Genius Fan

Look on this face. I’ve tried to capture the hope, the fear of disappointment, the tension that hangs in the split second it takes realisation to reach the brain. This is how I imagine Claude Colleer Abbott looked in the just-before-moment while reading the handwriting on the first page of a bundle of manuscripts. That’s what I call a Genius Moment. In the next second, he would realise he made the find of his career, and one of the most important discoveries in literary history: The original manuscript of James Boswell’s London Journal 1762-1763.

Abbott’s own description of this genius moment

In his wonderful book Boswell Papers Found at Fettercairn, Abbott begins the Preface as follows:

“The story of the finding of these papers is set down in the Introduction of this Catalogue. That it will convey to readers anything but a trace of the excitement the search gave me, is hardly to be expected. But it seemed to be a story worth the telling; almost, indeed, too good a story to be true. At times I have been tempted to doubt it myself.

“The one or two friends that heard it had to shake themselves from incredulity into belief. Yet all periods of delighted excitement have to be paid for, and the spirit of Boswell has exacted from me many months of my life and much hard work since the rapture of the finding faded.”

Boswell’s papers and the ‘Lost’ London Journal

For a century after Boswell’s death in 1795, everyone thought his papers (letters, documents, book manuscripts, journals and so on) had been destroyed. But in the mid-1920s the search was on as a rumour spread that maybe the imagined inflagration that destroyed Boswell’s papers…perhaps it had never happened after all. The tale that follows is very romantic and adventurous (read it elsewhere), and it involves American book collector Lt Col Ralph Isham.

His search lead him to Malahide Castle near Dublin in Ireland. Between 1928 and 1936 he publishes his Private Papers of James Boswell from Malahide Castle in the Collection of Lt. Colonel Ralph Heyward Isham. By this time the world believes all the Boswell papers that survive have been discovered. How wrong they were. Those that knew Boswell, his life and his writings, were conscious of glaring gaps in the documents, particularly his London Journal. Now, flip over to Claude Colleer Abbott.

Claude Colleer Abbott

Claude Colleer Abbott (17 April 1889 – 17 September 1971) joined Aberdeen University in 1921 as an English lecturer. In 1928 he completed his scholarship on the 19th century poet George Darley with the publication of The Life and Letters of George Darley, poet and critic and was looking around for his next subject for study. In his wonderful book Boswell Papers Found at Fettercairn, Abbott goes into details about his career at this time and how he came to make this discovery.

He got a tip from University Librarian Dr Douglas Simpson, which had been passed to him by Alistair Tayler who had visited Fettercairn House in the north east of Scotland, between Aberdeen and Dundee, in pursuit of his Jacobite studies. He told Simpson that he’d seen papers belonging to James Beattie (1735-1803), Professor of Moral Philosophy and Logic at Aberdeen University. This tip about Beattie was passed to Abbott who decided to follow it up. He got a letter of introduction from Simpson to Lord Clinton, owner of Fettercairn House. And that led to Abbott’s visit to Fettercairn and his amazing discovery…and Genius Moment.

See my post about Abbott discovering Boswell’s lost journal.

Abbott, Fettercairn and the Devil

“There are times when I think the temptation to go to Fettercairn was a snare of the devil. How much else I might have done had I been deaf to the call of Sir William Forbes. But were the bait dangled again, I fear I should fall.”