I will endeavour humbly

‘I will endeavour humbly but firmly, to acquire or achieve’ the following: practise yoga; acquire good knowledge; become a member of the British Parliament ‘do good to my country by all means in my power’; try to become a preacher of the highest philosophical religion. This is from a single significant diary entry made by the great Indian political leader and social reformer, Gopal Krishna Gokhale, who died 110 years ago today. The diary entry was found and revealed by his disciple and biographer, V. S. Srinivasa Sastri.

Gokhale was born in 1866, in Kotluk village, Ratnagiri district, present-day Maharashtra, India. Coming from a modest Chitpavan Brahmin family, he pursued his education at Rajaram College in Kolhapur and later at Deccan College in Pune, where he graduated in 1884. He was among the first generation of Indians to receive a Western-style education, which deeply influenced his political and social outlook.

After completing his studies, Gokhale began his career as a professor at Fergusson College in Pune, where he taught for nearly two decades. In the early 1890s, he became actively involved in politics, joining the Indian National Congress in 1899. He quickly rose through the ranks and became one of the leading moderate leaders, advocating for gradual political reforms through dialogue with the British. In 1905, he was elected president of the Indian National Congress.

Gokhale founded the Servants of India Society in 1905 to promote education, social reform, and political training among Indians. He was also a member of the Imperial Legislative Council from 1902 to 1915, where he pushed for administrative reforms, free primary education, and reduced government expenditure on military affairs. He traveled to England in 1905 and 1912 to advocate Indian political interests and was instrumental in influencing the Morley-Minto Reforms of 1909.

Gokhale never married, dedicating his life entirely to public service. He played a crucial role as a mentor to Mahatma Gandhi, who regarded him as a political guide. Gokhale’s health declined in his later years due to overwork and stress, and he died on 19 February 1915, aged only 48. Further information is available from Wikipedia, Enyclopaedia Britannica, and National Indian Congress.

Although Gokhale did not keep a diary - and his biographer tells us why - he did, as a young man, write one significant diary entry. This is included in V. S. Srinivasa Sastri’s The Life of Gopal Krishna Gokhale (as published by the Bangalore Printing and Publishing Co. in 1937 - freely available at Internet Archive). Sastri was a close associate and disciple of Gokhale, indeed he succeeded Gokhale as president of the Servants of India Society.

The following is taken directly from Sastri’s biography:

‘This thing that I am going to read to you is from the diary where [Gokhale] occasionally recorded his thoughts. I must tell you, parenthetically, that he never maintained a diary. He asked us, his followers too, never to do so. Do you know why? Just at the time when the Society was started, the whole of India was in political ferment, and a part of the activities of Government was the institution of enquiries of all sorts into the conduct of young men, especially those who enrolled themselves as members of public bodies and went about for public service. In many political prosecutions, the diaries of the unhappy accused had been taken as evidence against them (laughter). So he told us, “though you will be perfectly innocent, something you write may bring, it may be, other public workers into jeopardy. Well, we cannot afford to keep diaries.”

I hope to make the significance of this note from Gokhale’s diary clear, as regards a certain phase of Mr. Gokhale’s inner life. Always he looked into himself, examined his conduct in the light of great principles and ideals; and it is said that if he had done wrong, nobody could have castigated him more severely than himself. If he had done right, nobody was more ready to give credit to those who had inspired him and look upon successes as stepping stones to obtain greater opportunities of service. Soon after this humiliation of the apology, he examined himself in this way and made resolutions, which he committed to paper in a certain document which I mean to read to you, only saying beforehand that you must listen to it with the respect, in fact reverence, due to a man’s ideals at the time when he was suffering most acutely, living as it were in the very presence of the Most High and desiring nothing so much as to make his life an instrument of God’s will and an instrument for public welfare under His guidance. 

This is what I found amongst his intimate papers. It is dated 5th February 1893:

“By the grace of Sree Guru Dattatreya, I will endeavour humbly but firmly, to acquire or achieve the following: 

1) I will practise Yoga regularly. 

2) I will acquire a good knowledge of (a) History - Ancient and Modern. (b) Philosophy - Ancient and Modern. (c) Astronomy. (d) Geology. (e) Physiology. (f) Psychology. Now, no more “ology”. (g) French.

3. I will try to become a Member of :—

(а) The Bombay Legislative Council.

(b) The Supreme Legislative Council.

(c) The British Parliament.

In all these assemblies I will try to do good to my country by all means in my power.

4) I will try to become a preacher of the highest philosophical religion and I will preach this religion to the whole world.” ’

An unpleasant odour of musk

‘The flesh [of Hoatzins, locally called Ciganas] has an unpleasant odour of musk combined with wet hides - a smell called by the Brazilians catinga; it is, therefore, uneatable. If it be as unpalateable to carnivorous animals as it is to man, the immunity from persecution which it would thereby enjoy would account for its existing in such great numbers throughout the country.’ This is from the much-revered natural history journals written by Henry Walter Bates - born two centuries ago today - after spending 11 years in the Amazon. His observations and research, like that of his friend Russell Wallace, supported the new theories, at the time, being put forward by Charles Darwin.

Bates was born on 8 February 1825, in Leicester, England, into a family of modest means, his father being a stocking maker. Despite limited formal education, he attended local schools and became proficient in Latin and French, which later helped him access scientific literature. At age 13, he became an apprentice to a hosier but continued pursuing a passion for entomology in his spare time. He joined the Mechanics’ Institute (which had a library), studied in his spare time and collected insects in Charnwood Forest. In 1843 he had a short paper on beetles published in the journal Zoologist. He met Wallace, a keen entomologist, who had taken a teaching post in the Leicester Collegiate School. The two men shared a passion to explore exotic lands. 

Inspired particularly by Alexander von Humboldt’s accounts of the Amazon (see Humboldt’s genius), Bates and Wallace embarked on an expedition to South America in 1848 to study the region’s biodiversity. They intended to fund their trip by collecting and selling specimens of plants and animals. Though Wallace returned to England in 1852, Bates went on to spend 11 years (1848-1859) in the Amazon, a period marked by much hardship and astonishing discoveries: during this period, he collected over 14,000 species, of which approximately 8,000 were new to science. 

On his return, Bates spent the next three years writing an account of the trip, This was published as The Naturalist on the River Amazons in 1863, and would soon become widely regarded as one of the finest accounts of natural history travels. In the work, he details his discovery of what would become named as Batesian mimicry - a phenomenon whereby harmless species evolve to imitate the warning signals of harmful species to avoid predators. The idea proved a significant contribution to the then emerging theory of natural selection.

Also in 1863, Bates married Sarah Ann Mason with whom he had several children. From 1864 onwards, he worked as assistant secretary of the Royal Geographical Society (though effectively he acted as secretary - the senior post being occupied by a noble figurehead). He sold his personal Lepidoptera collection, and began to work mostly on beetles. From 1868 to 1869 and in 1878 he was president of the Entomological Society of London. In 1871 he was elected a fellow of the Linnaean Society, and in 1881 he was elected a fellow of the Royal Society. He died in 1892. Further information is available from Wikipedia, Encyclopaedia Britannica, and The Natural History Museum (which today holds most of his collection).

Bates’ original 1863 work, in two volumes, can be freely read online at Internet Archive. However, much more recently, in 2020, The Natural History Museum published The Naturalist on the River Amazon: The Journals & Writings of Henry Walter Bates. According to the museum, the book includes pages from Bates’ illustrated notebooks and excerpts from, in the words of Charles Darwin, ‘the best book of natural history travels ever published’.

Most of The Naturalist on the River Amazons reads more like a memoir than a journal or diary, but there are a few dated extracts. Here are two.

29 August 1848 

‘The Mojú, a stream little inferior to the Thames in size, is connected about 20 miles from its mouth by means of a short artificial canal with a small stream, the Igarapé-mirim, which flows the opposite way into the water-system of the Tocantins. Small vessels like ours take this route in preference to the stormy passage by way of the main river, although the distance is considerably greater. We passed through the canal yesterday, and to-day have been threading our way through a labyrinth of narrow channels; their banks all clothed with the same magnificent forest; but agreeably varied by houses of planters and settlers. We passed many quite large establishments, besides one pretty little village, called Santa Anna. All these channels are washed through by the tides, - the ebb, contrary to what takes place in the short canal, setting towards the Tocantins. The water is almost tepid (77° Fahr.), and the rank vegetation all around seems reeking with moisture. The country however, as we were told, is perfectly healthy. Some of the houses are built on wooden piles driven into the mud of the swamp.

In the afternoon we reached the end of the last channel, called the Anapú, which runs for several miles between two unbroken lilies of fan-leaved palms, forming with their straight stems colossal palisades. On rounding a point of land we came in full view of the Tocantins. The event was announced by one of our Indians, who was on the look-out at the prow, shouting, “La esta o Paraná-uassú!” “Behold, the great river!” It was a grand sight - a broad expanse of dark waters dancing merrily to the breeze; the opposite shore, a narrow blue line, miles away. We went ashore on an island covered with palm-trees, to make a fire and boil our kettle for tea. I wandered a short way inland, and was astounded at the prospect. The land lay below the upper level of the daily tides, so that there was no underwood, and the ground was bare. The trees were almost all of one species of Palm, the gigantic fan-leaved Mauritia flexuosa; on the borders only was there a small number of a second kind, the equally remarkable Ubussú palm, Manicaria saccifera. The Ubussú has erect, uncut leaves, twenty-five feet long, and six feet wide, all arranged round the top of a four-feet high stem, so as to form a figure like that of a colossal shuttlecock. The fan-leaved palms, which clothed nearly the entire islet, had huge cylindrical smooth stems, three feet in diameter, and about a hundred feet high. The crowns were formed of enormous clusters of fan-shaped leaves, the stalks alone of which measured seven to ten feet in length. Nothing in the vegetable world could be more imposing than this grove of palms. There was no underwood to obstruct the view of the long perspective of towering columns. The crowns, which were densely packed together at an immense height overhead, shut out the rays of the sun; and the gloomy solitude beneath, through which the sound of our voices seemed to reverberate, could be compared to nothing so well as a solemn temple. The fruits of the two palms were scattered over the ground; those of the Ubussú adhere together by twos and threes, and have a rough, brown-coloured shell; the fruit of the Mauritia, on the contrary, is of a bright red hue, and the skin is impressed with deep crossing lines, which give it a resemblance to a quilted cricket-ball.

