The postal strike means people are taking up telegrams again, according to the companies Telegramsonline and Couriergram – and that can only be good. Emails aren't enough. If they are short, they are rude; if long, they're a bore. But telegrams, charged by the word, demand brevity and brevity is an invitation to the crunchingly apothegmatic. History is littered with them, none better than the one received at Melbourne by Captain Scott en route to the pole: "BEG LEAVE INFORM YOU PROCEEDING ANTARCTIC AMUNDSEN". In seven exquisitely courteous words, the bottom falls out of a man's life.
But it's also a chance to be funny. Anne Howe, who for her sins was married in the 50s to Peter Sellers, was at home in the kitchen when a knock came on the door. Sellers was working upstairs. The Post Office man gave her the telegram: "BRING ME A CUP OF COFFEE STOP PETER". The marriage did not last. The novelist Simon Raven had actually left his wife when he got a telegram from her saying "WIFE AND BABY STARVING SEND MONEY SOONEST". Raven replied: "SORRY NO MONEY SUGGEST EAT BABY".
We don't do this any more. Tweets and texts are brief but endlessly repeatable. The point of the telegram is to say it once and once only, to land a bomb or a kiss in another person's life. When Lord Lovat led a massively destructive commando raid on the Lofoten Islands in 1941, he sent a telegram from the local post office to one A Hitler in Berlin: "LAST SPEECH SAID GERMAN TROOPS WOULD MEET BRITISH WHEREVER THEY LANDED STOP WHERE ARE THEY".
George Eliot was sending telegrams in the 1850s, Browning had them read to him on his death bed, hundreds of thousands of war widows learned by telegram of their husband's fate, Marc Bolan was still loving them in the 70s with "Telegram Sam", but they are nothing now, as forgotten as the horse and cart.
