The Bores Who Insist on Writing Letters

Several of the More Annoying Samples of Our Fervent Apostles of Epistles

GEORGE S. CHAPPELL

LETTER writing, according to Mielitz, the psychoanalyst who recently startled the Conference (July 7th, '89) of the Vercingtc Kumtwerbe by declaring Freud insane, is a definite cruelty complex of the appetitive division, Class B. the second from the left. It is an entirely subconscious, and usually subnormal reaction to the desire of one personality to establish contact with and absorb another. Mielitz cites numerous instances of this tendency. Before referring to them further I consider it only fair to the illustrious Dane,— (Mielitz's real name was Nielson: his father called him Mielitz because he (the father) was ashamed of his (the boy's) mother who was unmarried. The child was brought up in the gardener's cottage by a small duck-pond.) to mention a fact which he points out with no uncertain forefinger, namely that we must not confuse this letter writing propensity or "scripturge," as he calls it, with any of the abnormal impulses. It is subnormal rather than abnormal. "In the domain of Normality," says Miclitz with his rare directness, "thousands of folks fancy they are ab when they are merely sub."

Nor is this scripturge to be confused, Miclitz warns us, with Suppressed desires, the funny old things. An contraire, as Voltaire says, it is unsuppressed, and that is the dickens of it!

Letter writing is a rampant rage in the United States. It is symptomatic of a free country where mentality still remains fettered by abysmal ignorance. What the average individual, whose brain age is seven, going on six, thinks are ideas are merely hallucinations. One of these is that people in public life need their sympathy and advice and long to hear from them. Mr. Smith for instance, fancies that Zclla Lambert, the screen star whose beauty is said to have unhorsed the Prince of Wales on several rough parties, is interested in his ideas on her art. As a matter of fact Zella has no art and is interested only in herself and her salary. Smith writes her fully and fulsomely. Back of all this is the appetitive instinct. Old Smithy really doesn't give a whoopdidoo for Zell'sart. It is she he hungers for.

Mielitz . . . mercy, I had forgotten the old boy for a moment . . . lists fifty types of American letter writers who are constantly begging and besieging other people to come into their cosmos's. If I describe a few of them in my own words it is only because I am obliged to translate from the Italian in which the original volumes were written. (Pub. 1924 by La Soc. Anonyme des Bateauxa-vapeurs, Rue des Petits Fauxpas, Paris, Fr.)

First and foremost of those afflicted with acute scripturge is the adolescent girl of approximately seventeen whose heart, straining at the leash, falls under the spell of a movie star.

The mail of men like the Thomases, Meighan and Mix, is as large as that of the Standard Oil Co. From every corner of the country, from incredible places like Alfaloola, Kan., come guileless missives, complimentary, innocently romantic, infinitely boring. They follow a definite model. It is amazing how perfectly parallel thousands of minds are to each other.

Running from enthusiasm to coyness, they always end with a request for a photograph. The standard model for this class is as follows:

"My dear Mr.;. (insert name of favorite star) My girl friend, Lois Peapack, and I saw you last night in Leafing Love. We adored it! Lois dared me to write you and tell you so. Well, here I is! I do hope you won't think I am too bold for anything. But the picture was too adorable. Lois and I both adored it, . . . me the most! . . . and at the part where you dove down the manhole and came out of that huge big sewer pipe with the baby in your arms, well! I can tell you I applauded just as if you were there. And I couldn't help wishing you ccere. I mean in the theatre, not in the sewer, of course. (Ha ha.)

I feel just terrible to suggest it but I am going to just the same. I wonder if by any chance you have a photo of yourself that you could spare for little me? Yes? No? It would be too adorable to have it and it would have the place of honor on my bureau. But I suppose you will never read this. Anyway, I felt that I had to write and tell you how adorable Lois and I thought you were. Sincerely yours,

Helen Clapsaddle. ("Bobby") R. F. If. 26, Coo Coo, Tex. (care of Jones).

