LIKE CLOCKWORK every morning, a metallic bang of the mailbox chute echoed off the rowhouses that faced each other on Guilford Avenue.
It was great Aunt Cora depositing a letter. It was one of the sounds that woke this corner of the neighborhood and it would be repeated throughout the day.
We were a household of letter writers. Time and concentration went into their composition -- and reading. A letter received from an old friend got passed around the dinner table and was followed by the inevitable discussion of all pertinent points.
This is not to say that there weren't a lot of calls that came into my family's Tuxedo telephone exchange number. It was just that my family recorded many of their thoughts and observations in letters. And now, years after they were written -- and, in many cases, saved -- there is a permanent record of these strident personalities.
Both of my grandparents wrote letters. My grandmother, Lily Rose, kept a mahogany writing box, a portable desk that opened to reveal a green felt surface, plus little slots for paper, stamps, ink and envelope storage. She was never the most prolific writer -- alas, she was the only one of the five Stewart sisters who did not graduate from Eastern High School. I wonder if she regarded pen and paper as a chore.
Her husband, Edward Jacques Monaghan, made up for it. He was a prolific correspondent who kept a big desk full of fountain pens and ink bottles. His favorite pen was made in Baltimore and bore the name Jenkins. His letters, always in emerald green ink, are a joy to read. His handwriting was fine, controlled and full of Victorian flourishes. His humor jumps off the page. He's also a candid writer who confides every nuance of family temperament and mood -- especially any of the grumpiness or ill spirit he so detests.
My mother's voluminous output of letters is delightful. She began her letter writing early, getting a start in those 1920s winters when my grandparents took off for Miami and she remained home at Guilford Avenue. A couple of times a week, the letters arrived, postmarked Govans, from Notre Dame of Maryland, where my mother was a third-grade student. One of these has an account of a visit to Howard and Lexington to see the live reindeer in Bernheimer's window. At 7, her spelling was better than mine is today.
My mother's letters remain a joy to read. She was a quick and ready wit; her account of a walk down Charles Street in 1963 retains of full account of the friends she encountered on the walk, plus how she'd been into the Schofield Silver firm too. She could also say much in a few words.
Ever a voracious and careful newspaper reader, she also clipped articles of interest and enclosed them in her mail packets. One of her more curious series of letters was to an aunt who took the veil of a Dominican cloistered nun about the time of World War I.
The two women never met, yet they wrote back and forth for many years. They chatted on paper about family matters and about Baltimore. The nun, who was born in South Baltimore, lived in Wisconsin. My mother continued to write and fill her in about how the Inner Harbor was being transformed in the 1970s.
Sister Mary Joseph wrote back, chuckling about why anybody would want to live in the Otterbein neighborhood -- too close to the railroad tracks (Camden Station) and coal soot. She also thought harbor rats would doom what became Harborplace.
These letter writers ate paper and stamps. If you were ever at a loss for a family gift, boxes of stationery, writing tablets and envelopes were practical and appreciated. Some of these letters are on fancy bond paper with imprinted initials. But over the years, some of the best, the best written and reported, are those hastily written accounts on loose-leaf paper where the impressions and emotions leap off the page.
Pub Date: 3/20/99