The ethics of love letters going public

"Is it OK to sell love letters?"

Last week singer Marsha Hunt sold her 1969 love letters from Mick Jagger at Sotherby's for close to £200,000. Was she right to do so?

by

Anne de Courcy and Philip Norman

December 15th, 2012

The Observer

American singer Marsha Hunt has sold the love letters written to her by Mick Jagger in 1969. They were the centrepiece of an English literature and history sale at Sotheby's – which also included Rolling Stones memorabilia. They fetched £187,250 – considerably more than the guide price of £70,000-£100,000. Hunt, then the "face" of the West End production of Hair, had an affair with Jagger at a time when his relationship with Marianne Faithfull was apparently under strain. Today Hunt is living in France, and has declared "I'm broke", adding that the reason she was selling the letters was because she had been unable to pay her bills. But should one ever sell love letters?

Letters – maybe. But love letters? No. Shortage of money is a powerful incentive, and the knowledge that you are sitting on something so potentially lucrative must be a huge temptation. Put it – or rather them – on the market and your troubles are over, at least for the time being. But love, whether past or present, is not only a private matter; more importantly, it is between two people – both of whom have the right to keep private feelings private. Hunt may feel happy about revealing the intimacies of past passion, but what about Jagger? Even someone who spends much of his life on a stage may not want his deepest feelings publicly displayed and for sale.

Even acknowledging your general principle (which I don't), this is a very special case. Hunt began her affair with Jagger in 1969, before the era of scurrilous tabloids and fortunes to be made from kiss-and-tell. His letters to her were written in New South Wales, Australia, where he was starring in a biopic of the 19th-century outlaw Ned Kelly. Hunt did not cause his separation from Marianne Faithfull; it was Faithfull's descent into a spiral of heroin use, which ultimately almost killed her. By Hunt's account – never disputed by Jagger – he then told her he wanted to have a child with her. But when a baby daughter, Karis, was born in 1970, he denied paternity. It was eight years before a (US) court ordered him to pay proper child support. And never once did Hunt threaten to sell her story to the tabloids; in fact, she behaved with amazing dignity and restraint throughout. Her take from the Sotheby's sale is still a pittance compared with what modern ex-mistresses wring from megastars.

Anyway, these letters were hardly testaments of grand passion but chit-chat from the film set and about events such as the Isle of Wight pop festival and the moon landing. If they had been at all explosive, you can bet Jagger would have initiated legal moves to stop Hunt selling them (which he could, since they remain his copyright.) Far more revealing would have been his letters to his girlfriend Chrissie Shrimpton, whom he'd dumped for Faithfull. Years later, a (false) rumour reached him that Shrimpton intended to sell a cache of the letters. A legal sledgehammer came into play, and in terror she sent the whole lot back to him.

Anne de Courcy: Clearly Hunt behaved very well over the affair, and the baby. But for me that doesn't alter the general principle (though I do wonder why if, as you say, these letters are simply "chit chat", they are called love letters) that everyone is entitled to privacy in their private lives. And that even if one of you doesn't mind revealing your half of an affair, the other half might.

Despite the let-it-all-hang-out philosophy today, I still believe this desire for privacy is a general human feeling – look at the outraged squalls of celebrities who have been outed in some amatory misdoing or other. And, look, we've just had the biggest-ever privacy debate in the shape of the Leveson inquiry. And it wasn't the delicacy and modest restraint of the press that was complained of by Hugh Grant et al.

In my biographies, I've often had to consider the question of highly personal letters – usually love letters. Even when the two people concerned have died, sons, daughters, brothers or sisters are often extraordinarily sensitive about the exposure of aspects of the subjects' lives.

Of course letters are the property of anyone they're sent to. But there's also very much a sense of "what I write is mine". Not for nothing is that enshrined in British law in the form of copyright.

Philip Norman: They were billed as "love letters", of course, to jack up the price at auction. Hunt later called them "laughing, sad, pensive, deep, observant and touching" but I'd describe them more as "like letters", for they do reveal the softer side of Mick. A specially sweet and supportive one reached Hunt to wish her luck when she played at the Isle of Wight pop festival. An exploding prop pistol had injured his right hand, so he wrote with his left.

Certainly, we all have a right to privacy – and most of us have interrupted enjoyment of it. I, for one, do not expect any of my former girlfriends ever to pitch up at Sotheby's with the gruesomely embarrassing love letters I wrote them. In one, I recall, some paroxysm of forgotten passion made me say I felt like "a leper". Unfortunately, that particular inamorata had a touch of word blindness. "Why did you say you felt like a leopard?" she asked me when we next met.

But we have to admit that celebrities – as F Scott Fitzgerald said of the rich – "are different from you and me". Some, indeed – Mick Jagger certainly among them – will end up in the history books, the quarry of historical biographers such as you, Anne. Is it only the death of the subject and all his family that legitimises publication of their intimate correspondence? Should there be a 50-year rule, as for classified state documents? And might there not be a great-great-great-nephew somewhere who still gets upset?

