Abstract
Arguing for gossip’s relevance in the archive, this article examines the surviving private material relating to Charlotte Cushman (1816–1876). Cushman was the most celebrated American actress of the nineteenth century yet spent most of her life in an expatriate community in Rome, where she shared her home with other female artists. Analysing letters, diaries, and related forms of life writing by Cushman herself as well as by friends and family, this article pursues two goals: First, it accounts for how a fear of gossip (by Cushman and her family) might have shaped the gaps in the collection concerning Cushman’s sexual and romantic relationships. Second, it makes the case for the archival traces of gossip as evidence in writing the story of Cushman’s intimate life. The article thus reflects on the role of gossip and privacy in “intimate archives” (Dever et al. 2010) and contemplates their relevance to Cushman as an insightful case study of LGBTQ history. Overall, this article advocates turning to the archive with a renewed fervour for evidence of intimacy as well as for turning to intimacy for evidence.
Works Cited
“A Dangerous Party”. 1853. The Portsmouth Inquirer 5.49 (March 11): 1.Suche in Google Scholar
“A Nice Party”. 1853. Daily Evening Star (Washington) 1.54 (February 23): 1.Suche in Google Scholar
Adkins, Karen C. 2002. “The Real Dirt: Gossip and Feminist Epistemology”. Social Epistemology 16.3: 215–232.10.1080/0269172022000025598Suche in Google Scholar
Baker, Robert. 2013. Before Bioethics: A History of American Medical Ethics from the Colonial Period to the Bioethics Revolution. Oxford: Oxford University Press.10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199774111.001.0001Suche in Google Scholar
Bastin, Giselle. 2011. “Pandora’s Voice-Box: How Woman Became the ‘Gossip Girl’”. In: Melissa Ames and Sarah Himsel Burcon (eds.). Women and Language: Essays on Gendered Communication Across Media. Jefferson, NC: McFarland.Suche in Google Scholar
Beecher Stowe, Lyman. 1841. “Papers of C C. in L .C. Col I”. Beecher-Stowe family Papers, 1798–1956. Box of file cards of notes by Lyman Beecher Stowe re Charlotte Cushman. A-102, 432 a. Schlesinger Library, Radcliffe Institute, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA. <https://iiif.lib.harvard.edu/manifests/view/drs:44569113$393i> [accessed 12 June 2020].Suche in Google Scholar
Berg Collection. New York Public Library, New York City.Suche in Google Scholar
Brewster, Anne. 1876. “Diary”. Box 5, Folder 4. Anne Hampton Brewster Papers, 1777–1892, Library Company of Philadelphia.Suche in Google Scholar
Brewster, Anne. 1878. “Miss Cushman”. Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine DCCLIV.CXXIV: 170–175.Suche in Google Scholar
Carter, Rodney S. 2006. “Of Things Said and Unsaid: Power, Archival Silences, and Power in Silence”. Archivaria 61: 215–233. Suche in Google Scholar
“Charlotte Cushman As She Was, And As She Is”. 1851. Spirit of the Times (March 15): 38. <search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=h9m&AN=82967475&site=ehost-live /login.aspx?direct=true&db=h9j&AN=52393703&site=ehost-live> [accessed 25 June 2020]. Suche in Google Scholar
“Charlotte Cushman”. 1874. Harper’s Bazaar November 14: 742. <search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=h9m&AN=82967475&site=ehost-live> [accessed 25 June 2020].Suche in Google Scholar
“Charlotte Cushman – The Story of Her Love as Told by Celia Logan”. 1877. Lowell Daily Citizen 6604 (August 14). GALE.Suche in Google Scholar
Charlotte Cushman Papers, Manuscript Division, Library of Congress, Washington, DC.Suche in Google Scholar
Cifor, Marika and Anne J. Gilliland. 2016. “Affect and the Archive, Archives and their Affects: An Introduction to the Special Issue”. Affect and the Archive, Archives and their Affects. Ed. Anne J. Gilliland and Marika Cifor. Special issue of Archival Science 16.1: 1–6. Suche in Google Scholar
