Today I went to see this exhibit at the National Library of Victoria, the description of the exhibit is this:
Love doesn’t follow the rules: it rewrites them.
Rebel Heart: Love letters and other declarations is a tribute to defiant expressions of the heart, celebrating true stories of the rebels of romance from the past to the present.
This stirring new exhibition explores romantic love – and its foil, heartbreak – through State Library Victoria’s extraordinary archive of soul-baring letters, intimate diaries and rare manuscripts, amplified in powerful new music commissions.
Spanning centuries of connection and courage, meet the brave hearts who dared to love unapologetically – from same-sex couples in the Victorian era and a mid-century marriage at odds with the White Australia policy, to love outside marriage, across borders and online.
This was a really moving exhibit*, there were so many examples of people who were really punished by their society for loving one another, especially the indigenous and interracial couples who were treated absolutely abominably at the time.
There were also a couple of exhibits of Australian historical queer figures, the one which was most gutting to me personally was the letters of Andrew George Scott aka Captain Moonlite, who's lover/ fellow bushranger James Nesbitt was killed in the shootout where Moonlite was captured.
While in prison awaiting execution, Andrew George Scott wrote several letters, which detailed how much he loved James Nesbitt, and where he asked for several things--to be given the bloody clothes that Nesbitt died in, to tell Nesbitt's mother that her son was innocent of the worst of what he'd been accused of, and to be buried beside him:
"My dying wish is to be buried beside my beloved James Nesbitt, the man with whom I was united by every tie which could bind human friendship, we were one in hopes, in heart and soul and this unity lasted until he died in my arms."
Most of these requests were denied, and the letters were never sent by the prison authorities, but were rediscovered much later by a historian.
When he was hanged, Scott was wearing a ring made of a lock of Nesbitt's hair, and he was not buried with Nesbitt.
In January 1995 Scott's body was exhumed from Rookwood Cemetery in Sydney, and reburied alongside James Nesbitt.
Digitised versions of Andrew George Scott/ Captain Moonlite's letters can be found here: https://mhnsw.au/articles/captain-moonlite-digitised-letters-from-prison/
*Unfortunately there was one exhibit of AI generated drivel which was very disappointing and puerile beside all of the other genuinely moving and important exhibits
prguitarman
