The everlasting God, powerful, infinite, and omnipotent God, that almighty God, who is goodness it self, the true life and true light keep thee and thine. Have mercy on me, and teach me to forgive my persecutors and false accusers, and send us to meet in his glorious kingdom.
My dear wife farewell. Bless my poor boy. Pray for me, and let my good God hold you both in his arms. Written with the dying hand of sometimes thy husband, but now alas overthrown.
Yours that was, but now not my own.
WR
Alan Turing to Norman Routledge, February 1952
A heartbreaking letter from the time when homosexuality was illegal in the UK. Alan Turing was the computer scientist, mathematician, and cryptographer who had played a crucial role in breaking the Nazi Enigma code during the war, at Bletchley Park, and in developing the Turing test to measure artificial intelligence.
In 1952, Turing was living in Manchester, where he began a relationship with a young man, Arnold Murray. When Murray was burgled, Turing inadvertently revealed his homosexuality during the police investigation, resulting in prosecution for both men for “gross indecency” under the Criminal Law Amendment Act 1885, then used to prosecute homosexuals. Turing pleaded guilty, facing no time in prison provided he underwent a hormonal treatment similar to chemical castration that helped destroy him. This letter to his friend, the mathematician Norman Routledge, indicates the level of anxiety and misery that he is suffering. He committed suicide by biting into a cyanide-poisoned apple on 8 June 1954.
Homosexuality was decriminalized in the UK in 1967, but it was only in 2017 that the “Turing law” formally pardoned Turing and other homosexuals persecuted under the old laws.
My dear Norman,
I’ve now got myself into the kind of trouble that I have always considered to be quite a possibility for me, though I have usually rated it at about 10:1 against. I shall shortly be pleading guilty to a charge of sexual offenses with a young man. The story of how it all came to be found out is a long and fascinating one, which I shall have to make into a short story one day, but haven’t the time to tell you now. No doubt I shall emerge from it all a different man, but quite who I’ve not found out.
Glad you enjoyed broadcast. Jefferson certainly was rather disappointing though. I’m afraid that the following syllogism may be used by some in the future.
Turing believes machines think
Turing lies with men
Therefore machines do not think
Yours in distress, Alan
Che Guevara to Fidel Castro, 1 April 1965
The two heroes of the Cuban Revolution. Guevara was a handsome Argentine doctor who, after a motorcycle trip throughout Latin America, joined up with Fidel and Raúl Castro, to lead the Cuban Revolution. In the battle to overthrow dictator Fulgencio Batista, Guevara served as a commander of reckless courage and outstanding organizational skills alongside the Castro brothers. They took the capital in 1959. In power, Che oversaw the firing squads that killed “war criminals,” trained the army, and ran the agricultural economy, dominated by sugarcane, as well as steering Cuba into an alliance with the Communist Soviet Union.
Guevara was instrumental in inviting the Soviets to place missiles on the island directed at America, which demanded their removal. Faced with nuclear war with America in the Cuban Missile Crisis, the Soviets withdrew them. Guevara and Castro had been willing to risk nuclear apocalypse. Disillusioned with the Soviet betrayal and perhaps with Castro’s dominance, Che seeks new adventure, new revolutions to serve, and writes this letter of goodbye.
Guevara then vanishes—first to fight in Congo and then, leaving a letter to his children—“grow up as good revolutionaries”—to Bolivia. There, aged thirty-nine, he is captured and summarily executed by a CIA-advised rightist militia.
Fidel:
At this moment I remember many things: when I met you in Maria Antonia’s house, when you proposed I come along, all the tensions involved in the preparations. One day they came by and asked who should be notified in case of death, and the real possibility of it struck us all. Later we knew it was true, that in a revolution one wins or dies (if it is a real one). Many comrades fell along the way to victory.
Today everything has a less dramatic tone, because we are more mature, but the event repeats itself. I feel that I have fulfilled the part of my duty that tied me to the Cuban revolution in its territory, and I say farewell to you, to the comrades, to your people, who now are mine.
