Sheffield Retro column: I'm gonna sit right down and write myself a letter

Write a letter? When was the last time you actually wrote one? To yourself or to anyone else.

Not an email or text or a quickly scribbled signature on a card with ready printed sentiments.

But a letter that you sit down to write, with a pen and possibly sealed with a loving kiss. Oh, and post in a postbox!

There are very few of my Christmas cards that ever include a personal message and I think what is the point? Some people you have not seen for years and it would be good to see how life is treating them.

It seems that letters are now a part of history and fast disappearing.

One in 10 schoolchildren have never written a letter by hand but by contrast almost half of all pupils use Facebook or other forms of social media to communicate with their friends.

It is not just children who are fast losing this art.

People over the age of 50, many of them pensioners, have now become silver surfers and are not writing personal letters by hand, preferring to use modern alternatives.

I’m afraid I am one of them! But at least I have known the joy of letter writing!

A study commissioned by a charity prompted concern over a decline in writing skills among a generation of schoolchildren.

The rise in the use of computers has already been linked to poor spelling, punctuation, grammar and appalling handwriting.

Children today have no idea how to set out a letter, formal or not, and rely on spell checks on their computers rather than learning how to spell the word.

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Letter writing was part of my childhood, with good handwriting taught at the grammar school I attended.

When I passed the 11-plus my father took me to the much-missed FG Thomas on Surrey Street and bought a beautiful Conway Stewart fountain pen which I used for years.

Not only did my sister and myself write thank you notes for presents received on birthdays and at Christmas but we corresponded with penfriends obtained from columns in our weekly School Friend and Girls’ Crystal.

I very much miss the proper letter. Like books, it is the feel, the touch of the paper and the anticipation of its contents.

I could never get excited about electronic books although I realise that they are invaluable in many cases.

Letters have been a big part of history, especially of family history, and there are many much-cherished letters which came back from the battle lines in wartime, and love letters carefully passed down the generations.

Alas, these will no longer be part of life with text messages expressing every sentiment in future.

Some of our most important literary works have been love letters. A love letter from Napoleon to Josephine in 1795 says: “I awake all filled with you. Your image and the intoxicating pleasures of last night allow my senses no rest.

" Josephine, how strangely you work upon my heart!”

And: “I love you anyway. Even if there isn’t any me or any love, or even any life” from Zelda to Scott Fitzgerald.

Heady stuff. I doubt they would have had the same impact by email!

It isn’t of recent times that concern has been expressed about the demise of the letter.

In 1871 in a Sunday Magazine editorial, it stated that “The art of letter writing is fast dying out. We fire off a multitude of rapid and short notes instead of sitting down to have a good old talk over a sheet of paper.”

Marie Corelli, an eminent British novelist who died in 1924 and who had great literary success up to World War One, said that “Newspapers are full, not of thoughtful, honestly-expressed public opinion on the affairs of the nation, but of vapid personalities interesting to no-one save the gossips or busy bodies.”

However, the letters we read in this newspaper are far from being written by vapid personalities.

Readers of The Star are frequently entertained, enlightened and very often infuriated by the regular correspondents.

No matter, if their views are often totally alien to your own, and believe me I often have to grit my teeth, as long as people are not offensive then they are entitled to their opinion and make a tremendous contribution to our favourite newspaper.

Some of the great contributors like Vera Percy, Trevor Richardson and Ron Humberstone, have long gone to the great news desk in the sky.

We remember them fondly but have many more writing weekly, and often daily, to carry on the good work.

It would be good to think that there is an emerging generation of letter writers waiting in the wings and ready to step into the shoes of our favourite correspondents.

I may be wrong but somehow I doubt it!

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