I love you.

Who better to write the world’s most passionate love letters than the world’s finest writers? In Irish journalist, political activist and Nobel Prize winning dramatist George Bernard Shaw, we find a man so enamored with love letters that  he conducted an entire affair by them…

The midnight train…gets to Dorking at 1 (a.m.) 14th-15th June 1897…stopping just now, but will joggle like mad presently.

Do you read these jogged scrawls, I wonder. I think of your poor eyes, and resolve to tear what I have written up: then I look out at the ghostly country and the beautiful night, and I cannot bring myself to read a miserable book…Yes, as you guess, Ellen, I am having a bad attack of you just at present. I am restless; and a man’s restlessness always means a woman; and my restlessness means Ellen. And your conduct is often shocking. Today I was wandering somewhere…when I glanced at a shop window; and there you were – oh disgraceful and abandoned – in your third Act Sans Gene dress – a mere waistband – laughing wickedly, and saying maliciously: “Look have restless one, at your pillow, at what you are really thinking about.” How can you look Window and Grove’s camera in the face with such thoughts in your head and almost nothing on…

Oh fie, fie, let me get away from this stuff, which you have been listening to all your life, & despise – though indeed, dearest Ellen, these silly longings stir up great waves of tenderness in which there is no guile.

I shall find a letter from you when I get back to Lotus, shall I not? Reigate we are at now; and it’s a quarter to one. In ten minutes, Dorking station; in seventeen minutes thereafter, Lotus, and a letter. Only a letter, perhaps not even that. O Ellen, what will you say when the Recording Angel asks you why one of your sins have my name to them?

When George Bernard Shaw first met Ellen Terry in 1892, she was an internationally renowned actress and he was a relatively unknown journalist. They corresponded fitfully for 3 years, by which time Shaw had made a name for himself, and then embarked on (in Shaw’s words) “a paper courtship…perhaps the pleasantest and most enduring of all courtships.” Their love of their shared craft bound them with a strange, coy intimacy – they would only meet when their rate of correspondence slowed and a real romance became out of the question.

And Terry’s assessment of Shaw in person?

“He was quite unlike what I had imagined from his letters.”

Further Reading: Ellen Terry & George Bernard Shaw: A Correspondence (and thoughts on).

Images: TCNJ and Wikimedia Commons.

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To you;

The way I thought was wrong, having not known, it was right. Here is the proof of my feelings, Don’t hate me, love me forever: — — — —

Beautiful is the world, slow is one to take advantage. Wind up the world the other way. And at the start of the turning of the earth, lie my feelings for thou.

To you
Shame on me.
I love you.

Charlie is writing to his girlfriend Beverley Dolores Berg, later better known as Chan Parker (although they never formally married). She would stick by the jazz composer through his darkest years, as his early fascination with morphine turned to an addiction to heroin that would blight his talent and his career. Charlie and Chan were also an interracial couple at a time when America was still overtly segregated.

Charlie Parker died in 1955, at the terribly young age of 34 – but leaving an extraordinary legacy of composition and professional dedication that would far outlive the man himself.

Images: Kids Music Corner; SoulWalking. Letter via FastCoDesign.

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A love letter from Mary Wordsworth in response to her husband, William.

Who better to write the world’s most memorable love letters than the world’s most famous writers? And just imagine if that love letter came from a husband that was one of the most famous English Romantic poets, William Wordsworth? Here is his wife’s response to a letter sadly lost to us…

Oh My William! It is not in my power to tell thee how I have been affected by this dearest of all letters – it was so unexpected – so new a thing to see the breathing of thy inmost heart upon paper that I was quite overpowered, & now that I sit down to answer thee in the loneliness & depth of that love which unites us & which cannot be felt but by ourselves, I am so agitated & my eyes are so bedimmed that I scarcely know how to proceed…

Wordsworth’s marriage to his second wife, Mary Hutchinson, would come at a difficult time for the English poet. Two of his children would soon die, his brother would be lost at sea and his sister would suffer an emotional breakdown. Throughout, his love for his wife Mary shines through – even if we can only catch second-hand glimpses of it…

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The love letters of Founding Father Benjamin Franklin.

Who better to write the world’s most memorable love letters than the world’s most famous writers? Let’s look at intellectual all-rounder Benjamin Franklin, a man ahead of his time in perhaps every way but one.

