A Letter I Wished I Had Burned...

Letters have a powerful effect: they may lead to divorce, or to a duel, or to wars. And you are not done with a letter once you stick a postage stamp on it and drop it into the box, for what you set down in it may prove, even after a long while, a calamity for you. And the greater the standing of the sender, the greater the weight of the letter and of what it contains.

So beware what you write in haste, for you may have to pay its price afterward, and cry out: Would that I had burned that letter!

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Napoleon was a genius in the military field, but he was extremely careless when it came to expressing his opinions, especially when writing his letters. An example is this letter, which he sent to Marie Louise, his second wife, and which brought him to a fate that all the hosts of Europe together had been powerless to accomplish:

March 23, 1814

My darling:

I have not left my horse these past few days. On the 20th I occupied Arcis on the Aube, where the enemy attacked me at six in the evening. On the same day I defeated him and destroyed 4,000 of his men. I took two cannon from him and he took two from me, so we came out even. On the 21st the enemy drew up as if for battle, to cover the advance of some of his men toward Brienne and Bar on the Aube. I have resolved to make for the Marne and his fortified lines. I shall be at Saint-Dizier this afternoon. Farewell, my darling. A kiss for my son.

Nap.

This letter fell into the hands of the enemy, who thereby obtained all the information he longed to know. That was one of the many causes that led to Napoleon's defeat in the campaign of 1814 and to his exile to Elba.

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The famous English writer Jonathan Swift, author of "Gulliver's Travels," was caught in the love of two beautiful women, and unable to prefer one over the other. For many long years he courted the affection of one of them, Stella, while at the same time corresponding with his other lovely sweetheart, Esther, whom he called Vanessa.

Things went smoothly for this double lover! Each of the two sweethearts remained wholly ignorant of her rival's existence—until disaster struck, on account of a letter! For chance willed that Vanessa should learn of Stella's existence, and she penned her a letter asking her to explain the extent of her connection with Jonathan. Stella was thunderstruck when she read the contents of the letter. She carried it with a broken heart to Swift, and shed abundant tears as she told him of her pain that he was attached to another. Swift took the letter from her, went to Vanessa, flung it into her lap, and turned back the way he had come.

Only a few weeks passed before Vanessa died.

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It once happened that a letter was the cause of a duke's son being deprived of his title! The father, the Duke of Sussex and son of George III, King of England, made his way to Italy in 1793 on account of ill health. There he fell in love with Lady Augusta Murray, the daughter of a countess. Despite the marriage law of the English court and its strict restrictions, the Duke was able to persuade an English clergyman named Gunn to perform

the marriage ceremony.

A few days before his marriage, the Duke penned this brief letter to his sweetheart:

April 4, 1793

I shall not taste food until I marry you, and if I do not marry you I shall remain faithful to this vow of mine until it perishes with me! I have resolved to let nothing in existence turn me from this purpose. If Gunn does not perform the marriage ceremony, I shall die! Oh Augusta, my heart's blood!

Years later, a dispute arose in court over who should inherit the Duke's title from the deceased father. This letter was read out in court, and in it lay all the proof needed to show that the Duke had violated the laws of the land—and so his son was deprived of his title!

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And love letters—how often have they been a cause of misery! Love letters, my reader: write them on the sand, but never set them down on paper!

A bachelor was searching for a partner for his life. He made the acquaintance of a candidate of real possibilities, spoke to her on the subject, and mentioned to her in the course of the conversation that he was "a man of few words." The girl pleased him, and he was utterly taken with her; no sooner had he reached his house on returning from a visit to her than he took up his paper and pen and wrote her this letter, quite forgetting his "fewness of words":

My dear:

A thousand thanks, and another thousand thanks, for your kind, dear acceptance of my request for your hand. Since meeting you, I have gone over at least twice everything you said to me, and the sweet music of your words has begun to ring delightfully in my ears, like a beautiful melody I am hearing for the first time!

Days passed, circumstances changed, and our friend became once again "a man of few words": he wrote to his fiancée and informed her that "everything is over!"

Over for him—but for her, nothing was over... She took her case to court, which fined him a sum not to be sneezed at. On what basis? You have guessed it, my reader: that

short letter he was so quick to write and send!

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Among those who fell victim to a letter was Joan of Arc!

Before the lifting of the siege of Orléans, she wrote—or dictated—a letter demanding that the English who were besieging the city surrender. The letter contained the following:

... Surrender to the King of Heaven; surrender to the Maid, to whom God has sent the keys of all the good cities of France—the cities you have taken and plundered. God has sent her to restore the royal line. She is ready to make peace if you surrender, on condition that you leave France and pay compensation for what you have taken. And you, archers, and you soldiers of every rank who stand before the walls of Orléans: depart to your own country, I adjure you in the name of God; for if you do not, expect to see the Maid soon, and she will bring you great destruction...

And if you do not believe the tidings sent to you from God and the Maid, we shall strike you in every place we find you, and we shall make such a slaughter among you as France has not seen in a thousand years. And be assured that God will grant the Maid such strength that you will be powerless before her to repel her and her good soldiers...

The English kept this letter, and when they seized Joan of Arc and tried her on the charge of heresy, this letter was the most important piece of evidence in their hands. Joan was condemned—and burned!

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As for Thomas Paine, the immortal thinker, he suffered much in his life on account of a letter he wrote while in prison. Robespierre had ordered him thrown into prison, and Paine believed that the American minister plenipotentiary in Paris would help him get out. But his hopes went with the wind, and he grew bitterly furious that the state he had helped to found and whose order he had helped to establish did not come to his aid in his hour of need. So he wrote a letter to Washington, attacking him and expressing

his sorrow at the stand Washington had taken toward him, and calling him evasive, treacherous, and hypocritical!

When he came out of prison, he changed his opinion of America once more. But the American public had turned against him, as a result of his violent attack on the leader Washington. He lived in New Rochelle, where he was denied the right to vote. And he died alone and forgotten, with debts piled upon him!

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Paine, and Napoleon, and Joan of Arc, and the others... It would have been far better for them had they not committed their feelings and secrets to paper—had they followed the epistolary style of a certain American girl. A friend of her father's came to her house to choose himself a wife from among the six sisters. His choice fell on the eldest, Mary, and he told her that he awaited her answer to his request for her hand. Two weeks later her letter reached him, and this was all it contained:

Mr. Stephen Smith:

Yes.

Mary Gould

Or had they followed the way of Rousseau, who wrote his beloved Madame d'Épinay a love letter that did not please him, so he burned it and wrote to her anew:

I shall never be able to tell you how relieved I feel when I see what I have written made fodder for the fire... for on many an occasion, how many conflagrations are kindled by a single small spark!