- Helen Richardson and Harry Albert Espy – 50th Wedding Anniversary, 1947
Does anyone write love letters anymore? I hope so. But with all our time spent on e-mail and text-messaging and with cell phones glued to ears, I seriously doubt if any letters, much less love letters, are being written these days. Such a pity.
Right now, as I research material for my next book, I am reading the letters written between my grandmother and grandfather at the turn of the last century. They are charming. Not only do they tell me a great deal about their youthful personalities, they also paint a wonderful picture of their interests and their day-to-day lives.
In April of 1901, my grandfather’s mother, Julia Jefferson Espy, was mortally ill. She had been taken from Oysterville to Portland in February to be closer to medical assistance and was staying with her oldest daughter and family. My grandfather, who by then had been married three and a half years and already had a small daughter and infant son, went to be with her in late February. The family was gathering as it was felt that the end was near.
It was destined to become a long absence from his home in East Oakland, California, and during that five month period, my grandmother wrote to him almost every day. In addition to the daily household news and descriptions of the youngsters’ new words and antics, each letter contained a personal expression of her longing for her husband.
…During the coming summer evenings we must do some reading together, dear…I am getting positively starved for some good literature, not for the story but for the cultivation of new thoughts. My mind needs turning over. It is in as bad a condition as our hard packed back yard. I do want to keep in touch with master minds enough at least to keep my own poor feeble intellect with the glaring rust rubbed off. I don’t want the children to grow up and go to you for all of their research. Is this selfish? O, Harry, I can’t endure the thought of ever allowing my mind to be so dormant that you cannot find in me a companion of the brain as well as heart, soul, and body. I never have been and never can be your equal mentally but I will keep in touch.
I do miss you so my own love. I often wonder if you know quite how much. Be ever so careful of my boy…
My grandparents were married for fifty-four years and, during all that time, they wrote to one another when happenstance caused them to be separated. In those many letters, no matter the circumstances of their lives, they continued to express their love for one another. As I read their words, I laugh and cry and find that my faith in the gentle side of the human spirit is renewed. Would that our descendents could have the same experience a hundred years from now.
A wealth of history is slipping by for the lack of letter writing and to say nothing of the US Postal Service. Coming from a long line of pack rats I have a lot of old letters including some written to my grandfather by the girl he did NOT marry. Wow, that was quite the find. My father went to the South Pacific twice during the 1950s for government testing of the atomic bomb when I was five and seven. He was gone for six months once and five months the other. I have most of the letters he wrote to me and they are a treasure along with a rather healthy correspondance I had with my paternal grandmother in the 1970s and ’80s. I hope that this treasure will mean something to my grandchildren someday. It may be that ours is the last generation of letter writers. I know that my children do not write them. They have smart phones, which may be not all that smart.