The Original Catfish
Over at The Atlantic, Jessica Gentile revisits Ella Cheever Thayer’s Wired Love: A Romance of Dots and Dashes, a novel published in either 1879 or 1880 about a love affair between two telegraph operators, Nettie and Clem, who work in different towns. “Their conversations,” writes Gentile, “and the emotional attachment that ensues, may feel eerily familiar to those who have embarked on an online relationship in the modern world.”
From a conversation between Nettie and two friends, as excerpted by Gentile:
“It must be very romantic and fascinating to talk with some one so far away, a mysterious stranger too, that one has never seen,” Miss Archer said, her black eyes sparkling. “I should get up a nice little sentimental affair immediately, I know I should, there is something so nice about anything with a mystery to it.”
“Yes, telegraphy has its romantic side — it would be dreadfully dull if it did not,” Nattie answered.
“But — now really,” said Quimby, who sat on the extreme edge of the chair, with his feet some two yards apart from each other; “really, you know, now suppose — just suppose, your mysterious invisible shouldn’t be — just what you think, you know. You see, I remember one or two young men in telegraph offices, whose collars and cuffs are always soiled, you know!”
“I have great faith in my ‘C,’” laughed Nattie.
(Girl, if Cassie could have some words with you now.)
Gentile argues that “mystique is inherent to any mediated relationship,” whether on Gchat or in telegrams. And it’s somewhat of a relief to know that we’ve enjoyed their unraveling in public narrative form for more than a century.