1st August 1819, Lord Byron in Venice describes an incident with his mistress, Margarita Cogni:
“Going to the Lido with my gondoliers, we were overtaken by a heavy squall, and the gondola put in peril, hats blown away, boat filling, oar lost, tumbling sea, thunder, rain in torrents, and wind unceasing. On our return... I found her on the steps of the Mocenigo Palace on the Grand Canal, with her great black eyes flashing through her tears, and the long dark hair which was streaming, drenched with rain, over her brows. She was perfectly exposed to the storm; and the wind blowing her dress about her thin figure, and the lightning flashing round her, made her look like Medea alighted from her chariot, or the Sibyl of the tempest that was rolling around her… Her joy at seeing me again was moderately mixed with ferocity, and gave me the idea of a tigress over her recovered cubs.”
Queen Victoria, aged 20, writes in her journal of the visit to Windsor of her cousins, Ernest and Albert, on 10th October 1839:
“Albert really is quite charming, and so excessively handsome, such beautiful blue eyes, an exquisite nose, and such a pretty mouth, with delicate moustachios, and slight but very slight whiskers; a beautiful figure, broad in the shoulders and a fine waist. My heart is quite going.”
Just five days later, she writes: “I sent for Albert; he came to the Closet where I was alone, and after a few minutes I said to him, that I thought he must be aware why I wished them to come here—and that it would make me too happy if he would consent to what I wished (to marry me); we embraced each other over and over again, and he was so kind, so affectionate; oh! to feel I was, and am, loved by such an Angel as Albert, was too great delight to describe! he is perfection; perfection in every way—in beauty—in everything!... I really felt it was the happiest brightest moment in my life, which made up for all that I had suffered and endured. Oh! how I adore and love him, I cannot say!! how I will strive to make him feel as little as possible the great sacrifice he has made; I told him it was a great sacrifice—which he wouldn’t allow... I then told him to fetch Ernest, which he did, and who congratulated us both and seemed very happy. I feel the happiest of human beings. Albert went in and talked to Lehzen; and Ernest then said to me how perfect his brother was. Albert returned, and we talked so comfortably and happily together, till past 1, when I sent them off, giving dearest dear Albert a kiss.”
On 11th July 1938, Julia Strachey, author, writes in her diary:
“My young man has given me the chuck—Philip [Toynbee]. We met again after three months’ absence. While he was drinking his glass of sherry he said he was engaged to be married. ‘O really,’ say I. ‘But I do congratulate you! How lovely!’ and so on and on. It all seemed a bit sudden to me at the time. Only a week or two before he had been writing to me in a state of despair because I hadn’t written to him. Anyway the actual shock of trying to adapt myself so suddenly proved too much for me, and I found myself compelled after dinner to ask him to go away again.”
Joan Wyndham, an 18-year-old art student in London, writes in her diary in February 1940:
“Yesterday had lunch with Rupert’s artist friend Ralph... Ralph’s mistress cooked a ghastly meal, fish-head soup with ground maize in it, and we ladled it out with a tin mug and ate on the scrubbed kitchen table. Ralph is a Marxist, and is very shocked by my Catholicism... “
Afterwards we [Rupert and I] strolled back to my place, and lay down on the bed and made love. For the first time it seemed to me that Rupert realised I was actually there, that he was aware of me as a person and was making love to me knowingly, with his mind as well as his body. We’re all right now, I thought, we’ve made contact, we’re safe. We’ve bridged the gulf and fixed the cable.
“He was looking down at me broodingly, as if he really saw me, and there was tenderness in his hands tracing the lines of my face and in his eyes that looked into mine quietly, not laughing any more. I thought that perhaps after all he really loved me in spite of pretending to have no heart.”
The novelist Christopher Isherwood, living in Santa Monica, California, in February 1960, writes in his diary about his lover Don Bachardy:
“We are coming to the end of what has been a really happy day—our seventh anniversary. Don has been painting the inside of the windows in my study and I have been writing away at ‘Ambrose’ [a section of his novel Down There on a Visit]. I’m now about a dozen pages from the end. But many problems are still to be solved. “What shall I write about Don, after seven years? Only this—and I’ve written it often before—he has mattered and does matter more than any of the others. Because he imposes himself more, demands more, cares more—about everything he does and encounters. He is so desperately alive.”
