My Grandparents’ Love Letters Make Me Smile
Their professions of love are uplifting.
While reading the 146 daily love letters my grandparents wrote in 1929, I often laughed out loud in surprise at how elaborately they professed their love for one another.
Late at night, lying in bed and thumbing through my copy of their letters, I’d elbow my wife, get her to pause her Netflix, and pull out a single earbud so she could her me say with a chuckle, “Honey, you gotta listen to this one.”
What follows is a collection of some of my favorite parts of their letters.
Their swoopy, cursive handwriting was hard to read. Typing the letters revealed all the sappy details.
Since finding the full set of letters in 1984, my mother has hung onto the yellowing papers in a plastic bin in her garage.
In 2019, my mom acted on her long-time desire to have them typed and printed in order to more easily share them and to preserve a record of them.
She hired a woman in her town of Natchez, Mississippi to type all the letters in chronological order, paying by the page.
The lady had the difficult task of deciphering the handwriting. She spent parts of many days typing and quickly got wrapped up in the on goings of Clara and Riley. At the end of the day, her husband would ask, “Well, what happened with Clara and Riley today?”
The typist told me she still finds herself thinking about my grandparents.
Once all the letters were typed, my mom hauled a set of the printed letters to FedEx in Jackson and came out with copies for her sisters, children, nephews, and nieces. The letters are set in a custom case and binder designed by my cousin (and Riley and Clara’s granddaughter) Sarah Largen, who is a talented graphic designer and artist.
Some of their one-liners expressing their love to one another were so long and over the top, I did a double-take and had reread them.
Below are excerpts from various letters written over the months they wrote each other in the summer of 1929.
Writing about love
Sometimes they just felt the need to affirm their love and rejoice in having one another.
Clara writes…
I have been walking on air so much today I hardly knew what I was doing.
I can’t write. All I want to do is shout (you know, squeal) for gladness.
I can truthfully say that I have never been so happily and contentedly in love before. You are all I want and nothing more.
Sweetheart, I can’t work. All I want to do is to sit down and jump up and down and say “I am so happy”. I did not think a thrill could last so long. Sweetheart, I have decided that I have never been in love before.
I hope you are feeling that you are worth a million dollars and happy as can be. You said you were walking on air; that doesn’t express it for me. I seem to be floating, striking earth once in a very long while.
Riley writes…
Dear precious heart continue to take good care of my precious darling for words will not convey my feelings toward her. Why I love you so dearly I do not know, but the fact is I do love you dearly and I am happy because I do. Man is not infallible and since human flesh is weak I know is shall make mistakes even in trying to show my appreciation for you, but may I say that such mistakes will be of the head and not the heart.
I thank God because of the fact that you hesitated to accept any man as your ideal, until I had a chance to brush the scale from my eyes and see you as you really are.
Today, I want to pen the truth, by saying that if I know love, and finding genuine true love, I know I love you above all human beings and am happy, contented and satisfied because I do, then to know from your heart, directed by your brain and written by your hand, a fact conveying in wonder which has by action been demonstrated many times heretofore than your love for me is the only true, satisfying love you have yet experienced.
To love and be loved in an ideal way by your ideal is just about as near Heaven as anyone can get while on this sphere of ours.
I think I have every card, letter and everything you have sent me while away from you. As you said I think it would be awfully nice, that is if you are keeping mine, to put them together in a love pillow and then let them mix and mingle their love phrases forever. Then sometime when you were off on business, or if I should have to be away in school, I could take the “Love Pillow” along and embrace it and hold it near my heart and realize that you are very near.
Run-on sentences? Who cares! They were in love.
Writing with anticipation
Throughout their writings, you can just feel the anticipation for the wedding dripping off the page.
The wedding day in late August is the ultimate target for them. If they can just get through this summer apart without exploding from loneliness and unmet desire, then they can start their life of eternal happiness together.
Clara writes…
Honestly if I continue to increase in being thrilled this place can’t hold me before the summer is over.
Three months will have to end in twelve weeks and time will go by. I am going to miss you, yes, words can’t tell it, but I am going to be cheerful, write to you often, take care of myself, try to build up and be feeling well for many happy days with you which are to begin anew about August 26th. Living is easy when there is something to look forward to.
Riley writes…
My little love girl is becoming sweeter and more dear to me as the time grows nearer for the great event and the new life which shall be ours in happy land.
I pray God that the little love nest which is being consummated in our minds today, separately will soon combine and culminate into a visible reality, and however well and sincere and loving for each other may be today, is in only a gem of a great beginning and that as the curtain is drawn aside and our eyes behold the scenes of future years, my heart’s desire is that with each act in the great drama of life we will find that little love nest growing more and more toward perfection.
Remember, precious darling your man is here in person but every chance his thoughts wander back to S.T.C. where his true love is wanting, waiting and yearning for that day of days to come when true happiness and love will begin in reality.
With a grateful heart for you and a fond anticipation of many happy days, even weeks, months and years in the very near future, I feel inspired to dispense with reading of the period of the Renaissance long enough to fill my very being with happy thoughts and memories of thee by writing a brief note to the girl of my heart.
This is one great consolation I have, although far away and I know not what you are doing, but I know all is well and that when my precious heart meets me I shall feel assured of the fact that a true, trustworthy and loving sweetheart will fall into my arms to fill and thrill a heart and soul with gladness and happiness as no other mortal being could.
Precious, I have very much to feel grateful for, but my dream is and my hopes are that our lives will become more precious to each other as thoughts ripen into actions, habits, customs, convention and character.
Remember, the nearer the time comes for you to come to be mine, the nearer I get to our little blue heaven.
Rush time on a little faster.
Writing about promises
Over and over again they promise to do everything they can tone the best spouse possible and to make the other one the happiest person in the world.
Clara writes…
You touched my heart strings when you said you hoped to make me one of the happiest girls in the world. My prayerful hope is that I may at every moment make you as happy as you are making me.
Too, my happiness is increased many fold by knowing that you are perfectly happy and satisfied. Sweetheart I am glad I can make you happy. I hope I can always make you happy. I’ll be happy when I make you happy.
Riley writes…
Clara, I sincerely hope to make you one of the happiest girls in the world. I know I do not know how, but I hope to learn the answer if it be an answer.
Darling, I must not become sentimental and give way to my feelings in this matter, but I do want you to continue to keep in mind that you are my ideal helper the one that I want to live for and with, and if necessary die for.
I want us to be the happiest couple in the world.
You have no idea how very much your letters inspire me with some sort of something that makes me want to become a greater man.
Sharing these so you too can squirm
I hope you had a chuckle or two reading their love notes shared here. I find their writing deeply human, very kind, and brimming with optimism.
We could all use more of that.
The Author
Eric Burns is curious and inspired by other creatives who pursue their passions. He’s a full-time dad and was previously a product design manager with a passion for the employee journey side of design operations (recruiting, education, and culture). He honed his UX design and UX research skills at frog design and led different design teams at Uber.
