Les Lettres Romantiques

There is perhaps nothing I enjoy more than antiques. The age and the delicacy of these items elate me--the materials, the stories they tell. And while one can look at a particular item for hours longing for the story beneath, there is perhaps nothing more telling than a love letter of old.

So, I've decided to collect excerpts from some of my favorite love letters in history--to pay homage to some of these wonderful, thrilling tales--the grotesque, sexual, brazen, and passionate.



"--Methinks I could write a volume to you; but all the language on earth would fail in saying how much, and with what disinterested passion, I am yours ever."

Richard Steele to Mary Scurlock
1 September 1707


"--Oh, my dear, I can't be clever and stand-offish with you: I love you too much for that. Too truly. You have no idea how stand-offish I can be with people I don't love. I have brought it to a fine art. But you have broken down my defenses. And I don't really resent it."

Vita Sackville-West to Virginia Woolf
21 January 1927


"--I went away from you. I have had three more sherries. I vowed I would never see you again, but I cannot keep my vow. Albiet I come back to my love for you."

Caradoc Evans to Oliver Sandys 
9 June 1930


"--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


"--When shall we pass a day alone? I have had a thousand kisses, for which with my whole soul I thank love--but if you should deny me the thousand and first--t'would put me to the proof how great a misery I could live through. If you should ever carry your threat yesterday into execution--believe me 'tis not my pride, my vanity nor any petty passion would torment me--really 'twould hurt my heart--I could not bear it..."

John Keats to Fanny Brawne 
11 October 1819


"--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..."

Katherine Mansfield to John Middleton Murry 
28 March 1915


"--If I look at nature with the eyes of a sensitive reader, when I hear music or see paintings or--but why go on with a list of all the things which have come to life in me only through you?"

Alban Berg to Helene Nahowski
Spring 1909 


"--My love has made me selfish. I cannot exist without you. I am forgetful of every thing but seeing you again--my Life seems to stop there--I see no further. You have absorb'd me. I have a sensation at the present moment as though I was dissolving--I should be exquisitely miserable without the hope of soon seeing you. I should be afraid to separate myself far from you."

John Keats to Fanny Brawne
13 October 1819


"Not believe that I love you? You cannot pretend to be so incredulous. If you do not believe my tongue, consult my eyes, consult your own. You will find by yours that they have charms; by mine that I have a heart which feels them."

William Congreve to Arabella Hunt 
1690


"--There is so much you want to know. I remember your phrase: 'Only whores appreciate me.' I wanted to say: you can only have blood-consciousness with whores, there is too much mine between us, too much literature, too much illusion--but then you denied there had been only mind...I love this strange, treacherous softness of you which always turns to hatred..."

Anais Nin to Henry Miller
9 March 1932