An embarrassing incident

On a hot August afternoon in 1871, the Reverend Canon Arthur Charles Copeman and his brother-in-law trudged from Mont Dol to St Malo, their clerical coats ill-suited to the summer sun. Copeman, already known in Norwich as vicar of St Andrew’s and a meticulous keeper of journals, carried with him the habit of noting each day’s encounters. Three of his diaries have now entered the British Library, one of which is the focus of an Untold Tales blog - A Victorian holiday embarrassment.

Copeman was born in 1824 at Coltishall in Norfolk, the son of Edward Breese Copeman and his wife Elizabeth. He studied medicine before deciding on a career in the church. After ordination he served in Norfolk and was appointed vicar of St Andrew’s, Norwich, a position he retained for the rest of his life. He was made an honorary canon of Norwich Cathedral and acted for a time as rural dean. 

In his parish, Copeman was an active figure, overseeing improvements to the church and dedicating a stained glass window in 1869. He married and had children, the best known being Sydney Monckton Copeman, later a leading figure in public health and a fellow of the Royal Society. Arthur Copeman died at the St Andrew’s parsonage in Norwich in 1896. There is very little further information online about Copeman other than at Wikitree, and in three of his diaries, recently added to the British Library’s collections - see A Victorian holiday embarrassment in the British Library’s Untold Lives collection.

Two of the diaries describe the daily life of an English clergyman, recording the rhythm of parish work, family duties and social engagements in Norwich during the mid- and late-Victorian decades. The third is different in tone and scope, ‘a month-long tour around Brittany with his brother-in-law, seeing the sights.’

The holiday diary, written in the summer of 1871, gives a candid picture of middle-class travel in France just after the Franco-Prussian War. Copeman recorded the practicalities of inns, meals and transport alongside sharp observations of landscape and people. Two weeks into the trip the pair walked from Mont Dol to the town of St Malo. I will let the narrative in the Untold Lives piece take up the story (with direct quotes from Copeman’s diary embedded). 

‘ “We found a congeries of little wooden cells ranged on the sea-ward side of a gentle slope which was thronged with ye ladies & gentlemen of S. Malo with whom it appears the favourite and fashionable promenade - and an office for the issue of bathing tickets which was beset with applicants.”

Having secured a bathing ticket, the pair were pleasantly surprised to find it entitled them to temporary possession of two of the beach huts, together with towels and bathing costumes.

The Reverend was particularly taken with the available attire, enthusing it was “of the simplest construction but of imposing & indescribable effect”. Once within this pair of loose blue shorts and sleeved “gaberdine” top, he thought he would have been unrecognisable to even his closest friends.  However, Copeman believed he and his companion attracted “the admiring inspection of the promenade” as [they] made their way down to the sea.

And yet, their favoured bathing suits would prove to be their undoing.

“When emerging after a delightful bathe, we found our wondrous costume clinging everywhere tenaciously to the skin & bringing out in strong relief every irregularity of a development somewhat obtrusively bony.”

Shocked by the betrayal of their previously modest attire, the pair “took fright & with a leap & a run we regained our dressing houses whence were heard roars of convulsive laughter till we re-appeared in civilised attire”.’

As beautiful as her legend

‘The evening sunlight fading to make the colours hum more and more melodiously was a pleasure to us all. Greta did not seem to notice the magical effects, of which she in pink with pink and white striped trousers became a part and in this light she became as beautiful as her legend.’ This is Cecil Beaton writing in his diary about Greta Garbo, his ex-lover who was about to turn 60. Beaton, once obsessed by Garbo had wanted to marry her. They remained friends for decades, at least until Beaton published his diaries revealing the intimacies of their relationship. Today marks 120 years since Garbo’s birth.

Greta Lovisa Gustafsson was born in Stockholm on 18 September 1905 into a working class family. She left school at 13, and looked after her ill father. He died in 1920. Thereafter, she worked briefly in a barber’s shop, before taking a job in the PUB department store. Before long, she was modelling hats, and had secured more lucrative employment as a fashion model. In late 1920, she appeared in her first film commercial for the store, advertising women’s clothing. She made further advertising films, but, in 1922, the director Erik Arthur Petschler gave her a part in his short comedy, Peter the Tramp. From 1922 to 1924, she studied at the Royal Dramatic Theatre’s acting school in Stockholm; and it was during this period that she changed her name to Garbo.

The prominent Swedish director Mauritz Stiller recruited Garbo in 1924, and nurtured her for his films; but she then caught the eye of MGM’s Louis B. Mayer who asked her - still only 20 and unable to speak English - to come to the US. Once there, she and Stiller heard no word from Mayer, but eventually MGM’s head of production Irving Thalberg gave Garbo a screen test, and she was cast in Torrent. Stiller was hired to direct the next film for Garbo, The Temptress, but was soon fired. Garbo received rave reviews and went on to make eight more silent movies, turning her into a Hollywood star. John Gilbert, with whom she had an affair, was her co-star in several of these films, and is said to have taught her how to behave like a star, how to socialise at parties, and how to deal with studio bosses.

Despite concerns about her Swedish accent, she proved as much of a success when, from the early 1930s, MGM started making sound movies. Her first talkie, Anna Christie, was the highest grossing film of the year, and led to her first Oscar nomination. By 1933, she had negotiated a new contract with MGM, earning her $300,000 per film. Garbo continued to work, starring in films such as The Painted Veil, Anna Karenina, Camille and her first comedy, Ninotchka. With the success of Ninotchka, MGM chose another comedy, Two-Faced Woman, to be directed by George Cukor (who had directed Camille). This was not a critical success, and the negative reviews deeply affected Garbo. Although not intending to retire, in fact, she never made another film. Many a project was offered her in the 1940s, and she accepted some, but every one of them fell through.

Garbo never married or had children, though she had various affairs with men and women. Among these were the conductor Leopold Stokowski, the author Erich Maria Remarque, the photographer Cecil Beaton, and the poet Mercedes de Acosta. Her relationships with the latter two, in particular, have given rise to books: Greta & Cecil by Diana Souhami and Loving Garbo: The Story of Greta Garbo, Cecil Beaton and Mercedes de Acosta by Hugo Vickers (both published by Jonathan Cape, 1994).

From the early days of her career, Garbo avoided society, preferring to spend her time alone or with friends. She never signed autographs or answered fan mail, and rarely gave interviews. In 1951, she became a naturalised US citizen, and in 1953 bought an apartment in Manhattan where she lived for the rest of her life. She became increasingly withdrawn in time - though she would occasionally take holidays with friends - and was known for walking the city, dressed casually and wearing large sunglasses.

According to the 1979 edition of Encyclopaedia Britannica ‘Garbo had, in the opinion of her directors and most critics, a perfect instinct for doing the right thing before the camera. Her talent, her great beauty, and her indifference to public opinion made her career unique in the history of the cinema.’ She died in 1990. Further information is available from Wikipedia, the ‘Official Garbo website’, the fan site Garbo Forever, or the online Encyclopædia Britannica.

There is no evidence I can find of Garbo ever having kept a diary. However, she was the subject of other people’s journals, and, in particular, the memoir published by de Acosta (Here Lies the Heart) and the diaries published by Beaton. She considered herself betrayed by both ex-lovers for making public such intimate details. Beaton, himself, appeared fully conscious of the hurt he might cause to Garbo by publishing his diaries - though it wasn’t until he was long dead that some of his diaries were published in an expurgated form - see Nerves before a sitting. She also features in diaries kept by Remarque, but these have yet to be published and only short quotes about Garbo have appeared (in Great Garbo: A life apart, by Karen Swenson, for example).

Beaton’s diaries - especially those from the 1940s published as The Happy Years - are full of Beaton’s obsession with Garbo. A New York Times review says: ‘The core material for Loving Garbo was drawn from Beaton’s diaries and letters, in which he recorded his impressions of Garbo in minute detail, along with every seismic tremor of their relationship. Although Beaton’s encomiums to Garbo’s cheekbones and extra-thick eyelashes betray a rhapsodic giddiness, his writing never loses its undertone of shrewdness and common sense. And much as he may adore Garbo, he repeatedly evokes her as an object to be coveted for its social and economic value.’

Here are a few extracts about Garbo in Beaton’s diaries taken from published sources - the first two from Loving Garbo, the second two from Beaton in the Sixties, and the last from The Unexpurgated Beaton.

3 November 1947
‘I was completely surprised at what was happening & it took me some time to recover my bafflement. Within a few minutes of our reunion, after these long & void periods, of months of depression & doubt, we were suddenly together in unexplained, unexpected and inevitable intimacy. It is only on such occasions that one realises how fantastic life can be. I was hardly able to bridge the gulf so quickly & unexpectedly. I had to throw my mind back to the times at Reddish House when in my wildest dreams I had invented scenes that were now taking place.’

October 1956
‘She is like a man in many ways. She telephoned to say, I thought we might try a little experiment this evening at 6.30. But she spoke in French and it was difficult to understand at first what she meant. But soon I discovered, although I pretended not to. She was embarrassed and a certain pudeur on my part made me resent her frankness and straightforwardness - something that I should have respected.’

