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A series of post-war letters, poems and photographs detailing a romantic high-society love story have been found on the back of a bus in an old plastic bag. The photographs, dating from the 1940s, feature a glamorous Audrey Hepburn-lookalike travelling the world on cruise liners and attending weddings and parties.
Airmail love letters from a mysterious 'Xavier' are addressed to a Miss Anna Paton - presumed to be the English rose in the photographs - who would now be in her 80s. The fascinating love story was found, together with birth certificates and important documents, in a purple plastic bag on the back of a coach in Bristol in August 2008.
The bus company spent the last year trying to trace the owner without success and are now appealing for anyone with information to contact them. The mysterious purple bag contained more than 70 black and white photos and airmail letters, with many bound together in delicate pink ribbon.
It was left on long-distance coach that terminated in Bristol in 2008 and either came from London or from Devon and Cornwall and was operated by First.
The letters all begin ‘to my love’ and are signed off ‘god bless you my darling, my lover, X.’ The poems are clearly romantic in nature and one refers to the couple as ‘mistress’ and ‘lover’.
One two-page poem is titled The Lovers’ Complaynt On His Evident Incapacity To Fulfil His Mistress Her Task.
In the poem the author speaks of his longing for Anna by asking: ‘Simply to gratify my Anna’s curious pleasure is / It really honest to loot poor grave’s golden treasuries? / T’will be the only pinching I am likely to be allowed / Unless I goose her secretly in the middle of a crowd.’
From addresses on the envelopes, it appears Miss Paton lived at addresses in Chelsea and Knightsbridge in London, St Ives in Cornwall and various overseas locations.
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