Love Letters - From a Father to his Daughter

Today’s love letter is a rather special one. All week I’ve shown love letters of great and famous men to their spouses, fiancés or girlfriends and today I wanted to share a different kind of love letter, that of a father to his daughter.


The following letter was written in 1974 by a father to his 5yr old daughter. The family lived in London but the father, as part of his training to be a Social Worker for the Blind, attended a residential course in Birmingham for 6 weeks every Monday- Friday. He wrote to his daughter every day, sending a note card with a white rabbit on the front of it who he called “Snowy Rabbit.”


“Dear Sarah,

I hope you are feeling a bit better and that the doctor has given you some nice medicine. I was very sad to see you weren’t well, but don’t worry, just get some nice rest and you will soon be better. Daddy will phone you up on Thursday to see how you are and I hope you will be able to talk to him.

Daddy loves you and Mummy all the world and he sends you a special kiss X – a big one for being a good brave girl.

Don’t forget on Friday he will bring you home a little present, so get better soon and look after our lovely Mummy. Snowy has a bad cold as well and thinks he would like some of your drink but be careful because he likes to drink it all up.

Anyway, I must go now my two girls.

Sleep tight, stay bright, wake up bright to do what’s right with all your might.

God bless you both,
All my love
Daddy”


Every day after his course has finished, the father in the letters would go to the library in Birmingham to do further study, write his letter to his daughter (and wife) and then catch the bus back to his residence. The night after writing this letter, he didn’t go the library but went instead to buy the gift he mentions. It was a long dress with a cream bodice, long sleeves with a dark green velvet skirt. After purchasing the dress, he didn’t go to the library and instead caught an earlier bus back to his flat.

That night, 21st November 1974, bombs exploded in two pubs in Birmingham killing 21 people and injuring 182. Had he not been shopping that night, the father  would have been outside one of the pubs, at the bus stop when the bomb exploded and possibly have been injured or even killed.


How do we know all this? Well the Father who wrote these letters was my Father and the Sarah mentioned in them was me.

Was this man a famous man? No. Was he a great man, yes. What made him great, other than the fact that he was my dad was that he had a great amount of love for his family. We never had much in the way of financial wealth, but he gave me everything that money couldn’t buy in terms of his time, his love and support. I never doubted for one moment that I wasn’t loved or that I wasn’t the most important thing in his life. I kept that dress for many years as a reminder of his love for me and how it was the dress(and his love for me) that saved his life that night.

My father died just three years later when I was 8yrs old but the memory of him lives on through these letters and I shall treasure them always. I have always enjoyed receiving hand written letters and I have kept everyone that I have ever received. I think it is a shame that email and text message seem to have replaced the hand written letter and sadly they seem to be a dying art form.


I continue to send hand written letters to many friends and family and I still treasure any that I receive today.

Love Letters - From the Front

This next love letter come courtesy of a soldier who fought in World War I. It is perhaps particularly poignant because like many others, it was written at a time when a soldier didn’t know if he would ever see his loved one again.

What do you say to someone in your last letter? How would you say all that you needed to say and let that person know how much you loved them?

Regimental Sergeant- Major James Milne served with the 4th Battalion, Gordon Highlanders. The letter below is a farewell letter to his wife Meg in the event of his being killed in battle....

July 1917
My own beloved wife,

I do not know how to start this letter. The circumstances are different from any under which I ever wrote before. I am not to post it but will leave it in my pocket, if anything happens to me someone will perhaps post it. We are going over the top this forenoon and only God in Heaven knows who will come out of it alive. I am going into it now, Dearest sure that I am in his Hands and that whatever happens I look to him in this world and the world to come.

If I am called my regret is that I leave you and my Bairns, but I leave you all to His great mercy and goodness knowing that He will look over you all and watch you. I trust in him to bring me through , but should he decree otherwise then though we do not know his reason, we know it must be best. I go to him with your dear face the last vision on earth I shall see and your name upon my lips. You, the best of women. You will look after by Darling Bairns for me and tell them how their daddy died.

