A series of love letters that Mick Jagger wrote in the summer of 1969 are going up for auction in London next month, the Guardian reports.
Marsha Hunt, Jagger's former lover and the mother of his first child, is selling off the set of ten handwitten letters, which Jagger sent her in July and August of 1969 while he was filming the movie Ned Kelly in New South Wales, Australia. The Philadelphia-born singer is said to be the inspiration for the Rolling Stones' 1971 hit, "Brown Sugar."
In the correspondence, Jagger tells Hunt about reading Nijinski's diaries and the poems of Emily Dickinson, and describes his excitement at meeting writer Christopher Isherwood. He also makes references to the moon landing in his letter of July 20th, the Isle of Wight festival where Bob Dylan made his big comeback, and the death of bandmate Brian Jones.
All ten letters will be sold by Sotheby's as one lot on December 12th; they are expected to fetch somewhere between £70,000 and £100,000.
Hunt said that she is selling the letters in order to pay the electric bill and fund repairs on the house in France where she lives.
"I'm broke," she explained. "Anyone who has the impression that I have money knows nothing about me."
Hunt, who told Jagger of her intent to sell the letters, was asked if their author supported the sale. "I don't think so but they're not his," she said. "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."
