Page 49 →Chapter 2 “To address you My Husband”

To some extent, Brown and Primus learned and used the genre conventions for epistolary address as taught by complete letter-writer manuals. In addressing Primus, Brown began her letters with a left-aligned salutation line, positioned just below the right-aligned date and above the body of the letter. Also in keeping with conventions for address, Brown often used the words “My” and “Dear” within the salutation line. But Brown and Primus obviously defied conventions for specifically romantic forms of address. Whereas manuals taught romantic epistolary address as marked by gender difference, Brown composed romantic epistolary rhetoric addressed to another woman. Primus’s notations on envelopes of when she received and responded to Brown’s letters show that Primus affirmed Page 55 →that same-sex romantic address with her response. More interesting is how, in the absence of generic conventions for how exactly one woman was to address another in a romantic letter, Brown and Primus negotiated alternative forms of address that crossed both the categories of gender and the categories of relationship and subgenre emphasized by manuals.

Salutation lines for Brown’s romantic epistolary rhetoric include the following category-crossing terms of address: “my dearly adopted sister,” “my ever dear friend,” “my dear & dearest Rebecca,” “my darling friend,” “my loving friend,” “my beloved Rebecca,” “my dearest & most affec[tionate] friend,” “my only dear & loving friend.” These terms of address suggest a same-sex relation that is familial (these are sisters, even adopted sisters), and that is friendship (these are friends), and that is romantic (these sister-like friends are not only dear but also dearest; darling, loved, beloved, affectionate; only, most, and ever).¹³ These terms certainly queer the normative gendering of romantic epistolary address. The terms of address also cross the very categories of relationship that manuals used in separating chapters on the subgenres of familial and friendship letters from chapters on the subgenre of romantic letters.

Brown and Primus wrestled with generic conventions for address through further negotiation of these terms within the bodies of their letters. Consider, for instance, their negotiation of the epistolary address “sister.” In an 1862 letter, Brown seemingly responded to Primus’s request to be addressed as “my sister”: “now My Dearest here is nexe question you ask a favor and that is this too call you my sister and then you ask me if it will be agreeable O My Darling Darling you know it would it has been my wish for sometime I dare not ask My Dear I cannot find words to express my feeling toward you is all I can say I will address you as such” (Mar. 1862). Although she “cannot find words to express [her] feeling toward” Primus, Brown not only found it “agreeable” but also insisted it was her own “wish” that she “address” Primus as “sister.” Later, just before concluding the letter, Brown in turn asked Primus, “my Dear will you in your nexe address me by my new title … don’t forget.” Keeping the agreement, Brown addressed Primus as “sister”—not “friend”—in the salutation lines of subsequent letters.

Still, conversation continued as Brown and Primus struggled with the terms of address for their relationship and what those terms might mean. Even in the 1862 letter, Brown stated that she “cannot find words to express” her feelings, suggesting the term “sister” did not quite do it. Then, four years later, Brown assured Primus, “you have been to me more then any living soul has been or ever will be you have been more to me then a friend or Sister” (Apr. 10, 1866). Brown began the next line with the address “My Idol Sister,” a variation of which she used in another letter but never in a salutation line (June 25, 1861). Yet, in closing the letter, Brown lamented, “I wish that I could express my feelings to you” and signed it, “Sister Addie” (Apr. 10, 1866). Again, Brown agreed to use the address “sister” Page 56 →within the salutation line and sometimes even the signature line, but within the body of her letters she negotiated with Primus over the meaning of that address. Within these negotiations, Brown made grand romantic claims about Primus being “more then any living soul has been or ever will be,” insisting that Primus was “more” than a sister, “more” than a friend. At the same time, Brown asserted that the terms of address available within their negotiations did not “express” her feelings.

Brown fantasized about another term of address that might better express her feelings: husband. While Brown’s salutation in the letter from which I have drawn this chapter’s epigraph is “My Truest & Only Dear Sister,” she began the body of her letter with “What a pleasure it would be to me to address you My Husband” (Nov. 16, 1865). “Husband” was certainly an address in defiance of the genre conventions for letters between women. It defied heteronormative genre conventions by crossing categories of gender, relationship, and subgenre. A woman writer addressed a woman reader not only romantically but with the term “husband”—and, at the same time, with the term “sister.” That said, Brown did not entirely defy genre conventions. Instead, she seemed hyperaware that the address “husband,” whatever she might write about it within the body of her letter, did not belong in the salutation line. Brown did not use the term there and, where she did, she also uses the conditional tense (“What a pleasure it would be”). Brown kept her agreement not only with the conventions of epistolary rhetoric but also with Primus, by continuing with the salutation “sister.” Still, keeping “husband” out of the salutation line did not prevent Brown from fantasizing about it and its associated “pleasure,” from sharing that fantasy with Primus. This line is more a shared fantasy than a request, but Brown continued to negotiate the genre conventions for address, the terms she would use with Primus, and even what those terms might—or “would,” under different cultural conditions—mean. While Brown and Primus learned the conventions for epistolary address, they used and negotiated terms of address in ways that crossed the categories of gender and relationship taught by manuals.

