After my 3+-hour-long exam for applicants at Ahead Katipunan last Friday, I decided to wait for and go home with Charles who was finishing his thesis in Diliman. Since they weren't still done when I arrived, I went to the main lib to kill time. I grabbed a couple of books which seemed interesting and one of the books I got was The Oxford Book of Letters. It was a collection of letters mostly written by popular people (some were written for popular people while others were simply witty).
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Some, like this one, were actually heartbreaking;
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To Venetia Stanley, 12 May 1913
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Asquith broke of the letter he was writing when he received Venetia's letter announcing her engagement, and wrote this one instead.
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Most Loved,
As you know well, this breaks my heart.
I couldn't bear to come and see you.
I can only pray to God to bless you - and help me.
Yours.
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some were funny;
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To Princess Bibesco, 24 March 1921
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Katherine Mansfield was the wife of critic John Murry. Murry was having an affair with the Princess. Mansfield did not object to the affair, only to the letters.
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Dear Princess Bibesco,
I am afraid you must stop writing these little love letters to my husband while he and I live together. It is one of the things which is not done in our world.
You are very young. Won't you ask your husband to explain to you the impossibility of such a situation.
Please do not make me have to write to you again. I do not like scolding people and I simply hate having to teach them manners.
Yours sincerely,
Katherine Mansfield.
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most would force out an 'awww'.
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To H.G. Wells, 12 September 1943
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Wells was an old friend and opponent of Shaw. Shaw had been very tactless in his dealings with Wells when in 1937, Jane Wells was dying of cancer. Charlotte was Shaw's wife.
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Charlotte died this morning at 2:30. You saw what she had become when you last visited us: an old woman bowed and crippled, furrowed and wrinkled, and greatly distressed by hallucinations of crowds in the room, evil persons, and animals. Also by breathlessness, as the osteitis closed on her lungs. She got steadily worse: the prognosis was terrible, ending with double pneumonia.
But on Friday evening a miracle began. Her troubles vanished. Her visions ceased. Her furrows and wrinkles smoothened out. Forty years fell off her like a garment. She had thirty hours of happiness and heaven. Even after her last breath she shed another twenty years, and now lies young and incredibly beautiful. I have to go in and look at her and talk affectionately to her. I did not know I could be so moved.
Do not tell a soul until Thursday when all will be over. I could not stand flowers and letters and a crowd at Golders Green.
G.B.S.
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It may seem weird but I actually envy their having very few options of how to communicate. I have always loved receiving handwritten letters (have a small sack full of them!) and I guess I will always do. :)
*done blabbing.
