I’d been a high-school English teacher for almost 20 years, and I was teaching “Romeo and Juliet” when Sadia, one of the students in the front row, asked me if I believed in fate.
“Well,” I began in my best teacher voice. “Romeo and Juliet were star-crossed. And that means . . .”
“No,” said Sadia. “I don’t mean them. I mean you. Do you believe in fate?”
I didn’t know how to answer. Fate seemed to be handing me a pretty rough deal lately. I had been in love with my best friend for more than a decade. I’d seen her scroll through a number of ill-advised boyfriends, but I couldn’t seem to get her to see me as a potential boyfriend. Typical romantic-comedy stuff, I guess, but in that moment I had an idea.
Our “Romeo and Juliet” textbook included an essay about the “letters to Juliet” phenomenon, where people around the world send letters to the tragic heroine, asking for love advice. Thousands of notes flood into Verona, Italy, every year in dozens of different languages. They funnel into a little office off a cobblestone lane where, each morning, a group of Italian women sit down to answer them. These “secretaries” at the Club di Giulietta are not paid. For them, it is a labor of love.
So, right then and there, I decided I would join them over the summer break. I was going to travel to Verona, volunteer to answer the English letters and when I was there, I would write my own letter to Juliet. Fate be damned.
I e-mailed Giovanna Tamassia, the head secretary who had been answering the letters for more than 20 years, and asked if I could come when the school year was over. I think because I told her I taught “Romeo and Juliet,” she said that would be fine. And when I first arrived, stepping uncertainly into the small office, there she was. Giovanna was elegant, the kind of woman who wore pearls even in the afternoon. I think she was a bit surprised that I had actually come.
The place was in a state of organized frenzy. Opera posters and photographs obscured the walls. Books and papers lined the counters. “So,” I said, “how many letters do you get a month?”
“Come with me,” she said, ignoring my question. I trailed her down a corridor to a smaller office at the back. Shelves ran along two of the walls, sagging under the weight of boxes labeled according to each language: Russian, Chinese, Swedish, French. On the table was the biggest box of all, the English letters. There must have been 500 of them.
“Oh,” I replied, “how am I supposed to . . . ?”
Giovanna stared at me for a moment then whirled out the door. She had, I knew, taken over this post from her father, Giulio, who organized the first office in 1982. But the tradition goes back even further than that. The letters have trickled into Verona since at least the 1930s — originally dumped at a place called Juliet’s Tomb, where a groundskeeper first began to gather the letters and answer them.
These days, I was the only male in the office, and the other secretaries didn’t know what to make of me. They buzzed past my doorway as I kept at it, answering the letters as best I could, and gradually they came in to speak with me. There was Manuela, who stared at me through yellow-framed glasses like a professor. And Anna, one of the younger secretaries, who oversaw the Web page and other new media for the club.
Most of the letters I saw on that first trip were from teenage girls. One read:
Dear Juliet, please send me my Romeo. Send him to San Antonio, Texas.
Only occasionally was there a letter from a boy. A young man from California wrote:
Dear Juliet, my teacher is making me write this letter and I think it’s really stupid. But, there is this girl . . .
He went on for two pages in messy handwriting, concluding: So, seriously, Juliet. Help me out here.
Giovanna checked on me frequently. She told me I wasn’t there to offer solutions. Instead, I was to offer an empathetic ear, no matter how mundane the letters. I fell back on my Shakespeare. A lot of the letters could be answered by the line “To thine own self be true.”
That’s not even from “Romeo and Juliet” but it seemed to work well. Then Anna told me that every time you answer a letter, you are really replying to yourself, and I took that to heart, answering the letters as if the writers were all younger versions of myself.
I was still in love with a woman who was my best friend, and that’s all that it was. What could I do, I asked Juliet, to nudge things toward romance?
In the evenings, I explored Verona. It’s a beautiful, ancient city. In a wide piazza at the center, a Roman coliseum sits like a crown. In another piazza, a statue of Dante Alighieri glowers over the crowds.
The great Italian poet wrote much of his “Divine Comedy” here, and he may even have been present when the true story of Romeo and Juliet unfolded in the year 1302.
A house called the Casa di Giulietta (or House of Juliet) in Verona actually had belonged to a rich family called Cappello — very close to Juliet’s last name, Capulet. In its courtyard, a red letter box was bolted to the old stone walls, and a great number of letters were stuffed into it. Several times a week, that letter box had to be emptied and the letters brought back to the offices at the Club di Giulietta.
