Abstract for the Epistolary Cultures conference, 18–19 March 2016, York, England.
Samuli Kaislaniemi
University of Helsinki
Recent years have seen great advances in our understanding of material aspects of early modern letter-writing (esp. Daybell 2012). Where we have long known that the language of letters reflects social relations between the sender and recipient, it is now evident that the relationship also manifested in material features such as letterlocking – the folding and sealing of letters (Dambrogio 2014). This being the case, the material aspects of letter-writing must have been as highly conventionalised as those regarding the text. Full epistolary literacy, then, required an understanding of these material aspects, and the skill to apply them. Learning the nuances of these practices took time and effort, and many early modern letters written by parents to their children contain comments and instructions on these skills.
In the Cecil Papers, there survives a delightful sequence of letters between Sir Robert Cecil and his teenage son William. In a letter dated 15 May [1607?] (CP 228/19), Cecil comments on his son’s developing letter-writing skills:
I haue also sent yow a peece of paper fowlded as gentlemen vse to write theire letters, where yours are lyke those that come out of a grammer schoole.
This short passage illustrates several questions which at present we struggle to answer. We know that letter-writing was part of the curriculum in grammar schools. It would appear that materiality was a part of this, but how were pupils in grammar school taught to fold their letters?
This paper has two aims. The first is to investigate the correspondence between Sir Robert Cecil and his son William, in order to identify the practices of letterlocking alluded to in the extract above: how, exactly, should Jacobean gentlemen fold and seal their letters? How were William’s letters folded differently from his father’s?
The second aim is methodological. One common refrain in this age of digitization is that study of the original manuscripts is indispensable, especially for material features. I will show how digital images not only allow, but facilitate the study of (certain aspects of) materiality, especially when supported by the making of simulacra, of models of letters.
References
Dambrogio, Jana. 2014. “Historic letterlocking: The art and security of letterwriting. Queen Marie Antoinette’s use of removable locks in 18th century France”. Book Arts arts du livre Canada 5(2): 21-23.
Daybell, James. 2012. The Material Letter in Early Modern England. London: Palgrave Macmillan.