Note 421 — Chapter XIII · Walpole and the Art of Familiar Correspondence

These letters he prepared for the press after they had been returned to him by Mann. In August 1784 he wrote: ‘I have been counting how many letters I have written to you since I landed in England in 1741: they amount—astonishing!—to above eight hundred; and we have not met in three-and-forty years! A correspondence of near half a century is, I suppose, not to be paralleled in the annals of the post office!’ Letters 13. 182.