Letters written by my parents

and my grandparents and even by my great-grandparents have appeared during the sorting and packing going on here. There have not been a lot of letters but the few which are there are interesting.

I have looked at each of them of course.  They are there on thin, yellowing paper. Almost all of them use pen and ink rather than a biro. The oldest ink has gone that unique shade of brown. The most recent is still blue but it is fading. The biro remains blue...or black but there is very little written in it.

My mother wrote letters, a lot of letters. There was a time when she wrote one letter each night of the week. Six of them would be sent to the three of her four children living away from home in order to go on with our schooling. The seventh, written on Sunday evenings, would be sent to her mother. Our letters were short, sometimes not filling a page. Mum simply wanted us to know she was there, our father was there and our youngest sibling was there. They never said a lot. The letter to her mother was longer. It had to be or her mother would have complained she was not being told "everything".  

Mum found letter writing physically easy. She had lovely handwriting and her pen just flowed across the page. It is little wonder that she was on what they called "the Handwriting Committee".  She despaired of all of us, particularly of the Senior Cat and me. 

The Senior Cat wrote to his parents. I saw little evidence of that but he wrote to them on a regular basis from the time of his first (and very remote) posting as a teacher. He was a very long way from home and letters took several days to arrive. His mother would write to him and his father would add something to these.  Once married the letters continued. Grandpa also wrote regularly to his cousin in Scotland and to his siblings.

I found two letters written by my  paternal great-grandmother and I wish the family had saved hers. She was a crofter's daughter but, like many Scots, she had a very good education for as far as it went. Her actual handwriting is of that era, almost copperplate style. Her language is brisk. I am told she wrote to every one of her children who was not within her sight on at least a weekly basis. Yes, she had eleven children and, in her late sixties and her seventies, she was running a dairy farm. When she returned to the city in her eighties she continued to write. The letters are lost of course but they might have made fascinating reading. She had a social awareness far in advance of her time.

On the other side of the family my maternal grandmother wrote to a cousin in another state but there was little contact between anyone else apart from Mum. We did not even know she had a second brother until I found evidence of him in genealogical records. He was never mentioned. My maternal grandfather had siblings in the same city. They visited each other occasionally but none of them seemed to write to him or each other. Still, I found a letter from his father while doing "missionary" work at an aboriginal settlement. It makes curious reading being full of flowery religious sentiments. 

I doubt there will be any more unexpected finds but the little I have found is of interest to my generation and will be to the next. They are there waiting to be passed on for others to read. I look at them and think the art of letter writing has been lost. We email each other or phone. It is not the same. What we have to say to each other will not be there for the next generation. How will they find us?