Casement’s black reputation

Roger Casement - an Irish-born British diplomat, human rights activist, and, ultimately, an Irish nationalist - was executed for treason exactly a century ago today. His journals - which revealed him as a promiscuous homosexual - were successfully employed by the British government to blacken Casement’s name and undermine calls for clemency. However, subsequently, the diaries were kept secret by the government, leading some biographers and many others to believe they were a forgery. It was not until 2002 that an independent forensic examination proved, finally, they were genuine.

Casement was born in 1864 in Sandymount, near Dublin, the youngest son of an Ulster protestant and soldier. The family moved frequently, but both parents died young and the children became dependent on relatives. Casement went to live with his uncle in County Antrim, and was schooled until 1880, when he went to Liverpool to live with an aunt. After working in a shipping office, he signed up, aged 19, as a purser on board a ship heading for the Congo. The following year, he returned to stay in the Congo working as a surveyor on a rail project. There he met the writer Joseph Conrad and also the explorer (and sculptor) Herbert Ward who he then accompanied on a tour of the US.

Casement returned to Ireland where he took a job in the British customs department, before, in 1895, gaining a first consul appointment in Portuguese East Africa. Thereafter, he took similar posts in Angola (1898-1900), Congo Free State (1901-1904) and Brazil (1906-1911). He gained international recognition, though, for a report (published in 1904), commissioned by the Foreign Office, into the state of government in the Congo, which revealed atrocious cruelty in the exploitation of native labour by white traders - for more on this see Conrad, Hottot and the Congo. And, after producing a similarly disturbing report in 1912 on the Putumayo River region in Peru, he was awarded a knighthood.

Ill-health forced Casement to return to Ireland in 1912, and he retired from the British consular service in the summer of the following year. Thereafter, his views on Irish nationalism having strengthened, he helped form the Irish Volunteers. In 1914, he went to the US promoting the cause and seeking funds, and there, at the outbreak of the war, began scheming to gain German support for an Irish revolt. This led him to travel to Germany, seeking to recruit a brigade from Irish prisoners-of-war captured in the first months of the war. However, German support proved minimal, and his plans never materialised in any substantial way. The few German munitions he did manage to secure for shipment to Ireland were intercepted by the British; and he, himself, was arrested a few days after being transported to Ireland by a German submarine.

Casement was charged with treason, sabotage and espionage against the Crown, and was remanded, on suicide watch, at Brixton prison. The prosecution had some legal trouble arguing its case, and resorted to circulating extracts from Casement’s diaries, which contained details of his (illegal) homosexual activities, to influence those calling for clemency (among which were notables such as Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and George Bernard Shaw). Casement was hanged at Pentonville prison at 9am on 3 August 1916. Further information is available at Wikipedia, BBC, Stephen Stratford’s website, Irish Historical Mysteries. The Times report of the execution is also available at Stratford’s website.

Casement, it seems, was an intermittent diarist, keeping an account of himself from time to time in pocket diaries (with space for each day of the year) or cash agenda note-books. The term ‘Black Diaries ’ was coined by by Peter Singleton-Gates and Maurice Girodias in their 1959 book of the same name. Some 20 years earlier (in 1936), though, William J. Maloney had published a work claiming that he had proved the diaries used to blacken Casement’s name had been a forgery - something many people had people believed since his execution. It was not until 2002, following a detailed and independent forensic examination of the diaries, that it was proved, beyond reasonable doubt, that they were genuine.

The same year, Belfast Press, brought out Jeffrey Dudgeon’s Roger Casement: The Black Diaries with a study of his background, sexuality, and Irish political life. It contains Casement’s diaries from 1903, 1910 and 1911. This was the first time, the Black Diaries, with all of Casement’s promiscuous thoughts and actions laid bare, had been published. Dudgeon includes a large amount of additional information, in fact creating more of a biography supplemented by a few chapters on the diaries. The book runs to 650 pages less than half of which are diary texts, and the diary extracts themselves are heavily adulterated with Dudgeon’s notes in bold font enclosed by square brackets, often doubling or more Casement’s own words.

Some pages of Roger Casement’s Diaries - 1910: The Black and the White edited by Roger Sawyer can be read at Googlebooks (Pimlico, 1997). Extracts from One Bold Deed of Open Treason: The Berlin Diary of Roger Casement 1914-1916 (Irish Academic Press, 2016) can be read at The Irish Times. The following extracts, though, are from Dudgeon’s The Black Diaries (some pages of which can be previewed at Amazon).

20 November 1911
‘. . . Stopped at Mucuà at 4 p.m. and saw two rubber trees in tapping. Young Cearense of Sobral still there - splendid stern, thighs and testeminhos - a lovely boy. . . Fonseca at Santa Theresa higher  up - it is Peruvian territory. [On blotter] Got some mails by “Manco” today at 10.30 a.m. meeting “Hamburgo” on her way up . . . Saw fine Indian boy in Janissius canoe that brought him over. A big strong fellow - nice face and great thick stiff one which he felt often under grey pants.’

21 November 1911
‘Arr. Nazareth at 10 and after some hours there up to Marius Levy’s where shipped 65 cases rubber (101⁄2 tons weight) . . . Back to Nazareth - young Italian, stout but very nice face, huge stern, thighs and immense big one, long, thick, soft, he fingered often and one could see it hanging down 6” or 7” inches long - through very thick trousers too. Left Nazareth at 5 with “Le Journal” from Belém. Up to 5 Oct. giving Italy-Turkey war and strike in Ireland. At union and mouth of Javari at 9.30 and on to Leticia.’

22 November 1911
‘At Leticia since 11.30 p.m. Left only at 7.30 a.m. taking up Peruvian officer and family and enormous mass of rubbish of furniture including 5 jerrys! Cold is again very bad. Left letters to Tom, Gallwey, O’Reilly and Bernardino. . . Clock on church is painted strip of canvas always at 11.45 a.m.! . . . Met “Elisa” and got papers - including a “Truth” with part of Paredes’ summing up. José came and asked me for photo in Iquitos - looking lovely and then at 8.30 for cigarette papers and later I called and pulled mine and asked for water. Also with Pilot’s boy.’

23 November 1911
‘Lovely day. We are steaming very well and expect to be in Iquitos before 10 a.m. tomorrow. Read letters and drafted a long despatch to F.O. giving as my opinion the unlikelihood of Peruvian Government acting seriously . . . lots of logs still - often striking them hard. At 8 p.m. a huge one nearly swept away a man and case of rubber. . . Return to Iquitos.’

24 November 1911
‘Arr. 9.55. Antonio Cruz came on wharf and will come Sunday 8 a.m. Saw some big ones on Indian boys and then up ladder at top a young Spaniard with huge soft big one under blue pants. At my corner the lovely 6 foot young Inca policeman and his up at full half cock! Simply enormous, all down left thigh and thick too - fully 71⁄2 and huge testeminhos too. I now am sure of the Indians! Many letters from Mrs Green and others. Saw the Cholo policeman again going to lunch and it was huge, half down his thigh and he 6 foot and lovely. Then the small policeman passed and his too enormous. Then Paredes young Editor also very big. José came at 3.15 looking very nice and it was half up and showed big. Gave 5/8 for Spanish boo. Saw the young policeman while talking to José and it was simply huge. Both pure Cholos.’

Sir Haggard’s diaries

Sir Henry Rider Haggard, the British author of many an adventure story set in colonial Africa, often in sympathy with the native populations, was born 160 years ago today. He may have kept a private diary when younger, but the only diary extracts to have been published - Private Diaries and Diary of an African Journey - date from the last decade of his life. In the latter book, Haggard records an interesting conversation with the wife of South Africa’s first Prime Minister about the country’s future.

