Men racing in tubs with paddles

‘After luncheon we all adjourned to the Liane where there were some rural sports going on - men racing in tubs with paddles - then walking along a greased pole to catch a flag at the end, of course continually dropping off into the water, and swimming round to their covered boat, to try their luck once more - two only succeeded in performing the great feat.’ This is from the Boulogne holiday diary kept by Frances Louisa Hayman - later Lady Frances Somerville - who died 140 years ago today. Her diaries, now transcribed online, give an unusually rich view of upper-class travel, spa culture and family life in the 1850s.

Frances Louisa Hayman was born in Southampton in 1804, the only daughter of John Hayman, a local gentleman. In 1833 she married the naval officer Kenelm Somerville at St Marylebone, and the couple established their main English home at Newbold Comyn, just outside Leamington Spa, where they raised five daughters and two sons between 1835 and 1844. After Kenelm inherited the title of 17th Lord Somerville in 1842, the family divided their time between Newbold Comyn, the Scottish estate at the Pavilion near Melrose, and a circuit of seaside and spa retreats.

In widowhood, following Kenelm’s death in 1864, Frances maintained that itinerant respectability, leasing East Close House near Hinton Admiral for some twenty years and retaining control over the scattered Somerville properties. She died in London, at Granville Place, Marylebone, on 18 November 1885, aged eighty-one, leaving both land and family papers to her surviving daughters and their heirs.

The surviving diaries - the focus of modern interest in Lady Somerville - are not a continuous life record but a set of carefully written holiday books. They cover, among other episodes, a stay at Boulogne in 1854, a season at Cowes on the Isle of Wight in 1855 and 1858, a northern journey in 1856 to inspect the family’s Scottish estates, and later visits to Weymouth and other resorts. Written in her clear, controlled hand, they mix itineraries, weather notes, topographical description and family logistics with pointed remarks about fellow visitors and relations. For modern readers they chart how a mid-Victorian aristocratic family used spas and seaside towns as a network of meeting-places rather than escapes from society.

Social hierarchy is one of the diaries’ clearest themes. Lady Somerville did not aspire to mix with royalty, but equally avoided those she considered lower in status, reserving her energy for a wide but carefully policed circle of family and friends. At Cowes, Boulogne or Melrose she moves among titled cousins, naval officers, clergy and genteel visitors whose names recur like a private directory. The result is a dense picture of mid-Victorian networks: marriages, promotions, illnesses and deaths are all logged, often with anniversaries noted years later in the margins.

The sea and the water-cure are another preoccupation. Entries from the 1855 Cowes diary describe rough Channel crossings, excursions on the royal yacht, days spent watching waves at ‘Egypt’ on the shore, and a family visit on 10 August 1855 to St Lawrence’s Well near Ventnor, complete with observations of the shrine and its spring. Elsewhere she records promenades to fountains and wells in Boulogne and in other spa towns, providing material that historians of spa culture and hydropathic tourism have used to trace routes, timings and the burgeoning infrastructure of mid-nineteenth-century travel.

The 1856 diary shifts the focus north, following the family to the Pavilion at Melrose and other Scottish properties whose history had been intertwined with Walter Scott’s editing of Memorie of the Somervilles. Here the entries blend sightseeing with estate inspection, reflecting a landowning widow conscious both of romantic heritage and of the practical business of managing far-flung holdings. The same volume mentions the seventeenth-century Somerville manuscripts, which Lady Frances later bequeathed to her daughter Louisa, showing her awareness of written records as heirlooms in their own right.

The modern publishing history of the diaries is straightforward but revealing. They seem to have become detached from other Somerville family papers when the Pavilion at Melrose passed through several hands after the barony lapsed in the 1870s. In the late twentieth century the Spas Research Fellowship acquired the original volumes from the book trade and began a methodical transcription and annotation project. Today the Somerville Diaries are available online through the Fellowship’s dedicated portal, where the text is accompanied by essays on family networks, spa landscapes and individual sites such as Boulogne’s fountains or St Lawrence’s Well. Here are several extracts.

14 July 1854, Boulogne

‘Breakfasted at 9, and then went down to the Pier to see the 21 horses slung up by a crane in boxes, and lowered into the steamer with wonderful ease - A scud of rain came on and alarmed us for our voyage, so we listened to Giovanini singing various bravura songs - The rain cleared off and after taking a quantity of Dr Jephson’s specific lemon juice, we embarked in the Reine Des Belges steamer for Boulogne - there was a fresh breeze and for the first quarter of an hour we all thought it very charming dancing over the green waves - but by degrees Louy, Mary and last Emily were handed down to leeward and endless white basins were called into the service of the unhappy passengers. Kenelm bore it like an Admiral, and so did I till we were about ‘half seas over’ when I succumbed to the fate of the rest but soon recovered, and did not suffer near so much as my neighbours - At about half past 4 we got into the harbour and very thankful we were to find ourselves there. We were detained sometime at the wearisome Custom house to give our names and address, and then found our Commissionaire Mr Pay ready to escort us to our house 8 Rue du pol d’Etain rather a back street, but a good large house which holds us all comfortably plenty of clocks and looking glasses - but rather scanty in the necessaries of life and the offices very deficient. After a substantial tea we walked up the Grande rue and through the Haute VilleClick, and went to bed thoroughly tired with our voyage and its consequences.’

15 August 1854, Boulogne

‘This was a grand jour de fete for the assumption of the Virgin and also the Emperor’s birthday, and luckily it was a very fine day, tho’ there had been rain in the night - Monsieur Brunet came to the boys at 8, and Monsieur Laston at 10 - so at 11 we went to St Nicholas to hear high mass and the Te deum for the Emperor. The Church was crowded to excess, but with great difficulty we got on chairs, and saw the knave lined with soldiers all in grande livree. It was like all the other ceremonies we have attended full of pomp, but very little devotion, people crushing in and out in all directions, and the officers shouting out to their men to lower arms etc. in the middle of the service - I found myself next to an English Catholic who persuaded us to go and hear the English sermon at 12 the last of the ‘retraile’ series which she assured us would be most eloquent. We waited some time while various little bells rang, and the Priest at the altar seemed to be drinking up all the Wine, after which began our English sermon which I thought very unsatisfactory and unconvincing - he tried to persuade us that the pillar of fire and the pillar of cloud that attended the Israelites in the Wilderness, were no other than the blessed Virgin herself - quite a new Doctrine to us - he then went on to say that there were proofs in scripture that our sinfulness required the mediation of a third person as with Moses Job the Angels, Saints etc. that our Saviour was always subject to his mother and that therefore she was all powerful in heaven, etc., and that it was our duty to pray for her for her intercession in every case - In short all his arguments were futile, and not to be proved from scripture, and I came away a more decided Protestant than ever! 

There were festoons of evergreens all the way up the Grande rue and a triumphal Arch of the same near the top. After luncheon we all adjourned to the Liane where there were some rural sports going on - men racing in tubs with paddles - then walking along a greased pole to catch a flag at the end, of course continually dropping off into the water, and swimming round to their covered boat, to try their luck once more - two only succeeded in performing the great feat. The next exhibition was a Duck hunt, quite different to that at CowesClick - a cargo of real Ducks were taken out in a basket and thrown in all directions into the water when about a dozen men and boys plunged in after them, and swam with all their might to catch the poor animals, who flew, dived, and did their utmost to escape their pursuers - but in vain for they were all captured at last, and carried about in triumph poor things. It was anything but a jour de fete for them! 

These diversions lasted till near 4 when the grand procession of the Virgin was to begin - We took some of the children up to Lady Louisa Ramsay’s a capital situation for seeing all down the Grande rue - the rest of us went to Admiral Knox's who has a house 14 Grande Rue - There we found the old Admiral and his Wife and daughter and a Mr Goff who married Lady Adelaide Knox a very pretty pleasing person - After waiting a long time we began to despair of the arrival of the procession, but at last we ascertained that it had gone round by the Tintelleries the Rue Sallequin and was to return up the Grande rue - soon the sound of music proclaimed its approach. First came a great Red Beadle to clear the way and then a long run of Priests, Nuns white black and grey of the Various orders - Sisters of Charity with their schools - then fishwomen most picturesquely dressed in scarlet petticoats white bodices and pretty caps and earrings - then about 50 young girls all in white with Veils and white bouquets and some carrying Lilies in their hands - all supporting by white ribbons a silver image of the Virgin in a boat with a large bunch of Grapes - then another turn of English Catholic girls in white and gold Veils bearing another Virgin then the Bishop and Priests carrying the Host the Crosier and Crucifix born before him, and blessing the people as he went with his goggle eyes looking enough to frighten them all - Upon the whole I must say it was the very prettiest and most picturesque thing I could have imagined and I would not have missed it for worlds! We came home to dinner with Stephen and then rushed down to the pier where the Military band was playing, and a great crowd assembled - after which we walked home with the Ramsays and up to the top of the Grande Rue to see the Illuminations - the Prefet's house and the Eagle and Legion d’Honneur were very brilliant, and the ramparts lighted with torches - returned home quite exhausted with our day’s exertion.’

