Written in History
Page 17
During his long ordeal, Winnie struggled without his guidance, enforcing her power in Soweto through a security unit of murderous thugs called the Mandela United Football Team. Released in 1990 and then elected president, Mandela oversaw the transfer of power from white rule to multiracial democracy without bloodshed—one of the towering achievements of the twentieth century.
Mandela divorced Winnie in 1992 and married Graça, the widow of President Machel of Mozambique. Mandela died in 2013, Winnie five years later. This letter, signed “Dalibunga,” his Xhosa tribal name, is one of his best.
Darling,
I was taken completely by surprise to learn that you had been very unwell as I did not have even the slightest hint that you suffered from blackouts. I have known of your heart condition & pleurisy attacks.
The Power of Positive Thinking & The Results of Positive Thinking, both written by the American psychologist Dr. Norman Vincent Peale, may be rewarding to read.
He makes the basic point that it is not so much the disability one suffers from that matters but one’s attitude to it. The man who says: I will conquer this illness & live a happy life, is already halfway to victory.
Of the talents you possess, the one that attracts me most is your courage & determination. This makes you stand head & shoulders above the average & will in the end bring you the triumph of high achievement. Do consciously keep this constantly in mind.
You look somewhat sad, absent-minded & unwell but lovely all the same [in a family photo]. The [photo] depicts all I know in you, the devastating beauty & charm which ten stormy years of married life have not chilled. I suspect that you intended the picture to convey a special message that no words could ever express. Rest assured I have caught it. All that I wish to say now is that the picture has aroused all the tender feelings in me & softened the grimness that is all around. It has sharpened my longing for you & our sweet & peaceful home.
Finally Mhlope, I should like you to know that if in the past my letters have not been passionate, it is because I need not seek to improve the debt I owe to a woman who, in spite of formidable difficulties & lack of experience, has nonetheless succeeded in keeping the home fires burning & in attending to the smallest wants & wishes of her incarcerated life companion. These things make me humble to be the object of your love & affection. Remember that hope is a powerful weapon even when all else is lost. You are in my thoughts every moment of my life. Nothing will happen to you darling. You will certainly recover and rise.
A million kisses & tons & tons of love.
Dalibunga
Abram Hannibal to Peter the Great, 5 March 1722
The first black general and engineer of modern times was a Russian African named Abram Hannibal. He was captured by slave traders as a boy, probably in West Africa; sold in Istanbul, and there bought by agents of Tsar Peter the Great, who brought him to Russia where “I was baptized by the Tsar-Emperor and His Majesty chose to stand as my godfather.” Henceforth he was known as Abram Petrovich (“Son of Peter”) Hannibal because many black men were called “Hannibal” after the Carthaginian general (though in fact he was Phoenician). Hannibal often served as Peter’s equerry; the tsar recognized the boy’s talent, sending him to be trained in engineering, artillery, and mathematics in Paris, where he ran out of money. Here Hannibal appeals to Peter, who bails him out, ordering his chancellor: “Abram the Moor has written from Paris that he is ready to come back to Russia only he has to settle debts of 200 gold écu….Please send money and travel expenses and tell Abram to leave for Petersburg.” By Catherine the Great’s reign, Hannibal was a general; he was the great-grandfather of the poet Pushkin.
Do you remember Your Majesty how you warned me five years ago not to fall into bad habits or end up in prison. Instead you told me if I worked hard at my studies for the glory of Russia you would never desert me. Well I didn’t let you down but we are all of us in debt here not because of delinquency on our party but simply we are victims of paper money with terrible consequences as I am sure Count Musin Pushkin told you were it not for his kindness I would have surely died of hunger.
Between Simón Bolívar, Manuela Sáenz, and James Thorne, 1822–1823
Here are two goodbye letters in the love triangle of the Liberator of South America. “I am the genius of the storm,” declared Simón Bolívar, known as El Libertador, who in a just a few frantic years of fighting the Spanish, freed the modern states of Colombia, Venezuela, Panama, Ecuador, Peru, and Bolivia—half of a vast continent. Only Napoleon Bonaparte had achieved anything resembling the conquests of Bolívar. But he was also an enthusiastic dancer and lover, often greeted by devoted young girls as he liberated their cities, claiming that sex and flirtation stimulated his genius: “I deliberated best when I was at the center of revelry among the pleasures of a ball.” And the genius of the storm met his match in Manuela Sáenz.
After becoming president of Gran Colombia in 1819, Bolívar marched across the Andes to conquer Ecuador where he met twenty-two-year-old Manuela, the illegitimate daughter of a Spanish nobleman and a mixed-race mother, a convent girl who had been seduced by an officer, then married off to James Thorne, an older English merchant. Flamboyant, fearless, intelligent, and sensuous, she became Bolívar’s supporter and lover. But Bolívar fears any commitment, sounding much like anyone feeling suffocated in a relationship: “give me time.” He tries to restrain Manuela’s enthusiasm and sends her back to her husband.
