Midges very troublesome

‘Long walk without a shot. Gun did not pull at a snipe. Shot 1 grouse not picked up till after lunch. Lunch. Midges very troublesome.’ So reads a terse but vivid entry from the diary of Edward Linley Sambourne, a celebrated cartoonist and illustrator for Punch magazine. Sambourne died 115 years ago today, but his voice endures through nearly three decades of handwritten diaries, now freely available online thanks to the Sambourne Museum, which has transcribed and digitised the full collection.

Sambourne was born in London in 1844 into a middle-class family of Huguenot descent. His father, Edward Mott Sambourne, was a furrier and businessman. Young Linley attended several schools, including the City of London School, and later received training at the South Kensington School of Art, although he never completed a formal degree. From an early age, he showed considerable talent for drawing, particularly in technical illustration, which he combined with an interest in mechanical subjects and social observation.

In 1867, Sambourne began working for Punch magazine, initially as a junior artist producing decorative capitals and borders. He swiftly rose through the ranks to become one of its leading cartoonists, known for his detailed and finely wrought drawings. His style, heavily influenced by engraving techniques and photographic realism, became a hallmark of late Victorian illustration. Over the years he contributed thousands of cartoons, political satires, and social commentaries, often with a conservative bent. Outside of Punch, Sambourne also illustrated books and advertisements, and his work appeared in The Illustrated London News and other periodicals.

In 1874, he married Marion Herapath, the daughter of a wealthy stockbroker, and they settled at 18 Stafford Terrace in Kensington, now preserved as a museum. The couple had two children, including Maud, who became the mother of Anne, Countess of Rosse, and grandmother of Antony Armstrong-Jones, 1st Earl of Snowdon. Sambourne was deeply involved in London’s artistic and social circles, associating with fellow illustrators, writers, and members of the aristocracy. He was also a passionate amateur photographer, whose glass plate negatives reveal a private fascination with costume, the female form, and personal documentation. He died on 3 August 1910. For more information see Wikipedia, Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea, and Victorian Web.

Sambourne began keeping a diary in 1871 and then appears to have stopped until restarting in 1882; thereafter he maintained the habit until his death. The diaries were written in small, printed almanacs and detail his social life, professional commitments at Punch, family interactions, and observations of the period. They form part of the broader Sambourne Family Archive, preserved in the museum at 18 Stafford Terrace. All his diaries can be freely consulted online in an Issu file (with nearly 2,000 pages) uploaded by Sambourne House Museum. This is a digitised facsimile of Sambourne’s handwritten entries, released as part of the museum’s public engagement and archival accessibility efforts. Although the file lacks traditional publication metadata, it directly reflects the museum’s holdings and has not been edited or annotated for publication.

Here are several extracts.

‘1871

Thursday 8 June - Went to Ascot with King & wife M(illeg) & Miss Millington. Cold day. Mortimer won Cup. Home to supper at King’s & home after.


Friday 9 June - Rather seedy. Got up late. Worked. Played Quoits. In Chequers after.


Saturday 10 June - Worked a little. Walked with Farina to Drayton. Saw Blondin. Home & played Quoits afterwards.


Sunday 11 June - Went to see Brown at Latimore House Maidenhead. Taken up to town in train.


Monday 12 June - Worked on Ascot block. Played match at Quoits after. Lost.


Tuesday 13 June - Worked. Went up to town for first Punch Dinner. Home after. Met Garner. Walked from Drayton. (Red ink: 1st Punch Dinner.)


Wednesday 14 June - Did Essence Block.


Thursday 15 June - Worked on Pocket Book. Went to Uncle’s. Played double dummy. Pool & home.


Friday 16 June - Worked. Sent Pocket Book block off. Played quoits with William Heron. Home. Hutton & Farina there.


Saturday 17 June - Worked hard. Did three blocks.


Sunday 18 June - Worked hard. Did Thimble & Needles. At Uncle’s in evening afterwards.


Monday 19 June - Worked all day. Did Croquet girl.


Tuesday 20 June - Did Bee Wright. Went to Ealing in afternoon, there all night.


Wednesday 21 June - Went to Greenwich. Saw Gosling etc. Dined at Sydney’s. Took sketch, home by 9.30.’

5 March 1891, Stafford Terrace

‘(Red ink: Lovely day in town.) Up 10.0am. Head on after Ball. Dozed. Wrote M. Very little breakfast. Skemed drawing for Gendarme and Book maker. Saw Nash's foreman & foreman plasterer. Very little lunch. After at 2.30 Emma helped me with photos of self for Gendarme & Betting man, also Pirate being stabbed. Developed them, 6 photos. At 4.30 took cab to Turkish bath. Bought papers & flower. In bath read Indian story & Quarterly. Margullah of Spins(?). Out & cab on to Costers. Met Boughtons, Stones & Dewey. Good dinner. Talk with Marcus S after. Boughton amusing about D. Murray. Left 10.50. Home by cab. Redcliffe Road. Bed. Lovely fine day. Bright sun & light on new screen in matchboarding. Sat next Miss Macnamara at dinner. Maud dined at the Goulds. Her 1st dinner out. (Red ink across page: 1st photograph from new screen in yard.)’

18 March 1894, Stafford Terrace


‘Up at 8.30am. Down. Cold morning but bright. Breakfast. At 10.30 rode Cob along Hammersmith Rd to Mortlake & thro’ Richmond Pk. Crowd of cyclists. Down Putney Hill. Most curious dense black fog on one side of bridge, the other quite bright. Trotted home. Got stables 1.15. Changed. Lunch. Rested in chair. Read Major Griffith’s book on Prisons. At 4.15 Bret Harte & after Miss Holland & Mr Carlisle called. Slipped out & developed 8 or 10 plates taken at Knowlton Court last June. Up again & wrote many letters. After at 7.45 Welman came & dined. Had 2 bottles of Romanée Burgundy. Long talk & cigar. Welman looking very much older. He left at 10.0. Read & to bed at 12.15am. (Red ink: Blackish fog came on at 1.0pm. Very bad at Fulham.)’

11 June 1898, Stafford Terrace

‘Up at 8.20. Walk with Tip. Had to whip him. After put photos away & printed some. Very dense ones. Bright hot sun the whole day. M out. Very much annoyed by Otley & Emilie dragging heavy box over the floor cloth. Left at 12.15 & by buss to Piccadilly. Got hat at Lincoln & Bennetts (straw) & ties at (blank). On to C.C & Garrick. Lunch & talk to a gent. After to C.C. Up in hot Studio. Waited till 3.30. No one came. Tea & to Athenaeum. Saw Dr Robins. After to Bath Club. Again saw Robins. Bored by talk & in bath. Left 7.30 & home by buss. M & self dined quite quietly. Felt very tired & thirsty. Bed 12.0. (Red ink: Turkish bath. Very hot bright day. Hair cut.) (Cuttings glued in: Walter Palmer-Samborne to Bertha Taylor. June. Death of Frederick Eckstein.)’

19 August 1904, Drumlanford, Ayrshire.

‘Up at 8.30. Good breakfast. After the Factor came. Left in break at 10.0, Factor, 4 guns etc. Shot over moor past Col Hay-Boyd’s. Long walk without a shot. Gun did not pull at a snipe. Shot 1 grouse not picked up till after lunch. Lunch. Midges very troublesome. No, grouse picked up just before lunch. After continued walk by fishing ground of yesterday. Got a grey hen, 3 snipe & 1 golden plover after just at the last. Beale disappointed at bag of grouse. Home by 6.0. No news. Tea. Wrote letters etc. Let a fine old black cock off. Terribly bitten by midges. Bath & dinner. Bridge after. Bed 11.0. (Red ink: Lack of grouse at shoot. Good snipe day. Let a black cock off.) (Cuttings glued in: In Memoriam Thomas Hamp. The wife of Arthur Scawen Blunt, of a son.)’

22 November 1908, Stafford Terrace


‘Slept up to 6.45. Better night. Condal. Tea. M in room. Thankful for better night. Bath. Swelling better. Breakfast. Fair turn out. Shave. Masseur. At 12.0 went for drive with M, Hampstead Heath. Beautiful clear cold day. Back 2.0pm. Lunch. Mite with us. Up in room. Finished cuttings. Tea. Masseur. Doctor said stomach was worse. Chicken broth. In room 7.0. Punch, Westminster. Flatulence. Dinner. Roy dined downstairs. Had bad night, very little sleep. Not much flatulence. (Red ink: Dr came. Went for drive with M in 1 hr brougham up Fitzjohn’s Avenue & Hampstead Heath. Doctor said my stomach was worse. Being overfed by milk etc. Should pop off. Clear cold day.)’

26 November 1909, Stafford Terrace


‘Sleep from 7.0 to 8.20am. Grapes. Great turn out. Green. After breakfast Electricity. Dr Kingscote here 11.30am. Oxygen. Exhausted. To have exercise this afternoon. Good lunch. 1 hrs sleep. Mite & M in room. Tea. Letter from Lawrence Bradbury. Raven-Hill called. Exercise. Enjoyed dinner. Took much apple. Legs rubbed. Night nurse late in evening. Terrible night with obstinate flatulence & cough, supposed from apples. Great turn out. Slept to 4.30am & nine am. Nurse washed me in night. Terribly sore & shocking state. (Red ink: Dr here 11.20am. Bad night from apple. Cough & flatulence. Washed. Bad state & sore in night.)’

A swagman’s life

‘Went down to the river to get eels. Didn’t catch any, but passed the time visiting with old Tom who still remembers the 1896 floods.’ So reads a typical entry in the diary of James Cox, an English-born swagman who spent decades tramping the rural roads of New Zealand’s North Island. Writing almost daily from the early 1880s through to the end of 1918, Cox documented a life of grinding poverty, manual labour, and quiet perseverance - producing one of the most detailed and revealing first-person records of colonial working-class life in the Southern Hemisphere. However, it was not until the 1990s that historian Miles Fairburn brought Cox’s diary to wider public attention in his acclaimed book Nearly Out of Heart and Hope: The Puzzle of a Colonial Labourer - published 30 years ago today.