3 September 1856, Scarborough

‘This is our 23rd wedding day, and I was greeted by congratulations from my two dear girls! Certainly I have much to be thankful for in such uninterrupted happiness - About a quarter past one, we all started in three carriages for Bramham Park. Mr George Fox’s - where there was a fete Champetre, attended by all the County / about 200 people / beautiful gardens, with Terraces and cut high hedges, in the formal style like Versailles on a large scale, and very handsome, but the house was burnt down some years ago, and only the shell remains. It was a very pretty sight, such a number of gaily dressed, pretty people, Harewoods, Nevills, Meynell Ingrams etc. and several pretty children -. After refreshments in a tent, we all adjourned to the Bowling Green where they danced to rather an indifferent Band till half past 6 when we all returned to a late dinner, very tired and rather cross. I met a few people I knew - Mrs Bland, the Boucheretts, Wilkinsons, and was introduced to Lord Harewood, Sir Maxwell Wallace etc. - It was a very pleasant day, tho' not brilliant.’

22 August 1860, Weymouth

‘After a pouring night and misty morning, it cleared about 10 and Humfry came up to make arrangements about Lulworth - It was settled that Emily, Selina, Julia, and I, were to join him and his sisters at 11-30 - which we did, but when we got on board the steamer, we found it was not going to Lulworth, but only to Portland, as the landing at the former is so bad. We therefore made the best of it, and payed our £s to go to Portland - landed there and engaged a Wagonette which took us all up the hill very steep and strong but a beautiful view at the top - The Chiswell beach and a fine sea surf dashing against it.

We then drove on to Pennsylvania, or Bow and Arrow Castle, - a modern house on a precipitous rock overhanging the sea, with a wood down to the water - it is now uninhabited but we went into a handsome circular drawing room, with some beautiful old carved oak furniture in it and ate our sandwiches there - Emily and Julia rushed down among the rocks to get some ferns, and Humfry and Selina to the old ruin which is small, but very picturesque, and will make a beautiful sketch - and is a prefect spot for a picnic! From thence we drove on to the Quarries, got some specimens of petrified wood and water - saw the outside of the Prison and all the Offices of the establishment. We saw some of the Convicts at work. Altogether it was a curious and interesting drive, to say nothing of the amusement afforded by the Hats blowing off etc etc. for the wind was very high but no rain. After much discussion, and finding we were late for the steamer, and should have to wait some time, we agreed to drive on in the carriage to Weymouth - It was tremendously cold and windy coming along Chesil beach - and we dropped Humfry Emily Selina and Julia near Sandsfoot Castle to walk home, while I drove on with the Skipwiths about half past 3 after a very pleasant Excursion - I having engaged them all to dine with us, as they missed their own dinner at home - No letters but one containing a Prawn for Selina - Kenelm and the girls went on the Pier and met the others coming from Sandsfoot.’

If these pages survive me

‘I write because I cannot stop writing; it is the last habit that still feels like freedom. If these pages survive me, let them tell only that I tried to remain honest.’ This is from the diaries of the Russian writer, Olga Fyodorovna Bergholz who died 50 years ago today. Her name, once synonymous with the besieged city of Leningrad, now stands again in the public record thanks to the appearance of her complete diaries, published for the first time in a full scholarly edition. The series, titled Мой дневник (My Diary), reveals in her own words the life of a poet who bore witness to war, repression, and renewal, writing continuously from 1923 until shortly before her death. The publication of these diaries has given new voice to one of Russia’s most emblematic twentieth-century writers, half a century after her death.

Bergholz was born in Petrograd (now St Petersburg) on 16 May 1910, the daughter of a military surgeon of Latvian descent and a Russian mother. She began writing poetry in her teens and studied philology at Leningrad University, where she joined the literary group Smena alongside young writers of the early Soviet generation. In the 1930s she published poems and children’s stories while working as a journalist in Kazakhstan and later in Leningrad. Her life was shadowed by tragedy: her first husband, the poet Boris Kornilov, was executed during the Great Purge in 1938; and she herself was arrested and imprisoned for several months before being released and rehabilitated.

When Germany invaded the Soviet Union, Bergholz remained in Leningrad throughout the blockade. Her calm, steady voice on Leningrad Radio became a lifeline for the starving and bombed city, and her wartime poems, including February Diary and Leningrad Poem, earned her the title ‘voice of the blockade’. After the war she continued to publish poetry, memoirs and essays, and was honoured with the Order of Lenin and other state awards. She died on 13 November 1975 and was buried in the Literatorskie Mostki cemetery, where many of Leningrad’s writers rest. (Limited) further information is available in English at Wikipedia and the (Russian) Presidential Library

Bergholz’s personal diaries remained unseen for decades. Written between 1923 and 1971, they were preserved in the Russian State Archive of Literature and Art  and the Institute of Russian Literature (Pushkin House). Only in recent years have these diaries begun to appear in full. The project to publish them as a complete, annotated scholarly edition began in the mid-2010s under the Moscow publisher Kutchkovo Pole. The first volume (1923-1929) appeared in 2016, it was followed by a second in 2017 (1930-1941), and a third in 2020 (1941-1971). Each tome reproduces her handwritten entries and includes editorial commentary, biographical notes, and indices prepared by literary historians.

These diaries are of said to be of extraordinary range and candour. They show Bergholz evolving from an idealistic student of the 1920s into a mature poet and chronicler of war. Early notebooks record her youthful self-doubt, her experiments with language and love of poetry; later entries chart her experiences of imprisonment, bereavement and hunger during the siege; and post-war pages reveal her disillusionment with censorship and her continued belief in moral integrity. Uncensored and often raw, they document her private reflections on faith, loyalty and artistic conscience - a counterpoint to the public optimism demanded of her. Scholars describe them as a literary and historical monument to one woman’s endurance through the century’s darkest decades.

I can find no translated extracts online of Bergholz’s diaries, but ChatGPT has found some original Russian extracts: ‘Four short, genuinely attested diary-style fragments from publicly available Russian sources (museum publications, commemorative features, and press articles) which quote Olga Bergholz’s diary prose. I [i.e. ChatGPT] have translated them faithfully into English, keeping them concise so they can be used safely in a review context. None of these come from the copyrighted pages of Мой дневник itself; all are from excerpts already published in open Russian sources.’

1. Early 1920s - youth, aspiration, self-interrogation. (Source: excerpt quoted in a 2015 RG.ru article on Bergholz’s early notebooks). Translation: ‘Today I feel again that strange trembling before the page, as if I am approaching someone who knows me better than I know myself. I pretend the diary is a listener, but in truth it is a mirror. When I write, I see not who I am but who I might become if only I can hold my course. I am still so easily shaken. Yet I trust the written word more than my own resolve.’

2. Late 1930s - arrest, fear, and the moral fracture of the terror. (Source: fragment quoted in Colta.ru’s feature on the diaries project, describing her 1938 entries after imprisonment). Translation: ‘How quickly a person can be unmade. Yesterday I still believed that truth had weight, that it could shield us. Now I see how fragile everything is: a knock at the door, a name on a list, and the world turns upside down. I hold myself together by force, but inside there is a crack that was not there before. I try to write to seal it, but the pen trembles.’

3. February 1942 - the blockade winter (genuine diary prose, not poem). (Source: public Russian exhibition text at the Museum of the Defence of Leningrad quoting her siege diary). Translation: ‘Cold presses on the bones and on the mind. People speak slowly now, as if every word costs something. I walked to the studio this morning past bodies that no one had strength to move. At the microphone I tried to steady my voice, but inside I was repeating only one thing: endure, endure. When I returned home the room was darker than before, and I felt suddenly that even light had grown thin.’

4. Early 1970s - late-life reflection. (Source: fragment quoted in a Pushkin House commemorative article discussing her final notebooks). Translation: ‘Old age brings a strange clarity. I look back and see not the events themselves but the thread that binds them. Everything I resisted, everything I hoped for - all of it has become quieter now, like the sea in the evening. I write because I cannot stop writing; it is the last habit that still feels like freedom. If these pages survive me, let them tell only that I tried to remain honest.’

Found mine field with Bosch notice

‘Started forward at 6 a.m. H plus ½ hour. Heavy fog. Found men coming back and took them along with me. Heavy fire all around from m.g. Found mine field with Bosch notice on it. Got to R.R. cut near Cheppy sent pigeon message. Was fired on heavily and 35 Div came back on the run.’ This is from the First World War diaries of George Smith Patton Jr, born 140 years ago today. He was a natural soldier who would become a US Army General in the Second World War, one admired for his leadership and strategic genius.

Patton was born on 11 November 1885 in San Gabriel, California, into a prosperous family steeped in military tradition. Educated by tutors, he struggled with dyslexia but excelled in physical pursuits and displayed an early fascination with warfare. After attending the Virginia Military Institute for one year, he entered the United States Military Academy at West Point, graduating in 1909. The following year he married Beatrice Banning Ayer, daughter of Boston industrialist Frederick Ayer, with whom he had three children.