About midnight, the tide being favourable and the breeze strong, we crossed the river, taking it in a slanting direction, a distance of sixteen miles, and arrived at eight o’clock the following morning at Cametá. This is a town of some importance, pleasantly situated on the somewhat high terra firma of the left bank of the Tocantins. I will defer giving an account of the place till the end of this narrative of our Tocantins voyage. We lost here another of our men, who got drinking with some old companions ashore, and were obliged to start on the difficult journey up the river with two hands only, and they in a very dissatisfied humour with the prospect.

The river view from Cametá is magnificent. The town is situated, as already mentioned, on a high bank, which forms quite a considerable elevation for this fiat country, and the broad expanse of dark-green waters is studded with low, palm-clad islands, the prospect down river, however, being clear, or bounded only by a sealike horizon of water and sky. The shores are washed by the breeze-tossed waters into little bays and creeks, fringed with sandy beaches. The Tocantins has been likened, by Prince Adalbert of Prussia, who crossed its mouth in 1846, to the Ganges. It is upwards of ten miles in breadth at its mouth; opposite Cametá it is five miles broad. Mr. Burchell, the well- known English traveller, descended the river from the mining provinces of interior Brazil some years before our visit. Unfortunately, the utility of this fine stream is impaired by the numerous obstructions to its navigation in the shape of cataracts and rapids, which commence, in ascending, at about 120 miles above Cametá, as will be seen in the sequel.’

30 August 1848 

‘Arrived, in company with Senhor Laroque, an intelligent Portuguese merchant, at Vista Alegre, fifteen miles above Cameta. This was the residence of Senhor Antonio Ferreira Gomez, and was a fair sample of a Brazilian planter’s establishment in this part of the country. The buildings covered a wide space, the dwelling-house being separated from the place of business, and as both were built on low, flooded ground, the communication between the two was by means of a long wooden bridge. From the office and visitors’ apartments a wooden pier extended into the river. The whole was raised on piles above high-water mark. There was a rude mill for grinding sugar-cane, worked by bullocks, but cashaça, or rum, was the only article manufactured from the juice. Behind the buildings was a small piece of ground cleared from the forest, and planted with fruit-trees, orange, lemon, genipapa, goyava, and others; and beyond this, a broad path through a neglected plantation of coffee and cacao, led to several large sheds, where the farinha, or mandiocca meal, was manufactured.

The plantations of mandiocca are always scattered about in the forest, some of them being on islands in the middle of the river. Land being plentiful, and the plough, as well as, indeed, nearly all other agricultural implements, unknown, the same ground is not planted three years together; but a new piece of forest is cleared every alternate year, and the old clearing suffered to relapse into jungle.

We stayed here two days, sleeping ashore in the apartment devoted to strangers. As usual in Brazilian houses of the middle class, we were not introduced to the female members of the family, and, indeed, saw nothing of them except at a distance. In the forest and thickets about the place we were tolerably successful in collecting, finding a number of birds and insects which do not occur at Para. I saw here, for the first time, the sky-blue Chatterer (Ampelis cotinga). It was on the topmost bough of a very lofty tree, and completely out of the reach of an ordinary fowling-piece. The beautiful light-blue colour of its plumage was plainly discernible at that distance. It is a dull, quiet bird. A much commoner species was the Cigana or Gipsy (Opisthocomus cristatus), a bird belonging to the same order, Gallinacea, as our domestic fowl. It is about the size of a pheasant; the plumage is dark brown, varied with reddish, and the head is adorned with a crest of long feathers. It is a remarkable bird in many respects. The hind toe is not placed high above the level of the other toes, as it is in the fowl-order generally, but lies on the same plane with them; the shape of the foot becomes thus suited to the purely arboreal habits of the bird, enabling it to grasp firmly the branches of trees. This is a distinguishing character of all the birds in equinoctial America which represent the fowl and pheasant tribes of the old world, and affords another proof of the adaptation of the Fauna to a forest region. The Cigana lives in considerable flocks on the lower trees and bushes bordering the streams and lagoons, and feeds on various wild fruits, especially the sour Goyava (Psidium sp.). The natives say it devours the fruit of arborescent Arums (Caladium arborescens), which grow in crowded masses around the swampy banks of lagoons. Its voice is a harsh, grating hiss; it makes the noise when alarmed, all the individuals sibilating as they fly heavily away from tree to tree, when disturbed by passing canoes. It is polygamous, like other members of the same order. It is never, however, by any chance, seen on the ground, and is nowhere domesticated. The flesh has an unpleasant odour of musk combined with wet hides - a smell called by the Brazilians catinga; it is, therefore, uneatable. If it be as unpalateable to carnivorous animals as it is to man, the immunity from persecution which it would thereby enjoy would account for its existing in such great numbers throughout the country.

A great number of the insects which we found here were different from those of Para. Species characteristic of the one locality were replaced by allied species in the other, a fact which would tend to the conclusion that the Tocantins serves, to some extent, as a barrier to migration. This was especially the case with the Papilios of the group which wear a livery of black, green, and red. P. Echelus of this group, which is so common at Para, was here absent, and its place supplied by the closely related P. Æneides. Both have the same habits, and seem to fill similar spheres in the natural economy of the two districts. Another handsome butterfly taken here was a member of the Erycinidæ family, the Alesa Prema, which is of a dazzling emerald-green colour chequered with black. I caught here a young Iguana; Iguanas, however, are extremely common everywhere throughout the country. They are especially numerous in the neighbourhood of villages, where they climb about fruit-trees overrun with creepers. The eggs, which are oblong, and about an inch and a half in length, are laid in hollow trees, and are very pleasant eating taken raw and mixed with farinha. The colour of the skin in the Iguana changes like that of the chameleon; in fact, it is called chameleon by the Portuguese. It grows to a length of five feet, and becomes enormously fat. This lizard is interesting to English readers on account of its relationship to the colossal fossil reptile of the Wealden, the Iguanodon. The Iguana is one of the stupidest animals I ever met with. The one I caught dropped helplessly from a tree just ahead of me; it turned round for a moment to have an idiotic stare at the intruder, and then set off running along the pathway. I ran after it, and it then stopped as a timid dog would do, crouching down, and permitting me to seize it by the neck and carry it off.

We lost here another of our crew; and thus, at the commencement of our voyage, had before us the prospect of being forced to return, from sheer want of hands to manage the canoe. Senhor Gomez, to whom we had brought letters of introduction from Senhor Joao Augusto Correia, a Brazilian gentleman of high standing at Para, tried what he could do to induce the canoe-men of his neighbourhood to engage with us, but it was a vain endeavour. The people of these parts seemed to be above working for wages. They are naturally indolent, and besides, have all some little business or plantation of their own, which gives them a livelihood with independence. It is difficult to obtain hands under any circumstances, but it was particularly so in our case, from being foreigners, and suspected, as was natural amongst ignorant people, of being strange in our habits. At length, our host lent us two of his slaves to help us on another stage, namely, to the village of Baiaō, where we had great hopes of having this, our urgent want, supplied by the military commandant of the district.’

Laws of the world organism

‘Shouldn’t the student of modern subjects learn from geology, physics, chemistry, etc., the laws of the world organism? The perceived unity of the world is the most magnificent event in the study of nature, it is the content of all true philosophy; for even the mind and its development, which philosophy in its narrow sense has considered up until now, is itself a production of nature.’ This is from the diary of Karl August Möbius, an influential German zoologist born two centuries ago today. There are no published diaries kept by Möbius, but an American academic, Lynn K. Nyhart, quotes from the diaries in her celebrated book on the history of natural science in Germany. 

Möbius was born on 7 February 1825 in Eilenburg, Prussia, the only child of Johann Heinrich Möbius, a dancing teacher who died when Karl was just three, and his mother who was a descendant of Martin Luther. He was educated at home until the age of 12-13 when he was sent away to a private training college to prepare for a career in primary school teaching. From 1844 to 1849 he taught at Seesen in the Harz Mountains in Northern Germany. He went to the University of Berlin to study natural sciences under Johannes Muller, then took up teaching again at the Johanneum Grammar School in Hamburg. His continuing studies in the natural sciences gained him a reputation that led to a post at the Hamburg Museum of Natural History. In 1855, Möbius married Helene Meyer, and they had three children. 

In 1863, Möbius cofounded the first German sea water aquarium, in Hamburg. In 1868, shortly after passing his doctoral examination at the University of Halle, he was appointed Professor of Zoology at the University of Kiel. There he devised and opened a zoology institute which would for decades be considered a model for such establishments. Between 1868 and 1870, he was commissioned by the Ministry of Agricultural Affairs in Prussia to conduct research on the Bay of Kiel oyster beds. This led to his groundbreaking work Die Auster und die Austernwirtschaft (The Oyster and Oyster Farming) in 1877. In this, he introduced the concept of ‘biocenosis’ or ‘living community,’ describing the interdependence of species in an ecosystem.

In the mid-1870s, Möbius participated in scientific expeditions, including a journey to Mauritius and the Seychelles in 1874-1875, which resulted in a comprehensive review of the fauna in that area. In 1888, he became the director of the zoological collections of the Natural History Museum of Berlin, and Professor of Systematic and Geographical Zoology at the Kaiser Wilhelm University, also in Berlin, where he taught until he retired in 1905 at the age of 80. He died three years later. More information can be found at Wikipedia, Encyclopaedia Britannica, and Kiel University

Although there is no evidence of any published diaries, Möbius did keep a diary from 1844 to 1849 while living in the Harz mountains. This is described and quoted from in Modern Nature: The Rise of the Biological Perspective in Germany by Lynn K. Nyhart (University of Chicago Press, 2009). Some pages can be previewed at Internet Archive.

