OLD-FASHIONED LETTERS - GOING, GOING, GONE?

This is a lovely illustration I picked up on pixabay.com and I replaced a few of its original photos with my own.  On the left is a wedding photo of my Mom’s parents   Next to it is a family group with my Dad sitting front left.  His mother is on the right of that group with his father behind her.  The others were an aunt and uncle and cousins.  On the right of this illustration is my Mom and Dad, taken in the early 40’s.  I also placed the camellia in a space that I could not work with on the left, also from pixabay.  It was an easy fix.

Old-Fashioned Letters

by Edgar Albert Guest

Old-fashioned letters! How good they were!

And nobody writes them now;

Never at all comes in the scrawl

On the written pages which told us all

The news of town and the folks we knew,

And what they had done or were going to do.

It seems we've forgotten how

To spend an hour with our pen in hand

To write in the language we understand.

Old-fashioned letters we used to get

And ponder each fond line o'er;

The glad words rolled like running gold,

As smoothly their tales of joy they told,

And our hearts beat fast with a keen delight

As we read the news they were pleased to write

And gathered the love they bore.

But few of the letters that come to-day

Are penned to us in the old-time way.

Old-fashioned letters that told us all

The tales of the far away;

Where they'd been and the folks they'd seen;

And better than any fine magazine

Was the writing too, for it bore the style

Of a simple heart and a sunny smile,

And was pure as the breath of May.

Some of them oft were damp with tears,

But those were the letters that lived for years.

Old-fashioned letters! How good they were!

And, oh, how we watched the mails;

But nobody writes of the quaint delights

Of the sunny days and the merry nights

Or tells us the things that we yearn to know-

That art passed out with the long ago,

And lost are the simple tales;

Yet we all would happier be, I think,

If we'd spend more time with our pen and ink.

This poem was a memory jogger for me, of my Father's handwritten letters.  I still have them kept in a draw.  His writing was that old-world scroll. To put it succinctly, he had a beautiful penmanship, and I have never seen anything like it since.  My artistic side saw its great worth.  My Mother also had a lovely handwriting, small, neat letters, but hers was in a regular style and not like the scrolling Italic written by my father.  Dad was born in 1916, and when he went to school, every letter learned was beautifully curved and formed.  It reminds me now of those written by Monks.  

Okay, that was a little bit of humor.  Dad would have appreciated it.  

Dad was a letter writer when he had the time.  I remember he sent a written thank you to someone I knew, and they showed it to me and well, criticized and made fun of it as they couldn't understand its cursive.  I was used to it I suppose and read it without missing a beat, as I still do when I get his old letters out of the drawer.  I was shocked they thought he had terrible handwriting, that it was funny, but I definitely was not amused.  My younger mind said how dare they criticize my Dad!  I was truly appauled.  I found it rude and unkind, turning his kindness into something laughable.  I was also homesick for my family (this was after I got married) which didn't help at all.  But, years later I had an ah-ha moment.

Handwriting even then was definitely evolving, or perhaps I should say, devolving.  I am not sure if it is the case now, but it was no longer being taught extensively in school anymore.  If you disagree please let me know.  Do you think handwriting is a dying art?  Today it seems like it is all keyboarding and computers.

So, this poem was definitely a memory jogger.  I feel so fortunate that I have my Dad's old letters.  I kept my Mother's too.  I always had a strong connection to my parents, even though there were many miles between us.  Their letters keep that connection going and, as I get older, I think of them more and more.

One more memory, of the first day Dad went to school.  No doubt he would have been shown his letters even at five years’ old.  This is a story he told me many, many years ago in my early teens, and he would have a good laugh during the retelling of it.  He was the youngest, having an older brother and sister by several years.  

He didn't say much about the day itself, because after only an hour or two, my Nanny, heard wailing all the way from several streets over.  As it got closer the wails got more urgent and she saw Dad hurriedly climb over the garden gate, and with big heaving sobs he ran into her arms. She picked him up and with yet more big heaving sobs, he vehemently told her he didn't like school and was never going back.  He did and went on to be an excellent student, and also an all-round sportsman.

I don't remember my first day and I have no memory of my dear Mom or Sister telling me about theirs.  But I will always have the memory of Dad and thinking about that sobbing little boy climbing over the garden gate.  It always brings a smile.  I would ask him to tell it again many times over the years, and laughter always followed.  I wish I had thought to ask what his second day was like!