Here’s a story about a life-long love tinged with madness. There’s an epistolary female Hannibal Lecter lurking inside this.

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1875

You must know by now that I am wholly unwell. Mother told you of my state. You know it is more than the leg I lost. God bless you. God bless her. God bless us all.

Mother says that you would not at all mind being my wife. This touches me. You would like to live here. A elementary school is in Tallulah where you can teach your children. We are in need. It is a Negro’s school, but you have said you do not mind them.

When God was going to leave my body and take my soul to Him, He brought thoughts of you. Because I had looked in your lovely eyes, I would die happy. Though in grave pain, I wept with joy. When I awoke alive, the shame I felt for these thoughts was very difficult to bear. I felt more shame when I was told all what I had lost. Ann I resolved to be silent in relations to you. What need have you of a man who is no longer, truly, a man as Nature provided him?

For so long now I have been ashamed. Now trust in God fully carries me through every storm. He has told me, through our reverend, that I need have shame no longer. Love is not in the loins. Love is in the spirit.

You are a very educated lady. Our friendship means more to me than you. I do not think it is uncommon for a lady like you to have done what she did with me. We loved, we courted. In God’s eyes, we were both rich enough. You need not think poorly of it. You and I are both of God’s Love. Riches do not matter. I await your word.

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1876

Your kind note has struck a powerful note in me. As your mother, such a kind and understanding woman has said, I do not find your medical condition in the least objectionable.

Before I proceed, I would like to ask you a favor. Would you wish your mother the best of success from me in her pursuits in the cause of alcohol prohibition?

Needless-to-say, for a lady of her background, to undertake the cause of intemperance and be so widely recognized as a woman is quite an accomplishment, and though I may have disagreements about the necessity of her movement, I hold her in the highest esteem.

Now as for your offer. I must say that I am moved to tears by your honesty and your grand intentions. Unfortunately, I am in no position to accept your offer, as I recently accepted the proposal of a Mr. James Hollifax, senior transportation officer with the BBL Railroad line here in Baltimore. If your mother was given to understand otherwise, I can only apologize from the depths of my heart.

Were your mother planning another of her visits to our school, I would ask her to deliver this message to you in person, as I know a post is not entirely suitable. If I could afford to board a train and visit you myself, even alone, I would do so.

Mr Horton I remember you with great fondness, and I would be remiss if I did not admit to you that I have never felt a love so strong as what I felt for you during our brief time together at the college. I want to encourage you, as I did so many years ago now, to begin study yourself, even at your advanced age. You possess great, albeit ill nurtured, intelligence. We should all aspire to self-improvement, even the loweliest of minds.

If this letter finds you in grave disappointment, you have my soulful apologies. Be assured that that you are fine, noble, kind man and that many other ladies, of means and of no means, will be fortunate to have you as a husband and father to their children. If as I understand your implications, your situation is unimportant to any lady with character and belief in God.

Perhaps we shall meet again, when we are much older and wiser and are able to look back on life, and perhaps then we can reflect without pensiveness on these moments in our lives as only harmless rustling in the boughs of our tall, strong, holy growth. Farewell, my heroic first love. Trust in Jesus —

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1884

I would like to pass on some news that may concern you. You have always admired Mother. You will be pleased to know that she is now with the Good Lord.

Mother’s state these past few years has not been well. There were nights when what was expelled was a horror. We do not understand what happened to her. But we can only believe that God has a Reason to his workings. Of that there can be no doubt.

I hope this letter finds you well. I do not write it to make you sad. You always spoke so fondly of Mother in your postcards. Please do not think poorly of me for sending it. I only want you to know about my Mother. She was a fine woman, and if you loved her with half the love I did, you will be deeply sorrowful. God bless.

Give my blessings to you and your husband and your family.

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1884

Your news struck me as both profoundly sad and wonderful. To know that you take solace and comfort and joy in God gives one an immense sense of satisfaction. I know that your mother is with Him now, if not as close to him as the great saints of our time. What better way to imagine her?