Haggard was born into a large family, in Norfolk, England, on 22 June 1856. His father was a barrister and his mother a writer. He was schooled at Ipswich Grammar, and then in London to enter the Foreign Office, but he never sat the necessary exams. Instead, in 1875, his father sent him to South Africa to work for his friend, Sir Henry Bulwer, Lieutenant-Governor of the Colony of Natal. By 1878, he had secured himself a job as registrar of the High Court in the Transvaal. In 1880, he returned to England briefly, and there married Marianna Louisa Margitson with whom he had one son (who died young), and three daughters.

The family left South Africa in 1882, and settled in Ditchingham, Norfolk. Haggard turned to the law and was called to the bar in 1884, but, by then, he was more interested in writing novels. His most famous work, King Solomon’s Mines, was published in 1885, and other stories based in Africa followed, most notably She, which has become, according to Wikipedia, one of the best-selling single-volume books of all time. Also according to Wikipedia, his novels portray many of the stereotypes associated with colonialism, ‘yet they are unusual for the degree of sympathy with which the native populations are portrayed.’

Although Haggard failed to get elected to Parliament in 1895, he became involved with reform in the agricultural sector, sitting on land use commissions, and occasionally travelling to the colonies. Apart from his many fiction works, he wrote several non-fiction books, including Rural England (1902) and an autobiography (The Days of My Life, 1926). He was knighted in 1912 and made a KBE in 1919. He died in 1925. There is not much biographical information about Haggard freely available online, other than at Wikipedia. However, The Days of My Life is available as a University of Adelaide ebook or at Project Gutenberg Australia.

From the start of the First World War, Haggard kept a detailed diary. This was edited by D. S. Higgins and published by Cassel in 1980 as The Private Diaries of Sir H. Rider Haggard, 1914-1925. According to Kirkus Reviews, the diary extracts (only some two per cent of the total) make for ‘a live and affecting document’; however the impression the journal leaves is of ‘a fragile, worn-out relic from a bygone era’. Morton N. Cohen, author of Haggard’s biography for the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (log-in required) is less generous: ‘[The diary] is, sadly, the account of a sour old man who sees himself betrayed by fate, a disillusioned imperialist with authoritarian, racist leanings, who ranted against the Jews, communists, Bolsheviks, trade unionists, the Irish, and Indian nationalists (the editor of his diaries omits from the published text most of Haggard’s harangues).’

Haggard also kept a diary sometimes earlier in his life, although how often is not clear. In 1899, Longmans, Green & Co published a farming diary for the year 1898, A Farmer’s Year (freely available at Internet Archive), and, in 1905, it published A Gardener’s Year (Internet Archive). Both books have diary-like entries, though they were written by Haggard as information books with publication in mind. In 2001, C. Hurst, by arrangement with the University of Natal Press, South Africa, published Diary of an African Journey (1914), as edited by Stephen Coan. Some pages of this can be viewed at Googlebooks (the source of the following extracts). Also, it’s worth noting that Haggard mentions - albeit only a couple of times - a diary in his autobiography.

7 March 1914
‘On this day, together with a number of other people, we were invited by the government to what might be termed a ‘joyride’ round Table Mountain. For one of our party, Mrs. Tatlow, it proved nothing of the sort. The motor she was in collided with another. She was thrown or fell out and has been left behind in bed at the Queen’s Hotel (I write this at Oudtshoorn) suffering from something like slight concussion. We lunched in a tent at the famous house of Groot Constantia. This place was granted in 1684 to Van der Stel, who was the next governor to Van Riebeeck. He built the house and began to cultivate the vines from which the well-known wine Constantia was made. Its last owners were the Cloetes who sold it in 1885 with 280 acres of land to the government for the small sum of £5 500. Since that time the state could have done well on their bargain if, as I was informed by the manager, they refused an offer for it of £28 000. Here there are 103 acres under vines and 56 under fruit trees. The house with its large cool rooms all adorned with ancient and appropriate furniture is really beautiful.

At luncheon which was given in a tent I sat next to, and had an interesting conversation with, Mrs. Botha, who expressed herself as very pleased that I agreed with her husband, the Prime Minister [Louis Botha], as to the uselessness of attempting to emigrate poor white folk to South Africa when already there were enough of them. Such people, unskilled and resourceless, she said, would come right up against the competition of the native, and their exclusion, which in some quarters was set down to race feeling, was really in their own interests. The only openings were for farmers with some capital, a scarce class. We discussed the outlook of the white inhabitants of South Africa in the future and both agreed that it seemed very doubtful - chiefly because of this native question. The native could no longer be suppressed, or even oppressed: he must follow his destiny and often he was an able and a competent person. In practice South Africa must face the fact that all it has to rely on, so far as the whites are concerned, is its present population and their progeny. But here came the trouble - the restriction of population (i.e. race suicide) is creeping in, even among the Boers, except quite in the backveld districts where it would reach ere long. One no longer saw the large families of 30 years ago: they grew smaller and smaller. Moreover those who were growing up, for some subtle reason, in enterprise, in virility and femininity in their widest sense, were not the men and women of the stamp of our generation. She had often said as much to her own children. What was to be the end of it? She could not tell but the future was dark and dubious. Perhaps at last South Africa would be the heritage of the black races with an admixture of white blood. The danger of war between whites and Bantu had gone by, but there were other dangers. Thus what I saw on the previous day, white man and black, working side by side was one of them: it meant the approach of equality. Once that was established how could the dwindling white people hold their own against an increasing race, already four or five times as numerous?

She said it was hard work for a man like her husband to be Prime Minister of the Union in these days and hard for his wife also. It was both exhausting and difficult to deal with politics continually and keep his hands quite clean. We both agreed that time and experience were wonderful softeners of strong views. Thus today I should not write another Jess and she would not think about the English as she had thought even a dozen years ago. She told me that although it seemed a strange thing for her to say, the deportation of the captured Boers had been a very good thing for the people. The sight of other lands had opened their minds and made them more progressive; also they had learnt what the British Empire meant. Such is a summary of this enlightening talk made from notes taken that evening, and I think one that is accurate, although compressed. Mrs. Botha struck me as an able woman in a quiet way and I liked her very much.’

10 March 1914
‘Woke up lo find that we were running over bush-clad sourveld with a few ostriches wandering round lonely Boer steadings. While I was dressing the iron lid of the washbasin fell on and crushed the top plate of the false teeth which were recently fitted with so much discomfort. A most annoying incident. Luckily I have the old temporary set with me which the dentist wanted to destroy.

At lunch time we came to a range of mountains called Outniqiua, or some such name, that tower above a little township of about 2 000 inhabitants, called George, which is largely inhabited by retired persons in search of quiet. The situation is fine on a flat plain dominated by tall grassy peaks down which run waterfalls that look like lines of wandering silver. At the beginning of the pass we went through government plantations of gums [eucalypts] of about 10 years of age which are doing splendidly. There are several of these here. Next we passed through some native bush in the kloofs, then came broom, heather and bracken, clothing the broad hill shoulders. From the crest of the pass the view was grand. The flat plain below diversified with plantations surrounding the scattered town of George and in the distance the great sea. All this district might be afforested, the hills with pines and the plains with gums. As the land seems to be worth no more than 10s. an acre it would be an excellent purpose to which to put it. About 4 o’clock we entered the Oudtshoorn valley, a hot and fertile place surrounded by hills, and everywhere saw ostriches feeding on lucerne in their wired camps.

On arrival we were met by the mayor and notables and taken off to see the farm of Mr. John le Roux where, after 34 years or so. I renewed my acquaintance with that ungainly but profitable fowl, the ostrich. By the way, at the station a gentleman whose name I think was Rex came up and asked me if I remembered him - as I did not he produced from his pocket an official order of the Pretoria High Court, written and signed by myself in 1878, appointing him a sworn interpreter. I wonder if he always carries it about with him. I was glad to see that the order was properly drawn and written in a better hand than I can boast nowadays. The signature, however, is identical with that I use at present.’