Cox was born in 1846 into a Wiltshire farming family. Working as a clerical assistant in the Swindon office of the Great Western Railway, he became a proficient bookkeeper. In 1880, when his mother sold the farm, he suddenly decided to emigrate to New Zealand, part of a wave of working-class settlers drawn by the promise of work and land in the colonies. 

Over the next four decades, Cox lived a life of physical hardship and financial instability, rarely settling in one place for long - though the flax mills in Manawatu held him for a year or two. Living the life of a swagman, he found sporadic employment in rural labour - roadworks, clearing land, working as a gardener - and frequently relied on charity or relief work. He spent extended periods walking between towns or living in rudimentary shelters on the outskirts of small rural communities such as Carterton and Greytown in the Wairarapa region.

Cox never married and had no known family in New Zealand. He suffered from poor health in later life and lived out his final years in the Carter’s Home for Destitutes in Carterton. He died in July 1925. See National Library of New Zealand and Stuff for more biographical information. Despite his marginalised status, he left behind a remarkable record of his life in the form of a diary - one of the most significant first-person accounts of working-class life in New Zealand in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

Cox kept the near-daily diary from at least the early 1880s through to the end of 1918. Spanning thousands of pages, the diary is a considered an extraordinary document of colonial working-class life, chronicling everything from weather and wages to hunger, loneliness, local politics, and fleeting pleasures such as whisky, reading, or conversation. His entries are concise, factual, and repetitive, but they build cumulatively into a stark, honest portrait of precarity, endurance, and reflection on life at the social margins.

Historian Miles Fairburn brought Cox’s diary to wider public attention in his acclaimed book Nearly Out of Heart and Hope: The Puzzle of a Colonial Labourer (Auckland University Press, 1 August 1995) which can be previewed at Googlebooks. Fairburn used the diary as a primary source for a wider investigation into the structure of Cox’s life, identity, and thought. Rather than focusing solely on events, Fairburn asked why Cox lived the way he did and how his worldview was shaped by his extreme social isolation. The book is both a social history and a deep psychological and cultural reading of a unique document.

In the 2010s, a project led by the Alexander Turnbull Library and New Zealand historians turned Cox’s diary into a digital and public history initiative. Between 2013 and 2018, excerpts were posted daily on Twitter/X as part of Life 100 Years Ago, with each entry appearing exactly 100 years after its original date. This digital project brought Cox’s voice to a wide audience and positioned his diary as a rare chronicle of World War I-era life away from the battlefield. Here are a few brief extracts from the diary.

14 April 1892

‘Some showers in the night but cleared this morning and was bright and warm all day… I left Pahiatua this morning and walked through Eketahuna and to a roadmakers camp about 6 miles further where I am stopping. I had nothing since breakfast to eat but a bit of bread…’

15 April 1892

‘Good Friday. There was some rain in the night . . . I got my breakfast this morning at the camp and then walked through to Masterton . . . I am terribly footsore this evening . . .’

1902

‘I am no better off than when I came out to the colony ... hope in the coming years I may do better.’

25 April 1914

‘No work today, I loafed all day. It is pay‑day by the County Council. I got mine this afternoon £6.1.6.’

7 November 1914

‘Heard of farmers gathering in a meeting about conscription. Nearly all against it. I reckon they’ll not get it here.’

Undated (likely 1914–1916)

‘I walked to Greytown and bought some stores also had two whiskies and bought a bottle 7/- to have a nip where I want.’

Undated (likely 1914–1916)

‘The wind is southerly and chilly. I was inside until dinner time. This afternoon I walked to Carterton, changed books at the Library...’

3 August 1915

‘Went down to the river to get eels. Didn’t catch any, but passed the time visiting with old Tom who still remembers the 1896 floods.’

9 June 1916

‘Saw a lot of aeroplanes up this afternoon passing over Carterton. Hadn’t seen them fly before.’

15 February 1918

‘A strange humming in the night - it wasn’t the wind. Worried me till I realised it was the new telephone wires.’

31 December 1918

‘The end of the year finds me laid up in Carters House and of no more use but certainly much better off than I deserve to be.’

This article is a slightly revised version of one first published on 1 August 2015.

Wall Street palpitating

It is 150 years today since the death of George Templeton Strong, a New York lawyer remembered for his remarkable diary, which provides a near-daily description, a living history, of his city during the mid-19th century. He was as keen on writing about fire emergencies, financial panic (‘Wall Street has been palpitating uneasily all day’), and riots in the streets as he was about the nuisance of organ-grinders outside his house. Some say Strong’s is the greatest American diary in the nineteenth century.

Strong was born in his father’s house in Manhattan in 1820, and was educated at Columbia College. He trained as a lawyer, and joined his father’s firm, practicing as a real estate attorney. He married Ellen Ruggles in 1848, both of them keen amateur musicians, and moved into a house near Gramercy Park. They had one son (also George, but not born until 1856), who became a composer and painter and spent most of his adult life in Europe.

In the 1860s, and through the Civil War, Strong took on various public service roles, serving on the executive committee of the Sanitary Commission (a precursor of the American Red Cross), helping found the Union League Club of New York, and acting as a trustee of Columbia College. He was also a vestryman at Trinity Episcopal Church, and, from 1870 to 1874, president of the New York Philharmonic. He died relatively young, on 21 July 1875. A little further biographical information is available at Greenwich Village History, Mr Lincoln and New York, or Wikipedia.

Strong is mostly remembered for the daily diary he kept from the age of fifteen and for the next 40 years - amounting to some four million words. The manuscript diaries are held by the New-York Historical Society, and have been edited twice for publication. The first time was by Allan Nevins and Milton Halsey Thomas (four volumes, Macmillan, 1952) - all of which can be downloaded as pdfs from this website. This version was abridged into one volume in 1988 for publication by University of Washington Press. According to Nevins: ‘Strong was an artist who was consciously trying to render his own city, his own time, his own personality in such form that later generations could comprehend them.’ 

The diaries were also edited by Vera Brodsky Lawrence for her three volumes: Strong on Music: The New York Music Scene in the Days of George Templeton Strong (University of Chicago Press, 1988-1999).

A few extracts from Strong’s diary (taken from the Nevins/Thomas volumes) can be found at Googlebooks in The Civil War - The Third Year Told By Those Who Lived It, edited by Brooks D Simpson; and in Writing New York - a literary anthology, edited by Phillip Lopate. Lopate says Strong’s diary is ‘the greatest American diary in the nineteenth century’, remarkable not only for its length but for ‘the flavoursome precision of the writing’.

Here are several extracts culled from Writing New York.

23 November 1851
‘Fearful calamity at a public school in Ninth Ward Thursday afternoon, a false alarm of fire, a panic, a stampede downstairs of 1,800 children, and near fifty killed on the spot and many more wounded - a massacre of the innocents. The stair banisters gave way, and the children fell into the square well round which the stairs wound, where the heap of killed and wounded lay for hours before help could reach them. The doors opened inwards. The bodies were piled up to the top of the doors; they did not dare burst them open and had to cut them slowly away with knives.’

5 July 1852
‘Have been at home all day writing. Tonight went on the roof awhile. It’s a beautiful sight the city presents. In every direction one incessant sparkle of fire balls, rockets, roman candles, and stars of all colors shooting thick into the air and disappearing for miles around, with now and then a glare of coloured light coming out in some neighbourhood where fireworks on a large scale are going off. A foreigner would put it in his book of travels as one of the marvels of New York, and compare it to a swarm of tropical fireflies gleaming in and out through a Brazilian forest.’

23 November 1855
‘I must ascertain whether the mighty bug-destroyer Lyons has no modification of his cockroach powder that will exterminate organ-grinders. We suffer peculiarly here, for the street is very quiet, and they play all round the square before they leave it and are more or less audible at each successive station. I have been undergoing the performances of one of the tribe for an hour and a half and have heard “Casta Diva,” “Ah, Non Giunge,” the first chorus of Ernani, and some platitude from the Trovatore languidly ground out six times each. It makes me feel homicidal. If Abel had gone about with hand organs, I shouldn’t censure Cain so very harshly. There goes “Casta Diva” for the seventh time!’

14 October 1857
‘We have burst. All the banks declined paying specie this morning, with the ridiculous exception of the Chemical, which is a little private shaving-shop of the Joneses with no depositors but its own stockholders.

Wall Street has been palpitating uneasily all day, but the first effect of the suspension is, of course, to make men breathe more freely. A special session is confidently expected, and the meeting of merchants at the Exchange at 3:30 P.M. appointed a committee that has gone to Albany to lay the case before Governor King. He ought to decline interference, but were I in his place I dare say my virtue would give way.

My great anxiety has been for the savings banks. Saw the officers of the two in which I feel a special interest (the Bleecker Street and Seaman’s). Both were suicidally paying specie and thus inviting depositors to come forward to get the gold they could get nowhere else and could sell at a premium. The latter changes from specie to bills tomorrow; the former did so this afternoon. All the savings banks are to do so tomorrow. The run has been very formidable; some say not so severe as it was yesterday, but bad enough. I think they will get through.’

14 July 1863
‘Eleven P.M. Fire bells clanking, as they have clanked at intervals through the evening. Plenty of rumours throughout the day and evening, but nothing very precise or authentic. There have been sundry collisions between the rabble and the authorities, civil and military. Mob fired upon. It generally runs, but on one occasion appears to have rallied, charged the police and militia, and forced them back in disorder. The people are waking up, and by tomorrow there will adequate organization to protect property and life. Many details come in of yesterday’s brutal, cowardly ruffianism and plunder. Shops were cleaned out and a black man hanged in Carmine Street, for no offence but that of Nigritude. Opdyke’s house again attacked this morning by a roaming handful of Irish blackguards. Two or three gentlemen who chanced to be passing saved it from sack by a vigorous charge and dispersed the popular uprising (as the Herald, World, and News call it), with their walking sticks and their fists.