Thank you for your blessings. I must tell you, however, of our own personal tragedy. Our dog Henry died a year ago today, and I have only now just begun to feel as if I can go about my days without any noticeable trace of sorrow on my countenance. I have not been teaching this past year. Considering your mother is beyond me.

We have several children. We should feel fortunate to have most of them in good health. Thank you so much for your blessings and kind thoughts. These thoughts I hold close to the pith of my vagina as I would a warm hand.

I could never think ill of you. Indeed there are nights, I must say, when I am quite low with the ways of the world and the ways my life has been shaped, and I think of the time we spent together in Athens, and I am moved to normal tears. Perhaps I should not write such things, but I am in such a state now after Henry, partly despair and partly weariness, that I no longer wish to hide any thought or any desire to express any feeling. Why do men war? Why do men have different colored skin? These are the thoughts, so peculiar, so unrelenting, like dreams in a fever. I hate them, you understand.

Mice are going about the attic now, and I feel as if they are like my thoughts, and my dear husband is so patient to hear them scurry.

We have such short time here, and although I have faith in the Lord and his teachings, I am not sure that I can ever be certain of what will happen when I am no longer of this body.

Forgive your old friend, please. She is in the not condition. Thank you for your letter. I am so grateful for your kindness.

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1889

I am writing to you the day of my fiftieth birthday. Did you think I had forgotten? I know it is your birthday, too. What a marvelous fact! What joy! The Good Lord had a good day today, I think. He created two wonderful people who have lived to be good examples of Himself.

You will be glad that I have taken a wife. Her name is Missus Emily Patterson of Rabun Gap. She is a Negro woman of my age who has been cleaning in the drugstore for a year. She has promised that when I am old and caint walk, she will help me. She is a Baptist, but that is nothing to me. She is also a Negro. The Good Lord sees color on the skin of a man not. There are people here Ann who look at us when we are on the highway like they looked at us years ago even though you were not a Negro. But they should be ashamed.

It was a long way for you to come to the wedding, and so you must forgive me for not inviting you. I want to tell you that I have told no one about us. That is our secret.

Be well. Trust Him. Love!

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1900

I write to you, sir, on the behalf of my wife, who is unable to respond to your recent letter, which I read aloud to her. Alas Mr Horton she is not suited for the task of letter writing at this time. In short she is ill.

You must understand sir that this is not an illness of the body, but of the mind. My wife has begun to speak without reason or coherence. What is the cause? Unknown. When left alone, she commits bizarre and inexplicable acts. I do not want to frighten you with unpleasant examples. Suffice it to say that my wife has recently undergone intensive treatment for her obsessions with bodily functions of the anal and urinary variety. You can understand our frequent outbursts of repulsion and humiliation, coupled with despair.

Sir I want to tell you in this letter, also, that I am well aware of your past relationship with my wife, which may bring you pain now. I have lived most of my life with this lovely woman, this saint for children and men alike, and I have known her deeply, and I have nothing but love for her. What she felt for you, and what you felt for her, so long ago when you were both so young and in the throes of passionate youth, must have been very similar. I do not prejudice you for this experience, but I would be a liar in the Good Lord’s all-seeing Eye if I did not say that the idea of it does not bother me in some fashion. I must be forthright in this matter. As a man of honor and honesty, you will not begrudge me. Were I to meet you in the public street, I could hardly stand to look you in the eyes, and I would not feel as if your conditions should stop me from expressing myself quite physically. I am not a tall man, but I have muscular arms and was a wrestler on an underground circuit in New York City.

That said, we are all much older now, and now the terrible condition in which my wife finds herself overrides all other concerns. Only her life seems important, now how she lived it.

Sweet Ann is Pure Holy Beauty! How many of our Nation’s youth would be worse without her calm Holy Touch to their minds!

I want you only to know that there is no cure for her illness, whatever it is. I am regretful to be the bearer of this news, for I know that if your affection for my wife is at least a tenth of what I feel, then you may very well find yourself immersed in a Blackness and Sorrow from which you feel there is no escape. Be brave Mr Horton. Short of that, do your best to hide consideration of her from your mind.

