Love’s Letters Lost

It was a first date, and it was not going well. Even the server ignored the couple so as not to ruin what was otherwise a pretty good shift.

She was pure "Burberry Becky."

He wore creased blue jeans with a red and black checked collared shirt beneath a gray houndstooth wool vest. It was an odd clash of prep school and the great outdoors. He picked the shirt because it was the only clean collared shirt he owned, and the vest was how he'd "dressed up" since 1998. With his large black glasses, big ears, and bald head, she described him later as "a Mr. Potato Head crossed with the cast of Dead Poet's Society and a lumberjack."

She squirmed in her seat. She'd asked him about his job to break the tension, and she regretted it.

He prattled, "...the Russian historian V.A. Smetanin, but the title isn't in the OED or other dictionaries. So, you could call me an epistilologist or epistilographer. But these are terms mostly used by academics…."

She cut him off mid-sentence by rising from her seat. Bag in hand, she declared, "I need tampons." and walked away. Even after the waiter dropped the check, he sat there for half an hour, wondering if she might return.

Jacob Grinter was 35 years old. As mentioned, he worked as an epistilologist, a tiny academic field. He spent his days wearing gloves and padding through archives while studying and understanding historical letters.

Jacob loved the fact that for most of human history, the world ran on letters. A letter was words held together with grammar and coded with intention. The magic was that this kept two or more brains connected no matter the distance.

There were letters from religious leaders designed to encourage and lead. Letters between lovers that held poetry and lewd imagery. Family missives expressing deathbed regrets. Letters took time to compose and effort to write. Jacob described handwriting as closer to speech than typing. But even then, a typewriter could convey more tone than an email. Intentions seemed more apparent in a letter. He studied paper, inks, wax seals, postage, and envelopes. At a lecture last year, he described a letter as "holding a piece of a body."

He'd once had a person in his life. He wrote her letters. She gave him greeting cards. Their relationship ended when he told her he felt she didn't care for him anymore. He'd confronted her with, "I can't make you love me."

She replied, "I can't make me love you either."

After three years of cocooning in work, he finally felt ready to date.

Though reluctant, he relented and joined "the apps." One phrase that tripped him up on many profiles was, "Not looking for a pen pal."

That was Jacob's dream.

He tried to analyze where this last date had gone wrong. He even went out and bought a box of tampons. Ever an academic, he wanted to understand what it felt like to buy something so intimate. What kind of choices would he have to make when purchasing? It was better to face collateral embarrassment when the stakes were low. He also thought it'd be good to have them on hand, just in case.

He wouldn't give up but wouldn't return to the field unprepared.

At the end of this week, he would separate himself from dating for a while. He'd be out of town in South Dakota for work. He'd been called to examine an unusual find.

In the 40s, the US government decided it needed underground bunkers. South Dakota seemed the perfect place. Yet the apocalypse took its sweet time. The space went from emergency plan to useless storage. Better options were built. These archaic cement holes were to be sold to a developer catering to doomsday preppers.

As the government did a walk-through of the bunkers, they found stockpiles of expired ammunition, rations, reems of canvas, and even a tank. Yet, the most unexpected find was a stockpile of antique letterboxes.

Popular during the Victorian era, letterboxes were a cross between a briefcase and a desk. Usually owned by male professionals, Jacob described them as "the original blackberry" to a high school tour at his museum. He was greeted with confused silence.

This was a little outside Jacob's area of expertise. He specialized in letters, not the boxes they came from. But these boxes were full of completed letters and not just blank stationery. The government called in an expert: Jacob Grinter.

It was his job to catalog the collection over the next few weeks. He was responsible for a complete count, but the number of boxes was estimated in the hundreds. Only a couple of boxes had been opened, each containing around four dozen letters.

The first box he examined had letters from Army Colonel Henry Larcom Abbot. These letters were all about engineering. Dry and to the point, these letters were a distillate of practical information. There was no color to the writing. It was mission-focused. The most interesting thing was his use of the word "Honorificabilitudinitatibus." It was a Shakespearean word meaning "the state of being able to achieve honors."

Next were letters from Colonel John W. Ames. Most, not all, of these letters were written to Margaret. Filled with action and description, John felt the need to impress her. They were filled with descriptions of battles and other "turgid" events. 

Jacob meticulously peeled through the letters. While this first batch belonged to Civil War soldiers, that only seemed to be the beginning. At least one box he'd yet to open showed signs that it'd been constructed in the 18th century. Some boxes appeared older.

Yet everything stopped when he got to the letters of Harriet Wood.

These were the first letters written by a woman. Then, even more unusual, the use of the name "Harriet Wood." It'd been a surprise because Harriet Wood was the name of a Union spy most of the world had known as "Pauline Cushman."

But most unusual was the first letter's contents. So far, these letters had belonged to a place. They had context baked into them. This letter was romantic and florid. It was poetic. The recipient was only identified as "ISF." An acronym? It lacked the punctuation of initials.

Wood wrote, "...ardor ignites my being while muskets pierce my soul. There is such calm in this ink. Share its comfort, my mysterious companion. Steer my spirit with yours. Let's watch wildflowers, wash away gunpowder, and ride the wind. Remember that trampled grass is remarkably resilient. Be you the same. Yours, H. Wood."

Jacob always tried putting himself in the author's shoes when studying letters. He attempted to contextualize the author's words. Where was the letter written? What was the weather? If there was a date, what was the news of the day? That seemed impossible with these letters.

He sat in a metal folding chair at a pop-up table with a legal pad. He copied Harriet's letter word for word to study it. Was this a coded letter from a spy? As a lark, he decided to write back on his pad.

"Harriet, while we've never met, I'm warmed by your language. Thank you for writing. I hope the war doesn't snuff out your flame. Be as resilient as grass."

He turned the idea of "resilient grass" over in his head. It was very poetic. Very Walt Whitman. He added a postscript, "PS - I'll buy a copy of Leaves of Grass for your return."

He liked the idea of Harriet wanting a pen pal. He genuinely wished he could buy her this book, but it would have been hard to come by then. He delicately opened the following letter in her stack.

The first sentence grabbed him.

"ISF. That you would buy me a book, any book, shows that you care, and the fact that you'd share it with me brings me solace…"