Image by lil_foot_ from Pixabay

So you’ve decided you want to write letters, and you’ve found somebody to write to. But. . . you’re still feeling lost. If only you could begin, you feel you might be able to sally forth. That’s just it.

How to begin?

Well, my friend, there is no one way to write a letter. The world is indubitably your oyster. But in this article I have collected some ideas and advice you can use to get yourself on your feet. These are mainly dedicated to writing the body of your letter—I will touch on epistolary accoutrements (fun things like wax seals, stamps, and stationary!) in another post. So without further ado:

Begin with addressing your pen pal. Who is your pen pal, to you? The standard manner of beginning a personal letter is with a “Dear (First Name) (comma)”. Dear Harriet, etc. If you are writing to a family member, it might be “Dear Grandfather” or “Dear Aunt So-and-So”. These are usually fail-safes. I have also seen “Harriet, &c.” This might be for a note written in haste, or someone tripping over the word ‘dear’. That should be just fine if you are writing to a friend. Obviously nicknames are also on the table. It might be “Dear Lizzie,” “Dear Tollers,” “Dearest,” “My dear friend",” “Dear most exceptional grandfather,” etc. Don’t overthink it.

Answer questions or respond to everything in the previous letter (if there has been one before) or the last conversation you had (if applicable). Some people leave questions till after giving some note about what they’re up to—mostly because the beginning benediction is typically followed, in polite English society, by a “How are you doing?” “I hope you are in good health" “How are you and yours?”. Some people begin with addressing the questions and then put a personal note at the end, and still others are able to weave the two together. This is largely an issue of personal style.

Ask follow-up and more questions. Get to know your pen pal! What do they do in their day to day lives? Where do you work? How far is your activity? Have you always done so-and-so? (Asking questions, as the Elephant’s Child might agree, typically becomes easier.) If this is your first letter, then it’s pretty usual to have to begin a correspondence with a barrage of inquiries.

ENCLOSURES! These are too fun to not have a post to themselves, so in the interim I direct you to ’s ideas here:

Kelly Bond

So You Want to Write a Letter...

I’ve found that the more obstacles there are between me and a task, the more likely I am to procrastinate, and in some cases never do it at all. Following is my advice for how to remove the obstacles that keep you from writing the letters you want to write…

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2 months ago · 8 likes · 5 comments · Kelly Bond

Things you could write about: what did you do today? What are you doing right now? What is scheduled? What are you reading and thinking about? What is something that currently fascinates you—something in school, your researching, a board game, song, or movie? Send a poem or quote you like. Share a story. Have fun. Say “write soon!” or “I await your reply!”

Signing off: these don’t have to feel boring. I like making fun sign-offs up to use in letters to friends. Tried-and-true, however, include “Yours sincerely,” “Your friend,” “Love,” etc. Or you could just wind up to it with something like:

With thoughts of cheese, remember me,

your friend,

Harriet1

Once you have signed off: address your envelope, stick a stamp in the top-right hand corner (1 oz = 1 stamp) and run it out to your mailbox.2

Then comes the hardest thing about writing letters. Patience.

Part Four will focus on pens, stationary, stamps, and other fun letter-writing things.

Photo by Pixabay.

“Presumably it is tedium,” she said to herself, conversationally, making an effort and dashing up the next half a dozen steps. “It is because this stairwell is without Feature.”

In this statement she was, perhaps, justified. The stairwell was cleanish but poorly lit. The steps were scratched and lined. Still, for the foreseeable future, it was to become a daily part of her new life, for Octavia had just been newly employed as a typist at the advertising firm of Blackstring Ltd just down the road, in the heart of Boston. After a good deal of scouring, she had been fortunate enough to find accommodations here, in Endurance Square, where there had been an advertisement for a flatmate.

At last she reached the fifth floor. She celebrated with a deep sigh of relief and self-congratulation. She had done it. It was good. She pattered down the hall, glad to see she was on the outside-facing side of the building, her boots clapping on the floor with a cat-like step.

Octavia Kingsley raised a hand and knocked on the door.

It swung open with fantastic energy, and produced a tall woman with fiery red hair, freckles, and a pale face. She was wearing a casual green dress.

“Hello,” said Octavia. “You must be Miss Beans.”

“I am Violet,” was the imperious rejoinder, “and you must be my roommate. Come in.”

She opened the door and led Octavia into a modestly sized space, mostly devoted to a sitting area. On the left hand side was a small kitchen, and flanking these, a couple doors leading to the bedrooms and bathroom. The half Octavia was going to pay for it was certainly a bargain.

“I’m Octavia, by the way,” she said presently.

“That’s a beautiful name,” said Violet.

“Thanks. I love yours.”

Violet nodded. “Where are you from?”

“Ofiliae, up north. You?”

“Philadelphia!”

“Wow!”

“Yeah, bit of a drive, that. I came to live near my grandmother. She’s in the building across the street, but they don’t like young people living there, so I had to get this place. It really is nice, though.”

“Where do you work?”

“Bookkeeper at the law firm down the way. Sometimes the telephone company when it’s understaffed. Is your work close to here?”

“It’s just down the road. Blackstring Ltd.”

“Blackstring, wow! Top advertising corporation. Here, come see your room.”

Violet gestured towards the open door near the kitchen. The two went in. Octavia was delighted at the small bed, desk, and bureau.

“This is great!”

“I’m glad. Oh, by the way, I hope you don’t mind,” Violet paused by the doorframe. “My young man usually comes to call on Saturday mornings.”

“All right,” said her new roommate, sitting on the bed.

“Do you have a beaux?” Violet asked conversationally.

“Me? Oh, no.” Despite the obvious effort, a memory seemed to pass over the other girl’s face, clouding her countenance for a moment before she gave a little laugh.

“Oh, I’m sorry,” said Violet quickly.

“It’s quite all right, don’t apologize,” said Octavia lightly.

Violet eyed her shrewdly. Though she might not look it, she was perceptive. She had enough experience to know when people were being overtly reticent, and her mother had raised up in her the virtue of tact. She said nothing, but Violet guessed at the past of the northern girl. An old school fellow, perhaps? Something had obviously happened, and such things are hard to forget.

“Do you have any siblings?” She said finally, by way of changing the subject, adding, “Come, I’ll make coffee.”

“One sister.”

“Younger? Older?”

“We’re twins, actually.”

“Twins! Wow! That’s neat.”

“What about you? Do you have any siblings?”

Octavia had followed her new friend out of the bedroom and into the little kitchen, where she now stood watching the girl with the charming lilt in her voice try to convince the gas-ring to cooperate.

“Eight,” said Violet casually. “Five brothers, three sisters.”

“What are their names?”