Walked uptown perforce, for no cars and few omnibi were running. They are suppressed by threats of burning railroad and omnibus stables, the drivers being wanted to reinforce the mob. Tiffany’s shop, Ball & Black’s, and a few other Broadway establishments are closed. (Here I am interrupted by a report of a fire near at hand, and a great glare on the houses across the Park. Sally forth, and find the Eighteenth Ward station house, Twenty-second Street, near First Avenue, in full blaze. A splendid blaze it made, but I did not venture below Second Avenue, finding myself in a crowd of Celtic spectators disgorged by the circumjacent tenement houses. They were exulting over the damage to “them bloody police,” and so on. I thought discretion the better part of curiosity. Distance lent enchantment to that view.)

At 823 with Bellows four to six; then home. At eight to Union League Club. Rumor it’s to be attacked tonight. Some say there is to be a great mischief tonight and that the rabble is getting the upper hand. Home at ten and sent for by Dudley Field, Jr., to confer about an expected attack on his house and his father’s, which adjoin each other in this street just below Lexington Avenue. He has a party there with muskets and talks of fearful trouble before morning, but he is always a blower and a very poor devil. Fire bells again again at twelve-fifteen. No light of conflagration is visible. [. . .]

A good deal of yelling to the eastward just now. The Fields and their near neighbour, Colonel Frank Howe, are as likely to be attacked by this traitor-guilded mob as any people I know. If they are, we shall see trouble in this quarter, and Gramercy Park will acquire historical associations. O, how tired I am! But I feel reluctant to go to bed. I believe I dozed off a minute or two. There came something like two reports of artillery, perhaps only falling walls. There go two jolly Celts along the street, singing a genuine Celtic howl, something about “Tim O’Laggerty,” with a refrain of pure Erse. Long live the sovereigns of New York, Brian Boroo redivivus and multiplied. Paddy has left his Egypt - Connaught - and reigns in this promised land of milk and honey and perfect freedom. Hurrah, there goes a strong squad of police marching eastward down this street, followed by a company of infantry with gleaming bayonets. One A.M. Fire bells again, southeastward, “Swinging slow with sullen roar.” Now they are silent, and I shall go to bed, at least for a season.’

This article is a slightly revised version of one first published on 21 July 2015.

Kentucky and Tennessee both gone

‘This morning there comes a dispatch from Chattanooga stating that the enemy had taken Fort Donelson. Generals Pillow, Floyd, Buckner with their commands are prisoners, and that Nashville is in their power: Kentucky and Tennessee both gone, 12,000 of our men are prisoners.’ This is from a diary kept by the crippled and housebound teenager, LeRoy Wiley Gresham, during the American Civil War. Not published until 2018, the publisher compares it to Anne Frank’s famous WW2 diary.

Gresham was born in  1847, in Macon, Georgia, to John Jones Gresham - an attorney, judge, twice mayor of Macon, textile company president, plantation owner of some 100 enslaved people - and his wife Mary Baxter Gresham. Aged eight, a chimney collapse crushed his left leg, causing lifelong impairment. Despite physical limitations, he was precociously intelligent: a voracious reader of Shakespeare, Dickens, Latin and Greek classics; an adept chess player; and a talented mathematician and poet.

Though Gresham never fully returned to health, he remained under continuous care, receiving various Victorian remedies including morphine, opiates, plasters, belladonna, and mercury - all to little effect. Over the years, Gresham’s condition worsened: by 15 he described himself as ‘weaker and more helpless than I ever was,’ later contracting both pulmonary and spinal tuberculosis (Pott’s disease). He died on 18 June  1865, at the age just 17 (only weeks after the Civil War’s ended). Further information is available at Wikipedia.

Gresham is remembered today because of a near daily diary he kept from June 1860 to June 1865. It remained largely unknown until featured in the Library of Congress’s 2012-2013 exhibition, The Civil War in America, and in Harper’s Magazine and in The Washington Post. Subsequently, in 2018, historian Janet E. Croon edited and annotated the diary, releasing it as The War Outside My Window: The Civil War Diary of LeRoy Wiley Gresham, 1860-1865 (Savas Beatie). This edition includes extensive footnotes, family charts, a medical foreword, and appendices highlighting his final years. Much of the book can be sampled at Googlebooks, and images of the original pages are available at the Library of Congress website. Reviews can be read here and here.

The publisher says: [The diary] captures the spirit and the character of a young privileged white teenager witnessing the demise of his world even as his own body slowly failed him. Just as Anne Frank has come down to us as the adolescent voice of World War II, LeRoy Gresham will now be remembered as the young voice of the Civil War South.’

9 November 1861

‘Warm and very windy. Lockett and Bates came and spent the morning with me. No more from Port Royal. Mother is terribly scared. There has been a great battle at Columbus, Kentucky. Our side was commanded by Gen. Pillow. The Yankees by McLernand and Bradford. 8,000 men. Our ammunition gave out and we charged with the bayonet and routed them. They threw away all encumberments. The paper says “it is a bloody battle and brilliant victory.” A great many women and children came up from Savannah this morning. Aunt Sarah among them; Cousin Eliza comes up tonight. Gov. Brown’s message is out today. I have a bad pain in my back and took a Dover’s Powder. Bob Lockett hit Allen on the head with a rock today. We had a great deal of fun last night. Mary Campbell stayed to tea. We had a “white horse” to our delight and the terror of Allen, who cried like a baby. I played chess with Uncle LeRoy who beat me because of the above frolic. He left for the plantation this morning. Father bought Thomas a pair of boots.’

20 December 1861

‘Cloudy and warm. Great news! Minister Adams has demanded his passports. War with England is thought to be inevitable! Mr. Faulkner is in Norfolk. The 3rd regiment has been moved back to Norfolk. The Yankees have certainly got their hands full. A fight is hourly expected in Kentucky! Father bought Thomas an elegant new knife! Cotton is 42 cents a pound in New York! Father was advanced 15 cents a pound! Thomas has got a very bad cold. I got a letter from Wilson yesterday, giving a description of his journey to Athens. The wagon came up bringing Betty, her baby, and a boy ‘Bil.’ Uncle LeRoy came this evening at nine o’clock.’

21 December 1861

‘Warm, clear, delightful. I went round on Bond’s Hill to see the funeral procession of Mr. Bloom. It was in Mr. Johnston’s house. Colonel J. E. Jones commanded the military. Sam does not get along well at all. He has not gone one curb down. They were too large. The news about Minister Adams is contradicted.’

22 December 1861

‘Cold, damp. Rained in the night pretty hard. I took a Dover’s Powder on account of my leg. There is an account of a small fight on the Potomac. Our side was repulsed with 30 killed and as many wounded. No more from Mason and Slidell. The coals popped so tremendously we moved into Mother’s room. Dr. Fitzgerald came to see Betty yesterday and put a plaster on her and gave her some medicine.’

1 January 1862

‘The New Year comes in with a clear cool day. All the folks went to the Supper last night and Thomas stayed home with me. Mr. Emmett Johnson is to be buried here today. Mother has gone down now to help give the supper out to the poor. Tracy came up to see us yesterday. Played a game of chess: Tom beat me. Thomas wrote to Uncle Richard today. Mrs. Vardell, Mrs. Ralston’s sister, died very suddenly here yesterday.’

2 January 1862

‘Warm and cloudy. Took a game of chess: Tom beat me. ‘Ginco Piano’ opening. Maty, Wills, and Olivia Bates spent the morning here. It is rumored that they are firing on Fort Pickens. The fort commenced first. There are also reports of fighting between Savannah and Charleston. Finished The War of Roses. The weather today is as warm as in spring. Uncle Richard has got back to Portsmouth again and Uncle John is opposite.’

17 February 1862

‘Cold, damp, raw. Had very considerable sore throat through the night and this morning. We were fighting all day at Fort Donelson and had whipped them, taking 1,000 prisoners and were driving them back with cold steel, &c. This morning there comes a dispatch from Chattanooga stating that the enemy had taken Fort Donelson. Generals Pillow, Floyd, Buckner with their commands are prisoners, and that Nashville is in their power: Kentucky and Tennessee both gone, 12,000 of our men are prisoners. All the government stores in Nashville lost, and amid all this, Savannah is in imminent danger. So is Weldon, the key to all the railroads that run to Virginia. It’s perfectly awful! T wrote a letter to Mother today. It is reported that the enemy had shelled Bowling Green and, on account of some movement of the enemy, General Johnston had evacuated it. It commenced raining this eve at 3 and rained hard until now, 9 o’clock. Father and Uncle LeRoy took a game of chess: odds queen. Father mated Uncle LeRoy and I played 7 games of backgammon: I 4, he 3. Thomas and Uncle LeRoy played 7 games of draughts: Thomas beat 3 games.’

18 February 1862

‘Cloudy, damp, and rainy. Rained the whole night and until nine AM. Thomas is writing to Mother. Some people don’t believe that news about Fort Donelson. There has been a dispatch saying that Nashville has not surrendered and do not know about Donelson. Commenced to rain at ten AM, and has rained very hard until 9 PM. A rainy day truly. We received a short letter from Mother. She got along very well and was met in Sparta by the family. My sore throat is entirely well.’

