Nobody to dig the graves

‘On the 19th of May, died Erich Hansen Li, who, throughout the voyage, had been very industrious and willing, and had neither offended anyone nor deserved any punishment. He had dug many graves for others, but now there was nobody that could dig his, and his body had to remain unburied.’ This is from the astonishingly tragic diary of Jens Munk, a Norwegian-Danish explorer who died 390 years ago today. His expedition to find the Northwest Passage ended in disaster: with his vessels ice-bound, almost all his crew succumbed to cold, hunger or scurvy. Munk’s diary records every death day-by-day over a period of months.

Monck (or Munk) was born in 1579 and grew up on his father’s estate at Arendal, southeast Norway. After his father’s downfall, he left with his mother to live in Aalborg, Denmark, but aged on 12 he embarked on a life at sea. He was sailing with a Dutch convoy, when it was attacked by pirates off the coast of Brazil. Munk survived, and then spent six years in Bahia working for a Portuguese magnate. In 1599, he managed to return to Denmark where he found a position as a ship’s clerk, eventually becoming a successful seafaring tradesman himself. In the 1610s, he was commissioned on various exploratory and military missions by the Danish-Norwegian king, Christian IV. On one of these, in 1615, he captured Jan Mendoses - a notorious privateer - off the northern coast of Russia. In 1618, the king appointed him commander of the first Danish expedition to East India with five vessels and nearly a 1,000 men, but the command was taken away from him weeks before sailing, probably because of a conflict with the Lord Chancellor. Around this time, Munk also suffered the loss of a large amount of money due to a failed whaling expedition

In 1619, Munk set out, with two royal vessels and 65 men, on an ambitious expedition to find the Northwest Passage. In September, he found the entrance to Hudson Bay becoming the first European to explore the bay’s western reaches. But the expedition then spent a disastrous winter near the mouth of what is now known as the Churchill River, a place Munk named Nova Dania (New Denmark). Everyone except Munk and two crewmen died from cold, hunger and scurvy; but, remarkably, with the onset of summer, the three men managed to return home sailing one of the vessels. Punk was imprisoned at Bergen for a short while but released on order of the king, and returned to Copenhagen. He continued to serve the king in various capacities, though a planned second expedition in search of the Northwest Passage never materialised. In 1625, the king promoted him to admiral in charge of a fleet on the Weser during the Thirty Years War. He died on 26 June 1928. Further information is available at Wikipedia, The Canadian Encyclopedia, the Northern Lights Route, and in the book Exploring Polar Frontiers.

Munk kept a diary of his voyage to Hudson’s Bay in 1619-1620. He published this in 1624 under the title Navigatio Septentrionalis, illustrated with a map of Greenland/Hudson’s Bay, and two woodcuts. It was first translated into English and published in 1650 as An account of a most dangerous voyage perform’d by the famous Capt. John Monck, in the years 1619, and 1620. This is freely available online at Googlebooks (though the printed text uses the old-fashioned long s). However, the diary is also available in a modern script in the second volume of Hakluyt Society’s Danish Arctic Expeditions 1605-1620 published in 1897 - see Internet Archive. This also contains extensive notes and a long introduction by C. C. A. Gosch (and is the source of the following extracts).

12 July 1619
‘On the 12th of July, I sent my lieutenant with some of the crew on shore at Munckenes [named by Munk], in order to fetch water and to ascertain what was to be found there, because it seemed a likely place for finding harbours and for obtaining water. In the evening, they returned with water, and reported that there were harbours but no anchorage; nor could we lie there in safety from ice. We were, therefore, obliged to choose the better of two bad alternatives, because nowhere in the channel could we see open water. Half a mile from Munckenes, I caused the lead to be thrown, and reached the bottom at 150 fathoms. On the same day, I shot two or three birds with a gun; but, at the last discharge, the same gun burst into pieces, and took the brim clean off the front of my hat.’

13 July 1619
‘On the 13th of July, towards evening, we were in the greatest distress and danger, and did not know what counsel to follow, because we could not advance any further by tacking, the ice pressing us hard on all sides. Being, then, in such a perilous situation, all the officers considered it most advisable to take in all the sails and fasten the sloop Lamprenen to the ship Enhiörningen; which, accordingly, was done. We then commended all into the hand of God; and, trusting to God’s merciful assistance, we drifted along and into the ice again. This incident of the attack of the ice and the distress of the ships in the ice are shown on the plate accompanying this treatise.

