An Archive of 20th Century Sado-Masochism: Letters to The Black Knight (1975-1983)

[Northampton, Massachusetts], 1983. Near Fine. A remarkable collection of nearly 30 love letters (including five photographs) sent by a Baptist minister from Massachusetts to his elder lover: "The Black Knight." The letters document in graphic and loving detail illustrated their illicit Sado-Masochistic affair that began in the spring of 1975 and continued through to the spring of 1982. All but one has the original mailing envelope, near fine. Most of the letters are handwritten in the pastor's attractive calligraphic hand, including two elaborately illustrated by him. All are well-written, indicative of a highly educated man from an established Dutch-American family, and in nearly all of the letters he writes with unconstrained passion of his insatiable love, spiritual and physical, and of his desperate need to be sexually enslaved and brutalized by his "Almighty Regent ... my Black Knight of infamous mystic stirrings." Included are two early albumen prints (family portraits), and three contemporary color photographs taken at the height of their affair, showing the pastor's Church, the pastor and the elderly Black Knight, and the Black Knight seated in his apartment. As it appears likely that the pastor was married at the time of the affair (he fathered children, and played an active leadership role in The American Baptist Churches of Massachusetts throughout his 35-year ministry), the names of both men have been withheld.