Secrets of Five Famous Lovers & Love Letters

Long before heart emojis, texts, and TikTok likes, lovers communicated through passionate handwritten letters delivered by trusted couriers. 

Passion sometimes overruled discretion, however, leading to disastrous consequences - even death - when the secret love letters were intercepted by enemies.

Here are five of history's most famous love letters and couples. 
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1. Richard Burton & Elizabeth Taylor

Richard Burton fell deeply in love with Elizabeth Taylor on the set of the 1963 epic Cleopatra: “I fell in love at once,” Richard said later. “She was like a mirage of beauty of the ages, irresistible like the pull of gravity.” They were both married at the time, but not for long.

“My blind eyes are desperately waiting for the sight of you,” Richard wrote. “You don’t realize of course, E.B., how fascinatingly beautiful you have always been, and how strangely you have acquired an added and special and dangerous loveliness.”

It was not to last, however. Burton was a heavy drinker and later letters reflected his apologies and repeat performances. On the couple’s 10th anniversary in 1974, Taylor wrote to him: 

“My darling (my still) my husband, I wish I could tell you of my love for you, of my fear, my delight, my pure animal pleasure of you - (with you) - my jealousy, my pride, my anger at you, at times. Most of all my love for you, and whatever love you can dole out to me - I wish I could write about it but I can’t. I can only “boil and bubble” inside and hope you understand how I really feel.

Anyway I lust thee, your (still) wife. P.S. O’Love, let us never take each other for granted again! P.P.S. How about that - ten years!”

A month later, they divorced only to remarry in 1975 and divorce again less than a year later.

2. General Napoleon Bonaparte To Joséphine Bonaparte

When General Napoleon Bonaparte was a young officer, he met Joséphine, a woman six years older. He wrote love letters while he was at war, revealing an emotional and complicated side to the General.

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They met in 1795 when he was 26 and clearly smitten with his future bride:

“A few days ago I thought I loved you; but since I last saw you I feel I love you a thousand times more,” he wrote. “All the time I have known you, I adore you more each day; that just shows how wrong was La Bruyére’s maxim - that love comes all at once. Everything in nature has its own life and different stages of growth. I beg you, let me see some of your faults: be less beautiful, less graceful, less kind, less good...”

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3. Zelda Fitzgerald and F. Scott Fitzgerald

The Fitzgeralds were seldom apart in the 1920s but, when they were, they corresponded with love letters. Zelda had a wonderful turn of phrase and F. Scott Fitzgerald was enchanted with her. 
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Montgomery, Alabama

Sunday - 

Darling, darling - I love you so - Today seems like Easter, and I wish we were together walking slow thru the sunshine and the crowds from Church - Everything smells so good and warm, and your ring shines so white in the sun - like one of the church lilies with a little yellow dust on it - We ought to be together this Spring - It seems made for us to love in - 

You can’t imagine what havoc the ring wrought - A whole dance was completely upset last night - Everybody thinks its lovely - and I am so proud to be your girl - to have everybody know we are in love - It’s so good to know you’re always loving me - and that before long we’ll be together for all our lives - 

The Ohio troops have started a wild and heated correspondence with Montgomery damsels - From all I can gather, the whole 37th Div will be down in May - Then I guess the butterflies will flitter a trifle more - It seems dreadfully peculiar not to be worried over the prospects of the return of at least three or four fiancees - My brain is stagnating owing to the lack of scraps - I haven’t had to exercise it in so long - 

Sweetheart, I love you most of all the earth - and I want to be married soon - soon - Lover - Don’t say I’m not enthusiastic - You ought to know - 

After an on-again-off-again engagement, the couple married and had a daughter. When The Great Gatsby was published, Fitzgerald’s drinking became excessive and Zelda suffered a mental breakdown in 1930. While she was hospitalized in North Carolina, Fitzgerald moved to Hollywood and became a scriptwriter, dying of a heart attack in 1940. Zelda died in a hospital fire eight years later. 

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4. Marie Antoinette’s letters to her dear Swedish Count

While Marie Antoinette was kept under surveillance for suspected treason and a botched escape attempt, the former French Queen exchanged secret letters with Swedish count Axel von Fersen. Historians have long speculated about the nature of their relationship - so much so, researchers used X-ray fluorescence spectroscopy to read scribbled-out passages of a 1792 letter.
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The redacted lines include words such as ‘beloved’, ‘tender friend’, and ‘adore’ but the exact nature of the relationship remains a mystery. The Queen of France before the French Revolution, Marie Antoinette (1755-93) was famously overthrown by revolutionaries and publicly guillotined after the French monarchy was abolished. She died with her secrets intact. 

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5. Katheryn Howard and the ‘smoking gun’ love letter

A teenage Katheryn (sometimes spelled Catharine) Howard arrived at the court of Henry VIII in 1540, soon attracting the attention of the much older 49-year-old King. They married but it was essential that the Royal Consort was chaste; it seems Katheryn had a complicated sexual past.

She’d had previous affairs and appears to have fallen in love with courtier Thomas Culpeper before marrying the King. Culpeper was a handsome man in his 20s but also a scoundrel, even accused of murder although never convicted. He and Katheryn had many private meetings after her marriage - she was likely 16 or 17 by some accounts - although these meetings may have involved intrigue rather than romance. Some speculate that Culpeper learned about Katheryn’s sexual history and may have pressured the Queen to grant him favors for maintaining silence about her previous affairs.

Katheryn seems to have been besotted, however. The smoking gun appears to be a letter to him written by Queen Katheryn in 1541 signed, "Yours as long as life endures." Unfortunately for the couple, life didn’t endure much longer.

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Culpeper denied the adultery, blamed the Queen, and claimed he’d tried to end their friendship but she was "dying of love for him". He changed his story, however admitting he intended to have an affair with the Queen but didn’t go through with it.

The King was shocked and angry at the scandal and Katheryn and Culpeper were executed for treason and adultery.