In the book, Nyhart examines various responses that coalesced into the so-called ‘biological perspective’, including: the transformation of natural history practices; changes in museum displays; developments in classroom education; and the emergence of the modern zoo. In particular, she highlights the contributions of key figures such as Karl Möbius, who articulated the concept of the ‘living community’. The work is praised for being wide-ranging, closely argued, and very readable for it goes beyond just tracing the history of a scientific concept, offering insights into the broader cultural and institutional contexts of late 19th-century Germany

Here is one extract about Möbius and his diary.

‘During his time there, from 1844 to 1849, [Möbius] kept a diary that both recorded his love of nature and afforded him a chance to practice his writing - a form of conscious self-improvement and self-cultivation - as he strove tirelessly to prove himself. In the diary’s pages he alternated rhapsodies over his hikes in the mountains with admonishments to himself to be a better man. As he voraciously read history and nature writing, and studied English and the classical languages in his spare hours, he sought to live up to a standard of virtue that would overcome his resentment of his poverty. “Cannot the privation wrought by poverty and the disdain brought on by underestimation and misjudgment lead the spirit [den Geist] to depend on itself and to drive it to be enough for itself?” he agonized in September 1847. “Thoughts, feelings of inspiration, and pure will: these are the opinions that will break through the final barriers to draw us into the inspiring center of the All, into the deity.”

His communion with nature, which offered him considerable spiritual sustenance, was deepened by reading Humboldt. “Great Humboldt!” he gushed a few months later. “With the purest, most warmhearted enthusiasm you [Du] have penetrated into the unity [Zusammenhang] of the world, and in your Kosmos you have given to your race [deinem Geschlechte] the treasure of your spirit, your great knowledge, in clear, poetic language drenched with the warmth of your heart.” The human race “gazes in amazement at your work and wants to thank you on its knees.” 

Reading Shakespeare and Goethe inspired him to similar heights; their works allowed him to imagine himself “on the throne of the world,” with a view of God’s laws of eternal human nature. From this vantage point, he forgot his individual existence and felt part of a larger, God-given order. One route to this sublimation was science: “Science [die Wissenschaft] is the most beautiful bride. He whom she has once kissed is caught in her magic.” 

These youthful yearnings for connection and unity would persist in his private writing as preoccupations with community and self-abnegation and may be viewed as the first, ill-formed inklings of what would emerge in scientific form years later as his living-community concept.’

Here is a second extract.

‘By 1848 he was reading a pedagogical text called Education toward a Public Spirit (Erziehung zum Gemeingeist), whose author argued that philosophy was to play a very minor role in his proposed reformed “Naturgymnasium.” “Here I must object,” Möbius wrote in his diary “Shouldn’t the student of modern subjects [Realschiiler] learn from geology, physics, chemistry, etc., the laws of the world organism? The perceived unity of the world is the most magnificent event in the study of nature, it is the content of all true philosophy; for even the mind and its development, which philosophy in its narrow sense has considered up until now, is itself a production of nature.” ’

And here is a direct quotation by Nyhart from another diary kept by Möbius apparently between 1861 and 1863.

27 February 1863

‘When the son of a craftsman in a small town has come so far through his own work that he is counted among the more capable teachers and research scholars in a large city, he should act content if he is not granted a wished-for highest scientific position. He may keep working on with the accustomed effort, on the side of his practical profession, so that he never forgets his heritage. It is easy for us to consider ourselves more independent of the whole than we are. But our being follows on all sides from our birth, childhood, and course of development. We only want to be taken by others as we are in the present, and yet they always see, as well, how we got here.’

Ampère falling in love

André-Marie Ampère, dubbed the father of electrodynamics, was born 250 years ago today. A child of the enlightenment and Rousseau’s education principles, he became a great scientist without formal training. He left behind one youthful diary, a naive and charming account of his love and courtship of the woman who became his wife, but then died just four years later.

Ampère was born in Lyon, France, on 20 January 1775. His father was a prosperous businessman who admired the teachings of Jean-Jacques Rousseau. In line with Rousseau’s education ideas, he left his son to educate himself at the family home - with a well-stocked library - at Poleymieux-au-Mont-d’Or near Lyon. Although his father came to be called into public service by the new revolutionary government, he was guillotined in 1793 as part of the so-called Jacobin purges. Ampère, himself, found regular work as a maths teacher in 1799. This gave him enough income to marry his sweetheart, Julie Carron.

In 1802, Ampère was appointed a professor of physics and chemistry at the École Centrale in Bourg-en-Bresse, which meant leaving Julie, by then a sick woman, and his son in Lyon. In Bourg, he produced his first treatise on mathematical probability - Considerations on the Mathematical Theory of Games, which he sent to the Paris Academy of Sciences. Following the death of Julie, he moved to the capital and began teaching at the new École Polytechnique, where, in 1809, he was appointed professor of mathematics.

As well as holding positions at the École Polytechnique through to 1828, Ampère also taught philosophy and astronomy at the University of Paris for a while, and in 1824 was elected to the chair in experimental physics at the Collège de France. He engaged in all kinds of scientific enquiry, but, from 1820, when hearing of a Danish discovery which showed how a magnetic needle can be deflected by an electric current, he began developing theories to understand the relationship between electricity and magnetism.

It is for his work in understanding electromagnetism that Ampère is best remembered. He developed a physical account of electromagnetic phenomena, empirically demonstrable and mathematically predictive, and in 1827 published his major work, Memoir on the Mathematical Theory of Electrodynamic Phenomena, Uniquely Deduced from Experience. This work coined the name of a new science, electrodynamics, while Ampère also gave his name, in time, to Ampère’s Law, and the SI unit of electric current, the ampere, often shortened to amp. He died in 1836. Further biographical information is available from Wikipedia, NNBD, Encyclopaedia Britannica. James R. Hofmann’s biography - André-Marie Ampère: Enlightenment an Electrodynamics - can also be previewed at Googlebooks.

Although Ampère is not known as a diarist, he did leave behind one published diary, a record of his courtship with his future wife. This was first published, in French, in 1869, as Journal et Correspondance de André-Marie Ampère (freely available in French at Internet Archive or Gallica). An 1875 English review of the book can be found in The North American Review (Vol. 121, No. 249, Oct., 1875), viewable online at JSTOR. The reviewer, T. S. Perry, says the volume is ‘idyllic’ and ‘charming’, and though Ampère was ‘far from being a fool, he certainly shows how foolish an intelligent man can be in the privacy of his diary’. And Perry adds: ‘Although Ampère’s letters and diary lack the historical value of Pepys’s they have a far higher interest in the light they throw upon the private life and character of a great and good man.’ High praise indeed.

An English translation was published by R. Bentley & Son, a few years later, in 1873, with the title The Story of his Love: being the journal and early correspondence of of André-Marie Ampère with his family circle during the First Republic, 1793-1804. The full text of the English version can be read online at Googlebooks.

10 April 1796
‘I saw her for the first time.’

10 August 1796
‘I went to her house, and they lent me ‘Le Nouvelle Morali di Soave’.’

3 September 1796
‘M. Coupier had left the day before. I went to return ‘Le Nouvelle’ and they allowed me to select a volume from the library. I took Mme. Deshoulières. I was a few moments alone with her.’

4 September 1796
‘I accompanied the two sisters after mass. I brought away the first volume of Benardin. She told me that she should be alone, as her mother and sister were leaving on Wednesday.’

9 September 1796
‘I went there, and only Elise.’

14 September 1796
‘I returned the second volume of Bernardin, and had some conversation both her and Jenny. I promised to bring some comedies on the following day.’

17 September 1796
‘I took them, and began to open my heart.’

27 January 1797
‘At length she has arrived from Lyons; her mother did not come into the room at once. Apparently for the sake of looking at some vignettes, I knelt by her side; her mother came in and made me sit down by her.’

9 June 1797
‘I was prevented from giving a lesson on account my cough; I went away rather early, taking with Gresset, and the third volume of the Histoire de France. Julie shows me the trick of solitaire, which I had guessed the evening before; I seated myself near Julie, and remained by her till the end.

Incidentally, referring to some airs and songs, I left C’est en vain que la nature on the table. I ate a cherry she had let fall, and kissed a rose which she had smelt; in the walk I twice gave her my hand to get over a stile, her mother made room for me on the seat between herself and Julia; in returning I told her that it was long since I had passed so happy a day, but that it was the contemplation of nature which had charmed me the most; she spoke to me the whole day with much kindness.’

21 May 1803
‘Walk in the garden. Julie very ill.’

9 July 1803
‘Julie very ill in the morning. I begged M. Mollet to take my place at the Lyceum. M. Pelotin continued the same treatment, in spite of the new symptom.’

This article is a slightly revised version of one first published on 20 January 2015.

A glow of enthusiasm

‘The air is distinctly fragrant with balsam and resin and mint - every breath of it a gift we may well thank God for. Who could ever guess that so rough a wilderness should yet be so full of good things. [. . .] God himself seems to be always doing his best here, working like a man in a glow of enthusiasm.’ This is from the diaries of the Scottish-born American John Muir, an early and influential voice in the development of US national parks who died 110 years ago today. 

Muir was born in 1838 in Dunbar, Scotland. Until the age of eleven he attended local schools but, in 1849, his family emigrated to the US, settling first at Fountain Lake and then moving to Hickory Hill Farm near Portage, Wisconsin. Muir’s father worked his family hard but whenever they had time he and his younger brother would explore the rich Wisconsin countryside. Muir developed a love of the natural world, but he also became an inventor, a carver and clock maker. In 1860 he traveled the short distance south to Madison, to the state fair, where he won admiration and prizes, and enrolled in the university. Although doing well, after three years he left to travel the northern US and Canada, odd-jobbing his way through the as yet unspoiled land. An industrial accident in 1867 nearly cost him an eye; thereafter, it is said, he resolved to dedicate his life to exploring and preserving nature. 

