Recently I discovered Maurice Baring’s 1910 book Dead Letters, a collection of imaginary letters from a variety of fictional and historical persons that rather unfalteringly anticipated most of my work as a writer (ersatz Edwardian ‘man of letters’ in light-comic dialogue with the classics).
“These letters are in no wise meant to be either historical documents or historical studies or aids to the understanding of history, or learning of any kind with or without tears. They are the fruits of imagination rather than of research. The word research is not even remotely applicable here, for in my case it means the hazy memories of a distant education indolently received, a few hurried references to Smith’s “Classical Dictionary,” a map of Rome which is in the London Library, and Bouillet’s “Biographie Universelle.” So that if you tell me that my account of the Carthaginian fleet is full of inaccuracies, or that the psychology of my Lesbia conflicts with the historical evidence,viii I shall be constrained to answer that I do not care. Yet amidst this chaff of fancy there are a few grains of historical truth.”
I’m familiar with quite a few of Baring’s contemporaries and friends (Belloc, Chesterton, Vernon Lee) but had somehow managed to miss him entirely. This is a shame, because had I discovered him sooner I might have skipped the vast majority of my own career, saving countless wasted man-hours.
From Edmund Wilson’s 1971 review of Baring’s career in The New Yorker:
The third department of Baring’s writing that I want to commend to the reader is the sequence of burlesques and parodies that he published between 1910 and 1913 : “Dead Letters,” “Diminutive Dramas,” and “Lost Diaries”—later reprinted in one volume as “Unreliable History.” One of the favorite devices here is to make the famous figures of the literature or history of whatever country or period talk and behave like the English characters of Baring’s contemporary novels.
It really is uncanny! The first two-thirds of Dead Letters’ Table of Contents is almost a one-to-one direct lineup with either my first book, Texts From Jane Eyre, or some of the recurring series I’ve written here at The Chatner. You may see for yourself:
Baring: From the Mycenae Papers
Clytaemnestra to Aegisthus
Most honoured Aegisthus,
One line to say that I have received your letter and loved it all except the last sentence. Please do not say that kind of thing again as it will quite ruin our friendship, which I thought was going to be so real.
Yours very sincerely,
Clytaemnestra.
Helen to Clytaemnestra
(Ten years later)
Troy.
Dearest Clytaemnestra,
Your letters are a great comfort to me when I get them, which is very seldom. Everything is going on just the same. It is now the tenth year of the siege, and I see no reason why it should ever end. I am dreadfully afraid the Greeks will never take Troy.
I can give you no idea of how dull everything is here. We do the same thing and see the same people every day. We know exactly what is going on in the Greek camp, and most of the time is spent in discussing the gossip, which bores me to death. You are quite right in what you say about Paris. I made a fatal mistake. It is all Aphrodite’s fault. He has become too dreadful now. He is still very good-looking, but even compared with Menelaus he is pitiable in every way and every bit as cross. Hector is very nice, but painfully dull. The King and the Queen are both very kind, but as for Cassandra, she is intolerable. She is always prophesying dreadful calamities which never come12 off. She said, for instance, that I would lose my looks and make a long journey in Egypt. As if I would go to Egypt from here! As to my looks, you know, darling, I never was vain, was I? But I can honestly tell you that, if anything, I have rather improved than otherwise, and among the Trojans’ women, who are absolute frights and have no more idea of dressing than sheep, I look magnificent.
Self: The Courtship of Penelope
ANTINOUS: I don’t think we ought to go over any of that again. The point is that no one’s courted Helen in ten years, nearly.
AMPHINOMUS: Yes, and now everyone is courting Penelope.
EURYADES: Is she as pretty as Helen?
ANTINOUS: I don’t think it’s sporting, comparing women’s looks like that.
EURYADES: Well, was she born in an egg or anything?
ANTINOUS: I think in the ordinary way.
What’s worse is, it’s not just that she gives him rides, it’s that days when her car is out of commission she hangs around the parking lot trying to see if anyone else can drive them home after their shift, despite living exactly nowhere along the way for anyone else. She bugs customers about it too. Customers! Even the awful ones who can’t take a hint who we’re always trying to give the brush-off to. How can you brush someone off with Helen in the parking lot, waiting to undo all your hard work by chirping, ‘Hey, where you headed?’ as soon as they chime their way out the front doors into the sunlight?"
“How can all Greece hate me? All Greece hasn’t even seen me.”
“I hadn’t seen you before I loved you,” Paris said, unhelpfully.
