P. S. Did you know policemen are numbered in case they get lost?

Postscripts of note

Sep 15, 2023

A couple of years ago I shared a selection of my favourite P.S.’s, those parting shots that can sometimes steal the spotlight from the letters they conclude. More than a few readers have since asked for more, and so, because you lot are the closest thing I have to a boss, I’m finally obeying. What you’ll find below, amassed over the years, is another assemblage of postscripts of note that have captivated me for a variety of reasons. You could, I suppose, if you were trying to be clever, think of this new collection as a P.S. to the first bunch. But I’m not so I won’t.

ps. English men are great

Sylvia Plath
Letter to her mother
14th February 1955
The Letters of Sylvia Plath

P.S. Aside from the fun of the above strictures it gives me great pleasure to tell you that the word “demean” does not mean “debase.” The phrase “to demean” means only “to conduct one’s self ” and does not imply that the conduct is either good or bad. It is a common error.

F. Scott Fitzgerald
Letter to John Peale Biship
30th January 1935
A Life in Letters

P.S. I suppose I should say a word about what happens to my old body. In truth, I don’t really care. Hopefully, make as little of it as possible. One way would be to cremate and then distribute the ashes somewhere pleasant. Be sure not to waste money on an expensive casket or any of that garbage.

Jim Henson
Letter to his children (to be opened in the event of his death)
2nd March 1986
Jim Henson: The Biography

P.S. The flowers have come, and are adorable, dusky, tortured, passionate like you—And I’ve had lunch and feel ever so much better, and have read my letter, and am ashamed of its egotism, and feel tempted to tear it up, but have no time to write another. And don’t I lecture you nicely. Thats what comes of attacking your poor Virginia and dog Grizzle. They bite instantly. But at the same time they adore: and if you hadn’t the eyes of a newt and the blood of a toad, you’d see it, and not need telling—

Virginia Woolf
Letter to Vita Sackville-West
19th November 1926
Virginia Woolf: The Complete Collection

p.s. no man is an island but why are so many of them flecks of dirt?

Charles Bukowski
Letter to Jon and Louise Webb
September 1963
Screams from the Balcony

p.s. s. edgar; goddamn your lying soul why did you have to go away and leave me? I love you so much.

Shirley Jackson
Letter to Stanley Edgar Hyman
7th June 1938
The Letters of Shirley Jackson

P.S. To confirm still more your piety and gratitude to Divine Providence, reflect upon the situation which it has given to the elbow. You see in animals, who are intended to drink the waters that flow upon the earth, that if they have long legs, they have also a long neck, so that they can get at their drink without kneeling down. But man, who was destined to drink wine, is framed in a manner that he may raise the glass to his mouth. If the elbow had been placed nearer the hand, the part in advance would have been too short to bring the glass up to the mouth; and if it had been nearer the shoulder, that part would have been so long that when it attempted to carry the wine to the mouth it would have overshot the mark, and gone beyond the head; thus, either way, we should have been in the case of Tantalus. But from the actual situation of the elbow, we are enabled to drink at our ease, the glass going directly to the mouth.

Benjamin Franklin
Letter to the Abbé André Morellet
July 1779

P.S. No matter how hard you try, you won’t leave this world alive.

Al Cooper
Letter to a friend
1948
Dear Wit

P.S. This seems a good time to warn you I am down to my last £3.

Philip Larkin
Letter to his parents, from college
17th December 1941
Letters Home

P. S. Did you know policemen are numbered in case they get lost?

Spike Milligan
Letter to Chief Superintendent Colin Dinsdale
11th September 1978
Spike Milligan: Man of Letters

P.S. Don’t go starving yourself. We shall all be dead soon enough anyway without accelerating the process.

Iris Murdoch
Letter to David Hicks
20th November 1938
Iris Murdoch, A Writer at War

P.S. A pileated woodpecker stopped by here yesterday morning for about half an hour. I am enclosing a chip he threw down from a tree on our front lawn, where he was trying out a hole for size.

E. B. White
Letter to Edmund Smith
1957
Chicken, Gin and a Maine Friendship

P. S. On both sides and for many generations we are blond and blue-eyed to a degree to arouse the admiration and perhaps envy of the dark-complexioned Hitler.

John Steinbeck
Letter to Reverend L. M. Birkhead
7th May 1940
Steinbeck: A Life in Letters

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