January 1963. He's reading "This Little Band of Prophets," by Anne Fremantle. I remember reading it years ago, after I dumped him, I think I took his reading list with me. The "Prophets" were the Fabian Society of England in the late 19th, early 20th centuries - Socialists, basically - and they included George Bernard Shaw, Sidney and Beatrice Webb, H.G. Wells, Annie Besant (later of the Theosophical Society) and Emmeline Pankhurst, heroine of the suffragettes (there's a statue to her now outside the British House of Commons, to which iron gates she once handcuffed herself). Later members were Bertrand Russell and John Maynard Keynes. Apparently, the Fabian society is still active (Google is God), influential in Labour politics, and includes Tony Blair as a member.

Anyway, I knew nothing of them in 1963. He writes of Sidney and Beatrice Webb (founders of the London School of Economics). "Theirs was one of the famous and most unusual marriages of their time. Deeply devoted to one another, close always, and each equally intelligent in their own way."

Was he thinking of our marriage in similar terms? Did it hold similar possibilities? No dreams of founding a School of Economics or any such thing - and, remember, the 60's had not really begun - but did he have a similar dream of us? I keep thinking of him as an "older man" and indeed he is older than I am, but I have to remember, he is only about 21 - 22 at the most - in these letters. How very young we are indeed.

He talks of Philadelphia, as if we are to meet there - but we never did. I don't know why. I don't remember anything about our Philadelphia story. He ends the letter, "We will be so happy there, together again as we should be, and I think, as we are meant to be." Beatrice and Sidney?

A little note from the not-to-be-mother-in-law. On notepaper from the Essex Inn in Chicago. Michigan and 8th streets. She says she's writing it on her lap (this is some kind of hardware convention, I think), and I almost read "laptop," before realizing... She's sending me a package.

I was a little afraid of her. I don't mean "afraid" in that she intimidated me in any obvious way. I was her (I think he was the youngest) son's choice in brides, and she accepted me lovingly. If I detect a note of something less than enthusiasm, perhaps that is because she found me as difficult to respond to as I found her. The only thing we had in common was our love for her son, and as history was to reveal, she was way one-up on me on that score - as one-up on me as I found her on many other scores. She was very nice. Me - not always so much. She was a devoted wife and mother. Me - not so much. She was devoted to her family - I was escaping mine. She was at home in the kitchen. I was at home in a library. I was having sex with her son. She was not allowed to know that. That, of course, would not be a thing we had in common anyway. Except for the occasional use of alcohol, she was my mother all over again. I would never become either one of them.

Or so I thought at the time.