Love Letters: The Romance of Grace Warne & Vernon Hogg 1933-35

Peter Botsman
14 March 2024
These letters are a glimpse into another time and place.

Passion burned brightly through the hot summer nights and cold winters of Melbourne in 1933-5. Grace Warne and Wilfred John Vernon (Vern) Hogg  were head over heels in love. When Vern was posted as a Principal of a small school four hundred and twenty kilometres away in the small town of Walwa on the Murray River, it seemed the end of the earth.

Letters became the life force that connected them both. Waited on eagerly every week, if no letter turned up in the post then the disappointment was palpable.

The urgency of being together was heartfelt. Love was blind to whatever was happening in the world. At this tumultuous time there is little in these letters of politics, of the Depression and of the tumultuous events in Europe though Grace and Vern were to become passionate environmentalists and stalwarts of the anti-war movement in the 1960s and 1970s. The only thing that mattered at this time in their lives was love.

The letters were kept faithfully in a “Remember” box. Grace died nine months before Vern, and the letters were by his bedside.  They were together for over fifty years.

To have known love like this is a great blessing. The letters are a reminder of something beyond words and even life itself.  Non Omnis Moriar (Not all of me will die) was the monogram on some of Vern’s letters to Grace and it has proved to be true in so many ways.

Should these private letters be made public? There are many notes from Grace and Vern and their daughter Barbara that are very instructive, as if they knew that at some point something might happen, though the letters may have been their last consideratno.  Vernon notes the shyness of Grace in one letter and both did not like the limelight. No doubt to have these letters published while they were both alive may have been too much. But the joy of these letters and the unique way they convey simple values from another time is something that Grace and Vern would have approved of. It is in keeping with the way they lived. I can imagine Grace’s cheeky smile at the thought of current generations putting aside their phones and dating apps to read her beautifully written letters. She was a feminist and an environmentalist and a supporter of Aboriginal rights and yet she was also an adoring partner.

Love was everything that made all things right. Each letter glows with devotion, adoration and simplicity. Love was for life. The modern world was held at bay by dreams of a simple life and pleasures: being together, a house and a family in a cocoon of love.

It was not a mirage. Grace and Vernon lived, worked together and were inseparable all their lives. They were seminal and inspirational for four generations of their family and beyond. Outwardly they appeared conventional, but they were always something special, unique, wonderful and modern about them. Heterosexuality and the nuclear family with all its traps sure, but wrapped up by the power of an abiding love.

Vernon was ten years older than Grace. He probably first met her with her sisters at the Matrons Ball, Mansfield on Sept 15, 1925. Vernon’s program, (see opposite) faithfully kept in the box with the love letters, shows his dance partners penciled in. He danced with four of the six Warne sisters, “Grace” is written next to the third dance, the Fox Trot. She would have only been ten years old. In one of her photo albums Grace suggests that she met Vern while a nurse. Perhaps Vern made the connection to the Mansfield Dance after their 1930s romance.

In the summer of 1933 Grace was a Nurse at Madeleine Private Hospital, Parkville. Nursing was never something Grace enjoyed. More than anything else she wanted to be with Vern. Vern was a young teacher at the mercy of the Victorian Department of Education being posted from country school to country school, enduring white-ant infested residences, he was intent on securing a good house that he and Grace could live in and be together.

The beauty of these letters comes from their under-stated sensuality and longing at at a time when seeing a show on Friday night, tennis (Saturday) and cricket (Sunday) were all the entertainment on offer and probably all that most could want.

‘Going to the city’ was something Grace and Vernon loved to do all their lives. In their latter years it was something of a rite, Vernon would walk up the laneways from Flinders St Station for chocolates and freshly baked cookies from the basement at Myers, stop in at Fletcher Jones perhaps and Grace would go wider afield up the tram lines to North Carlton and Brunswick doing a prowl of op. shops for her son, daughters, grandson and their friends, always coming up with amazing bargains and sought after fashion items never out of date. Friday night movies in country theatres were mandatory and often Vernon would take his daughter Barbara who had a life long love of cinema and the moving image.

