The one person in whose behalf I regret your withdrawal into private life is your wife, whom I had the pleasure of taking in to the aforesaid dinner. It was evident to me that she was a woman whose spirit was well-nigh broken by her conjunction with you. Such remnants of cheerfulness as were in her I attributed to the Parliamentary duties which kept you out of her sight for so very many hours daily. I do not like to think of the fate to which the free and independent electors of West Odgetown have just condemned her. Only, remember this: chattel of yours though she is, and timid and humble, she despises you in her heart.
I am, dear Mr. Pobsby-Burford,
Yours very truly,
Harold Thistlake.
Letter from Young Lady in Answer to Invitation from Old Schoolmistress
My dear Miss Price,
How awfully sweet of you to ask me to stay with you for a few days but how can you think I may have forgotten you for of course I think of you so very often and of the three years I spent at your school because it is such a joy not to be there any longer and if one is at all down it bucks one up directly to remember that thats all over atanyrate and that one has enough food to nurrish one and not that awful monottany of life and not the petty fogging daily tirrany you went in for and I can imagin no greater thrill and luxury in a way than to come and see the whole dismal grind still going on but without me being in it but this would be rather beastly of me wouldn’t it so please dear Miss Price dont expect me and do excuse mistakes of English Composition and Spelling and etcetera in your affectionate old pupil,
Emily Therese Lynn-Royston.
ps, I often rite to people telling them where I was edducated and highly reckomending you.
Letter in Acknowledgment of Wedding Present
Dear Lady Amblesham,
Who gives quickly, says the old proverb, gives twice. For this reason I have purposely delayed writing to you, lest I should appear to thank you more than once for the small, cheap, hideous present you sent me on the occasion of my recent wedding. Were you a poor woman, that little bowl of ill-imitated Dresden china would convict you of tastelessness merely; were you a blind woman, of nothing but as odious parsimony. As you have normal eyesight and more than normal wealth, your gift to me proclaims you at once a Philistine and a miser (or rather did so proclaim you until, less than ten seconds after I had unpacked it from its wrapping of tissue paper, I took it to the open window and had the satisfaction of seeing it shattered to atoms on the pavement). But stay! I perceive a possible flaw in my argument. Perhaps you were guided in your choices by a definite wish to insult me. I am sure, on reflection, that this was so. I shall not forget.
Yours, etc.,
Cynthia Beaumarsh.
P.S. My husband asked me to tell you to warn Lord Amblesham to keep out of his way or to assume some disguise so complete that he will not be recognized by him and horsewhipped.
PPS. I am sending copies of this letter to the principal London and provincial newspapers.
Letter from . . .
But enough! I never thought I should be so strong in this line. I had not foreseen such copiousness and fatal fluency. Never again will I tap these deep dark reservoirs in a character that had always seemed to me, on the whole, so amiable.Under the title "The Complete Letter-Writer," a version of the essay "How Shall I Word It?" first appeared in the Saturday Review in 1910. This revised version was printed under its present title in the collection And Even Now, by Max Beerbohm (William Heinemann, 1921)