Madame Brillon,

What a difference, my dear friend, between you and me! You find innumerable faults with me, whereas I see only one fault in you (but perhaps that is the fault of my glasses). I mean this kind of avarice which leads you to seek monopoly on all my affection, and not allow me any for the agreeable ladies of your country.

Do you imagine that it is impossible for my affection (or my tenderness) to be divided without being diminished? You deceive yourself, and you forget the playful manner with which you stopped me. You renounce and totally exclude all that might be of the flesh in our affection, allowing me only some kisses, civil and honest, such as you might grant your little cousins. What am I receiving that is so special as to prevent me from giving the same to others, without taking from what belongs to you?

The sweet sounds brought forth from the pianoforte by your clever hand can be enjoyed by twenty people simultaneously without diminishing at all the pleasure you so obligingly mean for me, and I could, with as little reason, demand from your affection that no other ears but mine be allowed to be charmed by those sweet sounds.

Yours,

Benjamin

Translation: “I require your faithful devotion, and in return you should allow me the freedom to dally?” It rather sounds that way. Skipping ahead a few years…

Articles for a Treaty of Peace with Madame Brillon (as reprinted here)
Passy, July 27, 1782.

ARTICLE 1.
There shall be eternal Peace, Friendship & Love, between Madame
B. and Mr F.

ARTICLE 2.
…In order to maintain the same inviolably, Made B. on her Part
stipulates and agrees, that Mr F. shall come to her whenever she
sends for him.

ART. 3.
That he shall stay with her as long as she pleases.

ART. 4.
That when he is with her, he shall be oblig’d to drink Tea,
play Chess, hear Musick; or do any other thing that she requires of
him.

ART. 5.
And that he shall love no other Woman but herself.

ART. 6.
And the said Mr F. on his part stipulates and agrees, that he
will go away from M. B.’s whenever he pleases.

ART. 7.
That he will stay away as long as he pleases.

ART. 8.
That when he is with her, he will do what he pleases.

ART. 9.
And that he will love any other Woman as far as he finds her
amiable.

Let me know what you think of these Preliminaries. To me they
seem to express the true Meaning and Intention of each Party more
plainly than most Treaties. – I shall insist pretty strongly on the
eighth Article, tho’ without much Hope of your Consent to it; and on
the ninth also, tho I despair of ever finding any other Woman that I
could love with equal Tenderness: being ever, my dear dear Friend,

How much can we read into such pronouncements? Could they be nothing but an intense, playful flirtation (we have no evidence to suggest it was more than that)? Or was one of the Founding Fathers of the United States a bit of a cad?

Image: Wikimedia Commons

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One of the very earliest love letters, from Rome’s Pliny the Younger.

Who better to write the world’s most memorable love letters than the world’s most famous writers? This week the clock gets turned back to AD 100 to discover one of the world’s earliest love letters, courtesy of writer and magistrate Gaius Plinius Caecilius Secundus, better known as Pliny the Younger…

You say that you are feeling my absence very much, and your only comfort when I am not there is to hold my writings in your hand and often put them in my place by your side. I like to think that you miss me and find relief in this sort of consolation. I, too, am always reading your letters, and returning to them again and again as if they were new to me – but this only fans the fire of my longing for you. If your letters are so dear to me, you can imagine how I delight in your company; do write as often as you can, although you give me pleasure mingled with pain.

The object of Pliny’s devotion was his third and most beloved wife Calpurnia – his marriage to her is recorded in the extraordinary collection of letters and written documents he left behind, including his famous account of his father’s ill-fated attempt to rescue victims of the eruption of Vesuvius in AD 79. Without Pliny the Younger’s love of the written word (and a great deal of luck in its successful conveyance to us) we would know a great deal less about Ancient Rome – and it can also be justly said that he was the father of the modern love-letter.

Images: Wolfgang Sauber/Wikimedia Creative Commons and thaumazein.

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A letter (of love?) from Jack London to fellow writer Anna Strunsky.

Who better to write the world’s most memorable love letters than the world’s most famous writers? In turning to author and journalist Jack London, we are faced with a question – where does close friendship end and love begin?

Dear Anna,

April 3, 1901

Did I say that the human might be filed in categories? Well, and if I did, let me qualify — not all humans. You elude me. I cannot place you, cannot grasp you. I may boast that of nine out of ten, under given circumstances, I can forecast their action; that of nine out of ten, by their word or action, I may feel the pulse of their hearts. But of the tenth I despair. It is beyond me. You are that tenth.

