It’s great to come across these things. In a book written by a Civil War vet, I found a letter from my great-grandfather, written after he had been captured at Bull Run. Fascinating stuff.
I think it’s really neat that you have a letter that had it not been written, you might not have been born! (unless great grandpa and great grandma were devious enough to sneak away)
Thanks for sharing. A great piece of history indeed!
But Laura knew full well that he was going to ask.
I not only deplore the loss of letter writing as a skill, I deplore the loss of the attitude, the humility and the charm of such things. God knows I don’t want to go back to those times, but is a little diffidence such a bad thing?
It’s a beautiful letter. Thank you for sharing.
That’s so very sweet!!
Not only is letter writing a lost art, most people can’t even properly write an e-mail. Ugh. Thanks for sharing; it’s a great find.
We had a housekeeper/nanny when I was little in Japan. I’ve got her diary around here somewhere. I’m going to have to find it.
That is such a sweet little treasure. I wonder sometimes what we’re leaving behind for our descendents to know us by.
My parents were apart from January, when Dad proposed, to April, when they married, because he took a job in Pennsylvania. (I think that’s why he proposed when he did.) I have the letters they wrote, and then some after they were married, when he was again working out of state. There’s at least one of those where his longing for his wife and their baby daughter (my sister, not me) is almost tangible. I read through them all and thought, "Who are these people and what did they do with my real parents?) They start with greetings like “my dearest” and “darling”. Wow! Those ordinary parents of mine?
Am I the only one who was waiting to hear that the writer used to be married to the Petroleum Minister of Nigeria, and wanted help getting money out of the country?
Probably.
Regards,
Shodan
I hope this is an appropriate place to share my favourite proposal of all time.
7th December 1897
Dear Miss Dynon,
I suppose it would do poor justice to the reputation my countrymen bear for courage - though in this case it may be called audacity - if I did not risk, as so many others in other cases have, with better or worse fortune done, the inevitable question. The world is made up of incompatibles, or rather contradictions; without the Union of opposites there would be no possibility of the average that makes progress. I am in most of the qualities that build a character, at one pole, you at the other; but your sex is born to redeem, and Goodness Knows there is a big field for redemption in my case. Well, you can well think I am, for once at all events in my life, in a bit of a muddle. I have written pamphlets, leading articles, essays, etc., by the mile, but never before put in writing the impertinence f a proposal of marriage. And this has to be done, at the table f the legislative Assembly of New South Wales, with the Federal Convention sitting, and Mr. Lyne, within a yard of me, pouring on the too-thinly protected top of my head, a Niagra of figures. However, I must attempt it.
Well Dear Miss Dynon, to be candid, which is indeed my dearest desire. I heard of you six or seven years ago, and from what a lady who knew you well said of you then, I know if on meeting you, I did not feel it instinctively, that you are as deserving of the reputation you bear as I am under the estimate…You unfortunately - or, rather perhaps, fortunately for myself - know little of me; that is outside my reputation as a public man. But as far as I can say it, I feel I am Bohemian in temperament, fond of the softer - I don’t like to say poetic - side of life; liable, like many of my too romantic countrymen to extremes of spirit, by no means correct as the world goes, but at all events capable of discerning if not following, the Right. The girl that takes me will deserve an indulgence - a dispensation from purgatory, so that I may have at least a negative recommendation…
But I find, with my usual lack of pluck in matters outside my line, I am becoming all preface. The Sum of it all is this, if you consent to marry me, Miss Dynon, you will for the sacrifice, deserve Heaven, and probably save me from somewhere else. May I ask you to do so. I am by no means well off - but why should I say that to you - but I can and do work, and though, if I may use the term for the sake of its great expressiveness, devil-may-care in most matters, will try under the great responsibility, to become financially orthodox, I don’t care the proverbial rap for the Ceremonial side of life.
