Love in Letters – Author to Author (Part Two)

Feb 21, 2014 | Early Modern Books, History, Literature

Last week, we offered up some salacious script from the very soul of particularly lovelorn writers. They can be found here. Not all love is that which stirs the loins, however. History has offered up adoration and camaraderie of a more innocent but equally perfervid sort, and a selection is displayed below. Less heat under our collective collars then, but emotional indeed.

Charlotte Bronte and William Makepeace Thackeray.

‘He fascinated her – not romantically, but intellectually – and dominated her thoughts… A passion of the mind and not of the heart’ – The New York Times 1914.

In a letter to editor William Smith Williams, dated 1874, Thackeray wrote:

“I wish you had not sent me Jane Eyre. “It interested me so much that I have lost (or won if you like) a whole day in reading it at the busiest period, with the printers I know waiting for copy. Who the author can be I can’t guess–if a woman she knows her language better than most ladies do, or has had a ‘classical’ education.”

He went on to call the novel a “fine book …very generous and upright so to speak,”

“Some of the love passages made me cry–to the astonishment of John who came in with the coals.” The novelist claimed to have been “exceedingly moved & pleased by Jane Eyre” and concluded his correspondence to Smith by asking his friend to give “respects and thanks” to the unknown author. (8) Bronte soon learned of Thackeray’s admiration and expressed her gratitude in the well-known dedication to the novelist in the second edition of Jane Eyre, a tribute Thackeray called the “greatest compliment I have ever in my life.”

Jane Eyre and others, Bronte, Charlotte, Emily & Anne.

Jane Eyre; Shirley; Villette; The Professor…to which are added The Poems; Wuthering Heights and Agnes Grey; The Tenant of Wildfell Hall; and The Life of Charlotte Brontë by Mrs Gaskell. An attractive set of the works of the Brontë sisters, in handsome contemporary bindings. Smith, Elder, & Co. were the original publishers of Jane Eyre, the novel which made the younger Smith’s reputation almost overnight in 1847, and changed the direction of the firm toward the literary output for which it was famous during the latter 19th-century. – SOLD

Charlotte Bronte’s admiration of William Makepeace Thackeray was made hugely public by the inclusion of a dedication in the second edition of her novel Jane Eyre in 1847:

There is a man in our own days whose words are not framed to tickle delicate ears: who, to my thinking, comes before the great ones of society, much as the son of Imlah came before the throned Kings of Judah and Israel; and who speaks the truth as deep, with a power as prophet-like and as vital-a mien as dauntless and as daring. Is the satirist of “Vanity Fair” admired in high places? I cannot tell; but I think if some of those amongst whom he hurls the Greek fire of his sarcasm, and over whom he flashes the levin-brand of his denunciation, were to take his warnings in time – they or their seed might yet escape a fatal Ramoth-Gilead.

Why have I alluded to this man? I have alluded to him, Reader, because I think I see him as an intellect profounder and more unique than his contemporaries have yet recognised; because I regard him as the first social generator of the day – as the very master of that working corps who would restore to rectitude the warped system of things; because I think no commentator on his writings has yet found the comparison that suits him, the terms which rightly characterise his talent. They say he is like Fielding; they talk of his wit, humour, comic powers. He resembles Fielding as an eagle does a vulture: Fielding could stoop on carrion, but Thackeray never does. His wit is bright, his humour attractive, but both bear the same relation to his serious genius, that the mere lambent sheet-lightning playing under the edge of the summer-cloud, does to the electric death-spark hid in its womb. Finally; I have alluded to Mr. Thackeray, because to him – if he will accept the tribute of a total stranger – I have dedicated this second edition of “Jane Eyre.”

Written in response to the relayed information of Thackeray’s admiration of Jane Eyre, this dedication seems disproportionate, which Thackeray’s confusion in the following note seems to acknowledge:

“January 1848

My dear Mr.  Williams,

I am quite vexed that by some blundering of mine I should have delayed answering Currer Bell’s enormous compliment so long. I didn’t know what to say in reply; it quite flustered and upset me. Is it true, I wonder? I’m – But a truce to egoism. Thank you for your kindness in sending me the volumes, and (indirectly) for the greatest compliment I have ever received in my life.

Faithfully yours,

W.M. Thackeray”

Despite them holding each other in high professional esteem, Thackeray seems more aware of the imbalances in the friendship. On one of their few meetings, Thackeray reports on being the object of the “miserable humiliation of seeing her ideal of me disappearing, as everything went into my mouth, and nothing came out of it, until, at last, as I took my fifth potato, she leaned  across, with clasped hands and tearful eyes, and breathed imploringly, ‘ Oh, Mr. Thackeray ! Don’t ! ‘”

Allen Ginsberg and Frank O’Hara

Despite being from two concurrent schools of poetry, Ginsberg and O’Hara formed a close friendship through the fifties and sixties. Beat poet Ginsberg made mention of O’Hara in several of his poems, and in 1966 notably credited him thus:

“He was at the centre of an extraordinary poetic era…which gives his poetry its sense of historic monumentality… And he integrated purely personal life into the high art of composition, marking the return of all authority back to the person. His style is actually in line with the tradition that begins with Independence and runs through Thoreau and Whitman, here composed in metropolitan space age architecture environment. He taught me to really see New York for the first time, by making the giant style of Midtown his intimate cocktail environment. It’s like having Catullus change your view of the Forum in Rome…”

