 Hello, and welcome to the British Library's online Valentine's extravaganza, the Library of Love. I'm your host, Dr. Fanredale, and tonight with me, we have two amazing curators from the library, the wonderful Alexander Locke, curator of modern archives and manuscripts, and the amazing Andrea Clarke, lead curator of the British Library's medieval and early modern manuscript collection. Thank you both so much for being with us tonight. I cannot wait to see what you've got for us. Now, I also want to wish a happy Lunar New Year to everyone who's celebrating tonight, and before we get started, I have a little bit of housekeeping for us. Now above you, you should see a button if you want to donate the library or provide any feedback. And below, there should be an amazing button for asking us all questions. I'm really excited for this. We'll be reading them out and doing a Q&A at the end, so fingers crossed we get some great Qs in. Now, before we get started any further, I want to make sure we can set the scene. Tonight, we're going to be talking about John Dunne, an amazing poet, and we're also going to be looking at some wonderful love letters that the library holds in its collection. If you want to support this work and you want to support these amazing artifacts, remember to hit that donate button. So with that housekeeping taken care of, let's get underway. Alex, I have so many questions to ask you, but let's get started. Who is John Dunne and why does he matter? Okay, well, I mean, for many, for me, certainly John Dunne is one of the greatest poets in the English language. He's one of the greatest Renaissance writers in the English canon, certainly. I mean, he's one of the greatest poets I suppose around metaphysical poets and the ideas that are contained within his poetry are really exciting around those sort of ideas. But I suppose so, John Dunne is an early modern writer. He's born in 1572. He's a very exciting figure. He serves in the Azores and places he studies at Lincoln's Inn, but he writes his great poems at the time he's there. He, very interestingly for us, he marries a lady called Anne Moore, which I suppose is very, very romantic in terms of the story. It's sort of the basis of his downfall, I suppose, in terms of his own. But he, and that, you know, that does play out in a lot of the poetry that we're going to be looking at today. But eventually, obviously, he becomes an Anglican priest and Dean of St. Paul's and follows a religious career. So he sees a man of, I suppose, of two parts in his earlier life. He's someone who's a bit of a card, a bit of a man about town, a bit of a reckless youth. Jack Dunne, as he describes himself, who later turns to, again, what he describes himself, Dr. Dunne of his elder, elder days. And I suppose a lot of the love poetry that we're going to be looking at today is from those younger, younger years more, I guess, more wild, reckless days. And I think poetry, but it's wiser than that as well. So this is someone who's born in the reign of Elizabeth I, this kind of incredible Tudor period, a really exciting time. And his poetry that's been left to us, we feel very passionately about, you know, this is an English poet who really matters to us. Why is he so important to the library? Is it this new acquisition that you've made, that you've made? Okay, yeah. So earlier, well, it was late in last year, we, the British Library announced the recent acquisition of what we call the Melford Hall John Dunne manuscript. So this is a really exciting acquisition. It's one of the largest manuscript collections, scribal copies of the poems of John Dunne, that, you know, that was in private hands. And prior to that, it was unknown to scholarship. So it was recently discovered by Sotheby's, by Sotheby's expert man called Gabriel Heaton, who discovered this manuscript, they brought it to sale and the library managed to acquire it. And it's, yeah, it's very, very exciting. The library's John Dunne manuscript collection is pretty strong. So it's a great place to be, but also we've acquired it that, you know, and now people can study it for, you know, hopefully in perpetuity. But it was unknown to scholarship. So it was very exciting. I think we've got an image of that to show everyone, haven't we, the Melford manuscript? I think so, yeah. So there it is. Yes, you can see the beautiful 17th century binding. And it has, it is one of the biggest collections of scribal copies of Dunne's poetry to come onto the market in recent years. It's probably the last copy of his poetry in private hands, which the British Library has now acquired. And it's, you know, it's a very significant manuscript, as I say, unknown to scholarship beforehand. So it's very exciting to see what this manuscript can begin to tell us or help us understand about Dunne's poetry going forward, Dunne's analysis of Dunne's work and more broadly manuscript scribal culture in the early modern period. So how old is this manuscript? So this is thought to be near contemporary with Dunne. So it probably dates from the about 1625 to maybe mid 1630s. It's hard to say. John Dunne died in 1631, sorry. So it's just, it's around the time of his death, maybe just after. So it's, it's very exciting to have something that's so close, so contemporary with him, because hopefully then we can start to understand, you know, it might be close a relationship with him as the writer, because of the tradition in which these manuscripts are created. Can you tell me a little about that tradition? Because you've said the word scribal culture a little and I certainly, before you and I started talking, had no idea what that meant. Can you explain it for us? Yeah, so very famously John Dunne eschewed printing, well printing of his poetry in his lifetime. He did print sermons and other prose works, but famously he eschewed printing, especially of poetry. So a lot of the way he published, as we might term it, the way he publishes poetry was to disseminate it amongst the coterie of readers, amongst a close circle of readers in manuscript form who would then copy it themselves and share it with other readers. But it's a way of controlling who's reading it. Sadly, only one autographed English poem survives in his own hands, so we have very limited in seeing the manuscripts drawn by Dunne, written by Dunne. So the way we understand what his poetic intentions are, are through these manuscripts, through these scribal copies of which there are numbers, but they do vary in form and content and that does affect the way we read the poems and the way the poems are translated to us. But that's the form in which this poetry is transmitted and that's why this manuscript, the Melford Hall manuscript, is so exciting to find because it's a new way of looking at that poetry. We have an amazing example called The Sun Is Rising and I think it's time to play that for you right now. The Sun Rising by John Dunne. Busy old fool, unruly sun, why dost thou thus through windows and through curtains call on us? Must thy motions lovers seasons run? Saucy pedantic rich, go chide late schoolboys and sour apprentices, go tell court huntsmen that the king will ride, call country ants to harvest officers, love all alike, no season knows nor climb, nor hours, days, months, which are the rags of time. Thy beams so reverent and strong, why shouldst thou think? I could eclipse and cloud them with a wink, but that I would not lose her sight so long. If her eyes have not blinded thine, look, and tomorrow late tell me whether both the indias of spice and mine be where thou left