“Thank you, darling,” she said. “Other people had seen me, and told you about me, which is roughly the same thing, so let’s not have anything else along those lines.” She puzzled over the paper a while longer. “And what’s all Greece–” she said in the same moment Paris asked, “Is there any more coffee?” Both waited on the other.
“Hang on, I know this one,” said Paris. “Mycenae, certainly.”
“Certainly.”
“Thessaly?”
“Are you asking me, or telling me?”
“I’m figuring, dearest,” he said without malice.
“And you’ve still got a full cup of it, or nearly, at your elbow, behind the jam-pot.”
“Oh, have I? How clever you are, as well as beautiful.”
“Mm,” she said, and kissed him.
Baring: With the Carthaginian Fleet, 216 B.C.
“Another stratagem of the Sardinian native is to demand money for the poultry destroyed by the23 sailors of our ship. Every family in the village complained that their poultry had been annihilated by our unprincipled mariners, but little credence was lent to the tale, because at the moment when the complaint was made there was only one hen in the village, a dead one that had just perished of old age.”
Self: But Why Didn’t Hannibal Ever Conquer Rome?
“He spent nearly two decades successfully besieging the Italian peninsula. His victory at Cannae caused the greatest single military loss in Roman history. Why didn’t Hannibal Barca ever attack Rome itself?”
He actually did
Don’t let anyone fool you about walls or supply lines or conscriptable forces or relative isolation or anything like that
He did attack Rome. It went fine
Better than fine actually
And he was still able to reach his other objective of disrupting Rome’s strategic network of military alliances in southern Italy
But he also wanted to attack Rome itself and he did
Hannibal Barca attacked Rome and even conquered it
He’s still there now, successfully attacking Rome to this day
Nothing could be simpler. Take, for example, Gustave Flaubert’s Salaambô: “What’s all this I hear about Salaambô of Carthage, daughter of Hamilcar, and this business with Matho? What did they make of one another, and what of the Zaïmph, the jewel-encrusted veil said to protect both Carthage and its people, of which it has also been said that all who touch it will die? What am I to make of that?” Simply procure for yourself a copy of Gustave Flaubert’s Salaambô, or equivalent, and direct your attention to the back cover copy, which is honor-bound to disclose further. There you will read, Salaambô is a historical novel by Gustave Flaubert. Set in ancient Carthage, the vivid plot bursts with exoticism, high drama and bloody violence, in bold letters.
So far, so good. “But what of this Salaambô? Who is she to me? Is she more than just a mere beauty? And where does the state of Matho’s wits enter into it?” To which the back cover answers: However, Salaambô proves more than just a mere beauty. She seeks to confound Matho, whose wits are blinded with lust. So there you are.
Baring: Lesbia Illa
We found the villa looking very clean and fresh; and it is a great blessing to get away from Rome. I never mean to go back there as long as I live; especially after what has happened. I suppose you have heard all about it, but I want you to know the truth, as everybody in Rome is telling horrible lies about me and giving a wrong complexion to the whole story, especially Lalage, who is a spiteful cat, and is sure to write and tell you all about it.
Well, of course I’ve known Catullus for years. We were almost brought up together. He was always in and out of the house. He used to amuse me; Metellus liked him, and we were both very kind to him. I used to think he was thoroughly nice. He was so sympathetic when my sparrow died, and quite understood what a shock that was, and what a state of despair I was in. By the way, I’ve got a new sparrow now. It’s quite tame. I’ve called it Julius. We used, in fact, to see a great deal of Catullus. We were useful to him, too, because31 he met a great many clever and important people at our house; and when we first knew him nobody had ever heard of him. It only shows what a mistake it is to be kind to people. After a time he began to give himself airs, and treated the house as if it belonged to him. He complained of the food and the wine.
Self: Sappho’s Fragment 63
“Playthings may not count in, tap out, or call time, but await the pleasure of big hands.”
But go ahead and ask me: What’s
the matter now, Sappho, why
this round of calls, what’s the new
pain lodged in my ghoulish heart,
fine, fine, “What’s her name this time, girl-chick,
whose kiosk in the mall did you hang around too long
after her shift got over, before her ride got there?
I’ll have her car
idling in your driveway
before she has time to pray to other gods.”
A dick move, if you ask me,
bragging like that.
Look, just get here, okay? Because (1) I gave you
my only set of spare keys years ago, (2) You know
I’d do the same for you if you needed anything,
so just fulfill what needs fulfilling and don’t
drag out my emptiness
(3)
just be a fucking friend, like you said
you’d be. Okay?