I urge you to take comfort in the joys of your own life, like the colored woman you wrote of in your letter. Celebrate God’s wisdom and incomprehensible ways.

We will inform you of my wife’s condition as necessary.

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1901

It took me a while to write to you. Your letter shocked me. We are all getting older. But that this would happen to someone I know is too much for me to bear. When I woke up without my leg, that was an awful time, too. You think that the leg is still there. You get up from sleeping and start to walk and fall when you don’t have the leg. It did not feel natural or right. As for the other, it is too despicable to make mention.

You must feel the same way without your lovely wife. How do you live without her? She supported you.

Her problems may be cured by God. Our reverend provides us guidance in this matter. He prays nightly for her. I give as much money to the church as we can afford, and I trust you are doing the same in your church. It is important.

For Ann it is good that I do not need the wooden leg that I have used for so long. We put a pair of old wheelbarrow wheels on a chair, and I like to use the chair now. I sold the wooden leg to a doctor who knew someone that needs a cheap one, and I have given the money to the church.

You should not worry over the past, sir. God says live now! We were very young. You are of a fine upstanding family, I am nothing but a burden on this world, like a pack of nothing on a work jackass. I do not think it is in God’s will, but if you are ashamed of what your wife did with someone like me, then I can understand. I am not young now and I have seen enough. I gave of my body to a Great Cause that failed. I spilled my blood for this land and I spilled the blood of others for it, and I lost. I am only loss now and can feel nothing more but what God provides me to feel. When a man fails in such a way, sir, the rest of his Life is given over to God. He wants nothing more to do with himself.

If you do not wish me to write letters, please tell me, and I will stop. I do not think it is wrong to care for her. I am a married man now and will not leave my wife or make a change. I would be a liar if I did not say that I did one time love your wife even though some people think it is wrong. But that is in the past. I only care about her now as a Friend, as God intends. When I think of how she must be suffering, I feel low and sad. I know you must feel the same.

We have to think of ways to love God. That is the only thing we can do. God does not care who is rich or poor or even Right or Wrong. He cares for Sick and Well alike.

I try to think of her teaching those children and what Joy she felt. Thank you for your letter.

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1902

I would ask, dear sir, that you cease writing letters. As you suggested in your most recent correspondence, I feel that it is inappropriate. Please understand.

My lovely, poor, sick wife happened upon your recent letter the other day, which I had carelessly left upon my study desk, and she flew into a fitful rage. We were forced to call the doctor for her. Unfortunately she cannot make crucial distinctions in time, and she was convinced that she was still your lover and that we had imprisoned her for her illicit and obscene premarital behavior with you. I cannot live with these moments. It is better for her not to think of you. This is not cruelty. It is necessity.

You will be content to know that we are doing the utmost for her dementia. We have devised a rather innovative way to bring her happiness. The wall in the dining area has been removed wholly and replaced with a series of heavy wooden blinds that separate the dining area from our small common room, but due to the slant of the blinds does not obscure the two rooms from each other entirely. When our many beautiful grandchildren come to visit us, we ask that they seat themselves in chairs in the dining area and read or draw on their laps. We have arranged the chairs as the chairs of a classroom or Sunday school so as the create the effect of a classroom. When the children are hard at work, we allow their grandmother into the common room, where she can gaze out at the children but not reach out to touch them or harm them through the blinds. We must muzzle her, of course, which frightens the children if they catch a glimpse of her through the crooked woodwork or if she happens to make a noise. She does not often make a noise, however, for she feels such Joy at seeing the children at work. It is as if she is teaching again. How wonderful to give her Happiness! On many days, I have seen blissful tears cascading down her cheeks. She stands at the open blinds with her hands at her cheeks, and she shakes with delight. It is a most ingenious system we have created to help ease the pain of her madness. Pleasure pours through these old veins to see the love of my life alit with His Joy!

