by Norma Best Boucher

“Shhh! Can you keep a secret?”

I look first to my left and then to my right.

“Well, can you?”

Here goes. I read other people’s mail.

That’s right. I read other people’s mail.

Okay, before you get all bent out of shape, I don’t steal and steam open envelopes as snoopy neighbors do in the old-time movies. I read published books of famous writers’ letters edited by biographers and relatives.

These letters are very personal, and the authors most likely never expected their personal thoughts to be revealed to the world. That is probably why most of these publications appear after the death of the famous people.

I first got hooked on reading famous authors’ mail when a friend of mine gave me a book called “The Letters of Ernest Hemingway 1907—1922.” This Volume One of letters begins with his short letters with misspellings to his Papa when Hemingway was eight years old to his letters upon his arrival in Paris when he was age 23.

I had decided to read just a few letters each day, but as this young man experienced life and matured into the man who became the famous Ernest Hemingway, I just read right through to the end. Footnotes by the editor fill in the information educating the reader as to whom the letters are addressed and the relationships between them and Hemingway.

Knowing the ultimate famous life and death of Hemingway allows the letter reader to recognize the “dramatic foreshadowing” of Hemingway’s experiences.

Recently, I have been reading the letters of the author John le Carre’ (real name David Cornwell) “A Private Spy,” edited by his son Tim Cornwell.

Whether someone enjoys the le Carre’ books, which are mostly about spies and espionage, is entirely irrelevant. These letters show the real thoughts and emotions of this man with his wives, his lovers, his family, his friends, his enemies and with the other famous writers and actors who are involved in his many successes and failures.

Again, knowing about this author’s books and his death lets me enjoy reading the letter writer’s intimate thoughts.

I am only 300 pages into this 600 plus page tome, and I haven’t even gotten into his own life as an MI5 and MI6 British spy. Call me crazy, but this is a page turner for me.

I think I know why I enjoy reading letters. I was a letter writer in the day of letter writing. When I was of upper elementary and junior high school age, I had pen pals. I had a subscription to a magazine called “American Girl.” This magazine was not affiliated with the modern “American Girl” magazine and dolls.

Girls wrote short letters to the editor, and other girls could respond and become pen pals. I got a couple of pen pals that way, but the pen pal I remember most was a missionary’s daughter. We corresponded for a couple of years. She was a British girl who lived in India.

Back then mail to and from different countries took a very long time, so there weren’t that many letters exchanged. We wrote mostly about school and after school activities. Still, it was a thrill to receive a letter from India. I wonder what the postman thought when he saw those foreign air mail stamps?

My favorite pen pal was a girl who went to summer camp with me. Our letters were not really very interesting, but we wrote backwards and had to put the letters up to a mirror in order to read them. We wrote every week just because of the novelty of writing backwards.

One of my girlfriends was a pen pal to Annette Funicello, one of Disney’s first Mouseketeers. I wanted to be a pen pal with Annette, also, but I figured Annette wouldn’t want to be a pen pal to two people living in Waterville, Maine, so I didn’t try.

I understand now that those letters were probably fan letters sent to all, and I could have been another pen pal after all.

Of course, with letter writing, one had to have the prettiest stationery with matching envelopes. For 25 cents I bought a note pad or a box of uniquely designed writing paper. I also received stationery for birthdays and Christmases and even bought some out of my allowance, which was 50 cents per week.

Then there were the sealing wax sticks in multiple color choices. I melted the wax on the “V” of the envelope closure and pushed down a sealing wax seal stamp to ensure that no one but the intended recipient would read the letter.

I had different designs of stamps, but my favorite was my initial “N.” Somehow this stamp made the letter more personal AND mysterious, at least to my young mind.

I am sure that the authors whose published books of letters I read now did not use pretty stationery and sealing wax stamps.

I am also very sure that no one has saved any of my letters to be published in a 600-page tome after my death for all to read.

In 1965 during the first week in my first college journalism class, the professor told us never to write anything down on paper for anyone to read that we did not want to haunt us later in life.

I believed him.

He also told us in that class that in the future we would be reading our newspapers not on paper but through the use of a machine.

I DID NOT believe that.

Yet, look at me now – I read The Town Line newspaper on my home computer.