{"id":11822,"date":"2019-06-11T00:00:02","date_gmt":"2019-06-10T22:00:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thelesbianreview.com\/?p=11822"},"modified":"2023-06-14T15:18:57","modified_gmt":"2023-06-14T13:18:57","slug":"precious-adored-ehrenhalt-laskey","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thelesbianreview.com\/precious-adored-ehrenhalt-laskey\/","title":{"rendered":"Precious And Adored by Lizzie Ehrenhalt and Tilly Laskey: Book Review"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Precious<\/a>Precious And Adored by Lizzie Ehrenhalt and Tilly Laskey<\/b><\/span> is a scholarly edition of the correspondence between two socially prominent (and wealthy) American women from the turn of the 20th century. In addition to the letters, the book provides the historic, political, and social context of their relationship.<\/span><\/p>\n

Rose Cleveland was the sister of U.S. president Grover Cleveland and served as his official White House hostess during part of his first term, until he married. Evangeline Marrs Simpson was left a wealthy widow after a very brief marriage to a much older man. The two met in upper-crust social circles in Florida in 1889 and began a life-long romantic relationship. Their letters reflect their initial passion, their continuing devotion, Rose\u2019s heartbreak when Evangeline entered into a second marriage with a prominent clergyman, and then after Evengeline\u2019s second widowhood, the life they made together in Italy until Rose\u2019s death in the Spanish Flu epidemic of 1918.<\/span><\/p>\n

Despite the author\u2019s characterization of their relationship as \u201cremarkable\u201d, what their correspondence and biographies show is how ordinary and unremarkable it was for women of their era to enjoy romantic relationships. In contrast to the professional women of \u201cBoston Marriage\u201d fame who formed households together with little comment, Rose and Evangeline were each wealthy enough to have multiple homes, traveling between the north-east and Florida in the course of their social and business dealings, and much of their correspondence details the logistics of when they would meet and spend time together. As letters tend to be written when the participants are apart, these arrangements drive the volume of letters they left behind. It also drives the longing and desire for each other\u2019s presence that the letters contain.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cI dare not think of your arms–but I am coming to them.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201c[Speaking of spring and youth] Will it come again, Eve? Is it keeping for me? Are you keeping it for me, wrapped up warm and sweet, fresh and deep, all in a closed bud that will open–when?\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

But the emotion and sensuality of their letters are still not \u201cremarkable\u201d in the sense of being unusual. Many of the women in Boston Marriages expressed similar sentiments in their correspondence. \u201c[I long] to lavish my love upon you, to let eyes and lips and hands tell you that I love you.\u201d It is only the repressive and reactionary atmosphere of the early 20th century that reframed these expressions as merely \u201csentimental\u201d and \u201cconventional\u201d rather than genuine records of erotic desire.<\/span><\/p>\n

The crisis provoked by Evengeline\u2019s second marriage shows how women of their time were struggling to articulate the sense that women could be enough for each other and not a substitute for relationships with men. The letters often danced around the un-naming of what they felt. \u201cI cannot speak nor write of my love…you know–\u201c But the essence is there: \u201cYou are mine, and I am yours, and we are one, and our lives are one henceforth, please God, who can alone separate us.\u201d But when Evangeline responded to Henry Whipple\u2019s courtship, Rose desperately tries to offer an alternative. \u201cI will give up all to you if you will try once more to be satisfied with me. Could you not take sex months for that experiment? We would go away from everyone.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

The age had no framework in which a female partnership would be accepted as establishing something not to be broken except by death. And Evangeline appears genuinely to have fallen in love with Whipple. Their relationship cooled to the merely social. Rose began traveling and spending time with another female friend, Evelyn Ames, though there\u2019s no similar documentation of the nature of their relationship. Evangeline\u2019s second marriage lasted five years–only a few more than her first. Rose\u2019s letters begin sounding her out on resuming their romance. For nine years they resumed their \u201cjet-setting\u201d companionship, with Evangeline now fixed in the Whipple home in Minnesota and Rose chasing around on her business affairs, including a farm in Maine that she co-owned with Evelyn Ames, a citrus orchard in Florida, and other ventures. But finally in 1910 they sailed to Italy together and shared the rest of their lives there.<\/span><\/p>\n

It doesn\u2019t appear to have been meant as a permanent move. Indeed, Rose\u2019s correspondence to Evangeline survived in part because Evangeline had left her house with instructions to the caretaker to leave everything \u201cas is\u201d for her return. But she stayed on in Italy for twelve years after Rose\u2019s death and until her own.<\/span><\/p>\n