While we thus drifted forwards and backwards in the ice, in great danger of our lives, the ice displaced a large knee in the ship, which was situated under the peg of the head of the ship, and fastened with six large iron bolts; wherefore I set all my carpenters to work to set that knee straight again. But it was too big for them, so that they could do nothing with it in that place. I therefore had the ship swung round and turned, so that the side to which the knee had come into a crooked position drifted against the ice, and then ordered the rudder to be worked so as to turn against the ice in order that the knee in a measure might right itself again, which also was effected as perfectly as if 20 carpenters had been engaged in refitting it. Afterwards, the carpenters adjusted the bolts which had become bent.’

12 September 1619
‘In the morning early, a large white bear came down to the water near the ship, which stood and ate some Beluga flesh, off a fish so named which I had caught the day before. I shot the bear, and the men all desired the flesh for food, which I also allowed. I ordered the cook just to boil it slightly, and then to keep it in vinegar for a night, and I myself had two or three pieces of this bear-flesh roasted for the cabin. It was of good taste and did not disagree with us.’

21 January 1620
On the 21st January, it was fine clear weather and sunshine; and, on that date, thirteen of us were down with sickness. Then, as I had often done before, I asked the surgeon, M. Casper Caspersen aforesaid, who was also lying mortally ill, whether he knew of any good remedy that might be found in his chest and which might serve for the recovery or comfort of the crew, as well as of himself, requesting him to inform me of it. To this he answered that he had already used as many remedies as he had with him to the best of his ability and as seemed to him advisable, and that, if God would not help, he could not employ any further remedy at all that would be useful for recovery.’

1 March 1620
‘On the 1st of March, died Jens Borringholm and Hans Skudenes; and, the sickness having now prevailed so far that nearly all of the crew lay sick, we had great difficulty in getting the dead buried.’

4 March 1620
‘On the 4th of March, the weather was mild, and we caught five ptarmigan in the open country, which were very welcome to us. I ordered broth to be made of them, and had that distributed amongst the sick; but, of the meat, they could eat nothing, because of their mouths being badly affected inside with scurvy.’

8 March 1620
‘On the 8th of March, died Oluf Boye, who had been ill nearly nine weeks, and his body was at once buried.’

9 March 1620
‘On the 9th of March, died Anders, the cooper, who had lain sick since Christmas, and his body was at once buried.’

11 March 1620
‘On the 11th of March, the sun entered Aries; it was then the Spring Equinox, night and day being equally long. In those quarters, the sun rose in the East-South-East, and set in the West-North-West at 7 o’clock in the evening; but it was not really more than six o’clock on account of the variation. On the same day, the weather was fine and mild, and I had all the snow thrown off the deck of the ship and had it nicely cleaned. At that time, I had but few to choose between that could do any work.’

11 May 1620
On the 11th of May, it was very cold, so that we all remained quietly in our berths that day; because, in our extreme weakness, we could not stand any cold, our limbs being paralyzed and, as it were, crushed by the cold.’

12 May 1620
‘On the 12th of May, died Jens Jörgensen, carpenter, and Suend Marstrand; and God knows what misery we suffered before we got their bodies buried. These were the last that were buried in the ground.’

16 May 1620
‘On the 16th of May, it was very cold indeed. Then died the skipper, Jens Hendrichsen; and his body had to remain unburied.’

19 May 1620
‘On the 19th of May, died Erich Hansen Li, who, throughout the voyage, had been very industrious and willing, and had neither offended anyone nor deserved any punishment. He had dug many graves for others, but now there was nobody that could dig his, and his body had to remain unburied.’

20 May 1620
‘On the 20th of May, the weather was fine and mild and the wind southerly. It was a great grief to us that, whilst God gave such an abundance of various kinds of birds, none of us was strong enough to go into the country and shoot some of them.’

17 July 1620
‘On the 17th of July, towards evening, I met much ice, and I stood off and on in front of the ice; but, in the course of the night, the weather being calm and misty, we stuck firm on the ice. I then let go the boat of Enhiörningen, which I had taken in tow for the purpose of having it for use if I should come near to land anywhere.’

