Missing Missives

some letters were intricately folded Courtesy of the Museum voor Communicatie

"If you come here, do not bring your instrument or anything else.” This could have been written to someone visiting any number of cities around the world, but what makes it particularly unique is not the where, but the when and the why. It was written in 1702, in a letter from a man to his brother, warning him to avoid Paris. Not because he might be robbed, but because another musician had been forced to join the army while there. Back then, letter delivery was paid for by both the sender and the recipient. If a recipient wouldn't or couldn't pay, the postmaster usually just threw the letter or package away. One postmaster and his wife in the Netherlands, though, had a better idea. They kept all the undeliverable mail, perhaps in the expectation that they could at some point make money off it. They never did, but the linen-lined trunk of old letters is better than gold to the international team of academics that is studying them: http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/nov/08/undelivered-letters-17th-century-dutch-society?CMP=ema_565b