I enjoy finding interesting things tucked into books that come into Classics. I’ve found money, four-leaf clovers and personal checks written by witches.
My favorite, though, was found in a book of poetry in written by Richard Nixon (not THAT Richard Nixon, the other one). There was a bunch of ephemera in it and as I went through it a story of lost love emerged.
First, I find, tucked between pages 22 and 23, a postcard that had written on it
“My Christmas thought/ Could not be bought. /I searched the city through. A sorry guest, / For the very best / Were none to good for you. Richard. Paris 1932.”
Second, later in the book, I find a typewritten letter, written from Paris on New Year’s Day addressed
“Dearest Clarice.
“You complain that I never open my heart. Let us take the fanciful case of a man who after many years finds his soul face to face with a woman he once loved,–a woman presumably in love with a perfectly good husband to whom she reads her letters. Such a man might well hesitate to unlock his heart, tho he might paraphrased Browning a little and say, Open my heart and you will see / Graven upon it only Thee. So it ever was, so shall it ever be.
“No, I didn’t stay on in Jersey beyond the merrie month of May, having finally been driven out of that terrestrial paradise by the Demon of Loneliness.
“I was cheered by your news that this has been a successful year for Melvin and I hope that good humor in which you are ending it will extend far enough into the new one to stimulate you to write me again and soon. Stella Farwell write me from New Orleans that you had been there twice since last spring, looking younger and handsomer than ever. No wonder you are in such good humor, with a good husband who has had a successful year and with Time treating you like a spoiled child.”
Later in the book, there is a Christmas card from Richard “with much love.”
Finally, there is a wedding invitation
“Mr. Richard Nixon has the honor to announce his marriage to Madame A Lelu in Paris on September Twenty-sixth, 1940.”