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| [a] Suzhou RF |
Click here for other posts written by Guest Contributor Lily Philpott:
1-About Me 2-The Tenacious Wall 3-A Yankee in the Land of Rhubarb
1-About Me 2-The Tenacious Wall 3-A Yankee in the Land of Rhubarb
Today’s guest contributor on Round & Square is Lily Philpott. She hails from Weston, Connecticut and recently graduated from Beloit College with a B.A. in Creative Writing and Literary Studies. She joins Rachel, Julia, Amara, and Sarah in the Geil archive in Doylestown, Pennsylvania to help digitize the collection and enjoy the stories she finds there.
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Please note that all items marked “DHS” are property of the Doylestown Historical Society, and used with DHS permission. If you wish to use an image, you need permission of the Society. Please contact Robert LaFleur (lafleur@beloit.edu), and he will put you in contact with the appropriate people.  |
| [b] Suzhou pagoda RF |
In preparation for writing this blog post, I reread a couple of documents that made me laugh out loud. Our work in Doyleston has been to digitize the archive, which means long days spent scanning so that the fragile documents will be more widely available as well as protected in the unlikely event of a disaster. The work can get repetitive, but we frequently stumble upon documents that are so nonsensical as to make us laugh, or give us an insight into the character of William Edgar Geil. The documents I used for this blog post are a perfect example of this.
Unlike the others working in the archive, I have never worked or spent much time in one, and am primarily interested in the physicality of working in the archive. The papers are so fragile: they crumble at the edges, or are messily folded—and have been for close to a century. Some of the printed pages are done in blue ink and some in purple, and the handwritten pages have proved difficult because no matter how wonderfully ornate the cursive is, I’ve still struggled to read them.
Secondly, I am drawn to the content of the papers. Of course, not every scrap of paper or yellowing letter included in the archive is note-worthy, but some of them are pretty interesting. Sometimes it’s letters written in illegible cursive; and sometimes Geil has typed out block quotes from Victor Hugo and Rousseau (and then filed them away with papers that he wrote while in China…).
And then sometimes, he spends pages and pages writing about rhubarb pie. It’s these pages, of course, that I picked to write my blog post on, because they’re a delightful departure from the attempted seriousness of Geil’s usual notes.
In these pages, Geil is writing about the Chinese city of Suzhou (Romanized in the documents, according to an old system, as ‘Su Chow’),* which he calls “The Land of Rhubarb." Any attempt at a serious summary of the place goes immediately out of the window, however, due to Geil’s love of rhubarb pie. And who can blame him for that?
Unlike the others working in the archive, I have never worked or spent much time in one, and am primarily interested in the physicality of working in the archive. The papers are so fragile: they crumble at the edges, or are messily folded—and have been for close to a century. Some of the printed pages are done in blue ink and some in purple, and the handwritten pages have proved difficult because no matter how wonderfully ornate the cursive is, I’ve still struggled to read them.
Secondly, I am drawn to the content of the papers. Of course, not every scrap of paper or yellowing letter included in the archive is note-worthy, but some of them are pretty interesting. Sometimes it’s letters written in illegible cursive; and sometimes Geil has typed out block quotes from Victor Hugo and Rousseau (and then filed them away with papers that he wrote while in China…).
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| [c] Rhubarb stalks RF |
And then sometimes, he spends pages and pages writing about rhubarb pie. It’s these pages, of course, that I picked to write my blog post on, because they’re a delightful departure from the attempted seriousness of Geil’s usual notes.
In these pages, Geil is writing about the Chinese city of Suzhou (Romanized in the documents, according to an old system, as ‘Su Chow’),* which he calls “The Land of Rhubarb." Any attempt at a serious summary of the place goes immediately out of the window, however, due to Geil’s love of rhubarb pie. And who can blame him for that?
*The pinyin system today would have "Suzhou." Geil's transcription is still a problem here, since—even in his own day—it should have been "Suchow."
He writes that: “The Land of Rhubarb is another name for the Panhandle of China. And yet this is a pie-less region.” Geil observes that the Chinese use rhubarb primarily for medicinal purposes, but that he “did succeed in having a rhubarb pie in Kansu”* baked for him by the kind wife of a missionary stationed there.
He writes that: “The Land of Rhubarb is another name for the Panhandle of China. And yet this is a pie-less region.” Geil observes that the Chinese use rhubarb primarily for medicinal purposes, but that he “did succeed in having a rhubarb pie in Kansu”* baked for him by the kind wife of a missionary stationed there.
*Gansu in the pinyin system.
Somewhat inexplicably, the document where Geil first begins talking about rhubarb has a handwritten note pasted on the bottom of it, that recalls the myth of Zeus slaying the healer Asclepius at Hades’ behest, after the healer healed so many of the dead that he “reduced the census in the Plutonian kingdom.