The Diary Junction

What might have been

André Laurendeau, a French Canadian writer and politician, died 60 years ago today. He is most well remembered for spending the last five years of his life as chairman of the ambitious Royal Commission on Bilingualism and Biculturalism, set up in 1963, designed to try and find solutions to the escalating crisis between French and English speaking peoples. The stress and workload of the position, and an increasing despondency at the Commission’s achievements, may have contributed to his early death. He left behind a diary, published in 1991, which, according to Patricia Smart’s introduction, traces his ‘intellectual and personal evolution against the background of the major political events of the years he was involved in the Commission’. But, ultimately, she wonders whether the diary can only serve ‘as a lament for what might have been’. According to The Canadian Encyclopedia ‘the unsolved consequences of biculturalism is still a key question in Canadian unity’.

Laurendeau was born in 1912 in Montreal, into a well-connected Quebec family, his father was an ardent nationalist. André was given a classical education at Collège Sainte-Marie and studied literature and history at the Université de Montréal. In 1933, he and several friends formed a youth separatist movement, advocating a homeland for French Canadians. In June 1935, he married Ghislaine Perrault, and the two of them soon travelled to France, where Laurendeau studied philosophy and social sciences at the Sorbonne. There he eschewed his focus on nationalism, and became more preoccupied with the Americanisation of French-Canadian culture (as opposed to the threat posed by English Canada). Upon returning home, he served as director of the L’Action nationale from 1937 to 1943 which previously had been managed by his father.

Laurendeau came to prominence during the Second World War years as leader of the anti-conscription Bloc populaire, under whose banner he sat in the Quebec Legislative Assembly from 1944 to 1947. Thereafter, he was a member of the editorial board of Le Devoir (and its editor from 1958); he also returned to being a director of L’Action nationale. He is credited with turning Le Devoir into an effective forum for criticism of Maurice Duplessis’s second government (1944-1959).

Laurendeau became a leading spokesman for a wave of neo-nationalism in Quebec, a policy which was adopted by the Québec Liberal Party of Jean Lesage. However, fearing the consequences of a rising tide of separatism, he called for the Québec and Ottawa governments to look into the crisis. Prime Minister Lester Pearson responded in 1963 by creating the Royal Commission on Bilingualism and Biculturalism with Laurendeau and Davidson Dunton as co-chairmen. Laurendeau worked zealously for five years, and although the commission did produce various reports and recommendations, many of which were taken up by the incoming Prime Minister, Pierre Trudeau, it never published a final volume. Laurendeau died on 1 June 1968, the strain of Commission work being cited as partly responsible for his early death. Further information can be found at Wikipedia and The Canadian Encyclopedia.

Laurendeau kept a diary of his time as co-chairman of the Commission. This was later published, first in French, and then in an English translation as The Diary of André Laurendeau (James Lorimer & Company, Toronto, 1991). Some pages can be freely read online at Googlebooks. The Canadian writer Patricia Smart provides an informative and explanatory introduction. She starts by explaining that the B&B Commission, as it was known, ‘was arguably the most important - also the most lengthy, the most expensive and the most controversial - commission of enquiry in Canada’s history.’

She continues: ‘Were it simply an account of the inner workings of such an important government body, André Laurendeau’s diary would be a valuable document. What makes it far more than that is the image it traces of Laurendeau’s intellectual and personal evolution against the background of the major political events of the years he was involved in the Commission. Begun in January 1964, four months after he had accepted the chairmanship of the Commission, the diary gives a fascinating behind-the-scenes account of the way the Commission was put in place, including Laurendeau’s own initial hesitation to accept the position of Co-Chairman and his decision, after consulting with a number of Quebec political figures - Jean Marchand, Rene Levesque, Claude Ryan and others - that he must follow the logic of his commitment to Quebec and Canada to its conclusion. From the beginning, Laurendeau insisted to Prime Minister Pearson that if the inquiry was to be effective it must include culture as well as language, that it must be based on the principle of the equality of Canada’s “two founding peoples,” and that it must have the authorization to include recommendations for constitutional reform.’