Simón Bolívar to Manuela Sáenz, 3 July 1822
I want to answer, most beautiful Manuela, your demands of love, which are entirely reasonable. But I have to be candid with you, who have given me so much of yourself…it’s time you knew that long ago I loved a woman as only the young can love. Out of respect, I never talk about it. I’m pondering these things, and I want to give you time to do the same, because your words lure me; because I know that this may well be my moment to love you and for us to love one another. I need time to get used to this, for a military life is neither easy to endure nor easy to leave behind. I have fooled death so many times now that death dogs my every step….Allow me to be sure of myself—of you….I cannot lie. I never lie! My passion for you is wild, and you know it. Give me time.
And here is Manuela’s response: she writes this amazing letter to her husband, copying it to Bolívar to make sure there is no way back to her tedious marriage: her destiny is with Bolívar, whom she then follows to Bogotá.
Manuela Sáenz to James Thorne, 1823
No, no, no, hombre! A thousand times No! Sir, you are an excellent person, indeed one of a kind—that I will never deny. I only regret that you are not a better man so that my leaving you would honor Bolívar more. I know very well that I can never be joined to him in what you call honor. Do you think I am any less honorable because he is my lover, not my husband? Ah! I do not live by social conventions men construct to torment us. So leave me be, my dear Englishman. We will marry again in heaven but not on this earth….On earth, you are a boring man. Up there in the celestial heights, everything will be so English, because a life of monotony was invented for you people, who make love without pleasure, conversation without grace—who walk slowly, greet solemnly, move heavily, joke without laughing….But enough of my cheekiness. With all the sobriety, truth, and clarity of an Englishwoman, I say now: I will never return for you. You are a protestant and I a pagan—that should be obstacle enough. But I am also in love with another man, and that is the greater, stronger reason. You see how precise my mind can be?
Your invariable friend, Manuela
Manuela fought beside Bolívar, helped with his papers, nursed the wounded, and deserved her promotion to colonel. There was something utterly liberated about Manuela: she sported dashing male uniforms, had affairs with black servants and female lovers, defied all convention. In Bogotá’s presidential palace in 1828, assassins forced their way into Bolívar’s bedro
om. Manuela fought them off and was almost beaten to death, enabling The Liberator to escape. Henceforth he called her “Libertadora de Libertador”—the liberatrix of the liberator. Bolívar retired from power and died of tuberculosis, aged forty-seven, in 1830. Manuela, persecuted, died in penury in 1856. In 2007, she was posthumously promoted to a general of Ecuador and in 2010 given a state funeral in Venezuela.
Fate
Oscar Wilde to Robert Ross, 28 February 1895
Even though he didn’t yet know it, this letter marks the beginning of the ruin of Oscar Wilde. The author of The Importance of Being Earnest, The Picture of Dorian Gray, and stories for children and adults such as “The Happy Prince,” Wilde was celebrated for his wit and his success. When he arrived in America, he told the customs officials “I have nothing to declare but my genius,” then made a fortune on a sold-out lecture tour. Son of a Dublin surgeon, Wilde was married with children but he was also ostentatiously gay at a time when homosexuality was illegal. He loved the adventure of pursuing wild encounters, which he called “feasting with panthers,” but he was in love with a spoiled aristocrat named Lord Alfred “Bosie” Douglas, whose monstrous father, the Marquess of Queensberry, was a pugilistic and bigoted ruffian. On this day, Queensberry left a provocative and misspelled card at Wilde’s club, calling him a “Somdomite.” In this letter, Wilde reports Queensberry’s insult to his best friend, literary executor, and sometime lover Robbie Ross, who like everyone else begs him not to take the bait. But Wilde insists on suing Queensberry for libel, a folly that would lead inexorably to his exposure as a homosexual, his trial, and his sentencing to prison with hard labor: it destroyed him.
HOTEL AVONDALE, PICCADILLY
Dearest Bobbie,
Since I saw you something has happened. Bosie’s father has left a card at my club with hideous words on it. I don’t see anything but a criminal prosecution.
My whole life seems ruined by this man. The tower of ivory is assailed by the foul thing. On the sand is my life spilled. I don’t know what to do. If you could come here at 11:30 please do so tonight. I mar your life by trespassing ever on your love and kindness. I have asked Bosie to come tomorrow.
Ever yours
Oscar
Between Alexander Hamilton and Aaron Burr, June 1804
The letters that follow chart the destruction of the most brilliant mind of the American Founding Fathers by the most despicable. The musical Hamilton has retold the story using hip-hop music, but here are the real letters. Alexander Hamilton was the illegitimate prodigy born on a Caribbean island who made it to America, became aide to George Washington, designer of the American Constitution, and the first treasury secretary as well as an army general. He possessed all the turbulence of genius but also, in an era obsessed with a complex code of honor, the touchiness of the self-invented.