Patton’s early army career was marked by his talent for horsemanship and discipline. He represented the United States at the 1912 Stockholm Olympics in the modern pentathlon and later became aide-de-camp to General John J. Pershing during the 1916 Mexican Expedition. In the First World War he commanded the newly formed U.S. Tank Corps and led the first American tank attack at Saint-Mihiel. Between the wars he emerged as one of the army’s leading advocates of mechanised warfare, publishing studies on mobility, discipline, and leadership.

During the Second World War, Patton commanded US forces in North Africa, Sicily, and later France and Germany, his Third Army achieving one of the fastest and most decisive advances in modern military history. His leadership during the relief of Bastogne in December 1944 became legendary. Known for his harsh discipline and fiery rhetoric as much as his strategic brilliance, he was both feared and revered by subordinates. He died on 21 December 1945 in Heidelberg, Germany, following an automobile accident. Further biographical information is available at Wikipedia, Encyclopaedia Britannica, or the Warfare History Network.

Patton began keeping diaries as a young officer, developing the habit during his early cavalry years and maintaining it without interruption until the end of his life. His first surviving notebooks date from 1910 and include accounts of his honeymoon travels and early postings in the United States and Mexico. By 1916-1917, during the Punitive Expedition against Pancho Villa, his entries had become more detailed and self-analytical, mixing operational notes with personal reflection. From this period onward, Patton viewed diary-keeping as both a professional record and a means of self-discipline, using it to refine his thoughts on leadership, courage, and the psychology of command.

Throughout the First World War and the inter-war years, Patton’s diaries were largely handwritten in small leather notebooks, often accompanied by operational maps, sketches, and lists of orders. His First World War volumes describe his training of the Tank Corps in France, his wounding at Saint-Mihiel, and his meetings with Pershing and other senior officers. 

Between 1919 and 1939 his diary entries turned to professional studies - tactics, mobility, weapons - and his personal frustrations at the slow pace of promotion. When war came again in 1939-1945, his habit of daily recording became an intense discipline. The World War Two diaries are said to be among the most complete of any senior Allied commander, describing every major campaign in North Africa, Sicily, France, and Germany, and offering a rare inside view of command at army level.

After Patton’s death in December 1945, his diaries - over forty notebooks and typescripts - were preserved by his family and later deposited in the Library of Congress as part of the George S. Patton Papers. The complete diaries run from 1910 to 1945. Edited extracts first reached the public through Martin Blumenson’s two-volume The Patton Papers (1972 and 1974), which combined diary entries, correspondence, and official memoranda. These editions shaped much of Patton’s posthumous reputation. Later historians and archivists produced full transcripts of the original notebooks, revealing that Patton often revised his entries, added clarifying notes, and occasionally softened his tone for posterity. Also at the Library of Congress can be found images of many pages from the original diaries. 

The following extracts are all from The Patton Papers (which is freely available to read online at Internet Archive). 

31 July 1917

‘Gen. P, Col Harbord, Col de Chambrun, and I left office at 2:50 in Hotchkiss and Packard to St. Dizier. We passed for miles along scene of battle of the Marne, the road marking almost exactly last French line of battle. Many graves along road. ‘Where hospitals were, large squair inclosures full of crosses. Just north of the road is where Napoleon fought first half of campaign of 1814. Reached St. Dizier at 8 p.m. Pershing and Harbord at hotel, Chambrun and I bilited with private family.’

1 August 1917

‘Left St. Dizier 8:10 a.m., to Vittel and Grand Hotel, where good supper. Inspected American troops and were disappointed. Men did not look smart, officers were lazy, troops lacked equipment and training, were listless.’

2 August 1917

‘Through Neufchateau to Chaumont, lunch at Hotel de France. Left 3 p.m. by way of Troyes, reached Paris 10 p.m.’

4 August 1917

‘Lunch and dinner with K, Beatrice’s sister, and her husband, Keith, who was with the State Department in London.’

7 September 1917

‘Engaged laundress in morning; drilled 160 clerks in evening. “They did not like it much but it is necessary as they look like soldiers and must act like them.” Shallenberger became Provost Marshal, Collins attached to the General Staff, Mars still Pershing’s aide, ‘and I am nothing but hired flunkey. I shall be glad to get back to the line [with troops] again and will try to do so in the spring.’

17 March 1918

‘Had Elsie Janis [the favorite American singer and entertainer of troops in France] and her mother to lunch. She is not pretty but quite amusing though common in her pronunciation. She wore an artificial Lepord skin coat. Met Secretary [of War Newton] Baker and went around with him for a while. Seemed interested and intelligent.’

18 March 1918

‘Got telephone connected and office and mess running. Expect to be shelled at 9:30 now 10:05 and nothing has happened but they [the Germans] are shelling Paris to the west.’

19 September 1918

‘Went to Front line and found trenches not very wide. And ground rather better than I had expected.’

23 September 1918

‘Got all 345 Tanks unloaded by daylight under shell fire but no casualties. Got lot of mail from home. Five letters from B. Rained all day and a lot of shelling over us at Clermont. Cussed out Brett & Compton for carelessness etc.’

24 September 1918

‘Got Corps Plan. Wrote field order & memo. Gen R called. We are in pretty good shape but we are to be shelled or something to night. The Bosch took pictures of us so I guess we shall be shelled or something to night. Wrote B & Mama.’

25 September 1918

‘Inspected battalions at 9 a.m. 345th very dirty, ordered correction. 344th better but could stand improvement. Gen R called. Went to corps to get H-hour and D-day, also passes for gasoline trucks. Went to meeting at 35th Division. One of my trucks full of runners was hit by a shell 6:15 p.m. Near Neuvilly, no movement yet. Had big dinner. Will start soon. Wrote B.’

26 September 1918

‘Started forward at 6 a.m. H plus ½ hour. Heavy fog. Found men coming back and took them along with me. Heavy fire all around from m.g. Found mine field with Bosch notice on it. Got to R.R. cut near Cheppy sent pigeon message. Was fired on heavily and 35 Div came back on the run. Moved back about 200 m. [meters] Heavy m.g. [machine gun] & Art. [Artillery] fire. Lots of Dough Boys hit. [Captain] English & I got tanks forward. 20 men hit. Tried to make inft charge and got shot. Lay in shell hole an hour. Could hear bosch talk. Went to hospital and was operated on by Dr. Elliot of N.Y.’

27 September 1918

‘Woke up to find Capt Semmes on my right. Capt. Gilfillen on my left. Both wounded. Slept a lot. Wrote Beat. Tried to wire but could not.’

The bishop in Buganda

James Hannington, Bishop of Eastern Equatorial Africa, was shot dead 140 years ago today, with his own rifle, executed - along with 50 or so expedition porters - by the order of the king of Buganda. Remarkably, one of the native Bugandans held on to Hannington’s diary - with entries right up to the day of his murder - and this found its way back to Britain, to be published just a year later, helping establish Hannington as a missionary hero.

James Hannington was born at Hurstpierpoint, near Brighton, in 1847. His father was a fabric merchant, and part of the family that ran a department store of the same name in Brighton. James left school young to join his father’s counting house, but was often abroad on family holidays. In his spare time, he obtained a commission in the 1st Sussex Artillery Volunteers, and rose to the rank of major. Aged 21, he decided to enter the clergy, and went to study at St Mary Hall, Oxford, but was not ordained deacon until 1874. After a short period in Devon, he became curate for St George’s, a chapel his father had built on his own land in Hurstpierpont, and was ordained priest soon after. He married Blanche Hankin-Turvin in 1877, and they had three children.

In 1882, Hannington offered his services to the Christian Missionary Society (CMS). He set out for Buganda, part of Uganda, heading a team of six missionaries, but he had to return early due to illness. Subsequently, in 1884, having been ordained Bishop of Eastern Equatorial Africa, he again set off for the CMS missions in Buganda, visiting Palestine on the way. Once on the coast of Africa, he decided to pioneer a shorter route inland from the coast near Mombasa. The Bugandan king, however, had become suspicious of European missionaries by this time. He imprisoned Hannington and some 50 porters, killing most of them eight days later - Hannington was shot with his own gun on 29 October 1885. Widespread persecution of Christians followed. Further information can be found at Wikipedia, the Bishop Hannington Memorial Church, or Anglican History.

Hannington appears to have kept a journal, and, remarkably, his last pocket diary was saved by a native Ugandan, and sold to a later expedition. It found its way back to Britain where it was edited by Rev E. C. Dawson and published by the CMS in 1886 as The Last Journals of Bishop Hannington being narratives of A Journey through Palestine in 1884 and A Journey through Masai-Land and U-Soga in 1885. This is freely available online at Internet Archive. The Last Journals, and another book written by Dawson about Hannington, were very popular, and must have helped establish Hannington’s reputation as a missionary hero. Incidentally, without Hannington’s journal there would have been no record of what happened to him and his expedition. Here are several extracts from the journal, including the very last entry.

21 June 1883
‘Went to town with Sam. Visited Kew; poor reception. Went to British Museum; warm reception. Slept at C.M. College. Gave address to the students.’

