Theme

Marriage

The long experiment of making a life in the presence of another person.

• High Roman Empire

  The Empty Threshold

  She is in Campania for her health. He rereads her letters, walks to the room where she sat, and writes as if the wax could keep her. Her side of the correspondence does not survive.

• London, 1845 to 1846

  Let Me Count the Ways

  Elizabeth Barrett and Robert Browning court by letter: invalid room, poet's visit, a father who would not bless them. The sonnet that survived is not a greeting card. It is a record of mutual attention.

• Halifax, 1832 to 1840

  Crypthand

  Anne Lister writes a life in code, and on Easter 1834 takes communion with Ann Walker as marriage. The diaries are private, sexual, economic, and sometimes controlling. She is not a series.

• Kimberley, 1897 to 1898

  Special Licence

  Solomon Tshekisho Plaatje, Motswana, courts Elizabeth M'belle, Mfengu, in a diamond town that does not make mixed families easy. They marry by special licence. The letters of the rocky courtship we paraphrase; the marriage we can date.

• Qing China, late 18th century

  Six Records

  A failed clerk and a woman who arranged flowers write an ordinary Chinese marriage: jokes, pawned hairpins, shared moonlight, and the days after she is gone. Two of the six records are lost.

• Massachusetts and Philadelphia

  Remember the ladies

  She wants a letter half as long as the ones she sends. The farm is hers. The children are still well. He is in Philadelphia. In the same sheet, later, she asks him to remember the ladies. The slogan is not the morning. The wait is.