Friends to Lovers

[osprey_archer]

And when I thought how my dear friend my lover was on his way
coming, O then I was happy, - Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass

When Civil War soldiers wrote to their wives, they often began their letters “Esteemed Friend.” (Actually they tended to spell it “Esteamed Friend.”) - Bell Irvin Wiley, The Life of Billy Yank

“As for William, he could never have been so wise, so tender, so lovable, so altogether delightful and worshipful, had it not been for his long guardianship of [his sister] Agatha. He has been father, mother, brother and lover to her.” - Florence Morse Kingsley, The Queer Browns, 1907. (I cannot emphasize enough that these Browns are queer because they are socialists.)

As I’ve been working on Sleeping Beauty, one of the things I’ve been thinking about/playing with/tearing my hair out over is the way that the meaning of “friend” and “lover” (and also just “love”) shifted over time between 1865 and 1965. Specifically:

1. Whitman uses “dear friend” and “lover” more or less as synonyms and the entire American reading public apparently found this a completely normal description of affectionate male friendship until about 1890, at which point people began occasionally to have Concerns.

2. In other contexts lover often specifically refers to an as-yet-unrequited romantic relationship: a girl’s “lovers” are the young men who are in love with her, whether or not she returns the feeling. If she does, he is then an “accepted lover.” Are they having sex? Probably not! Maybe? Who knows.

3. Also APPARENTLY you could use the word “lover” about a sister’s feeling for her beloved big brother without the entire reading public going INCEST??? The fact that William has been “father, mother, brother and lover” to his sister Agatha is not at all disturbing but the very reason he is “so wise, so tender, so lovable.” In this case lover seems to mean “shining ideal that the person looks up to very very much but not at all in a sex way.” Hero worship! (I have for a long time wondered how British boarding schools got the whole "You don't have a CRUSH, it's just HERO WORSHIP" thing going, but if that's part of the cultural understanding of crushes anyway...)

4. By the 1960s, “lovers” tends to describe a reciprocated romantic relationship, probaby with extramarital sex. (When my high school class was reading Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar in the 2000s, we all had a good snicker about the guy who signs a letter to Julius Caesar “Your lover.” IIRC he’s never even met Caesar. He just loves him in a “Don’t want you to die, bro” kind of way.)

5. In the 1960s friendship means DEFINITELY PLATONIC and if a man began a letter to his wife “esteemed friend” it would probably count as evidence in divorce court, but in the 1860s this was a warm and loving way in which many men began letters to their dear wives with whom they have had sex at LEAST five times based on the number of children produced by the marriage.

(I just find the “esteemed friend” thing so funny because nowadays I’m pretty sure the only people who use it are senators who hate each other. “My esteemed friend from Georgia would have us believe…”)

6. So when Whitman starts talking about his “dear friends” he’s not so much using a euphemism as using a word that in his context gives you no information at all about whether these people are having sex. Could be your bestie you have no sexual feelings for but would die for should the need arise. Could be your lawfully wedded spouse that you bang six times a week and twice on Sundays. Could be your friend you haven’t had sex sex with but you definitely share a bed whenever possible and kiss each other’s faces while murmuring fond words of deep emotional attachment. Who knows!

Anyway, yes, as you can imagine this is an absolute nightmare to try to write, and there is 100% a scene where they kiss among the wildflowers and afterward Russell gazes tenderly into Andrew’s eyes and murmurs, “You’re my dearest friend,” at which point steam rolls out of Andrew’s ears all “how the FUCK could you SAY that to me after kissing my entire FACE do you expect me to JOIN you in pretending this is platonic friendship???”

Comments

[sovay]

Whitman uses “dear friend” and “lover” more or less as synonyms and the entire American reading public apparently found this a completely normal description of affectionate male friendship until about 1890, at which point people began occasionally to have Concerns.

"Friend" and "friendship" are used with specifically romantic, queer connotations as late as 1920, cf. this journal which I found because Dorothy L. Sayers of all people contributed to it.

[regshoe]

Ooh, that looks interesting... *bookmarks*

[osprey_archer]

This makes me wonder if the reason "friend" become so aggressively platonic later is a conservative reaction against this kind of usage - an attempt to smother the queer reading of the word? "Friend is and always has been 100% platonic and there is absolutely NOTHING QUEER to see in ANY of these texts about intense friendship."

I'm also so curious why Sayers contributed to the magazine, because a queer magazine strikes me as outside her usual bailiwick. Did she have friends involved in the magazine?

[sovay]

This makes me wonder if the reason "friend" become so aggressively platonic later is a conservative reaction against this kind of usage - an attempt to smother the queer reading of the word?

In the absence of any research on the subject whatsoever, I would be willing to believe it. I have seen language—and gender roles—polarize in my lifetime.

I'm also so curious why Sayers contributed to the magazine, because a queer magazine strikes me as outside her usual bailiwick. Did she have friends involved in the magazine?