them or lie here with me. Ask for those kings whom thou sourced yesterday and thou shalt hear all here in one bed lay. She's all states and all princes I, nothing else is. Princes do but play us. Compared to this all honours mimic, all wealth alchemy, thou sun art half as happy as we, in that the world's contracted thus. Thine age asks ease, and since thy duties be to warm the world, that's done in warming us. Shine here to us, and thou art everywhere. This bed thy centre is, these walls thy sphere. Oh, what a glorious poem to start with. I love that. It's really beautiful ideas of love and how important it is to us and to that shared feeling of bonding and joy. When do we know? Do we have a date for this poem for the sun is rising? That's a very good point because of the way that the poetry was transmitted by a manuscript by scribal copies. It's very difficult to date some of them. This one is difficult, but it has been suggested that it relates to the years that John Dunn was living with his wife in Pireford, and it's probably quite closely related to around the time that he sort of loses favour with his patron, Thomas Edgerton. And the whole theme of that poem is about the importance of love, about being withdrawn from society, how the importance of your love is all important. It's almost divine, so transcends all else. I didn't explain it so well at the beginning, but he was patronised. He had a very good place, very close to court, to government with Thomas Edgerton. Thomas Edgerton's niece was a lady called Anne Moore, and Dunn met Anne. She was a teenager, and they married secretly. And this caused a scandal with her father, George Moore, who was Edgerton's uncle, and he was dismissed from Edgerton's service, and Moore wouldn't support them. So he sort of fell very seriously from grace as a great line, John Dunn and Dunn, and Dunn. So he kind of, maybe he didn't mean to, but he inadvertently gave everything up for love, for the love of his wife. And he did struggle for many years trying to get back the forms of patronage. But this poem is written around that time and suggests that we may have lost everything, but love is all-encompassing. Love is something that we should embrace and step, happy to withdraw from society with. So he's saying here that love is a kind of divinity, is a kind of sacrament to some extent, that it's more powerful than nature, that these lovers are the centre of the universe. So at the time, obviously, there's discussions about Copernicus and the heliocentric system of the universe, challenges with that with the church. But he's saying all that doesn't matter, because we are the centre of the universe. The sun goes round us. We are more important than the sun. I can eclipse the sun if I didn't want to not look at my partner so long. So it's a very charged, powerful, beautiful love poem that also draws on all these ideas of metaphysics. So it transcends itself. It's a beautiful love poem, but it transcends that love to say more about the divine aspects of love, the importance of love to nature. I mean, we would consider them that had to be sort of anachronistic, but it's very contemporary ideas of love, that love is so important. But beyond that, there's a real power, I think, in that he's relating it with kind of with divine love, that there's this idea in the title Sun Rising. So there's suggestions of sort of sexual awakening. What have the lovers done? It is the morning, so the lovers have woken up. So presumably, there's some sort of sexual relationship here. But he's saying that he's very radical, and you see this throughout his poetry, that sexual love and love is not a sin the way that the church is teaching it, that actually it is a form of, it is a divine thing. It is a very powerful feeling that should be embraced. So I think there's all these ideas in it. The other thing I should say, it's a type of obeyed, which comes from a courtly tradition, a Troubadour tradition of singing a morning love song, often sort of laments of leaving your lover in the morning. And it contrasts with this idea of the serenade, the song of the evening. So it's a beautiful work, absolutely beautiful. Yes, it is absolutely amazing. And I think this idea of withdrawing from society or a forced withdrawal from society and managing to deal with that because you have a love that supports and sustain you to get through it is one everyone really will understand, especially at the moment. And I love what you pointed out in Don's poetry, this kind of incredible love, passion, eroticism and excitement that comes from his words, because we really do struggle to understand that these are part of our historic past, that people who came before us weren't repressed, weren't prudish, but embraced sexuality and sensuality and eroticism with every fiber of their being. What you've told us about his relationship with his wife and this terrible scandal of them falling in love, did they ever recover? Were they received in society again? I mean, he was still from a wealthy family. They still had very strong connections. So he had strong connections from being at Oxford, being at Lincoln's Inn. They still had family connections, but he never quite attained the secular, the court places that he was often trying to get, because he was often, you know, thought of being sort of improved and a scandalous figure. And some extent some of his poetry is like that. By the time I think he recognizes that the place for him is within the church, so he becomes, he is ordained in 1615. By the time that happens and accepts that the place for him is within the church, as you know, King James is often sort of, and others are pointing in that direction. Once he accepts that and takes on that role, then yes, he does do much, much better. But it does take a number of years for them to overcome it, overcome this scandal, because it's, you know, it's taking advantage of your position and of your, you know, your patrons. The interest poems made him appear to be somewhat imprudent. Is that because of their eroticism and and passionate nature? Yes, I mean, particularly some of the earlier poems. So that a lot of the sort of erotic verse, again, it's different, there's some of the materials to date, but you can see that they're coming from this tradition that is evolving, well, has evolved within the ins of court, where it's, you know, it's lots of men studying together, lots of ribble, you know, they're sort of young men who can, you know, share these poems with each other, these, these dirty rhymes, these, these conceits. But, you know, I don't, you know, dumb is not childish in any way. His poetry is far more mature than that. But there's an element of this, this, you know, this eroticism in there that is perhaps not so, it's not sort of the dumb, the dumb thing if you're Dean of St Paul's really. And interestingly, later in life, his wife and marriage man called Edward Allen, who is a well known actor and theater owner, he owns, he runs the, the, the bear pits in Suffolk and things ready. John Dunn's daughter marries him and Dunn falls out with Allen over money in 1625, and Allen brings it up, you know, your earlier days. This is a sort of behavior that we would expect of you from your earlier days. And even, as I said earlier, Dunn does describe himself, you know, younger self as Jack Dunn, not Dr. Dunn of St Paul's. So I don't know if you'd go so far as a stigma, but it is a difficult thing. Because once you've released your manuscripts into the public realm, there's very little control you have. And Dunn does, does find