Lyrics of Sunshine and Shadow: The Tragic Courtship and Marriage of Paul Laurence Dunbar and Alice Ruth Moore

Chapter 3: The Wooing

T H R E E The Wooing A youth went faring up and down, Alack and well-a-day. He fared him to a market town, Alack and well-a-day. And there he met a maiden fair, With hazel eyes and auburn hair; His heart went from him then and there, Alack and well-a-day. —Paul Laurence Dunbar, “The Wooing” (1896) “The Wooing” is a whimsical summary of the courtship of Paul and Alice.1 It proceeded as sketched in his poem. Paul saw a photograph of Alice—his maiden fair—with hazel eyes and auburn hair. He fell in love with this image, and the love was unrequited. Paul persevered and “the twain were wed/ Alack and well-a-day.”2 Written during the early stages of the relationship, the five-stanza lyrical account reeks of romance and levity. There is no indication of the poignant, dramatic relationship that would ensue. Yet, as in reality, the poem’s characters are the key. Like his poetic mirror image, Paul fell in love with his idealized mate, not Alice; for to fall in love at first sight—as did Paul with a photograph of Alice—is to love a concept of perfection. Similarly, the poem’s maiden fair falls for a figment of Alice’s perfect mate—the courtly gentleman. When the maid decides the hero is not coarse but “highly bred,” she capitulates and the two marry.3 Paul’s first letter to Alice, dated April 17, 1895, launched their complex courtship. It ended in a secret marriage on March 5, 1898. The two formed their romantic attachment before actually meeting, since they courted strictly by correspondence for almost two years. They courted| 74 | covertly. The reason may be found in one of Alice’s short stories. A barely disguised southern belle being romanced by a famous author through the mail confesses: “My mother had old-fashioned ideas about corresponding with strange men and I did not take her entirely into my confidence as to the number and length of our letters. Nor of the ardent verses he sent to me—and afterwards sold to magazines.”4 In actuality, Alice’s mother confirmed this fiction. She wrote that she had no idea that Alice and Paul were romancing by mail; she thought that they were merely friends.5 Paul and Alice finally met at a party on February 5, 1897. They became engaged and kept that a secret, too, from her family and friends. Correspondence remained the principle means of courting during the engagement period, too, since they lived in distant cities and saw each other infrequently. Loving by mail may not have been unusual for the African American elite. The young activist Ida B. Wells (1862–1931), who would become famous for her staunch antilynching campaign, corresponded with numerous male admirers in several cities. An African American teacher at Spelman Seminary in Atlanta—a school for women of color—contacted her professor beau at Atlanta Baptist College through letters carried by student messengers.6 And John Hope, the first person of color to be president of Morehouse College in Atlanta, romanced his wife, Lugenia Burns of Chicago, almost exclusively by mail.7 Often his correspondence mentioned friends teaching in the South who were similarly conducting long-distance romances. School facilities and local environs were not always fertile grounds of mate selection for this corps of teachers. Trusted acquaintances acted as matchmakers for friends living in different cities. In the culture of nineteenth-century romantic love, letters spoke for and to the missing partner, across distances great and small. These missives have been called “the tongue of the absent.”8 Not surprisingly, Loney Butler, a man of color in Hazelhurst, Mississippi, wrote Sophronia Collins in Carpenter, Mississippi in 1889: “Darling, as I cannot talk to you, please hasten a letter to remove all doubt. . . . [E]very word you write would be a comfort to me.”9 During the five-year courtship of Madame E. Azalia Hackley, an African American concert singer from Detroit, and Edwin Hackley living in Denver, the two met only twice; they married on January 29, 1894. The Hackleys romanced strictly by correspondence, and even the marriage proposal arrived by mail.10 The Wooing| 75 | The concept of letters as the voices of lovers was common. Etiquette books offered guidance and model love letters, lest the “utterances . . . be rude and unpolished...