My Dear Aloushka...

The two holidays this week - Galentine's Day and Valentine's Day - have me thinking about my favorite historical gal pals.

Alice Longfellow and Fanny Coolidge Stone were as tight a pair as two gal pals could be. The daughters of prominent men - Henry Wadsworth Longfellow and Republican politician Eben F. Stone - Alice and Fanny occupied elite roles in Gilded Age Massachusetts and Washington D.C. Fanny accompanied her father to Washington and served as his secretary during his three terms in the House of Representatives. Alice traveled Europe and kept the family home in Cambridge in order. The two maintained their friendship through correspondence, and of course visits.

The National Park Service holds about 70 letters from Fanny to Alice from 1875 to 1889 at Longfellow House Washington's Headquarters National Historic Site. They detail life in Washington, the day's politics, and the "exceedingly stupid" receptions. But most interestingly, they show the depth of the two's friendship to be...more than friendship?

Most of Fanny's letters begin with a variation of "My dear Aloushka" - a nickname that seems to have only been used by Fanny. Other letters address "My dearest Aloushka," "My beloved Aloushka," or "My darling Alice." They are signed "Always and always your loving Fanny" or "with a loving heart."

The bodies of the letters contain bits and pieces of things that can be interpreted as romantic. Letter 36 declares how Fanny "wish[ed] I were going up the stairs of Craigie House, with the tea-kettle and some claret and sugar and spice, a couple of tumblers and you." In letter 22, Fanny writes about her distress upon losing a bangle Alice gave her, "for it has contained the comfort that I think a wedding ring must contain."

Neither Alice Longfellow nor Fanny Coolidge Stone ever married. When Alice passed away in December 1928, Fanny was the only non-relative mentioned in her will. Fanny died three years later. Her obituary noted that in the three years prior to her death, she was an invalid.