State-created crime

One Rev. John William Horsley was born 170 years ago today. Although not much remembered, he was a social reformer of great character - as much at home helping inmates in Clerkenwell prison as making room for children to play in his church or guiding groups of parishioners on nature walks in Switzerland. Distinguished by a very large beard, he became a significant figure in Southwark, where he served as mayor for a year. In the late 1880s, he published a remarkable book - Jottings from Jail - to help ‘remove that ignorance of what our prisons and prisoners are’ and to suggest ways in which all ‘should feel their responsibility for the existence of crime and sin and misery’. One chapter in the book is based on a diary he kept towards the end of his term as prison chaplain. In one entry - many others of which are enlivened by a near-bitter sarcasm - he argues: ‘There is such a thing as State-created crime.’

Horsley was born on 14 June 1845 in Dunkirk, near Canterbury, Kent, the eldest son of a churchman. He was educated at King’s School, Canterbury, and at Pembroke College, Oxford. After teaching for a few years, he was made assistant curate in Witney, and then, in 1875, moved to be curate of St Michael’s, Shoreditch. A growing interest in social issues led him first to an appointment as chaplain at Clerkenwell prison, where he served from 1876 to its closure in 1886. In 1877, he married Mary Sophia Codd, the eldest daughter of Captain Codd, governor of the prison. They had two sons and five daughters, though Mary died young, in 1890.

Subsequently, Horsley worked for the Waifs and Strays Society (later, The Children’s Society). After becoming vicar of Holy Trinity, Woolwich, he began campaigning for improved housing and sanitation in the area. By 1894, he had become rector of St Peter’s, Walworth. Here, he is well remembered for clearing the church’s great crypt so as to transform it into a playground for poor children in the neighbourhood. He believed that working for the welfare of children, defending their rights and recognising their importance, was a key to reducing crime. To set an example, he became a total abstainer, and campaigned actively for the Church of England Temperance Society, as he did for the Anti-Gambling League.

Horsley went on to serve as chairman for Southwark’s public health committee and for its largest workhouse. In 1905, when the new diocese of Southwark was created he became honorary canon of the cathedral; and, in 1909, he was mayor of Southwark. Two years later, he retired to the vicarage of Detling, near Maidstone, only resigning in mid-1921, just months before his death. He had been an enthusiastic alpinist and naturalist during his life, and had regularly taken groups of his parishioners for walking tours in Switzerland. There is very limited further information about Horsley readily available online - much of this bio has come from the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (which requires log-in). Jack McInroy also has some information on his Walworth Saint Peter Blog. That said, Horsley’s autobiography (up to 1910 or so) can be read freely at Internet Archive.

In 1887, shortly after his role at Clerkenwell prison had come to an end, Horsley put together a collection of his thoughts and writings on the prison system. It was published by T. Fisher Unwin and called Jottings from Jail - notes and papers on prison matters (freely available at Internet Archive).

In the preface, Horsley states: ‘These jottings from jail are just what their name implies. Time certainly, ability probably, was and is wanting, if I contemplated something more ambitious, a more detailed record of the experiences and observation of a decade spent as a chaplain of a metropolitan prison into which there came about an hundred thousand men, women, and children of all sorts and conditions, from the wholesale murderer to the child remanded only to be helped out of misery into the possibility and prospect of happiness and usefulness. These are but notes that I made from time to time, or articles or papers that were produced on sundry occasions and for divers audiences whom I wished to interest in the phenomena of crime in order that they might work for its prevention or cure. [. . .] My aim is to remove that ignorance of what our prisons and prisoners are, which in our grandsires’ days was the hardly excusable excuse for the existence of iniquities now inconceivable; to create or sustain more interest in, and sympathy for, a large but often forgotten or despised class of our brethren, and to suggest ways in which all in their several stations should feel their responsibility for the existence of crime and sin and misery, and so labour for the removal or prevention of all that makes these evils common and almost inevitable.’

Also in the preface, Horsley thanks Miss Manville Fenn for the design of the cover: ‘It represents a selection from my private collection of burglarious implements; some jemmies or sticks (Anglice, crowbars), one of which was presented me by him whose autobiography opens this book because he thought “it would be safer with me than with him;” some twirls or skels (skeleton keys and picklocks); a wedge for securing doors from the inside, a steel one for safe work; some neddies or life-preservers; and the firearms that it has become fashionable to carry, more out of bravado and because the mock-hero Peace (a canting old liar when under my care) used one than from any determination or desire to use them.’

Inside the book there is one chapter called A Month’s Prison Notes which is, in fact, a diary kept by Horsley for a month. He explains: ‘When the approaching abolition of the prison made it probable that I should speedily be regretting my discharge almost as much as the prisoners hope for theirs, one of the many things in my mind was the wish that I had had time to keep a private as well as an official diary, and to have noted down from day to day such incidents or observations as might have been useful in many ways hereafter. [. . .] True, I had kept for nine years notes of all cases of attempted suicide, which were between three and four hundred a year, and of all other cases specially commended to my notice by the magistrates; true, also, that I have a large notebook full of statistics and all sorts of curious subjects coming to my notice in prison; true, also, that my memory is retentive; but yet a daily record of things of interest would have been useful. During my last August I therefore endeavoured to make such a daily record as might show the varied nature of the work, and teach those who are not connected officially with prison work in what direction their intercessions and kindly thoughts and actions might tend.’

The diary is notable not only for the facts and figures Horsley brings to light about the prison and its prisoners, but for his lively use of sarcasm to stress social/political points.

3 August 1885
‘Of nine fresh cases on the female side I find one is 18, one 19, two 20, one 21, and the average age of all nine is only 25.

A lad, aged 19, spends four shillings in fourpenny ale, and then after midnight runs out with his baby, aged 13 months, and tries to drown himself and it. His wife was a rope-ground girl, and aged 15 at her marriage. A stalwart, intellectual, and good living race is likely to arise from such parentage!

The next case to which I come is that of a lad of 17 who has attempted suicide. How? I got into a pond. Why? Because I wanted to go to sea. This sounds humorous, but it turns out that he was trying to frighten his parents into acquiescence with his wishes. [. . .]

A rescue-worker complains to me of how Bank Holiday upsets girls who have hitherto been quiet and contented in Homes. It is commonly observed. The memories of drinks and “larks” attached to that day will come crowding in.’

5 August 1885
‘A woman, aged 36, has been eight years free, but has suffered five and seven years’ penal servitude. She must have begun young! She was turned out of doors “for cheek” by her stepfather when she was 15, then fell in with thieves and got five years when 15 for robbing a man of £63 in the street. She is not old, but she has outlived the possibility of a schoolgirl being sent to penal servitude for her first theft. There is such a thing as State-created crime.

A woman, aged 27, remanded for drunkenness and trying to rescue her husband, who was apprehended for being drunk and assaulting the police when they both had been “chucked out” of a public curse. They had regular work and are in comfortable circumstances; but then one must enjoy Bank Holiday. They have had seven children; one is living: of course this has nothing to do with their intemperance.

Justice Manisty sentences a man to two years for outraging a child aged 10, and regrets the law does not allow him to give more. The same copy of the paper records an exactly similar case in America - only there the man got twenty years. Oh our beautiful and righteous laws! “Who steals my purse, steals trash” - but can get penal servitude for so doing. Who steals the virtue of a child - cannot be punished half so severely. Oh these laws! “Proputty, proputty, proputty, that’s what I hear ‘un say.” [A quote from Tennyson.] Protect our spoons of course as long as they exist, but a national tumult is necessary to get protection for our girls.’

6 August 1885
‘Girl, aged 17, remanded for a petty theft from her place, and that I may find a Home for her if she promises well. Her mother says she is beyond her control, runs away from her places and gets into bad company, and that she has never been right since she was 10, when a “man” got six months for violating her. Two other girls, aged 13 and 9, were similarly treated by him, being waylaid on their way home from school. He was an accountant.

Another girl of the same age and charged with a similar offence I send to another Home. Her mother is dead, her father in the workhouse, and she has been brought up in a workhouse school, which quite accounts for her dulness and obliquity of moral vision. The huge barrack schools are utter ruin for pauper girls in comparison with any other system. Why is the British rate-payer so slow to note that children in Sutton District School cost £30 a head, while in Cottage Homes, such as those at Marston Green, the cost is but £20 10s., and children boarded out (e.g., by the King’s Norton Union) cost but £10 9s. 10d. a head per annum? I suppose they like to go on paying highest for the worst system and results, rather than lowest for the best.

A third girl this morning will go hopefully into a Home. She is only 18, but has led an immoral life for six months, yet is modest and quiet in manner; an orphan likewise.

An ex-prisoner is sent to me by a lady that I may help him. I find in conversation that a man for whom he worked twenty months is kindly disposed towards him and is now manager to a large firm. Yet it had never occurred to him to call on him! Verily, some men’s idea of seeking employment is to lie on their back with their mouth open, expecting it to be filled.

“Do you remember me, sir?” Yes, I did. This prisoner, a young clerk who had embezzelled in consequence of his drinking habits, and in spite of a wife and two young children, was a boy under me in a good school, of good birth, and his uncle an Archdeacon.

Sent to a refuge M.C., who was discharged this morning from Millbank and came to see me. For nine years have I striven to keep her straight, and to sixteen Homes have I sent her. A perfectly hopeless case of dipsomania I fear, but one must work against hope if one cannot work with it.’

7 August 1885
‘A young man, crippled and with only one hand, a friendless clerk, is helped and taken in by Mr. Wheatley, of the St Giles’s Christian Mission. Trusted on an errand with a cheque he absconds. Eventually he gets work at Westminster, and plays his employer the same trick. When no spark of honesty or of gratitude is discoverable, what can be done?’

8 August 1885
‘A country girl, aged 19, immoral and shameless, though only a month in London. Admits that sheer laziness and dislike to work have brought her on the streets.’

9 August 1885
‘Five males and one female brought in yesterday for attempting suicide. But “trade was bad” with us yesterday, for only forty men and six women were admitted.’