A life of Joy and lions

‘Went along the river bank with Joy and called a croc. She radiated sex and I only just managed to keep a hold on myself.’ This is from the diary of the British wildlife conservationist George Adamson - born 110 years ago today - who would soon marry the said Joy. Together, in Kenya, they would rear an orphan lion cub called Elsa, and reintroduce her to the wild - something not done before. Joy penned a book about this experience, called Born Free, partly based on George’s diaries, which became a worldwide hit, and made them both famous.

Adams was born at Etawah, in British India as it was then, on 3 February 1906, but educated at boarding school in England. Aged 18, he went to Kenya, to work on his father’s coffee plantation, but this did not suit him, and he tried various other occupations, gold prospector, goat trader, safari hunter, before joining Kenya’s game department in 1938, where he became the senior game warden of the Northern Frontier District. In 1944, he married Joy, after she had divorced from her second husband, Peter Bally. She had several miscarriages, but the couple never had any children.

Towards the end of the 1940s, Joy began painting the natives of Kenya. During several years of travel, and visiting more than 50 tribes, she produced 700 pictures many now held by Nairobi National Museum. In early 1956, George was sent to track down a man-eating lion that had been terrorising villages. His party startled a lioness in the deep bush, and he was forced to shoot her. He brought her three lion cubs back home with him, two of which were later sent to a zoo. However, he and Joy kept the third one - naming her Elsa.

Elsa remained with the Adamsons for three years before they decided to re-integrate her into the wild, something that had never been attempted before. She survived only a couple of years, dying from tick fever in 1961. However, by then, George had retired as game warden, preferring to focus on working with lions (still in the Meru National Park), and Joy had founded the Elsa Conservation Trust. They were also famous. A year earlier, a young David Attenborough from the BBC had interviewed them, and the book, Born Free, had been published. Born Free, written by Joy partly from diaries kept by George, was a publishing phenomenon, selling millions around the world (not least to friends of my parents, Bill and Sean, who bought it in May 1960 to give to me as a present for my eighth birthday! I still have it.) Two sequels followed, and a very successful film, starring Bill Travers and Virginia McKenna (husband and wife in real life).

In 1968, one of George’s lions mauled the son of a warden, and George was obliged to leave the Park. The only place where the government would allow him to continue his wildlife rehabilitation programme was in Kora, an isolated and almost uninhabited region of desert 400 km north of Nairobi. There he rented 1,300 sq km and set up operations with his younger brother Terence  and native assistants. Joy had no wish to move to Kora, which only added to long-standing tensions between her and George, and which led to their separation. Joy travelled the world promoting wildlife conservation, showing films and setting up Elsa clubs, but was murdered by an irate employee in 1980. The same year, Terence Adamson was mauled by a lion, and the Kenyan government stopped any further cubs entering George’s rehabilitation programme.

In 1984, Travers and McKenna set up the Born Free Foundation; and in 1986 George published his autobiography My Pride and Joy. Two years later, the Kenyan government reinstated his programme, with three orphan cubs to rehabilitate into the wild. But, in 1989, George and two of his assistants, in Kora, went to the aid of some tourists and were murdered by Somali poachers. Further information about George is available at Wikipedia, PBS, Father of Lions, VayuLila.com, and Destination Magazine.

As Joy acknowledged in her books - Born Free, Living Free and Forever Free - her husband’s records were the source of much of the detail. As far as I know, George’s diaries have never been published in their own right, however, Adrian House used them extensively in his biography: The Great Safari - The Lives of George and Joy Adamson (Harvill, 1993).

In his introduction, House says: ‘The written sources on which this book is based are primarily those left by George and Joy themselves. The most remarkable of these are George’s diaries, kept night after night for more than sixty years [. . .]

When I first read the most intimate passages in the diaries and letters I felt uneasy about using them. However, I then realized George and Joy had deliberately preserved them in the full knowledge that their activities aroused curiosity throughout the world and that they might die at any moment. I have therefore quoted them because they throw critical light on a number of mysteries. [. . .]

It has often been necessary to abridge passages from letters, diaries, reports and books, but to avoid distraction I have not indicated omissions with the customary eclipses.’

Here are several extracts from George’s diaries as reproduced by House in his biography.

1 January 1943
‘While we were walking along Bally was some way behind, Joy suddenly caught me by the hand and said she loved me. I was flabbergasted and felt very embarrassed.’

2 January 1943
‘Went along the river bank with Joy and called a croc. She radiated sex and I only just managed to keep a hold on myself.’

6 January 1943
‘In the evening we had drinks, while I went into the bush Joy filled up my glass with neat brandy. I pretended not to notice and drank it down. When we were going to bed our eyes met. If Bally had not been there we would have slept together.’

12 January 1943
‘Joy asked me whether, if we got married, she would spoil my life - I said she could make it and I believe she could.’

13 January 1943
‘Yesterday at our midday halt, Joy and myself were sitting on the ground next each other skinning a Vulturine guinea fowl. Presently we touched and it was like an electric current through me. It would be a very dirty trick to take advantage of the situation.’

14 January 1943
‘Went out for walk with Joy and she told me that Bally is impotent, pretty tragic. During the night I heard Joy crying. I’d like to help her - Bally seems a very decent fellow, but at the same time he is a bit of an “old woman” and I can quite understand a woman like Joy wanting a man with red blood in his veins.’

15 January 1943
‘The Ballys and Hales started back for Garissa by lorry. Sorry the Bs have gone, they were good company on the safari. She is an exceptionally good walker and does not mind hardship and would make a wonderful companion for a man like myself. As they drove off her eyes literally looked into my soul.’

18 March 1943
‘She wants to get a divorce and to marry me; she has discussed it with Peter and he wants it. I do not know whether I want to marry her; I do not want to behave like a cad, least of all hurt her. I am single, past my youth and I want to have a wife some day - why not risk it? It will be something positive if I make her happy.

Well I “burnt my boats” and now I am in honour bound to marry her. I think it will not be difficult to fall in love with her.’

24 April 1943
‘I do love Joy, in fact I am frantically in love with her. This has been the most wonderful experience of my life. Joy means everything in the world to me and I now long for the time when we are married.’

26 April 1943
‘I realised today that Joy has doubts about our marriage being a success. My God - is she another Juliette? No, it can’t be, she is in a very nervous state over the divorce and it is understandable.’

29 April 1943
‘She still loves Peter and I am terribly afraid that she may go back to him before the divorce is through.’

24 June 1943
‘In the course of the afternoon Joy turned up in a hired lorry. Very upset and wanted to dash off to Nairobi, appearing at the divorce case in court and telling the judge that the whole thing was “collusion” with the idea of getting the proceedings stopped and saving me! She said she had decided she did not want to marry me or anyone again.’

15 February 1957
‘Joy went up the beach with Elsa. About 6.30 pm. I was feeling definitely queer in the head. I imagined Elsa attacking Joy. Suddenly a terrible fear gripped me that I was going mad. I had the sense to call Herbert who was lying on his bed. I told him that I might do anything - anything! Asked him to stay with me and not leave me for a moment - told him to remove all guns, knives, everything with which I could injure myself or another.

I knew I was sinking into darkness, I went through the most terrifying mental anguish, I cried for help, I wanted something to clutch on to like a drowning man. Herbert held my hands which were ice cold and he urged me not to give in. I felt myself going colder and colder - I started to cry out for Joy because I knew that I was going into the limbo of insanity or death. At length I heard Joy come up from the beach. It was like the sound of a faint voice at the end of a mile-long corridor. I urged her to hurry because there was so little time left. She came and at once I felt a great relief as if a great burden had been suddenly lifted from my head.

