Neither rain, nor sleet, nor dark of night could keep local vendors from hawking giant teddy bears, roses and other mass-produced tokens of love Monday evening, and a few determined stragglers were seen shuffling through the soggy twilight, trying to find last-minute gifts.
Betty Dismuke of Columbus was surprised when her husband brought home a perfect red rose Monday night.
“I said, ‘Today ain’t Valentine’s Day. That all you’ve got?'” she said, laughing this morning as she stood outside the downtown Columbus post office.
Still, she was secretly pleased, and even though her job as a housekeeper leaves her too tired at the end of the day to enjoy the festivities, her husband has promised dinner and a movie, and she won’t disappoint him. This is her gift to him.
But while stuffed animals and flowers remain popular, love letters themselves seem to have gone the way of the Pony Express — quaint vestiges of a time few remember.
A 20-something woman clutched her houndstooth jacket closer as she stood on Main Street, trying to think of the last time she wrote or received a love letter. A text message or email maybe. Maybe.
“My husband’s not really a romantic,” she said. But judging by the smile on her face, she doesn’t really mind.
Centuries ago, though, love letters were not only written, they were an expected ritual of courtship, and few can top the prolific love affair between 19th century poet Elizabeth Barrett and her future husband, fellow poet Robert Browning.
Their 573 love letters, which capture their courtship, their blossoming love and their forbidden marriage, have long fascinated scholars and poetry fans. Though transcriptions of their correspondence have been published in the past, the handwritten letters could only be seen at Wellesley College, where the collection has been kept since 1930.
But starting today, Valentine’s Day, their famous love letters will become available online where readers can see them — just as they were written — with creased paper, fading ink, quill pen cross outs and even the envelopes the two poets used.
The digitization project is a collaboration between Wellesley and Baylor University in Waco, Texas, which houses the world’s largest collection of books, letters and other items related to the Brownings.
Modern-day Mississippi poets took to the windows this week, leaving anonymous notes about love on the glass panes of The Southern Letterpress and Job Printing, a downtown print shop. Owner Jessica Peterson posed four questions and invited romantics (or cynics) to write responses to be taped to the front window.
“We tend to forget how many kinds of love there are,” Peterson wrote, explaining the project. “In the real world, outside of our ideals and what is sold to us, love is less often about romance and more about a myriad of other things.”
The messages evoke a range of emotions, from “Awww…” to “Ouch.”
“He showed up at my best friend’s house — he was her boyfriend. I took care of that,” one woman wrote. It was signed, “53 years later.”
But not every love affair ends so happily.
“I loved him more than he loved me,” one woman wrote. “He loved her more than me. I loved me more than him.”
For those who have been on the receiving end of a love letter though, there’s nothing else like it. Even after decades of marriage, women — and sometimes men — often still keep the ribbon-tied memories of old flames.
Rogers said one of the most interesting things about the Barrett and Browning love letters is that Barrett almost left them behind when she and he left for Italy.
In her last letter to Browning, dated Sept. 18, 1846, she says she had to take them with her.
“I tried to leave them and I could not — That is, they would not be left: it was not my fault — I will not be scolded,” she wrote.
Henry Durant, who founded Wellesley College in 1870, admired the Brownings and considered Elizabeth Barrett Browning to be a strong, educated woman who would be a good role model for the young women of Wellesley. Durant gave his large personal library to the college, including many first editions by both poets.
Because the college was already known for its Browning room and collection, Robert Browning donated Elizabeth’s handwritten poem, “Little Mattie” to the college in 1882.
Former Wellesley President Caroline Hazard purchased the collection of Browning letters, and in 1930, donated them to Wellesley, where they have remained.
The library even has the actual mahogany door to the Barrett house in London, where Browning’s letters to Elizabeth passed through a brass letter slot. The slot was screwed shut by a Wellesley librarian more than 40 years ago because students slipped through letters of their own to pay homage to the Brownings. Rogers said she is considering re-opening the slot.
The digitized letters will be made available free online through Baylor’s digital collections.
Baylor transformed 1,723 raw digital images from Wellesley into more than 4,200 edited page and envelope images, said Darryl Stuhr, manager of digitization projects for Baylor’s electronic library. Baylor also digitized more than 800 other letters written by or to the couple by friends, family and other literary greats of the era.
Stuhr said Baylor needed 107 gigabytes for the love letters alone.
“It is giving worldwide access to the collection, where somebody can actually see what the letters look like without having to travel, from the comfort of their own homes,” Stuhr said.
Even among the young cynics though, there is some evidence that love — at least the desire for it — still exists.
One of the questions Peterson posed was, “How did you know it was real?”
“I still don’t,” one person wrote and posted on the letterpress shop window. “But I hear so much about it, it’s got to be real, right?”
Associated Press writer Denise Lavoie and Dispatch Reporter Carmen K. Sisson contributed to this story.
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