Opera: desire, disease, death

In several senses, Hall cuts a better figure here than in Charlotte Hall's Memoirs. Nevertheless, the remnants of the earlier "spouseography" are often still visible, despite Manuel's apparent awareness of the historiographic implications of using Charlotte's work as a primary source (p. 23). Some instances are trivial. For example, Hall's trip to the Scottish Highlands is alluded to by Manuel as if it had already been described (p. 14), but this is done only in the Memoirs, not in her account. Other showings have more serious implications for not only the accuracy of Manuel's details but also the analyses of Hall's early intellectual allegiances which she builds upon them. The Halls did not marry until 1829, and Charlotte had no first-hand knowledge of her husband's Edinburgh days. However, it will strike most readers as odd to find Andrew Fyfe is still described by Manuel as "the son of the Professor of Anatomy at Edinburgh" (p. 7). A bit more basic research into Hall's early teachers, the medical institutions of Edinburgh, and the University matriculation records, would have eliminated a number of other confusions perpetuated in Manuel's work. These include those between James Hamilton the elder, the hospital physician who wrote on purgative medicines, and James Hamilton Jnr, son and successor of Alexander Hamilton, Professor of Midwifery; between the Royal Infirmary of Edinburgh, where midwifery was not practised in Hall's time, and the Edinburgh Lying-In Hospital, where it was under the Hamiltons; and between misinterpretations of courses such as "medico-chirurgical obstetrics" for the separate, "Clin[ical] Medicine, [and] Obst[etrics]" he actually took in 1811 (along with the "Pr[actice of Medicine]"). So by all means view Hall in his new dress, but it might also be wise to have the spouseographer standing by in case a quick change of swimwear is required not to mention Hall's drowning manual if it all proves too much!