Radclyffe Hall, right, with her lover, Una Troubridge, 1927.

The below comes from a love letter dated October 24, 1934, sent by the English writer Radclyffe Hall to Evguenia Souline, a Russian émigré. Hall, best known for her 1928 novel The Well of Loneliness, wrote with unprecedented openness about her lesbian identity; she often went by the name John. Though she lived with Una Troubridge, pictured above, she carried on a long love affair with Souline. Her letters to Souline are collected in Your John: The Love Letters of Radclyffe Hall, edited by Joanne Glasgow.

Why is it that the people I write of are so very often lonely people? Are they? I think that perhaps you may be right. I greatly feel the loneliness of the soul—nearly every soul is more or less lonely. Then again: I have been called the writer of “misfits.” And it may be that being myself a “misfit,” for as you know, beloved, I am a born invert, it may be that I am a writer of “misfits” in one form or another—I think I understand them—their joys & their sorrows, indeed I know I do, and all the misfits of this world are lonely, being conscious that they differ from the rank and file. When we meet you & I will talk of my work and you shall be my critic, my darling. If you wish to you shall be very rude—but I do hope you like your John’s work just a little. I want you to like my work, Soulina. 

Darling—I wonder if you realize how much I am counting on your coming to England, how much it means to me—it means all the world, and indeed my body shall be all, all yours, as yours will be all, all mine, beloved. And we two will lie close in each others arms, close, close, always trying to lie even closer, and I will kiss your mouth and your eyes and your breasts—I will kiss your body all over—And you shall kiss me back again many times as you kissed me when we were in Paris. And nothing will matter but just we two, we two longing loves at last come together. I wake up in the night & think of these things & then I can’t sleep for my longing, Soulina. This is love—make no mistake about it—love has come to you—you are loved and loved. No one whom you meet is more loved than you are—no one in the whole world can be more loved. When you look at people you can say to yourself in your heart—“I also has [sic] got a lover—I am loved until the love is as pain, as a scourge of whips on my lover’s back, as a fire that torments and consumes my lover.” Blessed is this lover that torments day and night, night & day, for it also illumines and sustains when the loved one is kind—be kind, then, my Soulina.

Your John