I wish I could remember courtesy of whose Twitter feed I found out about the 1881 book, The Agony Column of The Times: 1800-1870, because I’m finding it fascinating, and am very grateful.

The book (which I downloaded here) is filled with evidence of how little we’ve changed over the centuries, how people are filled with love and longing and loss (and hope, too!) whatever the year.

I’ve always enjoyed reading classified ads detailing missed connections of those who smiled at each other on the subway, passed in a supermarket, nodded in the street, and then went on, with no word spoken, and nothing exchanged but a dream that enflamed a regret. And so they placed an ad describing the encounter, hoping their possible future could be found.

All such ads I’d seen up until now have been contemporary, but here’s an example from just over 210 years ago.

A Gentlemen wrote to a Lady on December, 18, 1800:

If the lady who a Gentleman handed into her carriage from Covent Garden Theater, on Wednesday, the third of this month, will oblige the Advertiser with a line to Z. Z., Spring Garden Coffee House, saying if married or single, she will quiet the mind of a young Nobleman, who has tried, but in vain, to find the Lady. The carriage was ordered to Bond Street. The Lady may depend on honour and secrecy. Nothing but the most honourable interview is intended. The Lady was in mourning, and sufficiently cloathed to distinguish her for possessing every virtue and charm that man could desire in a female that he would make choice of for a Wife. Deception will be detected, as the Lady’s person can never be forgot.

Did he find her? Did she answer? And if she did answer, how did it go? We’ll never know, unless as I move forward through the book, I discover a follow-up notice.

Such poignancy can be beautiful. And heartbreaking.

As heartbreaking as stories without endings.

As Irene was preparing an ancient address book for recycling, she pulled out the pages and ripped the book in half, at which time she discovered that the padded covers had been lined with rectangles of newspaper to give them some heft. There were about a dozen or so slips bound within each side. While we have no idea of the dates of the newspapers from which these were sliced, we think that the address book itself had to have been about forty years old.

Three of the pages contained commercial artwork. Neither one of us can read the text, so we have no idea what’s being illustrated, but still, this was an intriguing, serendipitous discovery.

It makes me wonder what else lies hidden away within book covers, perhaps never to be found!

There was nothing in today’s Washington Post about the Kennedy assassination. I had expected that there’d be something. There usually is some kind of look back on each anniversary of that traumatic event. And the 45th anniversary is a round enough number that I assumed I’d find at least a mention of it.

The absence of any remembrance as far as I see in either the Post or the New York Times seems to me as if it could mean only one of two things. Either so much time has passed that that it’s now considered ancient history, or else even the smallest mention of assassination in the current political climate has been rendered taboo by fear. (more…)