July 1965
‘I arrived at Vougliameni, the appointed bay where the yachts were harboured. Greta was the first I saw, sitting with her back to the quay, she had tied her haired back into a small pigtail with a rubber band. The effect was pleasing, neat and Chinese but the hair has become grey. The surprised profile turned to reveal a big smile. It was almost the same, and yet no, the two intervening years since we’ve last met have created havoc. I was appalled how destroyed her skin has become, covered with wrinkles, double chin, but worse the upper lip has jagged lower and the skin has perished into little lines, and there is a furriness that is disastrous. But no sign of defeat on Greta’s part. She was up to her old tricks. ‘My, my, my! Why can it be Beattie? Me Beat!’ [. . .]

In the apricot-colored light of the evening she still looks absolutely marvellous and she could be cleverly photographed to appear as beautiful as ever in films. But it is not just her beauty that is dazzling, it is the air of mysteriousness and other intangible qualities that make her so appealing, particularly when talking with sympathy and wonder to children or reacting herself to some situation with all the wonder and surprise of childhood itself.’

August 1965
‘The evening sunlight fading to make the colours hum more and more melodiously was a pleasure to us all. Greta did not seem to notice the magical effects, of which she in pink with pink and white striped trousers became a part and in this light she became as beautiful as her legend. But it is a legend that does no longer exist in reality. If she had been a real character she would have left the legend, developed a new life, new interests and knowledge. As it is, after thirty years she has not changed except outwardly, and even the manner and personality has dated. Poor old Marlene Dietrich, with her dye and facelift and new career as a singer, with all her nonsense, is a live and vital person, cooking for her grandchildren and being on the go. That is much preferable to this other non-giving, non-living phantom of the past.’

13 April 1973 [source: The Unexpurgated Beaton - The Cecil Beaton Diaries as they were written]
‘The day was not without its setbacks. Whether or not it was out of malice a commentator, after a radio interview, gave me a review of my book by - of all people - Auberon Waugh, the son of my old arch enemy. He seems to have inherited the spleen of his father. A devastating attack aimed to reduce me to a shred. It hurt. Then a horrid little woman journalist, referring to it, said, ‘You’re supposed to be a marvellous person, but they say your book is awful’ and she handed me Waugh’s review. [. . .] I do feel terribly guilty about exposing Garbo to public glare. Even though those things happened thirty years ago, my conscience has been pricking me terribly. Yet I know that if I had the option of not publishing it, I would still go ahead - and suffer. I only trust Greta can rise above it in the way she did about Mercedes’s book.’

This article is a slightly revised version of one first published on 18 September 2015.

Prodigious, wonderful - if true

‘Jeff Davis is to emancipate eight hundred thousand slaves - calls them to arms, and promises fifty acres of land to each. Prodigious, marvellous, wonderful - if true. . .  But it is impossible, as - after all - such a step of the rebel chiefs is as much or even more, a death-warrant of their political existence, as the eventual and definitive victory of the Union armies would be.’ This is from the diaries of Count Adam Gurowski, a Polish émigré aristocrat born 220 years ago today. During the Civil War he was employed by the State Department until, that is, he published a first volume of his indiscreet diaries.

Gurowski was born in 1805 into a noble family at Kalisz in Russian Poland. Educated first at home and then in Berlin and Heidelberg, he absorbed the currents of German philosophy, particularly Hegel. He married Theresa de Zbijewska in 1827, and they had two children, but the marriage broke down and his intellectual energies carried him into politics. Initially sympathetic to Polish national independence, he broke with many compatriots by advocating rapprochement with Russia as the only way to modernise Poland. This stance won him favour at the imperial court in St Petersburg. He served in the Ministry of Education and wrote on political economy, but his reformist zeal and his quarrelsome temperament made enemies. By the early 1840s he had left Russia in disfavour.

After a decade in Western Europe, where he wrote for French and German journals and cultivated radical causes, Gurowski emigrated to the United States in 1849. He struggled at first, teaching languages and living precariously, but gradually carved out a niche as a publicist. His America and Europe (1857) defended the democratic experiment of the United States and helped establish his reputation as a contrarian but incisive observer. During the 1850s he contributed to the New York Tribune and other outlets, his eccentric manners - thick accent, brusque speech, disdain for convention - were noted by contemporaries as much as his opinions.

At the outbreak of the Civil War, Gurowski entered the State Department under William H. Seward. By the autumn of 1862 the war had reached a critical stage, Washington society was consumed with rumours, and readers were hungry for insider accounts. Gurowski had been keeping notes since the outbreak of hostilities and hastily arranged them into a publishable volume, grouping entries by month. The result was rushed into print in New York before the year was out, both to seize the public’s attention and to establish himself as a commentator - but the speed and candour of publication cost him his government position. He died suddenly in 1866. Further information is available from Wikipedia and History is Now.

Gurowski diaries remain his chief legacy. Issued in three volumes (all available at Internet Archive - vol. 1, vol. 2, vol 3), they cover the period from March 1861 to 1865. The first, printed in 1862, groups his observations month by month rather than by precise dates, reflecting a compilation of notes prepared for publication rather than a strict daily journal. The second (1864) and third (1866) volumes adopt a different format: entries are headed with exact days, presenting a closer record of events as they unfolded. Together the volumes offer an idiosyncratic, often caustic commentary on Washington politics, military affairs, and the personalities of the Union war effort. Here are a few extracts from the second volume.

2 February 1863

‘All the efforts of the worshippers of treason, of darkness, of barbarism, of cruelty, and of infamy - all their manœuvres and menaces could not prevail. The majority of the Congress has decided that the powerful element of Afro-Americans is to be used on behalf of justice, of freedom, and of human rights. The bill passed both the Houses. It is to be observed that the ‘big’ diplomats swallowed col gusto all the pro-slavery speeches, and snubbed off the patriotic ones. The noblest eulogy of the patriots!

The patriots may throb with joy! The President intends great changes in his policy, and has telegraphed for - Thurlow Weed, that prince of dregs, to get from him light about the condition of the country.

The conservative ‘Copperheads’ of Boston and of other places in New England press as a baby to their bosom, and lift to worship McClellan, the conservative, and all this out of deepest hatred towards all that is noble, humane, and lofty in the genuine American people. Well they may! If by his generalship McClellan butchered hundreds of thousands in the field, he was always very conservative of his precious little self.

Biting snow storm all over Virginia! Our soldiers! our soldiers in the camp! It is heart-rending to think of them. Conservative McClellan so conservatively campaigned until last November as to preserve - the rebel armies, and make a terrible winter campaign an inevitable necessity. O, Copperheads and Boston conservatives! When you bend your knees before McClellan, you dip them in the best and purest blood of the people!’

18 August 1863

‘A patriotic gentlewoman asked me why I write a diary? “To give conscientious evidence before the jury appointed by history.” ’

20 August 1863

‘On the first day of the draft, I had occasion to visit New York. All was quiet. In Broadway and around the City Hall I saw less soldiers than I expected. The people are quiet; the true conspirators are thunder-struck. Before long, the names will be known of the genuine instigators of arson and of murder in July last. The tools are in the hands of justice, but the main spirits are hidden. Smart and keen wretches as are the leading Copperheads, they successfully screen their names; nevertheless before long their names will be nailed to the gallows. The World - which, for weeks and weeks, so devotedly, so ardently poisoned the minds, and thus prepared the way for any riot - the World was and is a tool in the hands of the hidden traitors. The World is a hireling, and does the work by order.’

1 September 1863

‘Jeff Davis is to emancipate eight hundred thousand slaves - calls them to arms, and promises fifty acres of land to each. Prodigious, marvellous, wonderful - if true. Jeff Davis will become immortal! With eight hundred thousand Afro-Americans in arms, Secession becomes consolidated - and Emancipation a fixed fact, as the eight hundred thousand armed will emancipate themselves and their kindred. Lincoln emancipates by tenths of an inch, Jeff Davis by the wholesale. But it is impossible, as - after all - such a step of the rebel chiefs is as much or even more, a death-warrant of their political existence, as the eventual and definitive victory of the Union armies would be. If the above news has any foundation in truth, then the sacredness of the principle of right and of liberty is victoriously asserted in such a way as never before was any great principle. The most criminal and ignominious enterprise recorded in history, the attempt to make human bondage the corner-stone of an independent polity, this attempt ending in breaking the corner-stone to atoms, and by the hands of the architects and builders themselves. Satan’s revolt was virtuous, when compared with that of the Southern slavers, and Satan’s revolt ended not in transforming Hell into an Eden, as will be the South for the slaves when their emancipation is accomplished. Emancipation, n’importe par qui, must end in the reconstruction of the Union.’

The Symbolist, Zinaida Gippius

Today marks the 80th anniversary of Zinaida Gippius’s death. A leading Russian Symbolist poet and polemical critic, she chronicled revolution and exile with an unsparing, self-interrogating voice; her diaries are among the sharpest first-person records of Petrograd in 1917-1918, when the Russian capital (renamed from St Petersburg during the war) was convulsed first by the overthrow of the tsar in February and then by the Bolshevik seizure of power in October.

