Archives for October 2024

I went to something of a ball last night at The Salon, where there were lots of beautiful people dressed to the nines and dancing the night away – so it seemed fully appropriate to put up some missed connection ads from people who were in my shoes over 100 years ago.

Also, to the photographer who kept looking up at me when I was on the balcony and then totally disappeared when I came downstairs to swing dance with the Harlem Renaissance Orchestra: this one’s for you.  (How meta.)

Arion Ball. – Will the tall lady dressed in black, who received her mask from a gentleman after supper, at the Academy of Music, oblige an admirer by sending her address to Arion, Herald office?

Arion Ball. – Beautiful eyes, teeth no dentist can improve, who noticed one of the two gents in adjoining box about 3 A.M., wore plaid shawl on leaving Academy; is it possible for the gent to make your acquaintance?  If agreeable please describe dress to avoid mistakes and address, in confidence, William Cromwell, box 171 Herald office.

Arion Ball – Will the lady who wore cherry evening dress with white over (and who received marked attention from Rufus H.), communicate with an admirer of her dancing?  Address F.M., Herald office.

Did you know that this it is the sesquicentennial anniversary of the beginning of the Civil War?  And can you pronounce “sesquicentennial”?  Say that ten times fast.  Yes, folks, it’s been 150 years since the war began and it’s just as fascinating a topic as ever, and it gives me an excuse to write more about some of my favorite advertisers ever: Civil War soldiers.  Or anyway, one of them.

A young man, a gentleman, thoroughly educated, and holding the rank of [?] in the United States Navy, and who during this war has had but little opportunity to form the acquaintance of ladies, desires to open a correspondence with one who is well educated, refined and of good birth, with a view to matrimony.  None need apply unless they are such, and perfectly sincere.  If agreeable would prefer carte de visite of the lady who might feel disposed to answer this.  Furthermore all communications will be treated with honorable [?].  Address Blake Thurston, U.S.N., Beaufort, N.C.

I hate it when I can’t make out words.  Anyone able to read those?  The first one looks like “superior” but that doesn’t make sense as an actual rank, so I don’t think that’s right.  I find neverending fascination with these ads because I can only imagine what it must have been like for these lonely soldiers – or at least lonely for female companionship (well, respectable female companionship).  All they want to do is go home and forget this horrible war and settle down with some nice little woman who’ll drive all the images of death and destruction from their memories and…yeah.  It makes me sad when I think about it.  Blake sounds a little stiff but I always feel so much sympathy for these men who have no chance to cultivate acquaintances with women. 

Of course, the lingering question I always have is, why didn’t he meet any women in his hometown before he left?  Obviously all my advertisers are people who haven’t met anyone elsewhere, so it’s not like this is unique.  But the way it’s written is like he never even tried to meet someone until he was in the navy.  You know?  Like he came out of nowhere.  Or maybe…perhaps he was just out of college (highly educated), and of course there were no women in college at that time, except, I think, Oberlin (don’t quote me on that).  And then out of patriotic fervor enlisted, and then, as I said, got lonely.

Interesting though…I guess I never thought of this before but…if he’s in North Carolina, how is he going to meet these women?  He’s advertising in a New York paper, but it had a national audience so that doesn’t signify, but when I say “national” in 1862 I don’t mean it was going down South (much).  And he wouldn’t want to meet women from North Carolina anyway because they’re part of the rebellion.  So, yeah, he doesn’t say when he’s mustering out – what if his term of service is another two years?  Is he just going to correspond with women for that length of time?  I think he would love that, but the women might get a little tired of waiting.  Or not.  Because a good patriotic Northerner would probably be willing to wait for a soldier fighting for the Union.  I don’t know.  I’m totally rambling, probably due to lack of sleep.  You wouldn’t think it, but it is, in fact, possible to stay out late at academic conferences.  Historians party too.  (I wasn’t partying.  But I did have a later night than planned.  I’m going to stop writing now.)

ETA: a friend pointed out that they’re probably “supplier” and “usage.”

The paper I gave at the conference this week was specifically about a particular type of advertisement from the turn of the twentieth century, so it seems appropriate that I should write a blog post about them too – especially as it’s been awhile since I’ve written about any of these, I think. So here are two I ran across this morning. Figured since I’m on a roll with blogging the last few days I should keep it up as long as I can…right?

Attractive brunette (29) desires meeting ideal companion; discreet, cultured gentleman of means. Matrimony, Herald.

B.B. – Will some middle aged gentleman assist financially refined, affectionate young lady (22); cosey home; lonesome; matrimony. Stranger, 216 Herald.

Hint: these young ladies weren’t expecting to get married. I mean, I’m sure if they met someone who wanted to marry them they wouldn’t say nay, but I doubt they really thought they’d be so lucky. But I’m sure you’re all smart enough to figure out what was going on: they were looking for a sugar daddy. (Not that they’d use that phrase back in the day.) Alternately, they may have been prostitutes…but I don’t think so. It doesn’t seem quite the way to go about soliciting clients. They’re angling for something quite specific.

It’s a little sad, honestly. In fact, it’s quite troubling just how many ads like this were in this newspaper every day. Who were these poor women? And I mean poor in both senses of the word: both financially and tragically. How did so many women get desperate that they felt they had no choice but to become mistresses of older, and quite probably married, men?

