It feels like I just started these posts, but we’re already over halfway through the semester – Spring Break is literally next week! Since last week, I ran into some interesting figures (don’t worry it’s people, not data) while researching Spectator quotes. The first is a woman by the name of Sabina Green, “now Sabina Rentfree,”, who talks about illnesses that affect young ladies in issue 431. While on the surface this is a perfectly normal occurrence, what is abnormal is that her letter immediately follows one from a Richard Rentfree (which presents what one might assume is an obvious connection), though I can’t find any reason of why exactly. I’ve tried to research them to find out more – are they related, married, both doctors somehow – by reading the rest of the issue for clues, but I can’t find an explicit connection. In fact, the opening doesn’t really address them or why their letters were included at all. It’s as if they appeared there of their own volition! The issue opens with a quote about fathers and children, but Richard is only twenty-one, so I don’t think Sabina is his kid. My guess, which might match yours, is that they are related by marriage (hence Sabina’s statement that she is “now…Rentfree”), but this is merely circumstantial. While Sabina appears to have married into the Rentfree family, it’s not guaranteed that it was to Richard, or even the same branch of that family. I tried a bit of general internet sleuthing, but other than a modern person’s financial success (good job, random Sabina Green!), I can’t find a Sabina Green or Richard Rentfree. Ah well.
The second figure is a certain Pierre Bayle, who it turns out is actually a real and findable person! He was born in France, though he eventually fled due to religious persecution. The quote used from his work in The Spectator is: “Those who are pleased with defamatory libels, so far as to approve the authors and dispersers of them, are as guilty as if they had composed them.” This was from issue 451, though I can’t seem to find the original. This could be due to there being no openly accessible translations of his work or that the Spectator authors changed it so much that it’s unrecognizable to poor google. Insert mandatory “why use it if you were going to change it so much” rant.
One of my favorite parts of researching quotes is the…drumroll please…research itself! It’s a lot of fun to try and find information about the quotes and the people who they are attributed to in the process. Aside from unfindable people and works, there is a small change I’ll be making going forward as I research quotes: adding the year to these entries! I realized when I started putting in dates that – surprise – dates tend to repeat year after year and the only difference is the day of the week. That can lead to confusion for researchers when they make use of our sources, and we don’t want that do we? So, going forward, I’ll have a special box on my spreadsheet just for the year. That’s research for you; always adding another box of information when you didn’t think you could get anymore minutely detailed.