Letters of this kind come in by the tens of thousands. One famous screen actor, who was very kind hearted and conscientious, tried to answer them all personally. His health failed and he began to get queer ideas. In a moment of nervous depression he went to a fortune teller to ask what the future held in store for him. The seer ess looked him in the eve and said, "You are going to receive a letter," and the poor chap was taken screaming from the room. He is now in a private institution on Long Island.

But they are really dear, pathetic little creatures, these adolescent letter writers, with their unformed handwriting, their mis-spelling, their perfumed paper and their hungry hearts. They are sweet. How cute, the way Helen drags in her chum, Lois, to rationalize her emotion and chaperone her through the adventure! And docs she get her picture? You bet. Photographs are one of the things of which all well regulated stars have nothing else but. If you examine the picture carefully you will see that the signature is printed, but it will satisfy Helen and when she meets Lois the morning of its arrival her shriek can be heard from Coo Coo to Wampus (14 mi. good macadam), "I've got it! ! !" They kiss convulsively. "Each," says Mielitz, "is sub-consciously embracing the hero of her dreams."

Many young men went their passion in a fine spray of letters to some beautiful she whose picture has been espied in the newspaper. This type is not, as one might expect, of husky and ardent mold. On the contrary he is timorous and anemic. He has bat-cars, clammy hands and a nervous cackle. His heart burns with a frustrate glow. Actual loveliness passes him by. He turns to the papers. The rotogravure section is his meat. He devours it. He feasts his eyes on the lithe-limbed dancers, the luring actresses. But they are not for him. Even in imagination his heart fails before such obvious beauty. He must not be dragged out of his milieu, the nice and respectable.

His eyes burn over the pictures. He reads the captions. "Princess Greta of Sweden christens her father's yacht, Seaskerri, at Lallapod."

THE princess is an exquisite child, the perfeet nordic. He would like to write and tell her so but, dear me, royalty is out of his class and Lallapod is a long way off. He reads on.

"Eloise Pringle, 15-year old Mermaid, on California's sun-kissed strand." Wow! what a girl . . . what development! And only fifteen . . . still, in California . . . but that onepiccc suit? Flis mind shies, hurries on. Ah, here we have it.

"Miss Florence Braggart of Joline, Mo., one of the Daisy Chain bearers at Vassar's recent Commencement."

Florence is just his style, pretty and proper. She will understand him and his loneliness. He unlimbers his Waterman and is off.

"My dear Miss Braggart,

I hope you will pardon the intrusion of one who is unknown to you. Your picture in this morning's Herald-Tribune is my excuse. It is dandy. I don't know when I have seen anyone whose face attracted me so instantly and so strongly. In your eyes I read kindness and sympathy for those who are lonely. May 1 say, frankly, that I am such?

I would welcome a line from you telling me that you have received this, that you are not offended and that we might become friends. With your intelligence and education you will doubtless get away from Joline as much as possible. My address is the Bassett Hardware Co., Mt. Vernon, X. Y. (Tel. Mt. Vernon 407) which is only half an hour from New York.

(Continued on fage 102)

(Continued from page 66)

Hopefully yours,

E. Kendall Boffinger."

And docs Boffinger get anv answers to his letters: Sometimes, "for there are feminine Imperfect Amorists. But when Romance sees his squirrel teeth, she droops.

Another sufferer from scribitis is the motherly soul. She is motherly because she has never been a mother. All young men are adopted by her, particularly poets and authors. She writes, admiring their latest work, she "wants to be among the first" and so on. Frequently she assumes the mother's privilege of scolding her young. She lays down "Arrowsmith" and looks up with kindly, dreamy eyes. Dear Sinclair Lewis, what a remarkable boy! So industrious, So full of enthusiasm . . . but indiscreet, a little too outspoken at times. Need he mention certain things in his catalogue of human ailments? She will write him. She does so.