Muir traveled extensively, walking from Indianapolis to the Gulf of Mexico and eventually settling in California in 1868. He became particularly enchanted with Yosemite Valley, describing it as ‘the grandest of all special temples of Nature’. Over the next six years, he explored and studied the Sierra Nevada mountains, developing groundbreaking theories about glacial formation. His environmental advocacy proved transformative as he was instrumental in establishing several national parks, including Yosemite (1890), Sequoia, Mount Rainier, Petrified Forest, and Grand Canyon. In 1892, he co-founded the Sierra Club, serving as its first president, to promote conservation and environmental protection.

Muir’s writings and activism significantly influenced public perception of wilderness areas and inspired conservation efforts. He was particularly close to President Theodore Roosevelt, accompanying him on a pivotal trip to Yosemite that helped secure federal protection for the park. He was also a prolific writer, publishing 300 articles and 10 major books about his travels and environmental philosophy. Some of his notable works include The Mountains of California and Our National Parks. 

Muir married Louie Wanda Strentzel in 1880 and he managed a family fruit ranch in Martinez, California, while continuing his conservation work. He died on 24 December 1914. Encyclopaedia Britannica has this assessment of the man: ‘His conviction that wilderness areas should be federally protected as national parks has given generations of US citizens and tourists an opportunity to appreciate America’s landscapes as they exist in the absence of human industrial influence. Muir’s writings continue to serve as sources of inspiration for naturalists and conservationists in the US and worldwide.’ 

Further information is also available from Wikipedia and The Sierra Club.

Muir kept extensive diaries throughout his life - some 78 journals and 25 notebooks. Nearly every page of these can be viewed at the University of the Pacific’s Scholarly Commons website. The diaries served as a basic resource for his books and many articles though they do not seem to have been published directly. Nevertheless a couple of his early books are presented in diary form: My First Summer in the Sierra (1911) and A Thousand-Mile Walk to the Gulf (1916) both published by Houghton Mifflin Company. 

The following extracts are taken from my First Summer in the Sierra.

19 June 1869 

‘Pure sunshine all day. How beautiful a rock is made by leaf shadows! Those of the live oak are particularly clear and distinct, and beyond all art in grace and delicacy, now still as if painted on stone, now gliding softly as if afraid of noise, now dancing, waltzing in swift, merry swirls, or jumping on and off sunny rocks in quick dashes like wave embroidery on seashore cliffs. How true and substantial is this shadow beauty, and with what sublime extravagance is beauty thus multiplied! The big orange lilies are now arrayed in all their glory of leaf and flower. Noble plants, in perfect health, Nature’s darlings.’

20 June 1869

‘Some of the silly sheep got caught fast in a tangle of chaparral this morning, like flies in a spider’s web, and had to be helped out. Carlo found them and tried to drive them from the trap by the easiest way. How far above sheep are intelligent dogs! No friend and helper can be more affectionate and constant than Carlo. The noble St. Bernard is an honor to his race.

The air is distinctly fragrant with balsam and resin and mint - every breath of it a gift we may well thank God for. Who could ever guess that so rough a wilderness should yet be so full of good things. One seems to be in a majestic domed pavilion in which a grand play is being acted with scenery and music and incense, - all the furniture and action so interesting we are in no danger of being called on to endure one dull moment. God himself seems to be always doing his best here, working like a man in a glow of enthusiasm.’

22 June 1869

‘Unusually cloudy. Besides the periodical shower-bearing cumuli there is a thin, diffused, fog-like cloud overhead. About .75 in all.’

23 June 1869 

‘Oh, these vast, calm, measureless mountain days, inciting at once to work and rest! Days in whose light everything seems equally divine, opening a thousand windows to show us God. Nevermore, however weary, should one faint by the way who gains the blessings of one mountain day; whatever his fate, long life, short life, stormy or calm, he is rich forever.’

23 July 1869

‘Another midday cloudland, displaying power and beauty that one never wearies in beholding but hopelessly unsketchable and untellable. What can poor mortals say about clouds? While a description of their huge glowing domes and ridges, shadowy gulfs and cañons, and feather-edged ravines is being tried, they vanish, leading no visible ruins. Nevertheless, these fleeting sky mountains are as substantial and significant as the more lasting upheavals of granite beneath them. Both alike are built up and die, and in God’s calendar difference of duration is nothing. We can only dream about them in wondering, worshiping admiration, happier than we dare tell even to friends who see farthest in sympathy, glad to know that not a crystal or vapor particle of them hard or soft, is lost; that they sink and vanish only to rise again and again in higher and higher beauty. As to our work, duty, influence, etc. concerning which so much fussy pother is made, it will not fail of its due effect, though like lichen on a stone, we keep silent.’

2 August 1869

‘Clouds and showers, about the same as yesterday. Sketching all day on the North Dome until four or five o’clock in the afternoon, when, as I was busily employed thinking only of the glorious Yosemite landscape, trying to draw every tree and every line and feature of the rocks, I was suddenly, and without warning, possessed with the notion that my friend, Professor J. D. Butler, of the State University of Wisconsin, was below me in the valley, and I jumped up full of the idea of meeting him, with almost as much startling excitement as if he had suddenly touched me to make me look up. Leaving my work without the slightest deliberation, I ran down the western slope of the Dome and along the brink of the valley wall, looking for a way to the bottom, until I came to a side cañon, which, judging by its apparently continuous growth of trees and bushes, I thought might afford a practical way into the valley, and immediately began to make the descent, late as it was, as if drawn irresistibly. But after a little, common sense stopped me and explained that it would be long after dark ere I could possibly reach the hotel, that the visitors would be asleep, that nobody would know me, that I had no money in my pockets, and moreover was without a coat. I therefore compelled myself to stop, and finally succeeded in reasoning myself out of the notion of seeking my friend in the dark, whose presence I only felt in a strange, telepathic way. I succeeded in dragging myself back through the woods to camp, never for a moment wavering, however, in my determination to go down to him next morning. This I think is the most unexplainable notion that ever struck me. Had some one whispered in my ear while I sat on the Dome, where I had spent so many days, that Professor Butler was in the valley, I could not have been more surprised and startled. When I was leaving the university, he said, “Now, John, I want to hold you in sight and watch your career. Promise to write me at least once a year.” I received a letter from him in July, at our first camp in the Hollow, written in May, in which he said that he might possibly visit California some time this summer and therefore hoped to meet me. But inasmuch he named no meeting-place, and gave no directions as to the course he would probably follow, and as I should be in the wilderness all summer, I had not the slightest hope of seeing him, and all thought of the matter had vanished from my mind until this afternoon, when he seemed to be wafted bodily almost against my face. Well, to-morrow I shall see; for, reasonable or unreasonable, I feel I must go.’

Two or three hundred yaks

‘We sighted two or three hundred yaks drinking in the river, and I wounded three. It was a glorious sight to see the whole herd dashing across ravines and through snow drifts up a lateral valley. I followed them for several miles, and though two of the wounded animals were losing quantities of blood, I failed to get again within range, for the melting snow and the slippery clayey soil were too much for my pony.’ This is from the exploration diary of US diplomat William Woodville Rockhill - who died 110 years ago today - during his second expedition into China and Mongolia. It was Rockhill who is credited with launching the so-called Open Door policy towards China in the early 20th century.

Rockhill was born in Philadelphia in 1854. His father died when he was 13 and his mother relocated the family to France to escape the Civil War. He attended the École spéciale militaire de Saint-Cyr, where he studied Tibetan (having been inspired by Abbé Huc’s account of his 1844-1846 voyage to Lhasa). After graduation, he joined the French Foreign Legion, serving as an officer in Algiers. In 1876, he returned to the US where he married his childhood sweetheart. They had two children. Although they tried ranching in New Mexico, by 1881 they had relocated to Montreux in Switzerland where Rockwood spent three years studying Tibetan, Sanskrit, and Chinese, as well as co-authoring a biography of Buddha.

In 1884, Rockhill was appointed to the US Legation in Beijing. In 1896, his wife died; however he soon got married again, to Edith Howell Perkins. Between 1897 and 1899, Rockhill served as ambassador to Greece/Serbia/Romania. In 1899, he was appointed Director-General of the International Union of American Republics, a position he held until 1905 when he was made ambassador to China (until 1909). He is credited with authoring the Open Door Policy towards China with the aim of preserving Chinese sovereignty while ensuring equal trade opportunities for all nations. In 1910, he was appointed ambassador to Russia and from 1911 to 1913 he was ambassador to the Ottoman Empire.

In addition to his diplomatic work, Rockhill was an accomplished explorer and scholar, undertaking two expeditions to Tibet and western China in the 1880s and 1890s. His meticulous observations on climate, geography, and local cultures established him as a leading expert on the region. En route to take up a position as advisor to the President of China, Yuan Shikai, contracted pleurisy. He died (in Honolulu) on 8 December 1914. Further information is available from Wikipedia, Geographicus, American Diplomacy.

A detailed daily diary Rockhill kept on the second of his expeditions was published in 1894 by the Smithsonian institution with the title - Diary of a Journey Through Mongolia and Tibet in 1891 and 1892.  The full work can be read at Googlebooks or Internet Archive.

In a short note at the start of the work, the institution’s secretary says the publication has ‘the general object of increasing and diffusing knowledge in regard to the little known countries traversed by the explorer.’ 

And in Rockhill’s introduction, he explains: ‘The form in which I now publish the results of my journey was only adopted after much hesitation, as I feared it might prove tedious to even the enthusiastic reader of books of travel - if such happily there still be. But a journal, kept from day to day, and often under great difficulties shows better, 1 think, than any other form of record the true impressions of the writer, his moods, his hopes, his anxieties, even when they concern nothing more important than his next meal, of which I am, however, assured the public likes to be informed. In such a Diary as is here given numerous glaring errors in style - if nothing worse - tedious detail and monotonous repetition cannot fail to confront the too critical reader, but let him be charitable - dirt, cold, starvation and a thousand minor discomforts which beset the explorer in Mongolia and Tibet who lives and travels like the barbarous inhabitants of those wild regions, are not conducive to sustained or successful literary work, as he may find out for himself if he will but try it.’ 

Here’s a flavour of the diary.