Gippius (also written as Hippius) was born in Belyov in 1869, the eldest of four sisters who only received a sporadic education as their father, a respected lawyer and a senior officer in the Russian Senate, moved residence often. She came of age in the Petersburg literary world of the 1890s. She married the writer-critic Dmitry Merezhkovsky in 1889, and together they became central to the city’s Symbolist circles - embracing mysticism, aesthetic experimentation, and the idea of art as a path to spiritual renewal. They launched the Religious-Philosophical Meetings, which tried to bring the intelligentsia and the Church into dialogue. Her most important works (beyond the diaries - see below) include several volumes of poetry that placed her at the centre of Russian Symbolism, the short story collections New People and The Devil’s Doll, the novel The Roman-Tsarevich. 

Gippius also cultivated a deliberately androgynous, confrontational persona and, under the male pseudonym ‘Anton Krainy’, wrote some of the era’s most incisive criticism. The 1905 Revolution radicalised Gippius’s politics while deepening her spiritual preoccupations. She welcomed the February 1917 revolution which overthrew the tsar and installed the Provisional Government, but judged October a cultural catastrophe, a judgment that drove the couple into emigration in 1919 - first to Poland, then France and Italy - where she kept writing poetry, prose, memoir. She died in Paris on 9 September 1945, four years after Merezhkovsky. Further information is available from Wikipedia; Encyclopaedia Britannica and the Library of Congress. 

Gippius began making diary entries in the 1890s, though only fragments from those years remain. The first substantial run of entries dates from the early 1900s. From then on she maintained diaries more or less steadily, though they became especially intense and historically important during the Revolutionary years, 1917-1918, when she wrote almost daily in Petrograd. After emigrating in 1919 she continued the habit in exile, sometimes combining poems and diary notes in the same volumes.

Her first major diary publication was Stikhi: dnevnik 1911-1921 (Berlin, 1922), a hybrid volume pairing late poems with diary entries; her best-known diary book, Sinyaya kniga. Peterburgskiy dnevnik 1914-1918 (The Blue Book), appeared in Belgrade in 1929. An English selection, Between Paris and St Petersburg: Selected Diaries of Zinaida Hippius, edited and translated by Temira Pachmuss, was issued by University of Illinois Press in 1975. This can be freely borrowed online at Internet Archive.

‘Hippius’s diaries are works of art,’ Pachmuss says in her preface. ‘Her skill as an artist is inevitably reflected in her diaries, even though they were not written for subsequent publication. They reveal aspects of her personality which are not expressed in her poetry or published prose works. They further illuminate her views on literature, religion, politics, freedom, ethics, love, marriage, life, death, God, the Holy Trinity - in fact, the entire evolution of her Weltanschauung may be reconstructed from her diaries. In them she defined her attitude toward other people, her concept of creative work, her criteria for imaginative literary criticism, and above all, her credo as a poet. Hippius’s diaries, written in her minute and graceful script, are a valuable, highly artistic personal confession. Their intrinsic value is justification for their publication in English in the present volume.

Hippius’s diaries have great historical and literary significance not only because they describe the views and attitudes of the poetess herself, but also because they re-create the spiritual atmosphere of St. Petersburg at the beginning of the twentieth century - with its emotional maximalism, metaphysical disposition, and religious aspirations. They further reveal the nature of life in Poland after the October Revolution, and the activities of ‘Russian Paris’ in the third and fourth decades of this century.’

Here is a sample extract from an early diary quoted in Between Paris and St Petersburg.

13 March 1901

‘I would like to know what attracts me to this diary - now? There is no more contes d’amour, no special amorousness . . . About what, then, to write? Yet I want to write precisely here. This means that there is within me some form of amorousness, or something resembling it.

Something resembling… yes, but at the same time something completely different. It is good that it does resemble, and it is also good that it is something different.

In spite of this absolutely shameless, personal pain of the old and human aspect of my soul (I am saying it calmly), there is a great deal of serene strength in me, active strength, and there is a great deal of my good and old amorousness for ‘something different.’ I have much strength now, but I do not wish to conceal from myself that there is a certain danger for me. An almost inevitable danger.

From now on I am destined to pursue the path of ascetism, complete as a closed circle. I know with the combined insight of both my body and my soul that this path is the wrong one for me. A deep knowledge that you are pursuing the wrong path will - without fail, quietly, but certainly - deprive me of my strength. I won’t be able to reach the end of the path; I won’t pour forth the whole volume of my strength. Even now, when I think about the future, it depresses me. At the present time there is so much of this lively strength in me. I will engross myself in the spirit - without fail - and my spirit will evaporate like light vapor. Oh, I do not suffer because of myself! I am not sorry for myself! I am sorry for That to Which I will not serve to the best of my abilities.

I would have selected another path - there isn’t any other, however. It is not even worthwhile talking about - it is immediately obvious that there isn’t any other path.

Sometimes it seems to me that there must be people who resemble me, who are neither satisfied with the existing forms of passion nor with the forms of life; that is, there must be people who want to go forward, who desire God not only in those phenomena which already exist, but also in those which will take place. So I think. But then I laugh. All right, there are such people. So what? Will I feel better from this knowledge? For I definitely won’t meet such a person. But if I do meet him? Then probably it will just be in order ‘to bless him while I descend into my grave.’ For in a few years I will become an old woman (a weak old woman who will be embittered by her past). And I will know that I have not lived righteously. And even if I meet him now, at this moment, will I believe it? And if I do fall in love with him, I will preserve my silence till the very end anyhow - from fear that he is not the ‘right’ one. And he, if he resembles me, will also be silent. No, it won’t be that way. It, this miracle, can take place only in the Third Person, but what He will tell me - I don’t know. I have not heard His voice as yet. But why do I ponder it? Why am I apprehensive? Why do I complain? Everything will be as it should be. This is not my will. It is not my volition that there is such strange, such lively blood in me. For something, for Somebody this blood is necessary. So let Him do with it whatever He wants. And also with that strength of mine which He has granted to me. I will only be sincere. Asceticism [the next page is missing] is stronger than what they think about themselves. Their sin is only their self-belittlement. I see how some people, who are able to save not only themselves but other people as well, perish from this sin. And my white flowers wither, wither away . . .

How can I tell them? How can I help them? Indeed I am not so strong, so long as I am alone.’

Polidori’s first ghost story

‘Began my ghost-story after tea. Twelve o’clock, really began to talk ghostly. L[ord] B[yron] repeated some verses of Coleridge’s Christabel, of the witch’s breast; when silence ensued, and Shelley, suddenly shrieking and putting his hands to his head, ran out of the room with a candle.’ This is from the diaries of John William Polidori, physician and writer, born 230 years ago today. He is best remembered today for his novella The Vampyre, often described as the first modern vampire story in English literature, but his surviving diaries also provide an unusually vivid portrait of a gifted young man caught between literary ambition and family expectation.

Born in London on 7 September 1795 to an Italian émigré scholar and an English mother, Polidori studied medicine at Edinburgh, graduating as a doctor at only nineteen. Restless and ambitious, he sought literary fame as much as medical distinction. In 1816 he entered the service of Lord Byron as his travelling physician and accompanied him to Geneva, where he found himself among an extraordinary circle that included Percy Bysshe Shelley and Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin (later Mary Shelley). The gathering at the Villa Diodati in June 1816 has since become legendary, for it was there that the company challenged one another to write ghost stories - an evening that led Mary Shelley to conceive Frankenstein and Polidori to begin what would become The Vampyre.

Dismissed by Byron, Polidori travelled in Italy and then returned to England. His story, The Vampyre, which featured the main character Lord Ruthven, was published in the April 1819 issue of New Monthly Magazine without his permission. Whilst in London he lived on Great Pulteney Street in Soho. Much to both his and Byron’s chagrin, The Vampyre was released as a new work by Byron. Byron’s own vampire story Fragment of a Novel was published in 1819 in an attempt to clear up the confusion, but, for better or worse, The Vampyre continued to be attributed to him. Polidori’s long, Byron-influenced theological poem The Fall of the Angels was published anonymously in 1821; but in August that year Polidoro died. The coroner gave a verdict of death by natural causes, but his family believed he committed suicide with prussic acid. Further biographical information is available from Wikipedia and The Millions.

Polidori’s diaries cover his youthful years in Edinburgh, his time with Byron, and the troubled period that followed. They reveal a man both enthralled and embittered by his proximity to greatness. He often complained of Byron’s arrogance and treatment of him as a mere servant, while at the same time recording his own bouts of melancholy, gambling losses, and quarrels with family. His diary for 1816-1817, edited by William Michael Rossetti in 1911, has become a key document for scholars studying the Villa Diodati circle.

After his death, Polidori’s sister Charlotte transcribed the diaries, but censored ‘peccant passages’ and destroyed the original. Based only on the transcription, The Diary of John Polidori was edited by William Michael Rossetti and first published in 1911 by Elkin Mathews (London) - this is freely available online at Internet Archive. Reprints followed in teh 1970s, and a new edition of The Diary of John William Polidori was issued by Cornell University in 2009.

