When handwriting reveals character

By: Francesca Peacock / The Daily Telegraph (original title: 'A love of order and control': how Lord Nelson's handwriting revealed his secret character)
Translation: Telegrafi.com

What is your handwriting like? Do you write long, ornate letters that would be reminiscent of 18th-century calligraphy? Or do your notes resemble more of a “doctor’s” style: isolated letters that barely resemble the familiar alphabet and words that require a paleographer to decipher? Perhaps this question is redundant these days – like many of us, you probably write everything digitally, using a pen only for the occasional signature.

But it wasn't always like this. Starting in the 30s and culminating in the period fin-de-siecle In the 1880s and 90s, there was a craze for collecting letters: signatures of the rich and famous, or simply the writing of a loved one. This obsession with writing led many sharp minds to consider it a kind of illness: “autographomania” or “autograph fever.” In the 30s and 40s, the American writer Edgar Allan Poe satirized this illness with his serious interpretations of handwriting. Of one particularly flamboyant handwriting, he said: “What peculiarity of mind lies … behind it all … that is more than we can say.”

One of these “autograph maniacs” that Poe mocked was Baron Edmond de Rothschild – a member of the famous French banking family and collector of thousands of engravings, drawings and books, which are now in the Louvre Museum in Paris. In addition to works of art, he also collected signatures: an interest that began in childhood, when his parents hosted diplomats negotiating the end of the Crimean War, and he asked each of them to sign in his “little album”.

A few decades later, his collection had grown into an archive of over two hundred letters from important historical figures – from a Mozart score to letters from the French writer Voltaire; royal notes from Elizabeth I and James II, to political letters signed by Benjamin Franklin and the Duke of Buckingham.

Last year, archivists at Wadsdon Palace – one of the Rothschild family’s former residences, and the home of James Rothschild, Edmond’s son, before he bequeathed it to the National Trust – accidentally discovered the collection during a routine cataloguing process. Opening this month, the 229 papers are being exhibited as a complete collection for the first time, and for many of them, it’s the first time they’ve been seen by the public. Seeing them all together in one place made Wadsdon researchers “realise the potential” of displaying this extraordinary collection, says archivist Laura Noble.

The Rothschild papers were acquired during the 19th and early 20th centuries, and unfortunately it is not known today how he obtained them or how much he paid for them. His interests were clearly Francophile – many of the letters are addressed to French recipients, suggesting they were purchased in France – but the collection was very diverse: from the 17th-century Flemish artist Peter Paul Rubens, to the witty and unscrupulous writer Lord Byron, and the naval hero Admiral Horatio Nelson.

The names may be impressive, but the collection hides a secret. Some of the letters tell of battles, high-stakes gossip and intrigue, but many are more prosaic. In one letter signed by Voltaire, he uses his secretary to write that he was in too much pain from rheumatism to write himself. Another, from King James II, is simply a standard-form thank-you letter to Louis XIV of France. These letters were not valued for their originality or depth of thought, but for their tangible nature – the physical presence of a signature. When Rothschild was collecting in the late 19th century, the world was becoming increasingly mechanical. The telegram and the telephone had only recently been invented. Letters were still used, but they were now beginning to be valued as a slower, more intimate form of communication. As archivist Noble puts it, these letters reveal a “truly human side” of their authors – a way of connecting with the hand behind the pen.

Just because the content of the letters may not be the most glamorous, that doesn’t mean they don’t offer valuable insights. Graphology is “the study of personality through handwriting,” as renowned graphologist Emma Bache puts it. “Like a snapshot in time,” it can reveal “what the author was like and what feelings or inclinations they had at that moment.”

Emma - who has written a book, Reading Between the Lines, about handwriting analysis - turned her analytical eye to some of the Waddesdon letters to uncover what might be hidden within the neat, competent scripts. Of Elizabeth I's 1583 letter written to thank the recipient for his gifts of horses, Bache notes the fluidity of the "relatively casual" script; its strong right-hand slant revealing that she was "ardent in her passions". At points, "she has been unable to avoid tangling of the lines", which Bache suggests might reveal Elizabeth's conflicted feelings: the tensions "between her regal demeanor and her repressed emotions."

Emma – author of the book Reading between the lines [Reading Between the Lines], which deals with handwriting analysis – took an analytical look at some of Wadsdon’s letters to discover what might be hidden behind the neat and competent writing. Of Elizabeth I’s 1583 letter, in which she thanks him for gifts of horses, Bache notes the “relatively ordinary” flow of the writing; the right-hand slant of the writing suggests that she was “fiery in her feelings.” In some parts, “she has not been able to avoid the confusion of lines,” which Bache suggests may indicate mixed feelings: the tension “between her queenly bearing and her repressed emotions.”

Elizabeth, unlike other Tudor women who were not aristocrats or rulers, learned to write. However, unlike the educated men of the time, she preferred an italic script, which was considered easier for women to master. The reliability of graphology is highly debatable – some consider it pseudoscience – but the possibility that it offers access to the Virgin Queen's secret feelings is tantalizing.

One of the most special pieces of the Rothschild collection is the manuscript of Mozart's aria Misera, Dove son! Composed in 1781, the narrow space between the lines of the score is filled with marginal notes about the libretto and the soprano who would perform the music. Mozart’s “strongly pressed” handwriting and “long upper parts of the letters” indicate that he was not concerned about the lack of space on the page – perhaps revealing a “tendency towards a boastful nature or, at least, a strong need to impress.”

But perhaps the most precious jewel in the collection is an 1802 letter from Admiral Horatio Nelson. Written five years after the Battle of Santa Cruz, in which the admiral lost his right arm, the letter was written and signed with his left hand, having learned to write again. Compared with the many letters he wrote before his amputation, the change in writing style is profound: from a flowing, classical XNUMXth-century style, the letter in the Wadsdon collection has a looser, less ornate style. But, Bache notes, for a non-dominant hand, it is remarkably competent: “The baseline is very straight and horizontal,” which may reveal a military man’s “love of order and control.”

But in comparing the letters before and after the amputation, Bache notices a shift towards a “more relaxed” handwriting – and character. Straight lines are replaced by curves, and the commander relies less on “brute intellect.” His injury may have been traumatic, but, judging by the handwriting, Bache speculates that it may have made Nelson “more charismatic and perhaps much easier to live with.”

With all this level of knowledge that can be gleaned from handwriting, it's no wonder that Rothschild and others were obsessed with the letters they could possess - the personalities they could possess through ink. So next time you're writing your shopping list: be careful. You never know what secrets you might leave on paper. /Telegraph/