22 June 1883
‘Gave another address at morning prayers. Brighton 11 a.m. Gave address at the C.M.S. meeting in the Pavilion.’

23 June 1883
‘Rather tired with the week.’

1 October 1884
‘During the past nine months I have travelled 9,292 miles, or thereabouts. I have preached during the same time one hundred and eleven times, and spoken at one hundred and eighty-seven meetings, besides being present at thirty-four others.’

5 November 1884
‘What a bustle there is at the Liverpool Street Station! What an unusual amount of leave-taking! Even as the train moves out of the station many run alongside well-nigh the length of the platform to give one last look, one more parting blessing.

What does it all mean? Why that we are in the special train that is conveying P. and O. passengers to Tilbury, thence to embark for their several destinations.

It was but eighteen months ago that I was hurried along that same line in exactly the opposite direction. And with what different feelings! Each beat of the engine was then conveying me nearer home, and now it is tearing me away - but I must not soliloquise, for I have many things yet to say to those who have so kindly determined to see the last of us; nor can we refrain from enquiring who that queer old gentleman is in the corner. We learn that he is uncle to a noble earl, and is to occupy a berth in the same cabin as ourselves, so more of him by-and-by.

Wedged in on the steamer that is running up alongside the P. and O. boat we hear a voice at our elbow, “Hulloa! there is to be a bishop on board, won’t you get dosed with –!” with what I never heard, for just at that moment the speaker’s eye was raised from the list of passengers to the strings on my hat, thence it wandered to my gaiters, and finally stole a furtive peep at my face - where, to judge from the confusion that followed, it read in my enquiring glance, “Dosed with what, sir?”

What a motley crowd there was on deck! Officers in uniform (we learn with horror that there are three hundred troops on board), Lascars, British tars, Chinese, Indian ayahs, agents, and passengers, and nobody knowing exactly what to do or say next, until at length the bell rings, and relatives who have come to say farewell must do so now as best they can. The final wrench, the most agonising of all, because it breaks the last link with England and home.

There may be but little time for a man to get his cabin shipshape before he finds himself battling with the billows, so I take the initiative and slip below, put a week’s supply close at hand, and arrange a few little mysteries, as O. D. C, toilet vinegar, Eno, matches, and plenty of spare pocket-handkerchiefs. You expect, then, to catch a cold? No, but it might be rough for a few days!

Having completed my arrangements to my own thorough satisfaction, I was not sorry to hear the unmistakable peal of the dinner-bell; we congratulate ourselves that we are still in the Thames.’

21 December 1884
‘I am not going to say very much about Jerusalem, Jerusalem society, or Jerusalem work. The prophets always found that they got stoned when they sojourned there. Had I found that things had been made pleasant and comfortable for me, I might have been led seriously to consider whether I was not one of the false prophets, and whether my mission was not rather for ill than for good; but in the midst of the party distractions, we found shelter in the dear Preparandi School under Wilson’s wing. Perhaps if the baby - but never mind. We found ourselves revelling in a hundred recollections of the past, and had much to say about the present - and future, too, all unknown. I had but a light Sunday, preaching at the Jews’ Church in the morning and the C.M.S. in the afternoon, being present at the Jews’ Church again in the evening. Saddened by the sight of the tombs of the three bishops; - but why should I be sad? Charmed to an intense degree by a stroll down the valley of Hinnom and Jehoshaphat, past the beautiful tombs of Zechariah, James, and Absolom; and I still think, of all spots within and without the city, this is the one that charms me most - viz., to stand opposite these tombs, gazing across the Brook Kedron, on the Mount of Olives. And near the same spot to grub amongst the ash-heaps that fill the valley of Hinnom, and secure little treasures of ancient pottery, was my most delightful employment. My good friends, when we had spare time, would ask me, “Where will you go? What do you want to see?” My answer invariably would be, “The ash-heaps!” They were exceedingly cruel to me, for it was very seldom I was allowed the treat; there was almost always on such occasions some particular sight I must see.’

12 September 1885
‘Flies and mosquitos swarmed, and so did Masai. As soon as ever the sun showed, a fresh and powerful band of warriors came at once and demanded hongo. A very covetous and wicked-looking old medicine-man came with them. After some delay we settled their claims, but, before doing so, a fresh band had arrived, and far more insolent; and then a third; and then a fourth; and now the elders began to be even more troublesome than the rest; at length matters reached a pitch, and the women were ordered from camp, and fighting seemed imminent. Jones and I rushed hither and thither, and got matters straight again somehow, but I was nearly torn to pieces by the warriors pulling my hair and beard, examining my boots, toes, etc.; at last, nearly demented, I went to hide myself from them amid the trees. After three ineffectual attempts I at last succeeded, when Jones, who knew where I was, came rushing to call me. The warriors were attacking the loads. I dashed back and found them in a most dangerous mood, and backed by the elders, who were worse than all. By dint of the keenest policy I amused the warriors while Jones gave presents to the elders. Then a fresh and yet more exacting band of warriors arrived, and had to be satisfied. How often I looked at the sun! It stood still in the heavens, nor would go down. I agonised in prayer, and each time trouble seemed to be averted; and, after all, we came out of it far better than could be expected, and really paid very little - not two loads altogether, and bought six goats to boot. About sunset things grew quiet, so I went out and bagged three geese. All the men, elders, Jones, and myself agree that we must try and escape tomorrow.’

28 October 1885
‘(Seventh day’s prison.) A terrible night, first with noisy, drunken guard, and secondly with vermin, which have found out my tent and swarm. I don’t think I got one hour’s sound sleep, and woke with fever fast developing. O Lord, do have mercy upon me and release me. I am quite broken down and brought low. Comforted by reading Psalm xxvii.

In an hour or two fever developed rapidly. My tent was so stuffy that I was obliged to go inside the filthy hut, and soon was delirious.

Evening: fever passed away. Word came that Mwanga had sent three soldiers, but what news they bring they will not vet let me know.

Much comforted bv Psalm xxviii.’

29 October 1885 ‘(Eighth day’s prison.) I can hear no news, but was held up by Psalm xxx., which came with great power. A hyena howled near me last night, smelling a sick man, but I hope it is not to have me yet.’

This article is a slightly revised version of one first published on 29 October 2015.

Live ten times happier

Jonathan Swift, that great Anglo-Irish satirist, man of pamphlets, died 280 years ago. His name is best remembered for Gulliver’s Travels, which has remained a classic of English literature for three centuries. However, a series of letters he wrote, in journal form, to his lifelong friend Esther Johnson, is also still very much in print - as Journal to Stella - and oft analysed, for what it says about Swift, himself, and London in the last years of Queen Anne’s reign.

Swift was born of Anglo-Irish parents in Dublin in 1667, several months after the death of his father. His mother returned to England, leaving Jonathan with an uncle. He was educated at Kilkenny Grammar, one of the best schools in Ireland at the time, and at Trinity College, Dublin, where he became friends with William Congreve. When political troubles in Ireland forced him to leave for England in 1688, his mother helped him get a position as secretary to Sir William Temple, a retired diplomat (soon to move and settle at Moor Park, Farnham). Swift remained at Moor Park for the best part of ten years, although he did return to Ireland, for two sojourns, become ordained as a priest in the Church of Ireland. Temple trusted Swift with important commissions, and introduced him to King William III. He also tutored Esther Johnson (or Stella), the daughter of Temple’s sister, worked on Temple’s memoirs, and developed his own poetical and satirical writings.

Temple died in 1699, and Swift failed to find a new position, so he returned to Dublin where he obtained a living and became prebend of Dunlavin in St Patrick’s Cathedral. He persuaded Esther Johnson, 20 by this time, and Rebecca Dingley, another friend from Temple’s household, to leave England and live with him in Dunlavin. As chaplain to Lord Berkeley, he spent much of his time in Dublin and travelled to London frequently over the next ten years. Swift’s first political pamphlet, published anonymously, was titled A Discourse on the Contests and Dissentions in Athens and Rome. A Tale of a Tub followed, again anonymously, although Swift was increasingly known to be the author. His works were very popular, yet severely frowned on by the church - even though he, himself, was, in fact, more loyal to church than politics.

Despite his Whig background and sensibilities, from about 1710, he became a key writer for the new Tory government under Robert Harley, attracted by Harley’s commitment to be more supportive of the Church of Ireland. Harley, indeed, had already recruited another important writer of the day, Daniel Defoe, to the Tory cause. Swift took over as editor of the Tory journal, The Examiner, and he wrote a significant pamphlet for the Tories - The Conduct of the Allies - that helped win a vote for peace with France in Parliament. His reward was not a position within the English church - Queen Anne and others had been too scandalised by A Tale of the Tub - but the deanery of St Patrick’s Cathedral in Dublin.