“Fiona, Declan, Una, Eithne, Sean, Patrick, Ronan, and Charlie. All older than me, except Ronan and Charlie. Ronan’s in the Air Corps1 and Charlie works for the railroad. Fiona and Declan are both married, and I’ve got a little nephew. I intend to spoil him quite completely. Right now he’s obsessed with aeroplanes.”

“My sister Genevieve got married last August,” said Octavia. “I’m going to be an aunt too. We’re all hoping for a boy, as the family rather runs to girls. And twins.”

“Good luck to you!” Violet replied boisterously. “It’s fun to have brothers around. I’ve got a fantastic baseball swing to show for it.”

They both laughed.

“What is your brother-in-law like? Fiona’s husband used to really intimidate me, because he was always super quiet, but at Thanksgiving we got left by ourselves one afternoon, and it turns out he’s GREAT at card games. Hannah, Declan’s wife, is a baker. She makes the Best. Cakes. Ever.

“That reminds me,” she continued, talking about a mile a minute, “when’s your birthday? When I moved in, I made a Solemn Pact that no-birthday-was-ever-to-go uncelebrated-to-the-best-of-our-abilities in this house. The building knows it, and I made it official with a root beer float, SO you are duty-bound. Mine is March 21st.”

“June 24th,” said Octavia, blinking a little at Violet’s infectious–and quite disarming–amount of energy. “My father calls me Midsummer Night’s Dream. Charles is very nice. I don’t think he’d be a whiz at cards, but he’s really good at making kites and paper airplanes and boats and things out of wood. He works at his family’s bank. The Middleston Bank.”

“Oh, I’ve heard of that! Wasn’t there a big Middleston wedding last year, or something? Like, in England?”

“Yeah, I think so,” said Octavia. “Charles’ cousin Andrew had his wedding in London.”

“Wait, I remember now!” cried Violet. “It was Alaric Germaine’s sister! You know! The great detective. Or he’s trying to be. The one always helping Scotland Yard with cases. Daddy’s cousins in Ireland went on holiday to the Lakes (in England) once, and Colleen actually saw him. Anyway, I read it in my grandmother’s newspaper. His sister Clare was married at St George’s Hanover Square, but they very nearly lost the ring, or something. It was positively thrilling to read about. I just LOVE mystery stories, do you?”

“Yes, I do!” Octavia said, finding herself delightfully surprised. “A great deal.”

“Which sort, and variety? Wait, how do you like your coffee?”

“One sugar, please.”

“Brave. I always put milk and cream and stuff in mine.” Violet dropped a sugar cube in one of the mugs and pushed it across the counter. The cup was bright green, with orange flowers, one chipped rim, and a tiny teaspoon which did not match anything in particular. Octavia stirred hers a little, watching the steam billow out of the cup. It reminded her of the train she had taken from home. Meanwhile, Violet was still inflicting cream and sugar into her mug, which was a violent orange and purple.

“All sorts, I guess,” Octavia mused, going back to the first question, “Agatha Christie, Sherlock Holmes.”

Violet stopped short, and seemed to come to a decision. Her shoulders tightened.

“I am batty for Agatha Christie. Did you read The Murder of Roger Ackroyd?”

“Yes. Wasn’t that one such a surprise?”

Violet Beans nodded and was quiet for a moment. Then she said: “Octavia Kingsley, I feel sure we are going to be great friends.”

Octavia agreed with her.

Maybe Boston wasn’t going to be so bad after all.

Read more about Octavia’s world here.

Photo by Phil Evenden from Pexels.

I apologize for being MIA on the letter-writing series since May; things got crazy, but I’m hoping to continue with it in the upcoming months! I did a lot of traveling this summer and have only now sat down to summer projects. This includes reading more Golden Age-style detective novels and scholarly nonfiction, and writing more short stories and book scenes.

I wanted to post something about my fiction project. Even though it will probably be several years before the novel could be published—I’m much more of a Tolkien than a Lewis in that sense—I love to share scenes and snippets from my world with my friends, and have been thinking that the community here might enjoy that as well.

The Chestnuts

Lost & Found

This short story was originally published in the Summer 2025 issue of St. Nicholas Magazine, available here…

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4 months ago · 7 likes · 6 comments · Natalia Testa

The Chestnuts

A Birthday Search

The prequel to this short story is published on my Substack, here…

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4 months ago · 9 likes · 3 comments · Natalia Testa

While I have shared two “mystery” stories here on Substack, Alaric Germaine—a gentleman and amateur detective who is involved in mysteries and misadventures, beginning in 1930s England—has actually been a backburner project.

During the day, what I am thinking about, planning, brainstorming, and scribbling frumiously at is a series of historical fiction books. That is, if categorized in a standard genre, they would count as historical fiction. I like to think of them as being in a “realistic novel” tradition with Jane Austen: unchanging medieval stories, or romances, that have been displaced into a modern setting1—every day stories with an ancient heart.

The series revolves around a set of characters’ lives in and around a fictional county in Massachusetts, a la Thomas Hardy’s Wessex, and the stories of their ancestors and descendants, from sixteenth century English dukes, all the way up to the present day. Right now I’m writing The Ivy and the Rock, which is set in 1934. It’s about a girl named Octavia who returns to her hometown and is confronted with several questions and mysteries, including a murder mystery. Can she find the courage to confront her fears?

So without further ado and all credit to Pinterest, I’d like you to meet. . .

Octavia Kingsley

• Her birthday is 24 June 1910 (Midsummer)

• She loves Saint Margaret of Antioch (because she slew a dragon)

• She’s 5’4” or 5’5”

• She has a twin sister named Genevieve

• She drinks coffee with one sugar

• At beginning of the novel, she is working as a typist for an advertising agency in Boston.

James Farragut

• His birthday is 9 September 1909

• He loves Saint George (again, dragons)

• He’s 6’2”

• He drives a Ford Coupe

• He drinks his coffee black but will not turn down black English tea

• At the beginning of the novel, he is in the Caribbean as a very young admiral in the Navy, probably preparing for President Roosevelt’s fleet review in May 1934.

Katharine Horowitz

• Her birthday is 16 May 1912

• She loves sailboats

• Her favorite flowers are daisies

• She’s 5’1”

• She drinks macchiatos but if offered sugar will just eat the cubes

• At the beginning of the novel, she is living in Ofiliae (these characters’ hometown) and about to be engaged to be married.

Maria Zexby

• Her birthday is in January 1911

• She loves to waltz and is something of a matchmaker

• Her signature color is robin’s egg blue

• She’s 5’7”

• She drinks cappuccinos (lots of foam)

• At the beginning of the novel, she is living in the large manor in Ofiliae. She is James Farragut’s very close first cousin.

As always, thank you for reading!

