FAMOUS LOVE-LETTERS

Evening Star, Issue 19760, 10 January 1928, Page 12

FAMOUS LOVE-LETTERS

PASSIONS OF GREAT MEH The various methods of writing love letters form the subject of an article in a London paper. It is pointed out that the average love-letter is, with rare exceptions, a mere business missive, with an awkwardly-executed embroidery of crudely-expressed affection here and there. In other days it was a man’s pride and pleasure to pour out his very soul on reams of paper, in ardent homage to the woman of his choice.

Thus, in one of Henry VlH.’s letters to Anne Bolcyn one reads: “My heart and I surrender ourselves into your hands. Absence gives me more pain than I ever thought could be felt. This brings to my mind a fact in astronomy, which is, that the farther the poles are from the sun,-the more scorching is his heat. Thus it is with our love; absence has placed distance between us, nevertheless fervor increases—at least on my part. . . .

The anguish of absence is so great that it would bo intolerable were it not for the firm hope I have of your indissoluble affection toward me I.

beg of you, my entirely beloved, not to be uneasy at our absence, for wherever I am I am yours.” No less ardent was John Churchill, the great Duke of Marlborough, when

he wrote to Sarah Jennings: “I love you and adore you with all my heart and soul—so ranch that I am and will be ever better pleased with your happiness than my own. But, oh, my soul! If we might be both happy, what inexpressible joy that would bo 1 I will not dare to expect more favor than you shall see fit to give me, but could you love mo I think the happiness would be so great that it would make me immortal.”

William Congreve, wit and man of fashion, worshipped at many fair shrines and always with the same ardor of devotion. In writing to Arabella Hunt, he thus unburdened himself of his passion: “ Recall what happened last night. That at least was a lover’s kiss, its eagerness, its warmth, expressed the God, its parent. . . . But love, almighty Love, seems in a moment to have removed mo to a prodigious distance from every object but you alone. Nothing but you can lay hold of my mind. I appear transported to some foreign desert with you (oh ! that 1 were really thus transported, where, abundantly supplied with everything in thee, 1 might live out an age of uninterrupted ecstasy).” Even Congreve’s passion for Arabella Hunt was no more ardent than that of Keats for Fanny Brawne, to whom he wrote: “ 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! I would never sec anything but pleasure in your eyes, love on your lips; and happiness in your steps. . . . My dear girl, I love you ever and ever without reserve. The more I. have known, the more I have loved. Even my jealousies have been agonies of love; in the hottest fit I have ever had I would have died for you. The last of your kisses was ever the sweetest, the last smile the brightest, the last movement the grncefullest.” Nor was William Hazlitt less transported by love when he wrote to Sarah Walker: “When I think of the thousand endearing . caresses that have passed between us-1 do not wonder at the strong attachment that draws me to you. I hear the wind sigh through the lattice, and keep repeating over and over to myself two lines of Byron’s tragedy: So shalt thou find me ever at thy side Here and hereafter, if the last may be—applying them to thee, my love, and thinking whether I shall ever see thee again.”