Love Letters

• Love letters

  1. Napoleon Bonaparte to Josephine du

  Beauharnais

  Since I left you, I have been constantly

  depressed. My happiness is to be near you.

  Incessantly I live over in my memory your

  caresses, your tears, your aectionate

  solicitude. The charms of the incomparable

  Josephine kindle continually a burning and a

  glowing $ame in my heart…. I thought that I

  loved you months ago, but since my

  separation from you I feel that I love you a

  thousand fold more. Each day since I knew

  you, have I adored you more and more.

  2. Richard Burton to Elizabeth Taylor

  3. Elizabeth Barrett to Robert Browning
• 

  It seems to me, to myself, that no man was

  ever before to any woman what you are to me

  — the fullness must be in proportion, you

  know, to the vacancy…and only I know what

  was behind — the long wilderness without the

  blossoming rose…and the capacity for

  happiness, like a black gaping hole, before

  this silver $ooding. Is it wonderful that I

  should stand as in a dream, and disbelieve—

  not you—but my own fate?

  Was ever any one taken suddenly from a

  lampless dungeon and placed upon the

  pinnacle of a mountain, without the head

  turning round and the heart turning faint, as

  mine do? And you love me more, you say? ….

  How shall I ever prove what my heart is to

  you? How will you ever see it as I feel it?

  4. Beethoven to his “Immortal Beloved”

  Though still in bed, my thoughts go out to

  you, my Immortal Beloved, Be calm — love me

  — today — yesterday — what tearful longings

  for you — you — you — my life — my all —

  farewell. Oh continue to love me — never

  misjudge the most faithful heart of your

  beloved. Ever thine. Ever mine. Ever ours.

  5. Winston Churchill to Clementine Churchill
• 

  6. Oscar Wilde to Lord Alfred Douglas

  My Own Boy,

  Your sonnet is quite lovely, and it is a marvel

  that hose red-roseleaf lips of yours should be

  made no less for the madness of music and

  song than for the madness of kissing. Your

  slim gilt soul walks between passion and

  poetry. I know 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 to cool your hands in

  the grey twilight of Gothic things, and come

  here whenever you like. It is a lovely place

  and lacks only you; but go to Salisbury >rst.

  Always, with undying love,

  Yours, Oscar