30 November 1891

‘I received to-day my passport from the Tsung-li Yamen. It is what we would call at home a “special passport,” authorizing me as former Secretary of the United States Legation to visit Kan-su, Ssü-ch’uan, Yün-nan, Hsin-chiang (the New Dominion), and the Ching-hai, or the Mongol and Tibetan country under the administrative control of the Hsi-ning Amban. This opens the road to Lh’asa for me as far as Dréch’u rabden and consequently Nagch’uk’a, for there are no inhabitants, only an occasional band of roaming K’amba before reaching the latter point.

I have two drafts on a Shan-hsi bank at Kuei-hua Ch’eng for 1103.31 taels, and I carry 172.56 taels in sycee. I will draw an additional 700 taels on reaching Lan-chou Fu in Kan-su. This and the goods I carry with me will have to do for the journey - a year or more.

We hear many rumors about the rebels up Jehol way. It is said here that they have crossed the Great Wall and are marching on Peking. There is no doubt that five hundred desperate men, willing to sacrifice their lives, could capture Peking by a coup de main, for there is only the Peking field force (Shen-ch’i ying) to defend it, which, as a Chinese general remarked a few years ago to the Seventh Prince, who is the chief of this body, is more expert with the opium pipe (yen chiang) than with the musket (yang chiang). This little rebellion is a specimen of what frequently occurs on the northern and southwestern frontiers of China. One day a chief of a band of highwaymen (ma-tsei) gave in his submission to the government and made himself so agreeable that he was after awhile given official preferment. His band, for the sake of economy probably, retained his name on their banners and kept to the road. This caused the Jehol officials to believe that the ex-chief, Li, I think he was named, was still connected with the profession, so he was arrested, tried, and beheaded. His son, to avenge his sire, joined the band, dubbed himself Ping Ch'ing Wang (‘‘The Prince leveler of the Ch’ing dynasty”), and announced on his banners that his platform was “First, right (li), then reason (tao), to put an end to the Catholic (t’ien chu) faith, to bring down the reigning dynasty, and to destroy the hairy foreigners.” A pretty pretentious scheme for a few hundred men. They are more or less connected with a secret society called the Tsai huei, a kind of northern Ko-lao huei, and some people here tell me they are called Hung mao-tzu (“red haired”) because they put on false beards of red hair in their secret conclaves. At all events they are very probably well armed, with Winchester rifles, I believe, supplied them by an enterprising foreign firm at Newchwang. Li Hung-chang is said to be sending troops from around Tientsin to the disturbed district, and soon the rebel band will disperse and the imperial forces will announce a glorious victory and the condign punishment of the guilty ones.’

4 December 1891

‘Got off late as we had the first casualty of the journey in our party. The black mule is dead! The kicker and most disorderly member of the party is no more. Before he had breathed his last, his carcass was sold for $2, his tail cut off to show the owner on the carter’s arrival at home, and his body carried off by the natives who were licking their chops over the anticipated feast. Our loss did not effect our rate of speed, except perhaps that it was slightly better, for we made twenty miles to Ch’i-ming-i. The day was pleasant but the road horribly stony, limestone pebbles, and such jolting as I never experienced. If ever I go over this road again I will take mule litters, they are much more convenient, and one travels just as rapidly as in a cart.’

13 February 1892

‘(15th of 1st moon) - Half of to-day was passed at Kumbum sauntering through the fair. I was surprised to see quite a large number of Bônbo lamas, recognizable by their huge mops of hair and their red gowns, and also from their being dirtier than the ordinary run of people. I heard that throughout this Amdo country they have numerous small lamaseries and that their belief is very popular among the T’u-fan.

There appears to hang a certain mystery about the famous tsandan karpo, the “white sandal wood tree” sprung from Tsong-k’apa’s hair. I now learn that the great and only original one, on the leaves of which images of the saint appear, is kept hidden away in the sanctum sanctorum of the Chin-wa ssü (“golden tiled temple”), remote from the eyes of the vulgar herd. So it would seem that I have never seen it, though I have been shown four or five other “white sandalwoods” in and around the lamasery. I learn, moreover, that the images on the leaves, bark, etc., only appear to those who have firm belief, and that the faithless can distinguish nothing extraordinary on them. This, if true, is rough on Hue, who thought he detected the devil’s hand in the miraculously produced images he perceived on the leaves of this tree.

Some of the Gopa (Lh’asa traders) have their wives here with them. They were out to-day dressed in all their finery and looked remarkably well. Strapping big women they were, with ruddy cheeks and frank open faces, in green satin gowns, aprons of variegated pulo, shirts of raw silk (buré), silver charm boxes (gawo) on their breasts, and crowns of coral beads and turquoises on the top of their long loosely hanging black locks.

In the Gold tiled temple in the northeast corner near the door is an impress in a chunk of sandstone of a human foot about eighteen inches long and two inches deep and said to be that of Tsong-k’apa. It is placed in a vertical position. On the top of the stone is a little wax; on this the people place a copper cash and then examine the footprint to ascertain their luck. If it is good, then bright spots will appear on the surface of the stone in the footmark.

In the evening I again went to Kumbum, this time to “lang t’eng,” as it is called here, anglicè, to see the lanterns and the butter bas-reliefs. The latter were very good - better perhaps than those I saw in ’89. In one of the largest ones the central portion of the design was a temple, and little figures of lamas and laymen about eight to ten inches high were moving in and out of its portals. Another new feature was musicians concealed behind curtains hanging around the bas-reliefs, who discoursed sweet (?) music on flutes, cymbals and hautboys. Four of the largest designs were in the style of the one just described, the others represented images of various gods inside of highly ornamented borders; in these the main figures were about four feet high.’

30 March 1892

‘We left by daylight, as we wanted to reach some place where we could procure fuel and cook a little food. After a few miles through deep snow we reached the main valley of the Tsahan ossu and left the snow behind. The snow line on this side of the Wahon la, as I shall call this mountain, is at least a thousand feet lower than on the northern slope. The predominant formation is still granite.

We noticed in the distance several large herds of wild yaks, hares, very large crows, a variety of bird that I took for a flicker, and a small greyish brown bird were also quite numerous. I saw quite a number of skulls of big-horns (Ovis Poli).

The general direction of the range before us is west-northwest and south-southeast, and its summits rise 2,000 to 3,000 feet above the valley, which in places is, perhaps - counting its width from the summits to the north to the crest of the southern range, two to three miles wide. Many patches of loess are visible on the mountain sides, and along the river bank there is a great deal of gravel and broken, angular pieces of stone. Reddish clay is abundant, I should have noted, on the southern slopes of the range we have just crossed.

We sighted two or three hundred yaks drinking in the river, and I wounded three. It was a glorious sight to see the whole herd dashing across ravines and through snow drifts up a lateral valley. I followed them for several miles, and though two of the wounded animals were losing quantities of blood, I failed to get again within range, for the melting snow and the slippery clayey soil were too much for my pony. I did not want to take any Ts’aidam ponies with me into Tibet, experience had proven them to be worthless for the kind of work I had before me, and so I had to give up the chase, as I could not afford to overwork the good little Konsa pony I was riding.

We camped on the bank of the river in a miserably bleak spot where the wind and the driving snow made it most uncomfortable for us all night, and where our cattle got very little grass or rest. A couple of bears came wandering about among the rocks near us, but we were all too tired to think of shooting. From what old Wang-ma-bum tells me the Tsahan ossu is the same stream which I crossed in ’89, in the Ts’aidam, when on my way to Baron kuré, and which is there called Shara gol. It is like all the rivers of this region, much shallower and of smaller volume in its lower course than at its head, much of the water being lost in the sands and swampy grounds when it leaves the hills.’

Amply rewarded

It is 80 years since the death of Princess Beatrice, a constant companion to her mother Queen Victoria while she was alive, and a great great grandmother to the current King of Spain, Felipe VI. Beatrice did not keep a diary herself, as far as I know, but Queen Victoria was a committed diarist: very soon after Beatrice’s birth, the Queen wrote of being ‘amply rewarded’ for the ‘very long wearisome time’. Moreover, it was Beatrice who edited Queen Victoria’s journals, a huge task that took her decades to complete, and she did so faithfully to the letter of her mother’s instructions. Towards the end of her life, Beatrice also translated into English, and edited, diaries kept by her German great grandmother.

Beatrice, the fifth daughter and youngest of nine children born to Queen Victoria and Prince Albert, was born at Buckingham Palace in 1857. The birth caused controversy, according to Matthew Dennison, author of The Last Princess: The Devoted Life of Queen Victoria’s Youngest Daughter (see review at The Guardian website), when it was announced that Queen Victoria would seek relief from the pains of delivery through the use of chloroform - the practice being dangerous to mother and child and frowned upon by the Church of England and the medical authorities. Two weeks after the birth (on 29 April), Queen Victoria wrote in her journal (freely available online here) about her newborn:

‘Till today I have been prevented from writing in my Journal, & I resume it today with feelings of the deepest, gratitude towards an All Merciful Father in Heaven who has preserved me, & restored me almost completely to health & strength. I have felt better & stronger this time, than I have ever done before. How I also thank God for granting us such a dear, pretty girl, which I so much wished for! She came into the world at 2 o’clock on the 14th, having caused me a very long wearisome time. I was amply rewarded, & forgot all I had gone through, when I heard dearest Albert say “it is a very fine child, & a girl!” & it was as inexpressible joy to me. My beloved ones love and devotion, & the way he helped in so many little ways, was unbounded. Mrs Lilley being old, & having been so ill last year, I had an assistant monthly Nurse, Mrs Innocent to help her. Dr Lucock & Dr Snow attended me. After I had some sleep, Mama & Feodore came in for a moment to see me. Albert had to go at 4 to the Council, & wished dear Aunt Gloucester. He brought Vicky in, to wish me good night - We have to settled that the Baby should be named, Beatrice>, Victoria, Feodore>. Beatrice, is a lovely name, meaning Blessed, & was borne by 3 English Princesses. Dear Mama, Vicky & Fritz & Feodore, are to be the sponsors. - Have done remarkably well all the time. - After the first days saw all the Children, & Vicky has often been reading to me, Mama, & Feodore, also constantly coming in & out. [. . .]