“Going to the Lido with my gondoliers, we were overtaken by a heavy squall, and the gondola put in peril, hats blown away, boat filling, oar lost, tumbling sea, thunder, rain in torrents, and wind unceasing. On our return... I found her on the steps of the Mocenigo Palace on the Grand Canal, with her great black eyes flashing through her tears, and the long dark hair which was streaming, drenched with rain, over her brows. She was perfectly exposed to the storm; and the wind blowing her dress about her thin figure, and the lightning flashing round her, made her look like Medea alighted from her chariot, or the Sibyl of the tempest that was rolling around her… Her joy at seeing me again was moderately mixed with ferocity, and gave me the idea of a tigress over her recovered cubs.”
Queen Victoria, aged 20, writes in her journal of the visit to Windsor of her cousins, Ernest and Albert, on 10th October 1839:
“Albert really is quite charming, and so excessively handsome, such beautiful blue eyes, an exquisite nose, and such a pretty mouth, with delicate moustachios, and slight but very slight whiskers; a beautiful figure, broad in the shoulders and a fine waist. My heart is quite going.”
Just five days later, she writes: “I sent for Albert; he came to the Closet where I was alone, and after a few minutes I said to him, that I thought he must be aware why I wished them to come here—and that it would make me too happy if he would consent to what I wished (to marry me); we embraced each other over and over again, and he was so kind, so affectionate; oh! to feel I was, and am, loved by such an Angel as Albert, was too great delight to describe! he is perfection; perfection in every way—in beauty—in everything!... I really felt it was the happiest brightest moment in my life, which made up for all that I had suffered and endured. Oh! how I adore and love him, I cannot say!! how I will strive to make him feel as little as possible the great sacrifice he has made; I told him it was a great sacrifice—which he wouldn’t allow... I then told him to fetch Ernest, which he did, and who congratulated us both and seemed very happy. I feel the happiest of human beings. Albert went in and talked to Lehzen; and Ernest then said to me how perfect his brother was. Albert returned, and we talked so comfortably and happily together, till past 1, when I sent them off, giving dearest dear Albert a kiss.”
On 11th July 1938, Julia Strachey, author, writes in her diary:
“My young man has given me the chuck—Philip [Toynbee]. We met again after three months’ absence. While he was drinking his glass of sherry he said he was engaged to be married. ‘O really,’ say I. ‘But I do congratulate you! How lovely!’ and so on and on. It all seemed a bit sudden to me at the time. Only a week or two before he had been writing to me in a state of despair because I hadn’t written to him. Anyway the actual shock of trying to adapt myself so suddenly proved too much for me, and I found myself compelled after dinner to ask him to go away again.”
Joan Wyndham, an 18-year-old art student in London, writes in her diary in February 1940:
“Yesterday had lunch with Rupert’s artist friend Ralph... Ralph’s mistress cooked a ghastly meal, fish-head soup with ground maize in it, and we ladled it out with a tin mug and ate on the scrubbed kitchen table. Ralph is a Marxist, and is very shocked by my Catholicism... “
Afterwards we [Rupert and I] strolled back to my place, and lay down on the bed and made love. For the first time it seemed to me that Rupert realised I was actually there, that he was aware of me as a person and was making love to me knowingly, with his mind as well as his body. We’re all right now, I thought, we’ve made contact, we’re safe. We’ve bridged the gulf and fixed the cable.
“He was looking down at me broodingly, as if he really saw me, and there was tenderness in his hands tracing the lines of my face and in his eyes that looked into mine quietly, not laughing any more. I thought that perhaps after all he really loved me in spite of pretending to have no heart.”
The novelist Christopher Isherwood, living in Santa Monica, California, in February 1960, writes in his diary about his lover Don Bachardy:
“We are coming to the end of what has been a really happy day—our seventh anniversary. Don has been painting the inside of the windows in my study and I have been writing away at ‘Ambrose’ [a section of his novel Down There on a Visit]. I’m now about a dozen pages from the end. But many problems are still to be solved. “What shall I write about Don, after seven years? Only this—and I’ve written it often before—he has mattered and does matter more than any of the others. Because he imposes himself more, demands more, cares more—about everything he does and encounters. He is so desperately alive.”
