So, Diane Blair’s bundle of notes contains a love letter written from Bill to Hillary in the 70s while they were teaching at the University of Arkansas in Fayetteville. It is, perhaps, the sweetest and nerdiest letter of all time.
At the time, both Bill and Hillary were living in Fayetteville, teaching law at the University of Arkansas. Unlike their time in more liberal New Haven or their summer in Berkley, they lived in separate houses. This living arrangement is referenced in numerous places, and was due to the conservative culture of the South. Hence, a love letter written from one to the other, very much young and in love but pressured to live apart until their marriage the following year.
Here’s some supporting background on this, from Bernstein’s interview with Hillary’s law school friend Nancy Bekavac, referring to a winter visit to Fayetteville two months after Bill’s 1974 defeat in the Congressional election:
After the speeches, Bekavac started to move to the back of the room where the serious political discussions were going on. Hillary stopped her.
“Sit down. We sit here,” she instructed. They had to remain seated with the women through dessert and coffee, until the event was over and the men had concluded their backslapping. Bekavac was shocked.
Later, the three could go to Bill’s house for drinks, said Hillary, who was still living in town with her brother Tony.
Bekavac told Hillary she couldn’t believe she was in modern America.
“This is Australia in 1956,” she said. “This is like mind Jell-O. You can’t do this. It’s like Antigone, you know, it’s like, ‘Jump in the tomb.’You can’t do this.”
Hillary responded: “Well, I know, but I love him.”
They would marry the following October - and finally move in together, in the house Bill bought for her.
The letter, likely written in 1974:
Yesterday the recurring shakes came over me again and to rid myself of them I decided to go and buy something for you as much to be doing it as to actually wind up with things.
Although I am ill and unevenly read there are some books that have made a deep mark on me or simply made me happy or taken me away for a while. At random almost I ran across these yesterday and decided to get them for you. Those you know already you can put to some use. Perhaps the others will bring you some of the good I found in them.
Solitude and Bread and Wine were selected less randomly than others for they are great books, though not so classic in the popular sense as to render their gift a cliche. The others were picked for various reasons bearing on how they seemed to me and how I thought they would touch you.
By the time I could call last night it was too late and I was too spent. Today is Thursday. I will be at the little place downstairs in the union at 11:30. If you aren’t there, I’ll understand. And if you are, I will.
At 3:30 this morning I fell asleep over Andrew Marvell’s To His Coy Mistress. It has been a while since I could feel something so sharply across three hundred years. [PDF]
From what can be gathered from the letter, a young Professor Clinton dropped off the note, along with a bundle of books (Bill often gifted her with books - with a copy of Leaves of Grass when they were a young couple is a well known example), in his girlfriend Professor Rodham’s mailbox, or perhaps outside of her office, at the university. It sounds like he dropped the bundle off first thing in the morning, and is suggesting that they meet up later on at the student union on campus between the classes they would be teaching. So sweet.
As for Marvell’s poem noted at the end of the letter, which he read, thinking of her, before falling asleep - here is an excerpt:
An hundred years should go to praise
Thine eyes, and on thy forehead gaze;
Two hundred to adore each breast,
But thirty thousand to the rest;
An age at least to every part,
And the last age should show your heart.
For, lady, you deserve this state,
Nor would I love at lower rate.
Shit is fucking cute, my dudes.
