"Letters and Memorials"

To the extent that I've done any work in the past few weeks, I've been collecting evidence of Tennyson's contact with two men he knew at Cambridge, and the general circulation of ideas among his Cambridge friends.  All that history, combined with being at such a longstanding institution like Cambridge, made me start thinking about certain continuities across the ages.  This is what C.S. Lewis called the Doctrine of the Unchanging Human Heart -- and he was (I think rightly) wary of reading literature with an eye only for what never changes about humanity.  Obviously, we're also products of the times in which we live -- but some things never change.  Everyone in the history of humanity has said something stupid or cruel, resented their parents, felt inadequate, fallen in love unrequitedly, etc., etc., etc.  I list the bad things because it really is comforting to realize that any issues I could ever possibly have are part of the wonderful mess of being alive, and they've all been had before.

Caveats: 1) Many people face serious problems like starvation and genocide, I don't want to class those as part of a 'wonderful' anything.
2) I realize that this means that nothing has changed in ages, in a way that some people find depressing.

The other thing that comes forward when reading Tennyson-related letters is the fact that people used to be able to control their legacies to a greater extent.  Tennyson's son collected lots of letters and recollections from the poet's friends, and he put them together into one of the authoritative sources of information about him.  He literally cut and pasted the material into a draft scrapbook.  Then he burned whatever didn't fit the narrative of a great Poet Laureate.  This is horrifying for us, but then again, Tennyson himself hated the celebrity worship that led people to strip his front-lawn tree bare because they wanted souvenirs.  Here's how one acquaintance explained it:

"He said...that the desiring anecdotes and acquaintance with the lives of great men was treating them like pigs to be ripped open for the public; that he knew he himself should be ripped open like a pig; that he thanked God Almighty with his whole heart and soul that he knew nothing, and that the world knew nothing, of Shakespeare but his writings; and that he thanked God Almighty that he knew nothing of Jane Austen, and that there were no letters preserved either of Shakespeare's or Jane Austen's..."

I can see how, from his point of view, it's none of our business what he wrote to friends.  But it's sort of staggering how people could actually somewhat control what posterity would know about them.  These thoughts bubble to the surface almost every time I write in my own diary.  I'm not a famous anything, nor am I likely to be.  So who is the audience, the potential reader, of my emotional unloading?  Well, I primarily write for my own benefit -- to think through things and to remember details of day-to-day life years later. But by definition, writing is for transmitting ideas -- to whom?  I often imagine some future historian using my rather banal diaries as material for reconstructing life at Stanford/Cambridge in the early 21st century.  Then I wonder how amusing or annoying it will be for them to slog through the parts about boys or family or whatever bothers me from time to time.  Oh well, it's not my job to adapt to a person who may not exist.

My lecture on "Tennyson's Cambridge"

Last week, I gave one of the weekly McMenemy Seminars at Trinity Hall.  This is a chance for grad students to talk about their research to their peers.  I wanted to make sure it was engaging for the crowd, though -- and to make sure there was a crowd at all -- so I talked about the context of Tennyson and his friends at Cambridge.  Thanks to a borrowed digital recorder, I have the speech and have paired it with my slideshow.  Sorry it sounds so rushed -- I went a bit over time!  And maybe one day I'll get a better resolution video up, but the limitations of size are, well, limiting.

Conferencing and coming "home"

As you all know, I'm prone to signing myself up for "too many" activities.  It's usually possible to do them all, but the running around doing them often leaves little time or energy for studying.  This has never been truer than this term, during which I have done essentially no research, unless you count writing various conference papers.  Why?  Because of the following:

• Rowing
• Chapel choir
• Trinity Hall Boat Club co-women's lower boats' captain [scheduling novices]
• Supervising (teaching) a student on Old English
• Classes: Latin, Old English, Old English literature, Old English informal reading group
• Job(s): conference assistant, proofreading, soon to be library invigilating
• Writing conference papers

At least the last one might sort of produce material toward my PhD.  Meanwhile, I took a trip to the North American Victorian Studies Association (NAVSA) annual conference.  Although it was in Nashville, I first stopped to get my Disney World fix and then visited friends and my brother's family in Greensboro, NC.  My little nephew is turning into quite the little man; he grabs you by the finger and walks you all around the house, or up and down the street, on a mission to find anything that might remotely be called a "choo-choo" -- i.e. anything with an engine, a toy thereof, or any screen that will show him a video of such a thing.

The conference itself was fun (so many people to meet!), though I wish I'd had a chance to go out into Nashville proper.  As it was, my excursions were restricted to a reception in the Parthenon reconstruction, with this gaudy-awful Athena statue:

and a walk around autumnal Vanderbilt:

It was a good trip, but I was also glad to arrive back home in Cambridge.