Here is a flavour of Polidori’s diary, though I have omitted the annotations and explanations (about the genesis of The Vampyre for example), which take up many pages in the published editions.

17 June 1816

‘Went into the town; dined out with Lord and Madame etc. here. Went after dinner to a ball at Madame Odier’s; where I was introduced to Princess Something and Countess Potocka, Poles, and had with them a long confab. Attempted to dance, but felt such horrid pain was forced to stop. The ghost-stories are begun by all but me.’

18 June 1816

‘My leg much worse. Shelley and party here. Mrs. S[helley] called me her brother (younger). Began my ghost-story after tea. Twelve o’clock, really began to talk ghostly. L[ord] B[yron] repeated some verses of Coleridge’s Christabel, of the witch’s breast; when silence ensued, and Shelley, suddenly shrieking and putting his hands to his head, ran out of the room with a candle. Threw water in his face, and after gave him ether. He was looking at Mrs. S[helley], and suddenly thought of a woman he had heard of who had eyes instead of nipples, which, taking hold of his mind, horrified him. He married; and, a friend of his liking his wife, he tried all he could to induce her to love him in turn. He is surrounded by friends who feed upon him, and draw upon him as their banker. Once, having hired a house, a man wanted to make him pay more, and came trying to bully him, and at last challenged him. Shelley refused, and was knocked down; coolly said that would not gain him his object, and was knocked down again. Slaney called.’

19 June 1816

‘Leg worse; began my ghost-story. Mr. S[helley?] etc. forth here. Bonstetten and Rossi called. B[onstetten] told me a story of the religious feuds in Appenzel; a civil war between Catholics and Protestants. Battle arranged; chief and commander calls the other. Calls himself and other friends. One will not persuade of his being wrong. Other accepted, and persuaded them to take the boundary rivulet; and they did. Bed at 3 as usual.’

20 June 1816

‘My leg kept me at home. Shelley etc. here.’

5 September 1816

‘Not written my Journal till now through neglect and dissipation. Had a long explanation with S[helley] and L[ord] B[yron] about my conduct to L[ord] B[yron]; threatened to shoot S[helley] one day on the water. Horses been a subject of quarrel twice, Berger having accused me of laming one.’

17 September 1816

‘Left St. Gingoux at 6. Walked to __. Took bread and wine. Crossed to Chillon. Saw Bonivard’s prison for six years; whence a Frenchman had broken, and, passing through a window, swam to a boat. Instruments of torture, - the pulley. Three soldiers there now: the Roman arms already affixed. Large subterranean passes. Saw in passing the three treed islands. The Rhone enters by two mouths, and keeps its waters distinct for two stones’ throw.

From Chillon I went to Montreaux - breakfasted - leaving Charney on my left. I began to mount towards the Dent de Jamanu. Before beginning to mount Jamanu itself, one has a beautiful view, seeing only part of the lake, bound by Meillerie, Roches, and the Rhone. Higher up the view is more extensive, but not so beautiful - nothing being distinct; the water looking merely as an inlet of sky, but one could see the Jura as far as Genthoud.

I entered a chalet, where they expressed great astonishment at my drinking whey, which they give to their pigs only. Refused at first money.

Descended towards Mont Boyon. What owing to the fatigue and hardly meeting any one, sick with grief. At Mont Boyon dined, and, finding they would not dance, slept immediately after.’

30 September 1816

‘Up at 5. Off at 6 in a large barge, with yesterday’s English party and two carriages, by the Tessino and canal to Milan: at first through a fine hilly country, and rapidly by the Tessino flood. After, slower, and through a flat plain with trees and neat villas and hanging grapes, to Milan. Slept out of the town by the canal.’

2 October 1816

‘Got up at 8. Breakfasted on grapes, bread and butter, wine, and figs. Wrote to Lord Byron. Dressed. Went to Marchese Lapone - not at home; Monsignor Brema - not at home. Walked about looking at booksellers’ shops. Entered the Duomo - invisible almost, so black and dark. They were putting up drapery for Friday, which is the Emperor’s birthday (probably the same as for Napoleon). Returned home, arranged my papers. Took a walk on the Corso; then to the Teatro Rè. The same price for all the places. The piece Il Sogno di Ariosto [Dream of Ariosto], where Fortune, Merit, Orgoglio, with Mrs. Disinganno, were all personified. The dialogue abounded in truths, especially regarding women, which they applauded. The theatre is very small, like the Haymarket. Home to bed.’

Riezler’s controversial diaries

‘If peace is concluded soon, the Polish question must lead to disaster. It has now become clear that at the Vienna negotiations in the summer nothing at all positive was achieved.’ This is from the diaries of Kurt Riezler, a German philosopher, diplomat and political adviser who died seventy years ago today. A few years after his death, the diaries fuelled a fierce historiography debate - the so-called Fischer Controversy - over Germany’s responsibility for the outbreak of the First World War.

Riezler was born in 1882 in Munich into a cultured family. He studied philosophy and classical philology at Munich and Berlin, completing his doctorate under Heinrich Rickert. In 1906 he entered the German diplomatic service, working first in St. Petersburg and later in The Hague. Riezler became one of Chancellor Theobald von Bethmann Hollweg’s closest advisers during the First World War, shaping German war aims and peace strategies. 

After the war, Riezler held academic and journalistic posts, served as political editor of the Frankfurter Zeitung, and taught philosophy and political theory. In 1927, he wed Käthe, the daughter of the painter Max Liebermann, a leading figure in German Impressionism. Dismissed by the Nazis in 1933, he emigrated to the United States, becoming a professor at the New School for Social Research in New York. He returned to Germany after the Second World War, living his last years in Munich, where he died on 5 September 1955. Further information is available from Wikipedia or The International Encyclopedia of the First World War.

Riezler’s reputation as a diarist rests primarily on the journals he kept during the First World War, where he documented not only military and diplomatic developments but also his personal reflections on politics, culture, and the fate of Europe. His notes are valued for the insight they provide into the inner workings of German policy-making and for his candid assessments of allies and adversaries alike. The diaries were preserved and eventually published posthumously, most notably in the 1972 volume Tagebücher, Aufsätze, Dokumente, edited by Karl Dietrich Erdmann, which made accessible his important Ergänzungstagebuch (Supplementary Diary) of 1914-1918.

Riezler’s wartime diaries later became central to the so-called Fischer controversy, the fierce historiographical debate of the 1960s over Germany’s responsibility for the outbreak of the First World War. Fritz Fischer had already drawn on partial access to the diaries when publishing Griff nach der Weltmacht in 1961, using them to argue that Bethmann Hollweg and the German leadership were prepared to risk a European conflagration in pursuit of expansionist aims. Fischer’s critics questioned the reliability of the text, pointing to gaps in the surviving material, entries that appeared to have been rewritten, and the retrospective nature of some passages. Thus the very diaries that seemed to offer unique insight into high policy were also contested as to their authenticity and evidentiary weight, sharpening the lines of division in one of modern history’s most influential scholarly disputes.

Although I can find no published translations of Riezler’s diaries, the original German is freely available at Internet Archive. The following is a randomly chosen extract, transcribed and then translated by ChatGPT.

30 November 1916

‘Everything favourable. Romania. Great effect in the West.

If peace is concluded soon, the Polish question must lead to disaster. It has now become clear that at the Vienna negotiations in the summer nothing at all positive was achieved. At that time, Burian, under the compulsion of circumstances, gave in with vague phrases, but inwardly did not abandon the idea; in Vienna they still think of the old plan of swallowing the whole thing, want to spoil the broth for us, increase the demands of the Poles at our expense, and hope that in all the ensuing confusion the political leadership will fall to them. Now we find ourselves, after our hands have been tied by Vienna’s withdrawal (through the Manifesto), in a wretched position. If we wish to push back the Austrians by means of the Poles under the slogan of uniting the two administrative districts and appointing a Regent - both of which are the first Polish demands expected from the new State Council - then we shall fall into a mutual escalation of concessions to the Poles and their claims, which are no longer bearable and must lead to independence, as is now the case, and must make Poland into a centre of the wildest intrigues by West and East against us and our relations with Austria. Given the state of affairs in the Ostmark, and the unavoidable follies there even after the war, and the rancour of the Hofburg, we shall be driven completely under the sleigh. Added to this, any peace congress at which negotiations are not dictated under unequal conditions but rather conducted more evenly, will, under Russian, French, and English influence, ensure that the country becomes entirely independent and in no way turned into a Luxembourg-type state, and in this the opponents will still find support from Austria-Hungary. That would bring a fine debacle, this time for the Reich Chancellor and all German policy, especially as the whole world here believes that, after Jagow’s declarations to the press and party leadership, we had successfully resisted Austrian aspirations and prevailed with our thesis.

Here timely help must be given. Otherwise the country will fall, under immense disgrace for Germany, for the same reason as in 1815, because Berlin and Vienna cannot find a solution with Russia, and the whole hopeful beginning of a new line in Germany - and in this case in Prague - will be destroyed, and the country will be thrown back, in the German foreign policy, into territorial and spiritual dependence which may be convenient for some decades, but must then lead to ruin or vassalage under the Tsar.

