The front of the Keep
By Diana Gallardo
A simple letter with doodles covering the open spaces with the cursive writing of Carrington. The letter is folded up from being placed in an envelope and put away again in a different fold. It is a letter from Carrington to Faith about the birth of her daughter. The type of paper is plain writing paper that is handwritten. It does not have a letterhead; the most defining feature is the art on the paper. The document is about the birth of Faith's daughter and how Carrington is sorry for Faith about the child's birth. How hopefully she will have a boy soon. It showed us that Carrington, at times, could be off, you know what. It means nothing other than to show how close this friend was with one another, that they would tell each other stuff like sorry you had a girl. It tells us that Carrington cannot understand being nice to someone who just had a baby. The most surprising part of the document is Carrington and her openness about telling Faith about her newborn baby daughter. Like, who says sorry about having a baby? You know who Carrington is because she does not care. That is who she is. Even though the small Bloomsbury book told us about her, you do not believe when someone says that people can be like Carrington.
My experience with working with the document was excellent. I read a whole series of letters that belonged to Faith. It was all her communication, but to find this gem from Carrington was just the cherry on top. It was even more of a cherry when getting to the end of the stack of letters when you realized that Faith's family had loaned the letters out to people. So they knew Carrington talked about their family member when she was bored. It felt great to be in The Keep special collections. It was a collection with much stuff pulled that had yet to be seen, like this letter that had just been inquired. Seeing the scrape books to three guineas and the original covers of Virginia's book was amazing. One of the more astonishing archives because of how it was set up just for it to be an archive.
The archive document I worked on during our time at the keep was a letter from Carrington to Faith. That shows a sense of friendship only acceptable in the Bloomsbury groups because of their weird connections. Their willingness to be open with one another and not hold back in comments is not PC for now. That was Carrington really as a person in the letters we read. She is strong-headed and has opinions, so she resonates with people. She is willing to tell people how it is. In the letter, she knew that a girl was probably not what was wanted. Carrington probably knew that with the times, some part of Faith wanted a boy, and deep down. She is willing to tell the truth in a way. There is a sense of freedom in how Carrington's writing, including her doodles, is like a breath of fresh air. "The reality of the archive lies not only in the clues it contains but also in the sequences of different representations of reality. The archive always preserves infinite relations to reality" (30). The letter from Carrington represents the quote in that it relates to reality. The relationship that Faith and Carrington had as friends were genuine. They had a friendship. They could tell each other things, like sorry, you had a girl. It could be Carrington who gives off that vibe of being able to say what she had in mind. She was free from everything. She was the infinite number representing her reality.