larger cities of the Italian Peninsula: Milan, Venice, Florence, Rome, and Naples. Letters also came to and from other centers, such as Madrid, which was a growing administrative center, and Lisbon, an Atlantic port. In fact, letters originated from 68 percent of the forty-four cities on the Continent with populations of over 40,000.
Figure 4. Number of letters originating from locations in the British Isles from the sets of correspondence examined. This map shows where the correspondents examined dated their letters from within the British Isles, allowing for larger circles around locations where many letters originated.
Figure 5. Number of letters originating from locations in Europe from the sets of correspondence examined. This map shows where the correspondents examined dated their letters from within Europe, allowing for larger circles around locations where many letters originated. Those emanating from the British Isles only show places from where more than twenty letters originated.
Figure 6. Number of letters originating from locations worldwide from the sets of correspondence examined. This map shows where the correspondents examined dated their letters from all over the globe, allowing for larger circles around locations where many letters originated. Only locations with more than twenty letters originating from the British Isles and the Continent are shown for those areas of the globe.
This pattern holds in the British Isles as well. As the largest city in Europe and the lodestar of the British world, London dominated this epistolary world. Every correspondent sent or received a letter from the city on the Thames and half of their English letters came from there. Letters from the capital helped their receivers keep track of political occurrences, their economic well-being, and the social whirl of the season. Urban life was becoming intensified for the British elite: most spent some time in the West End of London, participated in activities that nurtured elite ties, and remained in contact with their urban connections after they left.8 These letters also reveal England’s growing polycentric nature. Social, commercial, administrative, and industrial centers were all expanding and letters flowed in from these locations.9 Seventy-five percent of the correspondents received or sent a letter from Bath, “the queen of the spas.”10 Over half the correspondents sent or received letters from Dublin and Bristol, cities that owed their expansion to the British state’s need to rule Ireland, in the case of Dublin, and the expansion of Atlantic trade, in the case of Bristol.11 Having urban connections was important to most Britons and letters provided them with a way to keep track of these bustling centers.
These maps reflect the view contemporaries had of their own world. Writers complained when they were far from urban centers. William Byrd II of Virginia declared, “Tis a mighty misfortune for an Epistolizer not to live near some great city like London or Paris, where people play the fool in a well-bred way, & furnish their Neighbours with discourse.”12 A correspondent of Hans Sloane harrumphed that he was “buried alive” in Castle Rising, Norfolk, about one hundred miles from London.13 Often they described their position in relation to the traditional country and city divide, popular in literary works, where the vibrant, but dangerous city was contrasted with the dull, but innocent country.14 Authors sending letters within England put this literary device to work by referring to their residence as being generally in the city or the country. John Perceval’s cousin compared John’s letters to a beneficial tonic and reminded his London relative not to “neglect your Country Patient,” and when Perceval resided in London his tutor hoped that he and his brother or the “court Politicians” would “have pitty on the Country ones” and provide him with news.15 Others simply referred to their location as “the Country” rather than mentioning the specific place. When complaining about a lack of news and an excess of time, they knew that referencing their position in “the Country” was enough to explain their slim letters.16 Thus, in their letters, writers constructed an England divided into two zones: the urban, which buzzed with people and conversation, and the rural, which only echoed with lone birdcalls. However, besides a few laments about distance and a few comments about the problems and benefits related to being in the country, place is not discussed very often in letters that stayed within English borders. The distance between rural England and urban England was not great, and it was, especially for the elite, easily traversed.
For those who saw themselves as members of a wider British elite, but lived in Scotland and Ireland, such descriptions of place surfaced more often. While both locations had flourishing urban centers, when their writers spoke of their location they usually detailed their rural isolation. While the idea of the virtuous and bucolic countryside surfaces at times, as when John Boyle declared Ireland “the land of ignorance, but at the same time, the land of milk and honey,” for the most part writers derided the rural lifestyle.17 Rural Ireland and Scotland were dirtier and duller than England. John Boyle described Cork by stating, “The Butchers are as greasy, The Quakers as formal, & the Presbyterians as holy & full of the Lord as usual: All Things are in status quo: even the Hogs and Piggs gruntle in the same cadence as of yore.”18 A similar view of Scotland emerges from a letter Perceval wrote about his brief stay there. After entering a tavern so smoky that, even though it masked “the stink,” he could not see the proffered glass of wine, and after avoiding the butter, which “was of 20 colours, & Stuck with hair,” he kept his gloves on to avoid the lice, ate, and promptly recrossed the border.19 Such depictions allowed Boyle and Perceval to show their correspondents that this was certainly not a world that they belonged to; the comedy comes from the incongruity of their presence.
The world these individuals did belong to, however, was not strictly an English world, but rather one defined by a group of people usually centered in London. What concerned Boyle about Cork was its lack of excitement: everything is “as usual,” “in status quo,” and “in the same cadence of yore.” It was “dull, insipid, and void of all Amusement.”20 Similarly, one of Hans Sloane’s Scottish correspondents declared that in Dundee he was “living in a corner of the world” and that Coupar Angus was “a Country place without Converse.”21 These correspondents wanted the amusement and converse they knew flourished in London. This was a world where cultural and social distance mattered more than specific geographic coordinates. They also knew that letters were a way to reconnect with that world. They mentioned their isolation and the dullness of their surroundings to explain the lack of content in their letters, to enliven them, and to remind their correspondents of their need for letters; they were their connection to the bustling centers of elite sociability.
The fact that the same tropes surface in letters from the European continent supports the idea that letter writers saw themselves as connected by networks of sociability. Like writers in Britain, those who lived outside urban centers on the Continent worried what distance could do to their social or intellectual networks. Uppsala might have been a flourishing university town, but for Karl Linnaeus it limited his ability to join in the more lively and fast-paced intellectual discussions occurring in places like London and he envied those, like Peter Collinson, “who have a free & frequent Intercourse with your World.”22 British travelers also found the continental countryside less congenial than continental centers. On his trip to France in 1725, John Perceval and his brood went to Blois, but the dullness of the place soon sent them hurrying back to Paris.23 These men valued ties to urban centers because they connected them to wider networks and centers of discussion.
Worries about specific geographic origins remained, however. Superficially, members of the Scottish and Irish elite faced the same situation as their English counterparts. Both groups lived in their great houses when at their estates and all were spending less time on these estates and more time in London, and both were allowing power to flow into the hands of the local inhabitants.24 Those with lands and titles in Scotland and Ireland found their ways to the centers of elite sociability. John Boyle, an Irish lord himself, declared that Bath was “full