Famous Love Letters

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8 July [1819]

My Sweet Girl,

  Your Letter gave me more delight,than anything in the world but yourself could do; indeed I am almost astonished that any absent one should have that luxurious power over my senses which I feel. Even when I am not thinking of you I receive your influence and a tenderer nature steeling upon me. All my thoughts, my unhappiest days and nights have I find not all cured me of my love of Beauty, but made it so intense that I am miserable that you are not with me; or rather breathe in that dull sort of patience that cannot be called Life. I never knew before, what such a love as you have made me feel, was; I did not believe in it; my Fancy was afraid of it, lest it should burn me up. But if you will fully love me, though there may be some fire, 'twill not be more than we can bear when moistened and bedewed with Pleasures. You mention 'horrid people' and ask me whether it depend upon them, whether I see you again. Do understand me, my love, in this. I have so much of you in my heart that I must turn Mentor when I see a chance of harm befalling you. I would never seen anything but Pleasure in your eyes, love on your lips and those amusements suitable to your inclinations and spirits; so that our loves might be a delight in the midst of Pleasures agreeable enough, rather than a resource from vexations and cares. But I doubt much, in case of the worst, whether I shall be philosopher enough to follow my own Lessons: if I saw my resolution give you a pain I could not. Why may I not speak of your Beauty, since without that I could never have lov'd you. I cannot conceive any beginning of such love as I have for your but Beauty. there may be a sort of love for which, without the least sneer at it, I have the highest respect and can admire it in others: but it has not the richness, my own heart. So let me speak of your Beauty, though to my own endangering; if you could be so cruel to me as to try elsewhere its Power. you say your are afraid i shall think you do not love me - in saying this you make me ache the more to be near you. i am at the diligent use of my faculties here, I do not pass a day without sprawling some blank verse or tagging some rhymes; and here I must confess, that, (since I am on that subject,) I love you the more in that I believe you have liked me for my own sake and for nothing else. I have met with women whom I really think would like to be married to a Poem and to be given away by a Novel. I have seen your Comet, and only wish it was a sign that Poor Rice would get well whose illness makes him rather a melancholy companion: and the more so as so to conquer his feelings and hide them from me, with a force'd Pun. I kiss'd your writing over in the hope you have indulg'd me by leaving a trace of honey - What was your dream? Tell it me and I will tell you the interpretation thereof.

Ever yours, my love!

John Keats

Do not accuse me of delay - we have not here an opportunity of sending letters every day. Write speedily.

--John Keats to Fanny Brawne

Dear Prue, I am very sleepy and tired, but could not think of closing my eyes till I had told you I am, dearest creature, your most affectionate and faithful husband, Richard Steele

--Richard Steele to his wife 30 September 1710

My own dear boy - Your sonnet is quite lovely and it is a marvel that those red roseleaf lips of yours should be made no less for the music of song than for the madness of kissing. Your slim gilt soul walks between passion and poetry. I know that Hyacinthus, whom Apollo loved so madly, was you in Greek days. Why are you alone in London, and when do you go to Salisbury? Do go there and cool your hands in the grey twilight of Gothic things, and come here whenever you like. It is a lovely place; it only lacks you, but go to Salisbury first. Always with undying love, Yours, Oscar

--Oscar Wilde to Lord Alfred Douglas (c. 1891)

Jack, I shan't hide what I feel today. I woke up with you in my breast and on my lips. Jack, I love you terribly today. The whole world is gone. There is only you. I walk about, dress, eat, write - but all the time I am breathing you. Time and again I have been on the point of telegraphing you that I am coming home as soon as Kay sends my money. It is still possible that I shall.

Jack, Jack, I want to come back, And to hear the little ducks go Quack! Quack! Quack!

Life is too short for our love even though we stayed together every moment of all the years. I cannot think of you - our life - our darling life - you, my treasure - everything about you.

No, no, no. Take me quickly into your arms. Tig is a tired girl and she is crying. I want you, I want you. Without you life is nothing. Your woman Tig

--Katherine Mansfield to John Middleton Murry [28 March 1915]

Most Divine - It is some proof of my sincerity towards you, that I write when I am prepared by drinking to speak truth; and sure a letter after twelve at night must abound with that noble ingredient. That heart must have abundance of flames, which is at once warmed by wine and you: wine awakens and expresses the lurking passion of the mind, as varnish does the colours that are sunk in a picture, and brings them out in all their natural glowings. My good qualities have been so frozen and locked up in a dull constitution at all my former sober hours, that it is very astonishing to me, now I am drunk, to find so much virtue in me.

--Alexander Pope to Martha Blount (no date)

My dearest Eliza, I fear you will think the answer I wrote yesterday to your most kind and delicious letter, was very superficial, but I wrote it at once while people were talking and bother me. I have now read yours over and over more times than I should like to admit. I awoke in the middle of the night and immediately lit a candle to read it a few times again. It has given me more pleasure than I ever received from a letter, and infinitely more than I thought it possible I could receive from one. I fancy that it is not now an effort to your to write to me - at least it reads as if it was written without effort. Yet it tells me things which with your deep and reserved nature it must have cost you much to put on paper. I wish indeed I could feel worthy of your affection - my reason, if not my imagination, is getting to believe you when you whisper to me that I have it, but as somebody says in Miss Austen, ‘I do not at all mind having what is too good for me’; my delight is at times intense. You must not suppose because I tell you of the wild, burning pain which I have felt, and at times, thought I am and ought to be soothed, still feel, that my love for you has ever been mere suffering. Even at the worst there was a wild, delicious excitement which I would not have lost for the world. At first, and before the feeling was very great it was simple pleasure to me to come to Claverton, and the charm of our early intellectual talks was very great, although of late, and particularly since the day in the conservatory, the feeling has been too eager not to have a good deal of pain in it, and the tension of mind has really been very great at times, still the time that I have known and loved you, is immensely the happiest I have ever known. My spirits always make me cheerful in a superficial way, but they do not satisfy, and somehow life even before I was engaged to you was sweeter and gentler, and the jars and jangles of action lost their influence, and literature had a new values since you liked my writing, and everything has had a gloss upon it. Though I have come to Claverton the last few times with the notion that the gloss would go - that I should burst out and you would be tranquil and kind and considerate and refuse and I should never see you again. I had a vision of the thing which I keep by me. As it has not happened I am afraid this is egotistical - indeed I know it is - but I am not sure that egotism is bad in letters, and if I write to you I must write about what I feel for you. It is odd how completely our feelings change. No one can tell the effort it was to me to tell you I loved you - why I do no know, but it made me gasp for breath, and now it is absolutely please to me to tell it to you and bore you with it in every form, and I should like to write it in big letters I LOVE YOU all across the page by way of emphasis. I know you will think me very childish and be shaken in your early notion that I am intellectual, but I cannot help it. This is my state of mind.

--Walter Bagehot to Elizabeth Wilson Herd's Hill, 22 November 1857

Sage and Rosemary

The Language of Love

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