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| [a] Armed and ready RF |
Click here for Rachel Johnson's other posts in the series "From the Geil Archive"
Today's Round and Square Guest Contributor is Rachel Johnson. Rachel, from Burr Ridge, IL, just graduated from Beloit College with a BA in anthropology and a minor in Asian Studies. She was introduced to William Edgar Geil through a course taught by Rob LaFleur, and she is currently working in Doylestown, Pennyslvania with four other interns to research and digitize his archives with the Doylestown Historical Society. She and Geil share a mutual love of travel and of Chinese history and culture in particular, which is what drew her to study him further.
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Often, working with the Geil archives, the biggest challenge is to decipher who wrote what on the documents we are working with. Sometimes, we can recognize Geil’s handwriting, and his distinctive voice, right away. Sometimes, particularly when working with correspondences to and from Geil, it can be harder to tell who is speaking, especially when it comes to notes written in margins or comments and edits written in a different pen, in different handwriting.
There is one distinctive commenter who shows up occasionally, however, who is of particular interest. I have been referring to him casually, though not particularly creatively, as “the Red Penner,” since the notes are always in a bold, distinctive red pen, in the margins, on the backs, and occasionally right on the pages of Geil’s manuscripts. His comments are contained to the manuscripts for Geil’s books on China, certainly The Great Wall of China, and possibly others as well.
His comments, always insightful and occasionally passive-aggressive, sparked my interest. After deciding that he might make an interesting topic for a blog post, I settled down to do some research, hoping I might uncover a bit more on who this commenter was. (As it turns out, the answer was right in front of me, literally, but more on that in a moment.)
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| [b] Pagoda RF |
Surprisingly, it was a fairly easy research project. On the back of one of Geil’s manuscripts, the Red Penner comments, “I lived at Pagoda Anchorage in 1882, when my father was Vice-consul there,” and continues to comment on the state of the tea trade, which had gone into decline. A quick Google search of “Vice-consul of Pagoda Anchorage 1882” (referring to the anchorage in the Mawei district of China that was the site of the Battle of Fuzhou during the Sino-French War) brought up the name Herbert Allen Giles, a name which kept tugging at the back of my mind as being very familiar.
A second Google search later had me rolling my eyes at my own stupidity. No wonder the name sounded familiar! Herbert Allen Giles pioneered the Wade-Giles Romanization system with Thomas Wade, one of the most prevalent and well-established systems of the 20th century. In addition, he wrote literally dozens of books on China. And had a son (okay, many sons, and daughters, but one in particular) named Lionel Giles, who was famous for his translations of Chinese texts, including The Art of War, The Analects of Confucius, The Sayings of Lao Tzu, and The Book of Mencius.
And whose name was written under the very same red pen note that had sparked my research, this time in Geil’s own handwriting. A note which I had glazed over, the name meaning nothing to me ten minutes ago.
Nevertheless, I was proud of my discovery. And it made so much sense! Lionel’s comments were detailed, in-depth, and always, without fail, spot on. His knowledge of Chinese history, culture, and especially language is impressive.
And yet, Geil seemed less than enthused with many of Lionel’s suggestions. Many of the comments were crossed out in blue pencil, a giant X over them, or a slash through them. Many of his simple edits go uncorrected in the final manuscripts. But my favorite comment by far, and the most telling, is on the back of one of the Great Wall of China manuscript pages. It reads simply, “I can’t make anything of the names in this chapter. But I suppose you wish them to stand in their present form.”
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| [c] Stubborn RF |
Part of me wants to remonstrate with Geil for not taking more advice from this renowned translator. Part of me, the writer in me, understands the stubbornness that comes from writing something and not wanting it to be changed, no matter what.
Mostly, however, I am intrigued.
I want to know more about this little silent battle, this struggle between Giles and Geil (yes, the names confuse me, too) over the proper spelling of Ch’in Shih Huang, over which dynasty Geil meant when he wrote Tsu instead of Chou. It seems like Geil took some of Giles’ comments to heart, but he used his own discretion for what he would change and what he would keep, but I can’t help but wonder what his thought process was when he made these decisions.
I can’t help but marvel about how much information can be crammed into such a relatively small number of notes. Of the tens of thousands of documents in Geil’s archives, only a few dozen have comments from Lionel Giles, and yet in these few comments there is a wealth of information, both overt and subtle. I hope, as I continue to go through these archives, I can discover more about this odd and unlikely relationship.
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| [d] Remonstrance DHS |
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