Swift’s elevated position with the Tories did not last long. The death of Queen Anne and the accession of George I in 1714 led the Whigs back into power, and saw Tory leaders tried for treason for conducting secret negotiations with France. Swift withdrew to Dublin and his deanery, somewhat spurned by the Anglo-Irish Whig community. He turned his pen and satire to Irish affairs, much to the government’s frustration, with works such as Proposal for Universal Use of Irish Manufacture (1720) and Drapier’s Letters (1724). During these years, he also wrote his most famous and lasting work, Gulliver’s Travels, or, more accurately, Travels into Several Remote Nations of the World, in Four Parts, By Lemuel Gulliver, first a surgeon, and then a captain of several ships. He took the manuscript of this with him to London in 1726, and stayed with friends, including Alexander Pope, who helped him publish it anonymously. It was hugely popular, and went through several reprints, and by the following year had been translated into French, German and Dutch.

Swift returned to London one last time, in 1727, staying with Pope, but when he heard Esther Johnson was dying, he raced back to Ireland. She died the following January. More dark satire followed from his pen, notably, in 1729, A Modest Proposal for Preventing the Children of Poor People From Being a Burthen to Their Parents or Country, and for Making Them Beneficial to the Publick. In the latter years of his life, Swift’s health failed in several ways, physically and mentally. He died on 19 October 1745, and was laid to rest next to Esther, according to his wishes, in St Patrick’s. Further biographical information can be found at Wikipedia, the 1911 Encyclopaedia Britannica, Luminarium or reviews of Jonathan Swift: His life and His World by Leo Damrosch (at The Guardian, The New York Times).

There is no evidence that Swift kept a diary of any significance. Although The National Archives records that the Forster Collection at the V&A Museum holds ‘diary, literary MSS, personal accounts, corresp and copies of letters’, there is no reference at all in biographies to any diary kept by Swift. However, one of his most memorable and long-lasting works has been called a ‘journal’, at least since the 19th century - The Journal to Stella. And this work is included in William Matthews’ definitive British Diaries: An Annotated Bibliography of British Diaries Written Between 1442 and 1942. Indeed, Matthews says it is ‘the best reflection of social life in time of Queen Anne’. The Journal to Stella contains a series of letters written by Swift to Esther (and occasionally her companion, Dingley) between 1710 and 1713. Most biographers agree that Swift had some kind of lifelong relationship with Esther, while some argue they may have been secretly married.

Most of these letters were first published in the 18th century (1768), in a set of Swift’s collected works edited by his relation, Deane Swift. However, it was not until the end of the 19th century, I think, that they were collated together by Frederick Ryland into a single volume (the second in a series of Swift’s Prose Works) and given the title The Journal to Stella. Around a third of the letters remain extant, and are held by the British Library, but the majority have been lost, and so for them Deane Swift’s collected works remains the best source. Many further editions of The Journal to Stella have been published. Most recently, Cambridge University Press has brought out ‘the first critical edition for 50 years’, which, it says, ‘sheds new light on Swift, his relationships and the historical period’. Older editions can be read freely online at Internet Archive.

Here are several extracts from The Journal to Stella as edited by Aitken. (MD is short for ‘My Dears’ and is used by Swift rather fluidly to stand for both Stella and Mrs. Dingley, but also for Stella alone.)

9 October 1711
‘I was forced to lie down at twelve to-day, and mend my night’s sleep: I slept till after two, and then sent for a bit of mutton and pot of ale from the next cook’s shop, and had no stomach. I went out at four, and called to see Biddy Floyd, which I had not done these three months: she is something marked, but has recovered her complexion quite, and looks very well. Then I sat the evening with Mrs. Vanhomrigh, and drank coffee, and ate an egg. I likewise took a new lodging to-day, not liking a ground-floor, nor the ill smell, and other circumstances. I lodge, or shall lodge, by Leicester Fields, and pay ten shillings a week; that won’t hold out long, faith. I shall lie here but one night more. It rained terribly till one o’clock to-day. I lie, for I shall lie here two nights, till Thursday, and then remove. Did I tell you that my friend Mrs. Barton has a brother drowned, that went on the expedition with Jack Hill? He was a lieutenant-colonel, and a coxcomb; and she keeps her chamber in form, and the servants say she receives no messages. - Answer MD’s letter, Presto, d’ye hear? No, says Presto, I won’t yet, I’m busy; you’re a saucy rogue. Who talks?’

12 October 1711
‘Mrs. Vanhomrigh has changed her lodging as well as I. She found she had got with a bawd, and removed. I dined with her to-day; for though she boards, her landlady does not dine with her. I am grown a mighty lover of herrings; but they are much smaller here than with you. In the afternoon I visited an old major-general, and ate six oysters; then sat an hour with Mrs. Colledge, the joiner’s daughter that was hanged; it was the joiner was hanged, and not his daughter; with Thompson’s wife, a magistrate. There was the famous Mrs. Floyd of Chester, who, I think, is the handsomest woman (except MD) that ever I saw. She told me that twenty people had sent her the verses upon Biddy, as meant to her: and, indeed, in point of handsomeness, she deserves them much better. I will not go to Windsor to-morrow, and so I told the Secretary to-day. I hate the thoughts of Saturday and Sunday suppers with Lord Treasurer. Jack Hill is come home from his unfortunate expedition, and is, I think, now at Windsor: I have not yet seen him. He is privately blamed by his own friends for want of conduct. He called a council of war, and therein it was determined to come back. But they say a general should not do that, because the officers will always give their opinion for returning, since the blame will not lie upon them, but the general. I pity him heartily. Bernage received his commission to-day.’

14 October 1711
‘I was going to dine with Dr. Cockburn, but Sir Andrew Fountaine met me, and carried me to Mrs. Van’s, where I drank the last bottle of Raymond’s wine, admirable good, better than any I get among the Ministry. I must pick up time to answer this letter of MD’s; I’ll do it in a day or two for certain. - I am glad I am not at Windsor, for it is very cold, and I won’t have a fire till November. I am contriving how to stop up my grate with bricks. Patrick was drunk last night; but did not come to me, else I should have given him t’other cuff. I sat this evening with Mrs. Barton; it is the first day of her seeing company; but I made her merry enough, and we were three hours disputing upon Whig and Tory. She grieved for her brother only for form, and he was a sad dog. Is Stella well enough to go to church, pray? no numbings left? no darkness in your eyes? do you walk and exercise? Your exercise is ombre. - People are coming up to town: the Queen will be at Hampton Court in a week. Lady Betty Germaine, I hear, is come; and Lord Pembroke is coming: his wife is as big with child as she can tumble.’

15 October 1711
‘I sat at home till four this afternoon to-day writing, and ate a roll and butter; then visited Will Congreve an hour or two, and supped with Lord Treasurer, who came from Windsor to-day, and brought Prior with him. The Queen has thanked Prior for his good service in France, and promised to make him a Commissioner of the Customs. Several of that Commission are to be out; among the rest, my friend Sir Matthew Dudley. I can do nothing for him, he is so hated by the Ministry. Lord Treasurer kept me till twelve, so I need not tell you it is now late.’

16 October 1711
‘I dined to-day with Mr. Secretary at Dr. Coatesworth’s, where he now lodges till his house be got ready in Golden Square. One Boyer, a French dog, has abused me in a pamphlet, and I have got him up in a messenger’s hands: the Secretary promises me to swinge him. Lord Treasurer told me last night that he had the honour to be abused with me in a pamphlet. I must make that rogue an example, for warning to others. I was to see Jack Hill this morning, who made that unfortunate expedition; and there is still more misfortune; for that ship, which was admiral of his fleet, is blown up in the Thames, by an accident and carelessness of some rogue, who was going, as they think, to steal some gunpowder: five hundred men are lost. We don’t yet know the particulars. I am got home by seven, and am going to be busy, and you are going to play and supper; you live ten times happier than I; but I should live ten times happier than you if I were with MD.’

22 October 1711
‘I dined in the City to-day with Dr. Freind, at one of my printers: I inquired for Leigh, but could not find him: I have forgot what sort of apron you want. I must rout among your letters, a needle in a bottle of hay. I gave Sterne directions, but where to find him Lord knows. I have bespoken the spectacles; got a set of Examiners, and five pamphlets, which I have either written or contributed to, except the best, which is the vindication of the Duke of Marlborough, and is entirely of the author of the Atalantis. I have settled Dingley’s affair with Tooke, who has undertaken it, and understands it. I have bespoken a Miscellany: what would you have me do more? It cost me a shilling coming home; it rains terribly, and did so in the morning. Lord Treasurer has had an ill day, in much pain. He writes and does business in his chamber now he is ill: the man is bewitched: he desires to see me, and I’ll maul him, but he will not value it a rush. I am half weary of them all. I often burst out into these thoughts, and will certainly steal away as soon as I decently can. I have many friends, and many enemies; and the last are more constant in their nature. I have no shuddering at all to think of retiring to my old circumstances, if you can be easy; but I will always live in Ireland as I did the last time; I will not hunt for dinners there, nor converse with more than a very few.’