Grace’s letters are wonderful, partly because of their rhythm. In 1933/34 Grace would write weekly and then post the letter the next day. Her closest post office was the Carlton North Post Office at 546 Rathdowne St and she almost always (except when letters were entrusted to her brothers!) made the mail the day after her night-time writing. Vern’s letters are more enigmatic but equally passionate.

The great love that is expressed in these letters was a primary reason why the generations that followed Grace and Vernon had successful, happy, adventurous and joyful lives.  Those of us who are are alive and breathing in Australia in 2024 are invariably spoilt. We have so many things, privileges and capacities. Grace and Vernon lived simply, loved devotedly and unilaterally and they carried successive generations forward. These letters are a glimpse into anothe time and place. A great love was flourishing that would bind us in our families and in our world. We owe so much to the angels of the past. This volume is an attempt to say thank you and to acknowledge the miracle that was Barbara Botsman. Love is the foundation of all that is good.

Non Omnis Moriar

 

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PCB January 2024Passion burned brightly through the hot summer nights and cold winters of 1933/34. Grace Warne and Wilfred John Vernon (Vern) Hogg  were head over heels in love. When Vern was posted as a Principal of a small school four hundred and twenty kilometres away in the small town of Walwa on the Murray River, it seemed the end of the earth. 
Letters became the life force that connected them both. Waited on eagerly every week, if no letter turned up in the post then the disappointment was palpable. 
The urgency of being together was heartfelt. Love was blind to whatever was happening in the world. At this tumultuous time there is little in these letters of politics, of the Depression and of the tumultuous events in Europe though Grace and Vern were to become passionate environmentalists and stalwarts of the anti-war movement in the 1960s and 1970s. The only thing that mattered at this time in their lives was love.
The letters were kept faithfully in a “Remember” box. Grace died nine months before Vern, and the letters were by his bedside.  They were together for over fifty years.
To have known love like this is a great blessing. The letters are a reminder of something beyond words and even life itself.  Non Omnis Moriar (Not all of me will die) was the monogram on some of Vern’s letters to Grace and it has proved to be true in so many ways. 
Should these private letters be made public? There are many notes from Grace and Vern and their daughter Barbara that are very instructive, as if they knew that at some point something might happen, though the letters may have been their last consideratno.  Vernon notes the shyness of Grace in one letter and both did not like the limelight. No doubt to have these letters published while they were both alive may have been too much. But the joy of these letters and the unique way they convey simple values from another time is something that Grace and Vern would have approved of. It is in keeping with the way they lived. I can imagine Grace’s cheeky smile at the thought of current generations putting aside their phones and dating apps to read her beautifully written letters. She was a feminist and an environmentalist and a supporter of Aboriginal rights and yet she was also an adoring partner. 
Love was everything that made all things right. Each letter glows with devotion, adoration and simplicity. Love was for life. The modern world was held at bay by dreams of a simple life and pleasures: being together, a house and a family in a cocoon of love.
It was not a mirage. Grace and Vernon lived, worked together and were inseparable all their lives. They were seminal and inspirational for four generations of their family and beyond. Outwardly they appeared conventional, but they were always something special, unique, wonderful and modern about them. Heterosexuality and the nuclear family with all its traps sure, but wrapped up by the power of an abiding love.
Vernon was ten years older than Grace. He probably first met her with her sisters at the Matrons Ball, Mansfield on Sept 15, 1925. Vernon’s program, (see opposite) faithfully kept in the box with the love letters, shows his dance partners penciled in. He danced with four of the six Warne sisters, “Grace” is written next to the third dance, the Fox Trot. She would have only been ten years old. In one of her photo albums Grace suggests that she met Vern while a nurse. Perhaps Vern made the connection to the Mansfield Dance after their 1930s romance.