Occupied in choosing various things including little caps, &c - for the dear little new born one, who is such a pretty plump, flourishing child, promising to be very like Arthur, with fine large blue eyes, marked nose, pretty little mouth & very fine skin.’

From birth, Beatrice became a favoured child of her parents. Through much of her childhood she was referred to as ‘Baby’. Queen Victoria came to rely on her increasingly, for emotional and practical support, especially after the deaths of her mother and then of Albert in 1861, and from 1871 when the last of Beatrice’s older sisters married. At times, the Queen even dictated her private journal to Beatrice. Despite her mother’s reluctance to let Beatrice go, she did, eventually, in 1885, agree to her marrying Prince Henry of Battenberg, a morganatic descendant of the Grand Ducal House of Hesse, on the condition that the couple made their home with the Queen.

Beatrice and Henry had four children between 1886 and 1891, but Henry found domestic/royal life too monotonous and yearned for more employment. The Queen made him governor of the Isle of Wight in 1889, and, in time, consented to him joining an expedition fighting in the Fourth Anglo-Ashanti war (in present day Ghana). However, he contracted Malaria, and died in 1896. Beatrice continued to serve her mother, who gave her Henry’s job as Isle of White governor, as well as apartments of her own at Kensington Palace. On the death of the Queen in 1901, Beatrice was devastated; and, thereafter, not being close to her brother, the new King Edward VII, she played less of a role in public affairs

The marriage of Beatrice’s daughter, Princess Ena, to King Alfonso XIII of Spain in 1906 caused some controversy as it entailed her converting to Catholicism, against the wishes of Edward VII. The marriage, moreover, was to transmit Beatrice’s haemophilia gene to the Spanish dynasty. Felipe IV, who succeeded to the Spanish throne in June 1914, is her great great grandson. In 1917, George V’s policy of divesting the royal family of its German associations led the family to change its name of Battenberg to Mountbatten. Beatrice died on 26 October 1944; further biographical information is available at Wikipedia, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (log-in required) or The Royal Forums.

Queen Victoria left all her private journals to Beatrice, with instructions to edit or destroy any passages which appeared unsuitable for posterity. This involved her in transcribing the journals in her own hand, into 111 volumes, and destroying most of the originals. A few extracts from the diaries were published in the Queen’s lifetime - see The crown hurt me - and, in 2012, the Royal Family published 40,000 pages of the diary online as part of Queen Elizabeth’s Diamond Jubilee celebrations - see Victoria’s diaries online. Wikipedia has a separate entry for Queen Victoria’s diaries, although the fullest and most accurate information is on the Queen Victoria Journal website itself. Although, there are, in fact, four different versions of the journal, three of these versions only cover a few years, and it is Princess Beatrice’s 111 hand-written volumes that provide the vast bulk of what remains of Queen Victoria’s diaries. Thus, it is Beatrice who must have edited the above extract about her own birth!

Towards the end of her life Beatrice turned her hand to another ancestor’s diaries, those kept by Queen Victoria’s maternal grandmother, Augusta, duchess of Saxe-Coburg-Saalfeld. She translated these from the German, and they were published in 1941 by John Murray as In Napoleonic Days. Here is part of Beatrice’s own introduction to the book, and a few extracts, including the first and the last two, from Augusta’s diary as edited by Beatrice.

‘The King having kindly given me his permission to translate for publication some extracts from my Great-Grandmother’s Diary, I hope this small effort and venture of mine may be of some interest to the public and ultimately benefit the funds of various War Charities. [. . .] Her original diary is in the family archives in Windsor Castle and, so far, the extracts from it have only been printed in German for private circulation. The curious similarity between the days of the Napoleonic wars and our own times has led me to think this Diary might appeal to some readers, interested in that period. The record is very simply told and contains many references to the Duchess’s family and the part they played in her life, but these could not be easily eliminated without spoiling the impression given by her graphic descriptions of the times in which she lived, in the Germany of that day so very different from present-day Germany.’

2 April 1806
‘The moon shines cold and bright in a cloudless sky. The mild breath of Spring has given way to cold biting east winds. It seems as if nature has allied itself with humanity to destroy all thoughts of happiness. There are nothing but storms in the atmosphere and amongst men. Poor Germany, what will thy fate yet be, given over to the caprices of a despot, who recognises no law but his own will, who sets no limit to his own lust for power, and to whom all means are justifiable to gratify this passion.

Soon to be under the yoke of an arrogant, grasping people, what future can my poor devastated country expect, she who once in olden days, defied the Roman Eagle! When the short shameful war broke out, I foresaw a dark future, but now that war has ended so disastrously my heart is filled with a nameless dread. Slowly and heavily the storm is creeping over Saxony. I wonder where I shall finish these entries and in what place I shall lay my weary head to rest, after life’s storms have passed over me?’

15 August 1806
‘At last the terrible blow has fallen which wrecks the German Constitution! Francis II has laid down the German Imperial Crown. In spite of the flaws of the old regime it surely is better than what we are going to be given in its stead. The ancient national oak, with its mouldering trunk and weather-beaten branches in which Wotan’s eagle has for 1000 years had its eyrie, cannot be expected to stem the present tide of events.’

28 September 1806
‘A false rumour last night that a French Cavalry Brigade was approaching, caused great distress in the town and deprived us of sleep. It was “much ado about nothing.” But I wonder if these disturbers of the peace may not some day unexpectedly descend on us?’

10 October 1806
‘Merciful God, what terrible times we have lived through! The grim memories of these days of bloodshed will never leave me. Already at [half past eight] my niece sent for me. Her corner room overlooked on the one side Wladbergen, through which the road from Coburg passes. On the left, shots were falling at intervals, as well as in and around the little village of Garnsdorf, at the foot of the hills, where the Prussian Jagers were posted. The ground above the forest was also being occasionally shelled. Prussien Batteries were stationed in the fields near the high road to Rudolstadt, and on the road itself, Fusiliers.

Towards 8 o’clock Prince Louis Ferdinand arrived on the scene, rapidly followed by Horse Artillery and 2 Saxon Infantry Regiments. In the distance their fine band could be heard, and lastly our brace Saxon Hussars came by, at a quick trot.

Prince Louis Ferdinand accompanied by his ADCs reviewed all the Troops, his brave, debonnaire appearance creating a general sense of confidence.

One could see the enemy coming down the hills, and hear the tramping of the Infantry and the sound of bugles. The whole scene of bloodshed lay spread out before us. The fire of Prussian Battery was incessant, but the French guns seldom came into action. Their Cavalry emerged from the forest and streamed along in a never-ending and terrifying procession.’

1 October 1821
‘I must somehow have caught a chill on my drive back from Ebersdorf, and feel very unwell. I have such pains in my limbs, that I am afraid I must be feverish.’

3 October 1821
‘I had such pains in my head and palpitations of the heart this morning that I could not help being alarmed about myself, but it passed off, and we were able to lunch in the little Casino at the foot of the old tower, the Ebersdorf family joining us.’

This article is a slightly revised version of one first published on 26 October 2014

Professor of poetry

Francis Turner Palgrave, a close friend of Alfred Tennyson and a connoisseur of English poetry, was born two centuries ago today. He worked most of his life as a civil servant in the education service but in his 60s was elected Oxford University’s Professor of Poetry. Soon after Palgrave’s death, his daughter, Gwenllian, published a book about her father’s life in which she quotes extensively from diaries he kept intermittently for over 50 years.

Palgrave was born on 28 September 1824 in Great Yarmouth, the eldest son of Sir Francis Palgrave, an historian, and his wife Elizabeth Turner, daughter of a banker. He grew up in Yarmouth and also in Hampstead, London, but was largely educated at home, in an atmosphere of ‘high artistic culture’, ‘fervid anglo-catholicism’ and ‘strenuous thought’, until the age of 14, when his father could afford to sent him to Charterhouse public school as a day boy.

After travelling on the Continent, Palgrave won a scholarship to Balliol College, Oxford; but, in 1846, he interrupted his studies for a year or so to serve as assistant private secretary to William Gladstone. From 1847 to 1862, he was fellow of Exeter College. In 1849, he took up a civil service post in the education department, which led him, from 1850 to 1855, to be vice-principal at Kneller Hall, a government training college for elementary teachers at Twickenham. There, he met Alfred Tennyson. When the training college was abandoned, Palgrave returned to Whitehall in 1855, becoming examiner in the education department, and eventually assistant secretary.

Palgrave married Cecil Grenville Milnes in 1862, and they had one son and four daughters. Apart from Tennyson and Gladstone, Palgrave was friends with other notables of the time, including Robert Browning and Matthew Arnold. He wrote and published poetry, in volumes such as Visons of England. However, his principal claim to fame was to publish the Golden Treasury of English Songs and Lyrics (1861), a comprehensive and carefully chosen (in consultation with Tennyson) anthology of the best poetry in the language. This tome is considered to have helped popularise the poetry of William Wordsworth, and to have had a significant influence on poetic taste for several generations.

In 1884, Palgrave resigned his civil service position, and, the following year, was elected Professor of Poetry at Oxford. By then, his life was mostly divided between London and Lyme Regis where he had bought a holiday home in 1872, with almost annual visits to Italy. He died in London in 1897. Further information can be found at Wikipedia, Dictionary of National Biography (source of the quotes above) or The Twickenham Museum website.

Palgrave kept a journal for much of his life, and although this has not been published separately, Palgrave’s daughter, Gwenllian, included many extracts in her biography: Francis Turner Palgrave - His Journals and Memories of his Life. This was published by Longmans, Green and Co. in 1899. It is freely available at Internet Archive. According to Gwenllian, her father started keeping a journal, intermittently, as early as 1834, in the form of letters to his mother. His last journal entry was in 1890. Here are a few extracts from Palgrave’s diary, as culled from Gwenllian’s biography,

31 March 1849 [Palgrave’s first meeting with Tennyson]
‘In the evening to Mr. Brookfield’s. Found there Lingen, A. Tennyson; afterwards Thackeray and H. Hallam came. Walked towards Hampstead with A. Tennyson. Conversed on Universities, the ‘Princess,’ his plans, &c.; he very open and friendly: a noble, solid mind, bearing the look of one who had suffered greatly: - strength and sensitiveness blended.’