And, finally, Smart concludes (in 1991): ‘For today’s readers, André Laurendeau’s pilgrimage in search of a means to allow this country to realize its potential may seems quixotic, or - more frighteningly - no longer worth the effort; and in that case his diary will remain as a lament for what might have been. [However . . .] Even as I write these lines, changes are taking place that may oblige Canadians to come to terms at last with the reality Laurendeau devoted the last years of his life to finding a solution for. With both major political parties in Quebec now committed to a radical restructuring of federalism, the province is speaking from a position of strength that twenty-five years ago Laurendeau had come to suspect was the necessary prerequisite to real dialogue with English Canada.’

It is worth nothing that much more recently Smart has published a book - Writing Herself into Being (McGill-Queen’s Press, 2017) - which includes a discussion of the lifelong diary kept by Laurendeau’s wife, Ghislaine Perrault. Pages of this can also be found online at Googlebooks. Here, though, are several extracts from Laurendeau’s diary.

12 April 1964
‘Woke up this morning in Halifax in a thick fog, amid the screaming of sirens. We arrived here last night on our way to Sydney.

I note some impressions I’ve had over the last few days. Essentially the Maritimer is a Canadian dissatisfied with Canada, who remembers the period before Confederation as a period of prosperity, and who feels a constant need for interventions, at least on the financial level - which means grants from Ottawa. It is not only a political attitude: it’s a profound part of his psychology. He considers himself mistreated almost as much as the Quebecois does, but since he feels weaker economically, and less different from a cultural point of view, his criticisms always lead to more requests for money rather than a demand for greater autonomy.’

2 May 1964
‘On Saturday, April 25, at about 5:00 p.m., return to an impossible life: I leave Montreal first for Toronto, then for Vancouver. During the stopover in Toronto, I learn from the Toronto Star that a commissioner fell asleep at the regional meeting the previous day in Edmonton, and that another spent his time smoking cigarettes in front of a no-smoking sign; a woman in the audience even commented that he must not speak English . . . A disagreeable impression, since all this appears on page 1 of Canada’s largest daily paper. I sit with Neil, Mr. Stinson and Frank Scott on the plane. It’s about 6:30; a red sun is on the point of disappearing over the horizon when the plane takes off. As we’re climbing quite quickly into the sky, the sun all of a sudden seems to be rising. And then we observe an amazing spectacle: a twilight that lasts for four and a half hours. During the first hour, we distinctly see Georgian Bay, then Lake Superior, and finally the desolate view of Northern Ontario. Then a screen of clouds settles in below us, and all we can see is this extraordinary end of a day, so slow that you feel you are out of time. It is only when we’re approaching Vancouver that night falls.

Dr. Walden meets us at the airport, and it’s a good thing: for the second time my suitcase has been lost, and I have to borrow a pair of pyjamas, buy a toothbrush and shave with someone else’s razor.

The stay in Vancouver starts out rather painfully. It’s not yet ten o’clock by Vancouver time and Dunton, who arrived the same day from Edmonton, isn’t yet back from dinner. Marchand, Gagnon, Lacoste and Boisvert are travelling by train. The others gradually drift into our suite, and I learn in bits and pieces that the Edmonton incident was decidedly disgraceful, and that it could have led to unpleasant consequences. Two of the commissioners had had too much to drink at dinner; one snored through the session, despite the nudges of Jean Marchand, who was sitting beside him, and the other made some imprudent comments (specifically on the need for a new newspaper in Edmonton). The staff were disappointed and humiliated by this public behaviour. The next day I learned that Jean Marchand royally chewed out one of the commissioners, who failed to understand his veiled allusions. All this seems far away now, but at the time we were all thinking of what would have happened if a newspaper had photographed our indiscreet sleeping friend. When Dunton arrived he seemed nervous and even aggressive, which is not his usual style. . .