Fair autumn had come, crisp and cool, to London at long last, settling its crimson veil across the verdant trees of Kensington Gardens and Hyde Park.

The sunshine of October was smiling passively as a well-cut gentleman in a sharp jacket stepped out of an upper-storey flat, followed by a person of ancillary appearance.

Alaric Germaine–for indeed it was that most sleuthful of personages–sighed happily as he and the stone-faced valet proceeded towards the luxurious car that lay soporifically stretched at the foot of the building.

Summer had dealt Alaric well since the time of his last adventure: many an hour he had spent in the idle hours of June, the dog days of July, and the long adieu to the season of the last two months. However, today, as autumn came bustling down the street, he was feeling more content even than he had been of late. The city with all its cares had begun to lay low on him after the prolonged feverish activity he had enjoyed, dashing between calls, visits, and clubs in the long stream of lawn tennis and receiving lines that was high society.

Here was the respite he felt he needed–a restful weekend in the country with his newlywed sister to celebrate their birthday before she and her husband departed for America, where they lived.

“It would seem that the festive season is upon us once again,” he announced cheerfully as the car hurtled joyfully down the road at the edge of the city.

“The bonny days of October,

‘Thick as autumnal leaves that strow the brooks

In Vallombrosa, where th’ Etrurian shades

High overarched embow’r.’1”

“An appropriate sentiment, I should say, sir,” said Copeland solemnly.

Over rolling hills of greenish down, past stretching fields and spanses of meadow they drove, Alaric’s car purring softly all the while. As day turned to dusk, they came to a silver, shining gate that rose in front of an imposing structure, one of those ancient manor houses that hallmarks the English countryside. But Caldwell House, if it presented a formidable front to the world, had also an air of harmlessness. The knights of the portrait gallery did not meet them at the gate, which was swung open to admit them to the drive.

Alaric was just alighting at the end of this last when the darkened doors of the manor opened wide and cast the world into light. A figure burst forth and caught him in an affectionate embrace.

“Clare! How glad I am to see you! You are a sight for sore eyes.”

The newly minted Mrs Middleston drew back and smiled at him. “Alaric, dear. Come in, everyone’s so anxious to see you.”

The family was sitting at repose in the drawing room when they entered. Mr Germaine, Alaric and Clare’s father, was in an armchair looking decidedly stiff, and Jeanine and Edward Hayes, Clare’s new in-laws, were beaming pleasantly. Aunt Mildred, sitting in her corner, was cocking her head, and in consequence looked rather like a parrot. Alaric’s brother-in-law, the banker standing at the sideboard, turned around, two glasses in his hands.

“Ah, what ho, Germaine! This is for you.”

“Good evening, Alaric!” said Jeanine.

“Good to see you,” said Edward, standing to wring Alaric’s arm.

“Welcome back, son,” Mr Germaine nodded.

“Good evening to you, Jeanine, Edward, Father–thanks awfully, Andrew–and how are you, Aunt Mildred?”

The old lady blinked at him impassively. “Clare’s brother,” she said. “Hrmph.”

“What, is all memory of two waltzes at the wedding forgot? I’ve brought you a gift.” He dug in his pockets, and handed her a parcel. “Here we are. Pax?”

Looking skeptical, Aunt Mildred tore the paper off and stared.

“Crosswords. For whiling away the wee hours. I think it’ll make a nice change from knitting. I’m sure you’re a perfect whiz with words, and all that.”

“You, flatterer, you,” said Aunt Mildred, not unkindly.

Having performed this ritual of peace, Alaric was free to turn to the less stodgy persons of the family. Jeanine and Edward, he could tell, were waiting to speak to him. From the first moment of meeting them–and it had been quite a long time now–he had taken to the two with an immense liking.

“Happy early birthday to you two,” said Edward.

“Many happy returns,” Jeanine added. Her accent was almost an exaggerated combination of American and English, and everyone laughed, including Jeanine.

It was the following evening, and the house was full of joyful people who had come for the birthday festivities. Alaric and his sister had distinguished themselves famously in Charades, Hide-and-Go-Seek, and Animal, Mineral, or Vegetable. They had also enjoyed, Clare suspected–and Alaric knew–an inexplicable amount of cake.

Now rounds of gifts being thrusted on the twins, and innumerable rounds of for they are jolly good fellows sung, Alaric Germaine was standing, sleepy and satisfied, in the library. With him was Chief-Inspector Dickinson, whom he had invited up for the party and who was at this moment savouring a glass of port with an almost-sheepish look on his face. The two had fallen into a contemplative silence, which the policeman now broke.

“Alaric, I say, who’s that a portrait of?”

His attention had been captured by a painting that hung in a kind of niche between the magnificent bookshelves, and seemed to be of a placid-faced woman in a dark dress with a captivating smile. Alaric came out of his reverie with a jolt. When he followed Dickinson’s gaze to the portrait he smiled wistfully.

“That is our governess,” he said quietly. “When we were fifteen, Clare and I did everything in our power to have it done, and saved all our sixpence for it. It’s a wonderful likeness, really, much more than we expected. This was her place,” he gestured to the room, as if inviting the thousands of leathery spines to give tongue, “so we thought the painting should be here. We used to hide notes here.”

“Alaric, Alaric, Alaric!” Clare came dashing in.

Dickinson, who was still not quite comfortable with how alike the brother and sister were, started.

“What is it, Clare? What ever’s the matter?”

“Aunt Mildred’s little Demeter statue is missing. She sent the maid to fetch it so she could show Lady Osborne, but it’s gone.”

“It’s not on the parlor mantel? The servants haven’t taken and dusted it, or something?”

Clare Middleston shook her dark head.

“No. That’s what I asked. Did you see the little white statue on the parlor mantel when we were playing Charades, Chief-Inspector?”

Dickinson knit his eyebrows. “I did see something white,” he said at last, hesitantly.

Alaric looked thoughtful. “I’m positive that I saw it when we were Artemis and Apollo for Charades, Clare. It hadn’t been switched with the family cow creamer–I saw the little crown of harvest. Did you see it?”

“I can’t remember. I was thinking about all the games, you know. . . .”

The door opened, and the threesome turned. It was Andrew Middleston, followed closely by a Germaine cousin by the name of Miss Montclair-Cooke.

“I’ve had a look ‘round, it must’ve been taken,” Middleston said quickly, adding for Dickinson’s benefit, “Old family heirloom, and as old as the house.”

“Why, what’s the matter?” said the cousin, in a clipped London accent.

“Just a bit of a family counsel, and all that,” Alaric replied.

“He’s not family,” said the girl, nodding to Dickinson. “But I am. Do you forget your own cousins, Alaric?”

“Chief-Inspector, I don’t think you’ve met our cousin, Miss Montclair-Cooke?”