I see only three possibilities: either to speak plainly with Vienna, resume the old position of a Kingdom of North Poland and divide it between the two powers, attempt to abolish the condominium, or finally return it to Russia with autonomy - or the third, best, though all doubt its feasibility - a constitutional union of the two Empires, with Bulgaria, to which Poland should be attached. Then it may be almost independent, and then the condominium may also go.

Here everything is decided: the whole system of salvation or fragmentation of Europe, and also the future spirit of the Germans, whether they will find their renewal in their best traditions or not.’

Plundered woods

‘Our Woods have been latterly so extensively plundered, that I have found it necessary to engage an Under Woodward which since Mr. Llewelyns decease I have tried to do without - Agreed also that next year he shall be partially employed as Game Keeper for our Woods are now poached in every direction.’ This is from the diaries of Lewis Weston Dillwyn, a British porcelain manufacturer, naturalist and Whig Member of Parliament, who died 170 years ago today. His diaries, recently transcribed and made available online by Swansea University, are said to illuminate both his scientific pursuits and his social life.

Dillwyn was born in 1778, most likely at St Thomas’s Square, Hackney, London, though some accounts say Ipswich. He was the eldest son of William Dillwyn, a returned Pennsylvania Quaker and abolitionist, and Sarah Weston. Educated at a Friends’ school in Tottenham, Dillwyn began to study botany during a stay in Dover in 1798, later presenting his observations to the Linnean Society in 1801.

In 1802, Dillwyn’s father purchased the Cambrian Pottery in Swansea and installed Lewis as head; by 1803 he had moved there. He steered the factory toward higher-quality products, including porcelain, and published important early scientific works: Natural History of British Confervae (1802-09), the Botanist’s Guide through England and Wales (1805, with Dawson Turner), and A Descriptive Catalogue of British Shells (1817).

He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1804, and married Mary Adams, heiress of John Llewelyn of Penlle’rgaer, in 1807; and they had six children. Dillwyn’s scientific reputation grew alongside his civic duties: he served as High Sheriff of Glamorgan in 1818, MP for Glamorganshire from 1832 to 1841, and Mayor of Swansea in 1839. He was also a founder and first President of the Royal Institution of South Wales, and he authored a short history of Swansea in 1840. He died at Sketty Hall near Swansea on 31 August 1855. More information is available at Wikipedia. 

Dillwyn maintained diaries from 1817 to 1852 - voluminous records covering his personal, scientific, business, and public life, as well as travels such as a continental tour in 1836. The original manuscripts reside at the National Library of Wales, with transcripts by Richard Morris accessible online at the Swansea University website. Extracts have appeared in the South Wales and Monmouth Record Society publications. His diaries offer meticulously dated entries, shedding light on his scientific observations, estate concerns, social interactions, and official duties. A notably personal diary recounts travels in Ireland (1809), with a pocket-book–sized journal covering Killarney, Cork, and surrounding locations, preserved in Trinity College Dublin.

Here are some (fairly random) samples from the diaries as transcribed by Richard Morrises 

25 November 1822

‘Mr. Charles Tennant arrived & spent most of the morning in making fresh proposals on his Fathers & Lord Jerseys behalf, respecting a Consent to carry his new Canal through our strip of land at Cadoxton - Sir C.Cole, Sir Jo. Morris, Mr.Hill & Mr.Crawshay arrived to dine & sleep here’

11 December 1822

‘Engaged all Day at home, except that I walked with my Boys to look at the Nydfwch Woods - Our Woods have been latterly so extensively plundered, that I have found it necessary to engage an Under Woodward which since Mr.Llewelyns decease I have tried to do without - Agreed also that next year he shall be partially employed as Game Keeper for our Woods are now poached in every direction.’

17 June 1823

‘Went in the morning to the Philosophical Institution where I met the Dean of Bristol & Revd D Cooke with whom I spent an hour very pleasantly. In the Evening took a warm Bath’

21 December 1829

‘Drove in the Phaeton to Swansea & was persuaded by Capt Hickey & Geo Jones to drop all proceedings against Capt Gifford in receiving their Guarranty [sic] that he should not again trespass on our Manor or otherwise annoy me.’

12 February 1830

‘Reached Town at ½ past 8 [?] as the Mail was 2 hours later than usual through the excessive badness of the Roads. Took up Quarters at Hatchetts Hotel, & went as soon as I had breakfasted to see my Sister Mrs Sims of whom I had received very alarming accounts & who I found sinking fast from a decline. Being much tired I lounged the day away between Cavendish Square & our new Athenaeum which was opened last Monday. About 9 went to Bed’

3 February 1831

‘I walked to the Petty Sessions at Llangafelach & R Mansell accompanied me on his way to Swansea. Mary & Fanny went in the Phaeton & the former remained with Mrs Llewelyn. John & Mr Strickland went to pay a Visit at Penrice, & were immovably stuck in the Snow on Park Hill for ½ an hour till they were relieved by getting the assistance of 2 Cart horses. Lewis was to have accompanied them, but was too unwell from a Cold’

12 January 1844

‘My dear John has this day compleated his 34th year & a violent Rain which lasted till Evening prevented us from driving to Penllergare, & stopped his promised visit to us. Disappointed in not seeing the Nicholls for which we had prepared. Miss D went to the Grand Ball at Singleton & did not come home till about 7 in the morning. John Traherne had come over from the Gnoll to attend it & dined & slept at Parkwern’

Strapped to this journal

‘I’m strapped to this journal. Grunt. Heave. Impression that the ship is going down. The furniture slides, the table legs wobble …’ This is from the diary of Félix Guattari, a French philosopher, psychoanalyst, and activist who died 33 years ago today. Although not a diarist by nature, a collection of diary-like writings from his notebooks were published posthumously.

Guattari was born in 1930 in Villeneuve-les-Sablons, Oise, France, into a modest family background - his father was a metal worker and his mother a secretary. He attended secondary school in Enghien-les-Bains before moving on to Paris, where he became involved in student political circles. In his youth he developed a strong interest in philosophy and psychoanalysis. He trained with Jacques Lacan in the late 1940s and early 1950s, though he soon began to distance himself from Lacanian orthodoxy, pursuing a more experimental and collective approach to therapy.

In 1953, Guattari began working at the experimental La Borde Clinic near Blois, founded and directed by Jean Oury. La Borde became central to both his personal and professional life; he lived and worked there for much of the rest of his career. The clinic’s practice of institutional psychotherapy sought to dismantle rigid hierarchies by involving both patients and staff in the daily running of the institution, fostering collective forms of responsibility and therapeutic community. This practical experience deeply informed Guattari’s theoretical work, as he attempted to interweave psychoanalysis, politics, and philosophy.

Beyond his clinical activity, Guattari was heavily involved in left-wing activism. During the 1960s, he participated in far-left groups, supported anti-colonial struggles in Algeria and Vietnam, and was an active presence in the events of May 1968. Around this period, he began his celebrated collaboration with philosopher Gilles Deleuze, then teaching at the University of Paris VIII at Vincennes. Their joint publications, Anti-Oedipus (1972) and A Thousand Plateaus (1980), were later collected under the common title Capitalism and Schizophrenia. These works critiqued both Freudian psychoanalysis and orthodox Marxism, offering instead a radical exploration of desire, subjectivity, and social assemblages. They became central texts in contemporary Continental philosophy and cultural theory.

In addition to these collaborative works, Guattari published influential texts of his own, including Molecular Revolution (1977), Chaosmosis (1992), and the posthumously collected Soft Subversions. These writings continued his exploration of subjectivity, ecology, and collective enunciation.

Guattari married Nadine Charbonnel in 1961, with whom he had three children. Despite his involvement in international intellectual and political movements, he remained grounded at La Borde, where personal, professional, and political worlds often overlapped. He continued to write, teach, and practice therapy until his sudden death from a heart attack at La Borde on 29 August 1992, at the age of sixty-two. Further information is available from Wikipedia.

After his death, several collections of his unpublished writings appeared, notably The Anti-Oedipus Papers (2006), which contains diary entries and working notes from 1969 to 1973. They present a more personal and unguarded side of his thought - urgent, confessional, and exploratory - recording his creative struggles during the development of Anti-Oedipus as well as his conflicts with Lacan and his work at La Borde. A few pages can be sampled at Amazon. Back in 2015, The Paris Review published this extract from The Anti-Oedipus Papers, as translated by Stéphane Nadaud.

10 June 1972

‘I’m strapped to this journal. Grunt. Heave. Impression that the ship is going down. The furniture slides, the table legs wobble …

Writing so that I won’t die. Or so that I die otherwise. Sentences breaking up. Panting like for what. [. . .]

You can explain everything away. I explain myself away. But to whom? You know … The question of the other. The other and time. I’m home kind of fucking around. Listening to my own words. Redundancy. Peepee poopoo. Things are so fucking weird! [. . .]

Have to be accountable. Yield to arguments. What I feel like is just fucking around. Publish this diary for example. Say stupid shit. Barf out the fucking-around-o-maniacal schizo flow. Barter whatever for whoever wants to read it. Now that I’m turning into a salable name I can find an editor for sure [. . .] Work the feed-back; write right into the real. But not just the professional readers’ real, “Quinzaine polemical” style. The close, hostile real. People around. Fuck shit up. The stakes greater than the oeuvre or they don’t attain it [. . .]