The Commission met at 5:00 p.m. (the next day) for a briefing from Dr. Walden, who has done excellent work and recruited some remarkable collaborators. We ate on the run because at 8:00 there was a press conference in the presence of about twenty high-school students and the discussion leaders for the next day’s session. It wasn’t a very good blend: it meant we had a gathering in which the journalists felt a bit lost; and we had to exclude them from the meeting once the interviews were over . . . Once they were gone - and one of them surreptitiously tried to stay - it became a lot more interesting. Neil Morrison said a few words, and immediately the young people started to come forth with questions and opinions. I have only a vague recollection of what they said; I think it dealt mainly with language questions: Is it possible to learn French in Vancouver? Why this pre-eminence being given to French? How “good” is the French spoken by French Canadians? etc. Their ignorance of Quebec is no greater than that of other groups. And yet Dunton caught them out with a clever question: “How many of you know that Quebec has a rural majority?” All the hands were raised, and we burst out laughing. Dunton made the correction: 65% of the province is now urban, to which we could have added that there hasn’t been a rural majority since 1921. These young people are a good forty years behind the times; but it’s true that we took a long time ourselves to notice this transformation. This meeting, which lasted over an hour, was truly refreshing, and one had the feeling it could have gone on for hours. But to be really fruitful it would have had to contain a presentation on Quebec - which brings us back to our insoluble problem: for it’s a presentation we can’t make ourselves and that we can’t officially ask anyone else to make.

Finally, a fairly technical discussion with the group leaders, then coffee. A young businessman said to me: “Do you know why I’m here this evening? Like most people, I was fairly indifferent to this problem. About a month ago, I heard a speech by a young Liberal MP, a man with an attractive personality, very French Canadian. When he spoke in French, I said to myself: I don’t understand a thing he’s saying, no more than if he were speaking Russian; and yet he’s using the language spoken by a third of the Canadian people. My ignorance seemed to me abnormal.” Unfortunately, one swallow doesn’t a springtime make . . .

On Monday the 28th, the evening regional meeting was held in a shopping centre, almost in the suburbs. We expected a fiasco, but more than 400 people came. All the commissioners and group leaders were crowded onto a little stage, blinded by floodlights, but just the same it was a very lively meeting. It started out with a series of negative comments on Quebec, one after the other, very disagreeable to listen to; the theme was that of a “retarded people,” and retarded through its own fault. And then a young man I had met earlier in the day got up and said: “Keep on insulting French Canadians like this, and you’ll create thousands more new separatists in Quebec.” That was the turning point: others pointed out the large number of errors and prejudice in what had just been expressed, tried to set the record straight, etc. Neil was very nervous, and irritated by the comments he was constantly getting from the commissioners sitting near him. Once the meeting ended, he lost his temper: “This is the last meeting that I chair.” There was no point in trying to talk to him at that moment.

We went back and chatted in our suite, and later Jean-Louis, Mrs. Laing and I went out to eat in an Italian restaurant.’

9 September 1964
‘. . . I went to Ottawa Tuesday evening, August 25, and got in touch with the Commission the next day. It was mostly a matter of setting up the meeting for the following week. The calendar set up in July has been followed to a certain extent: all those concerned - with the exception of Dunton and Morrison, away on holidays - sent in their drafts on the agreed dates. Personnel did, too. As for phase two, that is, comments on the texts that are in, the deadlines weren’t met with the same rigour. The projected overview has been done, to some extent, by a staff member, Mr. Hawkins. In addition, Mr. Dunton, when he came back from his holidays, wrote a plan for the entire report, which was sent to me in Saint-Ga- briel at the end of mine. It’s truly a wonderful text, with a simple and convincing tone, that brings together a considerable number of facts and impressions. Its shortcoming is probably the fact that it doesn’t bring out the crisis aspect enough, a crisis which most of the commissioners sense keenly in Canada at the present time, and which Léon Dion had proposed we use as the report’s central theme . . .’

8 February 1965
‘A lot has gone on recently that I don’t have time to go into, but I will go into one incident having to do with the Department of External Affairs.

Occasionally, ever since the beginning of the inquiry, French-Canadian civil servants have proved to be very uncooperative. It’s quite understandable: in order for them to pursue a career in the civil service as it now exists, they have had to accept it for the most part, even though it was hard on them and they did their best to see it progress to some extent.