All the time the cold kept creeping relentlessly up and up, up from my feet, up to my knees, and it grew ever faster and faster until, like the bursting of a dam, it flooded over me and I knew I was dying.

The last feeling I can remember was of immeasurable peace.’

4 July 1958
‘Joy had the foolish idea of trying to drag Elsa by the chain into the car! When it didn’t work, Joy behaved like a lunatic. I went off to shoot meat, got a kongoni. Finally, after much abuse and ill temper from Joy, Elsa came along and without demur jumped into the car.’

The bishop in Buganda

James Hannington, Bishop of Eastern Equatorial Africa, was shot dead 130 years ago today, with his own rifle, executed - along with 50 or so expedition porters - by the order of the king of Buganda. Remarkably, one of the native Bugandans held on to Hannington’s diary - with entries right up to the day of his murder - and this found its way back to Britain, to be published just a year later, helping establish Hannington as a missionary hero.

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

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

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

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

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

23 June 1883
‘Rather tired with the week.’

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Much comforted bv Psalm xxviii.’

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

The Diary Junction

Lander in West Africa

Richard Lander, a low born lad from Cornwall who started his working life at 13 as a servant but progressed to lead expeditions in West Africa, was born 210 years ago today. He became a darling of the newly-established Royal Geographic Society for showing, in 1830, that the Niger River flowed into the Atlantic; but on a subsequent expedition he died, not yet 30 years old. Both he and his better educated brother, who accompanied him on the 1830 journey, kept travel diaries. These were lost in a raid by pirates, and the brothers re-wrote a joint diary from memory, which was published on their return to Britain. Subsequently, two of the journal books were found, and archived, and only recently have been transcribed and used to analyse differences between the originals and the published version.

Lander was born on 8 February 1804, in Truro, Cornwall, the son of an innkeeper. Aged but 13, he accompanied a merchant to the West Indies; and on returning home he worked as a servant for wealthy families, travelling to Europe, and, in 1823, to Cape Colony. Subsequently, he went to work for the Scottish explorer Hugh Clapperton, accompanying him on an expedition to West Africa. After crossing the Niger they went as far as Sokoto (northwest Nigeria) where Clapperton died in 1827. Despite being ill himself, Lander made his way back to the coast, and managed to return to Britain with Clapperton’s papers in April 1828. Later that year he married Anne Hughes, daughter of a London merchant. They had a daughter, and a son who died in infancy.

Lander returned to West Africa in 1830, accompanied by his brother John, to explore the River Niger upstream, the River Benue and the Niger Delta, returning - after many adventures - to Britain in 1831. The expedition settled a disputed question over the course and outlet of the Niger (that it flowed into the Atlantic), and Lander was awarded the first gold medal by the just-established Royal Geographical Society. In 1832, he led a new expedition to Africa organised by Liverpudlian merchants, with the intention of founding a trading settlement. However, the expedition ran into difficulties, many of the crew died from fever, and Lander himself was wounded during an attack by tribesmen. He managed to return to the coast but died in February 1834, two days before his 30th birthday. Further biographical information is available from the Richard Lander Society website, or Wikipedia.

Among Clapperton’s papers that Lander brought back to Britain in 1828 was his journal, which Lander helped edit for a publication by John Murray, in 1829, which also included a journal Lander had written: Journal of a Second Expedition into the Interior of Africa, from the Bight of Benin to Soccatoo by the late Commander Clapperton of the Royal Navy, to which is added, the Journal of Richard Lander from Kano to the sea-coast, partly by a more Eastern route. This is freely available to read online at Internet Archive. Here are the first few entries of Lander’s diary.

20 November 1826
‘The sultan sent a messenger for me this morning, and after waiting in a coozie an hour, I was introduced to him. He informed me of his having received a letter from my father (after the death of Dr. Morrison I always passed for my master’s son), desiring him to send me to Soccatoo, with the whole of the property intrusted to my care. I had myself received a letter from my master only two days previously, in which he expressed no such intention; but, on the contrary, said he should be with me shortly. In that letter he complained of a violent pain in his side, to which he had been for some time subject; and I fancied, by his not writing me to-day, he had died; and that, from motives of delicacy, the king had withheld the news from me.’

22 November 1826
‘The sultan again sent for me, and said he would make my father a present of five pack bullocks to convey the goods to Soccatoo, and send four men to take charge of them on the road; at the same time wished me to leave on the 25th.’

24 November 1826
‘Paid my respects to the sultan in the morning; remained with him upwards of an hour; and on leaving, he said in a feeling tone, shaking hands with me at the same time, “Good bye, little Christian; God take you safe to Soccatoo.” He sent a letter by me to my master, and desired me to give his compliments to the king of the Mussulmans (sultan Bello, who was invariably designated by that appellation). On returning to my house, found Hadji Hat Sallah waiting for me. He told me it was necessary I should take the whole of my master’s money, which consisted of 212,000 cowries, to him. As this could not be done conveniently without a camel, I purchased one for 62,000 cowries.’

25 November 1826
‘At half-past seven in the morning, left my house, accompanied by old Pascoe, a messenger from sultan Bello, and one from the king of Kano. Could not, however, get without the gates of the city till ten, the bullocks being very restive, and throwing off their burdens repeatedly. At one o’clock halted at Zungugwa: the camel, in endeavouring to enter the gate, unfortunately broke two boxes in which was stationery, &c. This accident detained us an hour outside the walls, and the men were ultimately obliged to carry the goods on their heads to the residence of the chief, which was a quarter of a mile’s distance. I waited on him, and gave him a pair of scissors, fifty needles, and a small paper of cloves, which pleased him highly. The chief showed me into one of his best huts, where, he told me, I might remain till I thought proper to leave the place; and shortly afterwards sent me butter, sour milk, a couple of fine fowls, and tuah and corn.’

A few years later, in 1832, John Murray publish the Landers’ journal (written jointly by Richard and John) of the Niger expedition. Elizabeth Baigent, in her biography of Richard Lander for the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (login required) says this: ‘John Murray, the publisher, gave them £1,000 for their journals. Lacking formal education, the brothers were not thought capable of editing the journals themselves, and they were instead (badly) edited by A. B. Becher and published as Journal of an Expedition to … the Niger (3 vols., 1832); a good later edition is that by Hallet (1965). The work was immediately popular and editions appeared in Dutch, French, German, Italian, and Swedish.’ All three volumes (and later two volume editions) are available at Internet Archive. The following extract is from near the beginning of volume 3.

21 October 1830
‘Though the venerable chief of Egga has to all outward appearances lived at least a hundred years, he is still active ; and, instead of the peevishness and discontent too often the accompaniment of lengthened days, possesses all the ease and gayety of youth. He professes the Mohammedan religion; and it is his custom to rise every morning long before daybreak, and, having assembled all his priests round him, performs his devotions, such as they are, repeating his prayers in a loud, shrill tone, so that we can hear him in his pious employment; and as our hut is directly opposite to his, and but a few paces from it, he is determined to give us no rest as long as we remain with closed doors. As soon as these devotional exercises have been gone through, several of his companions, with a disposition as thoughtless as childish, and as happy as his own, get together in his hut, and, squatting on the ground with the old chief, they form a circle, and beguile the time by smoking and conversing till long after sunset, and separate only for a few minutes at a time in the course of the day for the purpose of taking their meals. This company of gray-beards, for they are all old, laugh so heartily at the sprightliness of their own wit, that it is an invariable practice, when any one passes by, to stop and listen outside; and they join their noisy merriment with so much good-will that we hear nothing from the hut in which the aged group are revelling during the day but loud peals of laughter and shouts of applause. Much of this gayety, however, must be affected, in order to gratify the ruling passion of the old chief for joke and frolic. Examples of this nature are uncommonly rare. Professors of Mohammedanism affect, generally speaking, the solemnity of the owl; and though they understand no more of their faith than of the doctrines of Christianity, they regard all natives of a different persuasion with haughtiness and disdain.