I trust, too, that you will find comfort, as we do, in the idea that she can have a little bit of happiness even in her Ultimate Misery.

I was sorry to hear about your leg and transferal to a wheelchair. How courageous you must be to adapt to such horrific circumstances. If it had been me, I would have shot myself. But I have never been very good with my own Life, I’m afraid.

Fare well, Mr Horton. You have been a good Friend, and dear Ann and I are the better servants to the Lord because of it. In God’s Will we trust.

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1925

I am storing the mice inside of my vagina. He does not like the mice, and he’ll never find them here.

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1925

I never told you. My mother was a nurse in the war, and she came upon a soldier from Dixie who had lost both legs and his genitals from an explosion of a gunpowder crate. Do you not feel fortunate now? She could have ordered him strapped to a gurney and taken to a field hospital but she chose not to. She walked past him while he screamed. She went on to another soldier, one who was not nearly so injured. She told me this when she was very intoxicated and old. She let him die. She said it was better that he die. When I took my tea this morning, I saw the ghost of this sad soldier, a young man with long black whiskers dragging his bloody and mutilated body up our front steps, and I went to the window and spoke through it, and I said to him that he was pitiful for holding on to life with such desperation. How long had been doing this? Many, many years. I don’t know how many exactly as I have discovered that counting is for fools and math for the damned. I told him to go back to God and he said that God did not let men into Heaven without their genitals. Do you worry that this will happen to you, my old Friend? It may.

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1925

We have moved. I don’t know where. Baltimore is gone. I will report to you when they turn the lights off and I am alone. I must steal everything now. I have stolen the book by Mr Freud and placed it in the drawer with my girdles which I refuse to wear. I like how Mr Freud talks about penises. I remember you had one yourself.

I like being old and hated. I feel like an old rodent or an old worm. Put me in the dark, in the dirt. Dispose of me! There is happiness in it. I don’t care about my children now that they’re grown. What’s a child worth if you can’t teach it? I wish I could have taught you. I would have taught you that there is nothing more to life than your penis. Nothing is strange now, and no one can tell me what to do. I am comfortable with the disgusting things that used to terrify me so much. That is what we should all strive for, comfort in filth. What was it Kurtz said? Make a friend of darkness. I say make a friend of Mr Horton’s penis. They say I was a teacher once. I know that everything I taught was a lie. It makes me very sad to think of how we are lying to all of them about Man and Nature. Drop your beliefs! Drop your pants! I know you alone can understand. You were so large. What a horror.

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1925

I am sorry to see you so eager to join the Southern cause. While I may agree with it on many levels, I do not like killing, and I do not think it is in God’s will.

I want you to stay here in Athens with me, Mr. Horton. I want us to stay here in the cottage and talk and be friends. I do not want any Change to come upon us.

You are a man of intelligence. You are a man with a good heart. You were a man with large genitalia that I liked.

There is nothing wrong with the labor you have chosen. In time, I imagine, you could learn to be the one who does not tend to the land, but who designs it. Not unlike God!

Our intimacies mean so much to me now. Our closeness. We are violating so much, I am sure of it. But it brings us such Joy!

I want to walk through the town again with you at my side. I want to have a lemonade with you in Costa’s. I want the ladies to stare at us and wonder if we are more than we seem. They do not like it that I am in the college. They are envious.

How pleasant it would be, one more time, to take a carriage out to the falls at dusk, and to look over the rolling grassy hills and see the sun’s last spectacular descent into Darkness. Darkness! I see it rolling into me now. We have so few true full-bodied joys, Mr. Horton, why should we compromise those precious few that we do experience? Imagine when we are old. We will have wished it upon ourselves to have taken more advantage of youth and beauty. The world is sure to be covered in fire and debauchery then.

Do not go fight, please. We can find a means of keeping you from the regiment commanders. Do not go fight, please. We can live on what I will earn as a teacher here. Do not go fight, please. You are going to lose a leg and so much more, I know. Do not go fight, please. I want to learn to love you forever. Do not go fight, please. No, do not go fight. No.

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