Carry A Salmon In Your Backpack
Will Hamlin is spending time abroad this year on a Guggenheim Fellowship, researching the writing of famous 16th c. French essayist Michel de Montaigne.
Congratulations on winning a Guggenheim Fellowship! Can you talk about the work you plan to do while you're abroad?
Thank you. I'm taking a number of separate trips to Europe, since I don't like to spend more than three or four weeks abroad at any one stretch. In the summer of 2008 I went to London and worked in various metropolitan libraries and archives, looking at diaries, letters, commonplace books and study notes in which 17th century English readers mention Montaigne and discuss their reactions to his famous book of essays, translated by John Florio in 1603. In September I spent about ten days in New York doing the same thing, this time at libraries such as those at Yale, Columbia, Princeton, and NYU. In October and November I travelled to Paris, London, Cambridge, Oxford, Manchester, Durham, Newcastle, Edinburgh and Glasgow. And next spring I'll go back to France again, this time to Bordeaux and Toulouse. I'm trying to be as thorough as possible in gathering evidence of early readership. What's clear is that Montaigne fascinated English readers, despite his status as a Frenchman and a Catholic, and so the literary appropriations of his essays by Shakespeare, Webster, Burton and others have come to seem far less extraordinary and far more understandable--even predictable--given the overall pattern of reception.
Your research topic is dealing with the early English reception of the writings of the 16th-century French essayist Michel de Montaigne. Could you share a little of your interest in this subject and the relevance it has for us today?
The project has no special relevance for people today unless they're curious about the past, curious about how human beings respond to a particularly exceptional individual. Montaigne had the right combination of status, security, intelligence, confidence and social detachment to enable remarkably original commentaries on all sorts of contemporary issues (education, marriage, suicide, friendship, sexual double standards, religious hypocrisy, the New World, medical practice, drunkenness, torture, doubt, belief, beauty, styles of conversation, and so on). He was well-read but not pedantic, self-interested but not complacent or ego-driven, always willing to listen to the other side, always willing to change his mind. We know more about him than about any other European from the 16th century. That is, we know more about his inner life, the movement of his thought (though there are plenty of other people about whom we have more external facts). So my project has to do with the English reception of Montaigne: what English readers made of him, what they found interesting, what they ignored, what they appropriated. If I produce a book or a series of essays, I'll hope to contribute in some small way to the history of readership--which, in turn, is a subset of social, intellectual and literary history.
Can you share some interesting stories about your travel and research so far this year?
The most amusing thing that happened took place in Paris. It was my first day at the Bibliotheque Nationale, and I'd been required to go through a detailed interview in French about the nature of my project, why I needed to see certain rare books, and so on. After the interview, a very pleasant woman gave me my reader's ID card, several brochures, and various additional forms to fill out. She then took me to the cloak room, where I checked my raincoat, my umbrella, my backpack, and my computer bag. After that we walked to the Reserve des Livres Rares, where I was given additional sheets of paper and more forms to complete. Somewhere along the way I lost my ticket for the cloak room. And thus five hours later, when I went back to get my raincoat and bags, I had no proof that I'd left them there. The attendant looked at me rather suspiciously, then asked me to describe, in scrupulous detail (and in French), the contents of my backpack. Luckily for me, I'd been invited that evening to have a drink with a retired professor of English at the Sorbonne (and former president of the university), and I had a gift for him: a smoked salmon I'd brought from Seattle. So I managed to blurt out to the attendant that my bag contained a large, commercially-packaged, shrink-wrapped, alder-smoked King Salmon. He then opened the bag, peeked inside, and saw that this was indeed true. But I'm sure he still thought I was a crazy, uncouth American.
What is your approach to research on a trip like this? Do you have any advice for future researchers who may be thinking of doing similar international historical research?
Travel light. Take plug adaptors. Don't shave with a 240-volt current unless your razor is designed for it. Be prepared to wash your clothes in a filthy godforsaken laundrette at 6:00 a.m. Buy an Oyster card in London. Buy a carnet in Paris. Take an umbrella. Wear black pants. Plan in advance as carefully as possible, so that when you arrive people know you're coming to their libraries. Have the names of curators or archivists with whom you've corresponded. Be on time. Expect to go without eating for 12 hours. Take a water bottle on the train. Have your passport with you at all times. Carry a salmon in your backpack if you're going to the Bibliotheque Nationale. Attend evensong at Durham Cathedral. Avoid British cuisine; eat at Indian, Thai, Greek and Italian restaurants if possible. Go to French boulangeries whenever you can. Take the funiculaire at Sacre Coeur. Don't argue with Tottenham Hotspur fans emerging from pubs. Bring your digital camera wherever you go, but buy your memory cards in America. Read the TLS. Don't waste your time with "Emmerdale," "Coronation Street" or "East-Enders" -- they're all abysmal. Even American TV is better. If possible, watch "Family Guy" in French.
How has the nature of the Guggenheim Fellowship allowed you the freedom
to do the type of research you wish to pursue?
The kind of research I'm involved in right now necessitates extensive travel to scores of libraries in the UK, France, Canada, the USA, etc. The Guggenheim Foundation pays for this. It's that simple. With the digitizing of early printed books, such as those in the EEBO and ECCO collections, we can now gain access to most English and continental books without leaving home; but manuscript material is still, for the most part, undigitized. And since I'm reading commonplace books and diaries, letters and study notes and marginalia, I have to travel to collections. I've also taken about 6000 digital photos with a camera I bought last summer, and I'm slowly working my way through the images, transcribing the most important material. It's a slow, painstaking process, but it's yielding an enormous cache of evidence. I'll probably be working with the data for the next ten years. One of my essays, for instance, will be called "Montaigne Maximized"--it will deal with the tendency, after about 1660, for English writers to turn the Essays of Montaigne into a set of discrete aphoristic remarks, much like those of La Rochefoucauld in France. The problem is that such an undertaking is antithetical to Montaigne's easy-going, discursive style, and it lends absurd distortions to his thinking. Nonetheless, I've found about half a dozen compilations of maxims in manuscript, so I'll write about how the various compilers have chosen to condense and abridge a writer whose basic appeal lies in the sustained development of his prose, the sense of balance and irresolution, and the weaving together of personal anecdote with contemporary history, ancient philosophy, classical verse, and so on. It'll be a challenge, but I look forward to it. Basically, the Guggenheim Foundation has given me the time, freedom and money to make a start on a massive, long-term project. I'm grateful for the support.