Were ever two souls, with dumb lips, more incongruously matched! We may feel in common — surely, we oftimes do — and when we do not feel in common, yet do we understand; and yet we have no common tongue. Spoken words do not come to us. We are unintelligible. God must laugh at the mummery.

The one gleam of sanity through it all is that we are both large temperamentally, large enough to often understand. True, we often understand but in vague glimmering ways, by dim perceptions, like ghosts, which, while we doubt, haunt us with their truth. And still, I, for one, dare not believe; for you are that tenth which I may not forecast.

Am I unintelligible now? I do not know. I imagine so. I cannot find the common tongue.

Large temperamentally — that is it. It is the one thing that brings us at all in touch. We have, flashed through us, you and I, each a bit of universal, and so we draw together. And yet we are so different.

I smile at you when you grow enthusiastic? It is a forgivable smile — nay, almost an envious smile. I have lived twenty-five years of repression. I learned not to be enthusiastic. It is a hard lesson to forget. I begin to forget, but it is so little. At the best, before I die, I cannot hope to forget all or most. I can exult, now that I am learning, in little things, in other things; but of my things, and secret things doubly mine, I cannot, I cannot. Do I make myself intelligible? Do you hear my voice? I fear not. There are poseurs. I am the most successful of them all.

Jack

Is this the voice of an eloquent man overcome with passion? Clearly. What kind of passion? Good question. At the time of writing, London was a willing participant in a loveless marriage to his first wife, Bessie Madern – a union designed to create stability and children. It would falter, and a divorce would follow in 1904. Through this marriage ran the close friendship he shared with Strunsky. Both writers were fascinated with the nature of love, and would collaborate on The Kempton-Wace Letters (1903), a fictionalised exploration of two philosophies of love with Strunsky taking the romantic view, London the scientific.

So is this a letter exploring a friendship and foreshadowing a piece of academic enquiry – or is it the work of a man who can’t contain his romantic feelings? We may never know.

Images: Wikimedia Commons & JackLondons.net.

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A love letter from Mark Twain to his future wife, Olivia.

Who better to write the world’s most memorable love letters than the world’s most famous writers? And it’s difficult to top the fame of Samuel Langhorne Clemens (described by William Faulkner as “the father of American literature”). This is how Mark Twain goes a-wooing…

Livy dear,

I have already mailed to-day’s letter, but I am so proud of my privilege of writing the dearest girl in the world whenever I please, that I must add a few lines if only to say I love you, Livy. For I do love you, Livy…as the dew loves the flowers; as the birds love the sunshine; as the wavelets love the breeze; as mothers love their first-born; as memory loves old faces; as the yearning tides love the moon; as the angels love the pure in heart…

Take my kiss and my benediction, and try to be reconciled to the fact that I am

Yours forever,

Sam

…..

P.S.– I have read this letter over and it is flippant and foolish and puppyish. I wish I had gone to bed when I got back, without writing. You said I must never tear up a letter after writing it to you and so I send it. Burn it, Livy, I did not think I was writing so clownishly and shabbily. I was in much too good a humor for sensible letter writing.

Self-mocking it may have been, but this courtship was a success. The object of Twain’s affection here is Olivia Langdon – having rejected his first proposal of marriage, she had just accepted his second and would become his wife within the year. Through her, Twain came into contact with a number of American luminaries including Harriet Beecher Stowe, author of Uncle Tom’s Cabin.

Their marriage would last 34 years until Olivia’s death in 1904.

Images: Abdullah Frères (Wikimedia Commons) & Wikimedia Commons.

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A love letter from Winston Churchill to his wife, Clementine.

Who better to write the world’s most memorable love letters than the world’s most famous writers? Proving romance isn’t always confined to courtship, we turn to a letter from future British Prime Minister Winston Churchill to his wife Clementine, written during Winston’s trip to Germany after one year of marriage:

15 September 1909 Kronprinz Hotel

Wurzburg

My darling, We have been out all day watching these great manoeuvres. . . .

I have a very nice horse from the Emperor’s stable, & am able to ride about wherever I choose with a suitable retinue. As I am supposed to be an ‘Excellency’ I get a vy good place. Freddie on the other hand is ill-used. These people are so amazingly routinière that anything the least out of the ordinary – anything they have not considered officially & for months – upsets them dreadfully….I saw the Emperor today & had a few minutes’ talk with him. He is vy sallow – but otherwise looks quite well. . . . .