“Inspector? Why, I say, that’s a nice sort of surprise for a birthday party. Do you think we’re all going to pilfer your spoons?”

“The Chief-Inspector happens to be our friend,” Clare interjected.

“If you should decide to take up petty crime, however, it’s all rather handy, though, what?”

“I don’t know what you mean,” said Miss Montclair-Cooke angrily.

A sudden stab of light seemed to pierce, suddenly, through her cousin’s mind.

“We were just sayin’, how Clare and I used to send messages to each other, Eva. Didn’t you intercept a couple when we were little?”

“I–I don’t know what you mean,” but she had turned pale.

Alaric sighed, then smiled.

“Dickinson, if you would go to our governess and swing the hinge back, please?”

Beginning to understand, the policeman ambled over to the painting and slowly swung it forward. It came away from the wall on a hinge. Behind it, in a little cubby, was a small white statue wearing a crown of harvest.

“I–I was going to come and find it,” Eva stammered.

“And pin it on one of us, were you?”

She said nothing.

“I’ll tell the maid to fetch your coat,” said Middleston. “She’ll show you out.”

When Andrew, Clare, and Eva had gone, Alaric said not discontentedly, “A happy birthday, what, Dickinson?”

“I’m thinking about going to America.”

Alaric laughed. “Cheer up, Dickinson. Some cake?”

“Happy birthday, Alaric,” said Chief-Inspector Dickinson, of Scotland Yard. “Thank you, I think I will.”

To send one’s heart on a page is age-old. People have been writing letters for thousands of years. To be an ancient practice then, there must be something incurably and anciently human about it besides sheer practicality. It was this I examined in my last post, Why Write Letters?

The canon of famous writers of the form include many distinguished names, and if we are to embrace this form, we would do well to examine several of them. So, without further ado, I present some recommendations:

Part One: Historical Authors

Pliny the Younger

Pliny the Younger (61-c.113 AD) was a Roman magistrate under Emperor Trajan. He wrote nearly four hundred surviving letters, to a variety of people and on a variety of subjects, including the prosecution of Christians. Some of his most famous letters include the love letters he wrote to his third wife, Calpurnia, to whom he was greatly attached.

Pliny’s works can be found in a wide range of places today, including Project Gutenberg, Internet Archive, and Perseus Digital Library, or here in case you want to go and look at the original Latin as well as the English translation.

Saint Paul

I’m not sure how one would figure out who the most famous letter-writer ever is, but if you recognize any of the names on this list, it’s most likely to be with this one. You’ve probably read them before on your own or heard them in church.

Believed with the other biblical epistles—James, 1st, 2nd and 3rd John, 1st and 2nd Peter, Jude, and the letter to the Hebrews— to be the inspired word of God—Saint Paul’s letters are some of the most famous in the form, as he walked his readers through different aspects of the Christian life.

You can find them in any standard Bible, making them very accessible.

Letters of Dorothy L. Sayers

A letter says a lot about a person. One of the best ways to learn more about a historical figure or favorite author is to read some of their collected letters. Sometimes this practice can be better than reading a biography.

Dorothy L. Sayers is most famous today as a detective novelist whose powers rivalled those of her contemporary Agatha Christie. She was also a playwright, a medieval scholar, a poet, an apologist, and the brains behind the iconic Guinness advertising campaign: “If he can say as you can/Guinness is good for you/How grand to be a Toucan/Just think what Toucan do". (More on DLS at an intro post, here.) Sayers had a brilliant personality as well as brains, and wrote letters from the time she was five until her death in 1957.

Her goddaughter Barbara Reynolds edited them into five volumes. These are difficult to find in the States, but you can read Volume 1, here on Internet Archive.

Letters of C. S. Lewis & Letters of J. R. R. Tolkien

As you might expect, these two great writers of fantasy and medieval scholarship also wrote a lot of letters. I know each author has had their letters published several times, in different degrees of selection and adaption. I do not have a link for these but I’m sure you could find them moderately easily.

In 1942, Dorothy Sayers wrote a fan letter to C. S. Lewis which began a correspondence which lasted until she died. The blossoming of this beautiful but little-known friendship through their correspondence is explored by Gina Dalfonzo in her book Dorothy & Jack.

Heloise & Abelard

The letters of Heloise & Abelard make for one of the most famous Romeo-and-Juliet type stories, whether you are sympathetic to their story or not. Heloise was a very intelligent young woman in the twelfth century who fell in love with her tutor, Abelard. Unfortunately, this development did not go down well with her family and the two were separated. It is a sad and ill-fated story, but interesting nonetheless.

Their letters have been published by Penguin Classics.

Note

So go find the letters of your favorite author! These could be those written by Jane Austen, Louisa May Alcott, Lewis Carroll, and many, many more! You can also look for those written by Founding Fathers and great citizens, such as the correspondence of John & Abigail Adams and the letters of Winston Churchill. (Think The Federalist Papers and The Spectator).

Loeb Classics publishes side by side Latin-English and Greek-English volumes of ancient writers, including letters by Saint Jerome. If you can read Latin, internet resources like Perseus are a goldmine for finding almost everything.

Part Two: Epistolary Novels (and movies)

You may not know that the first novels (including Pamela) were originally epistolary. Epistolary, from Latin “epistula” meaning “letter”, means that the stories were told by characters writing letters to each other, or by using diary entries. This story-telling technique is still being used today. Wonderful examples of the genre include:

Frankenstein by Mary Shelley

Dracula by Bram Stoker

Lady Susan by Jane Austen1

The Documents in the Case by Dorothy L. Sayers & Robert Eustace

84, Charing Cross Road and The Duchess of Bloomsbury Street by Helene Haff2

Heroides by Ovid3

The Sherlock Holmes corpus of works by Arthur Conan Doyle

The Woman in White and The Moonstone by Wilkie Collins

The Screwtape Letters by C. S. Lewis

Honorable mentions: The Unselected Journals of Emma M. Lion (Vol 1-8) and The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society by Mary Ann Shaffer & Annie Barrows

Honorable film mentions: The Shop Around the Corner (1940), You’ve Got Mail (1998), and The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society (2018). (I am tempted to add Julie & Julia (2009).)

Part Three: Where to find a pen pal in 2026?

I promised that I would include a section on this. It can be hard to find a pen pal in the digital age, especially as there is a vast majority who dismiss letter-writing as unnecessary or don’t know how to go about writing one in the first place. But, as I said, it is important, and isn’t that hard to do! And it will change your life.

Some ideas I came up with:

1. Try a pen pal matchmaking service. I have no personal experience with these, but they seem to be fairly successful and in abundance. A Google search will connect you to several.

