William Congreve was a celebrated dramatist, best known for his play The Way of the World; Arabella Hunt was a musician at Court and a favourite of Queen Mary. Arabella was married in 1680 to one James Howard; she filed for an annulment six months later on the not-unreasonable grounds that James was actually a cross-dressing widow called Amy Poulter.
Unsurprisingly, Arabella never married again. Congreve also remained unmarried, but had longstanding love affairs with Anna Bracegirdle, an actress for whom he wrote a number of parts, and Henrietta, Duchess of Marlborough, with whom he had a daughter in 1723.

To Mrs Arabella Hunt
-Not believe that I love you? (只要是女人都會懷疑的啦)You cannot pretend to be so incredulous. If you do not believe my tongue, consult my eyes, consult your own. You will find by yours that they have charms; by mine that I have a heart which feels them. Recall to mind what happened last night. That at least was a lover’s kiss. Its eagerness, its fierceness, its warmth, expressed the god its parent. But oh! Its sweetness, and its melting softness expressed him more. With trembling in my limbs, and fevers in my soul, I ravish’d it. Convulsions, pantings, murmurings shew’d the mighty disorder within me: the mighty disorder increased yt it. For those dear lips shot through my heart, and thro’ my bleeding vitals, delicious poison, and an avoidless but yet a charming ruin.
What cannot a day produce? The night before I thought myself a happy man, in want of nothing, and in fairest expectation of fortune; approved of by men of wit, and applauded by others. Pleased, nay charmed with my friends, my then dearest friends, sensible of every delicate pleasure, and in their turns possessing all.
But love, almighty love, seems in a moment to have removed me to a prodigious distance from every object but you alone. In the midest of crowds I remain in solitude. Nothing but you can lay hold of my mind, and that can lay hold of nothing but you. I appear transported to some foreign desert with you (oh, that I were really thus transported!), where, abundantly supplied with everything, in thee, I might live out an age of uninterrupted ecstasy.
The scene of the world’s great stage seems suddenly and sadly chang’d. unlovely objects are all around me, excepting thee; the charms of all the world appear to be translated to thee. Thus in this sad, but oh, too pleasing state! My soul can fix upon nothing but thee; thee it contemplates, admires, adores, nay depends on, thrusts on you alone.
If you and hope forsake it, despair and endless misery attend it.

Richard Steele was a journalist, writer and politician, who with his friend Joseph Addison founded the Spectator magazine. Mary Scurlock was his second wife; he met her at the funeral of his first, and courted her with a single-minded passion. The second letter here , written two weeks before their wedding, is both amusing and touching in Steele’s description of himself as a man completely distracted from day-to-day concerns by thoughts of his beloved. Richard and Mary were married in 1707, although their marriage remained secret for some time after that, perhaps for reasons of propriety – this could explain the rather mundane postscript to the third letter below: their marriage was famously happy, although sometimes tempestuous, and she remained throughout his life his ‘dear Prue’. Steele wrote his wife more than four hundred letters both before and during their marriage; she died in 1718.

To Mary Scurlock
Madam,
With what language shall I address my lovely fair to acquaint her with the sentiments of a heart she delights so torture? I have not a minute’s quiet out of your sight; and when I am with you, you use me with so much distance, that I am still in a state of absence, heightened with a view of the charms which I am denied to approach. In a word, you must give me either a fan, a mask or a glove you have worn, or I cannot live; otherwise you must expect that I’ll kiss your hand, or, when I next sit by you, steal your handkerchief. You yourself are too great a bounty to be secured at once; therefore I must be prepared by degrees, lest the mighty gift distract me with joy.
Dear Miss Scurlock, I am tired with calling you by that name; therefore, say the day in which you will take that of, Madam, your most obedient, most devoted, humble servant,
Rich.Steele

August 1707 (two weeks before their wedding)
Madam,
It is the hardest thing in the world to be in love and yet attend to business. As for me all who speak to me find me out, and I must lock myself up or other people will do it for me.
A gentleman asked me this morning, ‘What news from Lisbon?’ and I answered, ‘She is exquisitely handsome.’ Another desired to know when I had last been at Hampton court. I replied, ‘It will be on Tuesday come se’nniht.’ Pr’ythee, allow me at least to kiss your hand before that day, that my mind may be in some composure. O love!
A thousand torments dwell about me!
Yet who would live to live without thee?
Methinks I could write a volume to you; but all the language on earth would fail in saying how much and with what disinterested passion I am ever your—
Rich. Steele

7 October 1707
My Loved Creature,
I write this only to bid you good-night and assure you of my diligence in the matter I told you of.
You may assure yourself I value you according to you merit which is saying that you have my heart by all the ties of beauty, virtue, good nature and friendship I find by the progress I have made to-night, that I shall do my business effectually in two days’ time. Write me word you are in good humour which will be the highest pleasure to your obliged husband,
Rich. Steele
I shall want some linen from your house tomorrow.

George Farquhar
George Farquhar was born in Londonderry, the son of a clergyman, and educated at Trinity College, Dublin. On leaving Trinity, he tried his hand as an actor, but suffered from paralyzing stage fright. He made his way to London where his first play, Love and a Bottle, was staged in 1698, telling the story of ann Irishman newly arrived in the city who is a great success with the ladies. By all accounts, Farquhar was himself both handsome and charming, a wit and a troublemaker.