The old chief longed to-day to give us a specimen of his activity and the vigour which he yet possessed; and for this purpose, when the sun was going down, his singers, dancers, and musicians assembled round our hut with a great concourse of people, who could not boast a proficiency in those refined attainments, but who came to witness the accomplishments of their aged leader. The old man advanced proudly into the ring, with a firm step and a smiling countenance, and casting upon us a glance full of meaning, as if he would have said, “Now, white men, look at me, and you will be filled with admiration and wonder” [. . .] and shaking his hoary locks, capered over the ground to the manifest delight of the bystanders, whose applauses, though confined, as they always are, to laughter, yet tickled the old man’s fancy to that degree, that he was unable to keep up his dance any longer without the aid of a crutch. With its assistance he hobbled on a little while, but his strength failed him, and he was constrained for the time to give over, and he sat himself down at our side on the threshold of the hut. He would not acknowledge his weakness to us for the world, but endeavoured to pant silently, and suppress loud breathings that we might not hear him. How ridiculous yet how natural is this vanity! He made other unavailing attempts to dance, and also made an attempt to sing, but nature would not second his efforts, and his weak piping voice was scarcely audible. The singers, dancers, and musicians continued their noisy mirth till we were weary of looking at and listening to them, and as bedtime was drawing near, we desired them to depart, to the infinite regret of the frivolous but merry old chief.

It is our intention to continue our journey tomorrow, though the elders of the town have been remonstrating with us that it will be highly dangerous to go by ourselves, and endeavouring to persuade us with many words to alter this arrangement for our own sakes. They have promised to procure us a convoy of traders, if we would consent to wait three days longer, which would leave Egga at the end of that time to attend a famous market, called Bocqua. But the attentions of our venerable friend already begin to slacken, being too intently engaged in his favourite pursuits to think much of us or of our wants, more especially since he has received his present; and we cannot easily maintain a quiet, equable temper, or keep up a flow of spirits for any length of time together, when we can get little or nothing to eat. We are therefore determined to go tomorrow at all risks, though we shall have no guide to accompany us; we have confidence in ourselves, and the mountains of the natives generally prove to be no bigger than mole-hills. The chief has been soliciting a charm of us, to prevent the Falatahs from ever again invading his territory. The old man’s allegiance to the King of Nouffie appears to us to be merely nominal. When we sent word to the chief that we intended going to-morrow morning, he begged us to remain at Egga a few days longer, and declared the banks of the river to be inhabited by people who were little better than savages, and plundered every one that came near them. He assured us that they were governed by no king and obeyed no laws, and that each town was at war with the others. I asked him if he would send a messenger with us, but he refused, saying, that the Falatah power and his own extended no farther down the river; that Egga is the last town of Nouffie, and that none of his people traded below it. “If that is the case,” I said, “it will be as safe for us to go to-morrow as any other day;” and with this determination I left him.

I then proceeded to give directions for our people to prepare themselves for starting, when, to my astonishment, Pascoe and the mulatto so often alluded to were the only two who agreed to go; the rest of them refused to a man. I then found out that the people of the town had been telling them stories about the danger of the river, and that they would all certainly either be murdered or taken and sold as slaves. Nor could all I said to them change their determination. I talked to them half an hour, telling them they were cowards, and that my brother’s life and mine were as good as theirs; till at length, tired of them, and seeing that I made no impression on them, I told them to go away from our sight, and that we could do without them. But now they demanded their wages, or a book to enable them to receive them at Cape Coast Castle, to which they said they would return by the way they had come here. This I refused instantly to comply with, and added, that if they chose to leave us here, they should not receive a farthing; but if they would go on with us down the river, they should be paid. They were indignant at this, and went directly to the chief to lay their case before him, and to induce him to detain us. The old man, however, would not listen to them, but sent them about their business; and it is not unlikely, rather than lose all their wages, that they will proceed with us.

My brother and I determined to satisfy the curiosity of the people to-day, and we accordingly walked about outside our hut for two hours. The natives were much pleased at this, and much order and regularity were preserved by two old Mallams, to whom the duty had been assigned of removing those away who had seen us when any fresh ones arrived. It was the old chief’s particular wish that all his people should see us, and they all conducted themselves in a very becoming manner. We had presented the chief with a pair of silver bracelets on our arrival, on which the arms of our gracious sovereign were engraved, and he wore them to-day with evident satisfaction. These were no less objects of curiosity to the people than they had been to the king, and hundreds of them came to look at them on his wrists, overjoyed at seeing their chief so smart. They even came and thanked us for our kindness to the old man.

The people of this town appear all very neatly dressed; the population is one-half of the Mohammedan religion, and the other the original pagan. The town is about four miles in length and two in breadth: the morass which surrounds it is full of crocodiles. The streets are very narrow, and, like most places where there are large markets, are exceedingly filthy. The reason for building their houses so close together is, that the Falatahs may not be able to ride through them so easily and destroy the people; it is said that they have been expecting an attack from these people a long time. The Portuguese cloth which we observed here on our arrival is brought up the river from a place called Cuttumcurrafee, which has a celebrated market for Nouffie cloths, trona, slaves, Nouffie knives, bridles, stirrups, brass ornaments, stained leather, and other things. The cloth is of a very indifferent manufacture. The large canoes lying here bring all the above articles from the Rabba market.’

Lost journals (Editorial note: the notes and quotes for the following paragraphs were all gathered in February 2014. However, on being checked in February 2024, none of the links were found to work, and the original sources, at the Harriet Tubman Institute, no longer seem to be available. Nevertheless, I have left the article as written, but without the source links.)

It appears, however, that much of the three volumes published by John Murray was written after the fact: the brothers, Richard and John, had lost their papers when their canoes were attacked by pirates and so they had jointly reproduced a single journal from memory. Two years after publication of the Landers’ journal, two of the lost diary books reappeared. These were, apparently, perused by Becher, who decided they did not materially add to the published account, and were set aside. One of these is today in the John Murray Archive, National Library of Scotland, and the other is in the Wellcome Library, London.

Photographs of the original (and quite severely damaged) journals along with transcriptions can be found on the website of The Harriet Tubman Institute for Research on the Global Migrations of African Peoples, at York University, Toronto, thanks to Jamie Bruce Lockhart, an ex-British diplomat in West Africa, and a keen student of Clapperton’s travels. Here is Lockhart’s transcription of Richard Lander’s original journal book for the same day as above (and see also Lockhart’s transcription of John Lander’s original journal book which provides a much fuller account):

21 October 1830
‘We have [h]ad nothing to day but dancing and singing enough to drive one mad ~ beating away on 10 old drums with all their might ~ the King first danced and then [h]is sons ~ but we did not like it a tall [sic] ~ it whas the worse dancing I we ever sow ~ the[y] threw themselves about like mad fellows ~ the old chief say he shall die happy now he [h]as seen a wite man ~ we have [h]ad all the princable ladys of the Town to see us [to]day most of them bringing some little thing with them as a present ~ this Town is the end of the Naffe country ~ the river seen coming from the N the day we arrived here is the Cudonia crossed by me on the former mission near Cutup.’

In addition to these files detailing the content of the Landers’ ‘lost’ journals, Lockhart has also written a very interesting - to students of historical diaries - analysis which can be read freely on The Harriet Tubman Institute website.