"My dear Mr. Lewis, (of course she wants to call him Sinclair), I have just finished Arrowsmith. I found it very interesting though I confess I should like your hero to have been a little bit more genteel. However my object in writing was to discuss another and quite different and much more important matter. You speak, on several occasions, of a disease that is never mentioned in well-bred conversations in which (when it is necessary to refer to this disease at all,) it is always described as 'the Social Evil.' Is your use of the more objectionable name justified? Do you think your book gains thereby? Could you not, in future printings, if there are any, delete this word and substitute Social Evil or, if you prefer, a line of asterisks. It seems to me that a sentence which says, "It was plain that the poor wretch was suffering from * * * *," is fully as forceful as a more explicit statement and much more delicate.

The purity of the American language, both in expression and in ideas, is largely in the hands of our authors. If you would like to talk this all over with me some day, in a nice, comfy, mother-to-son fashion, I should be delighted to have you drop in for tea. Just us two.

Cordially yours,

Edna H. Beckwith

Hotel Brumfit,

112 West 8 7th St., N. Y."

This sort of letter is one of the reasons Mr. Lewis lives in London.

The man who writes to the papers is a variant of the usual run. He is an unromantic creature, dry, fussy and, according to Mielitz (pp 67-8, vol. 3) in 83.02% of the cases has tufts of hair growing out of his cars. He has passion but it is of an intellectual kind, venting itself in outbursts of temper rather than affection. The penning of a fault-finding letter is for him the equivalent of a love passage. Every day or two he drops a line to Mr. Julian Mason of the Herald-Tribune somewhat as follows:

"Dear Sir,

Is it not time to call a halt to the increasing varieties of color in our taxicabs? Our eyes are no longer safe from the bewildering assault of these multicolored vehicles. Time was when all taxicabs were yellow. 'Call me a yellow,' we said. It was simple. Now, when we ask for a yellow, we are just as apt to get a blue, a green or a lavender. For women the conditions are much more intolerable. My wife waited for two hours on the corner of Forty-second St. yesterday before she could get a becoming taxi. What are you going to do about it?

Let me speak again, also, of the matter about which I wrote you last week, the question of garbage removal in West 5 5th St. Present conditions are a disgrace, rhe canteloupe rinds of which I spoke in my last letter arc still in the gutter in front of my house.

There is also the matter of taking up with Commissioners Harris and Enright my traffic suggestion of having all situ. one-way and the same way on alternate weekdays, traffic to be suspended on Sundays. I suggested that you take this up in an editorial campaign but have as yet seen nothing in your columns. Again, Mr. Mason, I must ask you: What are you going to do about these things?

Yours,

Roswell W. Gammage."

Newspaper columnists incite scripturge in thousands of people. Heywood Broun has only to say that he is getting too stout and he is deluged with anti-fat foods, reducing belts, diet directions, hiking maps, advertisements from Lane Bryant, dumbells, electric bath cabinets and suggestions to go chase himself. F. P. A. hints that there are no good apples any more and he is showered with enough to keep the doctor away for the rest of his life. I hese donations are accompanied by letters, wise, witty, fin tatious, earnest. Do the columnists mind: Not they. I hat is the way they fill their columns.

Organizers of radio programs are a shining mark for epistolarians. Every radio fan thinks lie is appointed by divine Providence to straighten out Roxy and his gang. They tell him to cut out the rough stuff, put in more pep, quiet it down, jazz it up, have fewer violin solos, and so on. It would be terrible if the broadcasters had to read this mail but fortunately only a few of them can read. It is rather hard when some one writes to Ben Benue, "Who was the guy that led the orchestra at WXJ last night? He had 'em on the air and off the tune all evening. For the love of Pete, can the pinch-hitting baton boy." Inasmuch as Ben was leading himself, personally, we repeat that this is rather hard.

We are all in one or more of these classes. I recognize myself in several, just which I will not say, but if those of my readers who are feminine, young and sociably inclined will send self-addressed envelopes they will be utilized to the best possible advantage.