It is the intimacy that shines out and it is the intimacy that we relish.
Reading love letters gives us a permitted thrill at witnessing someone
else’s raw emotions. Yearning as we often do for the rapture of love, here
we can see how clearly — with what honesty, directness and beauty — others
have been able to express it.
And here they are in all the multitude of feeling and character. These love
letters have little in common except their basic motive: to cross time and
space to reach a lover. Instead they display in its most concentrated form
the character of these different women — in all their boldness, neediness,
passion and distress. Perhaps in no other moment is the truth of a woman’s
feeling so guilelessly expressed.
Consider the hilarity of Dorothy Osborne’s prescription for a husband, setting
before the man she will marry just how exacting are her demands (“he must
have that kind of breeding that I have had”), adding a list forbidding
enough to daunt the most ardent suitor. But her love for Sir William Temple
was a triumph. Opposed by her father, it was conducted in secret: they
married after his death and were together more than 40 years.
The women’s emotional honesty is, not surprisingly, most eloquently expressed
by those who were writers, even if they were sometimes self-deluding. Jane
Welsh’s pledge to be a “very meek-tempered wife” was pie-in the-sky. She and
Thomas Carlyle were a notably quarrelsome match, prompting Samuel Butler to
observe that, “It was very good of God to let Carlyle and Mrs Carlyle marry
one another and so make only two people miserable instead of four”.
What we seek in love letters is a reflection of our own needs and passions. We
read the words of others as if they were our own. Do we dare to be as
explicit, as needful and full of yearning? And will the words do justice to
our feelings? Who can match the plaintive directness of the dying Catherine
of Aragon, ditched by Henry VIII more than 20 years earlier but still
writing “mine eyes desire you above all things”?
Today, time and distance no longer stand between lovers. With a twitch of
thumbs and the press of “Send” we can be within reach. We can hear the
beloved voice instantly on our mobile phones. A moment’s yearning can be
instantly gratified. What have we lost!
And yet there is still the magic of the written hand, the addressed envelope,
the intimacy of recorded words. Katherine Mansfield sits down to take
pleasure in being alone — “I long to write you a love letter tonight” — and
there follows the most eloquent, personal and beautiful expression of love.
It is unique and for all time. Texting can’t do that.
CATHERINE OF ARAGON (1485-1536)
Henry VIII and Catherine were married for more than 20 years before the King,
partly because of his obsession with producing a male heir, put her through
a humiliating trial so that he could marry Anne Boleyn, which he did in
1533. Ill and exiled from London, Catherine died the year after she sent
this letter.
To Henry VIII, 1535
My Lord and Dear Husband, I commend me unto you. The hour of my death draweth
fast on, and my case being such, the tender love I owe you forceth me, with
a few words, to put you in remembrance of the health and safeguard of your
soul, which you ought to prefer before all worldly matters, and before the
care and tendering of your own body, for the which you have cast me into
many miseries and yourself into many cares.
For my part I do pardon you all, yea, I do wish and devoutly pray God that He
will also pardon you.
For the rest I commend unto you Mary, our daughter, beseeching you to be a
good father unto her, as I heretofore desired. I entreat you also, on behalf
of my maids, to give them marriage-portions, which is not much, they being
but three. For all my other servants, I solicit a year’s pay more than their
due, lest they should be unprovided for.
Lastly, do I vow, that mine eyes desire you above all things.
JANE WELSH (1801-66)
This letter was written days before the marriage of Jane Welsh, the bright
daughter of a doctor, and Thomas Carlyle, the scholar and essayist. After
the Carlyles moved from Scotland to London in 1834, Jane entertained the
luminaries of the day, including Dickens, Thackeray and Tennyson, but her
already rocky relationship encountered serious difficulty in 1843, when
Thomas became infatuated with Lady Harriet Baring. While the marriage lasted
40 years, it is not certain that it was consummated. Jane Welsh Carlyle is
routinely referred to as the best letter-writer in the English language.
To Thomas Carlyle Sent from Templand, Tuesday, October 3, 1826
Unkind that you are ever to suffer me to be cast down, when it is so easy a
thing for you to lift me to the Seventh Heaven! My soul was darker than
midnight when your pen said “Let there be light,” and there was light at the
bidding of the Word. And now I am resolved in spirit and even joyful, joyful
even in the face of the dreaded ceremony, of starvation, and every possible
fate.
Oh, my dearest Friend! be always so good to me, and I shall make the best and
happiest Wife. When I read in your looks and words that you love me, I feel
it in the deepest part of my soul; then I care not one jot for the whole
Universe beside; but when you fly from my caresses to smoke tobacco, or
speak of me as a new circumstance of your lot, then indeed my “heart is
troubled about many things”.
