Leigh Hunt carried his versatility into his love-letters to Miss Marianne
Kent, his future wife. Below is an example written when he was nineteen:
MY DEAREST MARIANNE: I am very uncomfortable; I get up at
five in the morning, say a word to nobody, curse my stars
till eleven at night, then creep into bed to curse my stars
for to-morrow; and all this because I love a little
black-eyed girl of fifteen, whom nobody knows, with all my
heart and soul. You must not suppose I love you a bit the
better for being fifty miles out of my reach in the daytime,
for I travel at a pretty tolerable pace every night and have
held many a happy chat with you about twelve or one o'clock
at midnight, though you have forgotten it by this time.
Here follows a stanza of poetry, after which he proceeds:
You see, lovers can no more help being poets than poets can
help being lovers. I shall see you again and will pay you
prettily for running away from me, for you shall not stir
from my side the whole evening. If you are well and have
been so at Brighton, you are everything I could wish you.
God bless you and yours. You see I can still pray for
myself. Heaven knows that every blessing bestowed on you is
a tenfold one bestowed on your