I would like to know more about the proverb Absence makes the heart grow fonder.
History notes
The history of the proverb is proving quite interesting. In his literary work from 1650, Epistolae Ho-Elianae or Familiar Letters, the polyglot Anglo-Welsh writer James Howell observed that
“Distance sometimes endears friendship, and absence sweeteneth it.”
I was much enamoured of this letter of friendship when I read it: it appears to be a declaration of deep affection and love addressed to a man — specifically, it was sent from Amsterdam to a certain "Dan. Caldwell, Esq." on April 10 1619. The sentiment and nostalgia behind those words are extremely touching. Was Howell the first British author to equate distance and absence with affection and fondness?
Some claim that Absence makes the heart grow fonder first appeared in William Shakespeare's Merchant of Venice (1596-1598):
… but I dote on his very absence,…
I'm not terribly convinced, though; isn't this merely the same as saying, "I miss him terribly"?
Another theory I read said that an anonymous poem published in Francis Davison’s Poetical Rhapsody in 1602 is the origin of this proverb. I checked online, and this was the closest example I could find. Indeed the following line could have acted as a source of inspiration.
For hearts of truest mettle
Absence doth join, and Time doth settle
Has anyone ever unearthed the true identity of the author of this proverb?
source: Epistolae Ho-Elianae
the familiar letters of James Howell published 1907
Best Answer
Source of the exact phrase "Absence makes the heart grow fonder"
Linda Flavell & Roger Flavell, Dictionary of Proverbs and Their Origins (1993) offers this background on the phrase:
In fact, the full song (and piano score) for “Isle of Beauty, Fare Thee Well,” credited to T. H. Bayly, appears in The New York Mirror of June 4, 1831. Here is the complete third verse:
[[Update: I've found references to Bayly's lyric, dating to 1826 and perhaps 1825; see "Pre-1831 published references to Bayly's 'Isle of Beauty,'" the final subsection of my answer, below.]]
I checked several online versions of Davison's Poetical Rhapsody—which differ somewhat in the number of poems and song lyrics they contain—and couldn’t find the phrase “absence makes the heart grow fonder” in any of them. I don’t know what to make of Stevenson’s assertion that the phrase originated in the Poetical Rhapsody; several proverb researchers express respect for his scholarship. Ultimately, though, the absence of “Absence makes the heart grown fonder” from the Davison collections that I’ve seen and the absence of the phrase from the various early collection of proverbs and sayings that I’ve consulted leave me doubtful about his claim.
In John Ray, A Compleat Collection of Proverbs, fourth edition (1768) (see page 281), for example, the only proverb incorporating the word absence is "Absence is a shroe [that is, ‘shrew’]." And even as late as Henry Bohn, A Hand-Book of Proverbs (1875), the only two proverbs starting with absence are "Absence cools moderate passions, but inflames violent ones," and "Absence sharpens love, presence strengthens it." The first collection I’ve found that includes “Absence makes the heart grow fonder is Robert Christy, Proverbs, Maxims and Phrases of All Ages (1887), which lists "J. H. Bailey" as the source of the phrase.
——————
Earlier English phrases that express the same general idea
Flavell & Flavell does identify several quotations that (in the authors’ view) express similar sentiments:
The (unacknowledged) source of these citations appears to be William Walsh, Handy-Book of Literary Curiosities (1892), which also offers quotes from Charles Hopkins, “To C. C.” [written by 1699] (“I find that absence still increases love”) and Frederick W. Thomas, “Absence Conquers Love” [published between 1830 and 1833] (“’Tis said that absence conquers love,/But, oh, believe it not!/I’ve tried, alas,! Its power to prove,/But thou art not forgot”). Unfortunately, both Walsh and Flavell & Flavell appear to have gotten their Shakespeare wrong; as Mari-Lou A observes in her question above, the line is from The Merchant of Venice, and involves quite the opposite of fondness at any distance:
The Howell quotation, by the way, appears in this collection in a letter (to Dan. Caldwell, esq.) from Amsterdam, dated 10 April 1619, when Howell was 25 years old.
