A bread and butter letter is a hand written thank you letter to a hostess or host after you have eaten dinner at their house or stayed with them.
My mother was a beatnik but in certain areas she was strict. Table manners, saying may I please be excused when we finished eating, and bread and butter letters.
The most difficult one that I wrote as a child was after a dinner at a neighbor when we were staying with my grandmother. They were friends of hers. The husband died the day after we were there, of a heart attack.
My mother insisted that we write.
I had no idea what to say. I thanked her for dinner and said that I was very sorry that her husband died. I ended with “Dona nobis pacem”. We sang the round, along with many other rounds, at home.
My mother heard from my grandmother that the friend had been thinking of putting “dona nobis pacem” on her husband’s stone. She was undecided and her adult children were not sure about it, until my letter arrived. Then she decided: yes. Dona nobis pacem would be on his stone.
I hated writing that letter and it was scary and I didn’t know him and yet I am so glad that my mother insisted that I write it.
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