Brown and Primus similarly learned genre conventions for dating epistolary rhetoric but subverted cultural norms for pacing and restraint within romantic epistolary exchange. In the most basic sense, Brown and Primus did date their letters in keeping with formal conventions. In Brown’s romantic letters to Primus—as well as in Primus’s letters to her family—the women preceded their left-aligned salutation with a right-aligned date, where they provided the location from which they wrote, followed by the date. The first of Brown’s saved letters, for example, begins with “Waterbury Aug. 2 1859.” But, in teaching this basic Page 57 →convention for dating letters, complete letter-writer manuals also embedded cultural norms for a nineteenth-century version of “straight time,” for normatively timing romantic epistolary exchange through the exercise of restraint with respect to the pacing and intensity of courtship (Halberstam, Queer Time). With the heteronormative telos of marriage unavailable to their same-sex relationship, the temporality of Brown and Primus’s epistolary rhetoric obviously operated outside the “straight time” of courtship. Yet they also defied the widely taught temporality in other ways, by composing their romantic exchange with urgency and intensity.

Paradoxically in Primus’s case, her lack of restraint is evident precisely because she kept such disciplined track of the timing of her epistolary rhetoric. Although Primus’s letters to Brown are unavailable, the saved envelopes from Brown’s letters include Primus’s notations, in which she tracked the dates when she received and responded to letters. The back of a typical envelope, for instance, includes a notation like the following: “Rec July 3rd / 1861 / Ans July 8th / 1861.” This careful attention to timing is matched by an exercise of discipline in her epistolary exchange with family. While away from Hartford and teaching in Royal Oak, Primus maintained a regular practice of writing to family once a week. In the opening lines of a letter addressed to “My dear Parents & Sister,” Primus expressed her awareness of conventions for letter pacing by explaining that she was “writing your weeklie—I style it ‘The Home Weeklie’” (Apr. 27, 1868). Primus apparently maintained this regular schedule of writing to her family. In another letter to them, she began, “This quiet Sabbath P.M. I seat myself with pen in hand to write my ‘Home Weeklie’” (Nov. 29, 1868). In fact, it was cause for explanation when Primus did not stick to her disciplined schedule for writing. She explained elsewhere, for example, “I have been obliged to postpone writing your weekly until now on acct. of being from home” (Apr. 4, 1868).

In contrast with her home weeklies to family, Primus was less restrained in the timing of her romantic letters to Brown. On the one hand, some of Brown’s epistolary rhetoric does suggest there was an expectation that the women would exchange regularly timed letters, perhaps a letter per week. Brown even began one letter with an explanation much like Primus’s to her family. Brown wrote, “My reason for not sending my weekly missive last week was on account of sickness” (Jan. 19, 1868). On the other hand, the body of correspondence makes clear that neither woman exercised the normative restraint taught by manuals. While aware of the possibility for an evenly paced epistolary exchange, both wrote more frequently than once a week during the periods when they were separated geographically. In Primus’s case, her notations on envelopes indicate that she frequently “Ans[wered]” letters from Brown within one to four days, thus writing more than just once per week.

Page 58 →Even this frequency was not marked by consistency. Suggesting Primus’s inconsistency, Brown began a letter by acknowledging with delight that Primus had written sooner than expected. Brown exclaimed, “To my surprise you send me a ans sooner then I expected how delighted I was even those around me could see that I was…. I work with much lighter heart then I have all this week” (Nov. 16, 1865). In another letter, Brown questioned Primus about not writing as expected: “What shall I attribute to your silence to? You are not punishing me for not writing last week are you?” (Jan. 14, 1867). Of course, Brown’s first question quickly led to a second, which indicates that she too did not write when expected. These questions suggest both an awareness of genre conventions for letter pacing and a practice of pacing letters somewhat inconsistently, with the timing of their letters, like the terms of their address, being negotiated through their romantic epistolary exchange.