Anyway: get real. If we didn't want to give pain, why did we become writers?

Anne de Courcy: Philip, am just wondering if you meant "uninterrupted" not "interrupted" in first line of your second par? I think you're arguing about the particular, Hunt and the "like letters" – as I must now learn to call them – while I'm talking of the general principle: whatever the circumstances, is it right to sell love letters while the writer is still alive?

And for me, I'm afraid it's still a clear, committed and instinctive "no". I didn't even have to think when asked that question.

I don't want to sound too heavy, but for me love is the most precious and powerful of the emotions, and getting rid of the words that express that bond, for cash, has something wrong about it – in a sense, it's almost like selling yourself. Even if the person concerned will one day be a historical character, doing so is still a kind of car-boot sale of the emotions.

I'm also sure that one reason why most of us would hate any love letter we wrote to be made public is not just the revelation of our most secret emotions and fantasies but, as you say, sheer embarrassment – think of the squirm-making language used by Edward VIII to Wallis Simpson. It beats "leper" any time – though I shall always think of you as a leopard.

Philip Norman: Yes, I meant "interrupted". How can I tax that old inamorata with word blindness? I have no problem with what you say about love. But, as the Everly Brothers sang, it's "so sad to watch good love go bad".

You can be pretty sure that when love letters go under the auctioneer's hammer, love on both sides has long since gone well and truly stinko. There is unlikely to be a still-bleeding heart to be pierced by arguments over the reserve price. Rather than "selling herself" by wringing this small pension payment from a multimillionaire rock star, Hunt may well feel that she "sold" herself in the first instance – and a sight too cheaply at that.

On a general point, I only said my squirm-making love letters were unworthy to enter the public domain. That certainly wasn't true of Edward VIII's to Wallis Simpson, which forensically expose the foibles of this fitting ancestor of Prince Charles. And in the even more squirm-making letters of Edith Thompson to her young lover Frederick Bywaters (written in mock-Irish brogue) are the makings of a famous 1920s murder and miscarriage of justice.

I like the idea of a car-boot sale of the emotions. Isn't it what we journalists do every day? Vengefulness may turn some spurned women into mercenary old boots. But leave Marsha Hunt out of that.


Mick Jagger's love letters are for sale

Einstein: Chauvinist?

Mick Jagger's love letters are for sale

In a way this is somewhat sad. Personal things said will now be public knowledge.

"Mick Jagger's secret love letters up for sale"

'I'm broke' says Marsha Hunt, inspiration for Brown Sugar, who is selling 'Mick in his own words' from summer of 69 at Sotheby's

by

Mark Brown

November 9th, 2012

The Guardian

To some people in 1969, Mick Jagger was little short of being an uncouth hoodlum, what with his drug taking, louche lifestyle and rebellious views. But secret love letters, revealed here for the first time, show the rock star in a different light: as an articulate, dreamy, sensitive artist with a grounded self-awareness.

This side emerges in a series of letters he sent from Australia to Marsha Hunt, his lover, first child's mother and the inspiration for Jagger's controversial song Brown Sugar.

Written during one of the most tumultuous periods of Jagger's life, the letters reveal a man spending his free time reading the diaries of Nijinsky, the poems of Emily Dickinson and larking with Christopher Isherwood.

The letters are being sold by Hunt, who lives in a beautiful money pit of a house in France. She is well aware that the first question will be: why?

"I'm broke," she said. "Anyone who has the impression that I have money knows nothing about me. I had friends who came to visit from Pennsylvania and there was no electricity in the house because the bill had been too high, I was kind of grooving it with a wood burning stove. One friend said, 'surely you've got something you could sell?'"

That led to a light going off about the letters from the summer of 1969 which have sat in bank vaults for the best part of 30 years.

Hunt is 66 and says she does not want to become a liability. "Someone will protect them [the letters] and someone who protects them will protect me because I will make enough money from the sale to repair my house in France and if I fall down tomorrow with a stroke, which is happening with several of my friends, my daughter doesn't have to say 'what are we going to do about mom?'"

She hopes the buyer will "recognise that they have a piece of history", adding: "The letters speak for Mick at an incredible juncture of our lives. The summer of 69 was the end of a whole era of revolutionary spirit – we didn't know it was about to die. And who knew that this group of boys making music would 50 years on be still celebrated as a voice of the period?"

While the letters have remained secret, the affair has become a well documented chapter of British cultural history.

Hunt was a high-profile fixture of swinging 60s London and one of the only black faces. Born in Philadelphia, the Berkeley graduate arrived in London in 1966 and performed on the blues circuit with Alexis Korner and a young Elton John. Her big breakthrough was appearing in the original West End production of Hair, which led to Patrick Lichfield taking a famous nude picture of her for American Vogue and her appearance as the Christmas cover of Queen magazine with baubles in her distinctive Afro hair.

Hunt had success with her record Walk on Gilded Splinters and was approached about appearing in the photograph for the cover of the Stones' single Honky Tonk Woman. She was to be "girl in bar". "I said no," recalled Hunt. "I didn't want to look like I'd been had by all the Rolling Stones."