Lockhart concludes: ‘Perhaps the main question for us today is whether or not the end product [i.e. the published three volumes] suffers from having been constructed with a fair degree of hindsight. And other questions naturally arise. Readers will make up their own mind, but the following points seem relevant
- there is no new information of substance in the brothers’ primary journals. They form the preliminary record.
- the raw journals themselves are remarkably fluent and innocent of alterations. Deletions and insertions can be comfortably accounted for, although John Lander occasionally, no doubt by habit, sought to improve his word choice.
- the diaries give a rather different, and more lively, feel to the journey than the finished product, and would appear to reflect better than the latter what the brothers thought and felt at the time - unencumbered by the tortuous prose of the period. Small personal details emerge – such as worry over the health of the other, the minor irritations and discomforts of the road, as well as the major frustrations of accidents and delays, uncomfortable enclosed huts – which are the real stuff of travel.
- it is very evident that the first product was worked up later. It is also clear, pace Becher, that one could not possibly have based a finished journal on Richard’s incomplete and staccato notes.
- the published journal was well constructed from the separate as well as joint recollections of both. The individual input of each brother was original, and not cross compared at the time - two views complementing each other with only occasional muddle (for example in the incident of the kite).
- it is also clear when there is reliance on one account only, i.e. when one brother was absent or ill. While the text of Richard’s journal is not legible throughout, dates can be made out and give us an outline of days and periods when Richard, for whatever reason, made no entries at all. If required, cross reference of these dates to the published text would shed more light on the lack of consistency in the Landers’ and Becher’s attributions of source.
- the additional and often gratuitous comments (by John, or possibly Becher), and specially quotations, which abound are much to be regretted and detract from the interest and value of the journal.’

On the look out for Boers

Arthur Hamilton Baynes, a Church of England priest who served as Bishop of Natal in South Africa during the second Anglo-Boer War, died 70 years ago today. He is barely remembered, though he did leave behind two books, one of which was a diary documenting his war days in Natal.

There is very little readily-available biographical information about Baynes. He was born in Lewisham, Kent, in 1854, and was ordained in 1882. He served as vicar of St James Church, Nottingham, between 1884 and 1888, and than was appointed domestic chaplain to the Archbishop of Canterbury (Edward Benson) for four years, before becoming of vicar of Christ Church, Greenwich, for two years.

Most significantly, from 1893 to 1901, i.e. partly during the second Anglo-Boer War, Baynes was Bishop of Natal, a diocese which covered the western part of the South African province of KwaZulu-Natal, west and south of the Tugela and Buffalo rivers. During his time there, he helped reconcile opposing Anglican groups, and left behind a diocese of eighteen parishes, six Zulu missions, two Indian missions, three schools and one mission hospital.

On his return to England in 1910, Baynes went back to Nottingham and was vicar of St Mary’s Church until 1913. He was canon of Southwell Minster, and then of Birmingham Cathedral where subsequently he was made provost (1931-1937). He died on 30 June 1942. There is very little additional information online about Baynes, though two of his books have survived: South Africa, published in 1908 by A. R. Mowbray & Co. which Baynes himself called ‘a slight sketch of South African Church expansion’; and his South African diary.

This latter was published in 1900 by George Bell and Sons as My diocese during the war, extracts from the diary of the Right Rev. Arthur Hamilton Baynes, D.D. Bishop of Natal. This is freely available at Internet Archive and at Project Canterbury (documenting Anglican history online). The book was prepared for publication by Baynes’ sister, Helen, who notes at the beginning: ‘The Diary does not pretend to any literary merit; it is simply a hastily written record, for home reading, of days of intense interest and of stirring events.’

In his own preface to the diary, Baynes says this: ‘This diary is written in odd moments, in the early morning or late at night after a tiring day; and I take no special pains as to its form, but write down a bare record of facts. Comments, reflections, emotions of a higher or deeper kind, if committed to writing at all, are reserved for the more personal medium of letters. Rough in form, however, as my diary is, and bare and unedifying in matter, the Publishers have thought that it may contain enough of general interest during these last interesting months to be worth printing, and in response to their request my sister has undertaken the selection of extracts.

The roughest sketch which gives the local colouring sometimes conveys a truer impression than the most accurate photograph, and possibly this diary, written on the spot, may have this small merit. My own experience has been that there are some things one only gets a proper view of on the spot. For instance, before I came to South Africa I had a settled impression that Cape Town was at the extreme southern point of the Continent, and that Table Mountain looked out over it straight towards the South Pole. It was only when I got there that I found Table Mountain facing almost due north, staring at me as I approached from England. It is just possible that my diary may serve to correct a few such a priori and erroneous impressions.

But there is one respect in which even we who lived on the spot were quite at fault. Some of us, indeed, were at fault on two points. We never believed, till just before the event, that there would be war, and we never dreamed that if there were it would be anything very big.’

And here are three extracts from the diary during the first few months of the war.

15 October 1899
‘As no one had asked me to preach to-day, I thought I might have a day off, especially as I know there are plenty of clergy about from the Transvaal and Newcastle. However, when I went to the early service at the Garrison Church, Twemlow asked me if I would preach to the men at 11, as he was asked to preach to the Imperial Light Horse at a special parade at St Saviour’s at 9.30. I felt rather guilty in doing nothing, so I said “Yes,” though it was rather short notice. The Rifles were there - the 2nd Battalion, which has just come out. I preached to them from the words in the second lesson, “With singleness of heart, fearing the Lord.” Things are very quiet to-day. I suppose the Boers would not choose Sunday for operations unless they were obliged. After luncheon I went in for a little chat with the Governor.

We live in a state of feverish excitement, waiting for each scrap of news and surrounded by startling rumours which turn out as a rule to be pure inventions. We rush for the morning paper and hail everyone we meet for news. There are rumours to-day of various kinds, but all untrue as it turns out. We cannot tell, and probably shall not know for some days, what is happening on the western border, about Mafeking and Kimberley. There are rumours of fighting, and we know that they are more or less isolated.’

14 January 1900
‘Holy Communion at 5.45, in our little mess-tent. Only a few officers. Then after a cup of tea, church parade at 7. As we are two chaplains, we agreed to take two battalions each, so that all could hear. I had the 60th Rifles and the Scottish Rifles, and the Navals, and a few odds and ends; and Hill had the Rifle Brigade and the Durham Light Infantry. General Buller and some of his staff and General Lyttelton came to my service, and it was a charming spot with a little crescent of rocky hill, so that the men were in tiers above me, and during the sermon they could sit on the rocks. I preached from the second lesson, “Follow me, and let the dead bury their dead,” and showed them that a chaplain was not simply to console the dying and to bury the dead. After service I took my books and went up the hill. The two big naval guns have been brought up here from Chieveley (the Boers don’t know it yet, but they soon will). It is odd that the most useful guns were only improvised on the spur of the moment. Captain Scott, of the “Terrible,” designed and made the huge carriages to move these ship-guns on, and now they can take them with spans of oxen quite long journeys and up steep hills. They are enormous things, with great long muzzles.

I asked the naval sentry to let me look through their big telescope. I could see the Boers at 8,000 yards, quite plainly - could see which had blue shirt sleeves and which had white - as they worked in the trenches. But only a few were working to-day; a fair number were sitting on the top of Spion Kop, looking at us. But the two guns are just enough below the ridge to be out of sight. Then I went over the ridge and down into the bush, on the other side, where there was more shade. I got a very comfortable seat under a tree. If the Boers had taken a shot at our naval guns I should have been too near to be pleasant; but this was not likely, especially on a Sunday. While I sat and read a partridge came out of the long grass to within three yards of my foot. Back to write and read, and then lunch and some English papers. But nothing for me. I have not had a letter or a paper since I left Maritzburg, last Friday week. It is awful to think what I may be neglecting. At 6 we had a voluntary service as last week. Hill read, and I preached from the first lesson, “I dwell with him that is of a humble and contrite heart” (“Lest we forget”).’

