From the office: Hidden love messages

With Valentine’s Day fast approaching, in the WDYTYA? Magazine office our thoughts are turning to love…

We’ve been discussing the fact that although you can find a marriage between a couple, order the certificate and hold it in your hands, in most cases you’ll never know what drew them together, how they met and what they liked about each other.

Short of finding a bundle of love letters among the family papers during your research, most of us are simply left to speculate.

Expressions of love, I discovered when I Googled the subject, can turn up in the most unlikely places…

Last month, BBC Four's Illuminations: The Private Lives of Medieval Kings revealed how saucy love notes from Henry VIII to Anne Boleyn scribbled in the margins of her prayer book had recently been found buried in the British Library’s manuscript collection. Other notable love letters from the Library’s collection including examples from Charles Dickens, Charlotte Brontë and Oscar Wilde are celebrated in an event on Saturday and a related book Love Letters: 2000 Years of Romance.

Search for “Valentine” on the British Newspaper Archives website and all manner of love messages come up – from the florid: “Clear young eyes in whose childish candour lies love’s first innocent surprise,” (Leicester Chronicle, Feb 1886) to the more down to earth: “Bessy my sweet and Comely wife, thou greatest treasure of my life (Bradford Observer, Feb 1866).

But my favourite is the story of a Gloucestershire furniture restorer who was working on an antique chair the owner had bought in a French house clearance. He noticed a tightly folded scrap of paper tucked into one of the arms. When he fished it out he discovered it was a 200-year-old love letter ending “My dear, I cover you with kisses and caresses. I need you in this moment of desire. I love you.” Steamy stuff!

It’s a shame that in this age of texting and emails the love letter is a dying form. Have you come across any in your research? Email me here…