My Mother is not come yet, but is expected this week; the week following must
be given to her to take a last look at her Child; and then Dearest, God
willing, I am your own for ever and ever . . .
Oh mercy! What I would give to be sitting in our doll’s house married for a
week! . . .
I may well return one out of twenty. But indeed, Dear, these kisses on paper
are scarce worth keeping. You gave me one on my neck that night you were in
such good humour, and one on my lips on some forgotten occasion, that I
would not part with for a hundred thousand paper ones. Perhaps some day or
other, I shall get none of either sort; sic transit gloria mundi . . . But I
must stop. And this is my last Letter. What a thought! How terrible and yet
full of bliss. You will love me for ever, will you not, my own Husband and I
will always be your true and affectionate Jane Welsh.
KATHERINE MANSFIELD (1888-1923)
Born in Wellington, New Zealand, to parents of English descent, Mansfield was
educated in London. She had a series of love affairs that resulted in a
miscarriage, a marriage, divorce, and her mother cutting her out of her
will. A collection of her stories was published in 1911, bringing her to the
attention of the magazine editor John Middleton Murry, and in the following
few years they flitted between London and France, dodging creditors and
striking up friendships with writers and artists such as D. H. Lawrence,
with whom they took part in a short-lived experiment in communal living in
Cornwall. Murry and Mansfield married in 1918, and Mansfield died of
tuberculosis five years later.
To John Middleton Murry Sent from Redcliffe Road, Fulham, Saturday night,
May 18, 1917
My darling
Do not imagine, because you find these lines in your private book, that I have
been trespassing. You know I have not — and where else shall I leave a love
letter? For I long to write you a love letter tonight. You are all about me
— I seem to breathe you — hear you — feel you in me and of me — What am I
doing here? You are away — I have seen you in the train, at the station,
driving up, sitting in the lamplight talking, greeting people — washing your
hands — And I am here — in your tent — sitting at your table. There are some
wallflower petals on the table and a dead match, a blue pencil and a
Magdeburgische Zeitung. I am just as much at home as they ...
Last night, there was a moment before you got into bed. You stood, quite
naked, bending forward a little — talking. It was only for an instant. I saw
you — I loved you so — loved your body with such tenderness — Ah
my dear — And I am not thinking now of “passion”. No, of that other thing
that makes me feel that every inch of you is so precious to me. Your soft
shoulders — your creamy warm skin, your ears, cold like shells are cold —
your long legs and your feet that I love to clasp with my feet — the feeling
of your belly — & your thin young back — Just below that bone that
sticks out at the back of your neck you have a little mole. It is partly
because we are young that I feel this tenderness — I love your youth — I
could not bear that it should be touched even by a cold wind if I were the
Lord.
We two, you know, have everything before us, and we shall do very great things
— I have perfect faith in us — and so perfect is my love for you that I am,
as it were, still, silent to my very soul. I want nobody but you for my
lover and my friend and to nobody but you shall I be faithful.
I am yours for ever, Tig
DOROTHY OSBORNE (1627-95)
Osborne had to smuggle her vivacious and witty letters to Sir William Temple
out of the house: the courtship was against the wishes of her Royalist
family, whose finances had been severely depleted by the Civil War and who
were hoping for a rich husband. The two were eventually married, and moved
to the Netherlands, where Dorothy became a confidante to Mary Stuart.
To Sir William Temple
There are a great many ingredients must go to the making me happy in a
husband. First, as my cousin Franklin says, our humours must agree; and to
do that he must have that kind of breeding that I have had, and used that
kind of company. That is, he must not be so much a country gentleman as to
understand nothing but hawks and dogs, and be fonder of either than his
wife; nor of the next sort of them whose aim reaches no further than to be
Justice of the Peace, and once in his life High Sheriff, who reads no book
but Statutes, and studies nothing but how to make a speech interlarded with
Latin that may amaze his disagreeing poor neighbours, and fright them rather
than persuade them into quietness . . . Nor a travelled Monsieur whose head
is all feather inside and outside, that can talk of nothing but dancing and
duets, and has courage enough to wear sashes when every one else dies with
cold to see him. He must not be a fool of no sort, nor peevish, nor
ill-natured, nor proud, nor covetous; and to all this must be added, that he
must love me and I him as much as we are capable of loving.
Without all this, his fortune, though never so great, would not satisfy me;
and with it, a very moderate one would keep me from ever repenting my
disposal.