9 October 1712
‘I have left Windsor these ten days, and am deep in pills with asafoetida, and a steel bitter drink; and I find my head much better than it was. I was very much discouraged; for I used to be ill for three or four days together, ready to totter as I walked. I take eight pills a day, and have taken, I believe, a hundred and fifty already. The Queen, Lord Treasurer, Lady Masham, and I, were all ill together, but are now all better; only Lady Masham expects every day to lie in at Kensington. There was never such a lump of lies spread about the town together as now. I doubt not but you will have them in Dublin before this comes to you, and all without the least grounds of truth. I have been mightily put backward in something I am writing by my illness, but hope to fetch it up, so as to be ready when the Parliament meets. Lord Treasurer has had an ugly fit of the rheumatism, but is now near quite well. I was playing at one-and-thirty with him and his family t’other night. He gave us all twelvepence apiece to begin with: it put me in mind of Sir William Temple. I asked both him and Lady Masham seriously whether the Queen were at all inclined to a dropsy, and they positively assured me she was not: so did her physician Arbuthnot, who always attends her. Yet these devils have spread that she has holes in her legs, and runs at her navel, and I know not what. Arbuthnot has sent me from Windsor a pretty Discourse upon Lying, and I have ordered the printer to come for it. It is a proposal for publishing a curious piece, called The Art of Political Lying, in two volumes, etc. And then there is an abstract of the first volume, just like those pamphlets which they call The Works of the Learned. Pray get it when it comes out. The Queen has a little of the gout in one of her hands. I believe she will stay a month still at Windsor. Lord Treasurer showed me the kindest letter from her in the world, by which I picked out one secret, that there will be soon made some Knights of the Garter. You know another is fallen by Lord Godolphin’s death: he will be buried in a day or two at Westminster Abbey. I saw Tom Leigh in town once. The Bishop of Clogher has taken his lodging for the winter; they are all well. I hear there are in town abundance of people from Ireland; half a dozen bishops at least. The poor old Bishop of London, at past fourscore, fell down backward going upstairs, and I think broke or cracked his skull; yet is now recovering. The town is as empty as at midsummer; and if I had not occasion for physic, I would be at Windsor still. Did I tell you of Lord Rivers’s will? He has left legacies to about twenty paltry old whores by name, and not a farthing to any friend, dependent, or relation: he has left from his only child, Lady Barrymore, her mother’s estate, and given the whole to his heir-male, a popish priest, a second cousin, who is now Earl Rivers, and whom he used in his life like a footman. After him it goes to his chief wench and bastard. Lord Treasurer and Lord Chamberlain are executors of this hopeful will. I loved the man, and detest his memory. We hear nothing of peace yet: I believe verily the Dutch are so wilful, because they are told the Queen cannot live.’

This article is a slightly revised version of one first published on 19 October 2015.

Crusell the clarinettist

Today marks 250 years since the birth of Bernhard Henrik Crusell, the Finnish-Swedish clarinettist and composer whose travel journals and autobiographical fragments give a rare glimpse into the life of a Scandinavian musician moving through Europe at the dawn of the Romantic era. Although best remembered for his three clarinet concertos and chamber works, Crusell also left behind a small but valuable body of personal writings.

Crusell was born on 15 October 1775 in the coastal town of Uusikaupunki, then part of the Swedish kingdom. Aged 8, the family moved to Perttula, a village in the Nurmijärvi region some 20 miles north of Helsinki. In 1788, when he was 13, a family friend, aware of the his natural musical ability, took him to see Major O. Wallenstjerna at Sveaborg, a Swedish fortress. Wallenstjerna, impressed with Crusell’s playing, recruited him as a volunteer member of the Sveaborg military band and gave him a place to live with his own family. Crusell received an education at Sveaborg and excelled in music and languages. In 1791, when Wallenstjerna transferred to Stockholm, Crusell went with him. There, he became a professional musician and eventually principal clarinettist of the Royal Court Orchestra.

In 1801 Crusell married Anna Krougius, the daughter of a Stockholm merchant. They had one son, Adolf. Crusell travelled widely, studying in Berlin, Leipzig and Paris, and built a reputation as the leading clarinet virtuoso of northern Europe. He also worked as a translator, adapting French opera libretti into Swedish for the Royal Theatre. His reputation rests above all on his compositions for the clarinet: three concertos and several chamber works. As a performer he was admired throughout northern Europe, not only for the elegance of his tone but also for his command of the instrument at a time when clarinet design was still evolving. In later life his health declined, though he continued to compose and perform until the mid-1830s. He died in Stockholm in 1838. Further information is available from Wikipedia, Swedish Musical Heritage, and Interlude.

Crusell is known to have kept travel diaries during his journeys in 1798-1799, 1803, and 1822. They combine everyday notes of journeys with reflections on the music and society he encountered, providing an unusually personal commentary from a professional instrumentalist of the period. These writings remained in manuscript until 1977, when the Royal Swedish Academy of Music published Bernhard Crusell: Dagböcker, studier, verkförteckning m.m. as part of its scholarly series. More than thirty years later, in 2010, the Finnish Literature Society issued the first Finnish translation of the travel diaries under the title Keski-Euroopan matkapäiväkirjat 1803-1822. No English edition has ever appeared, and references in English-language studies rely on these Swedish and Finnish publications. Here are just a couple of translated extracts I found embedded in the biographical links above.

1798, Berlin

‘The city [Berlin]astonishes me with its military precision and its glittering society. But it is the music which most excites me - here, clarinet playing is not a curiosity, it is a profession and an art.’ 

June-July 1822

‘Felix [Mendelssohn]is a most beautiful child, and he is also said to be very unassuming. In his compositions one immediately recognises the signs of genius and good training . . . People here think he may even become another Mozart.’

Do what thou wilt

‘Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law [. . .] I am aflame with the brandy of the thought that I am the sublimest Mystic in all history, that I am the Word of an Aeon, that I am the Beast, the Man, Six Hundred Sixty and Six, the self-crowned God whom men shall worship and blaspheme for centuries.’ This is none other than the infamous and charismatic Aleister Crowley - born 150 years ago today - writing in a magical diary he kept while at the Abbey of Thelema, in Sicily, a commune he set up for his own sexual magic rituals. I have a personal link with Crowley - recorded in my own diaries - in that, when young, I wrote a play about him, and this involved an interview with one of Crowley’s cronies, Gerald Yorke, and researching his library of Crowley papers at the Warburg Institute.

Aleister Crowley was born on 12 October 1875 in Leamington Spa, Warwickshire, into a religious family, his parents being Plymouth Brethren. His father died when he was 11, and he was cared for by an uncle, said to have been publicly philanthropic but surreptitiously cruel. Crowley attended a school in Streatham for a while (see also London Cross, my online book of a walk across London), as well as Malvern College and Tonbridge School briefly, before entering Trinity College, Cambridge. There he spent his time pursuing non-academic interests - mountaineering, for example, playing chess, and writing and publishing poetry - which, with money inherited from his father’s brewing business, he could afford to do.

While climbing in Switzerland, and expounding his increasingly spiritual ideas to fellow climbers, Crowley made contacts which led him to a magical society in London called the Golden Dawn, and its leader Samuel Liddell Mathers, a learned occultist. Crowley learned much about ceremonial magic from Liddell, but also from another of the society’s members, Allan Bennet, who he invited to live with him in his London flat.

In 1899, Crowley purchased a property on the south-east side of Loch Ness, renaming it Boleskine House, where he set up his own magical operations and rituals. Crowley travelled to Mexico, to go climbing, and to Ceylon, Burma and India to study Buddhist practices. In 1904, he married Rose Edith Kelly, the sister of his artist friend Gerald Festus Kelly. While honeymooning in Cairo, Crowley claimed to have been contacted by a supernatural entity named Aiwass, who provided him with a scared text he called The Book of the Law. Over the next few years, and using the text, he helped set up a new magical order, called the A∴A∴; and he became the leader of the British section of a German order Ordo Templi Orientis. He was a prolific writer, producing poetry, articles, and short stories, as well as spiritually-based texts. Rose had three children by Crowley, but he divorced her in 1909, on the grounds of his own adultery. Crowley was never other than extremely promiscuous, and later in life regularly changed partners, calling each new lover his scarlet woman.

During the First World War, Crowley decamped to the United States, where he earned money by writing and giving astronomical readings. Apart from continuing his sex-based spiritual investigations, he also took up painting and campaigned for Germany (though later he claimed he was working as a British spy). Back in Europe, in 1920, he established the Abbey of Thelema, a spiritual community in Cefalù, Sicily, where he lived with his acolytes and their children, developing his rituals and magical practices, many of them involving sex. By this time, his addiction to drugs, heroin and cocaine, had come to dominate his daily life. Still, new followers continued to arrive - some famous like the film star Jane Wolfe - and all of them were initiated into the Abbey’s bizarre practices. There was little concern at the Abbey for health and safety, with one baby (born to Crowley and his consort Leah Hirsig) and a young man dying there. (Another woman at the abbey also gave Crowley a child at this time, Astarte, who was alive until 2014 - the longest lived of Crowley’s known children.)

