatty" letter, nine times out of ten, is a simple display of vanity on the part of the writers. It is an attempt to be" clever—and the world of today has no- time for attempts at cleverness. In the "chatty" letter there is a straining after effect; and the one important factor in a good letter—namely* the conveying of information, of news—is neglected in favour of such phrases as: "I keep wondering whether " "There are moments when I think

"This morning when I woke and looked at the white clouds "

all of which constitute mere egoisms, and generally are imitations of the sentimental epistles which figure in novels.

Now in the heyday of letter-writ-ing there were long letters but there was little if any "chattiness." Though we speak of the art of let-ter-writing, when we allude to the wonderful correspondents of that era, the truth is that the art was intrinsic in the theme. And the theme of the finest letters' of the finest let-ter-writing period's "was always news. This is what the "chatty" letter writer is too conceited to grasp; that length in a letter, is only justified by interestingness, and intercstingness is only to be found in news. Such.phrases as "I keep wondering whether " are not news; and the woman who spends ink and energy on page after page of these pseudo-conversational outpourings would be much better employed in dusting her drawingroom or indulging in a hearty game of lawn tennis. \

Previously, as a little self-discip-line, she could do as other sensible women have learnt to do—say all she has got to say on the back of a postcard. %

For the fallacy that postcards are not polite is exploded. A news-con-veying postcard is not only more interesting than the vapourings of the average "chatty" letter—it is also a sign of better manners.