Books: Other People’s Mail

A TREASURY OF THE WORLD’S GREAT LETTERS — Edited by M. Lincoln Schuster—Simon & Schuster ($3.75).

M. (for Max) Lincoln Schuster is the more breathless half of Publishers Simon & Schuster. For 25 years he has worked on an anthology of notable letters. But he has been too busy publishing other people’s best-sellers to complete one of his own. He was also hampered by an embarrassment of riches. As friends sent him new finds, the Schuster letter collection swelled, at last filled “many mammoth volumes.” Whenever he decided to publish, a new “irresistible” letter would turn up. This week he finally got it off the press: A Treasury of the World’s Great Letters.

The Schuster editorial scheme was to concentrate on letters that reflect “the great personalities, the great events, the great ideas of history.” The anthology opens with the somewhat acrid correspondence of Alexander the Great and Darius III (circa 334 B.C.), closes with Thomas Mann’s warning to his age. St. Paul counsels the quarrelsome Corinthians (“the greatest of these is charity”). The Younger Pliny is baffled by the early Christians (“if they persevered, I ordered them to be executed”). St. Jerome eyewitnesses the Barbarian sack of Rome (“the wolves of the North have been let loose”). George Washington rejects a crown (“I must view with abhorrence”). Lincoln consoles Mrs. Bixby, whose sons had been killed in battle (“I feel how weak and fruitless must be any word of mine. . . .”). Emerson hails Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass (“I greet you at the beginning of a great career”). John Brown writes his family from prison: “I am waiting the hour of my public murder with great composure of mind.” Captain Robert Falcon Scott holds off death in the Antarctic long enough to scrawl: “We are showing that Englishmen can still die with a bold spirit. …” Dying, Lenin warns the Bolsheviks to remove Stalin from power before it is too late.

There are also the love letters. After he has been unmanned Abelard writes Heloise: “It will always be the highest love to show none.” Ninon de 1’Enclos propositions the Marquis de Sévigné.

About love letters Editor Schuster discovered two facts: 1) they are usually magniloquent, often incoherent; 2) in Venezuela the post office sends love letters at half rate provided they are mailed in a bright red envelope.