Aaron Burr, also a veteran of the War of Independence, had all Hamilton’s ambition but lacked his brilliance, and he seethed with jealousy, particularly when Hamilton helped undermine his career by backing his old enemy Thomas Jefferson against him, Burr, his supposed friend, in the presidential elections of 1800. Burr was instead elected vice president under Jefferson, but the president despised and excluded him. Hamilton himself was out of power after the collapse of his Federalist Party. Using the orotund language of honor and law (both being lawyers), Burr accuses Hamilton of defaming him in the 1804 contest for the governorship of New York. Under the exaggeratedly polite phrases the reader can feel the oncoming resort to violence—in the form of a duel—and then we read the arrangements being made by their seconds, William P. Van Ness and Nathaniel Pendleton.
The duel is fought on 11 July 1804, in New Jersey. Hamilton claimed he would fire in the air. Burr shoots at Hamilton, killing him. Burr was charged with his murder, but was never tried. He lived on until 1836, perhaps the most despised man in early American history.
Burr to Hamilton
N YORK 18 JUNE 1804
Sir,
I send for your perusal a letter signed Ch. D. Cooper which, though apparently published some time ago, has but very recently come to my knowledge. Mr. Van Ness, who does me the favor to deliver this, will point out to you that clause of the letter to which I particularly request your attention.
You must perceive, Sir, the necessity of a prompt and unqualified acknowledgment or denial of the use of any expressions which could warrant the assertions of Dr. Cooper.
I have the honor to be
Your Obdt. St.
A. Burr
Hamilton to Burr
N YORK 20 JUNE 1804
Sir:
I have maturely reflected on the subject of your letter of the 18th Instant, and the more I have reflected, the more I have become convinced that I could not without manifest impropriety make the avowal or disavowal which you seem to think necessary. The clause pointed out by Mr. Van Ness is in these terms: “I could detail to you a still more despicable opinion which General Hamilton has expressed of Mr. Burr.” To endeavor to discover the meaning of this declaration, I was obliged to seek in the antecedent part of the letter for the opinion to which it referred, as having been already disclosed. I found it in these words: “Genl. Hamilton and Judge Kent have declared in substance that they looked upon Mr. Burr to be a dangerous man, and one who ought not to be trusted with the reins of Government.” The language of Dr. Cooper plainly implies that he considered this opinion of you, which he attributes to me, as a despicable one; but he affirms that I have expressed some other still more despicable; without, however, mentioning to whom, when or where. ’Tis evident that the phrase “still more despicable” admits of infinite shades from very light to very dark. How am I to judge of the degree intended. Or how should I annex any precise idea to language so vague?
Between Gentlemen despicable and still more despicable are not worth the pains of a distinction. When, therefore, you do not interrogate me as to the opinion which is specifically ascribed to me, I must conclude that you view it as within the limits to which the animadversions of political opponents, upon each other, may justifiably extend; and consequently as not warranting the idea of it which Dr. Cooper appears to entertain. If so, what precise inference could you draw as a guide for your future conduct, were I to acknowledge that I had expressed an opinion of you, still more despicable than the one which is particularized? How could you be sure that even this opinion had exceeded the bounds which you would yourself deem admissible between political opponents?
But I forbear further comment on the embarrassment to which the requisition you have made naturally leads. The occasion forbids a more ample illustration, though nothing would be more easy than to pursue it.
Repeating that I can not reconcile it with propriety to make the acknowledgment or denial you desire, I will add that I deem it inadmissible on principle, to consent to be interrogated as to the justness of the inferences which may be drawn by others, from whatever I may have said of a political opponent in the course of a fifteen years competition. If there were no other objection to it, this is sufficient, that it would tend to expose my sincerity and delicacy to injurious imputations from every person who may at any time have conceived that import of my expressions differently from what I may then have intended, or may afterward recollect.
I stand ready to avow or disavow promptly and explicitly any precise or definite opinion which I may be charged with having declared to any gentleman. More than this can not fitly be expected from me; and especially it can not reasonably be expected that I shall enter into an explanation upon a basis so vague as that which you have adopted. I trust upon more reflection you will see the matter in the same light with me. If not, I can only regret the circumstances and must abide the consequences.
The publication of Dr. Cooper was never seen by me ’till after the receipt of your letter.
Sir, I have the
honor to be
Your Obdt. St.
A. Hamilton
Burr to Hamilton
N YORK 21 JUNE 1804
Sir,
Your letter of the 20th inst. has been this day received. Having considered it attentively, I regret to find in it nothing of that sincerity and delicacy which you profess to value.