Just setting up the terms of this project makes me feel better. My breathing is freed up by one notch. Intensities. A literary-desiring machine. [. . .]

When it works I have a ton to spare, I don’t give a shit, I lose it as fast as it comes, and I get more. Active forgetting! What matters is interceding when it doesn’t work, when it spins off course, and the sentences are fucked up, and the words disintegrate, and the spelling is total mayhem. Strange feeling, when I was small, with some words. Their meaning would disappear all of a sudden. Panic. And I have to make a text out of that mess and it has to hold up: that is my fundamental schizo-analytic project. Reconstruct myself in the artifice of the text. Among other things, escape the multiple incessant dependencies on images incarnating the “that’s how it goes!”

Writing for nobody? Impossible. You fumble, you stop. I don’t even take the trouble of expressing myself so that when I reread myself I can understand whatever it was I was trying to say. Gilles will figure it out, he’ll work it through. [. . .]

I tell myself I can’t take the plunge and leave this shit for publication because that would inconvenience Gilles. But really, though? I just need to cross out the passages he’s directly involved in. I’m hiding behind this argument so that I can let myself go again and just fucking float along. Even though when it comes to writing an article, I start over like twenty-five times!!

And this dance of anxiety …’

Calhoun in the Black Hills

James or Jimmi Calhoun, soldier in the US Army, was born 170 years ago today. He married George Custer’s sister, and was transferred to Custer’s 7th Cavalry Regiment. When the regiment was sent to explore the forbidding Black Hills, Calhoun kept an official diary of the expedition. Two years later, aged but 30, he was killed, along with his boss, at the Battle of Little Bighorn, also known as Custer’s Last Stand.

Calhoun was born on 24 August 1845 in Cincinnati, Ohio, into a rich merchant family. When the Civil War broke out, he was travelling in Europe, but on returning to the US, in 1864, he enlisted in the Union Army. By 1867, he had been commissioned as second lieutenant in the infantry. In 1870, he met Maggie, the sister of General George Custer, and they were married in 1872. By this time, Custer had promoted Calhoun to first lieutenant, had transferred him to his own regiment, the 7th cavalry, and had made him his adjutant. Custer and many of his men, including Calhoun, died in 1876, at the Battle of the Little Bighorn - famously remembered as Custer’s Last Stand - an overwhelming victory for the Native Americans against the US government. Subsequently, the site of the battle was named Calhoun Hill.

Two years earlier, in 1874, Custer had embarked on an expedition to the unexplored Black Hills, in what is now South Dakota, tasked with finding locations for a fort, seeking out a route to the southwest, and investigating the possibility of gold mining. He set off with around a thousand men, several Native American scouts, over a hundred wagons, artillery, and two months food supply. Calhoun kept a detailed diary of the expedition. This was edited by Lawrence A. Frost and published in 1979 by Brigham Young University Press as With Custer in ‘74: James Calhoun’s diary of the Black Hills expedition. For more on Calhoun see Wikipedia or ElectricScotland, and for more on the Black Hills expedition see Wikipedia or Dr Brian Dippie at the Friends of the Little Bighorn Battlefield website. Here, though, are a few extracts from the published diary.

17 July 1874
‘The command moved at 5 o’clock. Two more rattlesnakes added to the family. Saw an Indian trail.

In full view of the Black Hills.

Two extensive fires from the direction of the Black Hills - at midnight the very heavens seemed on fire. Marched 18 miles. Arrived at Camp No. 16. No wood, very little water.’

7 August 1874
‘Travelled through a rich country - high rolling prairie - good arable land, extensive forests of fine timber, principally pine of large growth. Passed several small valleys with beautiful streams of crystal water running through them. A large mountain (grizzly) bear was killed late this afternoon. I should judge its weight to be about 800 lbs. The following named persons shot him: General Custer, USA, Capt W. Ludlow, Engineer Corps, USA, Private Jno Noonan, Co. L. 7th Cavalry, Bloody Knife, Indian scout.

Mr. Illingworth, a photographer of St. Paul, Minn., acompanying the Expedition, took a photograph of the hunters on a high knoll behind the tent of the Commanding Officer.

The Indian also killed a bear.

Abundant supply of wood. In the Black Hills there is no scarcity of timber. Extensive forests of large timber run all through this country, and for this reason I have not mentioned for several days past the fact of wood being found at our camps.

Marched 16 half miles, arrived at Camp No. 29. An excellent stream of water running through camp.

Good grazing.’

16 August 1874
‘Saw Indians on the right intercepted by Bloody Knife and Cold Hand, who report that six (6) bands of hostile Indians are encamped on the east side of the Little Missouri awaiting to attack this command on its return march. These Indians, four (4) in number, belong to Cheyenne Agency.

Travelled nearly north. At noon arrived at the “Belle Fourche River.” The wagons were loaded with wood and water. Our general direction is towards “Slave Butte.”

28 August 1874
‘The General obtained two (2) porcupines. March 16 quarter miles. Arrived at Camp No. 47. Abundant supply of wood, water and grass.’ [Although this is the last of the diary entries, the diary is supplemented in the published book by Calhoun’s letters.

This article is a slightly revised version of one first published on 24 August 2015.

My imagination flies

‘I just said - “My imagination flies, like Noah’s dove, from the ark of my mind . . . and finds no place on which to rest the sole of her foot except Coleridge - Wordsworth and Southey.” ’ This is a young Thomas De Quincey, author of Confessions of English Opium-Eater, born 240 years ago today, confessing to his diary how he yearned to meet the Lake Poets. Later, of course, he would meet them; and some of his most important contributions to literature would be writing about those very poets. Unfortunately, it seems, he only kept that one diary - not published until the 20th century - for a few months in 1803.

Thomas was born in Manchester on 15 August 1785. His father, Quincey, also Thomas, was a successful merchant. In 1796, three years after the death of an elder sister and then his father, his mother moved to Bath and changed the family name to De Quincey. Thomas was enrolled in a series of schools, and proved a precocious student. During 1800-1801, he came into contact with various literary figures, and became keen on the poets Coleridge and Wordsworth. Having been refused permission to enter Oxford early, he absconded from Manchester grammar in 1802. His family, accepting the decision, allowed him one guinea a week, and he set off on a walking tour in North Wales.

De Quincey, however, soon lost his regular guinea by failing to write letters home. He borrowed money, went to London, where he preferred destitution to the prospect of family constraints. He later claimed to have been protected and comforted, innocently, by a young prostitute whom he celebrated in Confessions. Eventually, though, in early 1803, he was found by friends, and returned home. He was sent to stay in Everton, near Liverpool, for several months, and was then allowed to go to Worcester College, Oxford, on a reduced income. On the final day of his exams in 1808, he suffered a loss of nerve, and fled to London. During his student years, he had become acquainted with Coleridge and Wordsworth, and, in 1809, moved to Grasmere, in the Lake District, where he lived in Dove Cottage (once occupied by the Wordsworths - see Daffodils so beautiful). He studied German literature, planned an ambitious philosophical work, and travelled occasionally to London or Edinburgh.

De Quincey had first tried opium during a visit to London in 1804, apparently to ease the pain of toothache. By 1813, or so, his irregular use of the drug had become a daily habit. By the following year, he had begun an affair with Margaret, 18 at the time, who bore him a child in 1816. They married the following year, and would go on to have seven more children. However, De Quincey’s meagre income was failing, so he turned to journalism, finding employment as editor for a weekly Tory newspaper, The Westmorland Gazette. He proved poor at meeting deadlines, and, after a little more than a year, he relinquished the post. A position writing for Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine was even more short-lived.

In the summer of 1821, he took lodgings in London, where he worked on Confessions of an English Opium-Eater, an account of his early life and opium addiction that appeared in the September and October issues of the London Magazine. His Confessions were an immediate success, and attracted nationwide attention. They were published in book form in 1822, and regularly reissued in his own life time, and ever since. Over the next five years, he published upwards of 20 essays for the magazine, but money problems persisted. In 1825, he was evicted from Fox Ghyll, Rydal (which he’d taken on when more money was coming in from the London Magazine), and went to live with Margaret’s parents. By 1830, the family had relocated to Edinburgh, where De Quincey was regularly contributing to Blackwood’s Magazine, but then mostly to Tait’s Edinburgh Magazine - often but a hair’s breadth from debtors’ prison.

From 1840 or so, De Quincey’s life became more stable, as his eldest daughter, Margaret, took charge of her father’s affairs and finances. Over the next decade and more, he published regularly: a series of reminiscences of the Lake Poets in Tait’s is considered one of his most important works. He also went back to Blackwood’s contributing several works including a sequel to Confesssions. From 1850, most of his work was being published by James Hogg in The Instructor. Ticknor and Fields of Boston, US, undertook to publish a collected edition of De Quincey’s works. The 22 volumes were poorly organised and flawed, which prompted Hogg to suggest that De Quincey himself work on a revised edition of his own writings. This task - including a much lengthened Confessions - took up most of the rest of his working life. It was while working on the fourteenth and last volume that he died, in 1859. Further information on De Quincey can be found at Wikipedia, Historic UK, reviews of Morrison’s biography (The English Opium Eater) such as at The Guardian or The Washington Post, or Encyclopaedia Britannica. Confessions of an Opium-Eater is freely available at Internet Archive.

