From the Geil Archives (31)–Immortality to Obscurity to Villainy

Click Here for the "From the Geil Archive" Resource Center 

To learn more about William Edgar Geil, click here for the Accidental Ethnographer Resource Center 

A year ago on Round and Square (19 October 2012)–First and Second Presidential Debates

Two years ago on Round and Square (19 October 2011)–Seinfeld Ethnography (30)–Dinner Party 

[a] All the World's a Stage - RF

Click here for other posts by Guest Contributor Lily Philpott: 

1-About Me                                      2-The Tenacious Wall                    3-A Yankee in the Land of Rhubarb 

4-Immortality to Obscurity...

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 archive 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 touch with the appropriate people. 

[b] Tools of the trade - RF

Yesterday Julia Lacher wrote about the time Geil spent in the Clifton Springs Sanitarium in upstate New York, and the document I’m focusing on for today is written on stationery from the same sanitarium. Like Julia, I initially associated sanitariums with horror films, but was interested to learn that Geil would have stayed at one in the interests of improving his health, and securing time to write.

As a writer I am interested in Geil’s creative process. The notes that we are currently focused on digitizing are primarily concerned with China, and although Geil never explicitly mentions his writing habits, the nature of the documents allows us to infer the ways he may have written.

[c] Travelling in China - RF

Yesterday, for example, we found a folder full of typed pages written by Geil while on his Great Wall adventure to a "friend." The friend is never named, and the letters are not addressed, which led me to believe that they were Geil’s attempt at an epistolary account of his journey—that age-old tradition of telling an entire story in letters.

We have also been scanning diaries Geil wrote while traveling through China. I can almost picture William Edgar Geil sitting at a typewriter, and feeding sheets of paper through the machine while he typed up the day’s observations. The diary entries are often misspelled or unhelpful, but they seem to constitute an important part of Geil’s creative process.

The archive also contains notes—some from famous translators who were kind enough to lend a hand, and some fragmentary scraps of paper filled with cramped and nearly illegible cursive. All of these separate documents—the "letters," the travel diaries, the translations, and the handwritten notes—eventually became the books that Geil published.

[d] Paper Trail - RF

While writing, authors leave physical traces of their creative processes. There are letters sent to friends or relatives; books that have been annotated in the name of research; sloppy first drafts; correspondence with an editor, and more. If we’re lucky this paper trail is preserved for later generations to study and enjoy.

And so, finally, we turn to the document that inspired this blog post. When I unearthed it yesterday, I was delighted to find that it contained a number of quotations from William Shakespeare and Ben Jonson. This is something that Geil does frequently. There are a number of notes where Geil copied out quotations from authors, poets, or sinologists he seems to admire. I would assume that this is yet another part of his creative process: you can’t be an effective writer if you don’t read and engage with your betters. 

[e] Be-Geiled by Shakespeare - DHS

What really intrigued me about this note, however, was the way that the quotations seemed utterly nonsensical when put together. In true Geil fashion, he quotes from a number of plays, as well as from Shakespeare’s friend and fellow playwright Ben Jonson, on topics that range from immortality to obscurity to villainy.

Quoting Trinculo as he inspects Caliban in The Tempest, Geil writes: “A very ancient + fish-like smell," and then, for some inexplicable reason, circles it. Quoting The Merry Wives of Windsor, he writes: “The rankest compound of villainous smell that ever offended nostrils." Quoting from the same play, he writes: “I cannot tell what the dickens his name is." Not to forget Ben Jonson, he copies down the simple phrase: “I smell a rat." More importantly, he (incorrectly) transcribes a line from a poem that Jonson wrote about Shakespeare, writing: “He was not of our age, but for all time."

[f] Shakespeare's Globe - RF

Now, I have read a number of strange works while studying English literature. If I read slowly and carefully, I can understand Chaucer in his original form; I’ve navigated Proust’s love of run-on sentences; and I genuinely enjoy James Joyce. I also enjoy reading Shakespeare, and while it’s enjoyable to see Geil of all people quoting the Bard himself, I don’t really understand why.

I like the idea that Geil turned to the Bard for inspiration while working in the Sanitarium but it is a strange trove of inspiration that he came up with, indeed.

[g] Shakespeare's 'The Tempest' - RF

While we may never know why Geil found Trinculo’s description of Caliban’s stench important enough to write down and circle, what really struck me from the note was the line copied from the poem Ben Jonson wrote for William Shakespeare after his death.

