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John Lennon is considered by many to be a poet. But the Beatle revealed his more prosaic side in a letter penned in 1962 to his future wife Cynthia Powell, in which he declared: “I wish I was on the way to your flat with the Sunday papers and chocies and a throbber.”
The intimate missive, which includes a complaint about his bandmate Paul McCartney’s snoring, is now being sold at auction by Christie’s with a £30,000 to £40,000 estimate.
Written over five nights after concerts during their Hamburg residency in April 1962, Lennon, then aged 21, wrote: “I love love love you and I’m missing you like mad … I wish I was on the way to your flat with the Sunday papers and chocies and a throbber.
“I wonder why all the newspapers wrote about Stu … I haven’t seen Astrid since the day we arrived I’ve thought of going to see her but I would be so awkward.
“Paul’s leaping about on my head (he’s in a bunk on top of me and he’s snoring) … Shurrup Mcarntey [sic]!”
He then tells Cynthia he does not like the idea of McCartney’s then girlfriend, Dot Rhone, moving in with her, saying: “We would never be alone really … imagine having her there all the time when we were in bed – and imagine Paul coming all the time.”
He adds: “I love you please wait for me and don’t be sad and work hard be a clever little Cyn Powell.”
Lennon and Cynthia, who was a year older than him, had been in a relationship for four years, having met at Liverpool College of Art.
They married in August 1962 and their son, Julian, was born in April 1963, weeks after Beatlemania exploded with the release of their chart-topping first album, Please Please Me.
The couple divorced in 1968 and she later claimed he had inflicted physical abuse on her throughout their relationship, including slapping her face in a fit of jealousy.
The handwritten letter was sold by Cynthia to a Swedish collector in 1991 and changed hands to the Swedish vendor in 1993.
Thomas Venning, the head of books and manuscripts at Christie’s, said: “There are some smutty and funny bits and you sense his personality on the page, unlike his later letters which are more guarded and preachy. It provides an early insight into the Beatles from their time in Hamburg which was so important to their development as a band.”
Lennon was murdered by Mark David Chapman in New York in 1980.
The sale takes place on 9 July.