De Quincey kept a diary for a few short months, during his sojourn in Everton, before going to Oxford. It was first edited by Horace A. Eaton, Professor of English at Syracuse University in the US and published by Noel Douglas in 1927 as A Diary of Thomas De Quincey - Here reproduced in replica as well as in print from the original manuscript in the possession of the Reverend C. H. Steel. According to the book’s editor, the diary, 101 pages long, is contained in ‘a shabby little volume in quarto, with torn leaves and untidy scribbled pages, partly filled with a list of books’. Substantial further information about the diary can be found at the National Archives website. Here are a few sample extracts from the 1927 edition.

4 May 1803
‘Read 99 pages of “Accusg Spirit; - walked into the lanes; - met a fellow who counterfeited drunkenness or lunacy or idiocy; - I say counterfeited, because I am well convinced he was some vile outcast of society - a pest and disgrace to humanity. I was just on the point of hittg him a dab on his disgustg face when a gentleman (coming up) alarmed him and saved me trouble.’

5 May 1803
‘Last night I imaged to myself the heroine of the novel dying on an island of a lake, the chamber-windows (opening on a lawn) set wide open - and the sweet blooming roses breathing yr odours on her dying senses.[. . .]

Last night too I image myself looking through a glass. “What do you see?” I see a man in the dim and shadowy perspective and (as it were) in a dream. He passes along in silence, and the hues of sorrow appear on his countenance. Who is he? A man darkly wonderful - above the beings of this world; but whether that shadow of him, which you saw, be ye shadow of a man long since passed away or of one yet hid in futurity, I may not tell you.’

3 June 1803
‘Rise between 11 and 12 - go to W’s; - read out “Henry the Fourth”; (part 1st) which Mrs. E. pronounces “a very pretty play.” Almost immediately after this is finished  . . . dinner is announced; - I go without seeing Mr. W.; walk, by French prison and lane, to windmill on shore; - turn back along shore; cross over to French prison; - go to C’s; - dine there again by myself; - open a volume of the Encyclopaedia; read 2 pages of the life of Frederick the Great of Prussia . . . containing the origin of his acquaintance with Voltaire - his mode of spending the time as described by Voltaire; then read the article “French” (language) in the same volume; - open no other book; - go to W’s; ring and ask if the ladies are really gone, as they talked of doing, to Mossley; - find they are gone in spite of the rain; - walk to Everton; - find postman at door; - decypher a letter; - lend Miss B. 2s 3d to pay the postage of one; - the other (2s 2d) she leaves unpaid, though I offered to lend her the money; - both come from the coast of Africa; - Miss B. seems wild with joy; - has received money I suppose; I drink coffee.’

15 June 1803
‘I just said - “My imagination flies, like Noah’s dove, from the ark of my mind . . . and finds no place on which to rest the sole of her foot except Coleridge - Wordsworth and Southey.” This morning (and indeed many times before) I said - “Bacon’s mind appears to me like a great abyss - on the brink of which the imagination startles and shudders to look down” - Of that gilded fly of Corsica - Bonaparte - I said just now (what I have applied to others too - using it as a general curse) “May he be thirsty to all eternity - and have nothing but cups of damnation to drink.” ’

This article is a slightly revised version of one first published on 15 August 2015.

Shooting with Antonioni

‘I fall into bed exhausted. I dream that Jeanne Moreau wants to come out of the painting too, but for some reason I can’t do it for her. I know I’ll be dreaming of the filming for weeks to come; I always do when I’ve finished a shoot.’ This is Wim Wenders - today celebrating his 80th birthday - writing one of the last entries in his diary of an ‘extraordinary experience’ filming with the Italian director Michelangelo Antonioni.

Wenders was born in Düsseldorf on 14 August 1945, into a traditional Catholic family. His father was a surgeon. He went to school in Oberhausen, then studied medicine and philosophy in Freiburg and Düsseldorf, but dropped out of university to go to Paris to paint. It was to the film world, though, that he was soon drawn. Returning to Germany, he took a job in the Düsseldorf office of United Artists, before studying for three years (1967-1970) at Hochschule für Fernsehen und Film München  (Munich’s university for TV and film). At the same time, he wrote film reviews for national magazines, including Der Spiegel.

With other directors and writers in 1971, he founded the company Filmverlag der Autoren; and then, later, he set up his own production company, Road Movies. In 1978, he went to Hollywood to direct Hammett, but disputes with the executive producer Francis Ford Coppola, resulted in a delayed release and a truncated version. Wenders first international successes came in the 1980s, especially with films like The State of Things (1982), Paris, Texas (1984) which won him several significant awards, including the Palme d’Or and Baftas, and Wings of Desire (1987). His films are known for their lush visual imagery, much of which stems from the work of his longstanding collaborator, the Dutch cinematographer Robby Müller.

Wenders has directed several well-received documentaries, such as Buena Vista Social Club (1999), and The Soul of a Man (2003), many music videos for bands, as well as television commercials. He is a member of the advisory board of World Cinema Foundation, founded by Martin Scorsese. Alongside his film work, Wenders has also forged a major reputation as a photographer, exhibiting regularly and widely. The Wim Wenders Foundation, Düsseldorf, was created in 2012 to bring together his artistic work in film, literary and photographic fields, so as to make it publicly accessible. Among many other honours, he was presented with the Honorary Golden Bear at the 65th Berlin International Film Festival in February 2015.

Ten years ago, a happy 70th birthday message on the official Wim Wenders read as follows: ‘The long and winding road. So sang the Beatles in 1970. Wim was just 25 years old then and since then what a journey it’s been. Along the way we’ve witnessed his images, words and sounds. A photographer, painter, observer, explorer, storyteller, collector and cartographer. The journey with Wim allows us to see a new world. A world that encompasses his art. And whilst not all of his portraits show people, there’s a sense of humanity we can all feel part of. Ingmar Bergman talks about the wonder of silence. Wim’s imagery instills silence and yet if we get lost on our journey his music guides us back.’ For more on Wenders see Wikipedia, Senses of Cinema, Villa e Collezione Panza, or Images Journal.

I can find no obvious evidence that Wenders is a diary keeper by nature, but for a few months in the winter of 1994-1995, he did keep a diary, with the specific purpose of recording time spent with Antononio. A decade earlier, the renowned Italian director had suffered a stroke, and lost the ability to speak or write, though he could draw with his left hand. After much negotiation, and many delays, he and his wife, Enrica, had assembled finance, actors and crew to make a last film - Beyond the Clouds - comprising four of his own stories about romance and illusion. A condition of the producers was that another director be on hand - hence Wim Wenders’ nominal role as co-diretor.

The diary kept by Wenders was first published in German in 1995, and then translated by Michael Hofmann for publication in English in 200 as My Time with Antonioni - The Diary of an Extraordinary Experience. (A few pages can be sampled at Amazon.) Wenders wrote about the project in an article for The Guardian; but what comes across most forcefully when reading Wenders’ book is the huge effort - as well as compromises in Wenders’ case - made by so many people to bring Antonioni’s vision to the screen. Here are two extracts, from the first and last entries - the first and last days of shooting - in the English edition of the diary.

3 November 1994
‘First day of shoot. At last. Because the shoot has been put back from spring to summer and now to autumn, I’ve been able to be with Michelangelo and the crew during the last week of preparations in Portofino, the location for the first episode, ‘La ragazza, il delitto’, but on the very eve of the shoot I have to be in Paris. The French edition of my book Once is coming out, and there’s an exhibition in the FNAC, press-conference and interviews, and the whole thing is due to end so late there’s no chance of getting back to Italy the same night.

There was a lovely, unexpected ending to the day when we were driven back to the hotel by Martine and Henri Cartier-Bresson. How attentive, kindly and alert the old gentleman was, always so careful not to appear ‘old’: he’d rather hold open a door himself than have it held for him.

Yesterday morning we went to see a demonstration of the latest HDTV-to-film transfer from Thomson’s, who are interested in working with Michelangelo and me. The images on screen, recorded digitally and then put on film, are really impressive, and only barely distinguishable from real film images. They might actually be the perfect language for Michelangelo to shoot his final episode, ‘Due telefaxi’. The electronic medium would match the atmosphere of the story. And wouldn’t it be appropriate, too, for Michelangelo to make the last part of his last film using the technology of the next century, seeing as he was one of the very first directors with a positive attitude to video, and was never shy of new technology? [. . .]

Today, then, the first day of the shoot, Donata and I got up bright and early, took the first plane from Paris to Milan, and drove to Portofino through mist and occasional rain, afraid the weather might make us late. But we arrive on time. The first clapboard is an hour later. The rain has delayed everything, and indeed it will dominate the day’s events.

