Postscripts

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Title:     Postscripts
Author: William Davenport Adams [More Titles by Adams]

There is, and long has been, a prevalent impression that the penning of postscripts is peculiarly characteristic of the feminine letter-writer. Cynics have even gone so far as to assert that no woman can indite an epistle without the addition of a 'P.S.,' and, in support of this grievous aspersion, have been wont to trot out the venerable 'chestnut' about the lady who accepted from her husband a bet that she would not send him a letter without the inevitable addendum--the result being that, after having composed the epistle and signed her name, she artlessly appended the observation, 'You see I have written you a letter without a postscript,' capping it with 'Who has won the wager, you or I?'

It might be argued, even if it could not be proved, that, putting aside mere business communications, and confining one's self to ordinary social correspondence, men are guilty of as many postscripts as women are. But even if the stereotyped charge against the ladies be really well-founded, what of it? Does it convey any tangible reproach? What harm is there in a 'P.S.,' or a 'P.P.S.'? It may be not only a defensible, but positively a praiseworthy, thing. Often it proceeds from nothing more condemnable than a genuine overflow of feeling--a stream of sentiment which, checked by the signature of the writer, bursts its bonds and reasserts its power in a final sentence or two. What could be more charming, for example, than the instances of this afforded in so many of the heroic Lady Russell's letters to her husband--as in that particularly pleasing one in which, after assuring him that all the household are well, and that as he is 'the most enduring husband in the world,' so she is 'the most grateful wife,' she adds her signature, and then recurs to the subject of her children--'Boy is asleep, girls singing abed'--telling of the proposed kindness of a neighbour towards them.

Note, again, the superabundant playfulness of Cowper in one of his epistles to Lady Hesketh, where, after a few lines of personal description, he appears to conclude, but returns to the topic with a

'P.S.--That the view I give you of myself may be complete I add the following items: That I am in debt to nobody, and that I grow fat.'

Sometimes there will be pathos in a postscript, as in the case of Beethoven's touching communication to his brothers Carl and Johann in the matter of his deafness. In the body of the letter he has been begging them not to think him hostile, morose, or misanthropical, and making clear to them how little they know of the secret cause of his apparent indifference. Then, on the outside of the packet, comes this last melancholy outpouring:

'Thus, then, I take leave of you, and with sadness too. The fond hope I brought with me here [to Heiligenstadt] of being to a certain degree cured, now utterly forsakes me. As autumn leaves fall and wither, so are my hopes blighted.'

Of this spontaneous running-over from text into postscript, literature has many specimens--none, perhaps, more effective in its way than the kindly stanza with which Mr. Bret Harte makes Truthful James bring to a close 'His Answer to Her Letter':

'P.S.--Which this same interfering
Into other folks' ways I despise,
Yet if it so be I was hearing
That it's just empty pockets as lies
Betwixt you and Joseph, it follers
That, having no family claims,
Here's my pile; which it's six hundred dollars,
As is yours, with respect, Truthful James.'

One might, indeed, say more for postscripts than that they are often pardonable; they are often actually useful. They can be bent to the service of the writer; and over and over again, I dare say, have been appended with careful deliberation. They are invaluable as modes of emphasizing matter contained within the limits of the letter proper. They form 'last words' which can be charged with any measure of significance. Many people remember the case of the sailor who, after mentioning thrice in the course of one short epistle the desired purchase of some pigtail, felt constrained to add yet another reminder in the shape of a 'P.S.--Don't forget the pigtail.' Not less impressive, probably, was Sir Hew Dalrymple when, writing in 1775 to a friend to exhort him to give preferment to a worthy young cleric, he observed, in a postscript:

'Think what an unspeakable pleasure it will be to look down from heaven and see Rigby, Masterton, all the Campbells and Nabobs, swimming in fire and brimstone, while you are sitting with Whitefield and his old women, looking beautiful, frisking and singing; all which you may have by settling this man!'

There can be no question that a well-planted 'P.S.' is of great utility in clinching an argument raised in the main portion of a communication. Thus, when Artemus Ward wrote 'to the editor of ----,' asking for a line concerning the state of the show business in his locality, he knew what he was about. 'I shall hav my hanbills dun at your offiss,' he observed. 'Depend upon it. I want you should git my hanbills up in flamin' stile. Also git up a tremenjus excitement in yr. paper 'bout my onparaleld Show. We must fetch the public sumhow.' Then, at the end, came the summing-up of the whole transaction: 'P.S.--You scratch my back and Ile scratch your back.' There is at least one instance on record in which a postscript was made to convey a smart reproof. Talleyrand, having one day entrusted a valet with a letter to deliver, happened to look out of the window, and saw the man reading the message en route. Next day he despatched another letter to the same address by the same servant, taking care to append to it the following: 'P.S.--You may send a verbal answer by the bearer. He is perfectly acquainted with the whole affair, having taken the precaution to read this previous to delivery.'

On the whole, whether postscripts are defensible or not, it is clear that their history is eminently interesting. Some valuable matter has from time to time been put into them. There is at least one letter of Thomas Gray's, written in 1764 to the Rev. Norton Nicholls, the 'P.S.' of which is worth the whole of the remainder of the communication, so charming a bit of descriptive writing is embodied in it. Then, how full of good stuff are the epistolary addenda of Charles Lamb, with whom 'the cream of the correspondence' (as Tony Lumpkin has it) was very often rather in the postscript than in 'the inside of the letter,' in the sense of its larger portion. It is in one of these addenda that one finds the first record of a well-known sentence: 'Summer, as my friend Coleridge waggishly observes, has set in with its usual severity.' Elsewhere one comes across such tributes as: 'My friend Hood, a prime genius and hearty fellow, brings this.' Always characteristic in thought and in expression, Lamb was never more so than in the finales to his letters. 'I do not think your handwriting at all like ----'s,' he says to Southey; 'I do not think many things I did think.' He winds up a dog-Latin epistle to Bernard Barton, in 1831, with: 'P.S.--Perdita in toto est Billa Reformatura.' And to Coleridge he says, with delightful frankness:

'Write your German as plain as sunshine, for that must correct itself. You know I am homo unius linguae: in English--illiterate, a dunce, a ninny.'

Sometimes a postscript is unconsciously full of humour, as in the case of a note written by a certain Mr. O. to a recent Bishop of Norwich:

'Mr. O----'s private affairs turn out so sadly that he cannot have the pleasure of waiting upon his lordship at his agreeable house on Monday next.--N.B. His wife is dead.'

[The end]
William Davenport Adams's essay: Postscripts

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