I used to have a bit
of fun with my students while trying to make clear the unreliability of
so-called facts. "Imagine that it is fifty years in the future and you
have become famous for your (writing, art, political commentary, etc). Critics
have decided that the crucial moment that set you on the path to success came
during the weekend of Mardi Gras in 2011. Don't tell me what you did. Just picture it mentally. What was it? Where is the evidence? Now, what did you tell your best friend about the
weekend? And what did you tell
your parents? If future biographers look for evidence in your letters, diary,
journal, text messages, or Facebook photos, how accurate will their accounts
be?" After the blushes and giggles subsided, they got the message! I'm currently dealing
with the same sort of problem. Much of the evidence for the life of Laura M.
Towne, the heroine of my next book, must come from her own writings. There are, however, several renderings
of those writings. The evidence
comes in layers, like an onion, and each time we peel away a layer, the
stronger becomes the scent of unreliability. A published volume
offers the easiest way to access Laura's writings. Rupert Sargent Holland
edited the whole collection and published it in 1912. It has been reprinted and
is available for only a few dollars on Amazon. It reads well and it dates most
of the materials, although some confusion results from the editor's failure to
distinguish between journal entries and letters — an important distinction, as
my students would have recognized. As a result, contradictions crop up — a
statement that she has never felt better followed by a complaint of on-going
illness, for example. Gaps also exist. Did Laura really not write anything
about important events that
occurred during those gaps, or did her editor just not include what she wrote? And who is Mr.
Holland? As her editor, he necessarily stands between the writer and her words.
An internet friend who has been working on this same material suspects that he
may be Laura's nephew. I have spent some time in the genealogical records, and
I've been unable to find any connection between Holland and the Towne
family. I do know that he was a
Harvard-educated lawyer, who also wrote edifying children's books, such as Historic Boyhoods and Historic Girlhoods. His writings all
emphasize those qualities a right-thinking child should emulate. But did he
actually censor Laura's writings in any way? A collection of
materials concerning the Penn Center is housed at the University of North
Carolina at Chapel Hill. A typescript of Laura's journal and letters is
accessible on microfiche in the library. I've not yet seen it, but my
internet friend has. She tells me
that the typescript is marred by two problems. The more serious one involves passages in the typescript
that have been actually scratched out or marked over for exclusion. Since the
marked passages do not appear in the print version, it seems safe to assume
that the deletions were made at the time the book was being written. We can't know who made the choices,
however. Did a relative say to the
editor, "Don't include this bit"? Or did the editor decide the
excluded passage did not fit with the point he was trying to make? Either way,
the reader is hearing a voice other than Laura's. It would be easiest to
blame the editor, but the original typescript has gaps, too, indicated by
ellipses (. . . .) showing where material has been deliberately left out. Who
created the typescript? We don't know, although there is a reference in the
introduction that seems to suggest that Laura may have been the aunt of the
transcriber. How did the typist choose what to leave out? Was (s)he influenced
by a need to protect her relative? There's no way to tell
without being able to view the originals side by side with the typescript.
Laura's letters and journals still exist, but for the time being they remain
locked away. They have been housed
in the Archives at the Penn Center in South Carolina, but they are now in the
process of being catalogued and transferred to the University of North Carolina
at Chapel Hill. They were pulled from circulation three years ago, and no one
seems to know when they will be once again accessible. I've been mourning their
temporary loss just when I need them, but I do recognize — as did my students —
that what Laura wrote may not have been what Laura felt or did. Here's just one
example of how the layers of evidence can change the facts. Laura falls ill during her first year
in the Sea Islands, suffering from one of the many swamp fevers. She doesn't like to complain to those
around her but her medical training leads her to record all the nasty symptoms
in her journal. And because she doesn't want her family back home to worry
about her, she tells them that she was never healthier. The transcriber keeps
both the "I'm healthy" letter and the "I'm dying" journal
entry, but omits (. . . .) all the gory details of stomach fluxes and bowel
disorders — a typical Victorian attitude toward bodily functions. The book
editor spots the discrepancy and makes a choice. He wants his heroine to be a strong woman, so he omits any
mention of her illness. And the
reader comes away believing that Laura found the Sea Island climate a
particularly healthy and invigorating one. |