the love that dare not speak its name

“the love that dare not speak its name” is the phrase James Blackadder uses during a televised discussion of the newly revealed relationship between Randolph Henry Ash and Christabel LaMotte. In the same account, he calls Ash a great love poet and identifies LaMotte as the previously unknown subject of his poems, turning the expression into a public shorthand for the private love the letters have brought to light.

Television and the Discovery

During the broadcast, Blackadder recalls the discussion moving rapidly between female sexuality, the Fairy Melusina, and the danger attributed to female power. The conversation then turns to LaMotte and the love that dare not speak its name. Leonora Stern is surprised by the possibility that LaMotte loved a man, underscoring how the discovery unsettles established expectations about the poet’s life as well as Ash’s.

Blackadder’s Claim

Blackadder connects the phrase to Ash’s poetry, especially Ask to Embla, which he describes as a poem of true sexual passion. He says that no one had known for whom Ash wrote those poems and presents the letters as identifying their addressee. His phrase therefore links literary interpretation to biographical disclosure: the poems’ passion is no longer treated as abstract or anonymous but read in light of a particular relationship.

Public Meaning and Ownership

Blackadder calls the discovery the kind scholars dream of and argues that the letters must remain in the country because they belong to its national story. The phrase thus enters a dispute over how private correspondence becomes public evidence. It conveys the concealed character of the love while also helping Blackadder make the case that the papers are not merely personal documents: they have become part of the national literary record.