When did you last receive a love letter? I imagine they are very scarce these days, with text messages and emails used instead to communicate those special tender feelings.
The emotions and tragic acceptance of fate portrayed in Captain Scott’s last letter to his wife in temperatures of -70% tug at the heartstrings. It has just been presented to the Scott Polar Research Institute in Cambridge by his son’s widow and will be on public display from next week.
Here are some extracts which describe his doomed mission to reach the South Pole in 1912. With his team dying around him, he knew he stood no chance too:
“To my widow, We are in a very tight corner and I have doubts of pulling through.
“Quite the worst aspect of this situation is the thought that I shall not see you again.
Capt Scott tells his wife to “cherish no sentimental rubbish about remarriage” and to remarry “when the right man comes to help you in life”.
But the most poignant moment in the letter comes in the final entry.
“Since writing the above we have got to within 11 miles of our depot with one hot meal and two days cold food and we should have got through but have been held for four days by a frightful storm .
“I think the best chance has gone. We have decided not to kill ourselves but to fight it to the last for that depot but in the fighting there is a painless end so don’t worry.”
I wonder how many times Capt Scott’s widow Kathleen cried her eyes out over that letter, which portrayed his selflessness and declaration of love for her.
Love letters give us such a fascinating insight into the lives of our historical legendary figures. How many love letters written today will be saved for posterity? Will our future historical archives be depleted of these wonderful, descriptive tender emotions? Does anyone still write them by hand in the old fashioned way? Or are they all done by the click of a mouse or in non-sensical txt codes?
I am fortunate enough to live close to Cambridge and will make a point of reading the letter in full when I visit the Scott Polar Research Institute to attend this unmissable debate on Climate Change next month.
Very moving Ellee. I actually went into one of Scott’s huts (the “Discovery Expedition”, 1901, I think) at Hut Point when I worked down there in the Ross Dependency in the 70s.
2006 was the first year for as long as I can remember that I never got a valentine card. When I was a lecturer I used to get lots 🙂
How moving.
I recommend the letters of Winston and Clementine Churchill – a beautiful portrait of a marriage.
It’s so unusual to get a handwritten letter today, let alone a love letter. I do remember researching the poet Rupert Brooke once and was able to read his letters at the Cambridge Univesity Library. It felt so wonderful to be able to hold them, to know they had once been held by him. Our archives is going to be based on DVD collections in the near future, it just won’t be the same.
Don’t know.. never got one. ( well I did once, but it was rubbish)..
I did try to write by hand recently… Cripes! talk about a pain… :o)