To Elizabeth from Nathalie: decoding a 19th century love poem

There’s something evocative about old letters and diaries – the wisp-thin paper, the flourishes of unfamiliar handwriting or fading type-written text, the gentle creases, weakened by use and time.

The upcoming Salon After D’Arc: Letters and Diaries offers a rare glimpse into fascinating private papers, with an event that encompasses intimate live readings of letters and diaries, as well as display of rare items from the Women Writers Fund, held in the Library's collection, such as a first edition of Virginia Woolf’s A Writer's Diary, and letters and diaries of Mirka Mora and Vali Myers.

Ahead of Salon After D’Arc, we’re highlighting a beautiful and intriguing item from the Library’s collection: a handwritten poem held in a brown, leatherbound album belonging to a woman named Elizabeth Severne. The album was likely sentimental to its owner, containing clippings, letters, decorative stamped paper, drawings, watercolour paintings, prints, greeting cards, and collages using cut out figures and pressed flowers. This particular poem is written on a single leaf of paper with an ornately patterned border, addressed to Elizabeth and signed by Nathalie.

The poem unfolds as both loving tribute to Elizabeth and to the friendship the two women share. Nathalie writes that she longs for Elizabeth’s blue eyes to be spared from tears and that their hearts will remain close even if they are absent from each other. She refers to Elizabeth as the sister of her heart and soul. A refrain, repeated at the end of each verse, evokes the strength of their friendship and implores Elizabeth to think of Nathalie always.

What can a love poem like this one tell us about how women lived, formed relationships, and communicated with each other in the past? To the modern eye, it might suggest a romantic attachment between Nathalie and Elizabeth. But as Emma Donoghue writes in Poems Between Women: Four Centuries of Love, Romantic Friendship, and Desire, this kind of love poetry was commonly written to women by other women throughout the 18th and 19th centuries.

As part of the cult of romantic friendship – a movement that centred love between women as compatible with heterosexual marriage and just as meaningful – women formed romantic, sometimes passionate, attachments to each other which were often expressed through the written word. This was especially those who were physically apart: ‘Absence is a good condition for poetry; the beloved needs to be conjured into words’, Donoghue writes.

This sense of love and intimacy imbues the poem from Nathalie to Elizabeth. Nathalie writes of her desire for her friend’s happiness and that God might intervene on her behalf to keep Elizabeth safe from sadness. The poem’s language is marked by a sense of the private and the visionary, with Nathalie conjuring the image of the delicate wings of a bird and two hearts that feel the same emotions, whether that be happiness, longing, or loss.

Outside of the contents of this poem, we know very little about Elizabeth Severne or the life she led in Victoria. This intimate piece of correspondence provides a tantalising glimpse into the world she inhabited and the relationships she had – a world where intimate friendship between women was expressed through poetic declarations of fidelity and love.

Join us at Salon After D’Arc: Letters and Diaries for more intriguing private papers from the Library’s collection.

Did you know?

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Image: Letter to Elizabeth from Nathalie (manuscript), Elizabeth Severne, 1857;H93.29/157. Translation by Elisabeth Kerdelhue.