When a Few Words Are Worth a Single Picture

“Napoleon was a real fool to leave Elba,” the post card read, “but apparently he got restless after nine months and needed to get on to Waterloo.”

That was the message I received from a man who had spent one night on that flower-laden Italian island.

He praised his hotel, which overlooks a wide, clean beach of coarse white sand in the village of Marina di Campo. He said that he would have stayed longer if he had not been boxed in by hotel reservations in Rome.

In this era, I guess, hotel deposits can seem as pressing as battles once did to Napoleon. Travelers move on. Nobody likes to lose.

Another recent card also was from Elba. This writer was in heaven, she said, ensconced at an ancient villa seven miles east of the capital, Portoferraio.

The post card showed olive groves and a turquoise sea. Her words described the island’s fragrant air--a blend of lavender, rosemary and thyme. She wrote of hiking to the ruins of a 12th-Century castle, and of having them to herself because it was past the peak of summer.

Elba is 19 miles long, 13 miles wide . . . and I have not yet been there.

Why did I turn left as I drove south from Livorno last spring, instead of catching a one-hour ferry to Elba? Because I was tempted by the hill towns of Tuscany--San Gimignano, Volterra, Certaldo.

But Elba has the hill town of Poggio and next time . . . next time. . . .

Post cards do that to me.

I pick up the mail and riffle through press releases from tour operators and resorts. I toss out dreary envelopes marked “occupant” or “current resident.” I stack magazines and bills.

Then I make a pot of tea and, if there is time, sit down to savor post cards.

In years of receiving post cards--and sending all too few--I have developed strong notions about this minimalist form of communication. My favorite messages are personal, newsy and legible. They are like insider comments that friends trade at noisy parties.

“Jackiie, the Swiss bartender at the Royal Papeete, still makes the best dry martini in the South Pacific,” began a card from two inveterate travelers who used to live in Fiji.

“Bora Bora was beautiful at Christmas. Santa came by pirogue and landed on the hotel beach, which was crowded with children. The Trump Princess--with Ivana Trump on board--was anchored in the bay when we sailed in at sunset.”

That tells a lot.

The best post cards do not say that the weather is fine, as it will likely have changed by the time the card arrives--if it ever changes at all. They do tell me if the weather is extraordinary. They tell me if a friend has witnessed a volcanic eruption on the Big Island of Hawaii. They tell me if a landing on Cape Horn was scrubbed by high seas.

My favorites share witty remarks made, often unwittingly, by tour guides. They corroborate experiences I have had, and sometimes add the perspective of what it was like to visit that pyramid or coffee house as a youngster, traveling with a favorite aunt in the 1920s.

Post cards should not be a recital of an itinerary but an outburst of impressions, incidents or finds.

Don’t write simply that the food is delicious or the people are friendly. If you are staying at a Dordogne inn with an exceptional kitchen, tell me what to order. If the people are not friendly, fill me in with raucous details when you get home.

I smiled recently over a post card that pictured a manicured English resort near New Milton in Hampshire. It began with a chastisement from a London friend who said that it was wretched not to be able to get away for a weekend in the country without running into a Californian who claimed to be my neighbor. Both of my pals signed the card. Neither wrote “Wish you were here.”

Which reminds me of my favorite post card line, scribbled on a card that showed the Greek port of Hydra on a dazzling sunny day.

“Wish you were here,” it said. “Wish I were, too. But I’m in Chicago and it’s snowing.”