——————
A very early (Latin) precursor, and the Franklin complication
Martin Manser, The Facts on File Dictionary of Proverbs (2002) mistakenly reports that the proverb “Absence makes the heart grow fonder” was “first recorded c. 1850,” but this reference work does provide an interesting (and very relevant) instance of the same idea in Sextus Propertius, who died in A.D. 2:
Gregory Titelman, Random House Dictionary of America’s Popular Proverbs and Sayings, second edition (2000) likewise cites the Sextus Propertius quotation, and then offers this rather mysterious comment:
If the idea here is that Franklin was the first to quote Sextus Propertius’s Latin phrase in the United States, the claim seems both dubious and rather beside the point; if the idea is that Franklin devised the wording “Absence makes the heart grow fonder," he would certainly have precedence over Bayly—but at the online Papers of Benjamin Franklin site, I couldn't find any exact matches for either "absence makes" or "absentes felicior."
Unless someone can confirm the phrase’s appearance in Davison’s Poetical Rhapsody or Franklin’s Papers or some as yet unidentified source, it seems to me, Thomas H. Bayly has the strongest claim to having crafted the wording “Absence makes the heart grow fonder,” which appeared in print by June 4, 1831.
UPDATE (9/22/14): The Franklin mystery unraveled
I found a second, more specific reference to the Franklin Papers in Bartlett J. Whiting, Early American Proverbs and Proverbial Phrases (1977), which lists collected aphorisms under numerous generalized headings. Under the heading "Absence increases affection," Whiting offers the following items:
Sure enough, the Franklin Papers site includes this fuller observation by Catharine Ray, in a letter to Benjamin Franklin dated June 28, 1755:
Evidently, the effect of absence on affection was something that Ms. Ray had experienced personally. On the other hand, she didn't use the phrase "Absence makes the heart grow fonder," and presumably Franklin didn't publicize her letter to the wider world.
——————
Other Colonial American and early U.S. predecessors
The Ward quote from 1775 appears in a letter dated June 19, 1775, in Rhode Island Historical Society, Correspondence of Governor Samuel Ward, May 1775–March 1776 (1952) [snippet]:
Google Books does not contain any other reference to the Burr quotation, but the Foster quotation appears in Hannah Webster Foster, The Coquette (1797), an epistolary novel:
According to its Wikipedia article, The Coquette "was one of the best-selling novels of its time and was reprinted eight times between 1824 and 1828." That would make it a far stronger candidate than the private letters of Franklin, Ward, or Burr to have influenced the sentiments that T. H. Bayly expressed in his 1826 (or earlier) song "Isle of Beauty." And "absence serves but to heighten real love" is very much of a piece with "absence makes the heart grow fonder."
Meanwhile, by way of illustrating that the opposing "out of sight, out of mind" school has a long pedigree of its own, Whiting offers these specimens under the heading "Absence is a cure of love":
Under the circumstances, it's not surprising that some people have sought to reconcile the rival schools of thought on absence by cobbling together (as cited above in Bohn's Hand-Book of Proverbs) the saying "Absence cools moderate passions, but inflames violent ones." That saying is adaptable to every situation—since if the heart grows fonder, it proves the violence of the original passions, but if the formerly beloved departs out of mind, it proves their moderateness—and so represents a kind of perfection of proverbial wisdom.
——————
Pre-1831 published references to Bayly's "Isle of Beauty"
One of a number of earlier mentions of the title “Isle of Beauty, Fair Thee Well” occurs in The Harmonicon: A Journal of Music (1829), which identifies the song as “Romanza, " Isle of Beauty, fare thee well !" the melody by C. S. Whitmore, Esq., with an Introduction and Variations by G. Kiallmark,” and offers this rather sour assessment of the tune:
That this refers to the song with lyrics by Bayly is evident from this entry in Royal Lady’s Magazine, and Archives of the Court of St. James (September 1831):
The song is noted even earlier in the “New Music” section of The Monthly Review or British Register of Literature, Sciences, and Belles-Letters (May 1826):
And Google Books finds a nonpreviewable volume (which it dates to 1825) bearing this title:
Evidently the various lyrics in “Songs to Rosa” were popular enough quickly enough to inspire satirical comments such as this one from “The Dunciad of To-day, “ in The Star Chamber (May 10, 1826):
The “Songs to Rosa” collection seems to have been published in England in early 1826. An advertisement for it appears in The London Literary Gazette of March 18, 1826, followed by an enthusiastic review of the collection in the April 1, 1826, issue of the same periodical under the head “New Publications.” The Harmonicon reviews it, too, in June 1826, with considerably more kindness than its critic exhibited when revisiting “Isle of Beauty” three years later.