that particularly just before he takes orders, you know, he becomes ordained. Well, we have one of those early, probably, most probably early poems of Dunn Next. And it is my favorite poem of his. It's called The Flee. And I think in this, please correct me if I'm wrong, but we see Dunn as the seducer. This is definitely a poem that is to seduce someone into an intimate relationship. The Flee by John Dunn. Mark but this flee, and mark in this, how little that which thou denies me is. It sucked me first, and now sucks thee, and in this flee our two bloods mingled be. Thou knowest that this cannot be said a sin, nor shame, nor loss of maiden head. Yet this enjoys before it woo, and pampered swells with one blood made of two. And this, alas, is more than we would do. Oh, stay, three lives in one flee spare, where we almost, nay more than, married are. This flee is you and I. And this our marriage bed and marriage temple is, though parents grudge and you were met, and cloistered in these living walls of jet. Though use make you apt to kill me, let not to that self-murder added be, and sacrilege, three sins in killing three. Cruel and sudden hast thou since purpled thy nail in blood of innocence. Wherein could this flee guilty be, except in that drop which it sucked from thee? Yet thou triumphest, and sayest that thou findest not thyself, nor me, the weaker now. Tis true, then learn how false fears be. Just so much honour, when thou yieldest to me, will waste, as this flee's death took life from thee. Now, Alex, that's an incredibly sexy poem. What is it in aid of? What does Dunne want from the person who would read this? As you say, it's a very sexy poem, but it also is, as with all of Dunne's poetry, it's more than it necessarily seemed at the first sight. So it's very sexy, but it's also very clever. So on the face of it, you've got a man trying to get a lady into bed. But it's a little bit more than that. I mean, you were saying how do we date it? Could it be from his earlier period? And most people, most theorists would suggest yes, perhaps it is because of this sort of filthy undertones. But others have argued, perhaps it does relate to this period of just having married his wife, where there's, again, it's sort of playing on the ideas of marriage here, and illicit marriage, clandestine marriage. And what is the position or the importance of marriage within a relationship within society more broadly? So he's messing around with those sort of ideas as well. The number three is very apparent in this as well. It's three verses. It has each verse made up of three couplets with a triplet at the end. So there's threes repeated all the time. So this, I suppose, relates to sort of the Ciceroanian tradition of threes in oratory and argumentations, making a convincing argument. He's also sort of creating a discussion around sort of the Holy Trinity, the sacrament of marriage, and another religious idea. So they're all sort of summed up in this number three. There's also isn't a great interest and love of when he's talking about the fact that the flea bites both of them and then their bloods are intermingled. Isn't this Dunsway kind of saying, we know it's not so bad if we have sex now, because our bodily fluids have already intermingled in the body of this flea. So it's not a sin. It's all fine. Don't worry about it. Exactly. And that's the third third. So all three are mixed within this flea. And yet the symbol of the flea was widely used as a sort of metaphor for sex. It was developed with Ovid in his Amors. And Ovid comes out as an influence within a lot of Duns poetry. So he's questioning all these ideas about marriage, about sex, and ultimately, he's, again, like with in Sun Rising, there's this sort of this divinity, this questions about, you know, is sex actually a sin? There's one, the lines in it, you know, things that roughly, things that frighten us, we, you know, aren't necessarily things to be feared. So these ideas about sin in marriage and sin in sex isn't actually something to be feared. So there's all those arguments being made in it as well. So he's sort of transcending the poem itself that is not just about, you know, sex and getting a woman into bed. He's asking wider questions about the nature of marriage, about, you know, the naturalness of love and sex, and also possibly, you know, the divinity within sex. And this is really radical in a lot of his poetry is that he's, he's, you know, pushing against the church that actually sex is not a sin and extra marital sex is not a sin. So, but again, is this someone showing off at the ends of court amongst his mates or is this, you know, someone who's actually having a wider thought on the nature of marriage, having been married, their debates for, you know, literary scholars? I think this is definitely a pure expression of the joys of love and intimacy that go hand in hand. And it's one we definitely see reflected later on in the centuries, the Victorians, of course, absolutely believed passionately that to have intimate pleasure, you had to be in love. And it was crucial to share both of those things. I love the fact that we see those things in done. And after such a beautiful neurotic poem, I think it's only fair that we now bring in our second guest, the fantastic Andrea Clark. Andrea, you are a lead curator of medieval and early modern manuscripts at the British Library, which sounds like an amazing job. What's a working day for you? Like, what do you have to deal with? What do you get to see on a daily basis? Oh, gosh, a working day. I don't think there is a typical working day. Really, really varied, which is one of the lovely things about working at the British Library. I actually have a particular focus on 16th century manuscripts. So that's that's what I'm actually curating an exhibition about is the first in Mary Queen of Scots at the moment, which I hope will open this autumn. So that's what I'm spending most of my time doing at the moment. But yeah, really, really varied from looking after the collections to promoting the collections to trying to grow the collections and tell stories about the collections. And of course, part of your job was making this wonderful anthology of love letters. I think we've got a slide of this brilliant book that you've that you've managed to put together of these wonderful love letters that come from the British Library. Can you tell me a little bit about this? Yes, so I'm also lucky enough sometimes to be able to metaphorically sort of wander through other parts of the library's unique and vast collections and and do things like write a book about love letters. So it's really it's really a lovely journey through some of the library's most intimate, charming and passionate outpourings. I selected items that I enjoyed reading that amuse me, that move me. I wanted to try and cover the the breadth and the depth of the collection. So there are items from pre medieval times through to modern times, items written by great historical and literary figures, others, individuals who are less well known and some of them are lost to history. And it covers all spectrums of love really from the joy of falling in love to the pain and grief of unrequited and lost love. And isn't there one letter in this collection that holds a very special place in your heart because it starts from your earliest journeys at the library? Yes, so one of my favourite letters in the book and probably the inspiration for the book really is a letter written by somebody called Gordon Bottomley who's a little known, it's a great name, a