"Are you prepared for the storm of love making with which you will be assailed?"
For Valentine's Day, I brought something for everyone in the class.
Over the summer, I met up with Dan Snow in Pennsylvania to film an episode of History Hit about George Washington’s epic eff up: As a young man, he led an expedition *for the British* into the wilds of Ohio, oversaw a mission that left a French Diplomat dead and started a world war—and you’ll never believe what happened next!
I went on Eric Greenberg’s new podcast MAPSO to play judge and jury to a “George Washington slept here” claim.
Finally, votes for women! And by women, I specifically mean one woman—me! I’m up for best author in the Hudson Valley.
"Are you prepared for the storm of love making with which you will be assailed?"
I have an innate aversion to Hallmark holidays and obligatory romance, but I must admit that Valentine’s Day has a lot to recommend it: I love flowers. I love presents. But most of all, I loooooove love letters. On that note, Woodrow Wilson and I are in rare agreement.
To Ellen Axson, his first wife:
I long to be made your master.…and then I come myself, to claim you, to take possession of you….I tremble with a deep excitement when I think of it. I verily believe I never quivered so before with eager impatience and anticipation. I know that I was not half so much excited on the eve of our marriage. Are you prepared for the storm of love making with which you will be assailed?
In a state of disbelief? So was Theodore Roosevelt, his political rival, when an affair threatened to ruin Wilson’s political future: “You can’t cast a man as a Romeo when he looks and acts so much like an apothecary’s clerk.” On a related note, Wilson signed letters “hungrily yours.”
Did Wilson have BDE or was he just a thirsty af racist? I’ll follow up soon.
In the meantime, Valentine’s Day-inspired recommendations:
WATCH
There was no shortage of lusty fanfare accompanying the release of Netflix’s adaptation of Lady Chatterley. The film was “super hot,” a friend texted our historian group chat at 2 am, and the sex scenes were, as The Atlantic’s Shirley Li declared, “works of art.” It was objectively less cringe than the book: D.H. Lawrence assigns pet names to genitals and dislikes “mouth kissing” and oral sex.
I found like-minded friends over at Slate, where Rebecca Onion, a Senior editor who “likes to watch movies with kissing in them” (she’s also an accomplished historian) discussed Lawrence with Claire Jarvis (current Twitter bio: *bleak*), a journalist who has studied Victorian literature. “The feminist critique of Lawrence,” Jarvis explained, is “a sense that his vision for sexually fulfilling womanhood must be vaginal and not clitoral.” It’s not “bad,” she points out, just “limiting.” But Hollywood takes Lawrence and hits the horniest notes just right. “You would want coarser treatment with me,” the gamekeeper told the lady of the house, my face inches from the screen.
READ
In the 19th century, elite women could occasionally get it—and by it, I mean a degree of independence befitting a man.
Like women? Enjoy a Boston marriage. Married to a man you can tolerate at a distance? Humiliate him into living separate lives with a conspicuous affair. Want a divorce? For a certain New York set, apparently Sioux Falls, South Dakota was once the answer.
In The Divorce Colony, low residency laws offered New York women the promise of a better life—but husbands are allowed on trains, too! Drama.
The women in April White’s book are elite but their tales of marital hell differs. An on-brand example: The young marriage of Mary Nevins Blaine, the 19-year-old daughter of a quiet but respectable family, and her husband, Jamie, the 17-year-old son of a powerful politician, quickly turned sour. Mary secured her divorce—and dashed her father-in-law’s dreams of the oval office.
FROM MY ARCHIVE
Nothing says love like a same-sex murder in 1890s Memphis. In 2014, the tenderhearted Isaac Fitzgerald, author of the bestselling memoir Dirtbag, Massachusetts, took this photo at Housing Works Bookstore in New York. (He also has a great newsletter: Walk It Off.)
In 2013, I wrote about the Anti-Flirt Club for the Atlantic. As a free agent, I object to the first rule, but you do you.
Don't flirt: those who flirt in haste often repent in leisure.
Don't accept rides from flirting motorists—they don't invite you in to save you a walk.
Don't use your eyes for ogling—they were made for worthier purposes.
Don't go out with men you don't know—they may be married, and you may be in for a hair-pulling match.
Don't wink—a flutter of one eye may cause a tear in the other.
Don't smile at flirtatious strangers—save them for people you know.
Don't annex all the men you can get—by flirting with many, you may lose out on the one.
Don't fall for the slick, dandified cake eater—the unpolished gold of a real man is worth more than the gloss of a lounge lizard.
Don't let elderly men with an eye to a flirtation pat you on the shoulder and take a fatherly interest in you. Those are usually the kind who want to forget they are fathers.
Don't ignore the man you are sure of while you flirt with another. When you return to the first one you may find him gone.
In 2018, I spoke to historian Tera Hunter about Bound in Wedlock: Slave and Free Black Marriage in the Nineteenth Century.
“Slaves faced the greatest threats of being sold away in their prime years, precisely when they would have been young couples. They were most prized as workers and able to fetch a higher price on the market then. The trepidation loomed large over their relationships, which sometimes made them ambivalent about whether to wed or not. The threat of separation was used as a form of punishment and containment to keep slaves obedient. It also became an issue when the finances of the slave owners lagged or when they passed away and their estates had to be settled. As you have noted, masters were quite blunt in making this clear even in the marital vows exchanged between slaves — ‘until death or *distance* do you part.’”—Tera Hunter
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Washington scholar Kathryn Gehred’s Your Most Humble and Obedient Servant is my platonic ideal of a podcast. I stand by the newsletter I wrote about it in 2021. From “till doomsday for aught that I car’d”:
Too often, history podcasts present information as if it is based on expertise or research, but really, it’s lifted from Wikipedia, or the hosts are very clearly reading a script that they’re trying to pass off as improvised storytelling. But Kathryn doesn’t have any of those problems. She’s reading letters of people and subjects she knows well, so she jokes, speaks freely, and makes unexpected connections. She shines in this medium, and comes across as your smartest, funniest friend, eager to share something cool she found at work. Not all of us have a Kathryn, but we can have Your Most Humble & Obedient Servant.
To be clear, I have a Kathryn, and specifically, this one. She’s tops. I was a guest on the pod, too, but you should subscribe and discover other fun scholars.
UPCOMING PUBLIC EVENTS:
March 23rd: Keynote on George Washington. Raynham Hall Museum. Oyster Bay, New York.
April 11th: In conversation with Alexandra Petri. The Bell House. Brooklyn, New York.
May 17th: Interviewed by Christy S. Coleman. The Jamestown Settlement. Williamsburg, Virginia.
Woodrow! My word...