When you’ve seen (almost) everything, and done (almost) everything, few things in this life still have the ability to surprise you with joy. And to do it again and again. The handwritten note is one of those things.
Today, more than ever, the handwritten note rules.
Maybe real men don’t eat quiche, but they sure as hell write notes. Napoleon Bonaparte was a tireless note writer. So is skydiving George H.W. Bush. New York tycoon Ronald Lauder is said to dash off a note to his hosts the same evening he gets home from a dinner party.
Probably the most memorable "review" in my years as an exhibiting artist came from another tycoon, a four-by-five card I think I treasure more than the countless inches of clippings I’ve laid away.
It was from M, an industrialist who resembles a cold, hard Renaissance duke (with one look, he’s been known to freeze a roomful of executives of his various companies). It came out of the blue, from his New England headquarters, some months after M, a collector, bought a drawing he’d seen described in a Pittsburgh (one of his branch cities) paper. "What an honor to own my very own Schwalb," he wrote.
Oh, it was clear that M doesn’t do many notes (there are administrative aides for that). The lines were horizontally challenged, careening from side to side, and the letters looped from small to large and back again.
That didn’t matter. It’s not about penmanship. You’ll find that people are so pleased to receive a writ-by-hand note, a writ-by-your-hand note, they will cut you a world of slack. That’s how potent a note’s outreach can be.
Incidentally, a note from a lowly artist can sometimes be as memorable as a note to a lowly artist. I am thinking of W, a venerable critic of my acquaintance, who must have reviewed the work of hundreds (thousands?) of artists in his time, and who told me that what he remembers best is the handful of notes he received from the paint-spattered multitude in all those years.
A couple of notes were from artists he hadn’t even reviewed favorably, but who thanked W for looking at their efforts and for his suggestions, though they did not happen to agree with his judgment (failing to recognize their evident genius, I guess).
The late, great Pittsburgh artist Henry Koerner imparted a delicious twist to the traditional note. Every summer, which he would spend painting in his native Vienna, he’d send his friends here little drawings (city life, captured in Koerner’s nervy, high-speed ink strokes) on a plain postcard. The address side always held just two words: "Love, Henry." (I believe the postman averted his eye the first time he delivered my "Love, Henry" card.)
A spontaneous communication needn’t be a Koerner artwork to resonate. A lady near and dear to me returned to a cold, gray Pittsburgh to work in a Shadyside private school after some years as an assistant to the headmaster of a Florida academy. She did not forget her old friends in the sunny South, however, and one day penned a note to one of the mothers who had befriended her. Just an I’ve-been-thinking-of-you note, a few words of gratitude for the friendship shared over their two boys (my acquaintance’s son had been a scholarship student at the school).
Soon after, a phone call. Something like "…note meant so much to me, been thinking about the old days too, must be cold up there now, would like to send you a coat, what kind of mink coat do you like?"
My friend responds to the jest with a laugh: "Dark. Very dark."
Days later. A call from the fur salon at Saks Fifth Avenue in Palm Beach. "How shall we monogram the coat Mrs. D is sending you?"
Yes, the coat arrives and it is dark, very dark. (And long, very long.) My friend later discovers that her old friend and her old friend’s brother own a goodly chunk of Minnesota Mining & Manufacturing. You know, 3M, the Scotch-tape people …
To sum up: Never underestimate the delight, the warmth, the power of the handwritten note. Never again, dear hearts, sneer at "snail mail." You’ve just seen a sluggardly little gastropod capture a MINK.