Brown exercised even less restraint than Primus, writing to her with frequency and sometimes urgency. Brown often wrote another letter to Primus even before there had been enough time for Primus to answer the prior letter, even before the notes on envelopes suggest Primus had answered. At times Brown wrote as much as once a day or more than once in the same day. Relatively early in their correspondence, for example, Brown mailed Primus letters dated September 25, September 28, September 29, and October 2, 1861. On September 28, Brown wrote not once but twice, first in the “morning” and then again at “midnight—twelve o clock precisely.” In the first entry, Brown wrote, “I think its about time that I heard from you I have been looking very patincely for a letter and have not received any as yet.” By the second entry, it seems Brown had received a “kind and Affec letter,” but her early remarks “about time” and “looking very patincely” raise questions about just how patiently she looked for that letter. Brown wrote with frequency (five letters in seven days) and urgency (“its about time”). While Brown and Primus generally dated their letters according to generic convention, their romantic epistolary rhetoric was not in keeping with the measured and studied restraint recommended by manuals. Operating outside the “straight time” of courtship in pursuit of heteronormative marriage, their epistolary rhetoric queered norms for the temporality and intensity of romantic relations.

Brown and Primus most defied the cultural norms embedded in the genre instruction of manuals through the rhetorical purpose of their romantic letters. Manuals taught that romantic letters served a generic purpose within a courtship process that was teleologically oriented to heteronormative marriage. But, like the exceptional cryptogram writer represented in manuals and considered previously, Brown and Primus composed epistolary rhetoric with more subversive purposes. Although they did later marry men, both women navigated Page 59 →their rhetorical situation by writing for purposes not limited to the generically conventional marriage telos.

In spite of how Brown and Primus otherwise adapted conventions, cultural constraints were such that they simply could not marry each other.¹⁴ Brown wrote a good deal about marriage not being an option with Primus. I have already quoted the letter in which Brown fantasized about “What a pleasure it would be to me to address you My Husband,” but she realized her would-be address could not be (Nov. 16, 1865). In another letter, Brown proclaimed romantic love for Primus but paused over the question of what her claims might actually “come to” given that Primus was a “Girl” and not “a man”: “no kisses is like yours…. You are the first Girl that I ever love … you are the last one…. I mean just what I say … if you was a man what would things come to” (Aug. 30, 1859). Elsewhere, Brown relayed that Primus’s mother “said I thought as much of you if you was a gentleman she also said if either one of us was a gent we would marry” (Jan. 21, 1866). Across their correspondence, Brown recognized that their letters could not pursue heteronormative marriage. One of Brown and Primus’s purposes for writing romantic letters, then, was to acknowledge and find ways of coping with the constraints that prevented them from pursuing the generic ends of marriage with each other.

Navigating these constraints involved coming to understand (and then to persuade Primus of) the economic reasons to marry a man. Relatively early in their correspondence, Brown wrote to Primus about a suitor, “Mr. Lee,” explaining, “I act so indifferently that he dont know what to make of me…. I like him as a Friend and nothing more then that…. I cannot reciprocate his love” (May 24, 1861). Still, Brown conceded, “but Dear Rebecca if I should ever see a good chance I will take it for I’m tired roving around this unfriendly world.” Brown realized that the institution of marriage might provide relative economic stability, particularly for an African American woman whose employment as a domestic involved being “tired” from working nearly nonstop and “roving around” from one state and job situation to the next. Brown’s “good chance” did come, after years of being courted by another suitor, Joseph Tines. But her letters to Primus represented that courtship as anything but romantic. Most of Brown’s statements about Tines were lukewarm at best, and she unfavorably compared her feelings for him to those she had for Primus. When Brown began to write of him more fondly, even the letter most overtly expressing “love” for Tines was ambivalent. While Brown wrote, “I had the pleasure of seeing Mr. Tines twice last week,” she clarified, “I shall miss him very much if your not here I should not care very much he seems to be rather doubtful of my love for him I do love him but not fasinated and never will” (Oct. 25, 1866, my emphasis). Almost a year after expressing these feelings, Brown complained that her employer did not pay her fully or fairly and announced her coming elopement (Oct. 15, 1867).¹⁵

