Do you still write letters? Do you still write love letters? If not, ask yourself if there are messages you would like to leave behind, preserved in the amber of an archive, or if you’d rather your correspondences vanish underneath accumulating time and history. It almost happened to Charlotte Partridge (1882-1975) and Miriam Frink (1892-1978), influential Milwaukee collaborators who co-founded the Layton School of Art and who exchanged letters for years that chronicled their achievements.
Enter archivist and researcher Faythe Levine, who has pulled their story out from underneath historical obscurity and given the pair due credit for their radical accomplishments. Levine spent years in public archives researching their story, locating historical context for phrases in the letters, and putting the missing pieces of Charlotte and Miriam’s lives back into a tangible timeline. The result is Levine’s forthcoming book, As Ever, Miriam, which thoroughly catalogues and contextualizes the epistolary relationship between Partridge and Frink.
The pair met at the turn of the 20th century and embarked upon a 50-year personal and professional relationship that influenced culture, academics, and visual art. As co-founders of the Layton School of Art, Partridge and Frink were progressive, civic-minded, community-oriented Milwaukee powerhouses who shaped art college practices that are still in place today. The pair held leadership roles in the Works Project Administration, were involved in the Federal Art Program, and recognized that a sensitivity toward beauty was invaluable when cultivating an artistic spirit. But despite their extensive contributions, women’s history and queer history often gets pushed into the shadows while the dominant identity (white, hetero, male) enjoys sustained recognition and remembrance. This does a great disservice to marginalized luminaries of the past and to today’s culture-makers who follow the paths they pioneered.
I reached out to Levine ahead of the launch of As Ever, Miriam, for a Q&A about how the project unfolded and the future of Partridge and Frink’s legacy in Milwaukee.
Milwaukee Record: Charlotte Partridge and Miriam Frink were clearly quite influential in Milwaukee, but their names and contributions do not seem to enjoy widespread recognition. Why do you think that is, and how do you see their legacies living on today?
Faythe Levine: Charlotte and Miriam’s legacy, being lesser known, boils down to run-of-the-mill patriarchy that is foundational to who we learn about and why. Part of why I’m interested in doing the type of research and storytelling that I do is to break that pattern and show examples of underrepresented histories and lifestyles. I also like to share my process and discuss different ways to investigate questions, explaining what resources exist to the public that are often underutilized outside of academia.
In Milwaukee, Charlotte and Miriam live on in many visible ways, including their dotted line to Milwaukee Institute of Art and Design (the founders of MIAD were graduates of the school they co-founded, the Layton School of Art). The Layton Art Collection and the War Memorial at the Milwaukee Art Museum exist as they do because of Charlotte’s influence and labor. And the more you understand Charlotte and Miriam’s work dynamic, the more you learn that if Charlotte got credit for something, Miriam was in the background managing the moving parts and taking care of her. I name this because if it weren’t for Miriam’s massive amounts of invisible labor, Charlotte wouldn’t have been able to accomplish many of the monumental things she received credit for.
I also believe their impact lives on more quietly. Their sheer dedication to working with artists and creating community was unbelievable. So I like to think of their spirits living on in the many generations of radical art makers the city has supported. Additionally, they lived so far outside the social norm for their time, unapologetic and incredibly successful as professional and domestic partners for over 50 years, which alone is a legacy.
MR: It’s interesting how you came to focus on the signoffs—noting that you could learn more about their relationship through how they said goodbye, even as the bodies of the letters dealt with more practical professional and domestic matters. Do you feel that there is a secret to sustaining a lifelong partnership hidden in these closers?
FL: I want to explain why I ended up focusing on the signoffs. I was adrift in my research, floating in piles of information about their prolific lives, and needed an anchor. My initial intention was to write a combined biography, and after a few years of working in their papers, it became apparent I didn’t have the capacity. I knew I wanted to do something to share the wealth of their story in more detail, and I desperately needed a container to focus my research. I have always been a letter writer. I still save all my correspondence. Their archive has hundreds of folders of letters, personal and professional, and I had gotten pulled into that space. One day, thinking about how people say goodbye, I realized that looking at how that could reflect their relationship over 50 years could be an intimate, exciting, and potentially interesting space to dig into, and it’s where I landed.
