All of the Unknowns

After reading "The Clerk's Tale" from Chaucer's The Canterbury Tales this past weekend for class, I've been thinking a lot about Grizzle Cale again.  I came across Grizzle in the 1750-1800 August County Court Order Books back in 2010 when I was working as a research assistant.  All I know about Grizzle is that she had a husband named Jacob Cale and that at one point they came into court to certify a deed of gift or something.  That's all I know.  Likely, that's all there is available to know.  Perhaps if I really dug deep, I could find a record of their marriage, but that's assuming those records weren't burned or destroyed.  Maybe I could find something more on Jacob Cale-- maybe a birth record, or if he owned a little plot of land?-- but even so, what would that really tell me?  It wouldn't tell me the things I long to know.

I wonder what Grizzle looked like.  I wonder what color hair she had, what color eyes she had.  I wonder if she and Jacob had children, and how many, and if they lived.  I wonder if she loved Jacob and if he loved her.  I wonder if they hated each other.  I wonder who she was friends with, and I wonder if she ever visited market fairs.  I wonder what colors she loved.  I wonder what she liked to eat, and if she brewed beer (likely), and if she did, what it tasted like.  I wonder if she could read (as I recall, she made her mark, so probably not-- but some people could read even if they couldn't write).  I wonder what stories she knew, and what stories she told, and what songs she sang.  I wonder if she embroidered, and what the things she embroidered looked like, if she did.  I wonder what her maiden name was.  I wonder if her name was really Griselda, or if it was Grizzle and if it was pronounced Grizzle like "grizzly bear" or if it was pronounced Grizzle like "Giselle" but with an 'R'.  I hope her story was nothing like that of Griselda in "The Clerk's Tale," unless she got to have just the happy ending part with her husband loving and cherishing her, and her children living. 

Grizzle sticks out to me, because of her name, but there were countless other people in those order books just as inscrutable.  I remember one time having the macabre thought that everyone I read about in the order books had died and no one would ever know anything more about most of them than the sentence or two they were allotted in the books for securing a bond or certifying a deed.  Just name after name.  Then, I turned the wheel and the microfilm revealed a blank page with a little drawing on it, a doodle of one of the clerks in the court, to judge by the name written under the tiny informal portrait.  It made me feel relieved to see a picture.  To see that, for at least one them, there was something more than a name.  All of them, all of them were flesh and blood.  All of them had thoughts and feelings and lives.  And even if most of it is unrecoverable, isn't it enough to know that they were there?  Aren't these glimpses of the past worth it, just to remember that we are not alone in our strife, or in our joy, and that none of this is new?

I'm not really sure where I want this post to end up, or what I mean by this.  Perhaps all it means is that I should really be a historian, or a biographer, or a story-teller.  But somehow, it means more.  I can't exactly articulate what I mean, but I'm very glad to know that one person, at least, remembers that once there was a woman named Grizzle Cale.  She's not forgotten, even if she's mostly unknown.