15 January 1900
‘English letters for next Saturday’s mail had to be despatched this morning! You would think we were in the remote parts of the Transvaal, instead of being little more than twenty-five miles from the railway at Frere. But I suppose with the roads blocked by transport, and the stoppages at the different camps en route, they have to take time by the forelock.

Colonel Byng of the South African Light Infantry went out with two guns of the artillery, with a view to catching Boers on the road between Colenso and this; we heard later on that though he did not succeed in intercepting wagons, etc., he arrived in the nick of time to extricate a patrol of Thorneycroft’s Mounted Infantry from a perilous position. . .

Meanwhile General Lyttelton and his staff made an expedition to the two hills called Zwartzkop, and I went with them. We started about 11, with two guides. We had to ride round the top of the ridge before descending into the intervening valley, then crossed the plain and began the ascent of the opposite hill. It is lovely country. The hills are covered with thick brush, of semi-tropical character, to be found on our own river valleys as distinguished from the higher hillsides.

About halfway up we left our horses with the orderlies, and climbed the rest, which was steep, on foot. Then we took elaborate surveys of the position as it appeared from there. First to the east, towards the part of the river where Byng was on the look out for the Boers. Of course we could not see him, as he would keep under cover, and might be a good way off. At that part the hills come nearer to the river, and are steep, so that the road is forced nearer to the bank. There is a drift there, with a road leading to it; it is just possible that we might make an attempt there. Then we looked out to the north, and searched the hills for Boer intrenchments with glasses. There is less need of them there, however, for on the right the hills are steep and rocky. Then we looked towards the hills to the north-west, where the road from Potgieter’s Drift crosses the hills, to see if the guns on the hills commanded the back of some small kopjes just across the river; seeing them in profile here, we could judge better than from our camp. A spice of excitement was added here, as we saw just below us, at the foot of the hill, on our side of the river, a lot of cattle herded together, with some ponies, and our guides said that these must be Boers; and if they were, they might have a try to cut off our return to camp. However, we saw nothing of them when we descended the hill. We called at the Kaffir kraal at the foot and bought some chickens, and then returned by another road. Colonel Byng was to have come to dinner, but had not returned from his expedition.’

Livingstone’s invisible writing

A remarkable diary left behind by the famous British explorer and missionary David Livingstone has just been revealed, literally, for the first time - and published on the internet - thanks to a trans-Antlantic team of scholars and scientists. The so-called 1871 Field Diary was written in the run-up to Livingstone’s meeting with the journalist Henry Morton Stanley, and covers a horrific massacre by Arab slave traders.

David Livingstone was born in Blantyre, Scotland, in 1813. He went to work at the local mill aged only 10, which also provided some schooling. In 1836, he began studying medicine and theology in Glasgow, and then decided to become a missionary doctor. In 1840-1841, he was posted to the edge of the Kalahari Desert in southern Africa. In 1844, he married Mary Moffat, daughter of another missionary; they had six children, one dying in infancy.

During this first 16 year unbroken period in Africa, Livingstone undertook several expeditions north and into the continent’s interior in search of converts. In so doing, he added hugely to Western knowledge of central and southern Africa. On one of his expeditions, starting in 1853 and lasting three years, he discovered some spectacular waterfalls, which he named Victoria Falls. On arriving at the mouth of the Zambezi in 1856, he became the first European to cross the southern width of Africa.

Livingstone returned to Britain that same year, something of a national hero; and subsequently went on speaking tours. He also published his best-selling Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa, before heading out to Africa again (arriving in 1858). This time he stayed for five years working on official explorations of eastern and central Africa for the British government. In 1864, though, he was ordered home by the government, dissatisfied with his work. His wife had died some two years earlier.

Back in Britain, Livingstone spoke out against the slave trade, and secured private support for another expedition to central Africa, this time searching for the Nile’s source. The expedition began in 1866 and went on for years; indeed, when nothing was heard of Livingstone for many months, the journalist and explorer, Stanley, set out to find him. And find him, he did, in November 1871, greeting him with the now-famous phrase: ‘Dr Livingstone I presume?’

Livingstone continued on his exploration but increasingly suffered ill health; and he died in May 1873. His body was shipped to England and buried in Westminster Abbey. There is plenty of information about Livingstone on the internet, at Wikipedia, Livingstone Online, Believer’s Web, and Wholesome Words which has a long list of biographies.

Livingstone was a meticulous diarist, recording his journeys in pocket books, and then writing up the journals in larger volumes. All of these survived (brought back with his body in fact) and were edited by Horace Waller and published in two volumes by John Murray in 1874 as The Last Journals of David Livingstone in Central Africa from 1865 to his Death. These books are freely available at Internet Archive.

However, for some months in 1871, Livingstone ran so short of writing supplies that he resorted to using improvised composition materials to keep up his diary habit. This so-named 1871 Field Diary was thus composed on a series of odd scraps of paper, some of which already contained pre-printed text, such as an old copy of The Standard newspaper, and was penned using an ink made from the seed of a local berry. This manuscript, though carefully preserved by the National Trust for Scotland at its David Livingstone Centre in Blantyre, was unreadable: the paper had deteriorated badly and the ink had faded.

In 2009, a research team led by Dr Adrian S Wisnicki, assistant professor at Indiana University of Pennsylvania and honorary research fellow at Birkbeck, University of London, began a spectral imaging project to recover the lost text. And, on 1 November 2011, announced it had succeeded. The team says the story they found, in the hitherto illegible diary, ‘offers a unique insight into Livingstone’s mind during the greatest crisis of his last expedition.’ Of particular importance, it adds, in relation to what was already known of Livingstone’s diary in 1871, is the original description of a massacre in which slave traders slaughtered hundreds of local people. Stanley’s report of this massacre to the world press, sourced at the time on what Livingstone told him, prompted the British government to close the East African slave trade.

The David Livingstone Spectral Imaging Project has now made the complete original text freely available on the internet, complete with everything you would want to know about the project, the manuscript, and more! The website is hosted by the University of California, and the project was funded by the British Academy and the US National Endowment for the Humanities.

The 1 November press release from the project team highlights one of the key aspects of its findings: ‘The massacre is one of the most important events in The Last Journals of David Livingstone (1874), edited after Livingstone’s death in 1873 by his friend Horace Waller. Until now this book was the main source for historians and biographers. However, critical and forensic analysis of the original 1871 text reveals a very different story from Waller’s heavily edited version. In particular it sheds light on a heart-stopping moment when Livingstone gazes with ‘wonder’ as three Arab slavers with guns enter the market in Nyangwe, where 1,500 people are gathered, most of them women: ‘50 yards off two guns were fired and a general flight took place - shot after shot followed on the terrified fugitives - great numbers died - It is awful - terrible, a dreadful world this,’ writes Livingstone in despair as he witnesses the massacre. ‘As I write, shot after shot falls on the fugitives on the other side [of the river] who are wailing loudly over those they know are already slain - Oh let thy kingdom come.’ ’

The Sheltering Sky

Today is the centenary of the birth of Paul Bowles, author of The Sheltering Sky, and lover of Morocco where he lived most of his life. He was not a natural diarist, far from it in fact, but towards the end of his life he was persuaded to keep a journal for a year or so by a publisher friend. At the time, Bowles made no pretence that his life or the diary was of the slightest interest - ‘Very little to write about’ he reports to his journal regularly - nevertheless he was a literary figure, and in demand, not least by the Italian film director, Bernardo Bertolucci, who was making a film of The Sheltering Sky.

