Who would have thought that we could learn so much about the great Congregational
minister and theologian just by looking at his desk? At our most recent History
Matters Brown Bag Lunch, Ken Minkema, the director of the Jonathan Edwards
Center at Yale University, gave a fascinating and wonderfully illustrated talk
about the "material culture" of Edwards's life in eighteenth-century New England.
Living in the backwoods of Northampton and Stockbridge, MA, Edwards hoarded his writing supplies very carefully. He made his own ink from natural and household ingredients and collected quills for writing during goose molting season. He also used every inch of paper available to him, including the margins of a book given to him as a gift. (The book was not only written in French but it was by a Frenchman — Edwards was a loyal Englishman of his day — and so turned the text upside down and wrote a treatise in the margins.)
Edwards's "Blank Bible", incorporating
text and his own commentaries
image courtesy of the Beinecke Library at Yale
With this exception, books were highly prized. Over time Edwards amassed a personal
library of some 800 volumes, which seems surprising for a rural pastor of his time, especially because he regularly loaned and borrowed books from parishioners and other ministers.
Edwards also kept very systematic track of his ideas. He kept a pen and inkpot with him at all times, and was known to come back from a long walk covered with small pieces of paper containing fragments of ideas all pinned in careful order on his coat. Ken showed us pictures of Edwards's handmade notebooks, sewn together, bound by thick paper, and covered with whatever he could get his hands on, including wallpaper that probably adorned the walls in his parsonage. By the end of his career he had an enormous desk stocked with cubby-holes and drawers for storing the thousand or so sermons he had composed, as well as his Bible commentaries, miscellanies, and serious works of philosophical and theological reflection.
Edwards's writing desk
image courtesy of Jonathan Edwards College
It is almost impossible for us, now well into the computer age, to imagine what it was like to write a book in the eighteenth century. Every piece of paper was precious,
and erasing and starting over all but out of the question. Edwards could not depend on a computer to keep track of all the intricate ideas in his various treatises and sermons, collected over many decades of hard work. He had to invent his own indexing systems and carefully record every book he read or planned to read in a notebook.
This unusual view of Edwards's life made him seem very familiar and human — he was a man who kept a glass of Madeira close by while he wrote and chipped a large hole in his desk when he pondered — and at the same time incredible. Edwards composed his enormous corpus of books and sermons and pamphlets and letters while he was the father of a large family and the pastor of an often tumultuous church. I don't think any of us were surprised when Ken showed us the layout of Edwards's home in Stockbridge — the great theologian had a nicely appointed study to work in, but he did most of us actual composing in a small closet in the corner of the room. Privacy and quiet, like writing supplies and a sturdy desk, were just as important to an eighteenth-century writer as they are today.
Ken's article is about to be published; when it's available we will post the link.
-Peggy Bendroth
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