De l'importance de dire merci

Je savais dire merci avec style

J'ai souvent insisté sur l'importance vitale pour le maintien et le développement d'une relation à long terme avec les donneurs d'une politique sérieuse de remerciements.

KTO vient de nous donner un tout récent exemple de ce qu'il ne faut pas faire. Une lettre plate, sans intérêt.

Toutefois, je dois admettre à leur décharge deux points. Ils postent une lettre. Et ils la postent rapidement. Il est vrai qu'à tout prendre il vaut mieux une mauvaise lettre que pas de lettre du tout ou arrivant trois mois après le don.

Pour aborder la question avec le soutire, voici un post d'Harry Mount dans The Telegraph sur l'art de feu la princesse de Galles dans la rédaction de lettres de remerciement.

Princess Diana, patron saint of the thankyou letter

Thankyou letters - Champion of a dying art

The auction of a collection of letters from Princess Diana to an old kindergarten teaching colleague shows the princess in a touching, determinedly jolly, ultra-thankful light.

Highgrove, she writes shortly after her wedding, “will just be a cosy roost for Mr and Mrs Wales to roost, with bright colours of course!”

While her marriage was falling apart, and her husband was reigniting his affair with Camilla Parker Bowles, Diana continued writing away in the upbeat, coy, exclamation-mark-littered, traditional school of thankyou-letter writing. On her fifth wedding anniversary in 1986, she writes, “The five years have flown by and what with two little men to look after, its [sic] not surprising!” What’s more, she follows the crucial rule of thankyou-letter writing: always go over to the second page.

There are spelling mistakes and little sign of inspiration but, still, the letters reflect well on Diana. For all the intellectual shortcomings of the traditional Sloane education, there is one gleaming compensation – manners.

The art of the thankyou letter is in steep decline, killed off by the internet and supposedly busier modern lives; an excuse, in fact, for the triumph of selfishness over thoughfulness. But the thankyou letter lingers on, in Sloaneworld and in royal circles – Prince Charles is said to hand-write dozens of letters each week.

As the phenomenon goes into decline, the arrival of a letter on the front-door mat - however tritely or badly written – brings even more of a thrill; particularly if, like Princess Diana’s letters, the letter is topped with a coronet and the words “Kensington Palace”.