11 August 1885
‘A young lady with eight aliases, and all addresses given found to be false, is resigned and martyroid because every word of hers is not believed against those of others.’

12 August 1885
‘I wonder if this flower-girl, aged 18, used to sing the popular song, “We are a happy family.” She is in for assaulting her mother with a poker, and has twice previously been in for drunkenness: the mother is living apart from her husband, and has spent ten months out of twelve in Millbank doing short terms for drunkenness: a younger brother and sister have been sent to Industrial Schools. Yet the wonder is that any members of some families do right, and not that many do wrong. On what a pinnacle of virtue, inaccessible to a countess, is the daughter of a convict father and gindrinking mother who keeps straight!

Twice this week have I written to the Reformatory and Refuge Union to set their special officer on children that I find to be living in houses of ill-fame, of which the denizens or keepers come here. In one case, at any rate, there seemed a dereliction of duty on the part of the police, who, when they apprehended the mother, should have rescued the children.

Fate is the convenient scapegoat of those whose “can’t” is a shuffling substitute for “won’t” or “don’t like.” This man is in for theft from a public-curse; he is badly consumptive through drinking long and heavily; his father died of alcoholic phthisis; he has often tried to abstain, but never for more than six weeks; he has been warned by a physician at a hospital of how he is committing suicide; but he “supposes it is Fate.” ’

14 August 1885
‘One does not lose the sound of Bank Holiday (nor of Derby Day) rapidly in prison. A woman in yesterday for being drunk and violent had been a teetotaller for nine months up to Bank Holiday. A man who cut his throat after Bank Holiday spent in a public-curse was only yesterday well enough to be brought up and remanded.

Went last night to get the police in a certain district to take up a scandalous case of a girl, about 13, living with and being taken out nightly by her mistress, a notorious prostitute. Suggested that the case might have been dealt with any time this last four years under the Industrial Schools Act Amendment Act (which will go down to posterity as Miss Ellice Hopkins’ Act, as the Criminal Law Amendment Act will be called Mr. Stead’s). But the inspector had never heard of the Act. Quite courteous and willing to take up the case, of which he knew a great deal, but was ignorant of the Act under which scores of children in London alone have been rescued from immoral surroundings. The fact is, if the police know that those at head-quarters desire that an Act should be enforced, they can and will enforce it; if they do not know, or know the contrary, they don’t.’

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

Remarks and collections

Thomas Hearne, Oxford scholar and librarian, died all of 290 years ago today. He is highly regarded for his editions of historical works which he managed to continue publishing throughout his life - this despite falling out of favour with the university authorities for refusing to take oaths of allegiance to the crown. Apart from his valuable chronicles, Hearne’s diaries are also highly rated, not only for providing much information on books/manuscripts and intellectual history, but for portraits of eminent scholars and academic figures of the day. They are also a good read: Hearne is quite unguarded in his opinions, and he recounts interesting news items of the day, as well as amusing anecdotes.

Hearne was born at Littlefield Green in Berkshire, in 1678, the son of a parish clerk. He received an early education thanks to a wealthy neighbour. Later he was educated at St Edmund Hall, Oxford, where he studied classical history, philology, and geography, graduating in 1699. He came to the attention of the principal, Dr John Mill, for whom he did transcription work. In 1701, he was taken on as an assistant by John Hudson, the newly appointed librarian of the Bodleian Library, and set to work on a planned edition of Thomas Hyde’s Bodleian catalogue of printed books. (Hudson, however, gave up this project, and when the catalogue was finally published in 1738 by a successor to Hudson, Hearne’s work was uncredited.)

Soon after joining the library, Hearne published his first book, Reliquiae Bodleianae (1703), a collection of correspondence between the library’s founder, Sir Thomas Bodley, and his first librarian, Thomas James. Hearne also published, with Hudson’s help, editions of Latin classics; undertook bibliographical research for many visiting scholars, such as Jeremy Collier and Bishop Francis Atterbury; and contributed to various important historical chronicles and literary works. By 1712, he had risen to second librarian; but, thereafter, he failed to advance further in the university because he proclaimed himself nonjuror, i.e. he refused to take oaths of allegiance to King George I (a requirement of higher offices). Indeed, his written reflections on nonjurism and nonjurors became increasingly problematic for the university, and caused mounting tension with Hudson. Eventually, in 1716, having failed to take a legally-required oath, he was dismissed from his position in the Bodleian; the door locks were even changed to bar him entry.

Subsequently, Hearne was denied use of the university imprint, and measures were put in place to forbid him printing from Bodleian manuscripts. He was also persecuted for a short while by the university authorities. Nevertheless, he managed to pursue a living for himself as a private publisher, using historical manuscripts from other libraries, such as the Ashmolean, and Trinity College in Cambridge. Also, he had a considerable following among collectors and scholars who assisted in bringing many of his works to publication.

Hearne fell ill in 1735 and died, unmarried, in his lodgings at St Edmund Hall on 10 June. His library was sold soon after, and (ironically) his diaries, correspondence, and manuscript collection ended up at the Bodleian Library. The fullest biography of Hearne online can be found at the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (though log-in is required); otherwise Wikipedia, Berkshire History have briefer bios.

According to the ODNB, Hearne’s reputation today rests especially on his diaries, a series of 145 octavo diary volumes, written between 1705 and 1735, which he entitled ‘Remarks and collections’. The ODNB says: ‘[These] are filled with detailed information about books and manuscripts, contemporary scholarship, and intellectual history. They also contain lively if politically prejudiced portraits of the lives of late seventeenth- and early eighteenth-century scholars and antiquaries and autobiographical pieces. Though less accessible today (as workbooks, the diaries are also filled with scholarly and bibliographical detail) than the more urbane diaries of Evelyn and Pepys, Hearne’s volumes are still rewarding when read entire.’

Hearne’s ‘Remarks and collections’ was first edited by Philip Bliss and published, in 1857, as Reliquiæ Hearnianæ: The Remains of Thomas Hearne being extracts from his MS. Diaries (two volumes). This was republished in 1869 in three volumes. Then C. E. Doble and others edited the diaries for the Oxford Historical Society’s edition in 11 volumes (1885-1921). The original Bliss edition can be read online at Googlebooks or Internet Archive, and the Doble editions can also be found at Internet Archive. Images from Hearne’s manuscript diaries can be viewed at the Digital Bodleian website. Here, though, are several extracts taken from the 1857 edition.

14 September 1705
‘I was told last night that in the great fire at London was burnt a MS. Bible curiously illuminated, like the historical part of the Bible in Bodley’s archives, and that ’twas valued at 1500 libs.’

21 September 1705
‘Last night I was with Mr. Wotton (who writ the Essay on Ancient and Modern Learning) at the tavern, together with Mr. Thwaites, and Mr. Willis. Mr. Wotton is a person of general learning, a great talker and braggadocio, but of little judgement in any one particular science. He told me, he had begun sometime since to translate Graeve’s Rom. Demarius, but had not finished, and could not tell whether he should ever perfect it.

Mr. Wotton told me, Mr. Baker of St. John’s col. Cambridge had writ the history and antiquities of that college; and that he is every ways qualified (being a very industrious and judicious man) to write that hist. and antiq. of that university. He told me also, that he really believed Cambridge to me much later than Oxon.’

27 November 1713
‘Mr. Tompion of London, one of the most eminent persons for making clocks and watches, that have been produced in the last age, dyed last week. Indeed he was the most famous, and the most skillfull person at this art in the whole world, and first of all brought watches to any thing of perfection. He was originally a blacksmith, but a gentleman imploying him to mend his clock, he did it extraordinary well, and told the gentleman that he believed he could make such another himself. Accordingly he did so, and this was his first beginning, he living then in Buckinghamshire. He afterwards got a great name, lived in London, was acquainted with the famous Dr. Hooke, grew rich, and lived to a great age. He had a strange working head, and was well seen in mathematicks.’

22 April 1715
‘This morning was a total ecclipse of the sun. It began after eight o’clock. But the sky being not clear, the observations that were designed were in a very great measure hindered. There were many papers printed, before it happened, about it. This inserted [described in a footnote], is done by D. Halley. It was very dark when it happened. The birds flocked to the trees as they do at night. Many people used candles in their houses as in the night.’

19 February 1716
‘This has been such a severe winter, that the like hath not been known since the year 1683/4. In some respects it exceeded that. For tho’ the frost did not last so long as it did at that time, yet there was a much greater and deeper snow. Indeed it was the biggest snow that ever I knew: as it was also the severest frost that ever I have been sensible of. It began on Monday Dec. 5th, and continued till Friday, Feb 10th following, which is almost ten weeks, before there was an entire thaw. Indeed it began to thaw two or three times, but then the frost soon began again with more violence, and there was withall a very sharp and cold and high wind for some days. When it first began to thaw, and afterwards to freeze again, it made the ways extreme slippery and dangerous, and divers accidents happened.’

23 August 1716
‘Sir Christopher Wren says the ways of making mortar with hair came into fashion in queen Elizabeth’s time. Sir Christ. says there were no masons in London when he was a young man. Sir Christ. is about 85 years of age.’

13 December 1716
‘I had this day a hint given me as if the present vice-chancellor and some others (to be sure some of our heads of houses) have a mind to force open my chamber, and to sieze upon my papers.’