Everything I’ve just said applies, I believe, to Marcel Cadieux, Assistant Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs. We learned that the officials of this department wanted to submit a crucial paper; Mr. Cadieux intervened, and there would no longer be a paper. He didn’t like our using André Patry to investigate various aspects related to Canada abroad. He made his position clear to us through a letter signed by his minister, Mr. Martin, after which we met him. He was accompanied by one of his departmental chiefs who was taking notes. His official attitude came down to this: the Commission was not asked to investigate Canada’s foreign policy - which was patently obvious, no more than it was asked to investigate the running of trains by CNR, or the way the Armed Forces ensure Canada’s defence. However, we have to sniff around quite a bit to fulfil our mandate. And that’s what we answered, unwaveringly. Another letter from Mr. Cadieux summarized the meeting leaving out essential details, but Mr. Dunton courteously set the record straight in a subsequent letter. It was even said that Mr. Cadieux was quietly campaigning against our way of doing things with his colleagues, the deputy ministers. It remains to be seen if this is in fact true and what consequences it might have.’

Killed and scalped

‘The whole company of rangers went out this morning to scour the country towards Bay Verde: they returned in the afternoon, and brought with them a sleigh which our unhappy sufferers had taken out with them, and on it were laid the bodies of four of our men, and one ranger, who were killed and scalped.’ This is from the diary of a Captain John Knox, an Irish born soldier in the British army, who died 230 years ago today. He may have well have been completely forgotten had it not been for the diary he kept (and later self-published) while on service in North America during the so-called Seven Years War. Some 150 years later, the little-known diary had fallen into obscurity, but it was re-published by the recently-formed Champlain Society, and is now considered one of the most important first hand sources for the period.

Knox was born in Sligo, though very little is known about his early life - not even the year of his birth. He joined the British army, and served in the War of the Austrian Succession, and distinguished himself at the Battle of Lauffeld in 1747. He was promoted to an ensigncy in the 43rd Regiment of Foot by the Duke of Cumberland. In 1751, he married a relatively well off Irish woman, Jane Carre; and, in 1754, he purchased a lieutenancy in the 43rd. Three years later, he left Ireland with the regiment for Halifax, Nova Scotia. However, the regiment then spent two years stationed at Fort Cumberland, playing no part in either the planned Louisbourg Expedition or Jeffery Amherst’s subsequent and successful siege of Louisberg. Knox’s regiment did, though, engage in the Battle of Quebec in the winter of 1759-1760 under General James Murray; and it was also with Murray at the fall of Montreal in 1760.

By the following winter, Knox is thought to have been back in England. He was appointed captain of a newly formed independent company of soldiers, but this was soon amalgamated into the 99th Foot, which, following the the Treaty of Paris in 1763, was itself disbanded. Knox, by then living in Gloucester, was placed on half pay. His attempts to obtain military preferment came to naught, and he remained on half pay until 1775 when he was appointed to command one of three independent companies of invalids stationed at Berwick-upon-Tweed. He died on 8 February 1778. A little further information can be found at Wikipedia or The Dictionary of Canadian Biography.

Knox is remembered today only because he kept a diary during his North American service. On returning to England, he went to the trouble of editing it and having it printed in two volumes: An Historical Journal Of The Campaigns in North-America, For The Years 1757, 1758, 1759 and 1760. The volumes, published in 1769, were sold in two London shops: W. Johnston in Ludgate Street and J. Dodsley in Pall-Mall. They were subtitled, The Most Remarkable Occurrences of that Period particularly The Two Sieges of Quebec etc. etc. Orders of the Admirals and General Officers; Description of the Countries where the Author has served, with their forts and Garrisons their climates, soil, produce; and A Regular Diary of the Weather. Both volumes (one and two) are freely available online at Internet Archive (although the text was printed using the old-fashioned form of s). Nearly 150 years later Knox’s diary was reprinted (1914-1916), in a three volume version, by The Champlain Society (formed a decade earlier to advance knowledge of Canadian history through the publication of scholarly books). The three volumes were edited by Arthur G. Doughty, with the third volume being a series of appendices, i.e. other diaries, letters, historical summaries. Volumes one, two and three are all freely available at Internet Archive.