My new thing is infinite resignation. I’m extremely reserved now, and just, I hold everything loosely, because anyone who has lost as much as I have (my girlfriend but also just, like,
the very concept of personal fulfillment, which is fine, because
I can accept it)
Was I once happy and dwelt among the sunlit lands? Okay, yes,
And was my girlfriend loved as no one ever loved a girlfriend, like, ever?
Also a yes there, Chief,
but sometimes people get tired of happiness, I guess,
and if she doesn’t want to dwell in the highest form of bliss
available to mortals, then who am I to defy Fate?
my new thing is being a beacon of stoicism and endurance,
and closing myself off to all love and forms of consolation,
and people say things like, “Oh wow, is Catullus completely closed off to sweetheartism now? Who hurt him? and why? We should have appreciated him when we had the chance.”
Baring: Cleopatra at Rome
In the middle of dinner Caesar received a note. I guessed at once it was from his wife, whose jealousy lately had been something quite frightening. Caesar read the note and was visibly disturbed and irritated. Cleopatra pretended not to notice the incident. The moment dinner was over Caesar said that he would have to go home for a moment in order to despatch a piece of public business, but that he would be back shortly. He was still living, you know, in the public offices in the Via Sacra. Cleopatra did not make the slightest objection to44 his going; she only said that she hoped he would be back soon, and that as for herself she would be well occupied talking to Cicero, whom she had not seen for some time.
Caesar was just making ready to go, and the flute-players had been sent for, when Casca (who, I think, is the best-looking young man in Rome) walked up to Cleopatra and occupied the empty seat next to her. Caesar suddenly changed his mind, and said he would not go home after all. This was typical of his behaviour during these days: he had been constantly changing his mind about small matters and never seemed able to come to any decision. Besides this, he was always jealous of any one younger than himself, especially of Casca, who has got such thick hair.
Self: Cassius Only Has One Suggestion For Everything
CASSIUS: Are you having a good time?
BRUTUS: I’m not sure. Are you having a good time?
CASSIUS [Carefully]: You should go have a good time with everybody else. Unless you’re tired! You do look a little tired.
BRUTUS [Diplomatic]: I’m not as much fun as some of our other friends. Antony, for example. He’s a lot of fun. I hope I’m not keeping you from having fun.
CASSIUS: No, not at all.
BRUTUS: Should I go? I can go. I don’t want to spoil your fun.
CASSIUS: I hope this doesn’t sound like a criticism. But you’ve been a lot less gentle lately. Everyone’s been talking about it.
Baring: Ovid’s Banishment
Letter from Diogenes, a Sculptor, to a friend in Athens
My work, or rather the business which called me to Rome, is now accomplished, and the Caryatids which I was commissioned to make for the Pantheon of Agrippa are now in their place. But in what a place! Alas, they have been set up so high that their whole effect is lost, and the work might just as well be that of any Roman bungler. The Romans are indeed barbarians. They consider that as long as a thing is big and expensive it is beautiful; they take luxury for comfort, notoriety for fame, eccentricity for genius, and riches for wisdom; or rather they deem that wealth is the only thing which counts in the modern world, and here at Rome this is true. Their attempts at art are in the highest degree ludicrous. Yesterday I visited the studio of Ludius, who is renowned in this city for his decorative work. He paints walls and ceilings, and the51 Emperor has employed him to decorate his villa at Naples.
His work, which is not devoid of a certain talent, is disciplined by no sense of proportion. It would not be tolerated in Greece for a moment owing to an extravagance and an exaggeration which, so far from displaying any originality, merely form the futile mask of a fundamental banality. The man himself wears his hair yards long like a Persian, and favours a pea-green toga. I could not help saying to him that in Greece artists took pains to dress like everybody but to paint like no one.
Self: The State of Hellenistic Philosophy Five Minutes Before Stoicism
Thanks to the power of the imagination, we never have to confine ourselves to the present moment, instead reimagining the past or litigating the future over and over again in our minds, to endless profit.
If it feels good – do it!
I can step into the same river any time I want.
Baring: Nero Interviewed, Rome, A.D. 64
Letter from a Greek Traveller to his friend in Athens
It is fifteen years since I was last at Rome, and although I was prepared to find a change in everything, I had not expected this complete transformation. The Rome I knew, the Rome of the straggly narrow streets and rotting wooden houses, has disappeared, and in its place there is a kind of Corinth on a huge scale, marred of course by the usual want of taste of the Romans, but imposing nevertheless and extraordinarily gay and brilliant. The fault of the whole thing is that it is too big: the houses are too high, the streets too broad, everything is planned on too large a scale. From the artist’s point of view the effect is deplorable; from the point of view of the casual observer it is amusing in the highest degree.
