Another Self: Middle-Class American Women and Their Friends in the Twentieth Century

Chapter 5: “Partner and I”: Twentieth-Century Romance Friendships

5 “Partner and I” Twentieth-Century Romantic Friendships Janet Flanner and Natalia Danesi Murray met at a cocktail party in January 1940. Flanner, the renowned Paris correspondent for the New Yorker, was forty-eight years old and divorced. Murray, an Italian-born broadcaster and publishing executive whose marriage had also ended, was ten years younger. Five months later they encountered each other again. This time, as Murray recalled, the meeting was more significant: “Something struck us, a coup de foudre. Janet and I knew that night that we were to become great friends.” Shortly thereafter, Flanner sublet a small apartment in Murray’s house, and for the next four years, they “shared [their] lives . . . hopes . . . and the war drama.” Eventually the demands of their respective jobs intervened , and the women found themselves on opposite sides of the Atlantic for extended periods. But their relationship—punctuated by long separations , joyous reunions, and occasional conflicts—endured until Flanner’s death at the age of eighty-six on November 7, 1978. “Janet entered my life unexpectedly on a lively New York afternoon,” Murray observed, “and there she remained until . . . that sad November day.”1 In its constancy and emotional warmth, this friendship closely resembles the romantic friendships experienced by many nineteenth-century women. Janet Flanner’s letters to Natalia Murray clearly document what Murray characterized as “a passionate friendship. . . . framed by two continents .” Flanner’s use of affectionate salutations—including Darlinghissima , My beloved one, Dearest darling, My darling love, and Darling 125 one—and her fervent expressions of love mirror the sentiments expressed by women like Sarah Orne Jewett and Annie Fields in earlier generations. As the relationship between Flanner and Murray entered its nineteenth year, Janet Flanner revealed the depth of her feelings: “Thank you for the most beautiful and complete love letter I have ever known in my life. . . . I shall never forget this letter or lose it,” she wrote to Murray. “It is the major apogee of the reception of the gift of emotion in my long life. I cannot in any way express my love for you in an equality of discovery and appreciation. . . . I adore and love and appreciate you, the first two as since the day I first met you, the last in a fête of special identification.” Murray’s comments about Flanner’s reaction to her letter offer a simple but eloquent explanation of the connection between them: “We complemented each other. We were so completely in unison in our way of thinking , of understanding, that we simply could not do without each other, despite distances, loneliness, difficulties.”2 As the allusion to difficulties suggests, a current of tension periodically disturbed this relationship. Janet Flanner could not bring herself to leave Paris, but she was unhappy about living so far from her friend and blamed herself for their long separations. Although Murray never really expected Flanner to give up her work and life abroad, she often felt lonely and discontented. By the 1960s, their lives had developed a pattern, usually consisting of two visits a year, and the relationship had achieved an equilibrium. Natalia Murray’s earlier concerns about “challenging the accepted social tenets of the day by living openly according to my beliefs, in honesty and truthfulness” no longer troubled her, and the passage of time had not altered their affection. “We did not feel older,” Murray observed. “Our loving[,] tender feelings for each other had not grown dim with time; if anything, they had evolved, increased, deepened. For me, Janet was immutable, unique and eternal.”3 Natalia Murray’s evaluation of the enduring quality of her relationship with Janet Flanner links these individuals to past generations of American women who maintained similar affiliations over long periods. At the same time, her subtle reference to the problem of challenging “accepted social tenets” introduces an issue that was not integral to the frame of reference of most pre-twentieth-century romantic friends. The blend of continuity and change that characterized the Flanner-Murray friendship raises a series of more general historical questions about romantic friendship : How closely did the adult relationships of twentieth-century romantic friends resemble those of their predecessors? Did adult romantic 126 “Partner and I” friendships change more or less than friendships that did not involve a romantic component? Were similar or different social and cultural factors responsible for the changes? To what degree does the pre- and post-1920...