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Katie Did It!
Alexander Pope, the English poet, wrote to one of his sweethearts, Martha Blount, in June 1724, “Absence is a short kind of death.” To Lady Emma Hamilton in January 1800, Horatio Nelson, the English Admiral, penned, “I can neither eat nor sleep for thinking of you my dearest love, I never even touch pudding.” Just reading these loving words induces a longing for those days of romance, gentility and flowery hand scribble on parchment paper. If agreeing with this, however, one must consider a question: Why don’t the men of today court their crush with admitted passion and sentiment laced with desire, sometimes spoken, at other times lovingly handwritten and delivered to the post office? Better yet, why must women of this century settle for anything less than the efforts put forth by so many noble and everyday gentlemen of the past? Where are our Knights in Shining Armor, on bended knee with sword drawn, under our balconies as they profess of our beauty? I grew up in a house with two large balconies. I don’t recall anyone calling me out of my suite so they could make proclamations and professions of my greatness. Neither has anyone, to my knowledge, skipped eating their pudding because of their heartache over my absence. While considering these questions, a girlfriend and I ventured back to my favorite neighborhood pub, The Bishop’s Collar. It is typically elbow-to-elbow with a sampling of college students, professionals and your random Irish bloke, some of whom might even occasionally raise my eyebrow with an interesting variation on an old pickup line.
I watched the patrons bustling about, leaning on the wall with their ale and sitting at various candlelit tables. In seeing couples interacting and as some of the younger guys tried their wits on the ladies, I realized that there were several cell phones being used, by members of the crowd, at any given moment. In fact, in the two hours we were there, my girlfriend spoke to two different men on her cell, as if the conversations were so urgent that they couldn’t take place at a later time or in another, more private, arena. The more she gabbed with them, the more time I had to ponder why men are not as heavy in verbal and written pursuit of women as in the “old days.” Although I became progressively irritated by being slighted by her for these silly talks that could be done at some other time, her desire for the instant gratification of hearing these men’s voices now, rather than later, brought me to a realization: Why would a man, or woman, see the need or have the will to write a handwritten letter to their potential mate, when we are so infatuated with using email, phones and other technological resources to stay in touch? Further, how can anyone form the passionate, angst-ridden, obsessive longing as sampled in Napoleon, Pope and Nelson’s love letters to their ladies? We spend so much time staying in touch that there is a certain redundancy in speaking to one another again, even greater, in exerting energy to write. Who has time to consider, even more so to create, gut wrenching desire for another human being these days? The three aforementioned and historic lovers were all traveling when they wrote to their women. In their days, traversing thirty miles, much less many more off to war or for occupational or recreational pursuits, was such a huge undertaking and took so long that moments spent as a face-to-face couple were precious. Time spent apart became time during which the memories about their stolen moments within physical proximity were pondered and even seasoned into a bursting ripeness of that wonting to have what was once held, but then quickly ripped away. As was once said, “Absence makes the heart grow fonder.” The closest modern parallel that I can draw to the distances that created such yearning in relationships of those days is that of my ex-husband’s assignments in the US Armed Forces. He left, most often during winter, for three, six or more months at a time. I remember well how much I longed for him as he was away. During that time we were unable to speak by telephone more than once or twice per month, for about fifteen minutes. So, we wrote lengthy letters to each other. I found some of his the other day and read them, astounded by his loving and sweet sentiments that I had so long ago forgotten he could either possess or express. I am sure that somewhere he still has a stash of the same type of correspondence from me. Then, shortly after his return from duty, we would fall back into our normal routine and found that being together became less passionate and more focused upon the raising of children and fulfillment of all of the associated familial obligations. The shine always wore off the penny after the first couple of weeks back in each other’s arms. Despite our hotly burning desire when we were apart, we never could seem to connect when we were together. If our letters were found by a historian a couple of hundred of years from now, what a different picture they would paint of our relationship! I thought about all of the love letters I have received in my lifetime. In doing so, I realized that every single one, not counting the one left by the horny Air Force officer on my windshield one day post-divorce, was a direct result of not having access to telephones for a lengthy period of time. In fact, my last love letter was well before the invention of email. While sitting there on that bar stool last Thursday, in between cute interruptions by a 28-year old banker in a nice pinstriped shirt, I decided that no one really has much of a chance of building up that painful knife-in-the-stomach hunger for another human being that we used to, prior to email and cell phones. In fact, we really are capable of irritating the hell out of each other by using these technologies, aren’t we? As my girlfriend finally ended her second call to her second guy, I decided that I will have to cut my favorite guy, whomever he one day is, some slack and appreciate that I have him, not longing so much for the outdated gesture of love letters. I will go to my mailbox each day and expect only bills. I am also old and wise enough to know that something as superfluous as written professions of emotion do not necessarily accompany a great relationship. As the adultress Girolama Piccomlomini wrote to James Boswell on Valentine’s Day 1766, “When one loves, one never lacks words.” Equal to that idea, I must assume that when one really loves, what is unspoken and unwritten holds much more value than that which is openly expressed. But, I can still quietly hold out some hope that one day, as I reach into my wallet or approach my car’s windshield, I might find some sweet sentiment scrawled on a scrap of notepaper. That is, I hope for something better than that which the horny Air Force officer wrote: “I was pumping my gas across the street and saw you. I think you look hot in your red dress. I want to take you to lunch.” Oddly enough, this officer who was no gentleman scribbled an offer that was very similar, albeit less direct, to that of Prince de Joinville, a French aristocrat, who quickly passed a note to actress Rachel Felix after his first sighting of her in 1840. The Frenchman simply wrote, “Where? When? How Much?” At least she was more quick-witted in her response than I was when responding to the airman. She replied, “Your place. Tonight. Free.”
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On New Year’s Day 1807, Napoleon Bonaparte wrote to Madam Marie Walewska, “I have seen only you. I have admired only you. I desire only you.”
