The Power of Letters

Abstract John Locke’s friendship with Damaris Cudworth Masham has long been known about, but little explored as it is recorded in the many letters they exchanged. Of the forty-five that survive, only four are by Locke. This correspondence has been well mined for the exchange of philosophical and theological views that it contains, but it has not been read as the intensely emotional account of responses to lived experience that it is. The letters reflect not only the encounter of ideas, but also emotional reactions to people, places, ill health, circumstances of distance in space and time. This includes Locke’s exile in the Netherlands (1683–9), as well as both apparently involuntary and strategic displays of mood changes. The correspondence spans a long relationship of frequently affirmed friendship across some twenty-two years, from 1682, when Cudworth-Masham was twenty-four, and Locke’s death in 1704 at the age of seventy-two. The letters demonstrate strong shared literary interests, through the lens of which they viewed the world. Through a close reading of this exchange, this chapter exemplifies a new way of reading affect and embodiment within the domain of both literary studies and intellectual history.