QUEEN VICTORIA (1819-1901)
It is impossible to overstate how much Victoria depended on her husband
Albert; her children were a distant second in her affections, and she would
do nothing without his express approval.
When Albert died in 1861, she was utterly inconsolable, and plunged the court
into a mourning so deep as to be quite spectacular even by the stringent
standards of the time. This letter is to her uncle, Leopold.
To the King of the Belgians, sent from Osborne, December 20, 1861
MY own DEAREST, KINDEST FATHER, — For as such have I ever loved you! The poor
fatherless baby of eight months is now the utterly broken-hearted and
crushed widow of forty-two! My life as a happy one is ended! The world is
gone for me! If I must live on (and I will do nothing to make me worse than
I am), it is henceforth for our poor fatherless children — for my unhappy
country, which has lost all in losing him — and in only doing what I know
and feel he would wish, for he is near me — his spirit will guide and
inspire me! But oh! to be cut off in the prime of life — to see our pure,
happy, quiet, domestic life, which alone enabled me to bear my much disliked
position, CUT OFF at forty-two — when I had hoped with such instinctive
certainty that God never would part us, and would let us grow old together
(though he always talked of the shortness of life) — is too awful, too
cruel! And yet it must be for his good, his happiness! His purity was too
great, his aspiration too high for this poor, miserable world! His great
soul is now only enjoying that for which it was worthy! And I will not envy
him — only pray that mine may be perfected by it and fit to be with him
eternally, for which blessed moment I earnestly long. Dearest, dearest
Uncle, how kind of you to come! It will be an unspeakable comfort, and you
can do much to tell people to do what they ought to do. As for my own good,
personal servants — poor Phipps in particular — nothing can be more devoted,
heartbroken as they are, and anxious only to live as he wished!
Good Alice has been and is wonderful.
The 26th will suit me perfectly.
Ever your devoted, wretched Child, Victoria R.
EMILY DICKINSON (1830-86)
Dickinson wrote almost 1,800 poems but published only a handful in her
lifetime. One of her closest relationships was with Susan Gilbert, whom she
met as a girl at the Amherst Academy and to whom she wrote more than 300
letters. In 1856, Susan married Emily’s brother Austin. The couple built a
house in Amherst, Massachusetts. Their marriage was unhappy. Emily herself
never married.
To Susan Gilbert, February 6, 1852
Will you let me come dear Susie — looking just as I do, my dress soiled and
worn, my grand old apron, and my hair — Oh Susie, time would fail me to
enumerate my appearance, yet I love you just as dearly as if I was e’er so
fine, so you wont care, will you? I am so glad dear Susie — that our hearts
are always clean, and always neat and lovely, so not to be ashamed. I have
been hard at work this morning, and I ought to be working now — but I cannot
deny myself the luxury of a minute or two with you.
The dishes may wait dear Susie — and the uncleared table stand, them I have
always with me, but you, I have “not always” — why Susie, Christ hath saints
manie — and I have few, but thee — the angels shant have Susie — no — no no!
. . .
Oh my darling one, how long you wander from me, how weary I grow of waiting
and looking, and calling for you; sometimes I shut my eyes, and shut my
heart towards you, and try hard to forget you because you grieve me so, but
you’ll never go away, Oh you never will — say, Susie, promise me again, and
I will smile faintly — and take up my little cross again of sad — sad
separation. How vain it seems to write, when one knows how to feel — how
much more near and dear to sit beside you, talk with you, hear the tones of
your voice; so hard to “deny thyself, and take up thy cross, and follow me”
— give me strength, Susie, write me of hope and love, and of hearts that
endured, and great was their reward of “Our Father who art in Heaven”. I
don’t know how I shall bear it, when the gentle spring comes; if she should
come and see me and talk to me of you, Oh it would surely kill me! While the
frost clings to the windows, and the World is stern and drear; this absence
is easier; the Earth mourns too, for all her little birds; but when they all
come back again, and she sings and is so merry — pray what will become of me?
Susie, forgive me, forget all what I say, get some sweet little scholar to
read a gentle hymn, about Bethlehem and Mary, and you will sleep on sweetly
and have as peaceful dreams, as if I had never written you all these ugly
things. . . Mattie is very smart, talks of you much, my darling; I must
leave you now — “one little hour of Heaven”, thank who did give it me, and
will he also grant me one longer and more when it shall please his love —
bring Susie home, ie! Love always, and ever, and true!
Emily
This selection and commentary © Ursula Doyle 2009
Extracted from Love Letters of Great Women, published by Macmillan
on November 12 at £9.99. To order it for £9.49 inc p&p call 0845 2712134 or
visit timesonline.co.uk/booksfirst
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