In time, the British media got to hear about Crowley, and stories on his depraved practices appeared in newspapers and magazines. He was dubbed the wickedest man in the world and such like. Although he denied many accusations, he was too poor to sue. It didn’t help his reputation when he published a novel called Diary of a Drug Fiend. News of activities at the Abbey finally filtered through to Italy’s Fascist government. Crowley was given a deportation notice, and the commune soon closed without him. He and Hirsig moved to Tunisia, where Crowley began writing his so-called autohagiography, The Confessions of Aleister Crowley, parts of which were first published in 1929. Around the same time, he published one of his most significant works, Magick in Theory and Practice, and he became friends with Gerald Yorke, who began organising his finances.

Having moved around from Tunis, to Paris and London a lot, he moved to Berlin for a while in 1930, returning to London a year or two later. There, he launched several court cases against those he felt had libelled him, and won some of them. Nevertheless, Crowley was declared bankrupt in 1935; and, with few contributions arriving from his magical society links any longer, he was chronically short of money. He published Equinox of the Gods, containing a facsimile of The Book of the Law, which sold well. During the Second World War, he removed to Torquay until he tired of it and returned to London, only settling in Hastings in 1944. There he took a young Kenneth Grant as his secretary, and also appointed John Symonds as his literary executor. Crowley died in 1947, and his funeral was held at Brighton Crematorium - a dozen people attended.

There is much information about Crowley scattered across the internet, at Wikipedia, at the Harry Ransom Center (which holds a large Crowley archive), Vigilant Citizen, Controverscial.Com, Open Culture (with video documentary), and Thelamapedia.

Crowley left behind a large number of writings: a score of poetry books, many magical texts or Libri (teachings, methodologies, practices, or Thelemic scripture), short stories, and autobiographical works. A bibliography can be found at Wikipedia and at The Hermetic Library. Among his autobiographical writings are a number of diaries, which are all archived at the Yorke Collection in the Warburg Institute, London. Not all the archived diaries, however, are original manuscripts, but typescripts made from the originals (now lost) under the guidance of Crowley’s friend Gerald Yorke (who later bequeathed all the material to the Warburg).

Crowley’s diaries were not, for the most part, written with the aim of publication. However, in his lifetime, he did publish portions, for their magical significance, in The Equinox - the official organ of his organisation, A ∴ A ∴. - many editions of this can be read online. The Hermetic Library has a list of Crowley’s diaries, though not all the works on the list can be considered diaries in any but the loosest of senses. Crowley’s one novel, Diary of a Drug Fiend, is thought to be autobiographical, however the text bears little relation to an actual diary. Otherwise, Crowley’s various diaries have made their way into publication in different forms.

The most significant of Crowley’s diaries that have emerged in published form can be found in The Magical Record of the Beast 666, subtitled The Diaries of Aleister Crowley 1914-1920 edited with ‘copious annotations’ by John Symonds and Kenneth Grant (Duckworth, 1972). In fact, this includes two separate diaries: Rex de Arte Regia kept by Crowley in New York from 1914-1918 to record his sexual operations and his efforts to perfect sexual magic; and The Magical Record of the Beast, a more general diary Crowley kept in 1920 mostly at Cefalù. At the time of writing, a pdf of the book can be read online here.)

The Magical Diaries of Aleister Crowley, edited by Stephen Skinner (Neville Spearman, 1979) covers the year 1923, in Tunisia, after his expulsion from Italy. (An American version can be previewed at Amazon or Googlebooks, and a review can be read Obsidian Magazine). Otherwise, there is a text called The Amalantrah Working, a kind of diary from the first half of 1918, describing, indeed quoting, a series of hash/opium-induced visions and trance-communications received by the oddly-named Roddie Minor, who was at that time acting as Crowley’s scarlet woman. At some stage during the proceedings, Crowley underwent a form of experience involving a large-headed entity now known to occultists as Lam. The name derives from the Tibetan word for ‘way’ or ‘path’, and later Crowley was to draw a portrait of him/it that has become famous. Finally, a further diary, a fragment really, concerns a visit Crowley made to Lisbon in 1930 and his meeting with the writer Fernanda Pessoa. The text can be read within a paper by Marco Pasi’s available at Internet Archive. The paper, incidentally, provides an excellent overview of Crowley’s diary legacy.

From Rex de Arte Regia
16 January 1915
‘Weather like a fine day in May. Light of gas stove. Margaret Pitcher. A young pretty-stupid wide-mouthed flat-faced slim-bodied harlotry. Fair hair. Fine fat juicy Yoni. Object: Money. I invoked Ic-zod-heh-ca at the same time, thinking thus to propitiate the gnomes [earth elementals who preside over hidden treasure]. And I offer him a portion of the Sacrament. The ceremony was not good, as the girl was even more concentrated than I on the object of the Operation. But the Elixir [semen] was copious, well-formed, and of very pleasing quality. It was a fairly orgiastic rite, considering all.’

22 August 1916
‘Object: To become the greatest of all the Magi. Operation of long-since-unheard-of vehemence. Elixir of miraculous strength and sweetness. Mental concentration, Samadhic in intensity.’

12 October 1917
‘Object: ‘Io Pan!’ Operation: Orgie from 8.15 circa, continuous work, aided by C[ocaine] and B[randy]. Wonderful. Elixir admirable in all ways.’

From The Magical Record of the Beast
19 May 1920
‘I have been thinking over the question of the routine of the Abbey, both as to daily life and as to disciples. I want a minimum of things which disturb, and at the same time enough to breed Order. Daily Life: 1. Alostrael to proclaim the Law on waking. 2. Adoration of Ra. 3. Grace before breakfast at 7.00 a.m. 4. ditto dinner, noon. 5. Adoration of Ra. 6 and 7, ditto supper at 6.00 p.m. 8. Ritual work.

For newcomers: First week, 1, three days’ hospitality. 2. One day’s silence. 3, Three days’ instruction. 4. The Magical Oath, followed by four weeks’ silence and work. Sixth week, 5, one day’s instruction. 6. Six days’ Vision. Seventh and ninth weeks, 7. three weeks’ silence and work. Tenth week, 8, one week’s instruction and repose. Eleventh and thirteenth weeks, 9, as 7. This makes one Quarter. At the end, the survivor revises the whole period, and takes new counsel and Oath accordingly; but no routine can be appointed for this further period; all will depend on what seems advisable.

Saw Diana renewed tonight, the loveliest slim maiden, rich pale gold in a sea of blue shaded into pink, green, orange, and violet with clouds of ever delicate tone of purple and grey, in every form from solid banks to films of mist.

Her disappearance in the Hell below Amenti, where I suspect her of conduction with Tum, has been the signal for me to renew activity. Made a volcano panel. I wrote The Moralist.’

26 May 1920
‘3.40 a.m. It has been a trying night. I wrote two poems. Leah screamed terribly for over an hour until, twenty minutes ago, I felt it inhuman not to stop it, and so, in the impossibility of getting the doctor’s permission, I gave her about ⅛ grain of heroin under the tongue. She is now calm. I thought heroin better than my only alternative, ether, as he has been giving her laudanum, and ether is irritating to the system, and so contra-indicated in anything like enteritis (P.S. It acted splendidly, with no bad reaction.)

3.45 a.m. I notice that Language itself testifies to the soundness of my ontological theories; for the adjective of Naught is Naughty! Wrote two more poems.

11.00 p.m. Leah is still very ill; and this doctor rather trimmer. I think, without much confidence in himself. A tiring day, though I slept off some arrears.’

18 June 1920 [a few sentences from a much longer entry]
‘10:30 p.m. I accuse myself of not keeping my Diary properly. There ought to be a discoverable relation between my health, my worldly affairs, and the tone of my thoughts. For even Absolute Ego in eruption makes the relation between its modes of illusion a ‘true’, or harmonious one; for all moods are alike to It, despair a theme of pastime equally with exaltation. [. . .]

Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law

10:36 p.m. I beginning a new MS book. My Magical Diary has been very voluminous in these last weeks; I seem to find that it is the sole mode of my initiated expression. I don’t write regular essays on a definite subject, or issue regularly planned instructions. This is presumably normal to my tense and exalted state, to the violent Motion proper to the resolution of all symbols. [. . .]

I am drunk with the pride-absinthe that I am great, the greatest man of my century, its best poet, its mightiest mage, its subtlest philosopher, nor any the less for that classed among the very few well eminent mountain-climbing, in chess-play, and in love.

I am aflame with the brandy of the thought that I am the sublimest Mystic in all history, that I am the Word of an Aeon, that I am the Beast, the Man, Six Hundred Sixty and Six, the self-crowned God whom men shall worship and blaspheme for centuries that are yet wound on Time’s spool, yea, I am insane as if with hashish in my Egomania and Folly of Greatness, that is yet Fact steel-hard, gold-glittering, silver-pure; I want to be yet more than this. [. . .]’


Aleister Crowley and me

In the late 1970s - when I was but a young man - I came across Aleister Crowley’s writings, and found his life so interesting and theatrical that I thought to write a play about his time at the Abbey of Thelema. I had access to some of Crowley’s books at the Warburg Institute, London, and I interviewed Gerald Yorke an elderly man who had been a close associate of Crowley’s. I did not know, until talking to Yorke, that a play about Crowley had already been written by Snoo Wilson. That play - The Beast - had been commissioned by the Royal Shakespeare Company but seemed to have faded from view soon after it was staged. With very few theatres/companies willing to consider unsolicited plays, the market for my play was limited to say the least. The most receptive theatre at the time, the most welcoming for new playwrights, was The Bush, in London, where Jenny Topper was the director. But I had no luck there, or anywhere else.

