You may have seen the love letter from Napoleon to his wife, Josephine, telling her “Don’t wash, I’m arriving home in three days.” This (possibly apocryphal) love note goes viral on the internet every few months. It may be crude – but there is something more meaningful about declaring your devotion in a letter, as opposed to a throwaway text. And, as a new exhibition at the National Archives in Kew shows, letters of love could be romantic, erotic, gestures of friendship or familial affection.
Each area in Love Letters is separated thematically by diaphanous fabrics on which you can find words such as “Family”, “Reputation”, “Friendship”. The section titled Dangerous Love, tucked away into the corner of the exhibition, covers secret affairs: there in the glass casing is the original incriminating letter from Catherine Howard to Thomas Culpepper from 1541. The letter was used as evidence in a trial accusing Catherine of infidelity while married to Henry VIII. The final line of the letter, “Yours for as long as life endures”, was evidence enough to condemn both to capital punishment.
Many of the illicit letters relate to homosexual relationships. Lord Alfred Douglas’s petition to Queen Victoria, begging for the release of his lover Oscar Wilde, is next to Catherine Howard’s. Douglas and Wilde had a turbulent and passionate relationship, and Wilde’s imprisonment was the result of Douglas’ father’s campaign against him. Douglas’ letter is a tender defence of Wilde, begging the queen to reverse the playwright’s punishment: “Will you not save the man, who even if he is guilty has already been punished more, a thousand times more cruelly than he deserves.” He never received a response.
Before the passing of the Sexual Offences Act in 1967, gay men and women were forced to seek likeminded individuals using code words in classified advert publications like The Link under the non-matrimonial section: “bohemian” or “artistic” for men, “sporty” and “jolly” for women. A jokey exchange between two male friends separated by the Atlantic, one of which is described as “the campest thing between London and San Francisco” is placed alongside a letter between two men recovered after a 1920s raid of the Caravan Club in London, where many gay men met. In the section dedicated to familial love, a tender 19th-century letter is addressed to Ernest “Stella” Boulton, a performer who publicly preferred women’s clothing. The letter, sent from Boulton’s mother, challenges our understanding of gender-conformity and acceptance in Victorian England.
Some letters are not addressed to the loved ones themselves: there is a note to the Poor Law Board, written by a man pleading not to be separated from his wife of 49 years in the poor house; a letter to David Lloyd George written by Jamaican national James Gillespie accepting repatriation as long as his family come with him; the original, beautifully hand-written will of Jane Austen leaving her estate to her “dearest sister Cassandra”. Edward VIII’s Instrument of Abdication is displayed as a token of his dedication to his lover Wallis Simpson.
The exhibition is a poignant display of over 500 years of human attempts to express love and connection. Gen Z are often labelled the “loneliest generation”; with technology making communication easier, we have become more disconnected than ever. Perhaps we should start writing letters again.
[Further reading: The cultural power of balladry]
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