Group Therapy - Advice Columns From the Vault: July 14, 2005

Thursday, July 14, 2005

ADVICE TO LOVERS

MISS BEATRICE FAIRFAX ANSWERS APPEALS FOR HELP

And She Often Finds Some Curious Problems To Deal With In the Case of Hearts That Do Not Always Beat as One

The Fort Wayne Evening Sentinel, Wednesday, June 7, 1899

WE ARE EVERY UNLIKE

I am a young lady who has been keeping company with a young gentleman for over a year, and I think a great deal of him, and I know he does of me, for he has asked me to marry him. But we are not alike at all in our dispositions, he having a very mean disposition at times, and he is very jealous of me, so that leaves me very much undecided what to do about marrying him, so kindly advise me what to do.

A VERY DISCONTENTED GIRL

My dear girl, it depend entirely on yourself how much you can stand and how deeply you love the young man. Men who put their worst foot forward before marriage seldom withdraw it afterward. On the other hand, the absolutely unselfish devotion of a woman will sometimes work miracles with the most perfect types of selfishness.

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DOES SHE LOVE ME OR THE MUSIC?

Dear Madam--I am a young man 20 years of age, and I have the pleasure of being very talented in [the] line of music. I play seven instruments and am quite a good singer. I am acquainted with a young lady whom I love dearly, and sometimes she asks me to her house to see her, but she always wants me to bring my music with me. Now, what I want to know is if she loves me or the music.

ANXIOUS

Have you ever heard that love is a beautiful harmony? When you sing and play for the young woman you love, it expresses her own feelings and is another bond of union between you.

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HAS WRITTEN MANY THINGS ABOUT HER LOVE

Dear Madam--I have been keeping company with a young lady for three years. During that time she has written and said many things about her love for me, which I believed was always true. Last Sunday she sent me word that she had "decided for her and I to be strangers in the future." I know no reason for this action, unless some person (my enemy) has told her falsehoods about me and she believed it and took the action already stated. I wrote a letter to her, but got no answer as yet, which I could get in a day if she wanted to send one, as she had many times before. She is a person that is very easily lead and hasty for the minute. She is always asking about me from my comrades, but will not tell them in the case of her action. I always treated her up to the handle in every respect. I love her very dearly and would like to be on speaking terms again. So will you please tell me how to go about it, and would it be proper for me to speak to her first or let her speak first?

PARKER A. LEPONTE

As long as she has said that she wishes to be a stranger to you in the future, why not take her at he word? That is the best way to make her change her mind, if she is going to change at all.

Beatrice Fairfax is the pen name of Marie Manning, who penned America’s first write-in advice column on July 20, 1898 for William Randolph Hearst's “New York Evening Journal.” The column was an instant success, and in the following decades, both Manning and others wrote under the pen name Beatrice Fairfax.