Page 60 →While reflecting the material conditions in which Brown lived, her approach to marriage also developed through her romantic epistolary rhetoric. Consider, for instance, a letter in which she attempted to persuade Primus to view marriage differently. At a time when work had taken Brown to New York, she wrote, “My loved one I want to ask you one question that is will you not look at my marrying in a different light then you do … perhaps see you about three time in a year I’m sometime happy more time unhappy I will get my money regular for two or three week and then irregular what would you rather see me do have one that truly love me that would give me a happy home and or give him up and remain in this home … Rebecca if I could live with you or even be with you parts of the day I would never marry” (Feb. 23, 1862). Through ongoing conversation with Primus about marriage, Brown developed her economic reasoning for marrying. Brown insisted she would “never marry” if she could “live with” Primus “or even be with” Primus more often. But they were separated by work, and Brown neither saw Primus nor got paid regularly. Primus was Brown’s “loved one,” but with no option to marry each other, Brown preferred to marry a man who “would give … a happy home” rather than stay in her current work and living situation as a domestic.¹⁶

Amid the constraints that made marriage with each other impossible, Brown and Primus defied the conventional purpose for romantic epistolary rhetoric by writing about nonnormative erotic relations with others. They wrote not only about relations with the men who later became their husbands but also about relations with other women that were not teleologically oriented toward marriage. In an exchange while Brown was working at a private boarding school, she made frequent mention of her flirtatious interactions with other workers, at times writing in response to Primus’s inquiries. Brown informed Primus that the workers “visit” each other—“two of them English—one of them I call her my female lover”—and, a week later, that “the girls are very friendly towards me … sometime just one of them wants to sleep with me perhaps I will give my consent some of these nights I am not very fond of White I can assure you” (Oct. 20, 27, 1867).¹⁷

In Brown’s later references to those nights, she wrote of what Hansen termed “bosom sex” (186). Brown responded to Primus’s concern “that is my bosom that captivated the girl that made her want to sleep with me” with the assurance that “had my back towards her all night and my night dress was button up so she could not get to my bosom” (Nov. 17, 1867). Brown further assured Primus that “I shall try to keep you favorite one always for you” but then provoked with “should in my excitement forget you will pardon me I know.” In a later letter, she insisted, “I thought I told you about the girl sleeping with me,” evading the question of “whether I enjoyed it or not” and even back peddling with “I don’t know what kind of an excitement I refer to but I presume I know at the time” (Dec. Page 61 →8, 1867). Certainly Brown’s purposes included flirtatiously provoking jealousy. What I mean to emphasize, though, is how she and Primus discussed yet another nonnormative relation, a cross-race erotic interaction between two working-class women, an interaction certainly not teleologically oriented to marriage (or its classed and racialized iterations emphasized by manuals). This discussion simultaneously composed Brown and Primus’s own nonnormative relation: it perhaps fueled their ongoing exchange; it definitely was part of what they wrote about and so what rhetorically constituted their relationship through letters. In writing about relations with others, they—like the cryptogram writer—repurposed the letter genre to nonnormative ends.

Brown and Primus also defied conventions for rhetorical purpose by using their romantic letters to comment on political life. Not surprisingly, given the gendered norms for interactions between women and men, manuals did not model conventions for incorporating political discussion within romantic epistolary rhetoric. Such discussion was simply absent from the models, which represented the rhetorical situations of romantic and political life as distinct. But Brown and Primus wrote more in keeping with the patterns in African American women’s rhetoric identified by Shirley Wilson Logan, Elaine Richardson, and Jacqueline Jones Royster. As Royster’s research on nineteenth-century African American women’s rhetoric has made clear, they were “fully aware of the material conditions of their lives and equally aware of the public discourses swirling around them”; they wrote “within an environment of activism, advocacy, and action,” “a context of resistance” (110). Similarly situated and aware, Brown and Primus invented epistolary rhetoric that not surprisingly involved discussions of political action and resistance to racism. While Primus’s romantic letters to Brown are not extant, Primus discussed racial politics in virtually every letter addressed to her family while she was away teaching at the freedmen’s school in Royal Oak. For Brown’s part, even in her romantic epistolary rhetoric, she commented on electoral and racial politics.

