Famous Letter Writers

Now, here’s the question: Do you save all the letters you receive? And if you save them, where do you keep them? Do you keep them in any particular order? Thank Goodness someone kept the letters from these Famous Letter Writers!

I began pondering this issue when I discovered that a childhood friend has kept all of my letters. I was even more nonplussed to discover that several pen-pals have kept all the letters I sent to them over the years (granted, most of this occurred before email changed our lives). I’ve attempted to keep letters but over the years, events have sometimes transpired against me. Sometimes I moved and if it was into a smaller house or apartment, lack of space resulted in non-essentials (such as old letters) being tossed out.

Thinking about correspondence—in particular famous correspondence, let me to wonder how the recipients knew enough to save these letters.

This crossed my mind when I bought a copy of “Love, Ronnie” – Ronald Reagan’s letters to his wife Nancy written over decades. Apparently, she kept all of his letters—and President Reagan was a prolific letter writer! Many of those letters were written when Reagan was a struggling actor and later President of the Screen Actors Guild. Did she have some sense of the fame he would achieve as governor of California and later, as President of the United States?

Another prolific letter writer was Napoleon, who wrote many letters to his wife Josephine before and during their marriage. In one of those letters, Napoleon wrote, “I wake filled with thoughts of you. Your portrait and the intoxicating evening spent yesterday have left my senses in turmoil. Sweet, incomparable Josephine…!” (Well! I can understand saving that letter if someone had written it to me!)

Ludwig van Beethoven, one of history’s greatest composers, died at the age of 57, at which time a love letter was found among his possessions. It was written to an unknown woman Beethoven called his “Immortal Beloved”. We’ll never know who “Immortal Beloved” was!

One of the United Sates’ first First Ladies, Abigail Adams wrote romantic letters to her husband John Adams and in one wrote, “..I look back to the early days of our acquaintance and friendship as to the days of love and innocence, and, with an indescribable pleasure. I have seen near a score of years roll over our heads with an affection heightened and improved by time….”

Elizabeth Barrett Browning and Robert Browning exchanged many letters. Jane Austen loved to write letters and wrote hundreds of them in her lifetime.

Mark Twain wrote the following to Olivia Langdon, his future wife: “Out of the depths of my happy heart wells a great tide of love and prayer for this priceless treasure that is confided to my life-long keeping. You cannot see its intangible waves as they flow towards you, darling, but in these lines you will hear, as it were, the distant bearing of the surf…”

Harriet Beecher Stowe became famous with her first novel, “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” and went on to publish eight more novels and man short stories. What you may not know about Ms. Stowe is that she had a husband named Calvin and six children. A letter she wrote to her husband after eleven years of marriage survived, and in it Ms. Stowe wrote about the joys and tribulations they had shared as husband and wife. She wrote, in part, “I was at that date of marriage a very different being from what I am now and stood in relation to my Heavenly Father n a very different attitude…”

Hundreds of love letters survived from the Civil war, as well as World Wars I and II.

However, one famous letter which intrigues me was written by Albert Einstein—to President Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Written on August 2, 1939, Einstein warned of the possibility of Germany building an atomic bomb and urged the President to do nuclear research and complete the bomb before the Germans did. Albert wrote the letter as a result of a request from a friend, Leo Szilard. Szilard had become alarmed after the discovery of uranium fission. Szilard also asked Einstein to warn the Belgian Queen Mother. At the time of this request in 1939, most American physicists doubted that atomic energy or atomic bombs were a possibility. Although not a well known fact, there were two letters written and signed by Einstein and sent tot he President. There was a short version and a long version. Einstein preferred the long version and so that was the one finally delivered to the President. The letter did not have much impact and WW2 began on September 1, 1939.

So perhaps my next question to you might be, have you ever written to someone famous or have you ever received a letter from a famous person? One of our ITN subscribers told us that she has written to some of the American presidents and/or their wives, over the years and has kept all of those letters. She says she wrote to Jacqueline Kennedy when their baby, Patrick, died, and again when JFK was assassinated. Some months later, an acknowledgement card came from the First Lady. She says she also wrote to Michael Landon one time, when Bonanza was a hit TV program—she was disgruntled that “Little Joe’s” wife (in the series) died. Michael Landon sent her a lengthy personal reply.

Fortunately for history, and for us, a great deal of famous correspondence has survived over hundreds of years. I was reminded, however, of a page in Edward Klein’s book “Farewell, Jackie” which detail Jacqueline Kennedy’s final days on earth. Jackie Kennedy was another prolific letter writer and had saved much of the correspondence she had received. Knowing she was about to die, Jackie sent for her long-time friend Nancy Tuckerman. “When Nancy entered the library,” writes Klein, “she found Jackie curled up on a sofa in front of a roaring fire, surrounded by her books and music…On the table beside her were stacks of letters representing a lifetime of personal correspondence. The letters were neatly bound with ribbons…” One that she read aloud to Nancy was from Jackie’s father. When she finished reading it, she threw it into the fire. She went through all of her correspondence, one by one, re-reading each letter and most were thrown into the fire. Even though Jackie Kennedy had a reverence for history, she also made up her mind how much would be revealed about her after she died. “Which was not very much.” Klein concludes.

To save or not to save? Since most of us will never be rich or famous, saving our letters may not be for posterity, but simply for ourselves, reviving memories of another time and another place.