He knows the broad script he's supposed to stick to, but not the details, not the habits of the time or the in-jokes of his family --the lesson that no amount of study can substitute for reality--in some respects. Study WILL let you know details that even people at the time will not necessarily know, but the faces siblings will make at each other, favorite jokes too well-known ever to have been written down--those things you won't get.

I've had a vague notion for a story hanging around in my head, waiting for actual plot to happen (various unsatisfactory ones have presented themselves) that involves Jonathan Edwards. In one scenario, I imagined a shade of him in the present, and like Lovecraft, I imagined that he'd have thought himself damned--but only briefly.

How did you feel about the 1700s character's experience in the 1930s? It sounds like it wasn't really important for the movie, but were you satisfied with it?