#[insert them becoming closer and closer. their friendship flourishing. trusting each other the most than anyone else in their lives]

[altairring]

it's officially hallmark christmas movie season in my country which means im getting ads for them everywhere. which made me remember my hilarious revelation from last year that silvio / emma / rio can be fit almost perfectly into the 'rich and kind of asshole big city boyfriend'/'career driven but kind and independent woman'/ 'small town sweetheart' christmas movie archetypes

to be completely honest, the only christmas movie i know by heart is the first two Home Alone movies HAHA

bUT YOU ARE CORRECT!! those archetypes fit them so well and you got me freaking daydreaming about it the moment i saw this in my inbox.

particularly...rioemma

oh, you made my brain rot fURTHERRRR. but i shan't. ill keep my mouth shut.

silvio / emma / rio is a good trio for me. i like thinking about them ...be it their relationship purely platonic/familial. or one of the riccis got together with emma. their dynamic is just too good...

hihi, if they're in a typical Christmas movie. i would watch it.

#emma was busy fulfilling her dreams. it was tiring but she kept herself optimistic #rio making the best out of everything making his life dull and repetitive #they met when the snow was falling. it was a meet-cute. she slipped on a patch of ice that she didnt notice. he caught her. #she apologized and he told her it was okay. they small talk. that small talk became huge. big and got longer than it was intended. #they exchanged contacts and became friends #they talked through their socials...they talked about how the holidays leave them with an empty feeling... #joked abt spending it together #(plot twist: it was NOT a joke) #[insert them becoming closer and closer. their friendship flourishing. trusting each other the most than anyone else in their lives] #rio. whose life became brighter and full of color because of her. #emma. who found comfort in him. where she could let herself be tired and real in front of him. #*clenches fist* #[insert slow-burn romance. with tons of pining yearning and dreaming.] #it took a lot of time but they kissed. after years. while the snow was falling. #their lips warm. emma clutching his coat. rio holding her tightly by the waist. snowflakes melting on their cheeks and eyelashes #i am blabbering #what have you done to me. #my demirose/demian heart is shaking #alt rambles #alts inbox

[my-darling-boy]

im wondering if you think that edward brittain and geoffrey thurlow were lovers. because i know the movie implied that perhaps there was something more there, bu from reading the book as well as 'letters from a lost generation' i didnt get that impression. just wondering your thoughts!

Right okay I’m about to InfoDumpᵀᴹ because the love Geoffrey and Edward had is one of the main things that got me into learning about WWI years ago!!! So allow me to shed some light on these boys specifically!

So firstly, Geoffrey Thurlow was inserted swiftly into Edward Brittain’s life and the two got on INSTANTLY in early 1915 after Edward was commissioned to the Sherwood Foresters. For a long time, Victor Richardson had been Edward’s trusted friend, as of course they knew each other from their Uppingham days, but it’s apparent in Testament of Youth, Letters From a Lost Generation, and the other works by the family’s historian Mark Bostridge, that Geoffrey and Edward became VERY close VERY fast. And while it could be written off as a friendship..... there is a lot of evidence that, even ignoring my own conjectures, is hard to dispute the fact that their relationship was more than friendship, even if it never became sexual or explicitly physical.

On top of the two becoming quickly inseparable, they also frequented expression of their desire to be with one another while the other was away, Thurlow often sending Edward very affectionate and borderline romantic letters and postcards on a whim, even sending him one rather Cryptic postcard on Valentine’s Day one year. The two insisted on doing many activities together, and many found them a perfect fit, Geoffrey a rather dreamy, expressive, and emotional young man, while Edward was practically the opposite; it’s suggested that they adored each other so much due to their personalities complimenting the other’s quite well: Edward was able to provide Geoffrey with reassurance and That Officerly Gay Protectiveness, while Geoffrey’s understanding and soft demeanor provided an open window for Edward to share his insecurities when he couldn’t show them to the other men. And while it could be said that Edward was more hesitant to be with Geoffrey in such a manner, even if Geoffrey felt no personal conflict, the two wanted to be very, very personal.