In the summer of 1933 Grace was a Nurse at Madeleine Private Hospital, Parkville. Nursing was never something Grace enjoyed. More than anything else she wanted to be with Vern. Vern was a young teacher at the mercy of the Victorian Department of Education being posted from country school to country school, enduring white-ant infested residences, he was intent on securing a good house that he and Grace could live in and be together.
The beauty of these letters comes from their under-stated sensuality and longing at at a time when seeing a show on Friday night, tennis (Saturday) and cricket (Sunday) were all the entertainment on offer and probably all that most could want. 
‘Going to the city’ was something Grace and Vernon loved to do all their lives. In their latter years it was something of a rite, Vernon would walk up the laneways from Flinders St Station for chocolates and freshly baked cookies from the basement at Myers, stop in at Fletcher Jones perhaps and Grace would go wider afield up the tram lines to North Carlton and Brunswick doing a prowl of op. shops for her son, daughters, grandson and their friends, always coming up with amazing bargains and sought after fashion items never out of date. Friday night movies in country theatres were mandatory and often Vernon would take his daughter Barbara who had a life long love of cinema and the moving image.
Grace’s letters are wonderful, partly because of their rhythm. In 1933/34 Grace would write weekly and then post the letter the next day. Her closest post office was the Carlton North Post Office at 546 Rathdowne St and she almost always (except when letters were entrusted to her brothers!) made the mail the day after her night-time writing. Vern’s letters are more enigmatic but equally passionate.
The great love that is expressed in these letters was a primary reason why the generations that followed Grace and Vernon had successful, happy, adventurous and joyful lives.  Those of us who are are alive and breathing in Australia in 2024 are invariably spoilt. We have so many things, privileges and capacities. Grace and Vernon lived simply, loved devotedly and unilaterally and they carried successive generations forward. These letters are a glimpse into anothe time and place. A great love was flourishing that would bind us in our families and in our world. We owe so much to the angels of the past. This volume is an attempt to say thank you and to acknowledge the miracle that was Barbara Botsman. Love is the foundation of all that is good. 
Non Omnis Moriar
PCB January 2024Without such love we would not exist... 
Passion burned brightly through the hot summer nights and cold winters of 1933/34. Grace Warne and Wilfred John Vernon (Vern) Hogg  were head over heels in love. When Vern was posted as a Principal of a small school four hundred and twenty kilometres away in the small town of Walwa on the Murray River, it seemed the end of the earth. 
Letters became the life force that connected them both. Waited on eagerly every week, if no letter turned up in the post then the disappointment was palpable. 
The urgency of being together was heartfelt. Love was blind to whatever was happening in the world. At this tumultuous time there is little in these letters of politics, of the Depression and of the tumultuous events in Europe though Grace and Vern were to become passionate environmentalists and stalwarts of the anti-war movement in the 1960s and 1970s. The only thing that mattered at this time in their lives was love.
The letters were kept faithfully in a “Remember” box. Grace died nine months before Vern, and the letters were by his bedside.  They were together for over fifty years.
To have known love like this is a great blessing. The letters are a reminder of something beyond words and even life itself.  Non Omnis Moriar (Not all of me will die) was the monogram on some of Vern’s letters to Grace and it has proved to be true in so many ways. 
Should these private letters be made public? There are many notes from Grace and Vern and their daughter Barbara that are very instructive, as if they knew that at some point something might happen, though the letters may have been their last consideratno.  Vernon notes the shyness of Grace in one letter and both did not like the limelight. No doubt to have these letters published while they were both alive may have been too much. But the joy of these letters and the unique way they convey simple values from another time is something that Grace and Vern would have approved of. It is in keeping with the way they lived. I can imagine Grace’s cheeky smile at the thought of current generations putting aside their phones and dating apps to read her beautifully written letters. She was a feminist and an environmentalist and a supporter of Aboriginal rights and yet she was also an adoring partner. 
Love was everything that made all things right. Each letter glows with devotion, adoration and simplicity. Love was for life. The modern world was held at bay by dreams of a simple life and pleasures: being together, a house and a family in a cocoon of love.
