I dug up some actual historical love letters from the Regency era

Anne Walker, to Anne Lister, 1832

 I found this one on the Tumblr @lovingannelister, and the transcription was done by Anne Choma, who wrote the official companion book to the TV show Gentleman Jack. Interestingly, the letter quotes an earlier note. I’m not sure that this is the complete letter, but it gives you a good idea about how a woman of the period might have expressed distress. Here’s the Tumblr post that shows the diary entry that included the text to this historic love letter. 

I have received a letter which you shall see, but we must meet on different terms. Oh that I had taken you at your word last Monday, and as you said, finished the matter on that day. I should have then spared you this additional bitterness. I do hope when my word was once given to you that I should have felt at rest, and satisfied, but in reflecting on all you have said, in trying to turn it to my own advantage, I cannot satisfy my conscience, and with such sufferings as I have endured since Wednesday, I feel I could not make you happy—that I should only bring misery on you. For misery I am sure it would be to you to see me in the state I have been in for several days. It was this sort of wretchedness that was expressed in my note on Friday. It was these miserable feelings that prompted my request (that is I suppose for me not to send to York for the ring.) For your own sake fly whilst it is yet in your power (I smile as I copy this sentence), and believe that I will never intrude myself in any way upon you unless it is in your wish, whenever you revisit the neighborhood.

Samuel Taylor Coleridge, to Mary Evans, 1794

I feel for Coleridge here, and I’m sure the sexism is pretty typical of the time (Mary’s not like the other girls!) Mary broke his heart, though.

Too long has my heart been the torture house of suspense. After infinite struggles of irresolution, I will at last dare to request of you, Mary, that you will communicate to me whether or no you are engaged to Mr. ——. I conjure you not to consider this request as presumptuous indelicacy. Upon mine honour, I have made it with no other design or expectation than that of arming my fortitude by total hopelessness. Read this letter with benevolence—and consign it to oblivion

For four years I have endeavoured to smother a very ardent attachment; in what degree I have succeeded you must know better than I can. With quick perceptions of moral beauty, it was impossible for me not to admire in you your sensibility regulated by judgment, your gaiety proceeding from a cheerful heart acting on the stores of a strong understanding. At first I voluntarily invited the recollection of these qualities into my mind. I made them the perpetual object of my reveries, yet I entertained no one sentiment beyond that of the immediate pleasure annexed to the thinking of you. At length it became a habit. I awoke from the delusion, and found that I had unwittingly harboured a passion which I felt neither the power nor the courage to subdue. My associations were irrevocably formed, and your image was blended with every idea. I thought of you incessantly; yet that spirit (if spirit there be that condescends to record the lonely beatings of my heart), that spirit knows that I thought of you with the purity of a brother. Happy were I, had it been with no more than a brother’s ardour!

The man of dependent fortunes, while he fosters an attachment, commits an act of suicide on his happiness. I possessed no establishment. My views were very distant; I saw that you regarded me merely with the kindness of a sister. What expectations could I form? I formed no expectations. I was ever resolving to subdue the disquieting passion; still some inexplicable suggestion palsied my efforts, and I clung with desperate fondness to this phantom of love, its mysterious attractions and hopeless prospects. It was a faint and rayless hope! Yet it soothed my solitude with many a delightful day-dream. It was a faint and rayless hope! Yet I nursed it in my bosom with an agony of affection, even as a mother her sickly infant. But these are the poisoned luxuries of a diseased fancy. Indulge, Mary, this my first, my last request, and restore me to reality, however gloomy. Sad and full of heaviness will the intelligence be; my heart will die within me. I shall, however, receive it with steadier resignation from yourself, than were it announced to me (haply on your marriage day!) by a stranger. Indulge my request; I will not disturb your peace by even a look of discontent, still less will I offend your ear by the whine of selfish sensibility. In a few months I shall enter at the Temple and there seek forgetful calmness, where only it can be found, in incessant and useful activity.

Were you not possessed of a mind and of a heart above the usual lot of women, I should not have written you sentiments that would be unintelligible to three fourths of your sex. But our feelings are congenial, though our attachment is doomed not to be reciprocal. You will not deem so meanly of me as to believe that I shall regard Mr. —— with the jaundiced eye of disappointed passion. God forbid! He whom you honour with your affections becomes sacred to me. I shall love him for your sake; the time may perhaps come when I shall be philosopher enough not to envy him for his own.

Napoleon Bonaparte, to Joséphine de Beauharnais, 1796

I’m not a huge fan of this guy in general (no pun intended, haha), but he did write a lot of great love letters. It was hard to choose just one!

I have received your letter, my adorable friend. It has filled my heart with joy. I am grateful to you for the trouble you have taken to send me the news. I hope that you are better today. I am sure that you have recovered. I earnestly desire that you should ride on horseback: it cannot fail to benefit you.

