Sorry, Beatrice, your love poet was a 人種差別主義者 and a bounder... E E Cummings's romantic words were read out by Fergie at the low-重要な wedding... but he was obsessed with 売春婦s and even (刑事)被告 of 背信

No poem ever seemed more romantic than the one read aloud at the wedding last Friday of Princess Beatrice: ‘I carry your heart with me (I carry it in my heart).’

Those lines, recited by the bride’s mother Sarah Ferguson, were written by the American poet e e cummings (who 避けるd 資本/首都 letters and most other forms of punctuation). The groom 地位,任命するd them on social マスコミ, too ― though he 明らかに had second thoughts, and 削除するd them minutes later.

Many people, if they’ve heard of Cummings at all, will know him for the phrase ‘the moon’s a balloon’, in another blissfully romantic poem in which ‘everyone’s in love and flowers 選ぶ themselves’. The actor David Niven chose that childlike image as the 肩書を与える for his bestselling autobiography.

It’s ありそうもない that either Beatrice or her bridegroom, 所有物/資産/財産 developer Edoardo Mapelli Mozzi, let alone the other 王室のs listening to the wedding day poem, could have guessed how that ditty had its first inspiration.

No poem ever seemed more romantic than the one read aloud at the wedding last Friday of Princess Beatrice (pictured): ?I carry your heart with me (I carry it in my heart),' writes CHRISTOPHER STEVENS
Princess Beatrice Edoardo Mapelli Mozzi on their wedding day

No poem ever seemed more romantic than the one read aloud at the wedding last Friday of Princess Beatrice (pictured): ‘I carry your heart with me (I carry it in my heart),' 令状s?CHRISTOPHER STEVENS

Edward Estlin Cummings had many muses. He was married three times and, in his later years, was a darling of 女性(の) poetry fans, who adored him for his risque and いつかs sexually frank 詩(を作る)s.

But his first love that he never forgot ― the first heart that he carried with him ― belonged to a Parisian 売春婦 during World War I.

When the naive and scholarly 22-year-old from a 避難所d, middle-class family in Massachusetts first 遭遇(する)d the putains or whores of the French 資本/首都’s red-light 地区 in 1917, he was thrilled and scandalised in equal 手段.

< p class="mol-para-with-font">Some he slept with. Some he immortalised in poems. One obsessed him. Her 指名する was Marie Louise Lallemand and in one 詩(を作る) he called her ‘the putain with the ivory throat’.

Cummings was besotted with her. He wrote reams of love letters to her, 注ぐing out his 願望(する): ‘Darling Marie Louise, you who are more to me than the scarlet poppies which are mown . . . take the kiss which I give you, that kiss, without value, because it comes from a soul which loves you.’

Though he 猛烈に 手配中の,お尋ね者 to sleep with her, he was also terrified of catching venereal 病気 because he couldn’t 直面する the shame. His 宗教的な しつけ had left him 深く,強烈に repressed. ‘恐れる and sex go together in my life,’ he complained. In his final year at Harvard, in 1916, he wrote: ‘I led a 二塁打 life, getting drunk and feeling girls up but lying about this to my father and taking his money all the time.’

He remembered his adolescent fumblings in a later poem: ‘May i feel said he/i’ll squeal said she/just once said he/it’s fun said she/let’s go said he/ not too far said she/what’s too far said he/where you are said she.’

One evening, Cummings borrowed his father’s car to visit a 売春宿 in Boston with a classmate, Tex. They parked it outside, only to discover when they 現れるd in the small hours that the car had been 牽引するd away.

Mr Cummings Snr received a call at 3am to 知らせる him his car had been discovered outside 売春婦s’ lodgings and impounded.

Edward Estlin Cummings (pictured) had many muses. He was married three times and, in his later years, was a darling of female poetry fans, who adored him for his risque and sometimes sexually frank verses

Edward Estlin Cummings (pictured) had many muses. He was married three times and, in his later years, was a darling of 女性(の) poetry fans, who adored him for his risque and いつかs sexually frank 詩(を作る)s

完全に ashamed of his own behaviour, Cummings volunteered to serve on the Western 前線 as soon as the U.S. 正式に joined the war against Germany in April 1917. But his ambivalence to sex was mirrored by 衝突d feelings about the war. He 手配中の,お尋ね者 to be 伴う/関わるd but he didn’t want to fight, so he joined the 救急車 軍団, 大(公)使館員d to the Red Cross.