Well, the “how” isn’t such a very hard question to answer. As I’ve said before, of course, for single women to get jobs that paid well enough to live on in any kind of comfort was really hard. But on the other hand, how come so many women weren’t able to get married? I don’t think marriage should be the be-all, end-all of every woman’s life, but there were SO many women placing these ads. Why so many? How come so many women didn’t have families they could fall back on? Had they run away from home and been cast out by their parents? Whether or not they were really refined and attractive I don’t know, but if they were lying about that they probably couldn’t attract the kind of men they wanted to meet.

I think that some of these women must have been migrants from small towns who thought they could find a better life in the big city and were met instead with the dismal reality that this was often not the case. Maybe they weren’t willing to be domestic servants or factory workers, but becoming some married man’s mistress seems like a much less appealing option to me. Perhaps they’d live more comfortably as a mistress than as a factory worker, but still…not a great life option. And what happened when they got older and these men decided they wanted a younger, prettier companion?

I’ve mentioned it before, but anyone who’s read Sister Carrie should see this as a familiar story. I wonder if Theodore Dreiser saw these ads. He must have done.  The book was written at about the same time they starting become more frequent.  I wonder if, in any way, they might have inspired him. Carrie was never so calculating – which made her much more sympathetic (as well as annoyingly passive) – but her circumstances were certainly exactly the same.

A friend saw this and I thought it was too cool not to point out.  Tomorrow is the 200th anniversary of New York City’s famous grid plan!  Perhaps no other document in NYC history has had such an effect on the city’s growth and population.

And it does connect to my ads, at least the missed connection ads.  And maybe the other ones too.  Why?  Well, the grid contributed to extremely rapid population movement north.  The city was growing in population anyway, so there are more people, and they are more spread out, and therefore they are more disconnected from each other.  It was this disconnect that helped the rise of personals.

As far as the missed connections go, well, so many of the ads refer to street corners like 8th Ave and 23rd St created by the grid. I think, for people actually reading the ads for entertainment, these precise locations would have made it easier to visualize the exact scenario of a chance encounter and that would make them more interesting.  After all, when someone writes, I saw you on the corner of Ann St and Park Pl, that’s hard to picture, because it’s so friggin confusing in Lower Manhattan, and I’m down there all the time.  But when someone writes, I saw you on the corner of 14th St and 6th Ave, well, that I can see perfectly.  So, the grid provided orientation for these readers.

Also, as someone I met recently pointed out in a pretty great book, the newspaper columns that I write about so much mirrored the street layouts created by the grid, and I totally quoted a couple sentences from that discussion in my dissertation.  Thanks, Dr. D!

On a totally unrelated note, I’m testing out a “related posts” widget.  Right now it seems to be picking out all the same ads but supposedly it’s supposed to improve as the widget somehow catalogs the blog?  I dunno how these things work.  Anyway, we’ll see how that goes.

These make me sad.  But the second one, at least, makes me fascinated.

D – Any night but Wednesday; write at once; come this week; for God’s sake, pity.

D.M. – Last delivery made, but no mail for Pennsylvania.  Have you no mercy?  A dreadful calamity is awaiting him.  He wanders like a shipwreck, with no soul to stand by him.  Write immediately that you will W. be early.

Juan – Utterly wretched; cannot rest; wait anxiously; send letter care Swed. Log., London; going there; give safe address to reply.

Jimme A.F. – I am broken hearted; write and let me know where you are.  Katie F.

Wow.  These are mostly pretty typical heartbroken ads, but that second one is awesome.  I’ll get back to that in a minute though.  The other three, all from the same day, could practically have been written all by the same hand.  There were a few, rare people who believed that these ads were all inventions of the newspaper editors as a way to ensnare a romance-loving audience.  I don’t think that’s true, for a lot of reasons, one of which is that it would have been a full-time job coming up with clever new ideas every day, seven days a week, with as many as 10 or 15 ads each day.  That’s my own personal opinion; I also have some compelling evidence that backs me up.  That being said, why are these so similar?  This is one of the things that I found really intriguing as I worked on my dissertation (and funnily enough, by sheer coincidence, I was sort of talking about in my last entry).  Were people modeling their ads on the ads of others that they saw? Or on romance novels?  Was it a self-conscious decision to make themselves sound so tragic?  Did people actually talk this way?  I don’t think they did.  I think people 150 years ago talked pretty much like they do today, except maybe more politely.

Anyway.  It’s interesting to think about the possibility that despite the fact these people were miserable, they still wrote in a style that indicated an awareness of the romance of their affairs.  And the knowledge that they were appearing in public must have made that even more clear.

And the second ad is a perfect example.  “He wanders like a shipwreck, with no soul to stand by him.”  Oh, that is wonderful.  Who are these people?  Who is “he”?  What dreadful calamity awaits him?  What can D.M. do to save him?  It sort of sounds like “he” and D.M. were together, but D.M. broke up with him, and now he’s totally miserable.  He can’t live without her, he’s directionless and alone, etc etc.  But while that would make a lot of sense if “he” was writing the ad himself (because he’d be all overwrought and whatnot), it’s bizarre coming from a third party.  What does the writer have at stake here?  Why is s/he so wrapped up in this affair that s/he draws on this shipwreck analogy?  Parent?  Sibling?  Best friend?  And the “dreadful calamity”; is that just, he’s going to be even more depressed, or is something bad actually going to happen?  Oooohh, the romance-thriller is shaping up in my head as I write…