Arts & Culture

Deep in UVA’s vault, romance survives

The vault and the stacks at the University of Virginia’s Albert and Shirley Small Special Collections Library hold romantic accoutrements that put chocolate-covered strawberries and a bottle of champagne to shame.

In celebration of Valentine’s Day, UVA Today took a look at love letters, lithographs, poetry and first edition books, among other items, that document love that was sometimes hidden.

John Steinbeck’s writings to his wife

Before John Steinbeck won the Nobel Prize for literature, he scratched out a living working at a fish hatchery in Lake Tahoe, California. It was there he met his future first wife, Carol Henning, and fell in love at first sight.

Carol was instrumental in encouraging her husband’s writing career – she even suggested the title for “Grapes of Wrath” – and Steinbeck showed his gratitude in the novel’s dedication: “To Carol, who willed it.”

Special Collections holds the presentation copy (a copy of a book typically given by the author to another person), which includes an inscription written in a language that was theirs alone, sometimes called “Carol-ese” or “dog Latin.”

Open book dedication page reading “To CAROL who willed it. To TOM who lived it,” with “CAROL” circled and a handwritten note in blue ink below.

This presentation copy of “The Grapes of Wrath” features an inscription in “Carol-ese.” (Photo by Lathan Goumas, University Communications)

Holly Robertson, curator of library exhibitions, translated the inscription with a little help from artificial intelligence. To the best of her knowledge, the inscription translates as:

One Carol equal one everything
The cycle and equal misery
So love and stay around
One Carol equal and equal.

Sog (Steinbeck’s nickname)
John Steinbeck
Los Gatos in the evening.

Special Collections also holds the “fair copy” manuscript of “The Grapes of Wrath,” which Carol used to type the novel.

Discovery and Innovation: Daily research. Life-changing results.

“She said, ‘You’ve got to write more legibly, or I can’t do it,’” George Riser, a curator at Special Collections, said.

Steinbeck complied for the first three leaves of the fair copy.

Manly love in “Leaves of Grass”

In the 1860 third edition of “Leaves of Grass,” a collection of 176 poems by Walt Whitman, the poet included what is known as “the Calamus section” of the book.

Multiple handwritten manuscript pages arranged in neat columns on a black background.

This poem about love between two men was hidden in Whitman’s “Leaves of Grass.” (Photo by Lathan Goumas, University Communications)

“In that section, Whitman has put together 12 poems called ‘Live Oak with Moss,’ about manly love, and it’s too explicit. So, when he had the book printed, he had those 12 poems scattered throughout the Calamus section, so you wouldn’t be able to read them all in order and go, ‘Oh, this guy’s gay,’” Riser said.

In 1956, UVA professor Fredson Bowers examined the manuscript poems and noticed a set of 12 poems, all written on the same paper and fair copies. He put them in order for the first time since they were printed to form a long poem called “Live Oak with Moss."

The poem depicts love and disappointment with a male partner, making it less of a love poem and more of a heartbreak poem.

Alexander Hamilton’s letters to Angelica Schuyler Church

Fans of the Broadway musical “Hamilton” may believe one of the country’s founders had an affair with his sister-in-law. Historians disagree on the matter, though Alexander Hamilton’s affair with Maria Reynolds was a well-documented scandal.

Historians disagree about whether Hamilton had an affair with his sister-in-law. This letter shows the affection the two shared. (Photo by Lathan Goumas, University Communications)

Special Collections has a collection of correspondence between Hamilton’s sister-in-law, Angelica Schuyler Church and some family members. The two met when Angelica was already married. Some historians believe the two carried out an affair of the mind, but there is no direct evidence of a romantic or sexual relationship.

What is clear is that Hamilton and Church were … close.

“The first line of this letter is, ‘There is no proof of my affection I would not willingly give to you.’ Why are you saying that to your sister-in-law?” Jacquelyn Kim, an exhibitions coordinator, joked.

“White Fire” by Michael Laurie

The 1949 novel “White Fire,” by Michael Laurie (likely a pseudonym), is the love story of two young men in the 1930s that ended abruptly with the onset of World War II. The association copy (a copy owned by the author or someone close to the author) in Special Collections includes additions – some handmade – to dedicate it to the author’s lover, Julian.

Open book with handwritten dedication and oval pencil portrait.

“White Fire” depicts a same-sex love story at a time when homosexuality was still illegal. (Photo by Lathan Goumas, University Communications)

It is bound in full teal Morocco leather, one of the finest kinds of leather, in contrast with the relatively cheap paper on which the book was printed. The book’s inscription includes a quote from French author André Gide: “Oh, boy whom I love, I will carry you with me in my flight!”

The author also drew a portrait of his lover in pencil and white gouache inside. All the pages are gilded, and each chapter includes red-ink leaf embellishments.

“It was so beautiful to have a pulpy book like this that you couldn’t publish, and have a publisher do a fine press edition of this book that was, essentially, illegal,” said Yuki Hibben, curator of print culture in Special Collections.

“Pella on Saturdays”

Every week, the English visual artist Tom Phillips would have his longtime binder and collaborator, Pella Erskine-Tulloch, sit for a lithograph portrait. He used the same piece of stone for the lithograph, a kind of print that uses a stone to stamp an image onto a different material.

Here is a shorter, accessibility-optimized version: Folded poster with a grid of black-and-white portrait studies and the title “Tom Phillips: Pella on Saturdays” on the right.

The artist Tom Phillips is said to have been in love with the face of his bookbinder, Pella Erskine-Tulloch. (Photo by Lathan Goumas, University Communications)

It’s not clear whether Phillips and Erskine-Tulloch ever had a romantic relationship, but there was obvious affection between the two.

“A scholar wrote in an article that Phillips said he was in love with her face, and he did hundreds of images of her,” Hibben said.

“Pella on Saturdays,” an artist book held by Special Collections, includes 44 plates Phillips made of his collaborator. The early portraits are realistic, but grow increasingly experimental. Phillips loved Erskine-Tulloch’s face to the point of abstraction.

Throughout the book, on alternating pages, is an “episodic message” from Phillips, spelling a line from Dante’s “La Vita Nuova,” about Beatrice, Dante’s love. The message roughly translates to, “I want to speak with you about my lady.”