Loving this article: 300-year-old letters found in leather trunk shed light on life in the 17th Century
Apparently writing on behalf of a “mutual friend”, a Dutch opera singer who left for Paris, the letter details of the singer discovering of her pregnancy and appeals for money to make a return trip home...
The letter itself is marked “neit hebben”, meaning the merchant (and most likely the father of the child) declined to accept it...
It reminds me of a film called Dead Letter Office:
Alice's father left when she was a child. She continued to share her life with him in letters that she sent not realising that he never received them. Eventually, they all come back with "Dead Letter Office" stamped on the front. As an adult, she becomes consumed with a desire to find him and takes a job with the Dead Letter Office, convinced that she can use them to fulfil her romantic notions of a reunion with her father. What awaits her at the DLO is far more than that. - Peter Webb
Since that film I've always been a little fascinated by the idea of lost letters, and a DLO. A graveyard for missed opportunities, hopes and desires.
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