My Husband Has Hired a Personal Historian to Document Our Marriage and the Historian Has Started Taking My Husband's Side and I Believe They Are Forming a Coalition
Dr. Pembrook has been with us for four months. He has filled two volumes. He has opinions. This is the problem. I was under the impression that historians were meant to record events neutrally. Dr. Pembrook is not neutral. Dr. Pembrook has begun editorializing. Last Tuesday's entry, which I read over Reggie's shoulder, described a disagreement we had about the second yacht as "a spirited exchange in which R.F. displayed considerable patience and vision." I displayed considerable patience and vision, Dr. Pembrook. I was the one with the vision. The second yacht was my idea and it is a very good yacht and I will not have it documented otherwise.
Last week Dr. Pembrook submitted what he called a "preliminary findings report" which included a section titled "Areas For Growth (Arabella-Specific)" and I did not receive a copy. Reggie received a copy. Reggie has not shown me the copy. Reggie has been very calm and supportive since receiving the copy in a way that I find deeply suspicious.
There is now a third volume. Dr. Pembrook has requested a dedicated office. He has been given the library. I used to use the library. I have been relocated to the reading room, which is smaller and has inferior light and only one of the fireplaces.
My question is: how do I address the coalition, how do I reclaim the narrative, and at what point does a marriage historian become a marriage problem.
Arabella. I want to begin by saying that I have read Dr. Pembrook's preliminary findings report. It was forwarded to me by a colleague. I have significant notes.
The "Areas For Growth (Arabella-Specific)" section is, and I want to be diplomatic here, one-sided in a way that suggests Dr. Pembrook has been spending considerably more time with Reggie than with the primary source material, which is to say, you. The second yacht entry alone represents a fundamental failure of historical methodology. I have written a formal rebuttal. It is forty pages. I will be submitting it to the Journal of Domestic Historical Record next quarter. The yacht was your idea, Arabella. The record will reflect this.
The coalition is real. I want to validate that. Reggie's suspicious calmness is the single most alarming detail in your submission. A calm Reggie with a private copy of a findings report is a Reggie who has been briefed, Arabella. He has been strategically briefed. By a historian. This is unprecedented in the literature and I am thrilled about it professionally even as I am appalled on your behalf.
My recommendations are as follows. First, commission your own historian immediately. Not a rival of Dr. Pembrook — a superior. Someone with better credentials, a larger vocabulary, and absolutely no loyalty to the west wing. Two competing historical records will create what scholars call a Documented Marital Dialectic and what I call leverage. Second, reclaim the library. You were there first. The reading room with inferior light and one fireplace is not a workspace befitting the woman who conceived of the second yacht. Third, request your own copy of the findings report through your attorneys. You are a primary subject. You have rights. Dr. Pembrook's footnotes do not get to define you.
And finally, Arabella — start your own volume. Not a journal. A proper volume. Leather-bound. Gold embossed. Something that says the narrative has two sides and one of them has better taste.
The second yacht was your idea. History will know this.
I will personally see to it.