Need inspiration for your Valentine’s love letter? Take a note from these two historical lesbian couples.
Virginia Woolf and Vita Sackville-West
Virginia Woolf is one of the most notable writers of the twentieth century, and her love letters to poet Vita Sackville-West were no exception. Woolf’s novel Orlando is considered to be a giant, published letter to Sackville West (your candy hearts aren’t looking so great right now…) During a love affair that lasted nearly a decade (beginning 1922), Woolf and Sackville-West wrote some… intense stuff to one another, to say the least. Here are a few notable excerpts:
Vita to Virginia “I am reduced to a thing that wants Virginia. I composed a beautiful letter to you in the sleepless nightmare hours of the night, and it has all gone: I just miss you, in a quite simple desperate human way. You, with all your un-dumb letters, would never write so elementary a phrase as that; perhaps you wouldn’t even feel it. And yet I believe you’ll be sensible of a little gap. But you’d clothe it in so exquisite a phrase that it would lose a little of its reality. Whereas with me it is quite stark: I miss you even more than I could have believed; and I was prepared to miss you a good deal. So this letter is just really a squeal of pain. It is incredible how essential to me you have become. I suppose you are accustomed to people saying these things. Damn you, spoilt creature; I shan’t make you love me any the more by giving myself away like this — 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 defences. And I don’t really resent it.”
Virginia to Vita (in “Mr. Steal Yo’ Girl” fashion) “Look here Vita, throw over your man, and we’ll go to Hampton Court and dine on the river together and walk in the garden in the moonlight and come home late and have a bottle of wine and get tipsy, and I’ll tell you all the things I have in my head, millions, myriads — They won’t stir by day, only by dark on the river. Think of that. Throw over your man, I say, and come.”
Vita to Virginia “Your rare expressions of affection have always had the power to move me greatly, and I suppose one is a bit strung-up (mostly sub-consciously) they now come ping against my heart like a bullet dropping on the roof. I love you too; you know that.”
Eleanor Roosevelt and Lorena Hickock
One of history’s most well-known not-so-secret lesbians, Eleanor Roosevelt was quite the writer when it came to describing her love for successful journalist Lorena Hickock (known by friends and Eleanor as “Hick”). In the 30 years they knew each other, Roosevelt and Hickock exchanged around 4,000 letters explicitly detailing their fiery romance. Buckle up for these quotes:
Eleanor to Lorena “Hick my dearest, I cannot go to bed to-night without a word to you. I felt a little as though a part of me was leaving to-night, you have grown so much to be a part of my life that it is empty without you even though I’m busy every minute.”
Lorena to Eleanor “I’ve been trying today to bring back your face—to remember just how you look. Funny how even the dearest face will fade away in time. Most clearly I remember your eyes with a kind of teasing smile in them, and the feeling of that soft spot just northeast of the corner of your mouth against my lips. I wonder what we’ll do when we meet—what we’ll say.”
Eleanor to Lorena “Remember one thing always, no one is just what you are to me. I’d rather be writing this minute than anything else & yet I love many other people & some often can do things for me probably better than you could, but I’ve never enjoyed being with anyone the way I enjoy being with you.”
Eleanor to Lorena “I miss you greatly dear. The nicest time of the day is when I write to you. You have a stormier time than I do but I miss you as much, I think. I couldn’t bear to think of you crying yourself to sleep. Oh! how I wanted to put my arms around you in reality instead of in spirit. I went & kissed your photograph instead & the tears were in my eyes. Please keep most of your heart in Washington as long as I’m here for most of mine is with you!”
Hopefully, these excerpts stirred the romantic inside you and you can impress your Valentine this year!
Sources: Eleanor and Hick & Virginia and Vita