(17-04-2024, 01:02 PM)Scarecrow Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.For me Ethel Voynich's notebooks are the proof that the MS is genuine.
It is clear that Wilfrid couldn't have done the MS without Ethel knowing about it. Creating the MS would have been such an enterprise that Wilfrid just couldn't have done in secret from he's wife.
Because if she knew it was a forgery, and possibly co-author of it, she wouldn't have spent any time on trying identify the MS plants and we wouldn't have her notebooks.
On the contrary, her notebooks show the she dedicated quite a considerable time for the MS (You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view., You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.), ergo she knew the MS was genuine.
Most agree that Ethel did not believe the Voynich was fake. And yes, her notebooks and letters reflect this, in the Beinecke, the Grolier Club, and elsewhere on the internet. I found one of her two plant notebooks in the Grolier Club in NYC, and personally converted it to a PDF file: You are not allowed to view links.
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Login to view. And about her and Anne letters: You are not allowed to view links.
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Login to view. Also, I read every scrap found in the archives of the Beinecke over a two (lunchless!) day period.
So yes, I am very familiar with the writings and notebooks of Ethel, Anne, Wilfrid, Garland, and many other associated "players". From that I would say that Ethel and Anne fully believed the manuscript to be genuine. This did not stop them from controlling the message about it, by limiting access to those who might give a favorable verdict. They didn't want people who doubted the Roger Bacon authorship, for one thing. But that is understandable, as the perceived great value of the ms. was tied to it being a Bacon work... if just an "ordinary" herbal, it would be worth like a hundred times less.
But it is also important to note that Ethel's major interest in the manuscript came after Wilfrid died in 1930. It does not seem to be of great interest to her before that. The other thing is that, while she thought it was real, she seemed to question the validity of some of the paths that Wilfrid had taken in asserting certain "facts" about it. For one thing, in her notes under the whole Dee mythology, and related, she wrote strongly, "How do we KNOW this???", and underlined it several times. Well, we know now he didn't "know" that at all, he made it up, and must have known it was a lie: You are not allowed to view links.
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But to your other, and more important point: You claim "It is clear that Wilfrid couldn't have done the MS without Ethel knowing about it. Creating the MS would have been such an enterprise that Wilfrid just couldn't have done in secret from he's wife."
Wilfrid had bought, in 1908, the Libreria Franceschini, in Florence, Italy. He not only farmed it for its vast contents of over 500,000 items of all types, to add to his collections and catalog, and even sell blank ancient materials, but also as a kind of "safe house" for Tytus Philippovitch and his wife. Voynich made Tytus the "manager" of the Libreria, ostensibly to house him there. Did he manage it, too? Maybe: You are not allowed to view links.
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And also, as I understand, the Libreria, as many Florence businesses, would be shut down for several months each year. No matter, even if it were open, it would have been very easy to create a Voynich forgery there in a couple of months of spare time, maybe a month if worked on full time. The square footage of the shop, in fact, included the basement under it. And Wilfrid seems to have avoid his London and Florence "worlds colliding", as Sowerby related,
"When I first discovered that Mr. Voynich had a branch in Florence, I asked him to allow me to go and work there: I could not think of a more wonderful way of spending one's life than to be describing rare books in Florence. Mr. Voynich refused my request flatly and firmly, and gave me as his chief reason that I should inevitably fall in love with his Manager, and he with me! As I was young and unmarried, I would not see any objection to this, but Mr. Voynich was adamant."
So he has a half a million in piles of mostly uncatalogued "stuff" in Florence, but refuses the request of his best cataloger to spend some time sorting them?
I've not seen any mention of Ethel spending time there, either, nor anyone else. Certainly Wilfrid did, although how much, I do not know. But the point is, I think it is the most likely place the Voynich was created, as he most certainly could have done it there while keeping it a secret from all but less then a handful of people. But even that is assuming that, if a forgery, Wilfrid created it. I think he did, but in whole or part it could have been made by someone else, and anywhere else.
No, I strongly disagree with you that a case can remotely be made that if the Voynich was a forgery, even created by Wilfrid personally, Ethel would have to have known it was being made, or was made.