It was not a mirage. Grace and Vernon lived, worked together and were inseparable all their lives. They were seminal and inspirational for four generations of their family and beyond. Outwardly they appeared conventional, but they were always something special, unique, wonderful and modern about them. Heterosexuality and the nuclear family with all its traps sure, but wrapped up by the power of an abiding love.
Vernon was ten years older than Grace. He probably first met her with her sisters at the Matrons Ball, Mansfield on Sept 15, 1925. Vernon’s program, (see opposite) faithfully kept in the box with the love letters, shows his dance partners penciled in. He danced with four of the six Warne sisters, “Grace” is written next to the third dance, the Fox Trot. She would have only been ten years old. In one of her photo albums Grace suggests that she met Vern while a nurse. Perhaps Vern made the connection to the Mansfield Dance after their 1930s romance.
In the summer of 1933 Grace was a Nurse at Madeleine Private Hospital, Parkville. Nursing was never something Grace enjoyed. More than anything else she wanted to be with Vern. Vern was a young teacher at the mercy of the Victorian Department of Education being posted from country school to country school, enduring white-ant infested residences, he was intent on securing a good house that he and Grace could live in and be together.
The beauty of these letters comes from their under-stated sensuality and longing at at a time when seeing a show on Friday night, tennis (Saturday) and cricket (Sunday) were all the entertainment on offer and probably all that most could want. 
‘Going to the city’ was something Grace and Vernon loved to do all their lives. In their latter years it was something of a rite, Vernon would walk up the laneways from Flinders St Station for chocolates and freshly baked cookies from the basement at Myers, stop in at Fletcher Jones perhaps and Grace would go wider afield up the tram lines to North Carlton and Brunswick doing a prowl of op. shops for her son, daughters, grandson and their friends, always coming up with amazing bargains and sought after fashion items never out of date. Friday night movies in country theatres were mandatory and often Vernon would take his daughter Barbara who had a life long love of cinema and the moving image.
Grace’s letters are wonderful, partly because of their rhythm. In 1933/34 Grace would write weekly and then post the letter the next day. Her closest post office was the Carlton North Post Office at 546 Rathdowne St and she almost always (except when letters were entrusted to her brothers!) made the mail the day after her night-time writing. Vern’s letters are more enigmatic but equally passionate.
The great love that is expressed in these letters was a primary reason why the generations that followed Grace and Vernon had successful, happy, adventurous and joyful lives.  Those of us who are are alive and breathing in Australia in 2024 are invariably spoilt. We have so many things, privileges and capacities. Grace and Vernon lived simply, loved devotedly and unilaterally and they carried successive generations forward. These letters are a glimpse into anothe time and place. A great love was flourishing that would bind us in our families and in our world. We owe so much to the angels of the past. This volume is an attempt to say thank you and to acknowledge the miracle that was Barbara Botsman. Love is the foundation of all that is good. 
Non Omnis Moriar
PCB January 2024Without such love we would not exist... 
Passion burned brightly through the hot summer nights and cold winters of 1933/34. Grace Warne and Wilfred John Vernon (Vern) Hogg  were head over heels in love. When Vern was posted as a Principal of a small school four hundred and twenty kilometres away in the small town of Walwa on the Murray River, it seemed the end of the earth. 
Letters became the life force that connected them both. Waited on eagerly every week, if no letter turned up in the post then the disappointment was palpable. 
The urgency of being together was heartfelt. Love was blind to whatever was happening in the world. At this tumultuous time there is little in these letters of politics, of the Depression and of the tumultuous events in Europe though Grace and Vern were to become passionate environmentalists and stalwarts of the anti-war movement in the 1960s and 1970s. The only thing that mattered at this time in their lives was love.
The letters were kept faithfully in a “Remember” box. Grace died nine months before Vern, and the letters were by his bedside.  They were together for over fifty years.
To have known love like this is a great blessing. The letters are a reminder of something beyond words and even life itself.  Non Omnis Moriar (Not all of me will die) was the monogram on some of Vern’s letters to Grace and it has proved to be true in so many ways. 
