Love Letters

Love Comes In Many Forms

This is a story very dear to my heart after recently surviving six months of intensive chemotherapy. Mr Whizz Kid cannot draw (or write a decent letter), but supported me throughout each eight hour session by just being there.  'Thank You'.

The tale of Monica and Ronald Searle is so very romantic, precious, and so, so sweet ...

Cute

Very cute

Very, very cute

I love this

And this

And this too

             

  Les Très Riches Heures de Mrs Mole

By

Ronald Searle

These are some of the 47 jewel-like drawings by Ronald Searle, which he made for his wife, Monica, each time she underwent chemotherapy. On New Year’s Eve 1969, Monica Searle was diagnosed with a rare and virulent form of breast cancer and given just six months to live. She sought a second opinion and then underwent five years of  grueling chemotherapy. Each time she underwent treatment, Ronald produced a Mrs Mole drawing ‘to cheer every dreaded chemotherapy session and evoke the blissful future ahead’. Filled with light and illuminated in glowing colours, the drawings speak of love, optimism and hope. Like the mediaeval illuminated manuscripts such as the 15th-century Les Tres Riches Heures du Duc de Berry, to which the title of this book refers, the 47 drawings are on an intimate scale and were never intended for publication.

How homely

Prior to the cancer shock the couple had bought a decrepid house in the south of France and despite her illness, Monica continued to devote her time making this house a home.     

Devastated with his wife’s diagnosis Ronald did the only thing he knew how to do to cheer her up. .. draw.

How romantic

Before every chemotherapy session he gave his wife a painting. Monica was depicted as a mole, a very happy mole celebrating life in their new home. (The Mole idea came after their discovery of a large celler that they made into a cosy room).
‘Everything about them had to be romantic and perfect,’ says Ronald. ‘I drew them originally for no one’s eyes except Mo’s, so she would look at them propped up against her bedside lamp and think: “When I’m better, everything will be beautiful.”

This is my favourite

         Monica Searl died last year 41 years after her diagnosis.
         Ronald Searle died last week at the age of 91 years.