Paper lover and associate style editor at ELLE DECOR, Mieke ten Have, joins me this week to tells us all about a fantastic exhibition in New York.
Diaries of Paul Horgan (1903–1994), 1972–74. Gift of the author, 1979.
I often think that in our age of instant gratification—where every passing half-thought is texted, tweeted, and facebooked within moments of its dim inception—our capacity for reflection has markedly diminished. I know of few people who keep diaries anymore; I am sadly not one of them, which is particularly telling after years of meticulously chronicling the mundane and the momentous in my life. Rather, I log these thoughts into email’s ether, where they arrive tailored to fit relationships with friends near and far. Communicating with others has become a Sisyphean habit for most; it is little wonder that anyone has the time left to communicate with him or herself.
Manuscript journals of Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862), 1837–61. Purchased by Pierpont Morgan, 1909.
So, it was with great anticipation that I visited the Morgan Library’s latest exhibition, The Diary: Three Centuries of Private Lives, which runs through May 23rd. A voyeuristic sojourn through the personal deliberations of writers and thinkers long dead and still quite alive, the exhibit is a curated collection of private journals in the museum’s holdings. It offers several centuries worth of intimate snapshots of disparate lives’ details — both profound and fleeting, in an attempt, as Thoreau elegantly summarized, “to meet the facts of life—the vital facts—face to face.” (Thoreau’s set of marbleized paper bound journals (above), by the way, were the aesthetic delight of the entire show). Highlights include the mental meanderings of Anais Nin, John Steinbeck, Sir Walter Scott, John Ruskin, and a joint diary of Sophia and Nathaniel Hawthorne’s. It was amusing to see Joshua Reynolds’ travel journal exalting Renaissance artists while he was on the precipice of celebrity himself. Bob Dylan’s visual diary circa 1974 was lyrical—it boasts sketches of a hotel room in Memphis (drawn with a deftly whimsical hand) accompanied by lines of poetry: “exploding galaxies of the red white & blue pulsing in the night of the big eye”.
Cover of the marriage diary of Sophia Peabody Hawthorne (1809–1871) and Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804–1864), 1842–43. Purchased by Pierpont Morgan, 1909.
Mostly, though, I was taken in by the lonely musings of Charlotte Bronte, whose published collection of personal correspondence always blurred the lines for me between her heroines and herself. In her tiny and tidy penmanship she off-handedly expresses her longing for home and family as a teacher in Belgium, and her keen capacity to recognize falseness and hypocrisy in others, “it is a dreary life—especially as there is only one person in this house worthy of being liked—also another who seems a rosy sugarplum but I know her to be coloured chalk”. Her 1853 novel, Villette, draws on this exact solitude and repressed romance for a fellow teacher at the school. It was thrilling to see evidence of her inspiration in her own hand.
Warning penned in the diary of Frances Eliza Grenfell (1814–1891), 1841–42. Gift of Sir John Pope-Hennessy in honor of the fiftieth anniversary of the Morgan, 1974.
As the exhibition curators state, humanity has always had the impulse to document life as it unfolds. This impulse remains, though it has taken on new forms. I still maintain that the immediacy of communication has lessened the amount we turn to introspection. I write about paper because I love the beauty and craft it carries, but I also write about paper for what it represents—a canvas for reflection, expression, and intimacy. If you share such sentiments, The Diary is an exhibit not to be missed.
Mieke’s fantastic blog is the paper trail and is well worth a read and bookmark for the paper lovers amongst us. You can also read more from Mieke in the incredible interiors magazine ELLE DECOR.