Brown developed an increasing interest in politics over the course of her romantic correspondence with Primus, especially after the Civil War and as Reconstruction supposedly began. Brown’s interest in politics extended to figures elected to public office—even though African Americans were denied the right to vote in Hartford until 1876 (F. Griffin 90). Depending on the figure in question, Brown expressed both glee and disdain. Upon learning that “in Boston the Republican have nominated a colored man for the legislature no one but Mr. Charles B. Mitchell,” Brown wrote that she was “delighted our color will be a people get a few more states like Mass.” (Nov. 4, 1866). Upon hearing that “the President Johnson expect to be in Hartford the 26th,” she wrote that she “wish some of them [his friends] present him with a ball through his head” (June 23, 1867). Brown’s commentary on political figures was not separate, however, from Page 62 →her romantic purposes. In the same letter, and even in the lines directly following her wish for Johnson, she expressed a more conventional romantic longing, wishing for Primus to return from Royal Oak to Hartford so they might see each other: “how long will it be before I can have the pleasure of seeing you … do not Rebecca consent to teach another month O do come home won’t you” (June 23, 1867).

Brown’s epistolary rhetoric also served purposes simultaneously romantic and political; she wrote to Primus about public debates, lectures, and publications explicitly about racial politics. In one letter, Brown reported, “Colonel Trimble of Tennessee is going to lecture at Talcott street Church on Wednesday evening the subject is the capacity of colored men.” She looked forward to his lecture: “I think I shall go for I would like to hear him” (Feb. 24, 1867). In the next letter, Brown offered her lengthiest account of a lecture. In part, she wrote, “Col Trimble his subject was, Colored Mans Capacity, he spoke very well … he also spoke of [Reverend Henry Highland] Garnett, [Frederick] Douglass and other distinguish men the day would come when states would allow every man vote he also said that he was going back to Tennessee and take two blackest men one on each arm and go up to the ballot box” (Mar. 3, 1867).

Brown’s account of Trimble’s lecture about racial politics and the vote coexisted with her more romantic sentiments. In the same letter, for example, Brown wrote of how she would like to send her “very nice” breakfast to Primus, promising that when they were together next, “I shall make some … for you and only you” (Mar. 3, 1867). Brown also wrote that Primus’s letters “always affords me much pleasure … and I sometime feels that you are near,” and she mentioned that “I had a singular dream about you.” Through letters like this one, Brown continued her romantic epistolary exchange with Primus while also exchanging information and commentary about racial politics. Although legally barred from political participation in the form of voting, and although instruction in the genre conventions for romantic epistolary rhetoric seemed to bar all political discussion, Brown repurposed the genre in order to share with Primus her sentiments about not only their romantic relationship but also electoral and racial politics. Brown thus challenged manuals’ separation of romantic purposes from political life.

Brown and Primus’s rhetorical practices exemplify how at least some rhetors creatively queered genre conventions in defiance of cultural norms. Their epistolary rhetoric demonstrates a familiarity with genre conventions, which they certainly used. But they negotiated forms of epistolary address that crossed the categories of gender, relationship, and subgenre taught by manuals. The pace and intensity of their romantic epistolary exchange was more urgent and less restrained than advised. And they repurposed the romantic letter genre to compose Page 63 →their same-sex relationship, write about erotic relations with other women, and comment on racial politics—none of which was modeled by manuals.

When inventing romantic epistolary rhetoric by copying and adapting language from poetry, Brown neither used quotation marks nor attributed her sources. Still, it is clear that Brown did copy, even where the earlier sources cannot be located, because of a marked change in style.²⁰ Most of Brown’s letters are written in a conversational style, by which I mean that her seemingly stream-of-conscious language is in keeping with the commonplace manual instruction to write as though speaking on paper. Where Brown copied from poetry, in contrast, her style shifted quite drastically, with the copied language utilizing repetition, rhythm, and scene in ways familiar from poetic verse. But where Brown copied the language of the heart directly from poetry, she did not passively adapt to the language or its sentiments.²¹ Instead, she took ownership of the copied poetry by adapting it to invent her same-sex romantic epistolary rhetoric.