2. Ask a Substack friend or other online friend. I am happy to see that people are already doing this! If you would like to go deeper with somebody, rather than only communicating via fleeting Notes, DMs, or emails, reach out and ask to be their pen pal. Worst case scenario, they say no, but it’s 100% worth that initial leap of faith.

3. If you are an online student, ask a classmate! This is where I found most of my pen pals, and is very simple to do as a student or young person. If you are interested in what someone has to say but hate fighting with discussion forum platforms, emails, DMs, or the text message, just shoot them a note and ask if they would be interested in writing to you.

4. Write to a family member, family friend, or a friend who has moved. This one is a classic for a reason. My very first pen pal, whom I continue to write to, was my grandfather (shout-out to !). He asked me to write to him, since letters are a surviving legacy and texts are not, among other reasons. He gave me a fountain pen and. . . the rest is history. Since then I have also started writing to my uncle (shout-out to Rich Williams!) whom I sadly do not get to see more than once or twice a year. Both are excellent pen pals and their letters are hugely entertaining. (My uncle gave me a typewriter on which I write my letters to him.)

   So, ask a relative! Ask them to tell you about what they’re up to, and past experiences they had. Maybe you know somebody who is a bit lonely and could use a friend to write to, or maybe you have a friend who moved to another state.

5. If you are under eighteen, go check out my pen pal Fiona Altschuler’s work at the St Nicholas League. You can join their subscriber chat and from there use their new pen pal matchmaking service form to be matched with someone of similar age and interests!

In conclusion, I hope that this has been helpful to you. I encourage you to go check out collections of letters, epistolary novels, and try and find a pen pal of your own!

Part Three will focus on pens, stationary, stamps, and other fun letter-writing things.

The light fell, dappled, upon the spines of the antique books which lined the walls, casting long veiled shadows in the flat. Chief-Inspector Dickinson of Scotland Yard sat at repose in a large armchair over one of those shadows.

“How are things, and all that?” asked the owner of the flat, coming in from the other room.

“There was another burglary last night in Bloomsbury. Dashed vexing,” he sighed.

“Ah, the price the good men of the English police force pay to keep the rest of us safe in our beds.”

”It’s a dog’s life, Alaric,” said Dickinson mopedly.

The flat-owner, a well-cut gentleman in a suit, smiled at him.

“Cheer up, old chap. Have a sandwich. Copeland makes excellent sandwiches.”

He reached out and rang the bell. This resulted in the entrance of a stony-faced servant with a platter of sandwiches and an envelope on a silver tray.

“A letter for you, sir.”

“Thank you, Copeland.”

Alaric took the letter opener and began working on the seal. Dickinson, slightly more cheerful, attacked the sandwiches proffered to him by the manservant.

When his friend’s features lit up, he stopped and asked, “Good news?”

“My sister is getting married.”

“You never told me you have a sister!”

“She lives in the States, and I haven’t seen her in quite some time. Anyway, it shan’t be long before you do meet the soon-to-be Clare Middleston. She says she’s coming to London.”

“London? When?”

“Next week, dear Chief-Inspector, and I am to call at Audley Square to see her.”

Dickinson looked thoughtful. “But why is she in London if she lives in the States?”

“Middleston is a man of the old country. Or rather, his family is. I believe he was raised by his older sister and her husband, who crossed the pond early on. However, as is the wont of these ancient families, he is in possession of an aged aunt of great wealth. Middleston is a banker in Massachusetts. Anyhow, the aunt, it seems, has settled a rather tidy sum on him and he is to come and sign papers. Clare is also, I understand, settled to have a family heirloom: her wedding ring. An altogether full programme for a visit to one’s mother country, but a worthy one.”

“Do you like Middleston?”

“Oh, yes. He and my sister have been attached for some years, but Clare was at school and couldn’t be married till now.”

“How old is she?”

“Exactly as old as myself, give and take a few minutes. We are twins. What, surprised? We aren’t peas of pods, you know. Sun and moon, what, Apollo and Artemis. Or Viola and Sebastian. Whatever you like.”

And so it was that Dickinson found himself striding through Hyde Park the following Saturday, contemplating what Alaric had told him over the telephone that morning. Germaine had been incoherent, characteristically so. But one thing was certain. The heirloom which had supposed to have been Clare Germaine’s was missing, and would the Chief-Inspector come and assist him?

Arriving at the house in Audley Square, murmuring that it was all very well for an aristocrat to take his time but that a policeman had a schedule to follow, and that he just might take that post overseas if this went on, he had found his first surprise from Alaric. Despite what the latter had said to the contrary, Dickinson had found the sister to be identical to the brother: both siblings tall and dark with piercing eyes and a cool but striking manner.

“You must be Miss Germaine,” he had said stupidly, stricken from articulate words by this manner. The maid, he noticed, too looked stupefied. It seemed she was tracking soil into the house. There was some kind of briar tangled on her apron hem.

The lady had smiled. “Ah, and you must be the Chief-Inspector, the man from Scotland Yard. Alaric is in the Park.”

Thus, walking down the path, he finally caught sight of his friend, on his knees and evidently scrutinizing the rose garden bed.

“Ho!”

Alaric looked up.

“Ho, faithful friend. A stroll ‘round this garden is in order, that you may view the principal parts. Kindly observe the bees, they are very nice. Vergil would like them. What, did you run here? Maybe there is something, after all, in what is said of the habits of bobbies.”

“I am not out of breath,” Dickinson said shortly, very hot in the face, indignantly staring at the bed in question and adding, “and that is not a bee on that flower–it’s got a bit of sunshine, that’s all.”

His friend looked at the flower and then at him sharply, in some surprise. He seemed to come to a conclusion for he swiveled his gaze back to the ground and said:

“The ring was lost sometime between nine and half past eleven. The family was in the drawing room for most of that time. It was not dropped–”

“–given that we are here–”

“—it, if you will pardon the expression—”

“–Alaric–”

“—it was snatched.”

“By whom?”

“The drawing-room maid, I think. Tryin’ to bungle the wedding. Much taken with Middleston, you see. But you must have seen the mud and leaves on the sole of her shoes. And the thorns on her apron. We shall find Clare’s ring here, never fear. You simply must know where to look.”

“Did you take detection by correspondence?”

“Hm?”

“I mean, where did you learn this? You’ve helped me before with cases but this is a new thing entirely.”

“Come, prithee, and I will tell thee my ways. Come, see this flower.” He shot down to his knees, pointing to a seemingly random flower in the next bed. Dickinson, thinking this no doubt was a non sequitur, went down too.