I formally resign my positions in the leadership of the party, my post as minister, my rank of commander, and my Cuban citizenship. Nothing legal binds me to Cuba. The only ties are of another nature—those that cannot be broken as can appointments to posts.
Reviewing my past life, I believe I have worked with sufficient integrity and dedication to consolidate the revolutionary triumph. My only serious failing was not having had more confidence in you from the first moments in the Sierra Maestra, and not having understood quickly enough your qualities as a leader and a revolutionary.
I have lived magnificent days, and at your side I felt the pride of belonging to our people in the brilliant yet sad days of the Caribbean [Cuban Missile] crisis. Seldom has a statesman been more brilliant as you were in those days. I am also proud of having followed you without hesitation, of having identified with your way of thinking and of seeing and appraising dangers and principles.
Other nations of the world summon my modest efforts of assistance. I can do that which is denied you due to your responsibility as the head of Cuba, and the time has come for us to part.
You should know that I do so with a mixture of joy and sorrow. I leave here the purest of my hopes as a builder and the dearest of those I hold dear. And I leave a people who received me as a son. That wounds a part of my spirit. I carry to new battlefronts the faith that you taught me, the revolutionary spirit of my people, the feeling of fulfilling the most sacred of duties: to fight against imperialism wherever it may be. This is a source of strength, and more than heals the deepest of wounds.
I state once more that I free Cuba from all responsibility, except that which stems from its example. If my final hour finds me under other skies, my last thought will be of this people and especially of you. I am grateful for your teaching and your example, to which I shall try to be faithful up to the final consequences of my acts….
I am not sorry that I leave nothing material to my wife and children; I am happy it is that way. I ask nothing for them, as the state will provide them with enough to live on and receive an education.
I would have many things to say to you and to our people, but I feel they are unnecessary. Words cannot express what I would like them to, and there is no point in scribbling pages.
Robert Ross to More Adey, 14 December 1900
By the time Oscar Wilde was released from hard prison labor for homosexuality, his career had been destroyed and his health wrecked. Traveling on the continent at the turn of the twentieth century, he was working on his poem The Ballad of Reading Gaol—“Yet each man kills the thing he loves”— about the hanging of a murderer. He also handed Robbie Ross, his executor, De Profundis, a public letter of reproach addressed to his lover and nemesis, Lord Alfred “Bosie” Douglas. After a short reunion with Bosie, Wilde returned to Paris, living at the dire Hôtel d’Alsace in Saint-Germain—“My wallpaper and I are fighting a duel to the death,” he remarked. “One of us has got to go.” Here his suppurating ear, which had troubled him for a while, became fatal meningitis.
Robbie Ross had always been his most devoted friend: when Wilde came out of jail, Ross alone in a sullen crowd had taken off his hat: “Men have gone to heaven for smaller things than that,” Wilde wrote in De Profundis. Now Ross and another loyal friend, Reggie Turner, are present at this, Wilde’s last scene.
During my absence Reggie went every day to s
ee Oscar, and wrote me short bulletins. Oscar went out several times with him driving, and seemed much better. I had decided that when I had moved my mother to Menton on the following Friday, I would go to Paris, but on the Wednesday evening, at five-thirty, I got a telegram from Reggie saying “Almost hopeless.” I just caught the express and arrived in Paris at 10:20 in the morning.
Dr. Tucker informed me that Oscar could not live for more than two days. His appearance was very painful. He was trying to speak. He was conscious that people were in the room, and raised his hand when I asked him whether he understood. I then went in search of a priest, and after great difficulty found father Cuthbert Dunn, of the Passionists, who came with me at once and administered Baptism and Extreme Unction—Oscar could not take the Eucharist. You know I have always promised to bring a priest and I feel rather guilty that I had so often dissuaded him from becoming a Catholic, but you know my reasons for doing so….Reggie and I slept at the hotel that night in a room upstairs. We were called twice by the nurse, who thought Oscar was actually dying. At about 5:30 in the morning a complete change came over him, the lines of the face altered, and I believe what is called the death rattle began, but I had never heard anything like it before; it sounded like the horrible turning of a crank, and it never ceased until the end. Foam and blood came from his mouth, and had to be wiped away by someone standing by him all the time. At 12 o’clock I went out to get some food, Reggie mounting guard. He went out at 12:30. From 1 o’clock we did not leave the room; the painful noise from the throat became louder and louder. Reggie and myself destroyed letters to keep ourselves from breaking down. The nurse was out, and the proprietor of the hotel had come to take her place; at 1:45 the time of his breathing altered. I went to the bedside and held his hand, his pulse began to flutter. He heaved a deep sigh, the only natural one I had heard since I arrived, the limbs seemed to stretch involuntarily, the breathing became fainter; he passed away at 10 minutes to 2 p.m. exactly.