little known Yorkshire poet and playwright who was active at the end of the 20th century, so the end of the 19th century, early 20th century. Now, when I first joined the library, one of the things that I was asked to do was to catalogue his archive, his collection, which is vast. He spent quite a lot of his life bedridden, he was incapacitated by ill health for much of his adult life and he used that time to write to leading composers, artists, theatre directors, writers, so there are about 300 files, folders of his correspondence, his diaries, another ephemera, but his archive also contains about 500 letters that he wrote to the artist Emily Burton from 1895 through their friendship, their engagement until they married in 1905, but all of these letters were sealed at some point, he had resealed them in envelopes before his death in 1948 and there's a particular letter which, it just, it really touched me when I read it, I had to obviously in order to catalogue the letters, I had to open them and I was acutely aware that I was the first person to read these letters in at least 50 years, and yes, I think we have a recording of this particular letter, so perhaps we should listen to that and then I can tell you a little bit more about it. Ever since I have known you, I have had a thing in my heart to say to you, and in April last I determined to say it some day. For a long time I thought it was my duty to leave this thing unsaid, so I did my duty and it made me cross and irritable and bad-tempered to everyone and I fear unkind even to you. Oh, how I hope that I'm not estranging you, even when I tell you that I love you wholly, that as long as I have known you, you have been to me half angel and half bird and all a wonder and a wild desire, that your influence alone can awaken what is best in me, that if I had not been penniless and helpless and dependent upon my parents, I should long ago have asked you to marry me. That poem, Green Coif, is as much about you as if it had your name for its title, and is and always was as much addressed to you as this letter is. But at one time I thought you were likely to marry a Liverpool artist friend, a man of a finer and rarer spirit than I am, a man who would give you the life atmosphere you need, and I loved you well enough to know how far more excellent this was than anything I could give you. However, I have since thought that if you love him, my speaking cannot draw you away from him, and that if your heart turns to me more than to other men, as my heart turns to you and to know other women, then my keeping silent will not make you love him. But how uncouthly nay barbarically I have shown my love for you, ah, you think me are better and an abler man than I am, my one good deed has been to recognise and reverence a great-hearted, crystal-soled woman, until she has become my true inspiration, this letter is the best poem I shall ever write in all my life. I love you. I do not know how to say anything else. If you care for me in this way, you will tell me, won't you? But if this is all a mistake, if you can be no more to me than the friend you have always been, I beseech you to be never less than that, only burn this letter, for then you will not want it. And just say softly to yourself sometimes, I have a friend across the sea, I like him that he loves me, and come to me on your own terms, for I cannot do without you. True, you will be conscious of my love, but let that assure you I shall never do anything distasteful to you. At any rate, once in eternity, I feel blessed and made glorious, having written myself down your lover, Gordon Bottomley. People don't tend to think of Victorians as incredibly erotic and romantic, but they were. What was it like unpacking and reading that letter probably for the first time since it was read by the person it was meant for? Well, the first thing, when I took the letter out of the envelope, I think we saw a very quick glimpse of it at the end there, I saw that Gordon Bottomley after folding the letter before he placed it in the envelope, he'd written more private than the unshaped wish at the centre of your heart, so I sort of saw the first words that Emily would have seen on taking the letter out of the envelope, and then of course I read the letter and it just blew me away by its beauty really, it's so exquisitely written, it's so really honourable and heart-akingly honest, I think that's what I loved about it, and it marked the beginning of a true love story. They married, they were married for 42 years, and they remained inseparable for the rest of their lives, people spoke of the very profound bond between them, and yes, just days after Emily died in 1947, I think it was, Gordon wrote to a friend and he said, Emily is always, and that he was always and in all places with Emily, and so it's really, it's a beautiful story. It's incredibly moving, and I think there's such an honour to conserving these letters because they are from ordinary in every day lives, and yet they tell us so much about the hopes and dreams of the people of the past, how do you see love letters? Do you think there's something that if everyone who has a shoebox of love letters under their bed, should they make sure those love letters go to a library or go to an archive when they no longer want them? Well I think they tell us a really important part of a person's story, history, and we are a research library, at the National Research Library, and so we want to cover all aspects of history, social history, and I think people love to, ultimately people love stories, love finding out things about people, it's the personal interest, and so I think they're really, yeah, they tell us something really important and interesting about people. The library doesn't just have letters from ordinary people, does it? It also holds one of the most amazing examples of a historical love affair that shapes the country we live in, and that's Anne Malune and Henry VIII's Book of Hours. Can you tell me a little bit about this, and I believe we have a slide as well to show everyone. Yes, that's right. So we are looking now at a Book of Hours or a prayer book, and it was made in around 1500 and intended for private devotion. Books of Hours were medieval bestsellers, and large numbers of them have survived, but this one is incredibly special because it belonged to Ambulin, and it contains intimate love messages that she wrote, and Henry VIII wrote in it, that they wrote to each other. So they used this book really to kind of pass messages to one another, just by scribbling on these pictures. Did they choose pictures specifically? Is it the images that also have an importance, or were they just picked at random, do you think? No, no, very intentional. So Henry chose to write his book to Anne beneath an image of the man of Soros, that's a devotional image of Christ on the cross. So he was portraying himself as the lovesick king, really. He wrote in French, and he wrote, if you remember my love in your prayers as strongly as I adore you, I shall scarcely be forgotten, for I am yours, Henry Rex, forever. Wow. Yeah, and then Anne responded with a rhyming couplet in English, and she wrote, be daily proof you shall me find, to be to you both loving and kind. And she wrote her message beneath an image of the Annunciation, with the Archangel Gabriel telling the Virgin Mary that she would bear him a son. So by association, she's telling Henry that she will succeed where his first queen, Catherine Varrican has failed, and she will give him the son that he desperately wanted. So