Oh! How I love you all and as I sit here waiting I wonder what you are doing at home. I must not do that. It is hard enough sitting waiting. We may move at any minute. When this reaches you for me there will be no more war, only eternal peace and waiting for you.

You must be brave my Darling, for my sake for I leave you the Bairns. It is a legacy of struggle for you but God will look after you and we shall meet again when there will be no more parting. I am to write no more sweetheart. I know you will read my old letters and keep them for my sake, and that you will love me or my memory till we meet again.

May God in his mercy look over you and bless you all til that day we shall meet again in his own Good time. May he in that same mercy preserve me today.
Goodbye Meg,
Eternal love from
Yours for Ever and Ever,
Jim


Milne came through the war and returned home to Scotland and was reunited with his wife Meg and their Bairns (children)

Love Letters - Part Two

John Keats

Today, John Keats is regarded as one of the greatest poets in the English Language but in his time the critics treated him with contempt and mocked his work as vulgar and un-refined.

Throughout his lifetime, Keats faced financial problems and was surrounded by death and illness – his mother, brother and uncle died of tuberculosis and he fell ill with it himself in 1820n aged twenty-four. He travelled to Italy hoping to find a cure but died there just a few months later and was buried in Rome.

The love of his life was a neighbour, Fanny Brawne, to whom he was engaged. Although none of Fanny’s letters to Keats survive today, other facts show that she mourned Keats’ death throughout most of the 1920’s and befriended his sister at his request.His letters to Fanny are as graceful, lyrical and beautiful as his poems


“My sweet Girl—Your Letter gave me more delight than anything in the world but yourself could do; indeed I am almost astonished that any absent one should have that luxurious power over my senses which I feel.

Even when I am not thinking of you I receive your influence and a tenderer nature stealing upon me. All my thoughts, my unhappiest days and nights have I find not at all cured me of my love of Beauty, but made it so intense that I am miserable that you are not with me: or rather breathe in that dull sort of patience that cannot be called Life.

I never knew before, what such a love as you have made me feel, was; I did not believe in it; my Fancy was afraid of it, lest it should burn me up. But if you will fully love me, though there may be some fire, 'twill not be more than we can bear when moistened and bedewed with Pleasures.

You mention 'horrid people' and ask me whether it depend upon them whether I see you again. Do understand me, my love, in this. I have so much of you in my heart that I must turn Mentor when I see a chance of harm befalling you. I would never see anything but Pleasure in your eyes, love on your lips, and Happiness in your steps. I would wish to see you among those amusements suitable to your inclinations and spirits; so that our loves might be a delight in the midst of Pleasures agreeable enough, rather than a resource from vexations and cares. But I doubt much, in case of the worst, whether I shall be philosopher enough to follow my own Lessons: if I saw my resolution give you a pain I could not.

Why may I not speak of your Beauty, since without that I could never have loved you? I cannot conceive any beginning of such love as I have for you but Beauty. There may be a sort of love for which, without the least sneer at it, I have the highest respect and can admire it in others: but it has not the richness, the bloom, the full form, the enchantment of love after my own heart. So let me speak of your Beauty, though to my own endangering; if you could be so cruel to me as to try elsewhere its Power.

You say you are afraid I shall think you do not love me—in saying this you make me ache the more to be near you. I am at the diligent use of my faculties here, I do not pass a day without sprawling some blank verse or tagging some rhymes; and here I must confess, that, (since I am on that subject,) I love you the more in that I believe you have liked me for my own sake and for nothing else. I have met with women whom I really think would like to be married to a Poem and to be given away by a Novel. I have seen your Comet, and only wish it was a sign that poor Rice would get well whose illness makes him rather a melancholy companion: and the more so as so to conquer his feelings and hide them from me, with a forced Pun.

I kissed your writing over in the hope you had indulged me by leaving a trace of honey. What was your dream? Tell it me and I will tell you the interpretation thereof.

