Love Letters
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Posted by Geraldine Mills on Thu 3 November 2011
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Love letters can come in many forms, there is the traditional letter, or a postcard or even an email. I started to receive love letters from my first ever boyfriend when 16 years old. We had met when I went to High School in England. Instead of us breaking up due to geography, after my father was transfered back to Australia for work, we decided that we would give long distance romance a go. We were limited by the phone calls we could make to each other, (as this was before a time when emails was an option for communication, and waayy before Skype!).
I received a letter from Keith every week without fail. This continued for a year and a half until we saw each other again. The letters where not heavy with mushy love stuff but gave me insight into what he was up to, who he had been hanging out with, where he had been and how far away from seeing me he was. You see he had taken on a summer job working for a local hotel to save the airfare to come and have a Christmas in Australia, I think I first heard about it in a letter. I kept them all as trophies to remind me that our love was able to endure the distance of the miles.
“It was always the truancy of distance that made people write love letters to each other...”
Sadly as often happens we where not to stay the course with each other. Although he ironically lives in Australia now. We had both been accepted in to university but he in England and I in Australia, and we decided that this was not going to work anymore. Since that wonderful year of receiving a new envelope every week filled with his wonderful writing I have received a few more love letter. Some letters are just thoughts from boyfriends when they have been on the road somewhere telling me what they have seen, eaten and done, wishing I was there to experience it with them. I keep all of them, and treasure them, (although don't imagine I sit at home re-reading them every night!)
I know it might sound extremely old-fashioned (and it is a lot quicker to send an email) but I encourage you if you have never sent a love letter to anyone, do it. It doesn’t even have to be to someone you are romantically linked to. It could be to a friend or a family member just to let them know what you think of them and how much you care.
It was always the truancy of distance that made people write love letters to each other. Here is a list of people famous for their love letters:
Ludwig van Beethoven to the Immortal Beloved, Winston and Clementine Churchill, John and Abigail Adams, Napoleon Bonaparte and Josephine de Beauharnais, Lewis Carroll to Gertrude Chataway, Voltaire to Olympe Dunover, Lord Byron to Countess Teresa Guiccioli, King Henry VIII to Anne Boleyn, John Keats to Fanny Brawne, Emily Dickinson to Susan Huntington Dickinson.
Photographer: Geraldine Mills
