There have been a few times when I've gone down online rabbit holes to try to work out what some contemporary thing I have heard about - on a podcast, say - is all about. But, as the sources I've found assume knowledge on the reader's part, I've come away at once full of knowledge and pretty bewildered. This was the case for instance when I heard about about the 'Karen' meme a few years ago and ended up finding out about Black Jeopardy on Saturday Night Live without knowing what Jeopardy was and having only a very general knowledge about Saturday Night Live.
I've added a hyperlink for one of the sites I may well have visited...
Something comparable happened to me on my second day in the Special Collections concerning Cervantes and then - well, I'll explain when I get there.
I started with a set of letters to Margaret Headlam written over a period of months in 1842 and all from someone called D C Cumley who was writing about their (I'm not sure about their gender) translations of Cervantes into English to seek her advice and to let her know that they were not always agreeing with her comments. For instance, at one point, they defend their use of 'basic' language at one point to be as true as possible to the Spanish.
I'm tempted to do an online search for the translator's name to see whether anything comes up that I could use to illustrate this posting. What I would love to do is share what I can't till I have permissions, namely images of the actual letters. But, because I do want to include an illustration, here is one from a search involving 'Cervantes' and 'nineteenth century' that is in the public domain.
It's Don Quixote and the Dead Mule, by a French artist new to me named Honoré Daumier. The date given, after 1864, is nicely close to the date of the letters from D C Cumley to Margaret.
I've not given into the temptation to search for Cumley because I want to stick with the knowledge I had - and still have - when I was drafting my day's findings in my notebook. I mean here an old-fashioned paper notebook rather than a laptop notebook...
Among the many things that went over my head, I wondered which passage in Cervantes this comment, in a letter of 3 July 1842, is referring to:
I think the first/last of the last stanza is little obscene
I wondered, too, how the writer had conveyed the obscenity in their translation. The letter-writer does give sufficient context for the passage to be pretty easily located and I'll follow up at some time. My copy of Don Quixote - not that I'm sure that it is this work that D C Cumley is translating - is packed away ready for the house move I'm hoping to make soon.
This move is something which, like being in Durham and spending time immersed in Special Collections is contributing to the sense of disconnect I have with usual life just now.
Anyway... then I moved to Margaret's letters from John (her brother I think - I must check) over a period of three months, January-March 1861, where something seems to have happened - will I ever find HER letters back to him? - connected perhaps with a move she had made to Brighton and where he rants with none of the polite lead-ins that are customary in nineteen-century letters.
John's writing is hard for me to decipher. This isn't atypical of the letters, though these letters from John look to have been writing quickly, without any attempt at legibility. The letters - there are many - look to consist largely, or even entirely, of pages of rant made up of very long sentences concerning something Margaret has done, possibly in respect to receiving a gift, and potentially concerning something religious, perhaps something doctrinal.
Here, as an example, is a part of a sentence from the early part of one letter, of January 31st 1861:
I certainly wish you to be alone and it is of far more importance than any direction I can give you for me to become thoroughly acquainted with what is the result of your attempt to fain [or gain?] the confidence & affection of S & E - without [?] you can do this (which however I do not doubt) I do not think that you can [???] me much - I do not want you to try & confute them or argue with them but to exemplify Church principles and teaching - from your conversations, you will be able to tell me what strikes you as points to be especially [sentence continues...]
Having gone through a folder of correspondence pretty much like the above and feeling consistently bewildered, I turned to the next folder of letters to Margaret, this time from 1853 to 1871.
As closing time was approaching, I got to a letter to sent around the time of the correspondence with John. This letter is from Margaret's Aunt Mary and it is a warm letter, with the customary lead-in and praise for the kindness of the recipient. But something has happened concerning her (Margaret's?) brother who seems to be bearing up - the writing gets harder for me to read - despite something he is going though: the death of his wife, I think.
Could this grieving brother even be John?! It might very well not be...
The final letter I read was a pages-long one that I would have to return to the next day. I could not see who it was from - they might indeed not have signed it - and I've just noticed, from the photo I took and can't share, that it is written from 52 Clarence Square, the same address in Brighton where Margaret was staying when John wrote to her.
I can't find an image of Clarence Square in the 19th century that's in the public domain so here's an image of Queen's Road from 1855.
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The letter, which is dated November 12 1865 - ten years after the image of Queen's Road - must be from John again - I'll check the handwriting later. Here's the start of it: 'My dear Margaret', it begins, customarily enough. But next comes this:
To say that your last letter is the most painful one that I have received would be but a weak explanation for the extreme sorrow that it causes me [...]
But this 'extreme sorrow' would have to wait until the next day.
I do now know more about Saturday Night Live and so forth and about the Karen meme - and I hope to come to understand, likewise, just what was going on between John and Margaret while also finding out Cervantes in the 19th century to give some context to D.C. Cumley's letters.
And I'm going to have to try to find out whether anyone has consulted, and indeed written about, the letters previously.
None of this has anything to do with Classics or indeed young men's enculturation...
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