She did, although that doesn't entirely explain it to me: one of her contributions is sort of generically Christian, but the other is narrated from the more loving side of an affair: "I am not sadder that we have been friends / Not lonelier, loving you." There's some discussion in the modern preface; I poked a little at the lesbian representation in her books and it turned out to be more complex than I had remembered or noticed, which means there is almost certainly more (if my high school gaydar of a rock thought that Eiluned Price and Sylvia Marriott of Strong Poison (1930) were a couple, there must have been textual suggestion for it). I know that not every poetic "I" is autobiographical, but in this case I really want to know. It's a rather Housman-like poem.

[osprey_archer]

I'm not sure how one would research the question, even, but it does occur to me that Mary Renault uses "friend" and "lover" almost interchangeably in The Last of the Wine, set in ancient Athens where the characters have no reason to use a euphemism... so perhaps this was a usage she was familiar with, although one that had fallen out of fashion by the time she wrote the book? In The Charioteer, set in the 1940s, the characters only use "friend" to mean "lover" when they're afraid of being overhead, ​and Laurie never thinks a la Maurice that what he wants is a friend.

The Sayers part of the preface is fascinating. My impression (admittedly I am not deeply versed in Sayers biography) was that Sayers was strictly heterosexual, but then, many biographers struggle to deal with sexual fluidity in their subjects... Anyway, clearly she had witnessed these affairs with enough interest and sympathy to write a poem from the point of view of a participant, whether or not she was ever part of one.

[sovay]

I'm not sure how one would research the question, even, but it does occur to me that Mary Renault uses "friend" and "lover" almost interchangeably in The Last of the Wine, set in ancient Athens where the characters have no reason to use a euphemism... so perhaps this was a usage she was familiar with, although one that had fallen out of fashion by the time she wrote the book?

Renault uses the English words interchangeably in part because they are the same word in classical Greek: φίλος means a loved one and is therefore used for family, friends, lovers, spouses, social intimates, it's a multivalent word. When people call one another "my dear" in classical Renault, they are almost certainly saying φίλε, "my dear one." (I had a professor who used to translate φίλοι inclusively as "near and dear," which I always liked.) Latin has a similar relationship between its verb for "love," amo, and its noun for "friend," amicus. English now has the two different words, but if we go far enough back in the Indo-European DNA, I'm willing to bet it didn't. In any case, it clearly inherited the sense of overlap even after the terminology diverged; to get back to Renault, I also imagine she is evoking some contemporary gay culture, about which she felt ambivalently, but it's still vibing there in her ancient Athens. Honestly, I don't think the non-platonic valence of "friend" has died out entirely in the twenty-first century. It remains ambiguous, and ambiguity is useful to people.

My impression (admittedly I am not deeply versed in Sayers biography) was that Sayers was strictly heterosexual, but then, many biographers struggle to deal with sexual fluidity in their subjects...

Yeah. I have never read that she had any known romantic or sexual relationships with women, but then I also had no idea about The Quorum or "Veronica."

Anyway, clearly she had witnessed these affairs with enough interest and sympathy to write a poem from the point of view of a participant, whether or not she was ever part of one.

She had queer friends; that's known. She co-wrote the original 1936 stage play of Busman's Honeymoon with Muriel St. Clare Byrne, who had been a close friend since the undergraduate days of the Mutual Admiration Society and was openly lesbian. I really do wonder if at least once she got burned. That bitterness about dead sea apples reads less convincingly as a strictly external observation when she knew someone with an honest-to-God life partner.

[osprey_archer]

Yes to the continued non-platonic (at least sometimes) valence of friendship - you definitely see people calling their spouse "my best friend" these days, for instance.

Maybe Sayers had an unrequited crush on some girl at Oxford? I feel that even a blinkered biographer ought to notice an entire love affair (although... maybe not, who knows with biographers), but an unrequited crush could easily leave no record, or no record outside an ambiguous poem, anyway.

[skygiants]

There's also some interesting stuff in the book about the Mutual Admiration Society discussing Dorothy's friendship with Muriel St. Clare Byrne's partner Marjorie Barber -- that book does give the sense that Byrne was not always particularly kind about juggling her multiple ongoing relationships, and that Barber's struggles with being cast as the 'wifely' domestic partner who waited at home while Byrne lived the more glamorous and intellectual life resonated with Sayers in her own arguments with Heterosexuality And Gender. So it's possible that she was just drawing a line, although I certainly wouldn't rule out an Oxford crush either.

[osprey_archer]

I started Mutual Admiration Society and then drifted away and never finished it! I really ought to read the whole thing one of these days...

Yeah, the poem is not really *evidence* per se; Sayers could be drawing on personal experience, but she could also just be imagining herself into someone's shoes, "My Last Duchess" style. Anyway, I think the only evidence about the gender of the "you" the poet is addressing is the title? Which could be easily changed so Sayers would have a contribution to the magazine. (It is interesting that she wanted to contribute to the magazine, though.)