White Shroud. Poems 1980–1985. Ginsberg, Allen

White Shroud. Poems 1980–1985. Ginsberg, Allen, First edition, first printing – BOOK SOLD

O’Hara made mention of Ginsberg in several of his poems, the most obvious address in the title by-line ‘Fantasy. Dedicated to the health of Allen Ginsberg’, which twice references his friend throughout the text. The use of narrative presents them as informal friends within a somewhat confusing fantasy world:

Let’s see. Two aspirins, a vitamin C tablet, some baking soda

Should do the trick

That’s practically an Alka-Seltzer

Allen; come out of the bathroom and take it

I think someone put butter on my skis instead of wax

Ouch

The lean-to is falling over in the firs,

And there is another, fatter spy there

Thy didn’t tell me they sent him

Well, that takes care of him, boy were

 those huskies hungry

Allen, are you feeling any better?

Ginsberg and O’Hara remained close friends untimely O’Hara’s untimely accidental death at the age of forty. Both Ginsberg and his partner Peter Orlovsky mourned their lifelong friend, and chanted sutras over his grave after his funeral.

Sassoon and Owen

One of the most influential relationships in poetry since Wordsworth and Coleridge collaborated on Lyrical Ballads, Sassoon and Owen met in Craiglockhart Hospital in the latter half of the First World War. Sassoon committed by the government for his ‘wilful defiance of military authority’ in his refusal to return, and Owen for shellshock.

Poems by Wilfred Owen

Poems. Owen, Wilfred, 1920, First edition, first impression. This slim volume, promoted and published by Sassoon after Owen’s death, and backed by Edith Sitwell, contains all Owen’s best known poems, including “Dulce et Decorum est”, “Insensibility”, “Anthem for Doomed Youth”, “Futility” and “Strange Meeting”.

 

The younger poet was much in awe of the Sassoon, widely regarded as not only a famous poet but now a war hero. One letter to his mother stated “I am not fit to light pipe.”

While there is evidence to suggest Sassoon was merely humouring the aspiring poet, it becomes clear in later writings of the time that he came to regard his work as superior.
The most distinguished example of their working relationship is the handwritten an annotated copy of Anthem for Doomed Youth, which Sassoon later reported was the first time he realised Owen’s talent. On introducing Owen to London’s eminent literary circles in 1917 he wrote:

“I have faith in him… He will do well if you and RG look after him, and stop him writing precocities … Have you seen him yet? Craiglockhart gave me two friends – he, and Rivers , whom I adore.”

Letter from Owen to Siegfried Sassoon, 5th November 1917.

“Someday, I must tell how we sang, shouted, whistled and danced through the dark lanes through Colinton; and how we laughed till the meteors showered around us, and we fell calm under the winter stars. And some of us saw the pathway of the spirits for the first time. And seeing it so far above us, and feeling the good road so safe beneath us, we praised God with louder whistling; and knew we loved one another as no men love for long.

Which, if the Bridge-players Craig & Lockhart could have seen, they would have called down the wrath of Jahveh, and buried us under the fires of the City you wot of.

To which also it is time you committed this letter. I wish you were less undemonstrative, for I have many adjectives with which to qualify myself. As it is I can only say I am

Your proud friend, Owen.”

Sassoon survived the war, but Owen did not. It took several months for news of Owen’s death to reach his mentor, the blow from which Sassoon never recovered.

Steinbeck and Steinbeck

As an additional tug of the heartstrings, we’ll leave this entire transcript of a letter written by John Steinbeck to his son Thom in the spirit of fatherly love on the spirit of the romantic.

New York
November 10, 1958

Dear Thom:

We had your letter this morning. I will answer it from my point of view and of course Elaine will from hers.

First—if you are in love—that’s a good thing—that’s about the best thing that can happen to anyone. Don’t let anyone make it small or light to you.

Second—There are several kinds of love. One is a selfish, mean, grasping, egotistical thing which uses love for self-importance. This is the ugly and crippling kind. The other is an outpouring of everything good in you—of kindness and consideration and respect—not only the social respect of manners but the greater respect which is recognition of another person as unique and valuable. The first kind can make you sick and small and weak but the second can release in you strength, and courage and goodness and even wisdom you didn’t know you had.

You say this is not puppy love. If you feel so deeply—of course it isn’t puppy love.

But I don’t think you were asking me what you feel. You know better than anyone. What you wanted me to help you with is what to do about it—and that I can tell you.

Glory in it for one thing and be very glad and grateful for it.

The object of love is the best and most beautiful. Try to live up to it.

If you love someone—there is no possible harm in saying so—only you must remember that some people are very shy and sometimes the saying must take that shyness into consideration.

Girls have a way of knowing or feeling what you feel, but they usually like to hear it also.

It sometimes happens that what you feel is not returned for one reason or another—but that does not make your feeling less valuable and good.

Lastly, I know your feeling because I have it and I’m glad you have it.

We will be glad to meet Susan. She will be very welcome. But Elaine will make all such arrangements because that is her province and she will be very glad to. She knows about love too and maybe she can give you more help than I can.

And don’t worry about losing. If it is right, it happens—the main thing is not to hurry. Nothing good gets away.

Love,

Fa

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