Verona, Italy – the city of the most famous lovers in history, Romeo and Juliet.  Tourists flock to the tiny romantic courtyard of the House of Juliet and the hopelessly love lost send letters to Juliet looking for answers to sooth their troubled hearts.  Feelings of love twinkle on paper like stars in the heavens.  Volunteers reply to the letters adding a touch of magic to an already mystical story of two star crossed lovers.

Luciously romantic don’t you think?  But what’s happened to the passionate art of writing love letters?  Throughout history lovers have bared their souls to one another through the written word – the scandalous letters of Henry the VIII to his forbidden mistress Anne Bolyn or the romantic letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning to her husband Robert Browning.

There’s something intimate and exciting about reading a handwritten love letter.  You can turn it over and feel it in your hands, read it again and again, fold it and tuck it into a book for safekeeping.  And then years later when the long forgotten book is opened and the tattered letter flutters to the floor, the overwhelming feelings return as if time has stood still. 

Handwriting conveys a certain intimacy.  The penmanship, the curves of the letters, crossing of the t’s – they all mean something about the writer.  Something significant.

In the cold impersonal world of texting, instant messaging and cell phones, I would welcome the thrill of holding and reading a handwritten love letter.  Wouldn’t you?

“You have the greatest soul, the noblest nature, the sweetest, most loving heart I have ever known, and my love, my reverence, my admiration for you, you have increased in one evening as I should have thought only a lifetime of intimate, loving association could have increased them.”
– Woodrow Wilson to Edith Bolling Galt (who soon became First Lady)

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