Perhaps, Geil wished to make the connection between Asclepius and the traditional Chinese use of medicinal rhubarb? Perhaps if Asclepius had used rhubarb as a remedy he wouldn’t have been so unlucky as to have been struck down by a thunderbolt?
Geil goes on to write (on a separate document, and presumably on a different typewriter, as the paper and ink are different than before):
I shall soon say my farewell to populous China, and the memory of many places will fast fade as I travel over the Steppes of Mongolia. But the Lands-of-Rhubarb, the region of that indigenous growing of my favourite Pie Plant, will never waste into dimness! Ever since my early boyhood days I have had a fondness for “Pie Plant Pie” only equalled by my appreciation of cats! [...] I do not much care for a “peice” of Pie-Plant-Pie I want the whole thing and the whole-er it is the better! Give me a real American juicy rhubarb covered pie with little nitches all around the edge where the cook gashed it gently with her thumbnail, that’s the thing for me. [sic]
I’m particularly charmed by these sections of Geil’s work, because it gives us a glimpse of the man behind the explorer facade he worked so hard to cultivate. He makes attempts at seriousness, typing out the Latin name and genus of the rhubarb plant, but the interesting part is the part that allows you to imagine that William Edgar Geil is far from home, and he’d give just about anything for a big slice of rhubarb pie.
In the class I took with Professor Rob LaFleur on William Edgar Geil and his archive, I dedicated parts of my research to the idea that Geil’s ethnographies were less successful because he was unable to lose his quintessential "Yankee-ness." Taking the title of his book A Yankee on the Yangtze as an example, it seems clear that Geil intended it to rhyme, but the correct pronunciation of "Yangtze" destroys even the possibility of a slant rhyme. The fact that Geil self-identifies as a "Yankee" sets the tone for the rest of the book: he is defined by where he came from and his Western background prompts a clear bias in his treatment of the Eastern world.
Even while deep in China, Geil hearkens back to what he knows best: a comfortingly American slice of rhubarb pie. And while finding pages of notes on rhubarb pie brings Geil closer to home (strawberry rhubarb pie is a favorite of mine), it also offers us a glimpse of the man behind the books, the titles, and the pages of notes typed on fragile paper.
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| [d] Jupiter and Asclepius DHS |
Somewhat inexplicably, the document where Geil first begins talking about rhubarb has a handwritten note pasted on the bottom of it, that recalls the myth of Zeus slaying the healer Asclepius at Hades’ behest, after the healer healed so many of the dead that he “reduced the census in the Plutonian kingdom.
Perhaps, Geil wished to make the connection between Asclepius and the traditional Chinese use of medicinal rhubarb? Perhaps if Asclepius had used rhubarb as a remedy he wouldn’t have been so unlucky as to have been struck down by a thunderbolt?
Geil goes on to write (on a separate document, and presumably on a different typewriter, as the paper and ink are different than before):
I shall soon say my farewell to populous China, and the memory of many places will fast fade as I travel over the Steppes of Mongolia. But the Lands-of-Rhubarb, the region of that indigenous growing of my favourite Pie Plant, will never waste into dimness! Ever since my early boyhood days I have had a fondness for “Pie Plant Pie” only equalled by my appreciation of cats! [...] I do not much care for a “peice” of Pie-Plant-Pie I want the whole thing and the whole-er it is the better! Give me a real American juicy rhubarb covered pie with little nitches all around the edge where the cook gashed it gently with her thumbnail, that’s the thing for me. [sic]
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| [e] Land of Rhubarb DHS |
I’m particularly charmed by these sections of Geil’s work, because it gives us a glimpse of the man behind the explorer facade he worked so hard to cultivate. He makes attempts at seriousness, typing out the Latin name and genus of the rhubarb plant, but the interesting part is the part that allows you to imagine that William Edgar Geil is far from home, and he’d give just about anything for a big slice of rhubarb pie.
In the class I took with Professor Rob LaFleur on William Edgar Geil and his archive, I dedicated parts of my research to the idea that Geil’s ethnographies were less successful because he was unable to lose his quintessential "Yankee-ness." Taking the title of his book A Yankee on the Yangtze as an example, it seems clear that Geil intended it to rhyme, but the correct pronunciation of "Yangtze" destroys even the possibility of a slant rhyme. The fact that Geil self-identifies as a "Yankee" sets the tone for the rest of the book: he is defined by where he came from and his Western background prompts a clear bias in his treatment of the Eastern world.
Even while deep in China, Geil hearkens back to what he knows best: a comfortingly American slice of rhubarb pie. And while finding pages of notes on rhubarb pie brings Geil closer to home (strawberry rhubarb pie is a favorite of mine), it also offers us a glimpse of the man behind the books, the titles, and the pages of notes typed on fragile paper.
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| [f] Strawberry-Rhubarb pie LP |
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