Serendipity in the Archive – Archival Gossip

Sometimes (or maybe even most of the times?), researchers feel like treasure hunters in the archives. So did I when I looked through folders of the Minnie Bruce Pratt Papers for sources of intersectional critique of white lesbian feminism for my dissertation project. I was spending two months at Duke University with a fellowship of the Bavarian American Academy. One afternoon, I was carefully turning pages in a folder titled “Latinas” when I suddenly found this article on the reverse of a newspaper clipping from the Gay Community News, October 13, 1984:

Actress Charlotte Cushman and sculptor Harriet Hosmer chasing me to the other side of the Atlantic, I couldn’t believe it! What are the chances to find an article unrelated to what I was searching for, unrelated to the topic of the folder but speaking to the circle of women that I am working on for the gossip research project here in Germany. It was not cut into pieces even though Minnie Bruce Pratt was actually interested in the article on the other side of the sheet. Unfortunately, due to these circumstances, the second page was missing. Also, this made me think again about all the things that we as researchers are probably missing in our archival research. All the little traces and connections that we do not find by coincidence.

Serendipity certainly features prominently in this type of work. Yes, you can plan your time accordingly and structure your research stay based on the finding aids and secondary literature to make the most of the sources and miss as little as possible, but cross-references bringing together different projects that you are working on, you can usually only hope but not plan for that. If you have ever been in the archive, you know how time-consuming it is to go through the sources, to stay focused, to decide what to scan, which letters to include, and which are maybe not as important as others. Selection is key. You need to go for the most important sources because you have limited time, limited funding, … (let’s not go there and discuss the state of funding in the humanities at this point). Maryanne Dever states that “[a]rchival research, like collaboration, relies on encounters, as well as the need to discover linkages and to test the limits and modes of history making” (“The Intimate Archive” 96). At heart a historian, I am so intrigued by these encounters, the linkages but also the materiality of the original sources and our belated access to them, excited to put my fingers on them, to laugh at historical cartoons, anxiously noticing how much of the 1970s feminist agenda is still being discussed and not yet implemented… Archives, after all, are “sites of desire” (Sally Newman). Archives, as the spaces in which historians’ desire can unfold, drive researchers to “indulge in the fantasy of seeing through these miniature portals into another time and place” (Newman, “Sites of Desire” 153).

This desire partly explains my excitement over the article that I found, but there is another aspect to consider in archival and humanities work: the precarious job environment. Researchers are forced into a position in which they have to confidently and loudly uncover “the secrets that no one else had yet discovered” in order to be “one of the chosen ones” and justify one’s existence within the academy (Singh, No Archive Will Restore You 22). This requirement of a unique selling point, the desire and economic necessity to get a position is inextricably intertwined with the narrative of superseding others and seeing/finding something no one else has found before – “hoping to be one of the rare exceptions that would be plucked into that almost mythical land of tenure-track work” (Singh, No Archive Will Restore You 21). So part of the story of archival work is our love for the objects and physical material, but a major factor is also extrinsic. And while the article above is by no means an extraordinary discovery or content that no one has ever written about before, I still think that part of why I was so overjoyed to find this piece was that I felt like I fulfilled the task of being a detective.

I will not end this blog post without telling you about the actual content of the article. If you are interested to find a digitized version, go to the Digital Transgender Archive and find both pages there. On the screenshot included above, you can see a picture of Harriet Hosmer. The article is written by Linda Moody who sketches Cushman’s and Hosmer’s circle of “exceptionally talented” women, companionships, and lifestyles, as for instance their masculine attire. The article quotes from unnamed sources adhering to a gossipy style in the sense of two women that are repeatedly being talked about and known to the article’s readers who are expected to relate to the quotes used here, and whose authors are not of interest. The article starts with Cushman’s tomboy image, an “antithesis of proper Victorian ladies.” Cushman showed “fearless enthusiasm,” while Hosmer is described as a “wild woman” and a “skilled but reckless rider who was constantly being thrown in her effort to outride everyone else.” The article adds information on different steps in their lives, e.g., Cushman invited Hosmer to live with her in 1852, and Hosmer “formed an English hunt club” in Rome. Hosmer’s extrovert behavior is juxtaposed with Anne Whitney’s and Addie Manning’s “genteel and quiet lifestyle, more in keeping with old-line WASPish New England values.” The author argues that Whitney and Manning “frowned on Harriet’s brash behavior.”

About the same-sex relationship and love triangle among Cushman, Matilda Hays, and Hosmer, Moody writes: “Cushman had created a strong intimate bond with the British actress Matilda Hays . . . Alas, the wished-for permanence of the union between Charlotte and Matilda was cruelly shattered in the spring of 1853 when the new housemate at the Italian villa, Harriet Hosmer, enticed and advanced on Matilda.” The message is clear: Harriet stole Matilda’s heart. Eventually, Cushman and Hays broke up but Hosmer and Cushman remained friends nevertheless. Moody emphasizes the circle of hard-working women depending on each other for (economic) support when their work and reputation was threatened mostly by the “jealous” and “chauvinistic” men of the artist community, such as the “stuffy Bostonian” William Wetmore Story or Joseph Mozier who started a scheme against Hosmer, Cushman, and Louise Lander.

By the way, the article itself is part of a series called “A Place in the Past,” it is thus indicative of a desire for gay history and conservation.

Thank you, Duke University! And most of all, thank you, archivists of the David M. Rubenstein Rare Book & Manuscript Library for curating and conserving these wonderful sources!