Foreign News: The Urge

Nothing much happens in the quiet Wiltshire village of Steeple Ashton. Its 667 residents mind their own business, tend their gardens, go to church on Sunday and sometimes relax with a pint in one of two pubs on Saturday night. Whatever intriguing details there might be in the villagers' private lives are generally sealed tight in the letters that pass between them and the outside world through Steeple Ashton's one-story post office.

For over 70 years these confidential missives have been entrusted to ladies of

Steeple Ashton's Bartlett family. Auntie Lucy Jane Bartlett succeeded her mother in the job of postmistress, held it for 35 years and was in turn succeeded by her niece, who sorted the mail until 1947. Since then Auntie Lucy's plump, 33-year-old greatniece Mrs. Mary Gertrude Tye has been in charge of Steeple Ashton's mail.

Last week in a local magistrate's court, the shocked villagers of Steeple Ashton learned that Mary had been reading their mail. More than a year ago, Mrs. Tye confessed, she had first slipped a pencil under the flap of a letter from Vicar O.R. Yerbrugh to a certain Miss Wiltshire. After that, she said, "the urge got worse. I was opening letters during quiet spells several times a week. Then it got so that I was doing it every day. I knew I was doing wrong, but the practice grew on me and I couldn't resist. Nobody," she added, "need worry about what I read. I have never breathed a word to anybody, not even to my husband, and I never will." Nevertheless, the judge stripped her of her job and fined her £100 (of which Auntie Lucy contributed £40 which Steeple Ashton had given her on her retirement).

Penitent Mary left for Trowbridge and a job in a spinning mill. "Now," she said, "I've lost everyone's respect." But with its secrets secure once more the village could afford to be charitable. "It was just a crazy act," said Amos Bull, head of the parish council. "We shall remain good friends." Even the august Manchester Guardian admitted a "sneaking sympathy." "After all," it editorialized, "if once in a while a letter comes open in the postmistress' hands, well, who can struggle against fate?"