Self: Against Timarchus
God!! Athens! Athens, you know? It’s just like — Athens! Okay? Like, what does that even mean, but also, it kind of means everything, right? It says it all. Athens!! I just think, for me personally, that Athens is so important, especially for all of us as Athenians, which I truly believe that we are, every one of us in our own very special way, that it would be such a shame if Athens ever came to harm because someone among us was representing themselves as a friend to Athens when in actual fact, like in honest-to-God real life, in a very tangible way, they were not a friend to Athens, and were actually making her look bad to other people, Macedonians for example.
Baring: Marcus Aurelius at Lanuvium
I had never seen the Emperor before. He is short and looks delicate and a great deal older than he really is. His eyes have a weary expression, and the general impression of the man would be one of great benevolence and dignity were it not marred by a certain stiffness and primness in his demeanour. When he greets you with great affability, you say to yourself, “What a charming man!” Then he stops short, and it is difficult, nay, impossible, to continue the conversation. After a prolonged pause he asks you a question or makes some remark on the weather or the topics of the day. But he does not pursue the subject, and the result is a succession of awkward pauses and a general atmosphere of discomfort.
Self: Marcus Aurelius Prepares For the New Year
Not that I want to spend time trying to read other people’s minds in the new year, ahhh. I’m just: I release it. It’s honestly not my business if Antoninus or Gracchus or whomever is jealous of me, if they even are jealous of me. I want to spend more time this year releasing things, whether that’s just clutter around the house or relationships that don’t honor my higher self or books I’m never going to get around to reading, because I really want to get in touch with my own mortality, not that I want to spend a lot of time obsessing over death, because I can’t change it, but I want to live in a constant state of radical acceptance so that when I do die it’s not like Oh my God, ahh, death!!! like, DEATH!!! but more like, Yes, okay, this. Does that make sense??
Because if I’m really just honest with myself right now, I can accept that I’m never going to read all of these books. I keep buying them, and saying I’m going to read them, and then I don’t. Then when people are like, “Oh, Marcus, what are you reading right now?” which is a perfectly innocent question, I feel like they’re trying to GET me, and I’ll just name whatever books I recently bought (which, is that compulsive??) and hope they don’t ask any follow-up questions because then I have to guess what I think the book is probably about (not that a book can really be ABOUT anything lol) and that kind of feels like lying.
Baring: The Camelot Jousts
Then there is King Mark. Shall I ask him? Without Iseult, of course. He can’t expect us to ask her after all that has happened. I hear the King of Orkney asked them both and that he now expects her to be asked, but nothing shall induce me to receive her. If you think it is impossible to ask him alone we had better leave it, and ask neither of them.
Oh! I quite forgot. There’s Lancelot. Shall we ask him to stay? He’s been so often, so if you would rather not have him we can quite well leave him out this time. I don’t want him to think he’s indispensable to you.
The weather has been fine and the hedges are a mass of primroses. Vivi the cat (I christened her after dear Vivien) caught a mouse yesterday. Do come back quickly.
Your loving
Guinevere.
Many knights never learn of this aim. They are horse riders and cow-handed, fit only to sire sons and to round out the guest list at court. They can carry a cup across a tiltyard without spilling, say “Pleased to meet you” in French, and die in war. Not for them is the increase of the soul, the swelling up of merit, the augmentation of grace, the tournament in disguise, the leap from the window, the taking hold lightly and in secret of a dearly loved hand, the token worn tight against the chest, the exchange of hair locks, the midnight marriage by a tree-wild monk, the flight in disguise, the trade in clothes, and the setting out across the wasteland. The true knight longs for shame, awaits eagerly the day when he may cast aside his honor and trample it under the pounding of feet as he rushes to his friend. A knight is a humiliation-seeking device, and the point of knighthood is to renounce everything, to give up all, to cast honor and dignity and title aside and tumble headfirst into perfect degradation, perfect friendship, perfect trust, perfect felicity. In this collapse may knighthood, at last, flower. All else is horsemanship and table manners and may as easily be learned from a book (or, for that manner, a well-trained horse) as from a fellow knight. It is better than nothing and nothing else.
Baring: King Lear’s Daughter
Dearest Regan,
I am sending you this letter by Oswald. We have been having the most trying time lately with Papa, and it ended to-day in one of those scenes which are so painful to people like you and me, who hate scenes. I am writing now to tell you all about it, so that you may be prepared. This is what has happened.