although these messages obviously hold the same ideas of divine love and devotion that we see in John Donne's poetry, it's also a very political message as well, isn't it? It's very dangerous kind of determining of this will change the your future and the future of our country. Yeah, I think so. I mean, you can imagine them. I mean, I sort of imagine maybe Henry the Eighth going into Ambulin's bedchamber late one evening and them sitting together and passing the prayer book, very knowingly between each other and writing these messages in it. And of course, with hindsight, what we know is that we are we're looking at some of the earliest and most evocative pieces of evidence for the beginning of their love affair. But not only that, we're looking at a moment, you know, the beginning of the process that caused huge religious upheaval and changed the course of history. Absolutely incredible. And I love the thought, you know, we think of this love affair as holding such historical significance. And to think that in many ways it boils down to two people sitting passing a prayer book back and forth, almost as if they could be caught and have their have their hands slapped for being so naughty. So I really think this is such a powerful example of how love has shaped destiny in many ways. Do you think, is this one of an example of an object by a woman of this period? Is it something that you see commonly across the archive that you see a lot of love letters from women or is it is it mostly men? I haven't counted them, but I think it's fair to say there are probably more letters by men in my book than women, although not not not too many. In fact, the first love letter in the book is actually written by a woman. It was written in in 168 BC by a lady called Isaias and she was writing to her husband, Hepastian. He was a soldier in the Egyptian army and she's writing a very, very normal letter to him. She's telling him about the hardships that she's suffered since he's been away and she's entreating him to return home. It's incredible. It's written on papyrus and you know, it's a remarkable survival. Well, in your book it's not only this but also the first love letter written in English, which was also by a woman. So we have incredible authorship by women that really seems to push the idea of love letters through the centuries. Yeah, we, sorry, carry on. I was just going to say we have we have the it's the it's the oldest surviving Valentine in the English language and it was written by a lady called Marjorie Bruce writing to her. She addresses him as her right well beloved Valentine, a gentleman called John Paston. And yeah, it's a it's a letter. It's a it's a remarkable survival because very few personal letters survive from the medieval period and even fewer written by by women. And yeah, it's a letter in which she she writes to him. She tells him of her the depth of her feelings for him. She says, my heart bids me evermore to love you truly over all earthly thing. But she's also expressing her sorrow and concern about a dispute that's going on over her dowry. And I think we have that letter to hear and see now. Yes. Valentine's Day Love Letter by Marjorie Bruce to her fiance, John Paston. February 1477. Unto my right well beloved Valentine, John Paston, Squire, be this bill delivered. Right reverent and worshipful and my right well beloved Valentine, I recommend me unto you full heartedly, desiring to hear of your welfare, which I beseech Almighty God long for to preserve unto his pleasure and your heart's desire. And if it pleases you to hear of my welfare, I am not in good health of body, nor of heart, nor shall I be till I hear from you. For there knows no creature what pain that I endure, and even on the pain of death I would reveal no more. And my lady, my mother, hath laboured the matter to my father full diligently, but she can no more get than you already know of, for which God knoweth I am full sorry. But if you love me, as I trust verily that you do, you will not leave me therefore. For even if you had not half the livelihood that you have, for to do the greatest labour that any woman alive might, I would not forsake you. And if you command me to keep me true wherever I go, indeed I will do all my might, you to love, and never anyone else. And if my friends say that I do amiss, they shall not stop me from doing so. My heart me bids ever more to love you truly over all earthly things, and if they be never so angry, I trust it shall be better in time coming. No more to you at this time, but the Holy Trinity have you in keeping, and I beseech you that this bill be not seen by any non-earthly creature, save only yourself. And this letter was written at Topcroft with full heavy heart. Be your own Marjorie Brues. Well that is so powerful, and also Taylor's old as time, so this is her lover who she loves deeply and her father won't allow her to marry, is that true? Yes, she's expressing her concern about a dispute that has arisen over the dowry, so even though she came from a distinguished family, her father was refusing to increase her dowry above £100, so she seems to have possibly taken maths into her own hand and writes to John Passon and says, don't leave me, I love you. What's really lovely about this letter I think is that it's so personal, you've got two young people who want to marry one another, and it just makes me think that actually even though the way in which we communicate, we communicate to each other has changed, human emotions haven't really changed at all, they remain the same now as then, and what's particularly lovely about this letter in the bottom right hand corner is that there's a final flourish has been added and I think we've got to close up of that if we can see that while you talk about it. Yes, Marjorie Bruce has added her initials in the shape of a heart, and of course that's exactly the sort of thing that many young girls would do today. I just think that's so romantic and I love the fact that we have this real expression of her heart and soul in this letter of please don't leave me, I love you so much, I'm desperate and that final illustration is as you say it's very teenage, very young, kind of in that first flush of deep love where you think anything is possible and you will literally carve a heart to show how much you love the person, the object of your desire. This kind of female ownership of love is one that we I think maybe we're coming to slightly later because whilst it exists in the archives people haven't really understood that women express their love, express their desires in the same way that men did. Do you think that's a modern day attitude that's finally understanding we see that these things existed in the past? I think we definitely see that in this letter, I'm just trying to think of other examples. I think you can certainly see that in other letters in the book, letter by Catherine Parr for example to Henry VIII, so there definitely are examples of it and I think it's really, I think it's great to see a young girl taking you know clearly frustrated and taking control of the situation, deciding that if the men can't sort it out she's going to. Well from one very determined young person to another equally determined in love person, Alex let's bring John back into this for a second. We've heard some amazing expressions of female identity and understanding of love, how did Duncie women through his poetry, did he give them that independent spirit? That's a really good question, it's a difficult one to answer because the approach to women found across