By By Laura Prieto, Simmons College
Love letters come in many varieties, but there’s a resonant familiarity about the language of longing.
爱丽丝·巴奇·古尔德和亨丽埃塔·查尔德是剑桥柯克兰街的邻居. 这些年轻的女性都非常热爱书籍，喜欢讨论她们的想法和项目. Literary accomplishments marked the male and female lines of both of their families; Alice’s relatives included poet Anna Cabot Lowell Quincy Waterston, and author Catharine Sedgwick was Henrietta’s great-aunt.
亨丽埃塔继续她的非正式学习，而爱丽丝的野心带她离开了新英格兰:去布林莫尔攻读学士学位，最终去芝加哥大学攻读数学博士学位. 爱丽丝希望成为一名学者和大学教师，而亨丽埃塔则觉得对家里有责任. In 1896, both young women lost their brilliant fathers, 天文学家本杰明·阿普索普·古尔德和哈佛教授弗朗西斯·詹姆斯·查尔德. 爱丽丝的旅行圈子越来越大，从剑桥到芝加哥再到加勒比海. 她找不到她想要的那种教学职位，她发现写论文越来越难了.
在那些不安的岁月里，爱丽丝一直通过信件与亨丽埃塔保持og体育官网. They wrote lengthily and often, sometimes daily. 建议、观察、笑话、食谱和轻浮，都有它们在交换的书页上的位置. 这两个女人甚至通过通信继续他们严肃的研究, taking up the History of Mathematics written in 1758 by French author Jean Étienne Montucla (1725-1799). 爱丽丝在1902年10月拜访了亨丽埃塔，然后和另一位朋友兼邻居乘船前往波多黎各, Susie Preble. “我看海军跟踪你是为了看一看你随身携带的低领连衣裙,” teased Henrietta.
Alice and Henrietta’s affection and intimacy are always in evidence, 但是他们在1902-1903年的长时间分离导致亨丽埃塔对她与母亲和妹妹呆在一起的“责任”感到恼火. (Alice Bache Gould Papers, MsN-1309, Box 14, Folder 9) She confessed to Alice,
I have been indulging in thoughts, or dreams perhaps, about you, thinking how it would be if we could go off together, 我们该如何相处——你和我在一起会不会和没有我一样沮丧, 不过，如果离开家是对的，我还是愿意冒险的——因为我不喜欢你一个人走 & I thought in some ways it would be a change that I could put to use. I could study & cheer you up a bit & together — Well the rest was sentiment & not over wise, not according to the real way of life I suppose.
I am going to Montucla now, & be sensible.
Your loving friend,
Henrietta
I think of you a lot.
Don’t be discouraged, my little girl. Keep up brave heart, & 尽量把事情做到最好，那么事情就不会那么糟糕. I should like to be beside you to night when the lights were out & then we could have a talk.
Henrietta’s language is so passionate, and seems so un-self-conscious. What should we make of it? In the 1970s, 像卡罗尔·史密斯-罗森伯格这样的女性历史学家开始研究19世纪美国女性之间盛行的“浪漫友谊”. 这种紧密的关系通常始于学校，并在家庭领域的“女性世界”中得到培养, wherein women were supposed to be the affectionate, sentimental, innocent sex. In adulthood, 这种关系可以与女性传统的男女求爱和婚姻共存, or they could become her primary commitments. 当这些女人住在一起时，她们可能被称为“波士顿婚姻”.” Whether they were lovers in a physical sense is usually impossible to prove either way, and scholars differ on whether the sexual aspects even matter. Are the erotic possibilities essential or a prurient distraction?
They never lived together, as Henrietta fantasized doing; but Henrietta Child and Alice Bache Gould fit the quintessential profile of romantic friends. 她们都是受过良好教育的某一社会阶层的女性，彼此之间充满了深情和亲密. 他们用求爱的语言表达彼此的感情, welcomed physical closeness, and used playful, maternal endearments (“my little girl”). They never married. 如果他们的信件中有什么让历史学家感到惊讶的话，那就是他们的时机. 亨丽埃塔在爱丽丝·米切尔轰动一时的审判十年后写下了这封信, 她说她谋杀了她亲爱的朋友弗雷达·沃德，“因为她爱她”，不能和她在一起. 法庭和媒体指控米切尔“不自然的感情”、性变态和精神错乱. By then, 理查德·冯·克拉夫特-埃宾和其他性学先驱的理论已经开始将“同性恋”归类为一种精神疾病. Publicity cast new suspicion on intense same-sex friendships, making unseemly what had no one had objected to before. Yet in early 1900s Cambridge, 合适的年轻女性仍然可以“沉溺”于彼此相爱的感觉中.
Alice’s search for fulfillment eventually took her to Simancas, Spain, 在那里，她对哥伦布的第一次航行进行了开创性的档案研究.S. embassy during World War I. Henrietta ended up on an adventure of her own. In 1911, after her mother’s death, 她离开了新英格兰，在伯里亚农村的欣德曼定居学校教书, Kentucky. 她在那里度过了她的余生，在当地的学校系统中作为一个鼓舞人心的故事讲述者.
日益恶劣的环境和来自家庭的压力可能使她们无法“结伴而行”，但她们相爱的友谊给了亨丽埃塔和爱丽丝追求有意义生活的力量, on their own terms.