Cushman, Charles. 1941. “Charles Cushman to Lyman Beecher Stowe, March 17, 1941”. Beecher-Stowe family Papers, 1798–1956. LBS. Corres, re Charlotte Cushman, 1941–1942, 1949 A-102, folder 433 a. Schlesinger Library, Radcliffe Institute, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA.Suche in Google Scholar
Cushman, Charlotte. 1837. “The Actress: Extracts from my Journal”. Godey’s Lady’s Book 14 (February): 70–73.Suche in Google Scholar
Cushman, Charlotte. 1874. “Letter to Helen Hunt Jackson, July 29, 1874”. Helen Hunt Jackson Papers, Part 2, Ms 0156, Box 1, Folder 17. Transcribed by Nancy Knipe, 2007. Tutt Library, Colorado College. <https://libraryweb.coloradocollege.edu/library/specialcollections/Manuscript/HHJ2-1–17.html> [accessed 12 June 2020].Suche in Google Scholar
Cvetkovich, Ann. 2002. “In the Archives of Lesbian Feelings: Documentary and Popular Culture”. Camera Obscura 49, 17.1: 106–147. Suche in Google Scholar
Cvetkovich, Ann. 2015. Foreword. In: Amy L. Stone and Jaime Cantrell (eds.). Out of the Closet, into the Archives: Researching Sexual Histories. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press. xv-xvii. Suche in Google Scholar
Dever, Maryanne. 1996. “Reading Other People’s Mail”. Archives and Manuscripts 24.1: 116–129.Suche in Google Scholar
Dever, Maryanne, Sally Newman and Ann Vickery. 2010. “The Intimate Archive”. Archives and Manuscripts 38.1: 94–137.Suche in Google Scholar
“The Drama”. 1876. Inter Ocean 284 (February 19): 2. GALE.Suche in Google Scholar
Epstein, Joseph. 2012. Gossip: The Untrivial Pursuit. Boston, MA: Mariner Books.Suche in Google Scholar
Faderman, Lillian. 1985. Surpassing the Love of Men: Romantic Friendship and Love Between Women from the Renaissance to the Present. London: Women’s Press.Suche in Google Scholar
Fox, Richard Wightman. 1999. Trials of Intimacy: Love and Loss in the Beecher-Tilton Scandal. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.Suche in Google Scholar
Friedrich, Markus. 2013/2018. The Birth of the Archive: A History of Knowledge. Trans. John Dillon. Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press.10.3998/mpub.9394529Suche in Google Scholar
Gluckman, Max. 1963. “Gossip and Scandal”. Current Anthropology 4.3: 307–316.10.1086/200378Suche in Google Scholar
Greenwood, Grace. 1871. “Products of New England”. Lowell Daily Citizen and News 4574 (March 30). GALE.Suche in Google Scholar
Harris, Victoria. 2010. “Sex on the Margins: New Directions in the Historiography of Sexuality and Gender”. The Historical Journal 53.4: 1085–1104.10.1017/S0018246X10000300Suche in Google Scholar
Howitt, Mary. 1846. “The Miss Cushmans”. The People’s Journal July 18: 29–33; 47–49. Stead Collection, Billy Rose Theatre Division, New York Public Library.Suche in Google Scholar
Jennie Lorenz Collection relating to Charlotte Cushman Manuscript Division, Library of Congress, Washington, DC.Suche in Google Scholar
Kasson, John F. 1990. Rudeness and Civility: Manners in Nineteenth-Century Urban America. New York: Hill and Wang.Suche in Google Scholar
Kobetts Miller, Renata. 2019. The Victorian Actress in the Novel and on the Stage. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.Suche in Google Scholar
Leach, Joseph. 1970. Bright Particular Star: The Life and Times of Charlotte Cushman. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.Suche in Google Scholar
“Letter from New York”. 1861. The Hartford Daily Times March 7.Suche in Google Scholar
Manning, Adeline. 1876. “Letter from Adeline Manning to Anne Whitney, Mar 2, 1876”. Papers of Anne Whitney (MSS. 4): Corr. 56, Wellesley College Archives. <https://repository.wellesley.edu/whitney_correspondence/56/> [accessed 12 June 2020]. Suche in Google Scholar
Marcus, Sharon. 2007. Between Women: Friendship, Desire, and Marriage in Victorian England. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.10.1515/9781400830855Suche in Google Scholar
Marshall, Daniel, Kevin P. Murphy and Zeb Tortorici. 2015. “Editors’ Introduction”. Radical History Review 122: 1–10. 10.1215/01636545-2849486Suche in Google Scholar