Dun's oeuvre is complicated to say the least, contrasting to say the least. So in some regards you've got some quite deep misogyny in terms about the lady's constancy, about how they may not necessarily be reliable, reliable in love, reliant that they might change their attitudes to you, but or even that you know that women are just object you know sexual objects that sort of comes across a lot in the poetry as well but then on the other hand he does give some agency to women and does sort of glorify and celebrate them as well. I mean there's the great poem I suppose called Confined Love where he's writing from a female perspective about you know the ability for women that there should be an ability for women to you know to be free and you know sexually active and enjoying you know life as you know as free individuals. I mean that's very different to you know something like another poem we wrote about the community where he's called the community where he describes women as sort of kernels from a nut to be discarded once you know once consumed. So it's a very difficult you know it's very difficult to to see where he sits without and possibly it's perhaps it's about the audience he's writing for, he's writing for young men at Lincoln's Inn sort of showing that sort of manliness or or what it's quite difficult. I mean that's why Dunn is such an interesting poet is because he's he's never quite what he seems I suppose in all his poetry you know going from something like you know The Sun Rising that beautiful caring poem to some of his other ones like you know Go and Catch a Falling Star it's you know could be different people. Well I think before we talk any more about the next poem we have coming up we should let everyone hear it and then we can judge for ourselves how we think Dunn is portraying women in it. This is to his mistress going to bed. To his mistress going to bed by John Dunn. Come madam come all rest my powers defy until I labor I in labor lie the foe of times having the foe in sight is tired withstanding though he never fight off with that girdle like heaven's own glistering but a far fairer world encompassing. Unpin that spangled breastplate which you wear that the eyes of busy fools may be stopped there. Unlace yourself for that harmonious chime tells me from you that now it is bedtime off with that happy busk which I envy that still can be and still can stand so nigh your gown going off such beauty estate reveals as when from flowery meads the hills shadow steals off with that wiry coronet and show the hairy diadem which on you doth grow now off with those shoes and then safely tread in this love's hallowed temple this soft bed in such white robes heaven's angels used to be received by men. Thou angel brings with thee a heaven like Muhammad's paradise and though ill spirits walk in white we easily know by this these angels from an evil sprite though set our hairs but these are flesh upright. Licence my roving hands and let them go before behind between above below oh my America my newfound land my kingdom safely ast when with one man manned my mine of precious stones my empyree how blessed am I in this discovering thee to enter in these bonds is to be free then where my hand is set my seal shall be full nakedness all joys are due to thee as souls unbodied bodies unclothed must be to taste whole joys gems which you women use alike at lanterns balls cast in men's views that when a fool's eye lighteth on a gem his earthly soul may covet theirs not them like pictures or like books gay coverings made for laymen are all women thus arrayed themselves are mystic books which only we whom their imputed grace will dignify must see revealed then since that I may know as liberally as to a midwife show thyself cast all yay this white linen hence there is no penance due to innocence to teach thee I am naked first why then what needest thou have more covering than a man want to hit done for that last line at the same time because it's it's absolutely incredible how has this poem been seen well it's it I mean I think it does sum up those those tensions that we see about done and and and women and sexuality so in some ways it's about you know trying to convince a woman to come to bed with him it's it's playing on sort of petrarchan ideas about unrequited love and then mixing that with sort of avidian ideas of sort of erotic widths so he's messing about with different tropes there which were particularly popular in the period but you have this man who's trying to get a woman into bed to use this woman presumably for sexual pleasure but at the end he's actually the what you find out he's actually the one who's naked first he's really just a naked guy in bed sort of begging this woman to come to bed with him so how he recognized he's recognizing this power dynamic between men and women but then inverting it at the in the final lines as well so he's again there's all these sort of ideas about naturalism and in love it's it's a what what you term a blaze and so a type of poem which celebrates the beauty the physical beauty of women as a form of you know emblem um so it in some ways it's it's it's it's you know sexist it's seen as woman as an object of sexual but he's worshiping her for her beauty and she really is I suppose to some extent the one in control here because he's you know a naked man in bed sort of being annoying I suppose that it is I think it does sum up some of those those tensions in in Dunn and his attitude to women quite quite well I think it really does and it's also it shows both desperation desire need and determination all at the same time in this this desperate plea but very kind of it's going to you know but I'm here waiting come along dear which I think is is just absolutely wonderful now I need to remind you all that if you've got a question for either of my two amazing experts you need to stick it in the question box below because we are coming up to that time but one of the things that I think is incredibly important for us to have a look at is obviously a lot of the letters and the poems that we've talked about have been about heterosexual love but that's not the only love that is in the archives and that has been conserved for us from the past Andrea what's one of the most powerful letters that you have that shows different types of love so we for me I think one of the greatest love letters it's not a traditional love letter but one of the greatest love letters of history certainly that well for me that I've read is Oscar Wilde's day profundus letter that he wrote to Lord Alfred Douglas known as Bozie to his family and friends and it's it's beautiful it's so eloquent it's 50,000 words long which is why I say it's not a it's not a traditional love letter it's um it's a philosophical exploration of the end of their their love affair and it's it's it's just absolutely stunningly beautiful it's heartbreaking in many ways and we have an extract now that I I I think is just amazing HM prison reading dear Bozie after a long and fruitless waiting I have determined to write you myself as much for your sake as for mine as I would not like to think that I had passed through two long years of imprisonment without ever having received a single line from you or any news or message even except such as gave me pain our ill-fated and most lamentable friendship has ended in ruin and public infamy for me yet the memory of our ancient affection is often with me and the thought that loathing bitterness and contempt should forever take that place in my heart once held by love is very sad to me and