Brown most often copied language from others’ poetry in order to open her romantic letters to Primus. Consider, for instance, the following opening to what is an eight-page letter. After dating and addressing her letter, Brown began with Page 64 →language likely copied from poetry. Then, several lines down, I have noted where Brown made the shift in style characteristic of her copying from poetry.²²

New York Nov 14 1861

My Ever Dear Friend

yes when twilight comes starlings [?] us with all its gentle influences when the purple and gold have melted quite out of the sky when clouds of bright amber splashed with crimson have sunk deep into a rosy bed and the day-god have himself has you down into that far off lake beyond the world and only above there seems to hang out still silent canopy of deeply darkly blue it tis then I think am in this deepest of thought of you you only yes tis then I think of joys which can never be mine tears streams down my cheeks and some flow down the channel back into my heart. [stylistic shift here] one day last week I felt sad I did not rec your letter and I thought perhaps mine had shared the same fate as the other but on Monday between [?] o clock that sadness was remove I could not express the joys in perrusing you very loving & interesting Epistle but still there was one or two things made me feel bad

I describe the copied language with which Brown began the body of this letter as poetic in part because of the repetition of “when,” which creates rhythm and rhymes with the primary romantic sentiment: “it tis then” that the speaker thinks of the addressed—and, as Brown made this language her own, that she thought of Primus. Brown’s shift, from the copied language she began with to her more typical conversational language, is especially evident in subsequent lines. Brown wrote, “tears streams down my cheeks and some flow down the channel back into my heart,” and she used the only periods on this page of the letter. Then, in stark contrast, she wrote, “one day last week I felt sad” and “one or two things made me feel bad.” Brown thus used copied language to get started with composing her romantic epistolary rhetoric addressed to Primus.

Brown took ownership of the copied language by adapting it to express romantic sentiments she likely shared and then transitioning to still other sentiments. In the letter, Brown seemed to use the copied poetry to convey what she probably meant: it was nighttime when she thought of Primus, but with bittersweet tears because Primus would never be hers in the way she would like. Moreover, Brown transitioned from the copied “joys which can never be mine” to her own “joys in perrusing” Primus’s “very loving & interesting Epistle.” Similarly, Brown transitioned from the sadness in the copied language to another sadness, about not receiving a letter from Primus when desired. Finally, she transitioned again to what caused her to “feel bad.” Brown adapted the copied language not merely to imitate clichéd expressions of romantic feeling but to begin her letters and then express a more complex range of feeling.

Page 65 →With this letter, it is also important to note the dual way Brown’s epistolary rhetoric was both romantic—as in “of or relating to romantic love”—and Romantic—as in “of or relating to Romanticism.” The letter is romantic in its contemplation of and expression of longing for a love object; speaking of an “object,” the letter is also romantic in its version of love as possessive (“mine”) and narrowly focused on one (“you only you”). At the same time, the letter is Romantic in its crafting of a scene of beauty, simultaneously natural and aesthetic, as the occasion for contemplating love and inspiring composition; speaking of inspiration, phrasing such as “deeply darkly blue” is reminiscent of language particular to the Romantic poets Lord Byron and Robert Southey (“Darkly, deeply, beautifully blue” in Byron, “Blue, darkly, deeply, beautifully blue” in Southey). Crossing categories of gender, race, and class, Brown made Byron’s and Southey’s Romantic language her own in order to invent epistolary rhetoric that shared her romantic sentiments of joy, longing for Primus, and grief at her absence.

Another way Brown took ownership of copied poetry was by combining it with direct epistolary address. Brown reframed the language she copied from poetry by interspersing it with salutation-like forms of epistolary address beginning with “dear” and “my.” In another letter, for example, Brown followed her salutation, “My Ever Darling Primus,” with a contemplation of the moon that was definitely copied (Mar. 16, 1862). Most of the language Brown used here can be found in “Reveries by Night,” which was published in the literary periodical The New-York Mirror (1831) and, later, in Theodore Sedgwick Fay’s Dreams and Reveries of a Quiet Man (1832).²³ Brown deleted from Fay’s text an early phrase and several sentences and even an entire paragraph from later in the piece. In one of the places where she cut Fay’s language, she interjected with yet another epistolary address, only then to proceed further with copied language that came later in Fay’s essay. Brown wrote, “the moon tonight is so exquisite in its picturesque effects—so magical and subduing every thing that is touched by it is etherealized and elevated and softened beautiful object are invested with higher beauty grandeur rises to sublimity and sublimity oppresses the mind with heavy weight of admiration. Dear friend how perfectly still how hushed is all around but for …” (Mar. 16, 1862). Brown finished this last sentence and train of thought differently than Fay did. Then, after a few more lines about the moon, she again used direct address, this time quite conversationally: “well my Darling I suppose you think enough of [expatiate?] about the moon.” Aside from Brown calling Primus “Darling,” this portion of the letter is not especially romantic.²⁴ What I mean to highlight, though, is how Brown made copied text her own by reframing it with the epistolary address of “my Darling” and “Dear friend.”