Jagger later turned up in person at her Bloomsbury flat sometime in May 1969 and one thing led to another.

For the Stones, it was a time of turmoil. They sacked Brian Jones and it was Hunt who pointed Jagger in the direction of Jones's replacement, Mick Taylor.

The relationship, a closely guarded secret until 1972, resulted in a daughter, Karis. "We commenced on something in the 60s that was perceived to be what the future would be," said Hunt. "That you don't get married and monogamy is not necessarily the way to go. We've backed away from that but at the time I think Mick and I felt we were doing something modern – we were having a child outside of marriage and that was acceptable."

Ten letters are being sold, all written in July and August of 1969 when Jagger was filming Ned Kelly in New South Wales. They paint a picture far removed from the popular media image of Jagger at the time. He talks about the books Hunt sent him for his birthday – "toying" through Nijinsky's diaries, reading about Navajo Indians, enjoying the poems of Emily "Dix" (Dickinson). In another he recounts being excited at meeting Isherwood, who was coming to discuss a screenplay of Robert Graves' I Claudius. "… I hope I get the part of Caligula," he writes.

Jagger uses one letter to talk about an unrealised future project of an intimate performance that would include "all our medias – films, music, drama and magic" in a "procession of images".

That's not to say the Jagger swagger is not in the letters too. He went to one party and the "chicks" were so plain that all he could do was eat chocolate eclairs. No boogaloo was happening, he laments.

There are also references to what was by any measure a fantastically eventful summer. For example, he dates his letter of the 20 July "Sunday the Moon" to mark the first moon landing; he talks about his regret at missing the Isle of Wight festival – where Dylan made his spectacular comeback – as well as "John & Yoko boring everybody".

Also he makes oblique reference to harrowing events such as the death of Jones and his failing relationship with Marianne Faithfull, who was taken to hospital in Australia after an overdose of pills. In one letter he wonders why some people's lives are so short and in another he explains that things are "a little difficult" – "my patience snaps my love peters out at vital moments".

Jagger also makes reference to what was an unhappy shoot in New South Wales. Although he waxes lyrical about the Outback – how the early morning mist "turns red and violent then hard and warm" – Jagger misses Europe with its "renaissance houses and medieval gardens".

"They are much the best letters by Jagger to have come up at auction," said the Sotheby's manuscripts specialist, Gabriel Heaton. "It is obviously a really important time in terms of cultural history."

Heaton said Jagger shows a "strength of character" that has enabled him to survive and thrive in the unreal world he lives in. "He has a strong sense of irony about himself and what it is to be a superstar. He is very self-aware but think about it – in order for someone to stay sane with what was going on in all of his adult life you would need to be pretty centred."

The filming of Ned Kelly, directed by Tony Richardson, was not a particularly happy one. His handwriting is noticeably different in one letter, the result of a gun backfiring badly and injuring his hand. "Boring crap," he writes.

It was while in Australia that Jagger wrote Brown Sugar and the letters have scattered references to songwriting. His first letter begins with the lyrics to Monkey Man with three extra lines specially for Hunt. Heaton said there was a lyricism that was reminiscent of his songs, lines like "… wind blows, rains cold, stars shine, millions of them, guitar riffs on & on … "

The letters will be sold as one lot at Sotheby's on 12 December and carry an estimate of £70,000-£100,000. Hunt said if she hadn't been hard up she would have happily offered them to have a public institution but she hopes the letters will correct some of the misinformation there has been about Jagger and that time.

She has told Jagger of her intention to sell. Does he support it? "I don't think so but they're not his."

She went on: "This is Mick in his own words … This is part of English history, it is part of rock history, part of cultural history and it corrects all the misinformation and I think we live in a time when misinformation is swallowed as, 'well, who cares?' Facts are relevant.

"The sale is important. Someone, I hope, will buy those letters as our generation is dying and with us will go the reality of who we were and what life was."

Brown Sugar

1971

Sticky Fingers album

Gold coast slave ship bound for cotton fields
Sold in a market down in New Orleans
Scarred old slaver knows he's doing alright
Hear him with the women just around midnight

Brown sugar how come you taste so good?
Brown sugar just like a young girl should

Drums beating, cold English blood runs hot
Lady of the house wonderin' when it's gonna stop
House boy knows that he's doing alright
You shoulda heard him just around midnight

Brown sugar how come you taste so good, now?
Brown sugar just like a young girl should, now

Ah, get along, brown sugar how come you taste so good, baby?
Ah, got me feelin' now, brown sugar just like a black girl should

I bet your mama was a tent show queen
And all her boyfriends were sweet sixteen
I'm no schoolboy but I know what I like
You shoulda heard me just around midnight

Brown sugar how come you taste so good, baby?
Ah, brown sugar just like a young girl should, yeah

I said yeah, yeah, yeah, woo
How come you...how come you taste so good?
Yeah, yeah, yeah, woo
Just like a...just like a black girl should
Yeah, yeah, yeah, woo