you yourself will I think feel in your heart that to write to me as I lie in the loneliness of prison life is better than to publish my letters without my permission or to dedicate poems to me unasked though the world will know nothing of whatever words of grief or passion of remorse or indifference you may choose to send as your answer or your appeal I have no doubt that in this letter in which I have to write of your life and mine of the past and of the future of sweet things changed to bitterness and of bitter things that may be turned into joy there will be much that will wound your vanity to the quick if it proves so read the letter over and over again till it kills your vanity if you find in it something of which you feel that you are unjustly accused remember that one should be thankful that there is any fault of which one can be unjustly accused if there be in it one single passage that brings tears to your eyes weep as we weep in prison where the day no less than the night is set apart for tears it is the only thing that can save you your defect was not that you knew so little about life but that you knew so much the morning dawn of boyhood with its delicate bloom its clear pure light its joy of innocence and expectation you had left far behind with very swift and running feet you had passed from romance to realism the gutter and the things that live in it had begun to fascinate you that was the origin of the trouble in which you sought my aid at the end of a month when the june roses are in all their wanton opulence i will if i feel able arrange through robbie to meet you in some quiet foreign town like bruge whose gray houses and green canals and cool still ways had a charm for me years ago i hope that our meeting will be what a meeting between you and me should be after everything that has occurred in old days there was always a wide chasm between us the chasm of achieved art and acquired culture there is a still wider chasm between us now the chasm of sorrow but to humility there is nothing that is impossible and to love all things are easy what lies before me is my past i have got to make myself look on that with different eyes to make the world look on it with different eyes to make god look on it with different eyes this i cannot do by ignoring it or slighting it or praising it or denying it it is only to be done by fully accepting it as an inevitable part of the evolution of my life and character by bowing my head to everything that i have suffered how far am i away from the true temper of soul this letter in its changing uncertain moods its scorn and bitterness its aspirations and its failure to realize those aspirations shows you quite clearly but do not forget in what a terrible school i am sitting at my task and incomplete imperfect as i am yet from me you may have still much to gain you came to me to learn the pleasure of life and the pleasure of art perhaps i am chosen to teach you something much more wonderful the meaning of sorrow and its beauty your affectionate friend oscar wild and your that letter written in 1997 towards the end of his imprisonment is it something you think that wild ever expected would have been made public oh that's a very good question i i i don't i don't think he was writing it for posterity i think it was it was him um it was it was his account of of um a process of self-realization and um and him pouring out his heart and soul searching i think um um but i'm very glad that um that it has survived i i i find it very moving very touching and you know if um if i had to rescue my you know top five manuscripts in the bridge library in the event of that would definitely be one of them it is something that i i think is so important for us to have conserved and and so powerful that it's been it's that it is available for people to see because it tells us so much about love and pain and desperation and heartbreak at this time elix is done is does he connect to queer lives or is he heterosexual only no he he does and i suppose his most famous famous poem that does that is saffo and filanus where he's imagining being saffo and writing a love letter of of sort of unrequited not quite unrequited but a love letter missing his partner her her partner filanus so it's it's it's based on a sort of avidian tradition of of of sort of imagining a sort of erotic letters between imagined lovers so saffo and filanus were never were never together but it's drawing on a broader tradition so filanus is is a a greek name now for female companions and she apparently wrote you know a sex manual and was had a voracious um lesbian sexual appetite and so done is playing on this there are questions about um you know is this poem when was this poem written is it one of the sort of the linkin in this young man about town sort of dirty poems which potentially it could be or is some others have argued actually there's lots of hints at the use of the word more in it and done so is it actually a letter between him and his wife sort of pretending this kind of lesbian love so he talks about um you are my everything my more and you know feeling the what's about in it is done so there's hints at that in it as well so it's actually quite it's quite as with everything we've done it there's more to more to it than meets the eye so it is it is an extremely rude poem um uh really yeah it's I shouldn't say so much but it is extremely rude but it's uh exploring lesbian love it is the repeatedly the first poem of lesbian love in the english language um so it's quite quite remarkable for that I'm surprised because um two is two to his his mistress going to bed was not allowed to be published in the 1633 edition when Dunn's work was first published but this one was but I would personally think that Sappho Filane is actually much filthier a lady looking at herself in the mirror and touching herself thinking of her lover you know because you know they are women she's a woman looking at a woman and there's this sort of similarity in touch um it's it is a it's a good poem but it is yeah very rude well it sounds it sounds a lot as if when we start to look at the past we see that modern day attitudes and identities are always there and have always been part of us and I think that's one of the things that I certainly take from the amazing things that you've both shown us today is that love however it is expressed has always been needed to be expressed and to be recorded whether that's written down or printed and whether or not that was going to be shared by just one other person or with an entire audience and I'm really really in awe of the things that you have that you both brought to to show us today so thank you so much for that we have now come I'm I'm afraid and I'm aware we're overrunning so I hope everyone's okay because we're going to do questions now we're going to do questions for about 15 minutes and I'm going to start with one from Irene now this is to you Alex do you think women's constancy mock societies fascination with women's fidelity um I mean there is some of that in in some of Dunn's poetry isn't there that it is questioning um you know it is purposefully putting forward challenging ideas and I think actually yes yes it it is because at the end of it he says you know tomorrow I might not be you know might not be interested in you either so I think absolutely but very interestingly Dunn has does have a kind of fixation on this idea of constancy on fidelity to some extent his first daughter he named Constance um and in some of the work he's very aware of the instability of desire I