After washing and winding the body, and removing the appalling debris which has to be burnt, Reggie and myself and the proprietor started for the Mairie to make the official declarations.
I’m glad to say dear Oscar looked calm and dignified, just as he did when he came out of prison. Around his neck was the blessed rosary which you gave me, and on the breast, a Franciscan medal given me by one of the nuns. An unsuccessful photograph of Oscar was taken by Maurice Gilbert at my request but the flashlight did not work properly.
I can scarcely speak in moderation of the magnanimity, humanity and charity of Dupoirier, the proprietor of the Hôtel d’Alsace. Just before I left Paris Oscar told me he owed him over 190 Pounds. From the day Oscar was laid up he never said anything about it. He was present at Oscar’s operation, and attended to him personally every morning, paying for luxuries and necessities ordered by the doctor out of his own pocket.
Reggie Turner had the worst time of all in many ways—he experienced all the horrible uncertainty and the appalling responsibility of which he did not know the extent. It will always be a source of satisfaction to those who were very fond of Oscar, that he had someone like Reggie near him during his last days while he was articulate and sensible of kindness and attention.
Lucrezia Borgia to Leo X, 22 June 1519
A letter from a woman dying in childbirth to her priest. Its writer was born Lucrezia Borgia, daughter of the degenerate Pope Alexander VI (born Rodrigo Borgia) and sister of the merciless Cesare. Elected pope in 1492, Rodrigo immediately began to enjoy the riches and pleasures of the papacy and to promote his family’s prosperity with more shamelessness and bloodletting than was customary. His eldest son was murdered—most likely by his second son Cesare, who soon became a duke, killing any and all opponents.
Their sister Lucrezia was beautiful, but regarded by many as a she-devil, tainted by the family’s crimes. Her husbands and lovers were variously strangled, poisoned, or found floating in the Tiber; and she was said to have had a child by either her father or her brother, who then forced her to marry the future Duke of Este.
When father and brother died, Lucrezia was finally freed of her poisonous family and lived on as Duchess d’Este for fifteen respectable years. Now, at thirty-nine, she gives birth to a daughter but realizes that a postnatal infection has doomed her. She dies two days after writing this to the pope.
Most Holy Father and Honored Master
With all respect, I kiss your Holiness’s feet and commend myself in all humility to your holy mercy. Having suffered for more than two months, early on the morning of the 14th of the present, as it pleased God, I gave birth to a daughter, and hoped then to find relief from my sufferings, but I did not, and shall be compelled to pay my debt to nature. So great is the favor which our merciful Creator has shown me, that I approach the end of life with pleasure, knowing that, in a few hours, after receiving for the last time all the holy sacraments of the Church, I shall be released. Having arrived at this moment, I desire as a Christian, although I am a sinner, to ask your Holiness, in your mercy, to give me all possible spiritual consolation and your Holiness’s blessing for my soul. Therefore I offer myself to you in all humility and commend my husband and my children, all of whom are your servants, to your Holiness’s mercy.
Your Holiness’s humble servant,
Lucrezia d’Este
Hadrian to Antoninus Pius—and to his soul, 10 July AD 138
No farewell letter from a dying man to his friends could be more elegant than this one. When he writes this elegy for the departure of his soul, Hadrian is dying at his villa at Baiae.