“Long ago in my school days, when Clare and I were children, we used to summer at the Lakes, in Ambelside. We could do what we liked, our parents told us, so long as we were with our governess. Ah, but our governess was a jewel among her kind–too old to be illusioned and too young to be unfeeling. Day after day we would walk the District over with her, and we had many friends. Clare used to have tea with a girl of six, every morning, with one who wrote stories and painted rabbits. It was this friend who taught us the ways of animals at the Lakes. We had another friend, who taught me all I know. She gave me the eyes to see with which I now occupy with the solving of mysteries.

Every day, Dickinson, was a new lesson and a new adventure. Music we heard performed in abundance, and it was she who lent me my first novel by Sir Walter Scott. What hours, happy ones, that Clare and I spent with her outside, looking at the world and learning its name. She gave us journals for our birthday and taught us to paint what we saw in them, which at first we did not often do well in the beginning, but the drawings were always lovingly precise. So many things go unseen, but every flower and every bird is important and has a purpose.

And it is this training which has shaped the way I handle a case. What we learned in Ambleside has meant more than what I have learned anywhere else–that everything is related and that that is how everything is learned. Knowing that was how I got my First at Oxford, after my mother died and Clare went to school in the States. Which brings us to the present moment. Not every man in London has a friend on the force whom he met when a classmate was taken up for helmet-pinching, and one mustn’t bother him with too much talking. Although I am rather criminally lavish in that commodity. We can, however, make our way back to the house.”

“But we haven’t found the ring.”

“Ah, silence, Watson. But haven’t we?” Alaric lifted his hand from where it had been cradling the rose, so the policeman could see the golden band encircling the stem. The latter stared, opened his mouth, then closed it again.

“You mean that it’s been here while we’ve been talking?”

“Yes, right where Betty put it. A ring around a rosie, you could say.”

“Really, Alaric. I wonder why you had me come down at all.”

“Oh, but I mightn’t have found it but for you,” (sheer politeness, Dickinson thought,) “as it was you who found it before me. This is the bit of sunshine you pointed out. You give yourself no credit for your wonderful knack for seeing things which are out of place. You have the discipline but you persuade yourself that there is nothing uncanny. But my friends from the Lakes would be proud of your work.”

He straightened, bringing the ring with him cupped in his hand. Together, the two friends began finding their way through the gardens to the house in Audley Square: the tall, lean man in the suit jacket and the stout policeman in mufti.

And the bells would toll merrily the following Sunday, when two very happy young people were married at St George’s Hanover Square, and if the dark and smiling bride had shown you, you would have seen she wore a very old golden ring, for the two friends’ job was done, as was the day, the sun setting smoothly behind the towering buildings of London in a time now gone by–for something which had been lost had been found.

The End

Photo by Eilis Garvey on Unsplash

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Letter-writing is one of my greatest (and most beloved) pastimes.

At the time of this article, I have seventeen active pen pals across sixteen different states. Some are more active than others as people are busy with work, school, and other activities, but the average number generally remains the same, sometimes reaching as high as twenty at certain times of the year. Many of these are classmates. Some of these I have met in person; some I hope to meet one day. For a few, I’ve been writing to them for as long as four to six years; others are new friends who first wrote to me last week.

And yet the question is, why write letters at all? With the advent of modern-day technology, I can reach a friend in New England in a single minute or chat on a virtual meeting with a friend in California tonight. On the other hand, a letter sent through the postal service to reach these distant places can take two days at the earliest, and three weeks at the longest to arrive, leading to the popular nickname, “snail mail”.

(Or a letter might never show up at all, as a few of us know only too well.)

If I do not need paper, an envelope, and a stamp to talk to somebody, why should I take the time and effort to do so? Isn’t the use of phones and computers more efficient?The answer is yes and no. If you merely want to ask somebody, “are you still ill?”, “are you still alive?”, “are you going to the meeting tonight?”, etc., and receive an answer almost instantly, then yes, they are certainly more efficient.

But should efficiency be the standard? Are these superficial inquiries the only things you want to speak about? Can emotions, thoughts, and feelings be relayed in a text? Despite the flurries of emojis, GIFs, and message editing tools that are constantly being invented and downloaded into phone updates, the answer is no, as anyone who has ever used them will know. Tone can be almost impossible to figure out and individual voice difficult to hear.

Am I saying that text, email, and virtual meetings are bad? Absolutely not! I use all three regularly to talk to people I know. But I am also pen pals with them. One does not replace the other. The fact remains that the text message is a “short-hand” form. It is designed to work quickly and efficiently, because it is a machine. Texts are also fleeting: they drown in the mountain of small bubbles demanded by the form, never to be found again. Emails are usually better, a sort of “middle-hand” form if you will, and easier to locate and reread, but as your great-aunt will tell you, an email is no replacement for a handwritten thank you note.

Thus we return to the “long-hand” form: the written letter.

Humans are not machines. Having been made in the image of God and endowed with the rational mind, each person is blessed with thoughts, emotions, and feelings within their heart, mind, and soul. Additionally, everybody as a natural instinct for fellowship and friendship. Hearts seek hearts, and meeting, dance in the light of language and stories. There ought to be a written medium to be had for this.

As John Donne says1,

Text within this block will maintain its original spacing when published

Letters mingle souls,  
For thus, friends absent speak. This ease controls
The tediousness of my life;

There are many advantages to the written letter. Not the least of which is hidden within that qualifier: written. While several times in recent history some snail mail has been written on a word processor, the majority of it, and one of the main virtues of the form, is that it is written by hand.

One of the biggest problems with relying solely on texting and email is that every letter will always be uniform, just as the letters in this article are. The letters A B C will always look the same. This is a fallacy. “Your A is my A. Nothing is different between us.” Letters become just ones and zeroes in soul-less binary code.

John Donne was not writing about ones and zeroes. He wrote about people. As you have observed countless times, in reality everybody’s handwriting is different. Even people who have been trained in a specific handwriting school have separate styles. People form their individual letters differently, even in a pattern. Some people print; some people write in cursive. There are people who like to write in miniature and some who write larger. Some tail their “a”s, cross their “z”s, have long sloping “l”s, or don’t dot their “i”s. Some people can write in a straight line: others can’t.

This is only one of the ways you receive a part of a person when you receive a handwritten letter. You can say with certainty that some person specifically—your pen pal—formed the “D” that begins the personal address and the letters after it that make up the words with which they are writing to you. After you begin to know a person, you will start to see that their handwriting often reflects the person’s personality. You become friends with a whole person: not only a mind or a heart, but with their hand too.

There is also something additionally meaningful in that you can tell your correspondent actually put effort into writing to you. Anybody can type with their thumbs on an iPhone. But your correspondent took a pen or pencil and made the lines, lines which made letters, letters that made words, words that made sentences, dots and dashes that made those sentences grammatical, paragraphs that made up not only the physical reply (“I answer ink with ink”) but the inherent, spiritual reply that exists because language has intrinsic substance (“I answer a question you asked with an answer and an explanation of what it meant to me”). This also took time. A text can be written in a second, but depending on circumstance, a letter might take ten minutes or longer. And yet someone took time out of their busy day (and you know how busy they are) to write to you.

