When writing a letter, there had to be a decent effort at expressing ideas clearly. If you make a mistake, even for someone else living in your parish, you would have at best a turnaround of two days. If the receiver couldn't understand what you wanted, you've delayed any wanted action on their part by a substantial amount.
On top of that, most people wrote letters by hand before WWII (maybe not Tolkien, as a professor and author he had a typewriter at home, and I know that at least some of his correspondence was typed). Handwritten letters take a lot longer to compose than typing out an email. This is true even if you have a typewriter - making a typo is not fixed by hitting backspace a couple of times, you need to wind the paper forward, paint out the error, roll the paper back, and re-type.
Finally, it's not fair to hold the rest of us up to the standards of J.R.R. Tolkien, one of the most read authors in the English language! :)
It's also worth observing that people who actually take the time to write letters (or long form emails) today will tend to express themselves rather eloquently, whilst in times of yore people wishing to rapidly convey a simple message wrote telegrams that were usually decidedly lacking in erudition.
And even "HOW TO WRITE TELEGRAMS PROPERLY" style guides encouraged the use of phrases like:
Received your very fine letter and Telegram this morning so many things to be done morning after you left all we could do was pack and get taxi for train are leaving now.http://www.telegraph-office.com/pages/telegram.html
On top of that, most people wrote letters by hand before WWII (maybe not Tolkien, as a professor and author he had a typewriter at home, and I know that at least some of his correspondence was typed). Handwritten letters take a lot longer to compose than typing out an email. This is true even if you have a typewriter - making a typo is not fixed by hitting backspace a couple of times, you need to wind the paper forward, paint out the error, roll the paper back, and re-type.
Finally, it's not fair to hold the rest of us up to the standards of J.R.R. Tolkien, one of the most read authors in the English language! :)