Last year, I watched a documentary that depicted one scholar’s efforts to determine exactly how much of his ear Van Gogh cut off. That may not seem like a lot with which to fill an hour, but it was the most accurate portrayal of the research process I’ve ever seen. It can take a long time to pin down something concretely. I mean, I love it when Indiana Jones uses the buried map room to find the location of the Ark of the Covenant, but he (and his helpers) had to dig up a lot of the desert first – and that was after the other experts dug up a lot of desert in the wrong place, because they didn’t have all the information. Working with archival material can be a similar slog, but if you’re lucky and/or stubborn enough, the dawn will hit your medallion just right, and things will start to glow. Fortunately, my father informs me I’ve been stubborn since the day I was born and refused to oblige the doctor by breathing on command.
Given the enormous fame of Victorian Poet Laureate Alfred (Lord) Tennyson, you might be surprised to learn that his handwritten documents are only now becoming digitized and made available through the Cambridge University Library, thanks to the efforts of Phyllis Weliver and Ewan Jones, among others. Just a few years ago, when I was researching a glossary of Old and Middle English words that Tennyson had made in one of his notebooks, I had to transcribe that glossary from a facsimile edition published in the early ’80s. Indeed, one of my indelible memories from Cambridge is of late nights perched on the top floor of my college library, peering at photocopies of the facsimile to decipher the text, with help from my trusty Anglo-Saxon dictionary. The porters would come by to turn off the lights on their nightly rounds, see me, and ask me to switch them off on my way out.
I’m proud to announce that the effort was not wasted. What started as a practical means to an end – proving Tennyson’s interest in historical forms of English – grew into a full-fledged research project of its own after graduation. And after many more hours of squinting and cross-referencing, I had my medallion ready for the dawn. Later this year, the Tennyson Society will publish a monograph containing my transcriptions of both the glossary and handwritten lists of rhyming words (see photo), together with the insights I have drawn from them. If you’re eager for a sneak peek, a summary of my findings appeared in the 50th anniversary issue of the Tennyson Research Bulletin last year. I had to shovel a lot of sand to get here, and I’m very pleased to be able to share the results.