This goes back to one of the principles of letter-writing: that the form thrives on love. This is not exclusive to the love-letter, though of course that is the most famous form of it. True, unadulterated love—whether you have familial affection, love between friends, love between lovers, or love unconditionally with a person2—is fundamentally selfless. It is a gift wholeheartedly for another human person, and not a transaction. By nature a letter is selfless. One can say it is the form least like a transaction.3 Love makes a kind of covenant, even between friends. The lovely paradox of the well-formed letter is that it is simultaneously a slice of oneself and the least of one’s selfishness 4. You may speak of yourself and yet contract no egotistical complex. You are forced to lay bare yourself for the other person, and anticipate their reply.

If you’ve ever been unsure if that deep wondering you had while gazing at the stars at night belonged in a text message, think how much more it might mean in a letter.

If you know the joy of receiving parcels of books in the mail, think how much your day could be made by the receipt of words written to you, by a friend who may be thousands of miles away. 5 Think of how you could bring joy to someone’s day or week by being that giver yourself. In the spirit of Saint Therese’s Little Way6, we must know that a single act of love can change a person’s life.

Part Two will take us through the big names in letter-writing and also give some suggestions for finding a pen pal in our own time.

This poem was originally published in St. Nicholas Magazine, available here.

“I don’t know what happened,

I think it’s uncanny.

The statues, the murals, they’ve all gone, Aunt Jenny!

Our Mary, our Joseph, the St. Francis altar,

They’re all covered up, where they’re gone I do wonder,

The crosses are gone too, like the one Our Lord died on,

Tom says they’re still there, but I don’t believe him,

Anyone can see they’ve left violet ghosts in their wake,

So saying they’re there is a grievous mistake.

I think that they must have gone, 

Far, far, away,

They left nary a letter,

 When they left last Sunday,

But I hear that they’ll be back on Easter Day.

They say there’ll be chocolate,

They say there’ll be eggs,

But I just want St. Francis to come back with his hens—

Tom says there’ll be candy,

I’ve heard there’ll be fun,

But I only want St. Agnes to come back with her ewes,

Back to the rood screen in bonny St. Trewes’.”

Image by Ramon Perucho from Pixabay

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Born in Rome to an old senatorial family in 480 A. D., Anicius Manlius Severinus Boethius1 was one of the last people to know the Greek language before its thousand-year disappearance. He was a translator of the great ancients that had gone before him, a writer of myriad works on theology, music, and mathematics, and an active politician while the Ostrogoth Theodoric held power over Rome; but what we remember him for is his book which pointed medieval people to the heavens and to the music their own souls were tuned to.

It was this small book, The Consolation of Philosophy, which, written in Boethius’ lowest moments, would become the single most important text of the Middle Ages, encapsulating the worldview of a medieval man and Christian, eyes turned and hearts tuned to the heavens. It would touch every great writer after either directly or by association; Boethius is right up there with, above, and behind Edmund Spenser as your Favorite Author’s Favorite Author, a legacy stretching down into Golden Age detective novels with its ideas of medieval order. It is this legacy which I will seek to expound here in this essay.

The Consolation of Philosophy is the story of a man contemplating his world, and because this is a medieval man, fame, fortune, and death’s sting isn’t the half of it. With fame, fortune and death come the question of free will, the mystery of eternity, God’s interaction with man, and the state of the soul in times of immense difficulty.

What do you do when everything is taken from you in an instant? How do you act when punished for a crime you did not commit? Boethius enfolds his troubles into a fictionalized version of himself. This Boethius is visited by Lady Philosophy, a supernatural being reminiscent of Bertie Wooster’s aunt Dahlia–formidable, to say the least. She will become an inspiration for Dante when writing The Divine Comedy–instead of keeping the maternal figure, Dante will model his patron after a loved one who died too soon. Philosophy’s glowing, piercing eyes he will keep, but instead of a Juno-like death stare his lady’s eyes will glow like stars. Lady Philosophy will become Beatrice. Both Beatrice and Lady Philosophy must aid their medieval man when he’s grappling with his world after being exiled. Both women lead to new life while being a new life. The Consolation is the original Vita Nuova.

By the time the Consolation gets to Dante, it has become the most well-read work in European society from 525 after its publication until 1700. It will be translated into the vernacular English not only once, but by three worthy historical figures: King Alfred (Old English), Chaucer (Middle English), and Queen Elizabeth the First (Modern English). It will be at the core of core curricula for centuries upon centuries.

On top of this, Boethius will have reinvented the wheel. That is, the idea and imagery of the wheel as we know it. In Consolation he gives us the image of Lady Fortune, the ever-fickle luscious lady Luck, and her wheel from which we inherit the phrases “Fortune’s wheel” and “wheel of fortune”. Fortuna, or Tyche as she was sometimes called, was worshipped by the Greeks and Romans–-think “Bona Fortuna”—just pray to Lady Luck for good fortune, what could go wrong? Nothing, while it lasts. But one turn from the femme fatale upon her wheel and whiz! bang! crash! Job has lost his family, and Boethius has lost his world.

Order in the Consolation is representative of entire medieval thought. To the medieval imagination, the heavens moved in perfect synchronization, not like a gargantuan clock ever moving towards death, but like a set of spheres set in motion by an outside hand. Much can be summed up of this worldview by the mantra “a place for everything and everything in its place”. The planets and stars move in their accustomed circles as they are wont to do, and above and throughout they radiate a song that is as ancient as Creation and as deep as the cosmos: the music of the spheres. Everything has a place in the Great Dance, and everything is connected in a Great Chain of Being which is set off balance by any disharmony or false note. The key to being ordered is to order oneself. Ordering oneself will order everything else. If you think you can change the world without washing the dishes, then you miss the entire point. This is not a literature essay but Boethius’ historical legacy is in his literature.

By encapsulating medieval thought into not-150-pages he left a legacy which is unfathomably foundational. This legacy can be seen even to modern day in the early 20th-century in the Golden Age of Detective Novels.

After World War I, the world was in disorder. People, searching desperately for order, took up jigsaw puzzles and crosswords by the thousands. After his world had been turned upside-down, Boethius devoted himself to his Muses and poetry. Sometimes the poetry was all right. Sometimes the crosswords helped. But what was more helpful for people in the 1920s and 1930s were detective novels. Set in the beginning as presumed was a murder, a willful disruption of the natural order. The picture was fragmented. But at the end order was restored and the picture made sense. Often this picture was upside-down, and someone had only to flip it over for the truth to come breezing out.