If you consent to be my wife - a great word - why should we not be married at once. It will have the advantage for me that the matter will be inevitable settled before you know too much of me…If you have me, I can honestly promise you to give you no divided heart and to live no double life. You will know me for good or bad, as I am.
Well, if you bless me, I will with your consent, go for you on Friday, marry on Saturday and return the same day. If you will come - anyhow I wish you would - over at once, so much the better. We can be married on the arrival of the train. My friend Mr. O’Malley will give me away; I hope he has not done so already. This is a lot to ask but the occasion is my great excuse. I am not my own master now - we are servants of the Nation and its destinies. Besides as I said, I know you thoroughly - and after we can call each other wife and husband; well, what does the unorthodox way of settling the bond matter.
In Hopes of a reply that will enable me to really begin to live, I am Dear Miss Dynon,
Your admirer and friend under any circumstances,
P. McM. Glynn
(She said yes, BTW).
Wow! I love old letters, and I too regret the demise of that art.
My husband and I spend a lot of time apart. It has always been like that. Since we met before email was so common we used to communicate by fax. I have saved some of those faxes, and I hope one day my daughter can get a little glimpse of what we felt for each other.
I once found a letter from my dad to my mom when my mom was in a girls’ boarding school. I had the same reaction as thirdwarning: “who are these people, and what did they do to my parents”?
I hope the letter and those photos are in an acid-free album, Cicero – that scan looked like they were displayed in one of those adhesive photo album books. Has your family considered having the photos duplicated and restored to help preserve them?
I don’t actually have them Ice Wolf. I received a scan of them along with quite a few photos from around 1880 to the 1920’s as for some reson I seem to have become the family historian. I will forward your suggestion though.
I love this bit:
I love it for its honesty and its (unintentional?) humor. Either way, she cannot say she didn’t know what she was getting into!
Cicero and bathsheba thanks for sharing the letters. Those are priceless pieces of personal history.
I like what Marlitharn said upthread about how letters, diaries, etc of people are the real history. Just so true.
People set more store by appearances in those days, true, and worked harder to make things look right, without putting as much work into actually making them right. chappachula’s comment was quite correct: Adults had to ask other people leave for the simplest things, and certain relationships were not contemplated. And if your relationship was approved of, woe betide you if it turned out wrong or even physically dangerous. Certain things were not spoken of in those days, certain family secrets were kept absolutely, and certain parts of a relationship could only be changed by death (natural or otherwise).
The past is another country, and few fully-informed people seriously desire a visa to its more distant locales.
Another thanks, Cicero, for this letter.
I was watching Antiques Roadshow the other day and they had a letter from Jefferson Davis that used similar vocabulary and grammar usage.
It seems so foreign now. To think that the “average” person actually used the English language in this manner to communicate their most personal of feelings is somewhat humbling.
That said, I have to give sites like SDMB credit for keeping the art of written communication a step above cell phone texting. Say what you will about this board, but most people here at least try to communicate in a manner that befits the topic and specific discussion. I am often amazed at the level of discourse in Great Debates, or even in the Pit; for example, it is very rare to see someone saying “fuck you” so eloquently as one often sees here on this board.
The original version of your letter is not only eloquent, but the handwriting is beautiful…I have bookmarked the page and, if you don’t mind, I would like to have your official permission to show this letter to my students this coming quarter. I think it will be interesting for them to see this little time-capsule of romance.
Am I the only one not impressed by flowery diction and bulky, complex sentence structure? Maybe having been forced to slog through William James cured me of any starry-eyed wonder at a sentence that doubles as a paragraph, page, doorstop, and whaling vessel, and words that do not appear in any dictionary a mule can pull unaided. What’s worse is that they weren’t showing off: That’s really how they wrote back then, the poor buggers.
It’s not like they had anything else to do back then, besides colonising Africa and fighting wars with the French. 
And when the got sick of that, they’d fight wars with Africa and try to colonize the French. (To their credit, only one of those activities spread disease.)
Well, to be fair, nobody’s ever texted that to my mother on my behalf. 