We have had a banquet tonight at the Bavarian palace. A crowd of princes & princelets & the foreign officers of various countries. It began at 6 p.m. & was extremely dull. . . .

This army is a terrible engine. It marches sometimes 35 miles in a day. It is in number as the sands of the sea – & with all the modern conveniences. There is a complete divorce between the two sides of German life – the Imperialists & Socialist. Nothing unites them. They are two different nations. With us there are so many shades. Here it is all black & white (the Prussian colours). I think another 50 years will see a wiser & gentler world. But we shall not be spectators of it. Only the P.K. [“puppy kitten” – their nickname for their first child] will glitter in a happier scene. How easily men could make things much better than they are – if only all tried together! Much as was attracts me & fascinates my mind with its tremendous situation – I feel more deeply every year – & can measure the feeling here in the midst of arms – what vile & wicked folly & barbarism it all is.

Sweet cat – I kiss your vision as it rises before my mind. Your dear heart throbs often in my own. God bless you darling keep you safe & sound.

Kiss the P.K. for me all over

With fondest love

W.

Winston Leonard Spencer-Churchill’s later fame as wartime Prime Minister has overshadowed his prowess as an artist, historian and writer – regarding the latter, he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1953. His love affair with the written word was matched only by his devotion to the love of his life, Clementine Hozier – they first met in 1904, were married in 1908, would have 5 children and would still be together at Winston’s death in 1965, aged 90.

Images/Reference: The Library Of Congress.

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A love letter from Robert Browning to Elizabeth Barrett Browning.

Who better to write the world’s most memorable love letters than the world’s most famous writers? In the case of Robert and Elizabeth Barrett Browning, the love affair was between two of the most influential poets of the Victorian age… 

January 10th, 1845

I love your verses with all my heart, dear Miss Barrett, – and this is no off-hand complimentary letter that I shall write,- whatever else, no prompt matter-of-course recognition of your genius and there a graceful and natural end of the thing: since the day last week when I first read your poems, I quite laugh to remember how I have been turning again in my mind what I should be able to tell you of their effect upon me – for in the first flush of delight I thought I would this once get out of my habit of purely passive enjoyment, when I do really enjoy, and thoroughly justify my admiration – perhaps even, as a loyal fellow-craftsman should, try and find fault and do you some little good to be proud of herafter! – but nothing comes of it all – so into me has it gone, and part of me has it become, this great living poetry of yours, not a flower of which but took root and grew… oh, how different that is from lying to be dried and pressed flat and prized highly and put in a book with a proper account at bottom, and shut up and put away… and the book called a ‘Flora’, besides!

Browning first met Barrett in 1845, and their creative admiration for one another would soon turn romantic. They eloped in 1846 to avoid Barrett’s disapproving, tyrannical father, and lived happily in Italy until Barrett’s death in 1861, their fame and their love for one another increasingly assured…

Images: Gaston D. Haese and Wikimedia Commons.

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A love letter from Voltaire to Catherine Olympe Dunoyer.

Who better to write the world’s most memorable love letters than the world’s most famous writers? Picture a teenage François-Marie Arouet, imprisoned (as he would be many times) for his convictions. And the cause this time? His love of French refugee Catherine Olympe Dunoyer: 

The Hague 1713

I am a prisoner here in the name of the King; they can take my life, but not the love that I feel for you.

Yes, my adorable mistress, to-night I shall see you, if I had to put my head on the block to do it.

For heaven’s sake, do not speak to me in such disastrous terms as you write; you must live and be cautious; beware of Madame your mother as of your worst enemy.

What do I say?

Beware of everybody; trust no one; keep yourself in readiness, as soon as the moon is visible; I shall leave the hotel incognito, take a carriage or a chaise, we shall drive like the wind to Sheveningen; I shall take paper and ink with me; we shall write our letters.

If you love me, reassure yourself; and call all your strength and presence of mind to your aid; do not let your mother notice anything, try to have your pictures, and be assured that the menace of the greatest tortures will not prevent me to serve you.

No, nothing has the power to part me from you; our love is based upon virtue, and will last as long as our lives.

Adieu, there is nothing that I will not brave for your sake; you deserve much more than that.

Adieu, my dear heart!

Arout

Shortly after writing this letter, it’s believed that Arout kept his word and made his escape. It would be another 5 years before he would adopt the name history remembers him by – Voltaire (an anagram of his Latinized name AROVET LI). He would go on to become one the greatest writers of the French Enlightenment.

Images: Wikimedia Commons and History And Women.

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