Arriving in Paris with a friend, Slater Brown, he discovered they were a day late. So there was nothing for Cummings to do ― except 会合,会う 売春婦s, who fascinated him. He 逮捕(する)d them in a 一連の poems. One begins: ‘Wanta spend six dollars, Kid? Two for the room and four for the girl. The woman was not やめる 14.’

述べるing a woman’s ‘lazy strut’, another poem read: ‘The breasts look very good, firmlysquirmy with a slight jounce.’ Kitty, Mimi, Marjorie, Lucienne, Minette, Marie Louise ― he called them his ‘little ladies’. Cummings, who drew as avidly as he composed 詩(を作る), sketched Marie Louise, 伝えるing her beauty and wariness in a few lines.

After five weeks, the 楽しみ-追跡(する)ing ended. Cummings and Brown were 地位,任命するd to a 一連の (軍の)野営地,陣営s on the 前線 line. Appalled by what they saw, both men began 令状ing letters home ― and Brown was 特に frank about the low 意気込み/士気 of the French and the spread of venereal 病気 の中で U.S. 軍隊/機動隊s.

They were 感情を害する/違反するd, too, by the menial 仕事s, such as きれいにする their 命令(する)ing officer’s car. Other volunteers regarded them as arrogant and aloof. Certainly, as an adult, Cummings would develop 人種差別主義者 見解(をとる)s that would 撃退する most people today.

In one 1950 poem, using a 人種差別主義者 中傷する that cannot be printed here, he wrote that Jews were ‘the most dangerous machine as yet invented by even yankee ingenuity’ and (人命などを)奪う,主張するd that ユダヤ人の people produced nothing but ‘a few dead dollars and some 新たな展開d 法律s’. Scarcely surprising, then, if Cummings and Brown were disliked.

They certainly made enemies. In September, a French officer and two American 兵士s arrived at their base and 逮捕(する)d them in 前線 of their comrades. Cummings tried to make a joke of it: ‘Gentlemen, friends . . . I am going away すぐに and shall be guillotined tomorrow!’

‘Oh, hardly guillotined,’ murmured one of the 兵士s, with a 冷気/寒がらせるing sarcasm. Cummings suddenly realised that he and Brown were in serious trouble.

These lines (pictured), recited by the bride?s mother Sarah Ferguson, were written by the American poet e e cummings (who avoided capital letters and most other forms of punctuation)

These lines (pictured), recited by the bride’s mother Sarah Ferguson, were written by the American poet e e cummings (who 避けるd 資本/首都 letters and most other forms of punctuation)

They were (刑事)被告 of 背信 and スパイ because of their unpatriotic comments in the letters. Without a friend to help them in フラン, they were sent to a 軍の 拘留,拘置 (軍の)野営地,陣営 in Normandy and held with dozens of others in a 寄宿舎 for more than three months.

At first, Cummings’s anxious parents were 知らせるd that he would be 解放(する)d without 告発(する),告訴(する)/料金. Then they heard he had 乗る,着手するd on the 軍隊/機動隊 ship SS Antilles, which was sunk in the 大西洋 by a German U-boat, with the loss of 67 lives. A week later, they were told their son had not 溺死するd ― but no one knew where he was. It took two more months, and a handwritten 嘆願 from his father to the 大統領, Woodrow Wilson, before Cummings was 解放(する)d from the 拘留,拘置 centre.

He arrived home in Massachusetts on New Year’s Day, 1918. But before he left フラン, Cummings sent one last 情熱的な letter to Marie Louise, begging to 会合,会う her: ‘If you think that I have forgotten the days and nights that we spent together, then you are mistaken.’ But he never heard from her again.

It’s a sad and sordid story. And perhaps, if Beatrice and Edoardo had known the scandalous truth that lay behind the poem ― not to について言及する the vile anti-Semitism that flowed と一緒に it ― they might have chosen another piece of 詩(を作る) for their さもなければ glorious wedding day.

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