Letter closings

Like a conventional story, a letter has a beginning, middle, and end. It builds up as it progresses, reaches a climax, and then slowly comes to a satisfactory close. Most of us are good at starting a letter, even pushing through the heavy middle, but we don’t know how to conclude very well. Enough thought doesn’t go into the closing words. A weak closing is no different from leaving loose ends in a story. It frustrates and confuses the reader. And an abrupt end leaves the reader with an awkward half-felt emotion they can’t quite place anywhere. It isn’t the best.

There is a lot of depth and emotion in our closing words. How we end a story, a conversation, a relationship, a letter defines the strength of an unsaid bond. We know the formal closes to letters all too well. We learn it in school – Yours sincerely, Yours respectfully, Best regards. But informal letters are tricky. They require a lot more thought and sentiment. But we often sign off letters with “regards,” “love,” “yours,” “cheers,” and the latest abomination of “XOXO,” making our words empty, insincere, modern-day placeholders.

I think it is a good idea to look back at the old-timey ways and find some of the flavour and sentiment that is lost today. In a time when communication was slow, and people took greater pleasure in writing by hand, often under the light of a candle, the complimentary closes were elaborate, respectful, and highly sentimental and meaningful.

Leo Tolstoy often ended many letters to his son, Ilia, with a moving, “I kiss you,” after telling him about life and love.

Anton Chekov wrote a lengthy close to his future wife Olga Knipper saying, “Well, I firmly clasp and kiss your hand. Keep well, cheerful, happy, work, leap, let yourself be carried away, sing and, if possible, don’t forget a provincial writer, your zealous admirer...”

Thomas Jefferson signed off his letter to the newly elected President, George Washington, with the now-famous valediction, “Your most obedient and most humble servant.”

In his letter to his tutor and friend Henry Drury, Lord Byron wrote, “The cock is crowing; I must be going…” which is a line from a play by Kane O’Hare.

“Please forgive me for writing such a miserable letter,” wrote Vita Sackville-West in her letter to Virginia Woolf in 1926.

In the 16th century, Edmund Spenser closed his letter to Sir Walter Raleigh saying, “So humbly craving the continuance of your honorable favor towards me, and th'eternal establishment of your happiness, I humbly take leave. / 23 January, 1589. / Yours most humbly affectionate / Ed. Spenser.”

In an unsent letter by Ludwig Van Beethoven, written to his Immortal Beloved in 1812, he wrote, “Oh, go on loving me — never doubt the faithfullest heart / Of your beloved / L / Ever thine. / Ever mine. / Ever ours.”

The evocative, ornamental closings of the past say so much about the societal values and etiquette of the times. Long or short, flowery or prosaic, a letter closing, must be profound and personal. Today, as we dash off emails without much thought, let us take a pause to think about our words and the values they signify. I see emails more as telegrams that merely get urgent work done, and not as letters that were thoughtful correspondence which demanded patience, pause, and politeness. I do not envision a day when a “Collected Emails of So-and-So” book is published and archived in a museum somewhere. The literary letter is often a piece of art, worthy to be preserved long after we’re gone.

It does not take much to pepper our writings with a little elegance, sincerity, and civility, as we slowly attempt to shed the platitudes of our technological times.