New West Book Review

“Love in an Envelope: A Courtship in the American West”

By Jenny Shank, 2-13-09

Love in an Envelope: A Courtship in the American West
Edited by Daniel Tyler & Betty Henshaw
University of New Mexico Press, 210 pages, $34.95

Love in an Envelope collects the letters that Leroy Carpenter and Martha Bennett exchanged from 1870 to 1871, after Leroy had left his home near Tipton, Iowa to make a new life as a farmer in Greeley, Colorado.  His affections remained in Iowa with the 17-year-old Martha, a self-described “little schoolmarm” who planned to follow him to the frontier after he was settled in and they were married.  Leroy and Martha had known each other for only a short time before their separation began, so readers have the pleasure of witnessing them fall in love over the course of these letters. 

As editor Daniel Tyler notes in his introduction, the early letters begin with “Dear Friend,” and as the months pass, “they slowly graduated to ‘My Dearest.’” Tyler writes, “This aggregation of letters documents the sincere, authentic, and deliberate efforts of a man and woman in nineteenth-century America to construct a relationship based on affection, understanding, and trust.”

Although by modern standards, it would be odd for an American couple to become engaged after meeting in person only a few times, what is striking about the letters is the depth of work they reveal Leroy and Martha putting into their relationship before they marry, sounding each other out about their religious and political beliefs, the kind of life they hope to lead, and their specific preferences for daily life, such as how their house should be arranged and what crops they should grow.  (At one point Martha reminds Leroy to set out some fruit trees on the property he’s acquired for them.) It’s the sort of lengthy, specific premarital discussion counselors and authors of self-help books urge couples to have, instead of fixating on the details of the wedding.  By the last letter, which anticipates Leroy and Martha’s wedding, any fool can see that they are ready for marriage and deeply in love.

It’s easy to tell that Leroy is in love early on when Martha sets him straight on the subject of cider.  In the second letter he sends Martha, he writes, “I have never thought it wrong to enjoy the reviving taste of good cider.  I know that there are good reasons for not using it, but I think others as good for its use.  People will think differently in these things.  What is your opinion.” You can almost hear Leroy thinking, “hopefully she’ll let me throw back a pint of cider with the boys now and then.” But it’s not to be.  Martha writes back:

“There may not be any harm in taking now and then a drink of new cider, if a person can always judge when it is fresh.  It is something like forming the habit of drinking tea or coffee.  If the habit is once formed it is hard to break off from it and if the habit is not formed there will be no cause of after regrets and cider is something that will intoxicate, or may create an appetite for something stronger.”

So does Leroy insist that there’s no harm in cider, even though Martha views it as a gateway drug?  Of course not.  The poor guy is so smitten that by the next letter he writes that he attended a Temperance lecture, and Martha notes, “I presume it was quite interesting as most of lectures upon that subject are.” The reader begins to get the picture that Martha will run a tight ship at home, mandating church attendance, forbidding alcohol consumption, and occasionally letting loose by attending a Temperance lecture.  And Leroy very much wants to live his life in whatever way will please Martha.

The letters are often playful, with Martha and Leroy mentioning other suitors who have expressed interest in them, and describing how they rebuffed these advances (which never go much farther than an invitation to lunch or a dance).  They remark on the health of their families, and describe the specific 19th-century ailments that are afflicting people around them, such as consumption, “inflammation of the bowels,” “mountain fever,” and one poor soul whose face is “all swelled with erysipelas.” Leroy describes what life and the land are like in Colorado, sending her a local newspaper, and Martha discusses her students. 

One particularly refreshing plot thread is their frank discussion of Martha’s weight, which by the end of their correspondence apparently exceeds Leroy’s and is a source of fascination and pride for him.  As the editor notes, “In great contrast to comments that might be exchanged today between courting correspondents, Leroy’s remark about Martha’s weight reflected his concern that she might be too thin for survival.” When Martha writes that she has gained weight, Leroy writes back, “I am glad to know that you are so fleshy…as it only proves that you have been well kept (fed) and that you are ready for market…You weigh at least ten pounds more than I do.”

Not all of the letters are interesting in their entirety, because they often concern mundane details of daily life, and although we romanticize people of this era as having greater eloquence than we do now, sometimes Leroy and Martha stumble along in their prose, writing about how they have nothing to write about.  But overall this collection of love letters is a fascinating glimpse into the private lives of a couple of Colorado pioneers.  Hopefully it will inspire some readers to stop emailing and texting their sweethearts for one day and sit down and write a proper letter, giving him or her a keepsake that might endure, as Martha and Leroy’s letters have, for over a hundred years.

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