I felt a tinge of that treacherous hysteria when reading newly released extracts from Lawrence Oliver's steamy correspondence with Vivien Leigh. When the actor declares, "I am sitting naked with just my parts wrapped in your panties," you'd have to have a heart of stone not to squirm a little. Even so, the major part of my unease comes from the sure knowledge that my own hidden stash of billets-doux couldn't possibly withstand the glare of public exposure.
The knowledge that I once described a youthful passion as "burning white like magnesium, or fireworks of the soul", makes me dry-retch. Which is why I felt sympathy for the South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford in 2009, following the exposure of amorous emails to his Argentine mistress Maria Belen Sapur.
It was hard to know which passage was the more embarrassing: the one where he detailed, "The erotic beauty of your holding yourself (or two magnificent parts of yourself) in the faded glow of night's light", or his soulful description of the joys of tractors, "listening to country music playing in the cab, air conditioner running, the hum of a huge diesel engine in the background..."
It's tragic that our heartfelt scribblings become susceptible to misinterpretation, once sprung from the context in which they were penned. But a far greater tragedy is the knowledge that we're hurtling towards a future where there will be no more tremulous correspondence to be unveiled for posterity - just texts asking, "RU up 4 it?"
Love letters are the time machines that transport readers to pure moments of radiant intensity. A recent story in the US told of a woman with dementia who was reunited with letters from her first husband. The act of re-reading her sensual history helped restore her memory because the proof of desire was there. Just as it is in Larry's inky passion for Vivien and Bonaparte's raging hunger for his Josephine.
Today's starry couplings are mostly viewed via the prism of celeb-chasing websites and magazines. And that will be all we'll have if no love letters survive their relationships. My next door neighbour is one of the country's leading literary archivists and laments the fact that the rich seam of inked exchanges is dwindling. Future generations will almost certainly never know if Gwyneth Paltrow was Chris Martin's Immortal Beloved, or just a very self-conscious coupling. Nor whether Kim Kardashian's first, short-lived marriage was a publicity stunt, with no paean to her ample posterior.
Happily, there's no such confusion about Richard Burton's feelings for Elizabeth Taylor, as he wrote: "I lust after your smell... and your round belly and the exquisite softness of the inside of your thighs... and your giving lips; the half-hostile look in your eyes when you're deep in rut with your little Welsh stallion." No wonder the Vatican condemned their love affair as "erotic vagrancy". But if there's any bad behaviour I'd urge others to copy, it would be putting their yearnings down on paper. Passion is fleeting, but great love letters are eternal.
