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The early envelopes were often sealed with wax impressed by a signet ring to prevent the wrong people from reading them. For a really important letter a gallows mark could be put on the cover, meaning that it had to be delivered under pain of death.
That seems to me an empty threat. If you didn't receive it, how would you know? And since letters sometimes took months to deliver, the derelict postman would have absconded long since, anyway. Benjamin explains that you might actually have been able to trace it, as each wayside kept a record of passage.
It was Louis XIV of France, that master of the dramatic flourish, who popularized the use of a cover to ensure the privacy of letters, according to Benjamin. Louis had his secretary cut out forms with a template and fold and paste them to make envelopes for his communications to his court.
In America, Benjamin Franklin is known as the father of our postal service, hiring on in 1737 under the postmaster general for the Colonies. Franklin organized distribution, designed pigeonholes for collecting letters that were bound for the same place, and set milestones along the post roads, for in those days postmen were paid by the mile. It cost Samuel Adams, for instance, 11 pence in 1775 to send a letter from Boston to Philadelphia.
It is all too easy to veer off into a discussion of stamps here, or of the letters themselves, but I am determined to concentrate on the subject at hand. It just occurred to me: letter writing is coming back these days via e-mail and faxes, but what about the envelopes? In the virtual world, free of floods, fire and puppies, there is no need to protect your letter from damage. Benjamin notes, however, that most people still prefer the esthetic advantages of paper for personal letters and résumés.
Of course, in the days of the Pony Express, letters needed special protection. Already enveloped, they were then wrapped in oil silk and stuck into the four pockets of the mochila, a leather sling that fit over the saddle.
At that, the letters were still in for a rough ride. In 1860, "Pony Bob" Haslam, galloping up to an outpost on his exhausted horse, found it a smoldering ruin, the stationmaster killed and the spare horses stolen. Bob had to ride on, covering 120 miles in eight hours and ten minutes. When he reached safety he said he was a little tired.
As an ad for riders put it, "Wanted: Young, skinny, wiry fellows not over 18, must be expert riders, willing to risk death daily. Orphans preferred."
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