LoC Blog: The Love Letters of James and Lucretia Garfield
“I have for a series of years been accquainted [sic] with
Miss Lucretia Rudolph and have been, for several months studying her
nature & mind,” wrote future President James A. Garfield in his
diary on December 31, 1853.
While he respected her intelligence and her character, one question
troubled him as to their romantic prospects: “whether she has that
warmth of feeling– that loving nature which I need to make me happy.”
The couple’s struggle to answer that question is amply documented in the
hundreds of letters
they exchanged on the course of true love. Those letters — as well as
the former president’s diaries, professional and family correspondence,
scrapbooks, speeches, and other materials relating primarily to his
career and death — are now available online from the Library.
James A. Garfield’s Greek class,
Western Reserve Eclectic
Institute, Hiram, Ohio, 1853. Garfield (far
right, front row) is next to his future wife, Lucretia Rudolph.
The pair met at school in Ohio in the 1850s. She was nicknamed
“Crete,” short for Lucretia. (I’ll refer to them by their first names
for this rest of this post, to avoid confusion as to which “Garfield” I
might be referring.) James’s passionate nature demanded that he “know & be known,”
and he remained skeptical that the emotionally reserved Crete could
give him the affection he craved. For her part, Crete vowed to “never give my hand to one who has not my heart.”
Their romance blossomed, however, and they were engaged when James left
Ohio in 1854 to attend Williams College in Massachusetts. They
sustained their relationship through letters, but the physical distance
tested James’s resolve after he became enamored with Rebecca Selleck of
New York. James assured Crete that his love for her was “not a wild delirious passion,
a momentary effervescence of feeling, but a calm strong deep and
resistless current that bears my whole being on toward its object.” Yet a
painfully awkward meeting of James, Crete and Rebecca at James’s
graduation in 1856 exposed intense feelings and strained James and
Crete’s relationship. When James dithered in making a decision, Crete took matters in hand,
absolving James of blame for the “generous and gushing affection of
your warm impulsive nature” and giving him permission to marry Rebecca
if “you love her better, if she can satisfy the wants of your nature
better.” Better to release him, Crete explained, than “to be an unloved wife, O Heavens, I could not endure it.”
Lucretia Rudolph to fiancé James A. Garfield, August 19, 1858,
expressing her fears that their marriage will be based on “duty.”
In April 1858, James and Crete resolved to “try life in union.” But James felt “restless & unsatisfied” with his life, and Crete worried
that he would marry her “because an inexorable fate demands it.” While
she vowed to make the best of their life together, “there are hours when
my heart almost breaks with the cruel thought that our marriage is
based upon the cold stern word duty.” James wed Lucretia on November 11, 1858, hopefully with more enthusiasm than his stark diary entry suggests: “Was married to Lucretia Rudolph….”
Separation,
both emotional and physical, characterized the marriage for several
years. James stayed busy with a burgeoning political and legal career
before going off to war in August 1861. As James’ star rose in the
military and after his election to the U.S. House of Representatives in
1863, he and Crete struggled to sustain their frayed relationship. James
held out hope on their fourth anniversary
that “patient waiting and mutual forbearance has at last begun to bear
the fruits of peace and love” after they had “groped about in the
darkness and grief trying to find the path of duty and peace, and being
so often pierced with thorns.” Crete blamed “the mask my own heart had worn” for their sorrows.
After the death of their daughter “Trot” in December 1863, their severest trial came in 1864 when rumors
of an extramarital affair threatened James’ political career and his
marriage. James confessed his transgression to Crete, hoping for her
guidance and some measure of “respect and affection.” Crete offered sage advice, and forgiveness.
While painful for both, the episode seemed to awaken in James and
Crete a genuine intimacy previously missing in their marriage. Their
subsequent letters reflected a deep longing for and commitment to one
another. “We no longer love because we ought to, but because we do,” James explained, and promised that
“were I now alone, and with an unwedded hand and heart, but knowing
your nature as I now know it, I would woo only you, and use all the
powers of honor and effort to win you and make you mine.” To his “Precious Darling”
he expressed the wish “that God would let us die together when we die;
that neither of us might be left in the empty world for a single hour.”
James A. Garfield to his wife Lucretia, November 24, 1867: “We no longer love because we ought to, but because we do.”
Alas, an assassin’s bullet
thwarted James’s wish in 1881, leaving Crete a devoted widow until her
death in 1918. But their letters are eternal, and through them we can
share in the extraordinary love story of James and Lucretia Garfield.
via https://blogs.loc.gov/loc/2019/08/now-online-the-love-letters-of-james-and-lucretia-garfield/
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