18 April 1719
‘A present has been made me of a book called The Antiquities of Barkshire, by Elias Ashmole, esq. London, printed for E. Curll, in Fleet-street, 1719. 8vo in three volumes. It was given me by my good friend Thomas Rawlinson, esq. As soon as I opened it, and looked into it, I was amazed at the abominable impudence, ignorance, and carelessness of the publisher, and I can hardly ascribe all this to any one else than to that villain Curll. Mr. Ashmole is made to have written abundance of things since his death. All is ascribed to him, and yet a very great part of what is mentioned happened since he died. For, as many of the persons died after him, so the inscriptions mentioned in this book were made and fixed since his death also. Besides, what is taken from Mr. Ashmole is most fraudulently done. The epitaphs are falsely printed, and his words and sense most horribly perverted. What Mr. Ashmole did was done very carefully, as appears from the original in the museum, where also are his exact draughts of the most considerable monuments, of which there is no notice in this strange rhapsody. I call it a rhapsody, because there is no method nor judgement observed in it, nor one dram of true learning. Some things are taken from my edition of Leland, but falsely printed, and I cannot but complain of the injury done me.’

6 June 1719
‘Last Sunday died Edmund Dunch, of Little Wittenham, in Berks, esq. parliament for Wallingford, being about 40 years of age. He was a very great gamester, and had a little before lost about 30 libs. in one night gaming. He had otherwise good qualities. By gaming most of the estate is gone. He was drawn into gaming purely to please his lady. King James I. said to one of the Dunches (for ’tis an old family) when his majesty asked his name, and he answered Dunch, “Ay, (saith the king), Dunch by name, and Dunce by nature.” ’

This article is a slightly revised version of one first published on 10 June 2015.

Weeds don’t spoil

‘My [90th] birthday. [. . .] It is unusual, I believe, for persons of this age to retain possession of their faculties, or so much of them as I do. The Germans have an uncomplimentary saying: “Weeds don’t spoil” ’. This is Henry Crabb Robinson, one of the most interesting and entertaining of 19th century diarists, who was born a quarter of a millenium ago today. He trained as a lawyer, but an inheritance left him wealthy enough to pursue a life of cultured leisure. He was a great theatre-goer, knew a lot of literary types - was on very good terms with William Wordsworth, for example, with whom he travelled often - and was one of the first to recognise William’s Blake’s genius.

Robinson was born in Bury St Edmunds on 13 May 1775, the son of a tanner. He attended private schools, and was articled to a lawyer in Colchester when 15, and subsequently to another in London. In 1796, he was left an inheritance which allowed him to travel to the Continent frequently. Between 1800 and 1805 he studied in Germany, meeting, among others, Goethe and Schiller. He operated as a war correspondent for The Times for a short while during the Peninsular War, and, on his return to London, finished his legal training and was called to the bar.

Through an old friend, Catherine, who had married the writer and abolitionist Thomas Clarkson, Robinson was introduced into London literary society; and, in time, his own breakfast parties became famous. After retiring in 1828, he continued to take part in public affairs and to travel often. In 1828 he was one of the founding members of London University; and, in 1837, he revisited Italy on a tour with Wordsworth. He never married, but lived to an old age, dying in 1867. Further biographical information is available from Wikipedia, Encyclopaedia Britannica, or Peter Landry’s Bluepete website. The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography has a good short biography (but requires a login).

Robinson left behind a large amount of papers including the following: brief journals covering the period to 1810, a much fuller home diary (begun in 1811, and continued to within five days of his death - 35 volumes), and a collection of 30 tour journals. The papers were edited by Thomas Sadler and published by Macmillan in 1869 in three volumes as Diary, Reminiscences and Correspondence of Henry Crabb Robinson. And it is thanks largely to these volumes that Robsinson is remembered today, for his diaries are full of important detail about the central figures of the English romantic movement, not only Wordsworth, but Coleridge, Charles Lamb and William Blake. Of the latter, he was an early admirer, writing in his diary: ‘Shall I call Blake artist, genius, mystic or madman? Probably he is all’. Moreover, his diaries are also prized for their information about the London theatre in the first half of the 19th century (see the Society for Theatre Research’s 1966 volume: The London theatre 1811-1866: Selections from the diary of Henry Crabb Robinson.)

All three volumes of Diary, Reminiscences and Correspondence can be read at Internet Archive (Vol 1, Vol 2, Vol 3). Here are a few extracts.

7 December 1831
‘Brighton. Accompanied [John James] Masquerier [a British painter] to a concert, which afforded me really a great pleasure. I heard Paganini [Niccolò Paganini, an Italian musician and composer]. Having scarcely any sensibility to music, I could not expect great enjoyment from any music, however fine; and, after all, I felt more surprise at the performance than enjoyment. The professional men, I understand, universally think more highly of Paganini than the public do. He is really an object of wonder. His appearance announces something extraordinary. His figure and face amount to caricature. He is a tall slim figure, with limbs which remind one of a spider; his face very thin, his forehead broad, his eyes grey and piercing, with bushy eyebrows; his nose thin and long, his cheeks hollow, and his chin sharp and narrow. His face forms a sort of triangle. His hands the oddest imaginable, fingers of enormous length, and thumbs bending backwards.

It is, perhaps, in a great measure from the length of finger and thumb that his fiddle is also a sort of lute. He came forward and played, from notes, his own compositions. Of the music, as such, I know nothing. The sounds were wonderful. He produced high notes very faint, which resembled the chirruping of birds, and then in an instant, with a startling change, rich and melodious notes, approaching those of the bass viol. It was difficult to believe that this great variety of sounds proceeded from one instrument. The effect was heightened by his extravagant gesticulation and whimsical attitudes. He sometimes played with his fingers, as on a harp, and sometimes struck the cords with his bow, as if it were a drum-stick, sometimes sticking his elbow into his chest, and sometimes flourishing his bow. Oftentimes the sounds were sharp, like those of musical glasses, and only now and then really delicious to my vulgar ear, which is gratified merely by the flute and other melodious instruments, and has little sense of harmony.’

9 June 1833
‘Liverpool. At twelve I got upon an omnibus, and was driven up a steep hill to the place where the steam-carriages start. We travelled in the second class of carriages. There were five carriages linked together, in each of which were placed open seats for the traveller, four and four facing each other; but not all were full; and, besides, there was a close carriage, and also a machine for luggage. The fare was four shillings for the thirty-one miles. Everything went on so rapidly, that I had scarcely the power of observation. The road begins at an excavation through rock, and is to a certain extent insulated from the adjacent country. It is occasionally placed on bridges, and frequently intersected by ordinary roads. Not quite a perfect level is preserved. On setting off there is a slight jolt, arising from the chain catching each carriage, but, once in motion, we proceeded as smoothly as possible. For a minute or two the pace is gentle, and is constantly varying. The machine produces little smoke or steam. First in order is the tall chimney; then the boiler, a barrel-like vessel; then an oblong reservoir of water; then a vehicle for coals; and then comes, of a length infinitely extendible, the train of carriages. If all the seats had been filled, our train would have carried about 150 passengers; but a gentleman assured me at Chester that he went with a thousand persons to Newton fair. There must have been two engines then. I have heard since that two thousand persons and more went to and from the fair that day. But two thousand only, at three shillings each way, would have produced £600! But, after all, the expense is so great, that it is considered uncertain whether the establishment will ultimately remunerate the proprietors. Yet I have heard that it already yields the shareholders a dividend of nine per cent. And Bills have passed for making railroads between London and Birmingham, and Birmingham and Liverpool. What a change will it produce in the intercourse! One conveyance will take between 100 and 200 passengers, and the journey will be made in a forenoon! Of the rapidity of the journey I had better experience on my return; but I may say now, that, stoppages included, it may certainly be made at the rate of twenty miles an hour!

I should have observed before that the most remarkable movements of the journey are those in which trains pass one another. The rapidity is such that there is no recognizing the features of a traveller. On several occasions, the noise of the passing engine was like the whizzing of a rocket. Guards are stationed in the road, holding flags, to give notice to the drivers when to stop. Near Newton, I noticed an inscription recording the memorable death of Huskisson.’

26 December 1836
‘Brighton. This was a remarkable day. So much snow fell, that not a coach either set out for or arrived from London - an incident almost unheard of in this place. Parties were put off and engagements broken without complaint. The Masqueriers, with whom I am staying, expected friends to dinner, but they could not come. Nevertheless, we had here Mr Edmonds, the worthy Scotch schoolmaster, Mr and Mrs Dill, and a Miss Robinson; and, with the assistance of whist, the afternoon went off comfortably enough. Of course, during a part of the day, I was occupied in reading.’

28 December 1836
‘The papers to-day are full of the snow-storm. The ordinary mails were stopped in every part of the country.’

3 May 1850
‘I read early a speech by [Frederick William] Robertson [a charismatic preacher] to the Brighton Working Class Association, in which infidelity of a very dangerous kind had sprung up. His speech shows great practical ability. He managed a difficult subject very ably, but it will not be satisfactory either to the orthodox or the ultra-liberal.

I went to Mr Cookson, who is one of the executors of Mr Wordsworth, and with whom I had an interesting conversation about Wordsworth’s arrangements for the publication of his poems. He has commissioned Dr Christopher Wordsworth to write his Life, a brief Memoir merely illustrative of his poems. And in a paper given to the Doctor, he wrote that his sons, son-in-law, his dear friend Miss Fenwick, Mr Carter, and Mr Robinson, who had travelled with him, “would gladly contribute their aid by communicating any facts within their knowledge.” ’

18 February 1851
‘At Masquerier’s, Brighton. We had calls soon after breakfast. The one to be mentioned was that of [Michael] Faraday, one of the most remarkable men of the day, the very greatest of our discoverers in chemistry, a perfect lecturer in the unaffected simplicity and intelligent clearness of his statement; so that the learned are instructed and the ignorant charmed. His personal character is admirable. When he was young, poor, and altogether unknown, Masquerier was kind to him; and now that he is a great man he does not forget his old friend.’

29 November 1852
‘I went to Robertson’s, and had two hours of interesting chat with him on his position here in the pulpit; also about Lady Byron. He speaks of her as the noblest woman he ever knew.’

