Vox Meditantis

Chicago, Illinois
15th October, 1906

My Dearest Joseph,

The autumn winds have begun their earnest dance through the streets of Chicago, sending the golden leaves spiralling past my boarding house window as I pen these words to you. How I long for the warmth of California’s eternal spring that you describe so eloquently in your letters, yet I confess there is something in this season’s melancholy that mirrors the ache in my heart during our prolonged separation.

It has been four months since your departure, and though I endeavour to maintain the composure expected of a lady of respectable standing, I find myself quite undone by the simple act of writing your name. The other girls at Mrs. Henderson’s establishment speak of their beaux with such casual lightness, as if affection were merely a pleasant diversion between piano lessons and afternoon calls. How little they comprehend the profound transformation that love—true love—works upon the human soul.

I received your letter describing the aftermath of that terrible earthquake in San Francisco last spring, and though I am grateful beyond measure that it did not reach you in Los Angeles, the very thought of such calamity befalling your golden state fills me with the most acute anxiety. The newspapers here painted such vivid pictures of destruction that I spent sleepless nights imagining every conceivable disaster. How foolish I must seem to you, fretting over events hundreds of miles from your person, yet I cannot help but feel that any threat to California is a threat to my own happiness.

The photograph you sent of the orange groves near your lodgings has become my most treasured possession. I keep it pressed between the pages of my prayer book, and often find myself studying your dear face captured beside those laden trees, trying to divine your thoughts in that moment. Were you thinking of me, as I think of you each morning when I wake to the clatter of the elevated railway and the sharp scent of coal smoke, so different from the sweet citrus air you breathe?

I must confess, dearest Joseph, that I have been entertaining thoughts most improper for a young woman of my station. Mrs. Henderson would be scandalised to know that I have been researching the cost of railway passage to California, and even more horrified to learn that I have been corresponding with the Ladies’ Employment Bureau regarding positions for educated women in Los Angeles. The very idea that I might consider such independence, such abandonment of propriety, would send her reaching for her smelling salts.

Yet what is propriety when weighed against the certainty that my heart resides not within my breast, but three thousand miles away with you? I find myself quite altered from the timid creature who bid you farewell at Union Station. Love, it seems, has awakened in me a courage I never knew I possessed—or perhaps it has simply made clear that life without you is no life at all.

The leaves continue their descent outside my window as I write, and I cannot help but think of them as messengers, each one carrying a fragment of my longing westward on the wind. If only I could fold myself into this letter as they fold themselves into autumn’s embrace, to be carried swift as thought across prairie and mountain to your waiting arms.

Until such time as Providence or my own determination reunites us, I remain, with all the devotion of my faithful heart,

Your devoted,
Ida

P.S. I have enclosed a pressed violet from the little garden behind the boarding house. Though it cannot compare to your California blooms, perhaps it will serve as a reminder that even here, in this grey industrial city, beauty persists in thinking of you.

Bob Lynn | © 2025 Vox Meditantis. All rights reserved.