It’s worth mentioning that although the book’s focus is the signoffs, there are footnotes on almost every page that pull information from each letter that was hard to pass up. So, I made a “flexible” container. Lifting out their letters from the mass of the piles of correspondence took an enormous amount of time. After cataloging them chronologically, it became quickly apparent and inspiring to witness that expressing deep care and devotion is absolutely an element of sustaining a long partnership.
MR: Did you uncover anything particularly spicy in your research?
FL: It’s really easy to want to interpret things a certain way when looking for romantic and queer clues, which, in full disclosure, I absolutely was. It’s important to remember the tone of early 20th-century letter writing was very formal, and I tried to remain neutral. Still, the early letters were laced with what I interpreted as a possible “falling hard for someone” crush vibe. This is an excerpt of a letter from Miriam to Charlotte in 1917:
Charlotte dear: This business of writing letters is most unsatisfactory. I am getting tired of it. It’s a good thing I am to see you soon or the high tension caused by the plotting up of things I’d like to discuss with you will result in an explosion. It always seems impossible to me to say enough of what I am thinking in a letter to relieve my mind.
And a year later:
Dearest, If you weren’t so all sufficing, I wouldn’t miss you so much. And then possibly I wouldn’t pester you with two letters to your one note…You know C.R.P. You are awfully nice. If you were here now I am afraid I’d demolish you with a hug…
I find this tone very familiar, and I can imagine reading a screenshot sent from a friend who received a message from someone they like asking for help to decipher the tone. Is it friend vibes or crush vibes?! Of course, everyone can interpret it as they like, I say early 20th-century spice adjacent for sure, partially based on the trajectory of the next 49 years of their lives spent together.
MR: It seems a simple historical plaque wouldn’t quite satisfy their extensive accomplishments. If you could decide how Charlotte and Miriam should be memorialized in the city, what would you do?
FL: I love this question and also love a historical plaque (a fun fact about me is the only bumper sticker I’ve ever put on a car is “I break for Historical Markers,”) and think that would be a great starting point. I would love to know what other people think about this question once they learn more about them because I want their names to be more in the mix and known for their work. This goes for many of their contemporaries who are also lesser known and deserve the same. But I would love to visit Milwaukee and be able to leave them flowers at a memorial statue in a park. Or see a community center named in their honor or art funding to be available in their names.
MR: Who should read this book? Who would be most impacted by what is illuminated here?
FL: By design, As Ever, Miriam is the kind of book anyone can pick up and open to any page. It’s very conceptual outside of my hefty introduction and the fold-out timeline. Still, there is absolutely a target demographic that will be drawn to its contents—appreciators of Milwaukee history, correspondence, feminist history buffs, and queer and sapphic investigative historians.
MR: What can this book tell us about the queer history of Milwaukee back then? How can we better preserve it now?
FL: Charlotte and Miriam had the privilege of leaving us the power of visibility. Their lives are early 20th-century examples of an alternative to the dominant heteronormative narrative (they met in 1915 at Milwaukee Downer, then a women’s college), and their lifestyle choices fit into a spectrum of queer history without naming anything specific. Miriam’s letters to Charlotte were intimate but not explicit. I hope the reader can shape a vision of their shared lives with them; the few photographs and the handful of additional source materials show their lives were deeply intertwined. Visibility and investment in each other, in a shared community, will continue to be essential to how we preserve counter-narratives and queer histories moving forward.
MR: Has the publication of this book illuminated further archival work that needs to be done? (And are you going to do it?)
FL: The entire point of this book is to encourage more scholarship around their combined lives. I am so grateful to Charlotte and Miriam for leaving their papers to the Wisconsin Historical Society and for the public’s ability to access the expansive collection by appointment at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee Libraries’ Archives Department.
A dream situation would be magical funding surfacing for me to return to my initial plan of writing a combined biography or being hired as a researcher for someone else interested in doing that work. I am working on an exhibition slated to open in November 2025 at Lynden Sculpture Garden, focusing on their domestic space and civic work in Milwaukee, so I’m not quite done with them yet. But yes, I hope that sharing my research about their lives and talking about what I’ve learned piques people’s interest and lures them into their papers (or others!) to dig deeper into our histories beyond the narrative that has been fed to us.
Join Faythe Levine at Cactus Club on Saturday, October 12 from 5-7:30 p.m. for the official book release party and a discussion with the author. You can purchase a copy of As Ever, Miriam at the event, through OK Stamp Press, or at Lion’s Tooth in Bay View.
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