Ever yours, my love!

Do not accuse me of delay—we have not here any opportunity of sending letters every day. Write speedily.

The 2009 film Bright Star is a moving and poignant account of the romance that blossomed between Keats and Brawne, it’s highly emotive and perhaps slightly over sentimental in places but well worth a watch if you are a fan of Keats and his poetry.

Love Letters - straight from the heart

In March 1827 when Ludwig Van Beethoven died, two sets documents found amongst his belongings. One was the Heiligenstadt Testament and the other were letters addressed to his “Immortal Beloved”. Who was this mysterious woman? Did she receive the letters and return them, or were they in fact never delivered? The identity of the woman remains a mystery even to this day and although many believe it to be Antonio Bretano, we can never really be certain. There is no doubt though that the emotions and sentiments expressed in the letter are as passionate and moving as the music he composed.His music, along with the letters provide an insight into the man but still leave a certain air of mystery surrounding him - one that will capture the hearts and minds of his fans for many years to come.

The First Letter
July 6, in the morning
My angel, my all, my very self - Only a few words today and at that with pencil (with yours) - Not till tomorrow will my lodgings be definitely determined upon - what a useless waste of time - Why this deep sorrow when necessity speaks - can our love endure except through sacrifices, through not demanding everything from one another; can you change the fact that you are not wholly mine, I not wholly thine - Oh God, look out into the beauties of nature and comfort your heart with that which must be - Love demands everything and that very justly - thus it is to me with you, and to your with me. But you forget so easily that I must live for me and for you; if we were wholly united you would feel the pain of it as little as I - My journey was a fearful one; I did not reach here until 4 o'clock yesterday morning. Lacking horses the post-coach chose another route, but what an awful one; at the stage before the last I was warned not to travel at night; I was made fearful of a forest, but that only made me the more eager - and I was wrong. The coach must needs break down on the wretched road, a bottomless mud road. Without such postilions as I had with me I should have remained stuck in the road. Esterhazy, traveling the usual road here, had the same fate with eight horses that I had with four - Yet I got some pleasure out of it, as I always do when I successfully overcome difficulties - Now a quick change to things internal from things external. We shall surely see each other soon; moreover, today I cannot share with you the thoughts I have had during these last few days touching my own life - If our hearts were always close together, I would have none of these. My heart is full of so many things to say to you - ah - there are moments when I feel that speech amounts to nothing at all - Cheer up - remain my true, my only treasure, my all as I am yours. The gods must send us the rest, what for us must and shall be -
Your faithful LUDWIG.

The Second Letter
Evening, Monday, July 6
You are suffering, my dearest creature - only now have I learned that letters must be posted very early in the morning on Mondays to Thursdays - the only days on which the mail-coach goes from here to K. - You are suffering - Ah, wherever I am, there you are also - I will arrange it with you and me that I can live with you. What a life!!! thus!!! without you - pursued by the goodness of mankind hither and thither - which I as little want to deserve as I deserve it - Humility of man towards man - it pains me - and when I consider myself in relation to the universe, what am I and what is He - whom we call the greatest - and yet - herein lies the divine in man - I weep when I reflect that you will probably not receive the first report from me until Saturday - Much as you love me - I love you more - But do not ever conceal yourself from me - good night - As I am taking the baths I must go to bed - Oh God - so near! so far! Is not our love truly a heavenly structure, and also as firm as the vault of heaven?

