The Opened Letter. Lindsay O'Neill

traveling through the Continent were eager to keep track of their social network back home. They wished to know how family members fared and whether their business affairs flourished, and in return they sent welcomed continental news. When John Perceval traveled to France in 1725, he kept a journal recording what he saw and what he thought about what he saw, but his letters contain the true journal of his social world.⁶⁵ He mostly corresponded with his cousin and brother-in-law, Daniel Dering, his brother, Philip Perceval, and his cousin, Edward Southwell, three of the strongest nodes in his social network. He told them of his travels, of French news, of those he visited, and he plied them with questions about his social circle at home. The mobility of his wider network is brought home by the fact that his cousin’s son, Edward Southwell the younger, was traveling in Italy at the same time. Perceval reported back on his progress to his anxious father back in England.⁶⁶ These two members of the Perceval-Southwell clan enjoyed their European travels, but the point of their letters was to maintain their larger social network centered in Britain. John Perceval knew he had little to say from Rome that would interest his aunt back in England and so he declared she should not expect many letters from him for it was “unreasonable to enact from me brick where there is no straw.”⁶⁷ British letter writers had many ties to the Continent: they traveled there, fought there, and were deeply concerned about occurrences there, but rarely were their social networks centered or embedded there. The Continent mattered to the British, but it was not part of the wider British world.

      As maps of the epistolary world reveal, letters poured in from all corners of the globe. But different distances called for different types of connection because the British population experienced locations differently. Colonial letter writers noted distance the most often because they were simply farther away and thus possessed strained networks, but also because distance provided them with power. It made them valuable correspondents for those with Atlantic interests but few Atlantic ties. Colonists, due to their geographic stability, were also more likely to be constant and long-lasting correspondents. Continental ties were ever present and continued to affect British life as much as colonial affairs. It was across the Channel that the British traveled, fought, and looked for news. But the epistolary ties between the two were more ephemeral since, for those traveling, keeping their networks at home taut was more important than creating new Continental ties. They were dealing with the challenges of mobility rather than those of stability. Recognizing the importance of mobility for the British elite highlights the limitations of simply mapping the locations of origin of letters to show the way the British experienced their geographic world. Such maps are too static and undifferentiated. They need to be set into motion.

      Mobile Networks and Epistolary Anchors

      Places of origin can, however, gesture to the mobility of these writers. Letters sent from the Downs, a sheltered area off the Kentish coast where ships safely anchored, usually came from individuals aboard a ship.⁶⁸ Many from Chester and Bristol were from those awaiting transport to Ireland.⁶⁹ The letter noted from the Cape of Good Hope was from a correspondent on a voyage to eastern Africa.⁷⁰ One of Hans Sloane’s correspondents dated his letter “From on Board the Eaton Frigatt at anchor near Banjar on Borneo July 29, 1700” and noted that his last letter had been from the tip of Africa.⁷¹ These were men and women on the move.