Merrill, Lisa. 2000. When Romeo Was a Woman: Charlotte Cushman and Her Circle of Female Spectators. Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press.10.3998/mpub.15011Suche in Google Scholar
Merry, Sally E. 1984. “Rethinking Gossip and Scandal”. In: Donald Black (ed.). Toward a General Theory of Social Control. Orlando, FL: Academic. 271–302.Suche in Google Scholar
Origgi, Gloria. 2019. “Reputation in Moral Philosophy and Epistemology”. In: Francesca Giardini and Rafael Wittek (eds.). The Oxford Handbook of Gossip and Reputation. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 68–81.10.1093/oxfordhb/9780190494087.013.4Suche in Google Scholar
Pallares-Burke, Maria Lúcia G. 2002. The New History: Confessions and Conversation. Cambridge: Polity.Suche in Google Scholar
Ponce de Leon, Charles Leonard. 2002. Self-Exposure: Human-Interest Journalism and the Emergence of Celebrity in America, 1890–1940. Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press.Suche in Google Scholar
Sedgwick, Eve Kosofsky. 1990/2005. Epistemology of the Closet. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.Suche in Google Scholar
Sofer, Naomi Z. 2005. Making the “America of Art”: Cultural Nationalism and Nineteenth-Century Women Writers. Columbus, OH: Ohio State University Press.Suche in Google Scholar
Spacks, Patricia Meyer. 1982. “In Praise of Gossip”. The Hudson Review 35.1: 19–38.10.2307/3851309Suche in Google Scholar
Spacks, Patricia Meyer. 1985. Gossip: A Celebration and Defense of the Art of ‘Idle Talk’; a Brilliant Exploration of Its Role in Literature (Novels, Memoirs, Letters, Journals) as Well as in Life. New York: Alfred A. Knopf.Suche in Google Scholar
Stebbins, Emma. 1879. Charlotte Cushman: Letters and Memories of Her Life. Boston, MA: Houghton, Osgood and Company.Suche in Google Scholar
Stillman, William James. 1901. The Autobiography of a Journalist. Volume 1. Boston, MA: Houghton, Mifflin and Co.Suche in Google Scholar
The Illustrated American News. 1851. (August 9): 78. Suche in Google Scholar
Vicinus, Martha. 2004. Intimate Friends: Women Who Loved Women, 1778–1928. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.Suche in Google Scholar
Wahl, Elizabeth Susan. 1999. Invisible Relations: Representations of Female Intimacy in the Age of Enlightenment. Palo Alto, CA: Stanford University Press.10.1515/9780804765459Suche in Google Scholar
Walen, Denise A. 1998. “‘Such a Romeo as We Had Never Ventured to Hope for’: Charlotte Cushman”. In: Robert A. Schanke and Kim Marra (eds.). Passing Performances: Queer Readings of Leading Players in American Theater History. Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press. 41–62.Suche in Google Scholar
Weiss, Andrea. 2003. “‘A Queer Feeling When I Look at You’: Hollywood Stars and Lesbian Spectatorship in the 1930s”. In: Christine Gledhill (ed.) Stardom: Industry of Desire. New York: Taylor & Francis: 287–304.Suche in Google Scholar
White, Louise. 1994. “Between Gluckman and Foucault: Historicizing Rumour and Gossip”. Social Dynamics 20.1: 75–82.10.1080/02533959408458562Suche in Google Scholar
Yousef, Nancy. 2013. Romantic Intimacy. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.10.11126/stanford/9780804786096.001.0001Suche in Google Scholar
© 2020 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston
Artikel in diesem Heft
- Frontmatter
- Frontmatter
- What’s in an Archive? Cursory Observations and Serendipitous Reflections
- Archive Fever and British Romanticism: Blake, Byron, and Keats
- Between Aura and Access: Artefactuality, Institutionality, and the Allure of the Archival
- The Document as Epistemic Object: Notes on Archival Knowledge Cultures
- Of Gaps and Gossip: Intimacy in the Archive
- Words, Wares, Names: Dave the Potter as American Archive
- From Parchment to Podcast: The Collaborative Process of Building and Unlocking an Archive
- “The People Shall Continue”: Native American Museums as Archives of Futurity
- Speculative Bibliography
- Reviews
- Thijs Porck. 2019. Old Age in Early Medieval England: A Cultural History. Anglo-Saxon Studies 33. Woodbridge: Boydell, x + 278 pp., £ 60.00/$ 99.00.