The Third Letter
Good morning, on July 7
Though still in bed, my thoughts go out to you, my Immortal Beloved, now and then joyfully, then sadly, waiting to learn whether or not fate will hear us - I can live only wholly with you or not at all - Yes, I am resolved to wander so long away from you until I can fly to your arms and say that I am really at home with you, and can send my soul enwrapped in you into the land of spirits - Yes, unhappily it must be so - You will be the more contained since you know my fidelity to you. No one else can ever possess my heart - never - never - Oh God, why must one be parted from one whom one so loves. And yet my life in V is now a wretched life - Your love makes me at once the happiest and the unhappiest of men - At my age I need a steady, quiet life - can that be so in our connection? My angel, I have just been told that the mailcoach goes every day - therefore I must close at once so that you may receive the letter at once - Be calm, only by a calm consideration of our existence can we achieve our purpose to live together - Be calm - love me - today - yesterday - what tearful longings for you - you - you - my life - my all - farewell. Oh continue to love me - never misjudge the most faithful heart of your beloved.
ever thine
ever mine
ever ours



The film Immortal Beloved tells the story of Beethoven's friend Schindler finding the letters after his death and attempting to reunite them with their rightful owner - The Immortal Beloved. Although the film is not totally accurate, it does tell a beautiful story of the women in Beethoven's life as well as introducing you to some many of his wonderful compositions.In the final scenes, Schindler gives the letters to Beethoven's Immortal Beloved and she reads them whilst the Emperor Concerto is played in the background. In the film version, the lady believes that Beethoven was indifferent to her and it is only on reading his letters she realises how much he loves her. Despite the film's inaccuracies, it is incredibly moving. Not wishing to ruin the film for anyone wanting to see it, I have found this video which is just as touching...

That Ole Devil Called Love...

It’s February 14th and that Ole Devil called Love has reared it’s head again....on this day, St. Valentine's Day

No one really knows what the original St. Valentine (of whom there were at least two) had to do with love and romance. These days, commercialism has stepped in and it’s all about cards, hearts, flowers, roses and romantic gestures – often costing a lot of money and whilst all very touching and sentimental are really only tokens of the true feelings we have for the person we love.

So how do you express or demonstrate your innermost feelings for that someone special?
One way that always seems to impress, even throughout history is the love letter. There is just something so tender and personal about a love letter, the words that convey so many emotions and feelings – and often say what we can’t say face to face. History and Literature are full of wonderful examples of great love letters. Letters that really touch the heart and are worth more than 10 bunches of red roses, heart shaped cup-cakes or cute cuddly teddy bears.

So what makes a great love letter? Well, it's something that men have contemplated for many years, how do you write that perfect letter?

This week, I’m dedicating my blog to Love Letters of Great Men, both historical and fictional, looking at some of the most romantic and touching letters ever written.

Today’s example is from the fictional writing of Jane Austen in her novel Persuasion and Captain Wentworth’s letter to Miss Anne Elliot. If you have read the book, you will know that Anne and Capt. Fredrick Wentworth had enjoyed a romance years ago but it had been called off by Anne because of the disapproval of her family and –partly by the persuasion of her family friend, Lady Russell. Years later they are reunited and Anne, now 27 and still unmarried finds her former feelings returning. However, Capt. Wentworth appears not to have forgiven her for rejecting him – until she reads his letter and realises his true feelings for her...

"To Miss Elliot,
I can listen no longer in silence. I must speak to you by such means as are within my reach. You pierce my soul. I am half agony, half hope. Tell me not that I am too late, that such precious feelings are gone forever. I offer myself to you again with a heart even more your own than when you almost broke it, eight years and a half ago. Dare not say that man forgets sooner than woman, that his love has an earlier death. I have loved none but you. Unjust I may have been, weak and resentful I have been, but never inconstant. You alone have brought me to Bath. For you alone, I think and plan. Have you not seen this? Can you fail to have understood my wishes? I had not waited even these ten days, could I have read your feelings, as I think you must have penetrated mine. I can hardly write. I am every instant hearing something which overpowers me. You sink your voice, but I can distinguish the tones of that voice when they would be lost on others. Too good, too excellent creature! You do us justice, indeed. You do believe that there is true attachment and constancy among men. Believe it to be most fervent, most undeviating, in
F. W.
"I must go, uncertain of my fate; but I shall return hither, or follow your party, as soon as possible. A word, a look, will be enough to decide whether I enter your father's house this evening or never."

Happy Valentine's Day!