Gerald Durrell, a respected conservationist wrote a love letter to his future

wife, and then one of his students taking her PhD at Duke University, Lee
McGeorge.
~
July 31st, 1978

My darling McGeorge,

You said that things seemed clearer when they were written down. Well,
herewith a very boring letter in which I will try and put everything down so
that you may read and re-read it in horror at your folly in getting involved
with me. Deep breath.
To begin with I love you with the depth and passion that I have felt for no
one else in this life and if it astonishes you it astonishes me as well. Not I
hasten to say, because you are not worthy of loving. Far from it. It’s just that,
first of all, I swore I would not get involved with another woman. Secondly, I
have never had such a feeling before and it is almost frightening. Thirdly, I
would never have thought it possible that another human being could
occupy my waking (and sleeping) thoughts to the exclusion of almost
everything else.
Fourthly, I never thought that — even if one was in love — one could get so
completely besotted with another person, so that a minute away from them
felt like a thousand years.
Fifthly, I never hoped, aspired, dreamed that one could find everything one
wanted in one person. I was not such an idiot as to believe this was possible.
Yet in you I have found everything I want: you are beautiful, gay, giving,
gentle, idiotically and deliciously feminine, sexy, wonderfully intelligent and
wonderfully silly as well. I want nothing else in this life than to be with you,
to listen and watch you (your beautiful voice, your beauty), to argue with
you, to laugh with you, to show you things and share things with you, to
explore your magnificent mind, to explore your magnificent mind, to explore
your wonderful body, to help you, protect you, serve you, and bash you on
the head when I think you are wrong… not to put too fine a point on it I
consider that I am the only man outside mythology to have found the crock
of gold at the rainbow’s end.
But — having said all that — let us consider things in detail. Don’t let this
become public but… well, I have one or two faults. Minor ones, I hasten to
say. For example, I am inclined to be overbearing. I do it for the best possible
motives (all tyrants say that) but I do tend (without thinking) to tread people
underfoot. You must tell me when I am doing it to you, my sweet, because it
can be a very bad thing in a marriage.
Right. Second blemish. This, actually, is not so much a blemish of
character as a blemish of circumstance. Darling, I want you to be you in your
own right, and I will do everything I can to help you in this. But you must
take into consideration that I am also me in my own right and that I have a
headstart on you… what I am trying to say is that you mustn’t feel offended
if you are sometimes treated simply as my wife. Always remember that what
you lose on the swings, you gain on the roundabouts. But I am an established
‘creature’ in the world, and so — on occasions — you will have to live in my
shadow. Nothing gives me less pleasure than this but it is a fact of life that
has to be faced.
Third (and very important and nasty) blemish: jealousy. I don’t think you
know what jealousy is (thank God) in the real sense of the word. I know you
have felt jealousy over Lincoln’s wife and child but this is what I call normal
jealousy, and this — to my regret — is not what I’ve got. What I have got is a
black monster that can pervert my good sense, my good humour and any
goodness that I have in my make-up. It is really a Jekyll and Hyde situation…
my Hyde is stronger than my good sense and defeats me, hard though I try.
As I told you, I have always known that this lurks within me, but I could
control it, and my monster slumbered and nothing happened to awake it.
And then I met you and I felt my monster stir and become half awake when
you told me of Lincoln and others you have known, and with your letter my
monster came out of its lair, black, irrational, bigoted, stupid, evil, malevolent.
You will never know how terribly corrosive jealousy is; it is a physical pain as
though you had swallowed acid or red-hot coals. It is the most terrible of
feelings. But you can’t help it — at least I can’t, and God knows I’ve tried. I
don’t want any ex-boyfriends sitting in church when I marry you. On our
wedding day, I want nothing but happiness, both for you and me, and I
know I won’t be happy if there is a church full of your ex-conquests. When I
marry you I will have no past, only a future: I don’t want to drag my past
into our future and I don’t want you to do it either. But remember I am
jealous of you because I love you. You are never jealous of something you
don’t care about. OK, enough about jealousy.
Now, let me tell you something… I have seen a thousand sunsets and
sunrises, on land where it floods forest and mountains with honey-coloured
light, at sea where it rises and sets like a blood orange in a multi-coloured
nest of cloud, slipping in and out of the vast ocean. I have seen a thousand
moons: harvest moons like gold coins, winter moons as white as ice chips,
new moons like baby swans’ feathers.
I have seen seas as smooth as if painted, coloured like shot silk or blue as a
kingfisher or transparent as glass or black and crumpled with foam, moving
ponderously and murderously.
I have felt winds straight from the South Pole, bleak and wailing like a lost
child; winds as tender and warm as a lover’s breath; winds that carried the
astringent smell of salt and the death of seaweeds; winds that carried the
moist rich smell of a forest floor, the smell of a million flowers. Fierce winds
that churned and moved the sea like yeast, or winds that made the waters lap
at the shore like a kitten.
I have known silence: the cold, earthy silence at the bottom of a newly dug
well; the implacable stony silence of a deep cave; the hot, drugged midday
silence when everything is hypnotized and stilled into silence by the eye of
the sun; the silence when great music ends.
I have heard summer cicadas cry so that the sound seems stitched into your
bones. I have heard tree frogs in an orchestration as complicated as Bach
singing in a forest lit by a million emerald fireflies. I have heard the Keas
calling over grey glaciers that groaned to themselves like old people as they
inched their way to the sea. I have heard the hoarse street vendor cries of the
mating Fur seals as they sang to their sleek golden wives, the crisp staccato
admonishment of the Rattlesnake, the cobweb squeak of the Bat and the
belling roar of the Red deer knee-deep in purple heather. I have heard
Wolves baying at a winter’s moon, Red Howlers making the forest vibrate
with their roaring cries. I have heard the squeak, purr and grunt of a hundred
multi-coloured reef fishes.
I have seen hummingbirds flashing like opals round a tree of scarlet blooms,
humming like a top. I have seen flying fish, skittering like quicksilver across
the blue waves, drawing silver lines on the surface with their tails. I have
seen Spoonbills flying home to roost like a scarlet banner across the sky. I
have seen Whales, black as tar, cushioned on a cornflower blue sea, creating a
Versailles of fountain with their breath. I have watched butterflies emerge
and sit, trembling, while the sun irons their wings smooth. I have watched
Tigers, like flames, mating in the long grass. I have been dive-bombed by an
angry Raven, black and glossy as the Devil’s hoof. I have lain in water warm
as milk, soft as silk, while around me played a host of Dolphins. I have met a
thousand animals and seen a thousand wonderful things… but –
All this I did without you. This was my loss.
All this I want to do with you. This will be my gain.
All this I would gladly have forgone for the sake of one minute of your
company, for your laugh, your voice, your eyes, hair, lips, body, and above
all for your sweet, ever surprising mind which is an enchanting quarry in
which it is my privilege to delve.