2 April 1849
‘In the afternoon to A. Tennyson’s in the Hampstead Road. Long conversation with him; he read me songs to be inserted in the ‘Princess,’ and poems on A. Hallam, some exquisite.’

July 1870
‘On the 14th of July we welcomed another little boy. After eight or nine days this little darling began to pine, and my dear Cis wishing to have him baptised, he received the names Arthur Frederick, the second after Freddy Cavendish, who promised to be godfather. The baby looked at us with deep violet eyes, as if asking to live. I could not realise fear, though his dear mother had begun to realise she must resign her treasure. But in the afternoon of the 31st, as this sweet patient little Arthur lay on Cecil’s lap, every hope was clearly over. . . . We buried him in the quiet country ground at Barnes, where Cecil’s Aunt Sidney lies.’

23 November 1870
‘The war still, but with more than one difference. In so great and complex an action and where so much human feeling is mixed, a cause cannot remain true to itself: initial right and justice are insufficient to leaven the vast mass of after events. It seems clear that the French will die as a nation, sooner than make a surrender of defeat.’

29 May 1871
‘All to Stokesay Castle, a singularly perfect specimen of domestic residence temp. Edward I. The site of this small ancient relic, lovely amid green wooded hills and mountainesque horizon - indebted much to the haze of an exquisite summer day. Thence to Ludlow: the castle here of all dates, is as fine as that uncomfortable thing, a ruin, ever can be.’

21 July 1871
‘Came to Lyme. In the evenings I am reading to Cis the ‘Bride of Lammermoor’: this seems to me to stand above all other novels, like a play by Shakespeare above all other plays. Indeed, in astonishing truthfulness and variety in creation of character, in power and pathos, I cannot see how this, at least, is inferior to Shakespeare . . . We have spent four agreeable days at the Palace at Exeter: I had one long walk with the Bishop, and a really good discussion on Darwin and cognate topics. He was at his best on such points: large and wise and liberal . . . After that a brief visit to Whitestaunton, a charming house of early Elizabethan date; we much regretted the brevity of our visit, having greatly liked our hosts.’

20 October 1871
‘We came to Lyme, and Cis and I went carefully over our little intended purchase, Little Park. It is a pretty little old place, with its many little rooms and pretty garden and lovely views. May it be a true haunt of peace to us and our dear ones! . . . Returned home to a warm welcome from our dear, dear lively little ones.’

4 July 1874
‘We went to Chichester, taking little Cecy and Frank. A year has much shaken the good old Dean, but when pretty well there was all his old charm and life. He is about the best type of a former age that I know, or, rather, he has the best of the last age joined with our modern movement.’

23 July 1879
‘Cis and I took the two eldest children to ‘Hamlet.’ I had not seen any serious acting for years, and went expecting to find my greatest pleasure in the dear children’s; but I returned very deeply impressed with the frequent admirable renderings of Irving as ‘Hamlet’ and Miss Terry as ‘Ophelia.’ . . . Above all, the amazing difficulty of the art impressed me; as with painting, I doubt how far the spectator can pretend to point out the way in which parts might be improved, though he may lawfully feel not satisfied. What was good also, both in these and in the other actors, is to me so much clearly gained. Also if ‘Hamlet’ acted unequally, how unequally, a vrai dire, is ‘Hamlet’ written!’

17 July 1883
‘We took the children to ‘The Merchant of Venice’ for the second time. Irving’s Shylock seemed to me a fine and true rendering of Shakespeare’s intention - viz. the mediaeval Jew a little raised in dignity and humanity. The Terry Portia was generally admirable. This play gains, certainly, immensely by representation . . , the sort of tradition which gives Shylock the protagonist, if not the hero part, is amply justified. . . I certainly think that those who cannot see that Irving gave a very powerful, and Miss Terry a very beautiful, interpretation, and that the piece as a whole was a thoroughly ‘adequate’ representation of what Shakespeare meant, must never expect to be satisfied by human art.’

7 April 1885 [Naples]
‘The Pompeian frescoes and mosaics are much beyond what I expected in quality of Art: the invention is so copious, the handling so absolutely assured, that I fully felt the sad lesson how Art (despite a few reactions) has had one long downward career for two thousand years.’

2 October 1886 [Dorchester]
‘Walked with Frank through twilight to Winterbourne Came: a pretty little thatched house among trees. I was allowed to go up to the great aged poet in the bedroom which - at eighty-four and with now failing bodily strength - he is not likely to quit. Mr. [William] Barnes had invited me when Frank visited him last Christmas, and truly glad was I, and honoured did I feel, to accomplish it. A very finely cut face, expressive blue eyes, a long white beard, hands fine like a girl’s - all was the absolute ideal of a true poet. Few in our time equal him in variety and novelty of motive: in quantity of true sweet inspiration and musical verse. None have surpassed him in exquisite wholeness and unity of execution. He was dressed in red with white fur of some sort, and a darker red cap: Titian or Tintoret had no nobler, no more high born looking sitter among the doges of Venice. His welcome was equally cordial and simple; and, despite his bodily weakness, the soul, bright and energetic, seemed equally ready for death or for life. He talked of his visit to Tennyson; of his own work, saying he had taken Homer, and him only, as his model in aiming at choosing the one proper epithet when describing: also his love for the old pure English. I shall remember this most interesting half-hour all my life, and my dear Frank, I trust, will remember it many years beyond me.’

26 November 1885
‘Ince telegraphed that, I was elected Professor of Poetry by a majority of sixty. The pleasure this gave at home, and the many kind letters called forth from friends, have been the really agreeable elements in this success. It will be difficult to satisfy expectations - to face the illustrious images of ancestors in the Chair. But I am glad of a chance to be a little useful before the night cometh, if I may be so allowed.’

3 February 1887
‘A very pleasant visit to Browning. He was very affectionate and open, and told much of his earlier days. I was sorry to hear that he had lately been clearing his papers, and had burnt letters which, while his parents lived, he had written to them by way of minute daily journal from Russia, Italy, and England.’

10 February 1887
‘My dear eldest girl was married to James Duncan. Amongst the many friends who came to the house were Browning and Matt Arnold, who were among those signing the marriage register. . .’

27 February 1890
‘With dearest Cis to Oxford. Saw Jowett and Lyttelton Gell, and were received by the Rector of Exeter with his usual friendliness.’

‘My father’s journal,’ Gwenllian writes, ‘now breaks off with a pathetic abruptness; the last entry (February 27, 1890) being exactly a month before my mother’s death. From that time he altogether discontinued keeping a Journal. It is impossible to write of the effect which so near and sacred a sorrow had upon him. Such was the depth and the intensity of his feeling and reverence towards her, that even in her lifetime he only spoke of her - or of her opinions and judgment - with a kind of bated breath, as though she were too far above him to be mentioned in an ordinary way. During the remaining years of his life, few days passed without his recalling to his children some memory of her unselfishness, her humility, or her beautiful simplicity. For the first few months after her death this sorrow absolutely crushed him, and his friends, seeing him, feared that he would never recover any interest or happiness in life. But his own perfect selflessness - for with him it was always something more than unselfishness - enabled him to gather up the threads of life again for the sake of his children with a courage and loving tenderness which were inexpressibly touching. Many observed that his devotion to his children, strong and intense as it had always been, grew as these years passed, not only deeper, but also in many senses like that of a mother’s. He never conceived a plan, nor undertook anything, even for his own comfort or pleasure, without first thinking whether it would be for their happiness.’

This article is a slightly revised version of one first published on 28 September 2024.

Lafcadio Hearn in Japan

‘Then came the tug-of-war. A magnificent tug-of-war, too, one hundred students at one end of a rope, and another hundred at the other. But the most wonderful spectacles of the day were the dumb-bell exercises. Six thousand boys and girls, massed in ranks about five hundred deep.’ This is Lafcadio Hearn, a Greek-born Anglo-Irish writer, who died 120 years ago today, writing in a diary he kept while working as a teacher in Japan. Indeed, having emigrated from the US, he became very well-known for writing many books about Japan. Even in his diary entries, he seems fascinated by the traditions and culture of the Japanese people, and in the Oriental minds of his young pupils.

Hearn was born on the island of Lefkada (after which he was named), Greece, in 1850, the son of an Anglo-Irish surgeon-major in the British army and a Greek mother. His parents had a troubled relationship, which soon led to divorce. Neither parent was interested in Lafcadio, and he was brought up by another disinterested relative in Dublin. Nevertheless, he received a decent education, partly in France, partly in Durham, until his guardians went bankrupt. Aged 16, he suffered an injury to his left eye which left him partially blind and shy about his appearance.

In 1869, when his guardians had recovered some financial stability, they paid for Hearn to travel to the US, to Cincinnati, Ohio, to stay with relatives. However, these relatives gave him little assistance, and, for a while, he took menial jobs to survive. With a talent for writing, he gained a reporter’s job on the Cincinnati Daily Enquirer in 1872, and soon developed a reputation for his journalistic audacity and for sensational articles about murders. In 1874, he and a friend set up a weekly journal of culture and satire, Ye Giglampz. That same year he married Alethea (Mattie) Foley, an African-American woman, but the marriage violated Ohio law, and, in response to religious lobbying, he was fired from his job. He went to work for the rival newspaper The Cincinnati Commercial.

Tired of the city, and divorced from Foley, Hearn moved to New Orleans in 1877, where he lived for a decade, writing for, and editing city newspapers. He wrote many articles for national magazines (such as Harper’s Weekly), and books about the city, and is credited with helping create the popular reputation of New Orleans as a place with a distinct culture more akin to that of Europe and the Caribbean than to the rest of North America. He also translated French authors into English.