Both boys stayed connected regularly, no matter where they were, through intimate correspondence. As I mentioned, a good majority of their letters involve either one of them, but specially Geoffrey, longing poetically to be out in nature with the other or wishing they were together, but not at present, not wanting the other to be in harm’s way. A lot of Geoffrey’s letters to Edward, as I’m sure you’ve noticed, are signed “Him that thou knowest thine” or just “thine”. Of course this means “yours” or “you who know that I am yours”. And while this sort of thing, at least in my latter wording, was not an uncommon expression between men at this time, it’s..... the first way it’s worded that surprises me. For lack of a more eloquent explanation, it’s Gay as Hell to be THAT poetic to your new soldier friend, even for 1910s standards. One might ask why he simply wouldn’t just write “yours” instead of adding the special style, and making the extra effort to imply “not only am I yours, but you know as well as I do that I’m yours”. One might even ask if it was to refer to a special meeting, or inside romantic reference, such as the way in which Roland and Vera signed their own letters to each other, “au revoir”. Literally one letter from Thurlow to Edward simply ends with “In Life, in Death, Yours”.

There were also several letters marked “private” sent to the Brittain residence from Geoffrey in the span between 1915 to 1916 when Geoffrey would have occasionally been on leave, and could write whatever he damned well pleased to Edward without fear of the military censors poking around. What makes this crucial evidence to support they were having homosexual correspondence is the fact that Vera burnt the private letters before she died to protect the boys’ wishes to keep them private, if not by Edward’s direct request for her to do so, something which by itself doesn’t seem so odd given the fact letters were burnt all the time for a number of reasons, but is especially compelling given the fact other evidence makes a strong case that they were together. What was contained in those letters is lost to history, but they shouldn’t be confused with the letters taken off the censors which later may have began the domino effect to Edward’s untimely death, as that was in 1918, over a year after the death of Geoffrey, and were about different homosexual matters with other ranks at the time.

Additionally: while Edward’s reaction to Geoffrey’s death is argued not to have been as strong as his response was to, say, Victor’s death, as support for the fact he didn’t actually care much for Thurlow, he wrote to Vera “I have been afraid for him for so long and yet now that he is gone it is so very hard—that prince among men with so fine an appreciation of all that was worth appreciating and so ideal a method of expression . . . Always a splendid friend with a splendid heart and a man who won’t be forgotten by you or me however long or short a time we may live. Dear child, there is no more to say; we have lost almost all there was to lose . . .” In my own mind, this letter is just the tip of the iceberg to how he felt. It’s clear that Geoffrey’s death had a greater toll on him in the long run, while Victor’s death seemed to affect him immediately. I can only assume this is due in part to Edward being so emotionally invested in Geoffrey versus Victor, and that Victor’s death evoked an immediate and present sadness, while Geoffrey’s was so difficult to handle, he couldn’t think but to react in a collected but sorrowful manner, one I feel was meant to conceal just how heartbroken he was, as though he was worried if he showed as much outward devastation as he showed for Victor, he feared one may speculate why he held so much sadness for Geoffrey...as though he was afraid people knew what was between them.

Geoffrey’s death seemed to CRUSH Edward, leading him down this path of dark despair and depression following his passing, and it lead to a lot of misdirected tension between he and his sister at times, and he subsequently turned far more reserved, uncommunicative, and apathetic than ever before. I’d even go so far as to say that Edward might have felt guilty about his own relations with Geoffrey after he died, possibly believing he could have done more to be closer with him, or felt guilt in having distanced himself from him in some way later in 1917. And after such events, he showed more distaste for the war, more lack of emotion towards his own life and its worth, and his letters often took a downhearted turn towards the end.

