Archives

errors’? What a precious mess a ‘truthful person’ would go and
make of us, and how very different to what we really are or were! 28
Shortly before Geraldine Jewsbury’s death, on Mary Anne Everett
Green’s advice, she destroyed the entire bundle of scandalously personal
letters from Jane Carlyle. 29 It was, for Green the archival scholar, a
matter of propriety, which transcended any responsibilities towards
important documents she might feel she had as an archival historian.
The very same women who presided over the painstaking retrieval
of the voices of women in the archives for the historical record stood
equally vigilant and ready to defend their reputations from the
disapproval of posterity. There was a decorum to be observed, in the
interests of which even the most scrupulous of archivists might be
persuaded to tamper with the evidence.
28 Cit. N. Clarke, Ambitious Heights: Writing, Friendship, Love – The Jewsbury Sisters, Felicia
Hemans and Jane Carlyle (London: Routledge, 1990), p 15. Apparently, the two women
had discussed the fact that they did not wish their correspondence to survive them. Jane’s
sudden death had prevented her doing any sifting of Geraldine’s letters to her.
29 We have this from another woman-friend of the two, in the commentary attached to the
published edition of Geraldine’s letters to Jane.
Temptation in the Archives 17