- Francis Leneghan. 2020. The Dynastic Drama of Beowulf. Anglo-Saxon Studies 39. Cambridge: Brewer, xxi + 300 pp., 1 illustr., £ 60.00.
- Irina Dumitrescu and Eric Weiskott (eds.). 2019. The Shapes of Early English Poetry: Style, Form, History. Studies in Medieval and Early Modern Culture 51. Kalamazoo, MI: Medieval Institute Publications, xix + 281 pp., $ 109.99.
- Mary Clayton and Juliet Mullins (eds. and trans.). 2019. Ælfric: Old English Lives of Saints. Volumes I-III. Dumbarton Oaks Medieval Library 58–60. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, vol. I: xxxii + 384 pp.; vol. II: vi + 426 pp.; vol. III: vi + 402 pp., each volume $ 35.00/£ 28.95/€ 31.00.
- Christian Kloeckner, Simone Knewitz and Sabine Sielke (eds.). 2016. Knowledge Landscapes North America. Heidelberg: Winter, 305 pp., € 58.00.
- T. R. Johnson (ed.). 2019. New Orleans: A Literary History. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 379 pp., £ 35.00.
- Christian B. Long. 2017. The Imaginary Geography of Hollywood Cinema 1960–2000. Bristol/Chicago, IL: Intellect, 300 pp., £ 70.00.
Artikel in diesem Heft
- Frontmatter
- Frontmatter
- What’s in an Archive? Cursory Observations and Serendipitous Reflections
- Archive Fever and British Romanticism: Blake, Byron, and Keats
- Between Aura and Access: Artefactuality, Institutionality, and the Allure of the Archival
- The Document as Epistemic Object: Notes on Archival Knowledge Cultures
- Of Gaps and Gossip: Intimacy in the Archive
- Words, Wares, Names: Dave the Potter as American Archive
- From Parchment to Podcast: The Collaborative Process of Building and Unlocking an Archive
- “The People Shall Continue”: Native American Museums as Archives of Futurity
- Speculative Bibliography
- Reviews
- Thijs Porck. 2019. Old Age in Early Medieval England: A Cultural History. Anglo-Saxon Studies 33. Woodbridge: Boydell, x + 278 pp., £ 60.00/$ 99.00.
- Francis Leneghan. 2020. The Dynastic Drama of Beowulf. Anglo-Saxon Studies 39. Cambridge: Brewer, xxi + 300 pp., 1 illustr., £ 60.00.
- Irina Dumitrescu and Eric Weiskott (eds.). 2019. The Shapes of Early English Poetry: Style, Form, History. Studies in Medieval and Early Modern Culture 51. Kalamazoo, MI: Medieval Institute Publications, xix + 281 pp., $ 109.99.
- Mary Clayton and Juliet Mullins (eds. and trans.). 2019. Ælfric: Old English Lives of Saints. Volumes I-III. Dumbarton Oaks Medieval Library 58–60. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, vol. I: xxxii + 384 pp.; vol. II: vi + 426 pp.; vol. III: vi + 402 pp., each volume $ 35.00/£ 28.95/€ 31.00.
- Christian Kloeckner, Simone Knewitz and Sabine Sielke (eds.). 2016. Knowledge Landscapes North America. Heidelberg: Winter, 305 pp., € 58.00.
- T. R. Johnson (ed.). 2019. New Orleans: A Literary History. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 379 pp., £ 35.00.
- Christian B. Long. 2017. The Imaginary Geography of Hollywood Cinema 1960–2000. Bristol/Chicago, IL: Intellect, 300 pp., £ 70.00.