Romance in the pre-digital world
ONLINE
LOVE WITHOUT BORDERS:
Romance in the pre-digital world
Gustave Flaubert to Louise Colet
They say communication is the secret to long lasting relationships, but for those who travel often, this is easier said than done; which makes many wonder: how did couples manage it before Skype?
Patience seems to be the answer. From the beginning of time, lovers have had to resign themselves to silence when apart, as Penelope did when her husband Odysseus set off on a journey that would take 20 years.
For centuries after, letters were the most popular way for couples to stay in touch. Admiral Nelson sent hundreds of them to his beloved wife during his 15 years at sea, even if he was not a particularly gifted writer. Others sent fewer letters but full of beautiful declarations of love; like John Keats who wrote to his dear Fanny:“ I cannot exist without you- I am forgetful of everything but seeing you again.”
Often people moved faster than the post did. When Kathleen Scott heard that Amundsen had beaten her husband to the South Pole, she decided to travel to New Zealand to meet Scott on his return. He was already dead but the account of his passing reached London after her departure. She had already crossed America and found her way to Tahiti when the sad news finally caught up with her.
Sometimes the man was the one patiently waiting at home. Orientalist
Alexandra David-Neel never stopped writing letters to her husband in France throughout her 30 year sojourn in Tibet. He would send her newspapers, even if it took months for them to arrive at the cave in the Himalayas where she lived.
Thousands of letters also came out of the trenches of the First and Second World Wars, sometimes through unconventional means. In 1999, a fisherman found a bottle with a message dating back to 1914. It was written by Private Thomas Hughes to his wife Elizabeth and explained how she was constantly in his thoughts as he made his way to France in the early days of the First World War. He died shortly after.
Have such romantic gestures disappeared with time? It is indeed hard to compete with the words Ernest Hemingway wrote to Martha Gellhorn during the time they spent apart after dodging bombs in Spain or hunting lions in Africa. Yet, the most amazing love stories may be the anonymous ones.
Love still makes people do crazy things; like paying for overpriced Wi- Fi in airports or figuring out how to use an old-fashioned phone booth. People write fewer letters in today’ s world, but the 100 million users of Skype might be proof that, after all, absence still makes the heart grow fonder.
// Laura Secorun
“ I will cover you with love when next I see you, with caresses, with ecstasy. I want to gorge you with all the joys of the flesh, so that you faint and die. I want you to be amazed by me, and to confess to yourself that you had never even dreamed of such transports... When you are old, I want you to recall those few hours, I want your dry bones to quiver with joy when you think of them.”
source: theromantic
King Henry VIII to Anne Boleyn
“ Though it does not belong to a gentleman to take his lady in the place of a servant, however, in following your desires, I willingly grant it, that so you may be more agreeably in the place that you yourself have chosen, than you have been in that which I gave you. I shall be heartily obliged to you, if you please to have some some remembrance of me. B. N. R. I. de R. O. M. V. E. Z.
Henry R.”
source: vatican library
Beethoven to an“ Inmortal Beloved”
“ Even in bed my ideas yearn towards you, my Immortal Beloved, here and there joyfully, then again sadly, awaiting from Fate, whether it will listen to us. I can only live, either altogether with you or not at all. Yes, I have determined to wander about for so long far away, until I can fly into your arms and call myself quite at home with you.
Of your beloved.”
source: panmacmillan
49