Love Letters of Great Men

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Culture Trips are deeply immersive 5 to 16 days itineraries, that combine authentic local experiences, exciting activities and 4-5* accommodation to look forward to at the end of each day. Our Rail Trips are our most planet-friendly itineraries that invite you to take the scenic route, relax whilst getting under the skin of a destination. Our Private Trips are fully tailored itineraries, curated by our Travel Experts specifically for you, your friends or your family. This book is a collection of letters from (you guessed it) great men from throughout history to their love, or in some cases loves plural. Each letter is preceded by a short description of who the great man and the object/s of his affection were and a different side to these well-known names is revealed. John Keats was born in London, the oldest of four children, on October 31, 1795. His father, who was a livery-stable keeper, died when Keats was eight years old, and his mother died six years later. At age 15, he was apprenticed to an apothecary-surgeon. In 1815 he began studying medicine but soon gave up that career in favor of writing poetry. The critic Douglas Bush has said that, if one poet could be recalled to life to complete his career, the almost universal choice would be Keats, who now is regarded as one of the three or four supreme masters of the English language. His early work is badly flawed in both technique and critical judgment, but, from his casually written but brilliant letters, one can trace the development of a genius who, through fierce determination in the face of great odds, fashioned himself into an incomparable artist. In his tragically brief career, cut short at age 25 by tuberculosis, Keats constantly experimented, often with dazzling success, and always with steady progress over previous efforts. The unfinished Hyperion is the only English poem after Paradise Lost that is worthy to be called an epic, and it is breathtakingly superior to his early Endymion (1818), written just a few years before. Isabella is a fine narrative poem, but The Eve of St. Agnes (1819), written soon after, is peerless. In Lamia (1819) Keats revived the couplet form, long thought to be dead, in a gorgeous, romantic story. Above all it was in his development of the ode that Keats's supreme achievement lies. In just a few months, he wrote the odes "On a Grecian Urn" (1819), "To a Nightingale" (1819), "To Melancholy" (1819), and the marvelously serene "To Autumn" (1819). Keats is the only romantic poet whose reputation has steadily grown through all changes in critical fashion. Once patronized as a poet of beautiful images but no intellectual content, Keats is now appreciated for his powerful mind, profound grasp of poetic principles, and ceaseless quest for new forms and techniques. For many readers, old and young, Keats is a heroic figure. John Keats died in Rome on February 23, 1821 and was buried in the Protestant Cemetery, Rome. His last request was to be placed under a tombstone bearing no name or date, only the words, "Here lies One whose Name was writ in Water."

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p You still fascinate and inspire me. You influence me for the better. You’re the object of my desire, the #1 Earthly reason for my existence.’ p  p"p p  p p
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p  p To Livy Darling “Let us look forward to the coming anniversaries, with their age and their gray hairs without fear and without depression, trusting and believing that the love we bear each other will be sufficient to make them blessed.”

F: Fruit

Darling – I love these velvet nights. I’ve never been able to decide … whether I love you most in the eternal classic half-lights where it blends with day or in the full religious fan-fare of mid-night or perhaps in the lux of noon. Anyway, I love you most and you ’phoned me just because you phoned me tonight – I walked on those telephone wires for two hours after holding your love like a parasol to balance me.’ The letters are a mixture of witty and petulant and illicit and mundane, which proves to lessen the fairytale image often conjured of ancient love and heightens the realness of it. It enhances the often overlooked fact that these men lived. It brings a kinship between the men of the past and those of the present despite, no, because of, their various forms of correspondence and how they chose to articulate the desires of their souls. my whole existence is devoted to her, even in spite of her. [...] My duty is to keep close to her steps, to surround her existence with mine, to serve her as a barrier against all dangers [...] Robert Browning's letter to his future wife on the morning of their wedding (when she was 40 and he was 34) is worth quoting from: Honor with your presence the man who, if only he were free, would go a thousand miles to throw himself at your feet and never move from there.”