First off, big excitement, not least among the producers: it appears that the moment he got on set, Michelangelo announced that everything is being changed around, so it’s not John Malkovich who’s going to come out the door and walk down into town, but Sophie Marceau. That means changing the bedroom, where we’re going to film later, from a ‘man’s room’ to a woman’s. ‘Here we go . . .’ you can see the producers thinking. But on closer inspection, the change makes sense. Michelangelo just hadn’t been in a position before to clear up our misunderstanding. It often seemed to me in our discussions that it was simply too much of an effort for him to make his intentions clear to us, and so occasionally he left us under some misapprehension, fully knowing that the moment of truth would dawn once we were filming. Also, Michelangelo has trouble differentiating between ‘he’ and ‘she’ when speaking, so we were often uncertain whether he was talking about the male or the female character in a story. [. . .]

Having this huge crew and these actors assembled here - all of us ready to give everything we have over the coming weeks - to make a film out of this shooting script and this schedule is Enrica’s personal triumph. And today, on the first day of the shoot, there she is standing in front of the monitors next to Michelangelo, beaming all over her face. Of course everyone is making a fuss of him, but we know that Erica was and is the driving force behind him. A great dream is becoming reality, for both of them. Now it is up to us to sustain the dream to the end, so there is no rude awakening.

In looking for my own niche, I keep in the background, and leave various initiatives and suggestions with Michelangelo’s helpers [. . .] I will have succeeded in my task if I find the right balance between staying out of it and, where absolutely necessary, taking a hand. And above all, I need to learn to keep my own ideas on how I would shoot a scene to myself, because they’re not helpful in this situation.[. . .]

I take a few stills photographs, with the Fuji 6x9, rather sheepishly. Donata dusts off her new Nikon F4 and takes some pictures of the shoot and the crew, in black and white. I’m sticking to colour.

It’s very late, and I feel totally exhausted. Being at a shoot without being in charge is much more taxing than I had imagined.

Over supper we laughed till we cried while Tonino regaled us with the story of how Fellini was the first person who managed to get food stains on his back while eating. Tonino demonstrated how Fellini broke a roll in half, and a piece of mortadella flew up in the air and landed between his shoulderblades. He kept imitating Fellini standing there, with the slice of meat sticking to his back, worrying about how cross Giulletta would be when she’d get to hear about his foolish adventure.’

29 March 1995
‘Sixty-fourth day of shoot. The last day. My shoot ends on the day all the newspapers are carrying photographs of Michelangelo with Jack Nicholson. They’re all full of reports of Oscar night, and I buy all the newspapers I can lay my hands on, especially the Italian ones. [. . .]

My first thanks are due to Robby and Donata. As the evening goes on, with all of us eating at a buffet in a hall off the studio, it gradually sinks in that this adventure is over for the moment. There’s still the editing and the post-production to come, but they can’t be as risky or as onerous as the shooting.

Someone turns up the music, and we dance ourselves off our feet.

I fall into bed exhausted. I dream that Jeanne Moreau wants to come out of the painting too, but for some reason I can’t do it for her. I know I’ll be dreaming of the filming for weeks to come; I always do when I’ve finished a shoot. And they’re always dreams where something impossible has to be done, too. I’ve never been on a shoot where I haven’t been plagued by these nightmares afterwards.’

This article is a slightly revised version of one first published on 14 August 2015.

Missing Tom and Kate

Today marks the 30th anniversary of the tragic death of the British mountain climber, Alison Hargreaves. Having scaled Everest without the aid of sherpas or bottled oxygen, she was intent on completing similar climbs of the second and third highest mountains, K2 and Kangchenjunga, but she died on the descent from the K2 summit. Her diaries, as used by David Rose and Ed Douglas in their biography, Regions of the Heart, reveal a woman constantly torn between love of her two children and her obsession not only to climb, but to make her mark as a mountain climber.

Hargreaves was born in 1962, and grew up in Belper, Derbyshire, the middle child of three. Her family were often out walking on the English hills, and aged nine she had raced ahead of them to be the first to the summit of Britain’s highest mountain, Ben Nevis. She was introduced to rock climbing aged 13, preferring to climb than to study for Oxford as her parents had done. Aged 16, while working in a climbing shop, she met amateur climber Jim Ballard, nearly twice her age. She left home two years later to live with him. The couple ran an outdoor equipment shop, while Hargreaves trained and climbed in her spare time. By her mid-20s, she had climbed in the Himalayas, but in 1988 - the year she married Jim - she was back in the Alps, notably climbing the north face of the Eiger while six months pregnant with Tom. Her second child, Kate, was born two years later.

By 1993, Alison and Jim were in so much debt they had to leave their house. They relocated to live in Switzerland, in an old Land Rover, so that Hargreaves could continue to climb. That year she became the first person ever to scale the six north faces of the Alps alone and in one season. This brought her media and sponsorship attention. She wrote a book about the feat - A Hard Day’s Summer - but it was poorly received, and money problems continued.

Hargreaves decided that her next project - for personal and financial reasons - should be Everest. She bailed on a first attempt in 1994 fearing frostbite, but a second attempt in May 1995 succeeded, making her the first woman to reach the summit alone and without supplementary oxygen (the first man was Reinhold Messner - see Death on Nanga Parbat). She quickly made further plans to conquer the second two highest mountains in the world (K2 and Kangchenjunga). After a brief trip back to see her family in the UK, she returned to the Himalayas in June to join an American team with a permit to climb K2. For weeks, stormy weather kept the team at base camp. By August, remnants of the team had joined up with members of other teams from Canada and New Zealand. Peter Hillary, son of Edmund who along with Tenzing Norgay completed the first successful ascent of Mount Everest (see On top of Mount Everest), was also there with a Spanish team.

On 13 August, Hillary decided to turn back and go down, forecasting a change in weather conditions. However, Hargreaves and Spaniard Javier Olivar saw fine weather and made for the summit, reaching it at 6.45pm, making Hargreaves the first woman to conquer both Everest and K2 without supplemental oxygen or support. Four other climbers reached the summit behind them; but, then, all six died in a violent storm on the way down. A seventh climber that had turned back below the summit died later from the effects of exposure. The next day two other Spanish climbers, lower down, saw debris equipment, and a body in the distance, and concluded it was Hargreaves who had been blown off the mountain in the storm.

Hillary, in an interview with The Independent, noted that a bizarre chemistry had developed among the several expeditions on the mountain ‘that meant they were going for the summit no matter what’. Of Alison, in particular, he said: ‘[She] was a brilliant climber but she had tremendous commercial pressures on her and she became obsessed. When you spoke to her it was clear that climbing came first and everything else was secondary.’

Further information is available from Wikipedia, Encyclopedia.com, a Guardian interview with Jim Ballard, the BBC, or The Independent’s obituary. Alison and Jim’s son, Tom, later became the first person to climb solo all six major north faces of the Alps in one winter - see The Telegraph, for example.

Hargreaves left behind a large volume of diary material which, apparently, was fought over by her husband on one side and her parents on the other. In any case, two journalist/climbers, David Rose and Ed Douglas were given access to them for their sympathetic biography Regions of the Heart - The Triumph and Tragedy of Alison Hargreaves (Michael Joseph, 1999).

The authors say: ‘Alison’s diaries provide a record of her life which is well in excess of a million words. For the period 1973-92, the quotations from them found here were copied by us from the originals, which were left at Meerbrook Lea when the house was repossessed in 1993 and rescued by her parents. Later diary entries were published in her own A Hard Day’s Summer (Hodder & Stoughton, 1994) and Jim Ballard’s One and two Halves to K2 (BBC Books, 1996).’

Unfortunately, their book quotes very few actual diary entries, and rarely do they come referenced with a date. The following diary-focused extracts in Regions of the Heart can all be found in the last chapter, Nemesis.

‘ ‘I’ve been missing Tom and Kate today,’ she wrote in her diary as early as 3 July, ‘probably because I have had time to think about them. I’ve half felt like not wanting really to stay and finish this “job off” - but I don’t know if or when I’ll get another chance, so I might regret it.’ ’

‘Cooney remembers her returning in tears on 11 July from one of the agonizingly short telephone calls she made on the satellite phone to her children. ‘I spoke for two and a half minutes,’ she wrote miserably in her diary.’ ’

‘ ‘I am feeling pressure back home,’ she wrote in her diary on 5 August at the height of her crisis. ‘Why I failed, what went wrong. Personally it doesn’t matter but I worry about how everyone else will see it.’ Except, of course, that how others saw her was very important indeed to her self-esteem, and for Alison failure was bitterly personal.’

‘On 5 August, with the porters ready to start carrying her equipment down the glacier next day, she wrote of how she missed the children. She’d now spent more than a hundred days of 1995 away from Tom and Kate. Yet there was still a desire for the mountain, too. ‘It eats away at me - wanting the children and wanting K2,’ she wrote. ‘I feel like I’m pulled in two. Maybe they’d be happier if Mum was around but maybe summiting K2 would help make a better future for them. Long term, having me back safe and sound is surely more important.’ ’ [It’s not clear from the authors’ text whether this last is an actual diary entry or not.]

This article is a slightly revised version of one first published on 13 August 2015.