Occasionally, a letter would appear that was truly devastating, something almost Shakespearian in its depth and tragedy. When one arrived, there would be a murmur among the secretaries. Everyone would look up from their desks and gather around to hear the contents read out loud.
Once, I received a letter from a father. He had gone through a terrible divorce, his wife was now seeing someone else, but he hadn’t written about himself. He was worried for his daughters. Would they be disillusioned by love? Enclosed with the father’s letter was a letter from his eldest daughter. They must have written at the same time, although it was clear they hadn’t read each other’s. The daughter wrote that she was worried for her father. He was so sad and lonely. The secretaries all gathered for that one, and our answers to both were clear.
You have someone who loves you deeply. There are loves beyond those that are romantic. And you have the very best of that.
But what of my own problems in love? Was I learning anything at all?
I’d been in Verona a couple of weeks when, one gray morning, I sat down to write my own letter to Juliet.
I was still in love with a woman who was my best friend, and that’s all that it was. What could I do, I asked Juliet, to nudge things toward romance?
I had to get back to my teaching, so I posted my letter on one of my last days in Verona. Giovanna gave me a ride to the train station, and I flew home to Calgary, near the Rocky Mountains of Canada.
Seven months later, I received a letter in my mailbox postmarked from Verona.
The answer was short and sweet, and to this day, I don’t know which of the secretaries answered it. It read in slightly broken English: Confess her your love.
I agreed it was the right advice. But, just as in Shakespeare’s play, the tragedy of “Romeo and Juliet” hinges on a letter that is not delivered in time. And it was the same for me. Within days of receiving my answer, the woman I loved announced that she was pregnant. Shortly after, the father moved in with her, and that was the end of me. My heart was shattered, but I finished the school year, and when the summer holidays came round, I knew there was only one thing to do. I had to go back to Verona. I wasn’t finished with Juliet yet.
The secretaries were sympathetic when I returned. I never told them of my lost love, but they were experts and could sense my heartbreak. They brought me bomboloni — cream-filled pastries — and small rich cups of espresso as I tucked my head down to answer more of the letters until, at last, a sort of magic appeared.
Someone new was coming to answer the letters, and I went to pick her up from the train station. Desiree wobbled her suitcase out of the carriage, complaining that one of the wheels had broken. She was tall with long, sweeping hair, sun-streaked with gold. She spoke fluent Italian but was Canadian just like me.
I’d been enlisted to show her how things worked at the office, and Desiree took to it easily. Over the days, I learned that she had her own story, too. Everyone does.
“I was married,” she told me, “when I lived here in Italy.”
“Wait, you’re married?”
“I was, but I’m not anymore. That was a long time ago.” Desiree looked away. “It’s not what you think.” She paused. “Ever since I was a teenager, I wanted to live in Italy. Not just speak Italian. I wanted to be Italian — you know what I mean? I wanted to live here forever.”
“I can understand that,” I said.
“I begged my boyfriend to marry me so I wouldn’t have to leave. It was stupid. And then, when it all collapsed, I had to leave Italy. I thought I would never be able to come back.” She looked around the tiny office. A poster of Gustav Klimt’s “The Kiss” was tacked onto the wall.
Answering the letters, I knew, was just the balm her soul needed and, over the days, we spent a lot of time together. We went to see an opera in the ancient Roman coliseum. I took her to Juliet’s house, and we went out on the famous balcony. It didn’t take long before we were together, holding hands down the cobblestone lanes. I couldn’t have imagined this would be my fate in Verona. But it was. Desiree was the answer I’d been waiting for.
After that trip, we left Verona together and moved back to Canada. That was 2¹/₂ years ago, and we’ve never looked back. Desiree is the love of my life and everything I ever wished for. (As for my lost love,
I wish her the best. I gave her a copy of my book based on my experiences, so she knows how I once felt, and maybe, in time, we will be friends again.)
It’s kind of a Hollywood ending. And for that, with all my heart, I want to thank Juliet, and Shakespeare, and the remarkable secretaries at the Club di Giulietta. I guess it was, after all, my fate.
The address for the club, should you wish to send your own letter, is:
Juliet Club
Corso Santa Anastasia 29, 37133
Verona, Italy
You will be answered.
Glenn Dixon is the author of “Juliet’s Answer: One Man’s Search for Love and the Elusive Cure for Heartbreak” (Simon & Schuster), out now.