I do not love thee any more; on the contrary, I detest thee. Thou art horrid, very awkward, very stupid, a very Cinderella. Thou dost not write me at all, thou dost not love thy husband; thou knowest the pleasure that thy letters afford him... Most letters weren't "romantic" enough, at most it was a flirtatious correspondence, also I had a problem with the male dominant nature of these "supervising" figures which doesn't sit well with my feminist thinking. Also most of the letters were preludes or committed during adultery as most men and the women they corresponded with were married to other people or at least with other people and lot of them didn't even end up together. So, despite being a lover of love letters, these weren't what I hoped for. James Joyce was born on February 2, 1882, in Dublin, Ireland, into a large Catholic family. Joyce was a very good pupil, studying poetics, languages, and philosophy at Clongowes Wood College, Belvedere College, and the Royal University in Dublin. Joyce taught school in Dalkey, Ireland, before marrying in 1904. Joyce lived in Zurich and Triest, teaching languages at Berlitz schools, and then settled in Paris in 1920 where he figured prominently in the Parisian literary scene, as witnessed by Ernest Hemingway's A Moveable Feast. Joyce's collection of fine short stories, Dubliners, was published in 1914, to critical acclaim. Joyce's major works include A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, Ulysses, Finnegans Wake, and Stephen Hero. Ulysses, published in 1922, is considered one of the greatest English novels of the 20th century. The book simply chronicles one day in the fictional life of Leopold Bloom, but it introduces stream of consciousness as a literary method and broaches many subjects controversial to its day. As avant-garde as Ulysses was, Finnegans Wake is even more challenging to the reader as an important modernist work. Joyce died just two years after its publication, in 1941. These letters and the short biographical notes reveal some interesting, sometimes amusing details about famous people's private lives, such as the fact that Mozart and his wife both loved scatological jokes; Robert Burns was a dog (he got two women pregnant while carrying on with his "main", I guess you'd say, mistress; one of the pregnant women was the mistress's maid); Napoleon Bonaparte seems to have been very insecure about his wife's love for him and tortured over it; Charles Darwin made a pro-/con list when he considered marriage, "better than a dog anyhow" was on the pro- side and "not forced to visit relatives" in the con side (he subsequently sounded very happy with his choice though, even though he married his first cousin); Robert Browning's love for Elizabeth Barrett started as a fan's admiration; Mark Twain's in-laws had been conductors on the Underground Railroad; Alfred Douglas did not abandon Oscar Wilde after his process, on the contrary, he campaigned in the press against the sentence and petitioned the Queen for clemency. Translation: “Hey little mama let me whisper in your ear…” (on being creepy) Napoleon Bonaparte (1769-1821), The Great General and Emperor of FranceAnother fun part of October is to go to corn mazes which are sometimes fun and hard to do with friends and family. This is possibly my favorite of “The Cranberries” songs. I am not going to try and explain why this song is so amazing; if you listen to only one of the songs provided, let it be this one and form your own connection to it. It really is one of the most underrated songs, not only from the band but in the realm of music.

William Hazlitt's letter was also a favorite, though I can't tell which one was more sad, the letter or the story behind the letter. Hazlitt, an admirable essayist, ("On The Pleasure of Hating" is one I've studied for its surprising mixture of ambiguity and clarity) fell in love with a twenty-three year old while he was still married. He wanted a divorce but remarriage after a divorce was only allowed in Scotland, so he went to Scotland. While waiting on the process, his young lover started a relationship with someone else and the devastated Hazlitt anonymously wrote a book about the experience but his critics ousted him as the author and it shattered his career.

“Black Widow” from “Are You Listening?”

If only I were a clever woman, I could describe to you my gorgeous bird, how you unite in yourself the beauties of form, plumage, and song! I would tell you that you are the greatest marvel of all ages, and I should only be speaking the simple truth…You are not only the solar spectrum with the seven luminous colors, but the sun himself, that illumines, warms, and revivifies! This is what you are, and I am the lowly woman that adores you.’ This is a collection of letters by famous people like Kafka, Beethoven, Napoleon etc from the first century to early nineteenth, so pretty much we will get a grasp of how these great men felt the love!

But oh my dear, I can’t be clever and stand-offish with you: I love you too much for that. Too truly. You have no idea how stand-offish I can be with people I don’t love. I have brought it to a fine art. But you have broken down my defenses. And I don’t really resent it.’

Y: Yams

To Calpurnia (my wife): “You will not believe what a longing for you posses me. The chief cause of this is my love; and then we have not grown used to be apart. So it comes to pass that I lie awake a great part of the night, thinking of you.” What makes me so sad is that this book is called "LOVE Letters of Great Men." It romanticizes the abusive, manipulative, dehumanizing behavior that these "great" men exhibit. In Sex and the City, Carrie sits and sighs over these letters. Perhaps it was poor choice on Doyle's part, in arranging this book, but none of these letters should be read as romantic. The men come off as possessive and creepy. The women don't seem to have any agency. It makes me sad. There were also some truly touching, sweet, lovely intimate exchanges, such as Schiller's trembling hopefulness that his beloved may return his feelings and his selfless and genuinely respectful explanation as to why he hadn't dared reveal his heart sooner: As much as I loved reading about the poet, John Keats, and the reactionary critics he shared with William Hazlitt ( oh the joys of literary criticism), I also loved reading Keats' letters to the great love of his life, Fanny Brawne: