Clarke, Norma

I have a valued friend who lives a long way away and doesn’t do email or social media. We phone, occasionally, but once or twice a year I’ll sit down, choose a pen, assemble paper, pour a glass of wine, and spend the evening writing her a letter. It feels at once deeply self-indulgent and extravagantly generous. I write about myself but I’m thinking of her, knowing she will be pleased at being chosen. Jane Welsh Carlyle, a woman Sir Leslie Stephen described as ‘the most wonderful letter-writer in the English language’, put it simply: she liked ‘writing to people who like to hear from me’.