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Love and Lace


By Sune Christian Pedersen

In connection with the preparation of the special exhibition "My Treasure" Post & Tele Museum collected a number of letters from the time about the edition of the first stamp in 1851. The aim of the exhibition was to give an account of the letter-writing cultures of the time that gave rise to a postal reform, and we therefore chose to illustrate the contents of the old letters that were forwarded to us. There were business letters, short messages, soldiers’ letters, and family letters. A small random selection of what people wrote to each other in the 1850’s.


One very conspicuous letter was from Anna Rothscildt to her niece, Constance Graae, written on 27th April 1857 (mentioned in the last number of MuseumsPosten). The letter had been found in an old cupboard full of letters, drawings, bridal shoes and veil, a cocked hat, a peepshow from the time of the Napoleonic wars, tickets for the school dance, small account books, and much more from the second half of the 19th century. The cupboard used to belong to Constance, who received the elaborate letter, and its letters give us a fine picture of the written social conventions of the rural upper-classes which Constance and her family belonged to.

Family Life in Focus
The letter from Anna Rothschildt is a letter of congratulation in connection with Constance’s marriage with Julius Pilegaard in 1857. It is characteristic of the sentimental worship of home and family that cropped up among the bourgeoisie in the early 19th century and which the American sociologist Richard Sennett described as "The Fall of Public Man": The burghers withdrew from the public scenes on which they had appeared in the 18th century – the theatre, the salons; places where they could conduct themselves in their wigs. Instead they worshipped intimacy and closeness: "The childhood home with all the loving, faithful hearts in it", as Anna writes to Constance. "You are now to take over the duties of a housewife and above all make your friend happy", that was her main purpose in life from her aunt’s point of view. The letter was accompanied by a small hanging which Anna "with inexpressible joy" asks her niece to hang over her sofa in memory of the aunt.

True Love
Another letter to Constance was written by a certain Sophus Lund in 1854. The letter is a praise of "the blushing of Constance’s cheeks in these days" – we understand that she has just got engaged. It is a fine example of classic, romantic love that dates back to the poetry writing of the medieval troubadours’. In the troubadours’ poems as well as in Sophus’ letter love is a mystical power elevating the lover to a higher sphere where she senses the world in a different way. "Doesn’t the sky seem even bluer to you? Everything around you beautifies," he writes, "because where love lives, spring is eternal." But unlike medieval aristocratic love that was always invigorated by the unattainable and forbidden, love of the 19th century bourgeoisie is thriving within the frames of marriage and home.

Constance and Julius lived happily together at Julius’ ancestral farm, Skovsbo on the island of Langeland, until his death in 1898. To their great sorrow they remained childless. In her old days Constance seems to have transferred all her love to her dog Toto. One of its teeth was found meticulously wrapped up in the old cupboard.


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