When he died, Geoffrey’s letter, the last one he sent to Edward in 1917, was found in his breast pocket, and I would assume this to be over his heart. It ends by saying “Till we meet again, Here or in the Hereafter,” and it’s speculated he carried this ever since the day Geoffrey died, and, most defintely, died with it close to his heart.

By my own conjecture, I say that Edward felt that he was both conscious of and without objection to his homosexuality, most likely because it was suggested in private schools at the time (take Evelyn Waugh’s comments on being interested in boys at boarding school as a phase that one grows out of) that it was a passing curiosity, and that such interests would diminish when one reached adulthood. I felt that he did romantically love Geoffrey, even if it never had the opportunity to become sexual or physically intimate. And because our own understanding of homosexuality did not exist at the time for him to have any model from which to reference comprehension of his own sexuality, I believe, that like most of his queer contemporaries, he had a rather ambiguous—near procrastinating—outlook on his own sexual orientation and relationship status, along with his view concerning his future life and possible wife.

The war created a near diversion from having to consider the possibility of being with a woman, and he could instead allow to let his homosexuality subconsciously flourish while being in the presence of so many men, and allow his romantic love for Geoffrey to remain raw and intimate without having to confront the implications such a future would hold for him socially, all due to the war being the only thing on his present mind. And furthermore, I firmly believe that Geoffrey held a deep admiration for him: he looked up to him as well as loved him. Though he was training to be a priest, he seems to express no distaste—rather the opposite, based on his letters to Edward—for flirtatious relations between men, and remains such a gentle and deeply poetic figure to Edward I have only seen reflected in that of homosexual bonds. In my opinion, being gay myself, and with having delved into scattered studies of male affection in earlier centuries, they were in love. It’s a story I so often encounter between men of their class in this era, specifically during the war.

I will also admit that, for some reason, from standing afar, the recollection by itself of what information is told to us about Edward and Geoffrey is rather.... timid...in some instances amid the background of Vera and Roland, of Malta and France. And the ones provided alone from most books are merely the “friendly” letters. The ones I’m sure we would really like to see were lost on Geoffrey’s side and burned on Edward’s side, and what others remain are held in private facilities and university archives, and only available in brief mentions online. However, looking closely, reading sections purely between the two boys, isolating only their letters, their language, and even digging further into works written from Mark Bostridge and other minor historians piecing together dots not having previously been connected, what love they shared feels warm and strong, if not simultaneously distant and foggy at times: such is the way the world remembers homosexuals unfortunately.

These boys never got the oppertunity to be with each other in the way we would like to see historic gay people, the way we swoon over the way Maurice and Clive or Alec were together in Maurice for instance. Geoffrey and Edward were in the middle of war, and there’s both so much poor documentation on homosexuals and so little chance in the chaos to a have a ditch-lectures-to-go-on-a-motorbike-ride-into-a-meadow relationship we expect to see, compared to other circumstances where it would obviate the way they felt about each other. But because of the war, it made it even harder to progress gay relationships due to combat, death, anxiety, and just a general lack of space and oppertunity to be with a man all the time without someone seeing.

I later discovered a while back this historian’s articles about the lives and intertwining of Edward and Geoffrey and they are packed with a brilliant compilation of sources and their own take on the relationship, which I was quite excited to have the pleasure of reading, for we share very similar viewpoints on the matter and even caught onto hints and details during our own reading of the sources no other readers seemed to talk about!

Edward’s || Geoffrey’s

What fragments which are left to us, if we understand just how forcibly hidden life had to be for these men, letters marked “private” and passing remarks of desiring to walk among trees with someone special speak of a louder and more profound story buried deep beneath them. It’s important to take into account that many of the known gay relationships we have record of today are not as well documented as Oscar Wilde. Sometimes, the only record we have of their love lost to time is held in the way it’s held here, in the signing of “Thine”.

I can only hope now that since they could not hold each other in life, that in death, they could finally be together.

Anyway, there’s my Novel, thanks for the ask!

#I love them sm #testament of youth #vera brittian #edward brittain #geoffrey thurlow #asks #long post #wwi