The house was inherited by a charitable foundation who sold off some contents but the rest was eventually claimed for back taxes and the Whipples\u2019 papers were acquired by various local historical societies, with Rose\u2019s letters to Evangeline buried in a vast volume of other Whipple family material. (Henry Whipple was the first Episcopal bishop of Minnesota, so much of the material relates to his career.) It wasn\u2019t until 1969 that the materials began to be reviewed by an archivist who identified the content and meaning of those letters. Due to their \u201csuggestive content\u201d the historical society separated them from the rest of the collection and locked them away \u201cto be reviewed at a later date.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

This detailed history must be considered in the context of so many cases where we know that personal papers and correspondence were directed to be destroyed after death, or were destroyed by surviving family members to avoid affecting the reputation of the deceased. In the earlier parts of the 20th century, such records might be heavily edited for publication \u201clest readers misunderstand.\u201d But because Rose and Evangeline\u2019s correspondence was preserved in stasis until 1978, it was reviewed and published in a context more sympathetic and accepting of same-sex romance. Earlier publication was limited to a few extracts, but Precious and Adored<\/i> offers the letters in full, with additional correspondence from other members of their social circle that provides context and background. (Evangeline\u2019s letters to Rose were not preserved except in the occasional quotation in Rose\u2019s responses.)<\/span><\/p>\n

The Writing Style<\/b><\/span><\/h3>\n

About a third of the book consists of the authors\u2019 explanation of how they came to tackle the project and a detailed and accessible explanation of the women\u2019s lives and historic context. This is more of a local history project than an academic analysis, so don\u2019t fear that it will be full of technical terminology. The letters themselves are not always engrossing reading, being full of the details of travel, everyday interactions, logistical arrangements, and business transactions. The romantic content is a constant low-level through-line: the longing for a response, the joy at receiving one, unhappiness at separation, fond memories of time together. And every once in a while, effusions of passion and possessiveness. (Perhaps a somewhat overwhelming possessiveness on Rose\u2019s part, one gets the impression.)<\/span><\/p>\n

The Pros<\/b><\/span><\/h3>\n

Perhaps the hardest thing for a modern reader is to understand what women\u2019s lives and words meant to them in their own context, rather than read them as we would our contemporaries. Ehrenhalt and Laskey do an excellent job of providing that context–of helping us to interpret these letters as they were intended and received, neither reading in more than they hold nor excusing their emotional reality as mere sentiment and literary convention.<\/span><\/p>\n

The Cons<\/b><\/span><\/h3>\n

There is always a temptation to want to claim historic figures \u201cfor the team\u201d–to interpret women who loved women as heroic rebels and brave pioneers. Rose and Evangeline were not brave heroines. They were wealthy privileged white women who faced few consequences for the discreet conduct of their romance. They shared both the virtues and blind spots of their age. Even as they used their wealth for charitable purposes, they express casual racism. The power of their lives is not in being saintly role models, but in demonstrating one version of how utterly normal and ordinary life could be for women loving women in the past.<\/span><\/p>\n

The Conclusion<\/b><\/span><\/h3>\n

Read this book for a window on one of the many possibilities for same-sex couples in the past. Your life will be enriched by expanding your understanding of our history. And you just might be able to win a bar bet about who was the first \u201clesbian first lady\u201d in the White House!<\/span><\/p>\n

Excerpt from <\/b><\/span>Precious And Adored by Lizzie Ehrenhalt and Tilly Laskey<\/b><\/span><\/h2>\n

\u201cMy Eve! Ah, how I love you! I paralyzes me. I have been going over & over your written words until the full message of them–some<\/i> of them–has made me weary with emotion. This I must try and escape, for your<\/i> sake. But let me cry & shout it. Oh Eve, Eve, surely you cannot realize what you are to me. What you must be. Yes, I dare it, now, I will not longer fear to claim you. You are mine by every sign in Earth & Heaven, by every sign in soul & spirit & body–and you cannot escape me. You must bear me all the way, Eve; clasp me in my despair of any other and give me every joy & all hope–this is yours to do.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Get This Book On Amazon<\/b><\/span><\/h3>\n

(this link works for Amazon UK, US, Germany, Italy and Canada)<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n

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Bits and Bobs<\/b><\/span><\/h3>\n