AND ANOTHER THING
Lessons in civility from a great gentleman who put the public first
PAUL JOHNSON
History sometimes appears as a record of unrelieved human depravity. But it is also lit by flashes of unusual devotion to duty which make one feel ashamed of one's own shortcomings. Recently I have become increasingly uneasy about my failure to deal justly with my correspondence from readers. I get a lot of letters and each one merits a civil reply. But this does not hap- pen. Letters pile up and remain unan- swered for weeks, months, even years. Or, when I do answer, the reply is perfunctory. A week ago, in trying to clear a bit of space in my study, I came across a cardboard box of letters which had not even been opened. I have no secretary, apart from my wife Marigold. But she is busier than ever nowa- days, being a student psychotherapist, and I am writing a huge book. So matters are clearly going to get worse. I try to lessen my guilt by telling myself I am not the only one to behave like this. Everyone who, for whatever reason, is buttonholed by the public is also neglectful.
Unfortunately, that is not true. History gives accounts of many great men who, how- ever busy they were, treated correspondents, albeit perfect strangers, with courtesy and efficiency. I had long known of the case of the first Duke of Wellington, who received letters from tens of thousands of people. They wrote to him with their requests, com- plaints, advice and views, and he replied to them all, almost invariably in his own hand and often by return of post. His replies were terse, and not always helpful, but never rude. Thus, to a junior officer who had got in a tangle with a woman and asked for advice, the Duke replied, 'Dear Sir, You are in a devilish awkward predicament, and must get out of it as best you can. Yours etc., Wellington.' But even that was better than nothing. And some of the Duke's replies were useful and even generous. He was not above sending money in needy cases.
Now I have come across an even more reproachful example, Thomas Jefferson. Jefferson was a two-term president of the United States, 1801-9. He made it plain at the start he was to be accessible. You could call on him without an appointment or a letter of introduction and, if he could, he would see you. It is true that, unlike Calvin Coolidge, he did not answer the White House front door himself. But one stranger who arrived unannounced at 8 a.m. was immediately ushered into Jefferson's study and left some time later 'highly pleased', as he put it, 'with the affability, good sense and intelligence of the President of America'. Jefferson also let it be known that he would be glad to receive letters from the public, and that all citizens needed were paper and ink as he would pay the postage himself. This was no light concession. At that time, United States inland postage, depending on dis- tance, ranged from eight to 35 cents for a sin- gle sheet of paper. If you wrote two it cost twice as much. Jefferson's kindness was an invitation to prolixity. Some of his correspon- dents wrote him letters of 12 sheets, and if they lived in Maine or Georgia such a letter cost him over four dollars, at a time when a labourer earned a dollar a day.
A selection of the letters Jefferson got was published a few years ago by a Jeffer- son specialist, Jack McLaughlin — To His Excellency Thomas Jefferson: Letters to a President (Norton, 1991) — and it opens a curious window onto the lives of ordinary Americans at the beginning of the 19th century. Many were critical (`You infernal villain') or admonitory (`You must know there is a Plot to murder you'), yet others obsequious ('I think your Conduct as the presiding member of our government has been eminently Calculated to bring pros- perity and happiness to our Country'). Many sought employment (Permit an unfortunate Youth to approach your Pressence') or were from widows in distress ('I beg you would be so kind as to helpe me to a little money') or men who had invent- ed diving-suits, window-washing machines, hot-water guns, dental drills or from 'the invensher of a wheel that Runs perpedle with out wind or warter or Steam'.
The way Jefferson dealt with these letters is morally instructive. He had a secretary but he opened everything himself, fearing that some might contain confidences addressed to his eyes alone. He read each one himself, though some were in horrible handwriting and grievously misspelt. He replied to them all, except the merely abu- sive. He took note even of anonymous ones: 'I consider anonymous letters as suffi- cient foundation for inquiry into the facts they communicate.' Having made sure of the writer's name — not always easy — Jef- ferson wrote it on the top of the letter, plus place of origin, time dispatched and time received, and an indication of the topic 'office' (meaning job-seeking), 'yellow fever', 'assassination', 'madman' etc. A typi- cal endorsement on a letter from an inven- tor reads: 'Buchan, George, Wadsboro' N.G, July 1.07, received July 17, perpet. motion.' After this, Jefferson placed them in a file alphabetically by author and then copied each endorsement into his Summary Journal of Letters, which he later indexed. He wrote his replies with a quill, copying each, using either a fuzzy gelatine process or a polygraph of his own invention. These too he filed. In fact he kept everything. He was still at it years after he left office. He complained to another ex-president, John Adams, that in 1820 he had received 1,267 letters and replied to them all, 'many of them requiring answers of considerable research . . . As a result, from sun-rise to one or two o'clock, and often from dinner to dark, I am drudging at the writing-table.' A few days before his death in extreme old age, his wrist stiff from an old injury and his fingers aching with arthritis, he was still at his desk, drudging away. We may think that Jefferson was an odd man anyway. He never threw any bit of paper away and kept lists and accounts of everything. But to dismiss his attitude towards letters as mere compulsive behaviour is too easy, a cop-out to salve our own consciences. The fact is, he was an example to us all, a great, busy and necessi- tous man, with every conceivable temptation to attend to his estate, fiddle about in his laboratory, relax in his enormous library of 15,000 volumes, or simply to walk around the astonishing villa, Monticello, he built himself. But he insisted that his first duty was to attend to the claims of the intrusive, often selfish and self-centred, paranoid, needy, self-pitying or simply pathetic people who claimed a hearing. It was civility on a truly heroic scale and makes one proud of the human race which could produce such a man. All the same, I wish to God these paragons would not set such a good exam- ple. Now, where is that file of letters?
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