A final way that Brown’s use of language from poetry amounts to invention through active adapting rather than passive copying is that she selected which words, lines, and stanzas to redeploy for her own same-sex romantic purposes.²⁵ Page 66 →In another letter from that same month, Brown elected to insert just one copied line, which was both preceded and followed by her more typical style. Following conversational sentences about a party, she wrote, “wish I could see you when billows roll and waves around me rise one thought of thee will clear the darkest skies My Dearest to day I rec you very kind & Affectionate Epistle” (Mar. 1862). The more poetic phrasing here is a version of “When the billows roll and waves around me rise, / One thought of thee will clear the darkest of skies.” These lines appear in a later edition of Hill’s Manual of Social and Business Forms (1883) as one among many poetic “Selections for the Autograph Album” (141). Of course Brown did not have access to this edition of Hill’s, published after her death. But in keeping with the tradition of poems collected in autograph albums, these same lines were almost certainly compiled elsewhere before they appeared in Hill’s.²⁶ Regardless of where Brown encountered the lines, my point is that she selected these specific lines, rather than others just before or after them, and she elected where to place the lines in relation to the rest of her letter. Brown also redeployed the lines in service of her own rhetorical purposes. Once adapted for her romantic letter to Primus, the lines amplified both Brown’s prior expressed longing, a desire unfulfilled—“I wish I could see you”—and her next expressed pleasure, a desire that was fulfilled—Primus’s “very kind & Affectionate Epistle” might not “clear the darkest skies,” but it did leave Brown “in good spirit” and “gave [her] a great deal of pleasure” (Mar. 1862). Here and elsewhere, Brown copied the language of the heart from poetry written primarily by white men, but she took ownership of that copied language when inventing her romantic epistolary rhetoric addressed to Primus.²⁷

Brown’s rhetorical strategies of invention included not only composing with the language of the heart from poetry but also composing about the language of the heart from the novel. Most interesting is Brown’s writing on Grace Aguilar’s domestic novel, Women’s Friendship (1850), about a relationship between the middle-class Florence and the aristocrat Lady Ida. Whereas Brown copied from poetry without attributing her sources, she cited this novel. In her first letter to Primus about the novel, Brown prefaced the language she copied with a direct reference to the novel’s title and author. She wrote, “O my Darling I read a book called women friendship it was a [splendid?] book I wish I could sent it to you for to read … the author of it is Grace Aguilar” (Jan. 30, 1862). Brown further marked her practice of copying with “I will give you little idea of it.” In this way, she distinguished between Aguilar’s language and her own. As with her copying from poetry, however, Brown drew text from Aguilar’s novel in order to invent romantic letters to Primus. Brown not only relayed the novel’s story to Primus but adapted that story by reframing it with direct epistolary address in order to Page 67 →prompt an ongoing exchange with Primus about friendship, marriage, and the nature of their own same-sex romantic relationship.

On the one hand, Brown quite predictably copied from Women’s Friendship to share with Primus a version of the novel’s story. In Brown’s first letter about the novel, the text she copied amounts to a total of three and a half pages of her eight-page letter (Jan. 30, 1862). She began her retelling by copying directly from the opening of the novel. Here Florence’s mother offers a “warning address” about her “warm attachment” to Lady Ida when, “on the receipt of a note” from Ida, Florence becomes “animated” with “its rapid perusal,” “bound[ing] toward her mother with an exclamation of irrepressible joy” (Aguilar 1). The mother warns that “friendship even more than love demands equality of station” (1). Later in Brown’s letter, she began to copy more selectively from portions of the novel, especially chapters 2 and 7, and she combined this copied language with her own summary of the novel’s plot (10, 39–40). Brown described how Florence is continually cautioned against expecting anything other than disappointment from her relationship with Ida, because they will be separated for a time by distance, when Ida is away from England in Italy, as well as because Ida will marry. Part of what Brown copied is Ida’s insistence that “I may still be Florence’s friend,” and Brown emphasized Ida’s promise to be there for Florence in case of any difficulty (Jan. 30, 1862). Through a combination of copying and summarizing, Brown thus retold the novel’s story, sharing it with Primus.

