Trusting one's experience and instincts

[Joel S. Berson]

At 10/15/2009 07:06 AM, Shapiro, Fred wrote:
>...  Thirdly, the way this story turned out is quite a tribute to
>the experience and instincts of a historical lexicographer such as
>Jon Lighter.  Jon immediately sensed that the 1943 citation was "too
>good to be true," and his instincts were completely vindicated.  In
>the quotation realm, I often dismiss an attribution to Mark Twain
>without giving it a second thought, because my experience tells me
>that a certain kind of attribution of a certain kind of quotation to
>a certain kind of author is almost always bogus.  Datings from
>Google Books or Newspaperarchive of a term much earlier than any
>other known evidence should always be double-checked, such as by
>looking at the date printed as part of the image of the newspaper page.

I wish I could remember which historian wrote that one should ask
oneself, Is it plausible?  Perhaps Richard Hume, in Reconstructing
Contexts: The Aims and Principles of Archeeo-Historicism (1999).

I had a feeling similar to Jon's in reading of a young woman saying
circa 1675 "I had never seen such array of fashion as splendor ...
silken hoods [etc]".  That struck me as a very early reference to
fashionable and luxurious dress in New England, more than 40 years
earlier than I had seen documented  elsewhere.

The secondary sources did not lead me to the primary source, so I
Googled for the quotation (yes, this can be seen as a success story
for Google, but my point is rather about paying attention to one's
common sense), and discovered that it was from an article titled "A
Puritan Maiden's Diary" in a New England Magazine issue from the late
19th century.  I obtained and read the article (which happens to be
accessible via Google).  From the modest reading I've done in 17th
and 18th century American writing, I decided it sounded instead like
a 19th century writer's attempt to reconstruct 17th century speech --
but I am no expert, and I wanted to find confirmation.  With the
article's author now in hand, I Googled again, and found that Mary
Beth Norton had written a journal article debunking this very
"Puritan Maiden's Diary" (and other fictions) alleged to be from the
17th century.  Prof. Norton demonstrates that it is indeed the
construction of the late 19th century writer.

(Prof. Norton's article is "Getting to the Source: Hetty Shepard,
Dorothy Dudley, and Other Fictional Colonial Women I Have Come to
Know Altogether Too Well", Journal of Women's History, Vol. 10, 1998.)

Joel

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