Anybody watching Poldark will have noticed three things about epistolary communication in the late 18th century. They had no envelopes, their quill handwriting was elegant and, above all, delivery was usually the same day – making the Regency postal service considerably more efficient than today’s overpriced service.
I mention this as for Valentine’s Day this year I decided to give my wife a novel present: a love letter written on “hot press” parchment paper in authentic Regency-style script, in “iron gall ink”, using a 19th-century recipe. I arranged for the letter to be delivered to the front door of Upton Cressett, my house in Shropshire, by a 37-year-old calligrapher called Stephen Duckett, who personally folds each letter and then seals them in dark ruby wax with your loved one’s initials. I had seen his services advertised on an obscure calligraphy website.
After my wife was presented with this beautiful “hand cut” flowery letter, the least I could do was invite my epistolatory messenger in for a cup of tea. It turned out that his previous career had been as an apprentice butler at Buckingham Palace, before serving in such great houses as Blenheim Palace, Hatfield House and Arundel Castle (working for the Duke of Norfolk, the most senior lay Catholic in the country).
As we sat in front of the fire drinking tea, his ex-butler credentials got me thinking. Could I lure him out of retirement – if only for a weekend to organise arrangements for a house party my wife and I were hosting to celebrate my son’s christening?
Stephen looked mildly pensive at the suggestion but politely said he would “think about” turning Upton Cressett into Downton Abbey for the weekend and supervising all the meals, the kitchen, the flowers and the drinks.
“Where did you train to be a calligrapher?” I finally asked as we ate a second slice of cake.
“I was a Cistercian monk for two years in Leicestershire,” Stephen replied. “I began developing my calligraphic skills in the solitude of monastic life.” His calligraphy business was another “excuse to serve”, he said. “It may be the inner butler in me but I place a huge importance on making my customers and guests feel looked after.”
Stephen perfected his study of calligraphy in the muniment rooms of several great houses, mastered copperplate and Gaelic uncial and, for that matter, “calligraffiti”. His initial training took place while observing the Cistercian rule. “I try to re-present, complement and do justice to the text before me,” he says. “Even now, I write best in the middle of the night, in silence.”
What became clear as we talked was that his approach to life was not necessarily suited to the modern rat race. He owns no television or mobile phone and told me he prayed the Office every night between midnight and 3am. That’s when he starts on the calligraphy with its insistence on “concentration, solace and silence”.
The latter info did slightly worry me as our weekend parties at Upton Cressett tend not to lend themselves to “nocturnal quietude”.
From talking to Stephen, it was clear he had little interest in the chasing the progressive vanities of the modern material world; or singing to its noisy hip hop drum beat. After he switched his “service” vocation from monk to butler, he continued with medieval musical composition, choral song and playing the church organ. At Arundel Castle, he also sang as a countertenor and was second assistant organist at the cathedral across the road.
An ex-monk who can sing as well? When I heard this, I asked whether there was any chance he could play the organ and sing a solo plainsong at the christening service in our Norman church.
Looking back, I suppose this “singing monk” request was one step too far. The weeks passed. We heard nothing from our immaculately dressed ex-monk-turned-butler. It was only when I got a heartfelt email from him a few weeks ago that I learnt he had “fallen off the face of the earth” and suffered a “severe burnout”.
We have heard much recently about mental illness and how it is not talked about enough. This is especially true when it comes to former priests and Religious who face special challenges in adjusting to the real world.
“I am a born ‘doer’ and have always worked – even through adversity – all of my life,” Stephen wrote, “so my inability to work at the moment is not only very difficult to accept, but personally rather shaming. I have been advised that the hours of work I’ve kept for so many years have had enormous repercussions on my health. As well as the depression, it has left me so fatigued that I can’t do more than one/two hours’ gentle work each day, at most.”
He explained that God had been telling him to slow down for years. He was lucky to have a supportive family. For now, he works on his calligraphy (at duckettcalligraphy.com) and plays the organ occasionally.
………
I was powerfully moved by the honesty of his confessional letter to me. “I have read the script of my life for the last six months and see it as an invitation from God to help turn a bad situation into a good one, and bring light into the darkness through a daily blog,” he explained.
Stephen’s blog, fortheloveofgod.moonfruit.com, is well worth reading. It represents his “decision to move from the privacy of ‘pen and paper’ to public awareness which is also a way of ‘healing’ ”. It offers a reflection on the Gospel of the day and a “way of finding some peace, within an illness”.
The discipline of writing and keeping up the Office forces him to stop and enter into a “vocational life of contemplation”, which he has aspired to for many years, but was derailed from by being asked by foolishly romantic souls like myself to deliver flowery Valentine letters and return to the social circus of butler service. After reading a few entries, I felt it was me who should be doing the apologising.
William Cash is editor-in-chief of Spear’s
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