Rachel Russell to Arthur Sullivan

10.7.08

Arthur Sullivan (1842-1900) English composer and conductor who collaborated with W.S. Gilbert in writing many of gland's most famous operettas. In the late 1860s, he carried on an affair with two daughters of a prominent navel architect. He was unofficially engaged to Rachel Russell, twenty-three, but courted her older sister, Louise. Rachel Russell broke off the engagement. Never married, Arthur's high living took its toll on his last years. Addicted to morphine, and an inveterate gambler.Arthur died at the age of fifty-eight without any of his close friends in attendance.

I do so fear I have given myself away to you too completely. I try and I think our love is ideal and perfect and that your letters are all my heart longs for, and that they satisfy its uttermost cravings and when I see others love -- I say to myself, mine is better, greater, purer, nobler -- and the voice I cannot silence rises within me and says -- "its false". If any other woman who love you can make you happier than I -- then darling do not fear to leave me.

written, GeminiSide

Tina Etheredge