17 August 1853
‘Dr King wrote to me, informing me of the death of Robertson, of Brighton. Take him for all in all, the best preacher I ever saw in a pulpit; that is, uniting the greatest number of excellences, originality, piety, freedom of thought, and warmth of love. His style colloquial and very scriptural. He combined light of the intellect with warmth of the affections in a pre-eminent degree.’

13 September 1853
‘Brighton. Dr King called, and in the evening I called by desire on Lady Byron - a call which I enjoyed, and which may have consequences. Recollecting her history, as the widow of the most famous, though not the greatest, poet of England in our day, I felt an interest in going to her; and that interest was greatly heightened when I left her. From all I have heard of her, I consider her one of the best women of the day. Her means and her good will both great. “She lives to do good,” says Dr. King, and I believe this to be true. She wanted my opinion as to the mode of doing justice to Robertson’s memory. She spoke of him as having a better head on matters of business than any one else she ever knew. She said, “I have consulted lawyers on matters of difficulty, but Robertson seemed better able to give me advice. He unravelled everything and explained everything at once as no one else did.” ’

13 May 1865
‘My birthday. To-day I complete my ninetieth year. When people hear of my age, they affect to doubt my veracity, and call me a wonder. It is unusual, I believe, for persons of this age to retain possession of their faculties, or so much of them as I do. The Germans have an uncomplimentary saying : “Weeds don’t spoil.” ’

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

Folly, ignorance, idleness

‘Early in life, at the age of fifteen, I had commenced the dangerous habit of keeping a journal and this I maintained for ten years. The volumes remained in my possession unregarded - never looked at - till 1870, when I examined them, and, with many blushes, destroyed them.’ Alas, the great British novelist Anthony Trollope - born 210 years ago today - did not leave behind any diaries, only an autobiography with tantalising snippets about the journals he used to keep.

Trollope was born on 24 April 1815, in London, England, into a family of declining fortunes. His father, Thomas Anthony Trollope, was a barrister who struggled with financial management, while his mother, Frances Trollope, later became a successful writer. The family’s unstable income and eventual move to Belgium after financial ruin affected Anthony’s early years. He attended several schools, including Harrow and Winchester, but his time there was marked by unhappiness and bullying.

In 1834, Trollope began working as a junior clerk at the General Post Office, enduring several years of poverty before being transferred to Ireland in 1841, which improved his circumstances. During his postal career, he helped introduce the pillar box system, first in the Channel Islands, later spreading to Britain and Ireland. He wrote in the early morning hours before work, maintaining a disciplined schedule that allowed him to produce a vast body of literature. His first novel, The Macdermots of Ballycloran (1847), gained little attention, but he achieved fame with The Warden (1855), the first of what became known as the Barsetshire series.

Trollope married Rose Heseltine in 1844, and the couple had two sons, Henry and Frederick. He enjoyed a stable family life and often drew on domestic and clerical settings in his fiction. His works are known for their realism, detailed characterisations, and exploration of Victorian society’s moral and political issues. He remained prolific throughout his life, producing over 45 novels, numerous short stories, travel books, and essays. His political ambitions, including a failed run for Parliament in 1868, were less successful.

Trollope retired from the Post Office in 1867 to focus on writing full-time. He continued to publish steadily until his death in 1882. Though his popularity waned in the decades after his death, the 20th century saw a revival of interest in his work. Today, Trollope is considered one of the great chroniclers of Victorian England, admired for his insight into human behaviour and the intricacies of social life. His Barsetshire and Palliser novels remain widely read and studied. More information is readily available online at Wikipedia, Encyclopaedia Britannica and the Trollope Society.

An Autobiography by Trollope was first published in 1883 by William Blackwood and Sons, Edinburgh and London. Trollope completed the manuscript in 1879 and, after his death in 1882, his son Henry M. Trollope edited and arranged for its publication in 1883. This is freely available to read at Internet Archive.

On page 38, Trollope confesses: ‘Early in life, at the age of fifteen, I had commenced the dangerous habit of keeping a journal and this I maintained for ten years. The volumes remained in my possession unregarded - never looked at - till 1870, when I examined them, and, with many blushes, destroyed them. They convicted mo of folly, ignorance, indiscretion, idleness, extravagance, and conceit. But they had habituated me to the rapid use of pen and ink, and taught me how to express myself with facility.’

There is one other references to these journals later in the autobiography, and a further passage about ‘a little diary, with its dates and ruled spaces’ in which he seems to have set himself deadlines and recorded progress in writing the novels.

p48

‘I had often told myself since I left school that the only career in life within my reach was that of an author, and the only mode of authorship open to me that of a writer of novels. In the journal which I read and destroyed a few years since, I found the matter argued out before I had been in the Post Office two years. Parliament was out of the question. I had not means to go to the Bar. In official life, such as that to which I had been introduced, there did not seem to be any opening for real success. Pens and paper I could command. Poetry I did not believe to be within my grasp. The drama, too, which I would fain have chosen, I believed to be above me. For history, biography, or essay writing I had not sufficient erudition. But I thought it possible that I might write a novel. I had resolved very early that in that shape must the attempt be made. But the months and years ran on, and no attempt was made. And yet no day was passed without thoughts of attempting, and a mental acknowledgement of the disgrace of postponing it.’

p110

‘I have known authors whose lives have always been troublesome and painful because their tasks have never been done in time. They have ever been as boys struggling to learn their lesson as they entered the school gates. Publishers have distrusted them, and they have failed to write their best because they have seldom written at ease. I have done double their work, - though burdened with another profession, - and have done it almost without an effort. I have not once, through all my literary career, felt myself even in danger of being late with my task. I have known no anxiety as to ‘copy’. The needed pages far ahead - very far ahead - have almost always been in the drawer beside me. And that little diary, with its dates and ruled spaces, its record that must be seen, its daily, weekly demand upon my industry, has done all that for me.

There are those who would be ashamed to subject themselves to such a taskmaster, and who think that the man who works with his imagination should allow himself to wait till inspiration moves him. When I have heard such doctrine preached, I have hardly been able to repress my scorn. To me it would not be more absurd if the shoemaker were to wait for inspiration, or the tallow-chandler for the divine moment of melting, if the man whose business it is to write has eaten too many good things, or has drunk too much, or smoked too many cigars, as men who write sometimes will do,- then his condition may be unfavourable for work; but so will be the condition of a shoemaker who has been similarly imprudent. I have sometimes thought that the inspiration wanted has been the remedy which time will give to the evil results of such imprudence. - Mens sana in corpora sano. The author wants that as does every other workman, - that and a habit of industry. I was once told that the surest aid to the writing of a book was a piece of cobbler’s wax on my chair. I certainly believe in the cobbler’s wax much more than the inspiration.’

What could become of me

‘What could become of me, and what will become of me? My powerful fantasy will drive me into the insane asylum, my violent temperament will make a suicide of me!’ This is Hans Christian Andersen, a prolific Danish writer, born 220 years ago today, best remembered for his fairy tales. From the age of 20, he kept meticulous diaries. These reveal youthful insecurities, and struggles with loneliness. They also document his extensive travels across Europe, and his encounters with influential figures, such as Charles Dickens.

Andersen was born in Odense, Denmark, on 2 April 1805 into a poor family. His father was a shoemaker, while his mother worked as a washerwoman. His father had literary aspirations and read literature, including fairy tales, to his son, but he died when Andersen was just 11. His mother would remarry, but aged 14, Andersen moved to Copenhagen to pursue a career in the arts, initially hoping to become an actor or singer. His striking soprano voice gained him some attention at the Royal Danish Theatre, but when it broke, he turned to writing. With support from patrons who recognised his talent, he received financial aid to attend school, though he struggled with the rigid curriculum. Encouraged by Jonas Collin, a director at the Royal Danish Theatre, he persevered and eventually turned to writing poetry, plays, and novels.

Andersen’s first major success came in 1829 with the publication of A Journey on Foot from Holmen’s Canal to the East Point of Amager, followed by plays and poetry collections. In 1835, he published his first collection of fairy tales, including The Princess and the Pea. Although initially overlooked by critics, these tales gained widespread recognition over time. Andersen drew inspiration from his own experiences and often portrayed themes of poverty and social exclusion. His later works included beloved classics such as The Little Mermaid, The Emperor’s New Clothes, and The Ugly Duckling. Over his lifetime, he wrote more than 150 fairy tales.

English translations of Andersen’s works brought him fame abroad, influencing authors like A. A. Milne and Beatrix Potter. He forged friendships with literary figures such as Charles Dickens and traveled extensively across Europe, Asia, and Africa. Despite his success, though, he remained deeply sensitive to criticism and struggled with feelings of loneliness throughout his life. He never married, though he formed close, sometimes unreciprocated attachments to both men and women. His later years were marked by declining health, but he continued to write and travel widely, enhancing his international fame. He died in 1875, in Copenhagen,  but left behind a literary legacy that has influenced generations of writers, filmmakers, and artists. Today, he is celebrated as Denmark’s national poet. Further biographical information is available online at Wikipedia, Encyclopaedia Britannica, and in his own autobiography (The Story of My Life) available at Internet Archive.

Andersen kept extensive and detailed diaries throughout his life. After his death, only excerpts were published in the early 20th century. A first major publication of his diaries came in a six-volume Danish edition, edited by H. Topsøe-Jensen (1926-1931). A more comprehensive Danish edition was published in 11 volumes, as edited by Helga Pedersen (1971-1976). Translations and more scholarly work on the diaries has emerged since then. The information and excerpts below come from The Diaries of Hans Christian Andersen selected and translated by Patricia L Conroy and Sven H. Rossel (published by University of Washington Press, 1990 - freely available for digital loan at Internet Archive.)