When Papa came here he brought a hundred knights with him, which is a great deal more than we could put up, and some of them had to live in the village. The first thing that happened was that they quarrelled with our people and refused to take orders from them, and whenever one told any one to do anything it was either—if it was one of Papa’s114 men—“not his place to do it”; or if it was one of our men, they said that Papa’s people made work impossible. For instance, only the day before yesterday I found that blue vase which you brought back from Dover for me on my last birthday broken to bits. Of course I made a fuss, and Oswald declared that one of Papa’s knights had knocked it over in a drunken brawl. I complained to Papa, who flew into a passion and said that his knights, and in fact all his retainers, were the most peaceful and courteous people in the world, and that it was my fault, as I was not treating him or them with the respect which they deserved.
Self: Lear’s Daughters in Art
REGAN: can you IMAGINE!!!!
okay okay wait you be Dad and I’ll be Cordelia
GONERIL: okay SO
Do you love me? And/or do you ever want to have money again
REGAN: HMMMMMMMMMMM
UHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH
ZRRRRRRRRRRRRR
GONERIL: “I’m Cordelia, I don’t understand figurative speech”
REGAN: “What’s hyperbole, I’ve never heard of it, even though I live in a royal court where pretty much everyone deploys over-the-top language to demarcate rank, status, and power pretty much every second of the day”
GONERIL: “I’m Cordelia, I only speak shepherdess”
Baring: At the Court of King Claudius
“The Chamberlain’s daughter was listless throughout and seemed to take no interest in the play, and her father was too enfeebled in mind to catch the137 drift of it at all.”
Self: Hamlet, Texts From Jane Eyre
Baring: Romeo and Rosaline
Letter from Rosaline to her friend Olivia
Verona.
My dear Olivia,
Thank you very much for your kind letter. I am only just beginning to be able to write letters,139 as you may well imagine after all that we have gone through, and I am still in half-mourning, although they say this is ridiculous. As a matter of fact, nobody has a better right to be in mourning for Romeo than I, considering that he would certainly have married me had it not been for a series of quite extraordinary accidents. Mamma says that I was to blame, but I will tell you exactly what happened, and you can judge for yourself.
I made Romeo’s acquaintance two years ago. We at once got on well together, and I never minded his childishness, which used to get on some people’s nerves. He was the kind of person whom it was really impossible to dislike, because he was so impetuous, so full of high spirits and good humour. Some people thought he was good looking; I never did. It was never his looks that attracted me, but I liked him for himself. Wherever I went he used to be there, and whenever we met he always talked to me the whole time and never looked at any one else, so that we were practically engaged although nothing was announced.
Self: Romeo and Juliet, Texts From Jane Eyre
Baring: Heine in Paris
Herr Heine, like all Germans, is a trifle tiring and long-winded; of course he is cultivated and accomplished, and they say he has written most interesting books, but I cannot read a word of German. He talks French well, but he is heavy and continues a subject long after one has sufficiently discussed it. This is so different from the French, who skate over every topic so lightly and never dwell too long on any subject, and understand what you want to say before you have half said it. All the same, you see at once that he is an interesting man, and every now and then he says something truly remarkable. He wears big spectacles, and his hair, which is very fair, is cut straight and is rather long and bunches over his low collar. He astonished everybody at supper by saying that the perpetual praise of Goethe and Byron tired him.
“I cannot understand you Parisians,” he said, “when you talk about poetry. You go out of the way to search out and idolize all sorts of foreign poets when you have got a real native poet who is worth all these foreigners put together.” Somebody said “Victor Hugo.” “Nothing of the sort,” he answered, “Victor Hugo is like a wheel which turns round and round in space without any intellectual cog-wheel. It is all words, words, words. But he has no thought and no real feeling. He is screaming at the top of his voice about nothing.”
“Then who is our great poet?” asked Madame Jaubert.
Self: The Nine Lyric Poets
I’m not thinking of Lycus now.
Arrivederci to the whole affair —
hunting for excuses to brush a forearm, to catch a hug —
no more songs about his hair, no matter how long he grows it out.
Let him grow it out forever. Let it hang like a dark veil,
like all the night falls on his back, I won’t put quill to ink.
Hair grows every day. Mine does too.
I can’t quite decide whether this means it’s time for me to gracefully retire or to self-importantly demand to be historically reassessed. I do like the idea of demanding a reassessment, although I’m not sure where to begin sending my requests, Edmund Wilson being dead these fifty years and more.
This is amazing—reassessment! You follow in an illustrious tradition.
The mentor texts you didn’t know you had! Perhaps you read them in a past life 😄