One night in a tavern, Farquhar heard a young woman named Anne Oldfield reading aloud behind the bar. He was so convinced by her talent that he introduced her to friends in the theatre, and she was taken on as an actress at Duruy Lane.

George and Anne’s liaison was not long lasting, and in 1703 George married a widow named Margaret Pemell. He had money trouble all his life, and health problems, but even when his difficulties were at their height he was still writing his dazzling and iconoclastic comedies, the best-known of which is probably The Recruiting Officer.

Anne Oldfield began a long-term relationship with an MP named Arthur Mainwaring at around the same time as George’s marriage. Her career went from strength to strength, and by the time she died in 1730 she was both rich and famous. She is buried on Westminster Abbey.

To Anne Oldfield, Sunday, after Sermon
I cam, I saw, and was conquered; never had man more to say, yet can I say nothing; where others go to save their souls, there have I lost mine; but I hope that Divinity which has the justest title to its service has received it; but I will endeavour to suspend these raptures for a moment, and talk calmly-

Nothing on earth, madam, can charm, beyond your wit but your beauty; after this not to love you would proclaim me a fool; and to say I did when I though otherwise would pronounce me a knave; If anybody called me either I should resent it; and if you but think me either I shall break my heart.

You have already, madam, seen enough of me to create a liking or an aversion; your sense is above your sex, then let your proceeding be so likewise, and tell me plainly what I have to hope for. Were I to consult my merits my humility would chide any shadow of hope; but after a sight of such a face whose whole composition is a smile of good nature, why should I be so unjust as to suspect you of cruelty. Let me either live in London and be happy or retire again to my desert to check my vanity that drew me thence; but let me beg you to receive my sentence from your own mouth, that I may hear you speak and see you look at the same time; then let me be unfortunate if I can.
If you are not the lady in mourning that sat upon my right hand at church, you may go to the devil, for I’m sure you’re a witch.

The brilliant Alexander Pope was a poet, critic, essayist, satirist, garden designer, art connoisseur, letter-writer and wit. He was dogged throughout his life by ill health; this was attributed to his spending too much time at his book, but in fact he had tuberculosis of the bone, contracted in infancy, which left him small, crippled and plagued with various tiresome ailments. He was a great feuder, but also had a large circle of devoted friends. He loved female society and was clearly extraordinarily charming, but while women enjoyed his attentions and his wit, his deeper feeling were never reciprocated.
Particular among his friends were two sisters, Martha and Teresa Blount, and he corresponded with both, writing at one point to Teresa, ‘My violent passion for your fair self and your sister had been divided, and with the most wonderful regularity in the world. Even from my infancy I have been in love with one after the other of you week by week’ Pope never married, and Martha was the chief beneficiary of his will.
Four letters follow: one to each of the Blount sisters, and two to Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, another intimate, married to a diplomat and living in Constantinople.

To Martha Blount, 1714
Most Divine,
It is some proof of my sincerity towards you, that I write when I am prepared by drinking to speak truth; and sure a letter after twelve at night must abound with that noble ingredient. That heart must have abundance of flames, which is at once warmed by wine and you: wine awakens and expresses the lurking passions of the mind, as varnish does the colours that are sunk in a picture, and brings them out in all their natural glowing. My good qualities have been so frozen and locked up in a dull constitution at all my former sober hours, that it is very astonishing to me, now I am drunk, to find so much virtue in me.
In these overflowing of my heart I pay you my thanks for these two obliging letters you favoured me with of the 18th and 24th instant. That which begins with ‘My charming Mr. Pope!” was a delight to me beyond all expression; you have at last entirely gained the conquest over your fair sister. It is true you are not handsome, for you are a women, and think you are not: but this good humour and tenderness for me has a charm that cannot be resisted. That face must needs be irresistible which was adorned with smiles, even when it could not see the coronation! I do suppose you will not show this epistle out of a vanity, as I doubt not your sister does all I write to her….

To Teresa Blount, 1716
Madam,
I have so much esteem for you, and so much of the other thing, that, were I a handsome fellow, I should do you a vast deal of good:but as it is, all I am good for, is to write a civil letter, or to make a fine speech. The truth is, that considering how often and how openly I have declared love to you, I am astonished (and a little affronted)that you have not forbid my correspondence, and directly said, see my face no more!
It is not enough, madam, for your reputation, that you have your hands pure from the stain of such ink as might be shed to gratify a male correspondent. Alas! While your heart consents to encourage him in this lewd liberty of writing, you are not (indeed you are not) what you would so fain have me think you – a prude! I am vain enough to conclude that (like most young fellows) a fine lady’s silence is consent, and so I write on-
But, in order to be as innocent as possible in this epistle, I will tell you news. You have asked me news a thousand times, at the first word you spoke to me; which some would interpret as if you expected nothing from my lips; and truly it is not a sign two lovers are together, when they can be so impertinent as to inquire what the world does. All I mean by this, that either you or I cannot be in love with the other; I leave you to guess which of the two is that stupid and insensible creature, so blind to the other’s excellence and charms