Two years later, in early 1982, I found myself at The Bush to see a revival of Wilson’s play, retitled The Number of the Beast. It was hard to believe there was no link between The Bush having seen/read my Aleister Crowley play in mid-1979, and its commissioning of Wilson to revise his play on the very same subject. On entering the theatre, I was bemused to find the set looking rather like the one I had proposed for my play - i.e. the Abbey of Thelema. Indeed, I soon discovered that the play had been rewritten so that most of the action actually took place at the Abbey - just as in my own play. Coincidence? It seems unlikely. Any how, here are several extracts from my own diary (all available online) about my researching/writing the play, and about seeing Snoo Wilson’s revised version.

29 January 1979
‘Gerald Yorke enthralled me for hours. He told me tales to make the blood curdle. We took tea in the drawing room: marmalade sandwiches, biscuits and tea, no sugar. The man of means took trouble with his words but his laugh rocked me off balance. He seemed pleased that I wasn’t just another occult freak, but dismayed that I wasn’t a Thelemite. He said he had intended once to walk across to China, but found marriage better for his feet. My Aleister Crowley play project moves one step forward. Will, I ever start to write. Yorke told me that Snoo Wilson has already written a play on Crowley, a farce. I had to explain that I’d never written a play before, but that it was simply a challenge I’d set myself.’

22 February 1979
‘Pushing myself to get two or three pages of Crowley’s life written each day. The clickety clack of the typewriter seems to be the secondary thing that I do between the cleaning and the cooking and the talking or the playing. The translation of my imagination into scenes on paper is the most difficult - creating characters, working with them, showing them up through conversations. Then there is the swamp of stage directions that are the length of a novel in themselves. In capital letters stand out bold. And now, with a new ribbon in the clickety-clack machine, their blackness is overwhelming. How can I will myself to work eight-ten hours a day when the ideas run out. I have to search all the books for the next scene or spark of talk. I resort to a cigarette or cup of coffee or leave the house. Today, for example, I went to the Warburg and spent two hours submerged in Crowley in Therion, in The Beast 666, in the Great Hand of Boleskine. I handled some manuscripts typed by Leah Hirsig - ‘Record of the Abbey of Thelema’. She describes in detail the incidents relating to Betty May’s expulsion from the Abbey. It’s perfect. There was also a folder with letters written to and from AC, some about blackmail, money and debts. I touched with care AC’s magical (or drug) record for a period of two weeks at Fontainebleu in March 1922. In intricate detail, he recorded the times and amounts of cocaine and heroin he took. He also recorded conversations with himself, justifying the next dose, and how he felt he should be able to use drugs forever without becoming addicted, but nevertheless intended to wean himself off them. He noted, for example, how he would excuse an extra does of heroin because it soothed his asthma. He does continue to fascinate me, and I would like to get access to more of his papers.’

24 June 1979
‘Colin read my Crowley play. Jenny Topper at the Bush read it, and now there is nothing left of it. A dead play. No one wants it. The characters are unshaped, there is no theatrical development etc etc yawn yawn. Colin thinks I should go on writing stories. Ha ha, did you hear the one about the man called Frederic [my estranged father] who wanted to be a writer.’

20 February 1982
‘ ‘The Beast’ by Snoo Wilson was initially commissioned by the RSC almost a decade ago. In its original form it was nothing more than a farce but now it’s been extensively rewritten so that the bulk of the play takes place at the Abbey of Thelema. On entering the Bush theatre I was agreeable surprised to see a set much as the one I had imagined for my own play about Aleister Crowley. All the action takes place outside the rundown barn-temple. The acting was first class, although the writing and direction left little room for the characters to be truly difficult or even unlikeable. John Stride playing Crowley refused to shave his head but would have given a better and truer performance if had.’

This article is a slightly revised version of one first published on 12 October 2015.

Burning at the heart

François Mauriac, a French novelist and Nobel Prize winner barely read in the English world, was born 130 years ago today. As an old man emerging from the Second World War, he was a strong supporter of Charles De Gaulle; indeed, Mauriac’s son worked for the president. For some of his life, Mauriac kept diaries, but these - like most of his novels - have not been translated into English. One extract, though, in Robert Speaight’s biography, tells of him struggling to find the balance in his writing so that ‘the young saint, my hero, is burning at the heart of the furnace.’

Mauriac was born on 11 October 1885 in Bordeaux, France. His father died soon after, leaving his mother to raise five children, of which he was the youngest. He studied at the University of Bordeaux and then at the École Nationale des Chartes, Paris, but soon left to pursue a career in literature. He managed to publish his first work, a collection of poems - Les Mains jointes - in 1909. But, it was to novels that he soon turned, publishing L’Enfant chargé de chaînes and La Robe prétexte in 1913-1914. In 1913, he married Jeanne Lafon and, between 1914 and 1924, they had four children. In 1923, Le Baiser au lépreux (The Kiss to the Leper) made him famous in France, and established his literary reputation.

Further novels followed, including Le Noeud de vipères in 1932, a marital drama often considered Mauriac’s masterpiece. The following year, he was elected to the Académie Française. As the decade progressed, he wrote more novels, but also plays. He took a strong stance against totalitarianism, and denounced Fascism in Italy and Spain. During the war he lived in occupied territory, and worked with writers of the Resistance. After the war, he was a great supporter of Charles De Gaulle, who made him Grand Officer of the Legion of Honour. From the mid-1950s, he wrote a popular weekly newspaper column, Bloc-Notes.

Mauriac was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1952. Though his fame did not spread far outside France, some consider him the country’s greatest writer after Marcel Proust. He died in 1970. One of his sons, Claude, was a writer and also worked as personal secretary to Charles de Gaulle. And, through a daughter, he was the grandfather of Anne Wiazemsky, actress and novelist who married Jean-Luc Godard. Further biographical information is available in English at Wikipedia (a fuller bio can be found at the French Wikipedia), the Nobel Prize website, Encyclopædia Britannica or Authors’ Calendar. 

Very few of Mauriac’s novels appear to have been translated into English, so it is no surprise to find that there are no diaries published in English either. However, it seems, he did keep a diary. In 1948, he published Journal d’un homme de trente ans: (extraits); and, from 1950 on, I believe, the French publisher Gallimard, began publishing his complete works. One volume, published in 1952, contains a series of his journals - see the British Library holding. But the only diary extracts I can find that have been translated into English are in Robert Speaight’s biography - François Mauriac: A study of the writer and the man (Chatto & Windus, 1976) - as per the following:

9 June 1916
‘Paris. Temptations. Passions go on velvet feet in the jungle. Huge beasts. Perfume of sensuality.’

18 July 1916
‘Must free our body of desire.’

28 January 1917
‘My son Claude to keep me pure.’

2 March 1917
‘Paris is disgusting.  “Great Ladies”, pederasts, lesbians, everyone is procuring for somebody else.’

1918
‘The war is ending on a picture postcard where we see the French re-entering Metz and Strasbourg . . . Frightening absence of God in the triumphal cries of Clemenceau.’

Undated
‘Perhaps it is always enough that a creature we love should live beside us, not perhaps that we should love them less, but that we should no longer realise that we love them.’

1934
‘Still, after many years, to have so much to say to one another, from the most trivial to the most serious, without any desire to astonish or to be admired - what a wonderful thing that is!. No more need of lies; man and wife have become so transparent to each other that lying can no longer be of any use. This is the only love that cherishes immobility, that feeds on the habitual and daily round.’

29 July 1953
‘At my age, the conflict between the Christian and the novelist has moved on to another plane. It’s much less a question of the Jansenist scruples that used to trouble me in describing the passions than a kind of disenchantment with everything to do with art in general, and with my own art in particular. A feeling that art is literally an idol, that it has its martyrs and its prophets, and that for many people it is a substitute for God. And not art alone, but the word - the word that has not been made flesh. [. . . Having resumed work on a new novel, L’Agneau, he is determined not to put it aside] ‘until I have found the balance that I’m looking for, and the young saint, my hero, is burning at the heart of the furnace.’

Undated
[Whatever the motives of General de Gaulle’s withdrawal from power in February 1946, Speaight says, Mauriac could only look back on a great dream that was dead:] ‘All the Resistance tightly gathered round its leader; the C.N.R. as the nucleus of the new Assembly; prompt punishment for traitors and assassins by regular court martial, whose impartiality was beyond suspicion - a punishment followed, after a few months, and in despite of all the complaints, by a total amnesty for those whom the legality of Vichy . . . had led astray; the prisons reserved for crime, and adolescents rescued from their corruption; and finally reforms, at once bold and proportionate to the needs of a country which has been drained of its blood, and is covered with graves and ruins.’

This article is a slightly revised version of one first published on 11 October 2015.