One of the most gifted men to become emperor of Rome, he was a writer, poet, architect, and a restless traveler—in fact, the most traveled of all Roman princeps. He helped design exquisite architecture such as his villa, as well as the Pantheon and his own mausoleum in Rome, the Castel Sant’Angelo. He was married, but his great love was his male lover Antinous; when he died young, Hadrian had him deified. But Hadrian was also a ruthless ruler, executing senators and relatives suspected of treason or driving them to suicide, while his suppression of the Jewish revolt of Simon Bar Kokhba was savage.
Now dying, he writes to his chosen successor and adopted son, Antoninus Pius: “Emperor Caesar Hadrian Augustus to Antoninus, greeting. Above all I want you to know that I am being released from my life neither before my time or unreasonably or piteously nor unexpectedly nor with faculties impaired even though I shall almost seem to do injury to you who are by my side my father fell ill at the age of forty so I have lived twice again as long as him and reached the same age as my mother….” And he most probably includes in the letter this whimsical goodbye to his own soul, one of the best salutations to death ever written:
ANIMULA, VAGULA, BLANDULA,
HOSPES COMESQUE CORPORIS,
QUAE NUNC ABIBIS IN LOCA
PALLIDULA, RIGIDA, NUDULA,
NEC, UT SOLES, DABIS IOCOS
Little soul, little wanderer, little charmer,
body’s guest and companion,
to what places will you set out for now?
To darkling, cold and gloomy ones—
and you won’t make your usual jokes.
Acknowledgments
I want to thank my colleagues and friends who have helped with brilliant ideas for this book: Tom Holland, Andrew Roberts, Jonathan Foreman, Kate Jarvis, Dr. Lorenza Smith, F. M. Eloischari, and my very well-read mother, April Sebag-Montefiore. Special thanks to Jan Christian Mollestad for telling me the real story of Leonard Cohen’s letter to Marianne and allowing me to quote his words. Thank you to my publishers David Shelley and Holly Harley and to my agents Georgina Capel, Rachel Conway, Irene Baldoni, and my movie and TV agent Simon Shaps. Special thanks to my daughter, Lily, for helping me choose the letters on an exciting voyage through my library. Thanks to Alex Larman for additional research. And as always thanks to my darling wif
e, Santa, my daughter, Lily, and my son, Sasha.
Copyright Acknowledgments
The author and publishers gratefully acknowledge permission to reprint copyright material in this collection as follows. Every effort has been made to trace copyright holders and to obtain their permission for the use of copyright material. The publisher apologizes for any errors or omissions in the below list and would be grateful if notified of any corrections that should be incorporated in future reprints or editions of this book.
* * *
Frida Kahlo to Diego Rivera, undated: The Diary of Frida Kahlo: An Intimate Self-Portrait, Frida Kahlo, edited by Phyllis Freeman. © 1995 by Banco de México Diego Rivera Frida Kahlo Museums Trust, Mexico, D.F. Reproduced with permission.
Thomas Jefferson to Maria Cosway, 12 October 1786: Founders Online, National Archives, last modified June 13, 2018, http://founders.archives.gov/documents/Jefferson/01-10-02-0309
Catherine the Great to Prince Potemkin, c.19 March 1774: Great Catherine, Carolly Erickson, Simon & Schuster, 1994.
James I to George Villiers, Duke of Buckingham, 17 May 1620: Letters of King James, VI & I, ed. G. P. V. Akrigg, University of California Press, 1984.
Vita Sackville-West to Virginia Woolf, 21 January 1926: Excerpts from The Letters of Virginia Woolf, Volume 3, edited by Nigel Nicolson and assistant editor. Published by Chatto & Windus. © 1977 Joanne Trautmann © by Quentin Bell and Angelica Garnett, 1977, 1978, 1978, 1980. Reproduced with permission from The Random House Group Ltd.
Between Suleiman the Magnificent and Hurrem Sultan, c.1530s: The Imperial Harem: Women and Sovereignty in the Ottoman Empire, Leslie Peirce, Oxford University Press, 1991, p. 64.
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