I just watched the first part of Ken Burns’s “The Civil War” and they read speaches by Frederick Douglass and Abraham Lincoln. They were also reading letters and diaries by people.
I notice all the writing was very flowery and extremely descriptive. Did people actually talk like that back then? Or was there a formal way you wrote things down and another way you spoke. Or is it that it was so long ago what sounds “Formal” and “Flowery” to me was normal to them?
Well, since we have no recordings, there is no way to be completely sure. That being said, most historians seem to think they really talked like that.
Mark Twain (for example) reported on people’s dialect in his writings. We have some idea how someone like Huck Finn would have spoken, but he (and others) never commented upon the two ways rich educated people had of speaking and writing. So, probably it was not something he thought worthy of comment.
At the museum in which I work, we have an extensive collection of letters and diaries from the late 1700s onward. I have seen example of flowery writing, but I’ve also seen examples of much simpler, pared prose.
I think it comes down to education. People who lived in more isolated areas and had less access to newspapers and books (as well as formal education) probably spoke like they wrote-- in a more simplified vocabulary. Those who frequently read, attended public speeches, plays and whatnot had a more extensive vocabulary.
Social class was much more stratified in this era, and people strove to imitate their “betters” in order to be thought of as respectable. This would include copying the speech patterns of he higher classes to the best of their ability.
I’ve had similar thoughts myself when listening to the dialogue on “Deadwood.” It certainly sounds different enough to maybe be authentic, but I have often wondered if it is accurate or just done that way for atmosphere.
I have a number of letters written by relatives dating back to that era and noticed the same thing. Undoubtedly a letter was a much more formal instrument at that time compared today - it’s important to realize that travel of even a dozen or so miles was a relatively major undertaking, obviously one didn’t hop into a car and zip around like we do today. So when relatives moved a state or territory or two away, it wasn’t uncommon at all to never see them again. A letter was a treasured item, to be re-read over and over, often with religious imagery “We’ll meet again in the great beyond, on heaven’s Golden Shore.”
In the UK in around 1860, the postal service was pretty good, probably better than it is today (actually a lot better). I vaguely remember that the USA was an early adopter of railways.
Some people write like jerks, their stuff tends to get kept because it is unusual.
Think on it, did people speak like Jane Austen’s heroines - or did they aspire to so do?
In the City of London proper, I read somewhere they had mail delivery five (5) times a day, so a fellow could write home to find out what’s for dinner that night, and be reminded to pickup a loaf of bread, etc.
My recollections are the same
In Paris they had the ‘pneumatique’ which was a mega version of those air tubes they used to have for carting money and bills around in department stores.
I think FRDE was referring to letters in the United States which had to travel great distances by horseback or, later, rail.