In 1887, Hearn accepted an invitation from Harper’s to become a West Indies correspondent, and he lived in Martinique for two years. After that, though, he decided to go to Japan. Upon his arrival in Yokohama in the spring of 1890, he was befriended by Basil Hall Chamberlain of Tokyo Imperial University, and officials at the Ministry of Education. At their encouragement, he moved to Matsue, to teach English at Shimane Prefectural Common Middle School and Normal School. There he moved in distinguished circles, and later married Setsu Koizumi, the daughter of a local samurai family. He had the Japanese name Koizumi Yakumo.

Hearn stayed over a year in Matsue, moving on to another teaching position in Kumamoto, Kyushu, for a further three years. In 1894, he secured a journalism position with the English-language Kobe Chronicle, and in 1896, with some assistance from Chamberlain, he began teaching English literature at Tokyo (Imperial) University, a post he held until 1903, and at Waseda University. He died on 26 September 1904, having written and published many books on Japan - a full bibliography can be found on Steve Tussel’s Lafcadio Hearn site. Further biographical information on Hearn can be found at Wikipedia, the magazine Humanities, or The Japan Times.

Among his many different kinds of books, Hearn left behind a couple of diaries, neither covering more than a short period: one written in Florida in 1887, and the other written just after taking up his first teaching post in Japan. Both these are freely available at Internet Archive. The first published was From the Diary of an English Teacher included in Glimpses of Unfamiliar Japan (Volume II) published by Houghton Mifflin and Company (Boston and New York) in 1894. Later the diary was re-published in other Lafcadio Hearn volumes, such as Diaries and Letters, in English and Japanese, translated and annotated by R. Tanabe. Posthumously, in 1911, Houghton Mifflin published Hearn’s Leaves from the Diary of an Impressionist, which includes a diary called Floridian Reveries.

Here are several extracts from Hearn’s Japanese diary.

15 October 1890
‘To-day I witnessed the annual athletic contests of all the schools in Shimane Ken. These games were celebrated in the broad castle grounds of Ninomaru. Yesterday a circular race-track had been staked off, hurdles erected for leaping, thousands of wooden seats prepared for invited or privileged spectators, and a grand lodge built for the Governor, all before sunset. The place looked like a vast circus, with its tiers of plank seats rising one above the other, and the Governor’s lodge magnificent with wreaths and flags. School children from all the villages and towns within twenty-five miles had arrived in surprising multitude. Nearly six thousand boys and girls were entered to take part in the contests. Their parents and relatives and teachers made an imposing assembly upon the benches and within the gates. And on the ramparts over-looking the huge enclosure a much larger crowd had gathered, representing perhaps one third of the population of the city.

The signal to begin or to end a contest was a pistol-shot. Four different kinds of games were performed in different parts of the grounds at the same time, as there was room enough for an army; and prizes were awarded for the winners of each contest by the hand of the Governor himself.

There were races between the best runners in each class of the different schools; and the best runner of all proved to be Sakane, of our own fifth class, who came in first by nearly forty yards without seeming even to make an effort. He is our champion athlete, and as good as he is strong, so that it made me very happy to see him with his arm full of prize books. He won also a fencing contest decided by the breaking of a little earthenware saucer tied to the left arm of each combatant. And he also won a leaping match between our older boys.

But many hundreds of other winners there were too, and many hundreds of prizes were given away. There were races in which the runners were tied together in pairs, the left leg of one to the right leg of the other. There were equally funny races, the winning of which depended on the runner’s ability not only to run, but to crawl, to climb, to vault, and to jump alternately. There were races also for the little girls, pretty as butterflies they seemed in their sky-blue hakama and many-coloured robes, races in which the contestants had each to pick up as they ran three balls of three different colours out of a number scattered over the turf. Besides this, the little girls had what is called a flag-race, and a contest with battledores and shuttlecocks.

Then came the tug-of-war. A magnificent tug-of-war, too, one hundred students at one end of a rope, and another hundred at the other. But the most wonderful spectacles of the day were the dumb-bell exercises. Six thousand boys and girls, massed in ranks about five hundred deep; six thousand pairs of arms rising and falling exactly together; six thousand pairs of sandalled feet advancing or retreating together, at the signal of the masters of gymnastics, directing all from the tops of various little wooden towers; six thousand voices chanting at once the “one, two, three,” of the dumb-bell drill: “Ichi, ni, - san, shi, - go roku, - shichi, hachi.”

Last came the curious game called “Taking the Castle.” Two models of Japanese towers, about fifteen feet high, made with paper stretched over a framework of bamboo, were set up, one at each end of the field. Inside the castles an inflammable liquid had been placed in open vessels, so that if the vessels were overturned the whole fabric would take fire. The boys, divided into two parties, bombarded the castles with wooden balls, which passed easily through the paper walls; and in a short time both models were making a glorious blaze. Of course the party whose castle was the first to blaze lost the game.

The games began at eight o’clock in the morning, and at five in the evening came to an end. Then at a signal fully ten thousand voices pealed out the superb national anthem “Kimi ga yo,” and concluded it with three cheers for their Imperial Majesties, the Emperor and Empress of Japan.

The Japanese do not shout or roar as we do when we cheer. They chant. Each long cry is like the opening tone of an immense musical chorus: A-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a!’

3 November 1890
‘To-day is the birthday of His Majesty the Emperor. It is a public holiday throughout Japan; and there will be no teaching this morning. But at eight o’clock all the students and instructors enter the great assembly hall of the Jinjo Chugakko to honour the anniversary of His Majesty’s august birth.

On the platform of the assembly hall a table, covered with dark silk, has been placed and upon this table the portraits of Their Imperial Majesties, the Emperor and the Empress of Japan, stand side by side upright, framed in gold. The alcove above the platform has been decorated with flags and wreaths.

Presently the Governor enters, looking like a French general in his gold-embroidered uniform of office, and followed by the Mayor of the city, the Chief Military Officer, the Chief of Police, and all the officials of the provincial government. These take their places in silence to left and right of the platform. Then the school organ suddenly rolls out the slow, solemn, beautiful national anthem; and all present chant those ancient syllables, made sacred by the reverential love of a century of generations [. . .]

The anthem ceases. The Governor advances with a slow dignified step from the right side of the apartment to the centre of the open space before the platform and the portraits of Their Majesties, turns his face to them, and bows profoundly. Then he takes three steps forward toward the platform, and halts, and bows again. Then he takes three more steps forward, and bows still more profoundly. Then he retires, walking backward six steps, and bows once more. Then he returns to his place.

After this the teachers, by parties of six, perform the same beautiful ceremony. When all have saluted the portrait of His Imperial Majesty, the Governor ascends the platform and makes a few eloquent remarks to the students about their duty to their Emperor, to their country, and to their teachers. Then the anthem is sung again; and all disperse to amuse themselves for the rest of the day.’

4 April 1891
‘The Students of the third, fourth, and fifth year classes write for me once a week brief English compositions upon easy themes which I select for them. As a rule the themes are Japanese. Considering the immense difficulty of the English language to Japanese students, the ability of some of my boys to express their thoughts in it is astonishing. Their compositions have also another interest for me as revelations, not of individual character, but of national sentiment, or of aggregate sentiment of some sort or other. What seems to me most surprising in the compositions of the average Japanese student is that they have no personal cachet at all. Even the handwriting of twenty English compositions will be found to have a curious family resemblance; and striking exceptions are too few to affect the rule. Here is one of the best compositions on my table, by a student at the head of his class. Only a few idiomatic errors have been corrected:

“THE MOON

The Moon appears melancholy to those who are sad, and joyous to those who are happy. The Moon makes memories of home come to those who travel, and creates home-sickness. So when the Emperor Godaigo, having been banished to Oki by the traitor Hojo, beheld the moonlight upon the seashore, he cried out, ‘The Moon is heartless!’

The sight of the Moon makes an immeasurable feeling in our hearts when we look up at it through the clear air of a beauteous night.

Our hearts ought to be pure and calm like the light of the Moon.

Poets often compare the Moon to a Japanese mirror and indeed its shape is the same when it is full.

The refined man amuses himself with the Moon. He seeks some house looking out upon water, to watch the Moon, and to make verses about it.

The best places from which to see the Moon are Tsukigashi, and the mountain Obasute.

The light of the Moon shines alike upon foul and pure, upon high and low. That beautiful Lamp is neither yours nor mine, but everybody’s.

When we look at the Moon we should remember that its waxing and its waning are the signs of the truth that the culmination of all things is likewise the beginning of their decline.”

Any person totally unfamiliar with Japanese educational methods might presume that the foregoing composition shows some original power of thought and imagination. But this is not the case. I found the same thoughts and comparisons in thirty other compositions upon the same subject. Indeed, the compositions of any number of middle-school students upon the same subject are certain to be very much alike in idea and sentiment - though they are none the less charming for that. As a rule the Japanese student shows little originality in the line of imagination. His imagination was made for him long centuries ago - partly in China, partly in his native land. From his childhood he is trained to see and to feel Nature exactly in the manner of those wondrous artists who, with a few swift brush-strokes, fling down upon a sheet of paper the colour-sensation of a chilly dawn, a fervid noon, an autumn evening.

Through all his boyhood he is taught to commit to memory the most beautiful thoughts and comparisons to be found in his ancient native literature. Every boy has thus learned that the vision of Fuji against the blue resembles a white half-opened fan, hanging inverted in the sky. Every boy knows that cherry-trees in full blossom look as if the most delicate of flushed summer clouds were caught in their branches. Every boy knows the comparison between the falling of certain leaves on snow and the casting down of texts upon a sheet of white paper with a brush. Every boy and girl knows the verses comparing the print of cat’s-feet on snow to plum-flowers, and that comparing the impression of bokkuri on snow to the Japanese character for the number “two,” These were thoughts of old, old poets; and it would be very hard to invent prettier ones. Artistic power in composition is chiefly shown by the correct memorising and clever combination of these old thoughts.

And the students have been equally well trained to discover a moral in almost everything, animate or inanimate.’

This article is a slightly revised version of one first published on 26 September 2014.