mean the Greek word eros is relates to this idea of lacking lacking something lacking lacking something that you desire and then once that desire is filled I mean do you then do you then lose that love and that's what you know women's constancy is all about and and he's saying as with a lot of his poetry it's not just women it's men as well he's bringing the two together so yes a very good very good question and actually a good observation well thank you very much for that Irene a question for you Andrea do you think we will be archiving texts and emails in the future and will that replace the love letter gosh that's a really good question I mean the it's something that the the the library is certainly doing we we now um sort of acquire ingest electronic archives and for me personally I am in one of the selection criteria for my book was that uh you know I absolutely wanted to show images of the objects as well as the transcriptions of the letters themselves because I think that you know words are hugely powerful but there's something really special about seeing the physical constitution of a letter so physical features can often convey as much of the story as the words themselves the fold lines the tears the handwriting the signatures the the doodles the ink splodges and so you know we live in a world of instant communications now texts and tweets and emails they have their place and um you know that that is that is what we have but I do think that there's something really beautiful about holding a piece of paper in your hands and and you know that in itself creates an instant connection between the sender and the recipient so um yes we absolutely will be um archiving you know electronic messages and um archives but uh but I I yeah I don't feel quite the same about them well I really hope the the passion and the need to write love letters physical love letters is something that we manage to keep going even in our technological society and another question for you what's the most surprising thing you've read or found out about love while editing love letters oh my gosh um ooh I have to say I wrote the book quite a long time ago so I'm really um I hadn't really thought of that question um is there are there any other letters that are that tell us something important about history as much as about love I think for me I mean I've already spoken about it but I think the the um the ambulance prayer book that for me um is really the item that does does that um and I think something that I've learned will surprise me again I mean I'm repeating myself but for me it's got to be Oscar Wilde's day profundus but you know I just I wanted to um yeah I absolutely love that item it tells us so much and there's such there's such a quiet passion in it even though it's so painful to read you can really see how much love he had and and what a loss it was to him because there was there was in terrible silence wasn't there from those that he wants he was in prison yes yes yes and I think I think you can really the depth of feeling and emotion and love and forgiveness it's palpable it's it's it's just um mind-blowing really thank you so much Alex another one for you how many of these scribal copies of Dunn's work exist and how many are held by the British Library also can you give an example of how seeing the works laid out in the Melford Hall has informed you there are understanding of how he presented his works there's two questions there in one yeah that's a very a very good question um the the the number of scribal copies is is kind of a difficult one to quantify because there are different types of scribal copies so the Melford Hall is you know a major substantial collection of his works there's about over 130 poems out of an ove of about 200 of those sort of scribal copies um I mean they have they they have been quantified but there's a rough off the top of my head about 30 survive of that sort of size um but there are lots of others you know where people are copying it down in their commonplace books or their you know they're sharing them and in in separates or in their verse miscellany so it's it's quite hard to to to quantify in that way but of the size probably about 30 the British Library owns again I can't I can't remember I did did all the research for this when we're acquiring it but we you know we have you know a substantial number of those so it's great that it's there in the library for researchers to research them next to each other in terms of the representation you know what do we learn what does this tell us this is this will help us understand you know who was who patronized this this this this this copy what was their relationship to done or where did they get them from so where it'll help us understand the transmission of Dunn's poetry and that's important particularly because it's so contemporaneous with him the other thing is that they help us do is that they help us you know trace versions of the poem so there are often not just one version of the poem there are there are multiple ones because people either miscopy it or when they're copying it out into their poetry books they alter it on purpose to to kind of um be to make it more you know acceptable to them so for instance on um to his mistress going to bed there are a number of copies where they've changed some of the lines to make it appear as if it's a married couple whereas possibly Dunn makes it look as if it is an unmarried couple so there's the line about here there is no penance much less innocence and others say here there is no penance for there is innocence so it's interesting that we can track these sort of modes probably Dunn wanted the one to look much more controversial but you know how do we know that we know these things through studying these these volumes so it's it's unstudied it's there's you know much work to be done on it but it is already yielding you know lots of exciting questions and hopefully answers well thank you so much both for your answers the final question is going to be mine actually and it's this if you could write a love letter to anyone from history who would you pick oh my goodness Alex you go first I don't think I've ever thought of people from the past and had historical crush I think John Dunn is up there for me oh gosh I'll put at the end of the at the end of this I'll probably have the sort of a light bulb moment and no one here to hear it um have you thought of anyone Andrea? No I haven't I'm afraid they're all still alive I spent someone I maybe would write to have been say Mary Wollstonecraft I spent she might not want to hear from me probably but you know she's a you know a lady from the past that I you know quite admire for you know her writing that's a very very good choice but she probably yeah probably wouldn't want to hear from me it's probably it's happy enough with William Godwin actually Andrea is there anyone you could suggest or is are you going to remain innocent in that regard I think I will yes I'm not doing very well I'm afraid um yes I shall keep it close to my chest but much like love letters should be I just want to say thank you again to both of you so much for this evening and for bringing your amazing expertise and these artifacts to share everyone I want to thank unique media as well Brett our amazing moderator and the British Library for making this evening possible so happy Valentine's Day from the British Library and thank you so much for watching this will be available on the on the British Library's player at some point and have a wonderful Valentine's Day yourselves