LOVE-LETTERS OF ROYALTIES.

Pukekohe & Waiuku Times, Volume 5, Issue 183, 16 June 1916, Page 1 (Supplement)

LOVE-LETTERS OF ROYALTIES.

WHEN KINGS AND QUEENS MAKE LOVE. When words we want Love teacheth 1 to indite, And what we blush to speak she bids ■us write. „ . , —Herrick. How true it is that the of Cupid makes the whole world kin is proved by sheaves of letters, timestained and breathing the faint perfume from dead centuries, m which one may still read with sympathetic eyes the passionate and tender outpouring of hearts that have long ceased to beat. The writers were cradled in palaces; many of them wore Royal crowns, and seemed as remote from sentiment as the man in the moon. But their letters show them as helplessly caught in the toils of love as any amorous ploughman or leve-sick dairymaid. When the Princess Amelia, the most beloved of all George 111. s daughters lost her heart to the handsome and courtly General roy, her equerry, she poured out her love to him in a hundred letters with a fullness and freedom from all restraint which make her words burn and glow a century after she has been dust. "Marry you, my dear angel, I really must and will." one letter runs. "I glory in our attachment. I pine after my dear Charles more and more every instant. Your dear letter! Oh, what a treasure! I shall keep it, and read it over and over every day. Pray don't alter in your manner to me in any way, my dear angel. Oh. my precious darling how often do I say,,would to God my own husband atid best friend an guardian were here to protect and assist me as I am sure was destined " I shoulfl M »°- SOLDIER IN EUROPE. A few days she wrote, "Oh, God, how I do love you! Each day and hour has endeared you torn - cent the gratitude and affection of her who owes you everything, fo ever your most affectionate fr end and wife I own I can never liefp praying and hoping a time may yet como wlien tiie Almighty and join us in persons as we are m hparts ever inseparable. 1 nave loved you P™ed and esteemed you more every instant. God bless you. my own dearest and most bel °Y/*" n o-el Ever on earth or in HpaVe _ equally your attached wife and darhnEvenFmore unrestrained and passionate are the letteis w . cess Sophie Dorothea, later thes un harirv wife of the first of our Georg cT'wrote to Count Philip Komgsmarck the handsomest soldier m SfoK, with a reputation for eonrase won on a score of battlefields. When the Count was sent to Mo e to fight against the Turks, she wrote S him in her grief. "Nothing can make your absence bearable to mc T am faint with weeping- 1 no ' ) 0 Jo Prove bv my life that no woman has ever loved man as I love you Of a truth, dear one, my love wn only end with my life." Again, you love me," she pleads, "take care or yourself. I should die if any c*cident happens to you. But'J* l * •joy when I see you again! It will bo impossible for me to mcoerate my transports; I fear everybody will see how much I love you It matters little for you are worthy, and I can never love you enough." , HER BELOVED WARDER.. When Peter I of Russia, wearying „, h!s beautiful Empress Eudoxia. shut her up in a distant nunnery, robbed her of her rank her splendours. her very name, her lot was indeed pitiful. Faring v/orse than the meanest of her sister nuns, slit often lacked food to stay the pangs of hunger and clothes to keep t le blood warm in her. And when ,'or Glebof, a kind-hearted officer in the district, played the sood Samaritan to her, bringing food and wine and warm furs and tho sunshine of a tender sympathy into her cell, it i= small wonder that her gratitude crew rapidly into love. "Where thy heart is, dearest." she wrote to him, "there is mine also. Where th> tnogue is. there is my head; thy wil» is also mine." . When however, t.tie Majors \lslts ?nd letters grew more and more infrequent she suffered tortures of a xietv an dde.spair. My light. y soul my joy." she wrote in her detraction, "has the cruel hour ot separation come already How ran I endure existence? Rather would I see my soul parted from my body. God alone knows how dear thou art to me Whv do 1 love thee so much. n°v adored one. that without thee life is worthless? Why art thou angrv with me? Why, my dost thou not come to see me . pitV o" m - oIK my lonl ' a Col i n i C OVO me to-morrow. Oh, my world nv dearest and best, answer me, do not Ot me die of grief. Send me , a crust of bread thou hast bitten w' ( h thy teeth, or the waistcoat thou hast often worn, that I may have something to bring thee nca. t0 \ RCHOOI.GIRL'S PASSION. \o moid of any station in life ever lost heart and head more com pic■ en- than Pauline Bonaparte. Napo leon - 3 voungest. and most, beajititu and wayward sister, when, as a gill of fifteen Freron. the handsome coxcomb and revolutionary, her volatile fancy. It. was on boll 1 sidj, a gran do passion, an ecstasy of lo\e. And when Freron at last let Maice?!'es and his schoolgirl mv .uit>. she pursued him with thinmost passionate protestations. s K vroto "f swear, d-ar Stanislaus, never to love nnv o'her than thee, my , -t lenows no divided allegiance. T, ;: • ino atone. Who could oppose ~ion of two sen Is who seek to : ■' 0 Ot! er happiness than in a I ]ove?' ' And again. "Thou hew I love it not ■ ' - Me. for Pauleltc to iive anart hor adored Stanislaus. I love , - . ; or ever, must passionate,y, my

beautiful god, 1113- adorable one. I love thee —love thee' —love thee!" Indeed, to find a parallel to such rapture cne must turn to the correspondence between Catherine 11. of Kussia and the ex-Sergeant Patiomkin, whom her favour raised to such dizzy heights of power and splendour. To the Empress this low-born buffoon, the ugliest man in Russia, was always "my soul," "my king," "my inestimable treasure," and when death took him from her she spent days and nights in solitary weeping, refusing to see anyone, and writing to Grimm, "A rude and terrible blow struck me yesterday. My pupil, my friend, my almost idol, Prince Patiomkin of the Taurida, is dead. . . . Oh, heavens, it is now that 1 need to be Madame la Ressource!" Patlomkin's letters to her were no less ardent. They resemble, in fact, the ravings of a lovesick boy, as when he wrote, "When first I beheldl tliee, my thoughts were only of thee. Thy glorious eyes made me captive, yet I trembled to breathe my love. Ye cruel gods! Why did you dower her with such witchery or why did you so exalt her beyond my reach? Why did you destine me to love lier, and only her. whose sacred name will never pass my lips, whose charming image will never quit my heart?" —Tit Bits.