Alexis Coe’s past essays on women’s history for The Toast can be found here. Most recently: The Rise and Fall of Vivian Davis. At first, the intimacy between Alice Mitchell and Freda Ward seemed unremarkable. The well-to do young ladies met at the Higbee School for Girls in Memphis, Tennessee, at a time when romantic friendship was well-known and accepted. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow called the non-sexual relationships “a rehearsal in girlhood of the…