LETTERS OF Love
And what could possibly be more touching than that, asks Mary Fenwick
My family have always been avid letter writers. My grandparents wrote letters; my parents wrote letters; I my was at boarding school. I stood over my children and insisted they wrote thank-you letters.
In my family, we always knew a letter might well be passed on. It was all a bit P.G. Wodehouse: Uncle James’ letter about cousin Mabel’s peculiar behaviour being shot around the family circle (‘Jane, please read this carefully and send it on’).
Nowadays, however, I don’t have any ongoing correspondence, not like the exchanges I used to have with two great aunts. One of them wrote to me after abdominal surgery (‘My belly looks like a crinkle-cut chip’). The other, at age 86, wrote about startling her lunchtime friends with the words.