Bowles was born in New York City on 30 December 1910. He began writing short stories and composing music as a child. Although he enrolled at the University of Virginia he did not stay, preferring to travel to Paris where he met Gertrude Stein. He returned to Virginia in 1930 but, before long, had opted to go back to Europe, first to Berlin to study music with Aaron Copland, and then to Paris again.

For a decade or so, from 1937, Bowles settled in New York where he became a well-known composer writing music for plays (such as South Pacific) and ballets (such as Yankee Clipper). He also wrote a large variety of travel books, worked as a music critic for the New York Herald Tribune, and prepared translations from French and Spanish. In 1938, he married Jane Auer, another writer, though their relationship was unconventional since they both pursued intimate friendships with members of their own sex.

In 1947, Bowles moved to live permanently in Tangier (Auer joined him in 1948) where he wrote his first novel, The Sheltering Sky. This proved to be a best-seller, and remains a classic today. Several other novels and short story collections followed, and, although he focused on writing, he did also continue some composing. In the 1950s, Bowles began translating Moroccan literature into English. In 1970, he founded the Tangier literary magazine Antaeus with Daniel Halpern (who was also forming the independent publishing company Ecco Press). Later Antaeus was based in New York, and it lasted until 1994.

After the death of his wife in Spain in 1973, Bowles spent the rest of his life in Tangier, something of a celebrity writer, regularly receiving visitors, and giving interviews. In 1990, he made a cameo appearance at the beginning and end of the movie made by Bernardo Bertolucci of The Sheltering Sky. He died in 1999. Wikipedia has a lot more biographical information as does ‘The Authorised Paul Bowles Web Site’ and various obituaries (The New York Times, The Guardian.)

Bowles was not a diarist, not at all, but in the late 1980s, Halpern, his friend and collaborator on Antaeus, persuaded him to keep a journal for a year or so. It was published by Ecco Press in 1991 as Days - Tangier Journal 1987-1989. Here is part of the preface by Bowles explaining why he decided to keep a diary.

‘Three years ago Daniel Halpern wrote me asking if I kept a diary. I replied that I did not and never had, not seeing any reason for engaging in such an activity. He wrote again, suggesting that I start one immediately, since he would like to include whatever resulted in an issue of Antaeus to be devoted to diaries, journals, and notebooks. I told him that I thought the result would be devoid of interest, since I would have nothing to report. All he wanted, he responded, was a record of daily life in today’s Tangier. I agreed to try and did what I could with the project, although I was not very faithful, often allowing two weeks or more to elapse without writing anything. What went on during the periods of silence I have no idea, but doubtless the unrecorded days were even more humdrum than the others. I suppose the point of publishing such a document is to demonstrate the way in which the hours of a day can as satisfactorily be filled with trivia as with important events.’

And here are three extracts from the slim book.

20 June 1988
‘Very little to write about. I’ve been receiving clippings in various languages, all of them announcing Bertolucci’s intention of filming The Sheltering Sky. But in the cinema world any statement can be construed as propaganda, so I still have no idea as to whether or not he’ll make the movie. People find it hard to believe that Helen Strauss included no time-limit clause in the contract when she sold the film rights back in the fifties. So if Bertolucci has acquired them, I don’t know from whom.’

24 June 1989
‘Last night Bertolucci sent a car for me, to take me to the Minzah for dinner. At the beginning of the meal he said: “At last, it’s happening.” “Yes. For two years I’ve been wondering whether it would,” I told him. Everyone connected with the making of the film was there, including the producer, whom I’d met a few years ago. . . A very noisy floor show was going on for the benefit of a huge group of shrieking tourists. Bertolucci brought up the subject of music . . . I suspect he’d like electronic material rather than symphonic. Much easier, much cheaper . . . Scarfiotti had mentioned that he’d like to use Agadez as the setting for the final city in the south. I hope this can be managed, and that they don’t try to shoot everything in Morocco. I can appreciate their not wanting to get involved with the Algerians, but Morocco is no substitute for Algeria or Niger.’

27 August 1989
‘Bertolucci now thinks I should appear in certain scenes of the film. I don’t understand exactly why, and therefore suspect this to be a whim which he’ll possibly be thinking better of sooner or later.’

Fifty heads in one day

Oxford University Press has just re-published Antera Duke’s diary. Antera Duke was an African slave-trading chief, and his diary is said to be the only surviving eyewitness account of slave trading by an African merchant. And pretty callous the trade was too. One entry in the diary reads: ‘So we got ready to cut heads off and at 5 o’clock in the morning we began to cut slaves’ heads off, fifty heads off in that one day.’

Not much is known about Antera Duke. He is thought to have been born around 1735 and to have died around 1809. He was an Efik chief from Duke Town, Calabar in eastern Nigeria (now in Cross River State) about 40 miles from the Atlantic Ocean - see Wikipedia for more on the Efik people. But, thanks to a diary he kept, we also know he was a slave trader.

Written in Nigerian Pidgin English, the diary was discovered in Scotland over half a century ago, and published in 1956 for the International African Institute by Oxford University Press (OUP): Efik Traders of Old Calabar: Containing the Diary of Antera Duke, an Efik Slave-Trading Chief of the Eighteenth Century together with an Ethnographic Sketch and Notes by Donald Simmons & an Essay on the Political Organization of Old Calabar by G. I. Jones. This diary is said to be the only surviving eyewitness account of the slave trade by an African merchant, thus providing valuable information on Old Calabar’s economic activity both with other African businessmen and with European ship captains who arrived to trade for slaves, produce, and provisions.

OUP has now (February in the US, May in the UK - see Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk) brought out a new edition of Antera’s diary with the original (and difficult to understand) trade-English along side a translation into standard English on facing pages. The Diary of Antera Duke, an Eighteenth-Century African Slave Trader is edited by Stephen D Behrendt, A J H Latham and David Northrup. The publisher says the new edition draws on the latest scholarship: ‘Introductory essays set the stage for the Old Calabar of Antera Duke’s lifetime, explore the range of trades, from slaves to produce, in which he rose to prominence, and follow Antera on trading missions across an extensive commercial hinterland. The essays trace the settlement and development of the towns that comprised Old Calabar and survey the community’s social and political structure, rivalries among families, sacrifices of slaves, and witchcraft ordeals.’

Jon Silkin, writing a review of the 1956 edition for African Affairs, found the diary itself fascinating but was not very impressed by the scholarship attached to it. He wrote: ‘The most enlightening two sections in the book, enlightening in the sense that they tell you more about the Efiks than any of the stuff elsewhere, are the two versions of the fascinating diary kept by Antera Duke. These two versions: the original one and its more Anglicised equivalent, re-inforce what after all one might suspect the people to have been: avaricious, anxiety-ridden, superstitious, cheerful, propitiatory and extremely cruel, capable of extreme savagery and violence not only on other tribes (whom they enslaved), but on their criminals (whom they also enslaved) as well as each other.’

He provides an example of the diary in the two versions (1787, but otherwise undated):

Original: ‘. . . wee tak grandy Egbo and cany to Henshaw and Willy Tom for brow for not Captain for send and Callabar poun was putt for tak my slave goods to not send them poun way in Tender so wee have Tatam Tender go away with 330 slaves . . .’

Transcription: ‘We carried Grand Ekpe to Henshaw and Willy Tom to blow forbidding and Captain to send Calabar pawn, which was given for my slave goods, away in his tender. Tatam’s tender went away with 330 slaves. . .’

And here is a final diary entry, Silkin says, which treats cruelty with all the assumption of naturalness.

‘About 4 a.m. I got up; there was great rain, so I walked to the town palaver house and I found all the gentlemen here. So we got ready to cut heads off and at 5 o’clock in the morning we began to cut slaves’ heads off, fifty heads off in that one day . . .’