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 affectionate solicitude. The charms of the incomparable Josephine kindle continually a burning and a glowing flame in my heart. When, free from all solicitude, all harassing care, shall I be able to pass all my time with you, having only to love you, and to think only of the happiness of so saying, and of proving it to you? I will send you your horse, but I hope you will soon join me. 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 yet more and more. This proved the maxim of Bruyere, that “love comes all of a sudden,” to be false. Everything in nature has its own course, and different degrees of growth.

Ah! I entreat you to permit me to see some of your faults. Be less beautiful, less gracious, less affectionate, less good, especially be not over-anxious, and never weep. Your tears rob me of reason, and inflame my blood. Believe me it is not in my power to have a single thought which is not of thee, or a wish I could not reveal to thee.

Seek repose. Quickly re-establish your health. Come and join me, that at least, before death, we may be able to say, “We were many days happy.” A thousand kisses, and one even to Fortuna, notwithstanding his spitefulness.

.

Lord Byron, to Teresa, Contessa Guiccioli, 1819

 Byron had a lot of scandalous love affairs and broke a lot of hearts. Here, he’s writing to an Italian noblewoman with whom he had an affair, although she was married to a man who was fifty years older than her.

My dearest Teresa,

I have read this book in your garden;–my love, you were absent, or else I could not have read it. It is a favourite book of yours, and the writer was a friend of mine. You will not understand these English words, and others will not understand them,–which is the reason I have not scrawled them in Italian. But you will recognize the handwriting of him who passionately loved you, and you will divine that, over a book which was yours, he could only think of love.

In that word, beautiful in all languages, but most so in yours–Amor mio–is comprised my existence here and hereafter. I feel I exist here, and I feel I shall exist hereafter,–to what purpose you will decide; my destiny rests with you, and you are a woman, eighteen years of age, and two out of a convent. I love you, and you love me,–at least, you say so, and act as if you did so, which last is a great consolation in all events.

But I more than love you, and cannot cease to love you. Think of me, sometimes, when the Alps and ocean divide us, –but they never will, unless you wish it.

Honore de Balzac, to Evelina Hanska 

My beloved angel,

I am nearly mad about you, as much as one can be mad: I cannot bring together two ideas that you do not interpose yourself between them.

I can no longer think of anything but you.  In spite of myself, my imagination carries me to you.  I grasp you, I kiss you, I caress you, a thousand of the most amorous caresses take possession of me.

As for my heart, there you will always be—very much so.  I have a delicious sense of you there.  But my God, what is to become of me, if you have deprived me of my reason?  This is a monomania which, this morning, terrifies me.

I rise up every moment saying to myself, “Come, I am going there!” Then I sit down again, moved by the sense of my obligations.  There is a frightful conflict.  This is not life.  I have never before been like that.  You have devoured everything.

I feel foolish and happy as soon as I think of you.  I whirl round in a delicious dream in which in one instant I live a thousand years. What a horrible situation!

Overcome with love, feeling love in every pore, living only for love, and seeing oneself consumed by griefs, and caught in a thousand spiders’ threads.

O, my darling Eva, you did not know it.  I picked up your card.  It is there before me, and I talk to you as if you were there.  I see you, as I did yesterday, beautiful, astonishingly beautiful.

Yesterday, during the whole evening, I said to myself, “she is mine!” Ah!  The angels are not as happy in Paradise as I was yesterday!

The Love Letter from Jane Austen’s Persuasion

I can listen no longer in silence. I must speak to you by such means as are within my reach. You pierce my soul. I am half agony, half hope. Tell me not that I am too late, that such precious feelings are gone for ever. I offer myself to you again with a heart even more your own than when you almost broke it, eight years and a half ago. Dare not say that man forgets sooner than woman, that his love has an earlier death. I have loved none but you. Unjust I may have been, weak and resentful I have been, but never inconstant. You alone have brought me to Bath. For you alone, I think and plan. Have you not seen this? Can you fail to have understood my wishes? I had not waited even these ten days, could I have read your feelings, as I think you must have penetrated mine. I can hardly write. I am every instant hearing something which overpowers me. You sink your voice, but I can distinguish the tones of that voice when they would be lost on others. Too good, too excellent creature! You do us justice, indeed. You do believe that there is true attachment and constancy among men. Believe it to be most fervent, most undeviating, in F. W.

I must go, uncertain of my fate; but I shall return hither, or follow your party, as soon as possible. A word, a look, will be enough to decide whether I enter your father’s house this evening or never.

I hope you enjoyed these Regency era letters,

and if you’re writing a Regency-era story, be sure to check out my blog post on authentic Regency era names. Thanks so much for reading, and I have a great week!