my family in Hanover, but I don’t want to in case you decide to race back across the ocean to be with your Laura. I think Swift would like me to go away so she can loll about and do nothing. The newspapers say that you speak of me wherever you go there and that everyone knows my name, but if I did not have someone to read the papers to me, I would swear that you had forgotten me. I would like to go to the Baptist church, as my family does, but Swift says no. She is too strict with me. Please write to her.
Please give my love to your wife. She has not replied to my letters either.
June 1844, Julia to Louisa
Chev heard tell of a woman, if you can believe it, even more God-slighted than Laura, and so of course, he had to visit her, though it meant a trip all the way to Portsmouth. Here is a ditty I composed in her honor which I thought might give you a titter:
I found a most charming old woman,
Delightfully void
Of all that’s enjoyed
By the animal vaguely called human.
She has but one jaw,
Has teeth like a saw,
Her ears and her eyes I delight in:
The one could not hear
Tho’ a cannon were near,
The others are holes with no sight in.
Destructiveness great
Combines with conceit
In the form of this wonderful noddle,
But benev’lence, you know,
And a large philopro
Give a great inclination to coddle.
July 1844, Dr. Howe to Laura
My dear girl, I cannot possibly keep up with your vast correspondence. I am so very glad that you enjoyed the tour of the Britannia and that you are faring well in my absence. Help Oliver as best you can with lessons, though I know he is far from your equal. Remember to be at your tip-toppest especially on Exhibition Days as you are now known the world over!
July 1844, Julia to Louisa
I have what one would consider the best of all possible news, and yet a great gift I’d wished for later rather than sooner: you will be an aunt. The honeymoon will extend itself into forever now, though with less honey. After being tea’d and pie’d all over Geneva, Vienna, and Milan, we have descended into Rome, a climate my husband has deemed optimal for my state. The city feels almost medieval—as do I at the moment—and we shall probably stay here to wait out my confinement. Impossible: less than a year ago, I was still a viable New York belle, holding court on Bond Street with you. I pray the child has your manageable chestnut locks, not my furlable red ones.
And the most I can say for my delicate condition so far is that my wits have gone a’woolgathering…
July 1844, Laura to Dr. Howe
I wish that I could have a cameo of your head to wear as a brooch on the lace collar of my day dress. And then at night, alone in my bed, I would push the pin of the brooch right through the skin in the hollow of my neck so that your dear face would stay with me the whole night long and I could run my fingers over your raised likeness and never sleep. Miss Swift says they do not make cameos of men, but I don’t understand why not. Everyone says you are the handsomest man in Boston—who would not want you as an ornament?
And if I can’t have that, might you please, please allow me the raised Bible like the blind girls? Do not tell God, though, that I would rather have your cameo to sleep with than His book. It will be our secret.
August 1844, Jeannette Howe to Dr. Howe
A request, dear brother, which I will trade you for a warning: Please write more often to Laura. She asks daily if there is a letter from you, and you have doubtless received bundles from her. She is becoming quite the lady in some regards—grown an inch, I’d say, since you left—and I hope that the money you left for her expenses will be enough to cover a new dress or two. She is, of course, too thin, but that is another matter. She sits sometimes addressing your chair, her hands out and fingers racing away, her head cocked at attention. We let her be, even when she laughs and rocks herself or cries a bit.
This
Please give my love to your wife. She has not replied to my letters either.
June 1844, Julia to Louisa
Chev heard tell of a woman, if you can believe it, even more God-slighted than Laura, and so of course, he had to visit her, though it meant a trip all the way to Portsmouth. Here is a ditty I composed in her honor which I thought might give you a titter:
I found a most charming old woman,
Delightfully void
Of all that’s enjoyed
By the animal vaguely called human.
She has but one jaw,
Has teeth like a saw,
Her ears and her eyes I delight in:
The one could not hear
Tho’ a cannon were near,
The others are holes with no sight in.
Destructiveness great
Combines with conceit
In the form of this wonderful noddle,
But benev’lence, you know,
And a large philopro
Give a great inclination to coddle.
July 1844, Dr. Howe to Laura
My dear girl, I cannot possibly keep up with your vast correspondence. I am so very glad that you enjoyed the tour of the Britannia and that you are faring well in my absence. Help Oliver as best you can with lessons, though I know he is far from your equal. Remember to be at your tip-toppest especially on Exhibition Days as you are now known the world over!
July 1844, Julia to Louisa
I have what one would consider the best of all possible news, and yet a great gift I’d wished for later rather than sooner: you will be an aunt. The honeymoon will extend itself into forever now, though with less honey. After being tea’d and pie’d all over Geneva, Vienna, and Milan, we have descended into Rome, a climate my husband has deemed optimal for my state. The city feels almost medieval—as do I at the moment—and we shall probably stay here to wait out my confinement. Impossible: less than a year ago, I was still a viable New York belle, holding court on Bond Street with you. I pray the child has your manageable chestnut locks, not my furlable red ones.
And the most I can say for my delicate condition so far is that my wits have gone a’woolgathering…
July 1844, Laura to Dr. Howe
I wish that I could have a cameo of your head to wear as a brooch on the lace collar of my day dress. And then at night, alone in my bed, I would push the pin of the brooch right through the skin in the hollow of my neck so that your dear face would stay with me the whole night long and I could run my fingers over your raised likeness and never sleep. Miss Swift says they do not make cameos of men, but I don’t understand why not. Everyone says you are the handsomest man in Boston—who would not want you as an ornament?
And if I can’t have that, might you please, please allow me the raised Bible like the blind girls? Do not tell God, though, that I would rather have your cameo to sleep with than His book. It will be our secret.
August 1844, Jeannette Howe to Dr. Howe
A request, dear brother, which I will trade you for a warning: Please write more often to Laura. She asks daily if there is a letter from you, and you have doubtless received bundles from her. She is becoming quite the lady in some regards—grown an inch, I’d say, since you left—and I hope that the money you left for her expenses will be enough to cover a new dress or two. She is, of course, too thin, but that is another matter. She sits sometimes addressing your chair, her hands out and fingers racing away, her head cocked at attention. We let her be, even when she laughs and rocks herself or cries a bit.
This
Similar Books
