Dear 338171 (May I call you 338?)
Noël Coward
Letter to T. E. Lawrence
25th August 1930
(338171 was Lawrence of Arabia’s military number.)
Dear Desk
Noël Coward
Letter to a CBS executive
1955
(Coward was replying to an exec whose letterhead began ‘From the Desk of…’)
Dearest Pissoir Attendant
Dearest Hunk of Despair
Beloved Cat’s Paw
My little plum pudding
Martha Gellhorn
Letters to various correspondents
Various dates
(Gellhorn’s letters often began with creative salutations. A ‘pissoir’ is a public urinal.)
To Monsieur Fuckface Poueigh, Famous Pumpkin and Composer for Nitwits
Erik Satie
Letter to music critic Jean Poueigh
5th June 1917
(Poueigh had reviewed Satie’s work negatively. Satie was jailed for the abusive letters he sent in response, one of which began as above.)
Beloved Fluffpuss
Christopher Isherwood
Letter to Don Bachardy
14th October 1948
Worshipped Glossyhoof
Don Bachardy
Letter to Christopher Isherwood
25th October 1968
(Isherwood and Bachardy were partners for over 30 years. In their letters, Isherwood was a horse and Bachardy a cat, and the greetings became increasingly whimsical.)
O sultan, Turkish devil and damned devil’s kith and kin, secretary to Lucifer himself!
Ivan Sirvo, leader of the Zaporozhian Cossacks
Letter to Sultan Mehmed IV
1675
(The Sultan had demanded that the Cossacks’ army submit to him. Sirvo refused by way of a letter with this greeting.)
My dearest not too repellent you
Darling poor old ugly rejected you
My poor dearest American dilemma
Dearest nutty king of nothing
Simone de Beauvoir
Letters to Nelson Algren
Various dates
(See here for many more.)
Dear Miss Absolutely Amazing Thing
Jessica Mitford
Letter to Maya Angelou
16th September 1976
(Mitford had just read Angelou’s autobiography, Singin’ and Swingin’ and Gettin’ Merry Like Christmas, and was writing to gush.)
Dear Lad!
Spike Milligan
Letter to Charles, Prince of Wales
25th October 1989
You worthless, acid-sucking piece of illiterate shit!
Hunter S. Thompson
Letter to Mike Peterson
1971
(Peterson, a writer, had submitted an article to Rolling Stone magazine. A response with this salutation arrived, written by Thompson.)
See also…
—How to sign off
—How to add a P.S.
—How to resign
—How to say no
—How to send thanks
Typewriter image via Getty; text added by me. You can support this Very Important Newsletter by becoming a paid subscriber.
My father was deployed to the Aleutians islands in World War 2, which meant a year of isolation with lots of time for letter writing. He wrote almost daily to my mom, and one way to chart the procession of dark months is to look at his salutations. Back in boot camp and his first island posting, on Adak in the spring, most of the letters started with variations on Dearest Nunny, My darling, Nunny darling, and the occasional Little Lover. By the time he reached Attu, at the western extreme of the Aleutians and the last months of his tour, he had branched out:
My willowy one,
My quiet curassow,
O most delectable,
My Hemingway hating honey,
My pleasant capybara,
My incredibly loved infant,
My delectable darling
My wonderful wapiti
My passionate ptarmigan,
My adorable apple pie,
My favorite photographer,
My luscious little one,
My weird little watermelon,
Hello bodacious and beloved,
Allo my quaint little cabbage,
My cool charmant,
My bonnie ambivalent bivalve,
My pretty piltzer,
My consummately constructed consort,
and in the last few weeks before he was sent back to Seward, on the Alaska mainland where she could join him (posing as his sister)
My soon to be rejoined Rosita.
When she wrote to him she called him Butch.
morgancorrespondence.blogspot.com
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