On the other hand, Brown did more than simply retell the novel’s story. She reframed this retelling through her insertion of epistolary address, in order to make explicit connections between herself and the middle-class Florence, between Primus and the aristocrat Ida, and between the two pairs’ relationships and feelings. In copying language from the novel’s opening, for example, Brown first interrupted with, “my Darling I’m writing this miscellaneous I know you will understand it.” Here she directly addressed Primus with the salutation-like “my Darling,” while also signaling that Primus’s understanding of what was copied from the novel depended on the larger context of their ongoing romantic epistolary exchange. In another interruption to the language copied from Women’s Friendship, Brown claimed, “Florence and Lady Ida became warm friends Florence love her as I do you.” In this case Brown was more direct about how Primus might take the “little idea” Brown “will give” of the novel: she intended for the story of Florence and Ida’s friendship to speak to the ongoing narrative of her and Primus’s relationship. Interrupting copied language with the direct epistolary address of “my Darling,” Brown initiated an exchange with Primus about relationships in general and their romantic relationship in particular.

Even without Primus’s written responses, it is clear from a later letter that Brown’s rhetorical strategy of invention affected just such an exchange about friendship and love. In spite of Brown’s earlier insistence—that “I know you will Page 68 →understand it”—it turns out her writing about Women’s Friendship was anything but clear to Primus. Instead, Brown’s epistolary rhetoric prompted a back-and-forth questioning about these women’s own friendship. Three weeks later, after two other letters and an “unexpected visit,” the exchange continued:

you say that you have suffered for the last few months yes I now do credit your words and never again will you suffer if I can help it then you ask me if I believe that you love me or did I ever believe you did yes I did think you love me and truly think you do now you ask my forgiveness for the pain that you have cause me my Darling my Sweet Friend you have my forgiveness my Darling you friendship is ever been pure to me Rebecca when I spoke of that book I did not mean in that light that you think you did but some day I may be more capable of making you understand what I had reference too no Rebecca you never did anything [? ly] to me no anything else that way my only beloved friend I will not agree with you in this point you say I need never name the tie which exist between us Friendship this term is not [agreeable?] to you and you even say that you are not worthy of it call it any thing else but this O My Darling is that you no no never well call it any thing else as long as God is my witness it pure and true Friendship and you are worthy of it and more so never again pen such thought if love me. (Feb. 23, 1862)

With Brown’s references to what both “the book” and Primus “say,” this letter evidences an exchange prompted by Brown’s writing about Women’s Friendship. In conversation with each other and the novel, Brown and Primus traded expressions of suffering, apologies, and assurances. Brown refused to agree with Primus on at least some points. They explored questions about their relationship: Was it “pure”? Was it “true”? Was it best called “friendship”? What makes one “worthy” of pure and true friendship? What thoughts may an African American woman “pen” to another within a romantic letter?

Had Brown turned to the model letters in letter-writing manuals, she would not have found a “name” specific to her love for and relationship with Primus. But Brown instead crossed generic lines (as well as those of race and class), drawing on the language of the heart and form of friendship modeled in the novel. She both copied language from Women’s Friendship and wrote about the novel, in order to invent her romantic letters to Primus. In addition to sharing with Primus the story of the novel, Brown reframed that story with direct epistolary address, developing an ongoing exchange about friendship, love, and marriage. Brown also took ownership of the language of the heart as copied from poetry by reframing that poetic language with direct epistolary address, actively selecting specific lines to copy, and using the copied language to initiate her romantic letters and develop expressions of romantic sentiments. Brown practiced rhetorical Page 69 →strategies of invention that, while not necessarily learned from letter-writing manuals, relied on adapting language copied from others’ hearts.

In the absence of specific references to complete letter writers or language obviously copied from the manuals, it is impossible to know with certainty whether Brown and Primus consulted that popular form of rhetorical education for romantic engagement. But it is clear that these African American women learned and adapted the rhetorical strategies of invention as well as the genre conventions widely taught by manuals and the broader culture. While manuals taught readers to invent romantic epistolary rhetoric by copying the language of the heart from model letters, Brown drew instead on the novel and poetry, adapting the language she copied in order to compose her same-sex relationship with Primus. And, whereas manuals taught a heteronormative conception of romantic relations as defined by gender difference, paced with restraint, and oriented to a marriage telos, Brown and Primus developed queer rhetorical practices for romantic engagement. These women queered conventions for epistolary address by addressing each other; composed an epistolary exchange that exceeded conventions for the urgency and intensity of romantic relations; and, unable to marry each other, addressed and exchanged letters for the rhetorical purposes of pursuing nonnormative romantic and erotic relations with both each other and others. Brown also repurposed epistolary rhetoric to not only romantic but also civic ends by writing about racial politics within her romantic letters to Primus.