What helped Boethius was Lady Philosophy doing just that. She turned his upside-down-world upside down, and the only other direction for upside down is right-side-up. At the center of Golden Age detective stories readers encountered a well-ordered person. This person was the detective and often had a gift of sight and a knack for observation which no one else in the novel had. At the center of his Consolation of Philosophy Boethius found the same thing. A detective’s vocation is sight and reinstating order. For people stricken after a World War, a detective was just what they needed, and they found them in Golden Age detective novels. Boethius, stricken after the loss of a world, needed one too and found one in Lady Philosophy.

Appearance versus reality may be one of the most common and profound truths in medieval stories, but it held on for a long while after that. It is at the heart of all stories as The Consolation of Philosophy is at the heart of all Golden Age detective novels.

All things in nature thus retrace

The paths acknowledged as their own

They gladly then regain their base.

Assigned to them is this alone,

To seek as end their starting-place,

And make the world a stable zone.

The Consolation of Philosophy, Book 3, Meter 22

One way or another, everybody has been at one point quite familiarly a friend of Winnie-the-Pooh and Christopher Robin. Short, squat, and golden, with a simple heart and generous nature, Pooh has a home in each of our hearts, whether we know him from the effervescent words of A. A. Milne or or from the Disney television specials where Pooh was given his trademark red shirt. But why is this? I think it is because the adventures of Winnie-the-Pooh make up the form of a medieval romance.

A medieval romance, or a medieval questing story, follows a knight on a quest, taking on the comic structure usually characterized by the letter U. Like a knight in a romance, Pooh must encounter a series of mini quests and obstacles along the way before reaching the achievement of his main quest.
The evidence that A. A. Milne wrote his children’s story in the form of a displaced romance is substantial. Every chapter ends with either a feast or some other symbol of the restoration of order, an important aspect of a romance–usually Pooh returning home for “a little something” to eat after the adventure has been resolved. This is more obvious at the end of the first book when, after Pooh rescues Piglet from the flood (1.9, Piglet Is Entirely Surrounded by Water), Christopher Robin throws Pooh a celebratory party with which the book closes, (1.10, Christopher Robin Gives Pooh a Party, and We Say Good-bye). The flood has receded and he who could not Fly, Burrow, Jump, Climb, or Make a Loud Noise Until Rescued has been saved: order has been restored to the forest.

More often still, Pooh is set on a quest for an object, much like a knight of the Matter of Britain in search of the Holy Grail, magical swords, and lost persons. In 1.4 when Eeyore loses his tail, Pooh volunteers to find it, eventually doing so, Owl having misplaced it for a bellpull; in chapter six an object must be found for a birthday present for Eeyore; in chapter eight all seven animals (joined albeit with Rabbit’s Friends and Relations) sally forth to discover the North Pole; while, in the second book, Piglet and Pooh search for a house for Eeyore, a breakfast for Tigger, one of Rabbit’s cousins, and a house for Owl.

When Winnie-the-Pooh is not in search of an object, he is typically to be found attempting to subdue a dangerous and mythical beast, as in 1.3 where he tracks with the astuteness of Sherlock Holmes four Woozles, but never catches up with them; in 1.5 when he and Piglet endeavour to catch a terrible Heffalump; and much more seriously in 2.7 (In Which Tigger is Unbounced) when Rabbit wants to tame Tigger, who is as dangerous and mythical as you can get, having accidentally “boffed” Eeyore into the river in the previous chapter.

Looking closer, 2.7 shows itself to be the microcosm of Pooh’s medieval journey. After Tigger accidentally pushes Eeyore into the river with his bounciness, Rabbit persuades Piglet and Pooh that Tigger’s bounces must be taken out of him. He suggests they do this by ascending to the top of the Forest and “losing” Tigger there overnight so that when they come back the next morning he will have been humbled. However, after they run away from Tigger they are unable to find their way home due to the fog shrouding the forest, and are soon going in circles around a sandpit. Pooh, with the whimsical inexplicableness that makes him so lovable says, “How would it be, if, as soon as we’re out of sight of this Pit, we try to find it again?”

When Rabbit asks what good that’ll do, Pooh replies, “We keep looking for Home and not finding it, so I thought that if we looked for this Pit, we’d be sure not to find it, which would be a Good Thing, because then we might find something that we weren’t looking for, which might be just what we were looking for, really,” and Rabbit, trying to prove how silly this is, walks away from the pit and gets separated from them.

Pooh then declares that he doesn’t know the way home through the mist, “But there are twelve pots of honey in my cupboard, and they’ve been calling me for hours. I couldn’t hear them properly before, because Rabbit would talk, but if nobody says anything except those twelve pots, I think, Piglet, I shall know where they’re coming from.”

By listening to the honey pots and being in tune, Piglet and Pooh find their way home. When Tigger, who is nothing if not a natural being, finds Rabbit later, (“Tiggers never get lost”!) it is Rabbit who has been humbled.

Fog and mist are images of labyrinthine spiritual wandering. Rabbit is both spiritually and physically lost.

Additionally, Pooh shows himself to be a medieval bard. Throughout the stories he composes myriad “hums”, even immortalizing events of glory such as Piglet’s bravery in 2.8 (In Which Piglet Does a Very Grand Thing ). In the succeeding chapter he composes a hum with seven verses and sings it three times, displaying two medieval numbers of completeness.

It is at the end of The House at Pooh Corner that Pooh is at his height, and what is Piglet’s poem ostensibly is undeniably its author’s. Pooh has tried to be more like the other animals, but every time he has failed. Here, however, in the nineteenth tale he is exactly who he is supposed to be: Winnie-the-Pooh. He has become ordered. He has achieved medieval numbers of completeness. Thus, we find that Pooh’s quest is really one of self-knowledge. And it is an identity quest, in fact, which is at the center of a medieval romance, which is allegorical of the Journey of the Soul to God. The knight has gone through trials and tribulations, finally reaching the achievement of his goal which, in the medieval imagination, would be communion with God.

This, then, must be part of why we are so fond of Winnie-the-Pooh. We too are souls on the journey to God, knights who must battle fearsome Heffalumps on our way to “a little something” that will revive us. Before we even cast eyes upon the Neverland our minds scampered after piglets, and later when we came to live in the Shire, it was no wonder that we felt at home, having been boys and girls in the Hundred Acre Wood.

Owl lived at The Chestnuts, an old-world residence of great charm.

And so, welcome to The Chestnuts: a publication dedicated to the medieval view of order, the importance of friendship, classic children’s literature, Golden Age detective novels, philology and dead languages, letters written by hand, and, forever and always, steaming cups of tea.