It need hardly be said that the woman by whom these letter were written had no thought that they would be read by anyone but the person to whom they were addressed. But a request, conveyed under circumstances which the writer herself would have regarded as all-commanding, urges that they should now be given to the world; and, so far as is possible with a due regard to the claims of privacy, what is here printed presents the letters as they were first written in their complete form and sequence.

Very little has been omitted which in any way bears upon the devotion of which they are a record. A few names of persons and localities have been changed; and several short notes (not above twenty in all), together with some passages bearing too intimately upon events which might be recognized, have been left out without indication of their omission.

It was a necessary condition to the present publication that the authorship of these letters should remain unstated. Those who know will keep silence; those who do not, will not find here any data likely to guide them to the truth.

The story which darkens these pages cannot be more fully indicated while the feelings of some who are still living have to be consulted; nor will the reader find the root of the tragedy explained in the letters themselves. But one thing at least may be said as regards the principal actors—that to the memory of neither of them does any blame belong. They were equally the victims of circumstances, which came whole out of the hands of fate and remained, so far as one of the two was concerned, a mystery to the day of her death.

By : Laurence Housman (1865 - 1959)

Section 01

Section 02

Section 03

Section 04

Section 05

Section 06

Section 07

Section 08

Section 09

Section 10

Section 11

Section 12

Section 13

Section 14

Section 15

Section 16

Section 17

Section 18

Section 19

Letter I

Beloved: This is your first letter from me: yet it is not the first I have written to you. There are letters to you lying at love's dead-letter office in this same writing—so many, my memory has lost count of them!

This is my confession: I told you I had one to make, and you laughed:—you did not know how serious it was—for to be in love with you long before you were in love with me—nothing can be more serious than that!

You deny that I was: yet I know when you first really loved me. All at once, one day something about me came upon you as a surprise: and how, except on the road to love, can there be surprises? And in the surprise came love. You did not know me before. Before then, it was only the other nine entanglements which take hold of the male heart and occupy it till the tenth is ready to make one knot of them all.

In the letter written that day, I said, "You love me." I could never have said it before; though I had written twelve letters to my love for you, I had not once been able to write of your love for me. Was not that serious?

Now I have confessed! I thought to discover myself all blushes, but my face is cool: you have kissed all my blushes away! Can I ever be ashamed in your eyes now, or grow rosy because of anything you or I think? So!—you have robbed me of one of my charms: I am brazen. Can you love me still?

You love me, you love me; you are wonderful! we are both wonderful, you and I.

Well, it is good for you to know I have waited and wished, long before the thing came true. But to see you waiting and wishing, when the thing was true all the time:—oh! that was the trial! How not suddenly to throw my arms round you and cry, "Look, see! O blind mouth, why are you famished?"

And you never knew? Dearest, I love you for it, you never knew! I believe a man, when he finds he has won, thinks he has taken the city by assault: he does not guess how to the insiders it has been a weary siege, with flags of surrender fluttering themselves to rags from every wall and window! No: in love it is the women who are the strategists: and they have at last to fall into the ambush they know of with a good grace.

You must let me praise myself a little for the past, since I can never praise myself again. You must do that for me now! There is not a battle left for me to win. You and peace hold me so much a prisoner, have so caught me from my own way of living, that I seem to hear a pin drop twenty years ahead of me: it seems an event! Dearest, a thousand times, I would not have it be otherwise: I am only too willing to drop out of existence altogether and find myself in your arms instead. Giving you my love, I can so easily give you my life. Ah, my dear, I am yours so utterly, so gladly! Will you ever find it out, you who took so long to discover anything?