Should these private letters be made public? There are many notes from Grace and Vern and their daughter Barbara that are very instructive, as if they knew that at some point something might happen, though the letters may have been their last consideratno.  Vernon notes the shyness of Grace in one letter and both did not like the limelight. No doubt to have these letters published while they were both alive may have been too much. But the joy of these letters and the unique way they convey simple values from another time is something that Grace and Vern would have approved of. It is in keeping with the way they lived. I can imagine Grace’s cheeky smile at the thought of current generations putting aside their phones and dating apps to read her beautifully written letters. She was a feminist and an environmentalist and a supporter of Aboriginal rights and yet she was also an adoring partner. 
Love was everything that made all things right. Each letter glows with devotion, adoration and simplicity. Love was for life. The modern world was held at bay by dreams of a simple life and pleasures: being together, a house and a family in a cocoon of love.
It was not a mirage. Grace and Vernon lived, worked together and were inseparable all their lives. They were seminal and inspirational for four generations of their family and beyond. Outwardly they appeared conventional, but they were always something special, unique, wonderful and modern about them. Heterosexuality and the nuclear family with all its traps sure, but wrapped up by the power of an abiding love.
Vernon was ten years older than Grace. He probably first met her with her sisters at the Matrons Ball, Mansfield on Sept 15, 1925. Vernon’s program, (see opposite) faithfully kept in the box with the love letters, shows his dance partners penciled in. He danced with four of the six Warne sisters, “Grace” is written next to the third dance, the Fox Trot. She would have only been ten years old. In one of her photo albums Grace suggests that she met Vern while a nurse. Perhaps Vern made the connection to the Mansfield Dance after their 1930s romance.
In the summer of 1933 Grace was a Nurse at Madeleine Private Hospital, Parkville. Nursing was never something Grace enjoyed. More than anything else she wanted to be with Vern. Vern was a young teacher at the mercy of the Victorian Department of Education being posted from country school to country school, enduring white-ant infested residences, he was intent on securing a good house that he and Grace could live in and be together.
The beauty of these letters comes from their under-stated sensuality and longing at at a time when seeing a show on Friday night, tennis (Saturday) and cricket (Sunday) were all the entertainment on offer and probably all that most could want. 
‘Going to the city’ was something Grace and Vernon loved to do all their lives. In their latter years it was something of a rite, Vernon would walk up the laneways from Flinders St Station for chocolates and freshly baked cookies from the basement at Myers, stop in at Fletcher Jones perhaps and Grace would go wider afield up the tram lines to North Carlton and Brunswick doing a prowl of op. shops for her son, daughters, grandson and their friends, always coming up with amazing bargains and sought after fashion items never out of date. Friday night movies in country theatres were mandatory and often Vernon would take his daughter Barbara who had a life long love of cinema and the moving image.
Grace’s letters are wonderful, partly because of their rhythm. In 1933/34 Grace would write weekly and then post the letter the next day. Her closest post office was the Carlton North Post Office at 546 Rathdowne St and she almost always (except when letters were entrusted to her brothers!) made the mail the day after her night-time writing. Vern’s letters are more enigmatic but equally passionate.
The great love that is expressed in these letters was a primary reason why the generations that followed Grace and Vernon had successful, happy, adventurous and joyful lives.  Those of us who are are alive and breathing in Australia in 2024 are invariably spoilt. We have so many things, privileges and capacities. Grace and Vernon lived simply, loved devotedly and unilaterally and they carried successive generations forward. These letters are a glimpse into anothe time and place. A great love was flourishing that would bind us in our families and in our world. We owe so much to the angels of the past. This volume is an attempt to say thank you and to acknowledge the miracle that was Barbara Botsman. Love is the foundation of all that is good. 
Non Omnis Moriar
PCB January 2024
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PDF icon Love Letters: The Romance of Grace Warne & Vernon Hogg 1933-35