The line reads: “He was not of our age, but for all time,” and it comes from a poem dedicated to the genius and legacy of William Shakespeare. Jonson and Shakespeare were contemporaries, but the line rang true in Geil’s time, as it does today. I imagine that while writing this line Geil may have wished that he, like Shakespeare, become a man “for all time.” This is not, of course, what happened, but there are a few us in Doylestown, who are digitizing even the most confusing of Geil’s notes in the interest of making him available to the twenty-first century, and I suppose that’s a start.  

[h] 'A man for all time' - RF

From the Geil Archive (30)—Halloween Edition: The Sanitarium

Click here for the "From the Geil Archive" Resource Center
To learn more about William Edgar Geil, click here for the Accidental Ethnographer Resource Center
A year ago on Round and Square (18 October 2012)—First and Second Presidential Debates
Two years ago on Round and Square (18 October 2011)—Sports and Games in Modern China

[a] Creepy RF

Click here for other posts written by Guest Contributor Julia Lacher:

1-About Me                                       2-American Flag                     3-Simultaneous Coin Extractor

4-Geil Visits the British Museum       5-Friends in High Places        6-Sanitarium

Julia Lacher is a proud native of Des Moines, Iowa, and graduated from Beloit College in May with a double major in Anthropology and History and a minor in Museum Studies. She is the only intern working with William Edgar Geil's papers at the Doylestown Historical Society who did not take Professor Rob LaFleur's class on "The Accidental Ethnographer," and is currently wondering what she got herself in to.

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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.

Before I began to work with Geil’s papers, I never really stopped to think about the kinds of materials that make up an archive—it’s all paper, right? However, the more I work with this collection, the more I understand the incredible diversity of material in Geil’s archive. There are envelopes, thin onion-skinned sheets, folders made of heavy cardstock, lined writing paper, telegrams, receipts, bills, and stationery from hundreds of different personages, hotels, organizations, and, to my surprise, sanitariums. 

[a] Fancy Stationery DHS

The view of sanitariums in popular culture today isn’t all that positive. Dozens of horror movies begin with atrocities committed at remote and lonely sanitariums, often inhabited by the criminally insane who are only outdone in creepiness by their sadistic doctors. It was this version of sanitariums that inspired this Halloween post. So I was surprised to see such a large amount of Geil’s notes written on stationary from different sanitariums: the famous Battle Creek sanitarium in Michigan, and the Clifton Springs Sanitarium in New York.

[b] Clifton Springs RF

Clifton Springs, New York, is a small town of about 2,000 people located in the Finger Lakes region of New York, southeast of Rochester. The town is named for the springs that run through it, which are rich in sulfur and other minerals. The first European settlers arrived in 1801, and were quick to utilize the health benefits of the springs. However, it wasn’t until 1849 that any institution existed to bring the healing properties of the water to the masses.

In 1849 Dr. Henry Foster founded the sanitarium after a religious conversion experience.  He firmly believed that prayer and medicine should be intertwined. In an informal address in October of 1892, Foster explained “God’s ordinary way of healing is through medicines, through hygienic applications, through all well-known remedies. His extraordinary mode is in direct answer to prayer.”

People came from all over to experience the mineral springs, and unlike the current popular view of sanitariums as hellacious prisons for those with uncurable and dangerous disorders, Foster’s sanitarium was more like a health resort, offering services for minor and chronic ailments.

Geil would have been familiar with the sanitarium through his participation in religious revivals all over upstate New York. It is also likely that Foster’s amalgamation of science and religion would have appealed to Geil’s sensibilities.  

[c] Monkeys Enjoy Hot Springs RF

Unfortunately, it is unclear when exactly he stayed at the sanitarium, and for how long. The stationary he writes on is dated 190_, so without more research we can’t be more specific than sometime in the first decade of the twentieth century. Perhaps he came there to rest after his missionary work in Australia in 1902 and his subsequent travels in China and Africa. The peaceful surroundings would have been a good place for him to write. Six of Geil’s 12 books were written between 1902 and 1909, so it’s possible we owe Clifton Springs for Geil’s inspiration to write. 

Whatever the reason and duration of his stay, Geil would have enjoyed living in the impressive five-story red-brick sanitarium, designed in monumental Romanesque style, complete with a chapel boasting a mosaic of the Last Supper designed by Louis Comfort Tiffany as its centerpiece. 

The sanitarium still exists as Clifton Springs Hospital and Clinic, featuring The Springs Integrative Medicine and Spa Center, where visitors can continue to experience the healing mineral waters as Foster had envisioned. 

[d] Tiffany Mosaic, Marquette Buidling, Chicago, IL RF