How to write romantic and passionate love letters.
The best love-letters are the direct promptings of the heart. A
loving heart naturally imparts its glow to the written page, and
this warmth is communicated by the mysterious power of words to
the heart of the reader. It is this pleasure that excites the
affections and awakens dormant friendships.
How the heart beats with expectation in the perusal of a letter
from one we love. How endeared becomes our connection by this
spiritual communion, in which our minds, with an ardent zeal and
devotedness, become united, and an eloquence and freedom
indulged, perhaps never more felicitously.
The charm in correspondence arises from the degree of
congeniality in tastes, from the impressed individuality and
unstudied naturalness of the writer, from his genuine
representations of affection and avoidance of strained or
artificial expressions. Love-letters written in sincerity and
faith need but little guidance except from the heart of the
writer. The true lover will find the words he seeks flow easily
from his pen, and probably the eyes resting next upon them will
not criticize very severely.
It is best to entirely avoid flattery in such letters. The fact
that you love the person to whom they are addressed is a
sufficient proof of your appreciation of any merit or beauty he
or she may possess, and the praises of lovers are apt to become
too warm to appear perfectly sincere.
A lady's letter should be always dignified. Al- though there may
be an engagement existing at the time of writing, it may be
severed, or others may chance to see the epistles intended for
one person's perusal only. Be sure that your betrothed will
respect you more for a quiet, affectionate dignity in writing,
than if you put too much of the most sacred of all feelings upon
paper.
The love-letter ought to be more easy to write than any other,
premising always that the writer is really under the influence
of the grand passion. Upon first addressing the object of your
regard, there should be no prudent hesitation about committing
yourself too far.
You either love the fair being whom you address, or you do not.
If you are not decided upon that point, you do wrong to write at
all; but if you earnestly desire to unite your destiny with hers
you must, in the first instance, give her to understand that you
entertain for her a sincere and earnest admiration.
Your letters should express respect blended with exalted and
overpowering passion, and this applies more particularly to your
first letter. A tame, hesitating lover cannot make a strong
impression upon the hearts of the gentle sex. The writer must
show the woman of his choice that his love is too real and too
violent to be prudent, or to have any place for a selfish fear
of compromising himself. He must compromise himself, fearlessly
and thoroughly, in his first address to her, and have his mind
made up to stand the hazard of the die; for the first thing a
man has to do when disclosing his love for a woman is to
convince her that he does love her, and that he loves her a
great deal, and her alone.
Let this be the aim of your letters; speak just as you feel, and
speak out all that you feel, in straight-forward, simple, honest
language -- which is always the language of strong emotion --
and if she be a woman whose heart has not been hackneyed by the
arts of coquetry, she will know how to estimate your sincerity
and your devotion.
A celebrated writer has said, that " to write a good
love-letter, you must begin without knowing what you are going
to say, and finish without knowing what you have said "; and as
the true secret of all successful letter writing lies in the
power of conveying the thoughts, feelings, and desires of the
writer to his correspondent, the remark may be to some extent
correct. Such a letter would undoubtedly reflect the state of
the writer's heart, agitated and distorted by the tumultuous
throbs of his passion; but as the zeal of young persons
generally in matters affecting the heart is very apt to out- run
their discretion, he would unconsciously give expression to
absurd and foolish pretensions, or to romantic and extravagant
adulation of the object of his attachment. To obviate this
tendency regard should be had, in the composition of them, to
propriety of diction, correctness of taste, and purity of style,
avoiding all the bombast and affectation, and that morbid
sentimentalism which too frequently characterizes epistles on
these subjects.