Andersen began his diary on 16 September 1825. ‘For the next thirty-five years’, the translators say in their preface, ‘nearly all of Andersen’s diaries are reports of his travels, both at home and abroad. They were often begun on the very day of departure and continued uninterrupted until the last, routine stages of his journey. Like his schoolboy diary, these travel diaries record extraordinary times in his life.’

Here is more from the preface: ‘In late August 1861, when Andersen was on the last leg of his journey home from a trip to Rome, word reached him that Jonas Collin, his benefactor and friend for thirty-nine years, had died. Saddened, he continued his journey to Copenhagen to attend the funeral. This time he did not cease writing his diary at the trip’s end but continued to make entries, reporting his impressions of a Copenhagen so familiar to him but now made alien by the absence of his good friend. From this point on, Andersen made of his diary an unbroken record of his life until the pen literally fell from his hand during his final illness. In these entries, Andersen is in his workaday world, among the people who mean most to him. It is particularly in these entries that the reader learns of his irascibility, his small vanities and petty tyrannies, as well as his capacity for friendship, his honesty, and his kindness.

No reader can come away from Andersen’s diaries without the feeling of having met both a remarkable artist and a remarkable man. In making our selections from his diaries, we, his translators, have tried to allow Andersen to document himself in both these regards for his English-speaking audience. We have naturally focused on those periods in his life that seemed to us especially interesting, but we have sought to fashion the excerpts so that they also include some of his more ordinary experiences - after all, his life was not all agony and ecstasy. 

His first diary, for example, shows the plight of a young man forced to play schoolboy for his own good. The diary from his trip to Rome in 1833-34 records the raw material that the young artist will soon use to forge his breakthrough novel, The Improvisator. Unfortunately, the few diaries that exist from 1835 to 1840 reflect little of Andersen’s productivity - he wrote three novels and numerous tales and singspiel - or his struggle for recognition. It is not until his trip to Greece and Turkey in 1840-41 that we encounter another treasure trove for those interested in the best of his travelogues, A Poet’s Bazaar. Later travel diaries show Andersen enjoying his acclaim abroad, visiting famous artists and nobility, and impatiently enduring the role of travel guide for Jonas Collin’s grandsons. 

We decided to translate the diaries from his two trips to England in their entirety because of their special interest for the English-speaking audience. The diaries of his last years are an interesting document of his struggle with old age, when his health deteriorated and failed. The diaries for this painful period show Andersen at his most admirable, bearing not only the discomfort of his illness but the gruesome medical treatment that was standard at that time. When he became too weak to hold a pen, his friend Mrs. Melchior made his entries for him, at first from dictation and then, when he fell silent, in her own words until he died.’

And here is the last paragraph from Rossel’s Introduction.

‘Andersen’s diaries interest posterity for two main reasons. Through them we learn of his reading, visits to museums and theaters, and musical experiences. Revealing how deeply he was part of the European literary and cultural tradition, his diaries constitute a source of the greatest significance. Likewise, one can find information about Andersen’s daily associates, what he learned and encountered, and what impact his environment had on him. Second, his diaries contain a poignant expression of human weakness as well as strength: nowhere does one come closer to the author than through these simple entries in which great and small philosophical speculations and impromptus are experienced and depicted side by side. Here one finds that strange mixture of precision, irony, and naïveté that is so characteristic of Andersen and his writing. His diaries present one of the strangest and most disparate artistic portraits in world literature.’

20 September 1825 

‘What could become of me, and what will become of me? My powerful fantasy will drive me into the insane asylum, my violent temperament will make a suicide of me! Before, the two of these together would have made a great writer! Oh God, do Your ways really prevail here on earth? Forgive me, God; I am unfair to You who have helped me in so many ways. Oh, You are God, so forgive and go on helping me. (God, I swear by my eternal salvation never again within my heart to mistrust Your fatherly hand, if only I might this time be promoted to the fourth form and to Elsinore.)’

21 September 1825

‘I was quite lucky in religion and Bible history, I was the best of all. Got a letter from Collin. Mrs. Meisling comforted me by saying that I would probably be promoted to the fourth form. Hope fills my breast! My God, I am again relying on You! (Vithusen and Frendrup have left.)’

22 September 1825

‘Studied Greek until 1 o’clock. After that invited to celebrate Ludvig’s birthday at the principal’s home. (I’ve given him 11 shillings’ worth of macaroons and a bouquet.) The children are quite fond of me. The principal and Hjarup told about a lot of shenanigans from their schooldays - fights and practical jokes. A carefree spirit, but not to my liking. Accompanied Pedersen home. Oh God, whatever are these people all about; oh, whom can one trust! Oh God, Your will with me be done; Your great world is boisterous and diverse.’

20 March 1843

‘Bad mood! Wrote to Mrs. Rowan that I wasn’t well and so couldn’t attend the soirée. Met a Danish engineer in the Café du Danemark. Wrote a letter to Holst and Mrs. Laessoe. Went to see Alexandre Dumas in the Hôtel de Paris on the Rue de Richelieu. He welcomed me with open arms, dressed in blue-striped shirt and baggy trousers! The bed was in the same room and unmade; the table, full of papers. We sat by the fireplace, and he was extremely charming and natural. He related that the king of Sweden, who had been a general along with his father, had invited him to Stockholm; he wanted to go there and then visit Copenhagen and St. Petersburg. He offered to take me tomorrow at 8:30 up to the Théâtre-Français and introduce me to Rachel. Then he presented me with a ticket for two in the first gallery in the Théâtre des Variétés, where they were performing The Petty Secrets of Paris. (There’s a good scene in this where the patrol is passing by and the man says: “My poor wife, she’s bored.” He looks up, and close to her shadow on the curtain can be seen the shadow of a man who is kissing her.) The entryway to the Passage de l’Opéra, very authentic. I think a similar, original Danish work could be written. Marriage to the Beat of a Drum, from the time of the Revolution; the young girl sang quite well; the last idea about the unhappy lover is funny. He says: “I want to stay a bachelor forever, just like my father!” Lastly, The Night of the Mardi-gras, a carnival skit. I took Theodor with me. We sat in front of stage center; close to us was a lady; everybody was staring at her; she was definitely an authoress or singer. Alexandre Dumas talked about Thorvaldsen, whom he had visited in Rome. Gave me a note to Vernet. Talked about Liszt and Thalberg; he rated the latter higher.’

13 February 1851

‘Lovely, sunny weather! Flags are waving; people and soldiers are strolling around in large groups. At one o'clock some of the artillery arrived - the Schultz Battery, which went straight out to the barracks in Christian’s Harbor. Here the decorations were especially lavish with wreaths, garlands and flags. An immense royal standard was stretched almost entirely across one of the streets. The Knippel Bridge was converted into two triumphal arches with trophies, Danish flags, shields with the names of heroes on them! The guard rails of the bridge were all lined with pikes and greenery on both sides; and there were vessels on both sides of the bridge, each one draped with countless numbers of flags. With its singularity and the surroundings, it was a more beautiful sight than even the triumphal arch on Old Square. (The fountain with the golden apples is turned on everyday.) Outside of the wholesaler Heering’s house there are a lot of flags hanging from the roof to the bulwark of the canal; the street has been decorated all the way to Amager Gate. I felt so good on this day. (Saw King Lear at the Royal Theater.)’

20 ]une 1857

‘Thunder and lightening last night. I drove with Dickens, who was headed for the city, and left him in Strood to get a shave. It was low tide; the sun-warmed foreshore glistened. It was the first warm summer morning here in England. Dickens told me that Shakespeare had set the scene here at Gad’s Hill because many pilgrims came here in those days, since it’s halfway between London and Dover. In the second scene of the first act of Henry IV, Part I, the prince says: “But, my lads, my lads, tomorrow morning, by four o’clock, early at Gadshill! There are pilgrims going to Canterbury with rich offerings, and traders riding to London with fat purses. I have vizards for you all; you have horses for yourselves. Gadshill lies tonight in Rochester. &” Two friends of Charles came out here in the afternoon. We played cricket on the lawn; I took a blow from the ball on one finger, so that it turned blue and the skin was broken. Diarrhea!’

21 June 1857

‘Letter from Miss Bushby and from Bentley. Wrote letters to Bentley, Count Reventlow-Criminil, Jette Collin and Mrs. Balling; they’ll be sent off tomorrow. It’s going better with my stomach. The weather is delightfully warm; I’m wearing summer trousers. Yesterday I read without trouble a story in English by W. Irving. Very warm, but it soon turned to rain. Albert Smith, the author of The Ascent of Mont Blanc, is here today on a visit; he seems lively and loquacious. In the evening, music by Miss Hogarth and Mary. I was very tired. Yesterday Dickens asked me so nicely not to depart before I had seen the performance they were giving for Jerrold’s widow; said he, his wife and daughters were so happy to have me with them. I was very moved; he embraced me, I kissed him on the forehead.’

7 December 1867

‘Sent letters to the king, to the Student Association and to the Craftmen’s Association in Slagelse. (There was no remembrance from the one in Copenhagen.) There was a storm last night; the snow is drifting. A large number of beggars, the last one, a drunk. Called on the shoemaker Gredsted, who seems to be prosperous, the newspaper publishers Dreyer and Lauritsen, along with Miss Susanne Bunkeflod. Dinner at Titular Councillor Mourier’s; I was seated next to his wife at the table. There was a toast to me; it was a lovely dinner. At 7:30 the president of the Music Association, the dentist Jensen and the businessman Christian Andersen arrived and took me to the elegantly illuminated main hall of City Hall, where there was a seat of honor for me. I was seated in the midst of all the ladies, and the only men in the vicinity were Unsgaard, Koch, Mourier and the bishop. The concert began with a song in my honor; later they did “In Denmark I Was Born” in four part harmony. Two young Poles, Julius and Henry Schloming, got up and played the violin. It was past 10 o’clock before the concert was over and past 12 o’clock before I was in bed.’