Today Knox’s diary is highly rated. The Dictionary of Canadian Biography says:’Though notably uncritical, it is an important source for the history of the Seven Years War in North America.’ Doughty goes further. He says, in his introduction, that Knox’s narrative ‘is regarded as the most valuable record of those eventful times’. And Doughty goes on to provide a more thorough assessment of the diary. ‘Knox’s English, it must be admitted, is often slipshod, but his style, though sober, is terse and not dull. If some of the incidents appear now of comparatively little interest, it must be remembered that Knox wrote for his contemporaries, and chiefly, we may believe, for those who had taken part in the events with which he was dealing. For these even the minor details which he records would have value as supplementing their own recollections and impressions. The Journal keeps the reader wonderfully in touch with the general course of events and with the principal actors in the drama. [. . .] He seems to have been a genuine soldier at heart, and, in spite of the painful scenes which he describes, he gives us a favourable idea of the military profession. We are made to feel that war is not, as some would have it, mere murder, but that in practice it binds even more than it severs, that its friendships are more lasting than its enmities. In point of accuracy the Journal must, on the whole, be commended. Errors of fact are to be found here and there, but they are few and not of great moment. Honesty seems to greet us from the face of the narrative.’

The following extracts are taken from the first of the three volumes.

21 September 1757
‘Last night we were alarmed in our camp, by two shots fired on the swamps to the left of our ground; the guards and pickets turned out, and we stood to our arms until it was clear day-light in the morning; this was occasioned by some of our rangers, who took the advantage of a moon-light night to lie in waiting for wild ducks, which, with most other kinds of wild fowl, are in great plenty here, though not to be got at without risk; the weather to-day is clear, and comfortably warm. The reinforcements of Highlanders, mentioned before to have arrived lately at Halifax, consisted of two new-raised regiments; an unlucky accident lately happened to one of their private men, of which the following are the particulars; a soldier of another regiment, who was a centinel detached from an advanced guard, seeing a man coming out of the wood, with his hair hanging loose, and wrapped up in a dark-coloured plaid, he challenged him repeatedly, and receiving no answer (the weather being hazy) he fired at him and killed him; the guard being alarmed, the Serjeant ran out to know the cause, and the unhappy centinel, strongly prepossessed that it was an Indian, with a blanket about him, who came skulking to take a prisoner, or a scalp, cried out, I have killed an Indian, I have killed an Indian, there he lies, etc. but, upon being undeceived by the Serjeant, who went to take a view of the dead man, and being told he was one of our own men, and a Highlander, he was so oppressed with grief and fright, that he fell ill, and was despaired of for some days. In consequence of this accident, most of these young soldiers, being raw and unexperienced, and very few of them conversant in, or able to talk English (which was particularly his case who was killed) these regiments were ordered to do no more duty for some time; at length some of the inhabitants having crossed over to Dartmouth to cut fire-wood, they were attacked by a party of the enemy, and several were killed and scalped: whereupon a large detachment of these Highlanders were immediately sent to take post, and remain there; which will effectually secure the town on that quarter, and inable the settlers to provide fuel during the approaching winter, without any farther apprehensions. Changeable weather for several days past, though mostly fair.’

22 September 1757
‘Two men of the 28th regiment deserted this morning, and took their course towards Baye Verde, where meeting with some of the enemy (savages as we are informed) one of them made his escape, and returned to the fort; in consideration whereof, and his good character, he was pardoned. A violent rain came on this afternoon, which obliged us to quit our work.’

4 August 1758
‘The heat of the dog-days in this country is excessive, with close, suffocating airs; this evening we had the most violent thunder and lightning that ever I saw and heard; even the inhabitants express much surprise at it; and the flashes had the greatest variety of awful beauties, and choice of colours, that the most lively imagination can conceive; this was succeeded by five hours constant, heavy rain, with remarkable large drops.’

21 January 1759
‘The whole company of rangers went out this morning to scour the country towards Bay Verde: they returned in the afternoon, and brought with them a sleigh which our unhappy sufferers had taken out with them, and on it were laid the bodies of four of our men, and one ranger, who were killed and scalped; the rest are still missing: at the place where these unfortunate people were way-laid, there was a regular ambush, and designed probably against the rangers, who have been out, for some weeks, cutting and cording wood for the garrison, and seldom missed a day, except the weather was uncommonly severe, which was the case yesterday; and their not going was providential, for they are generally too remiss upon service, and so little did they suspect any danger, that the half of them went out without arms, and they who carried any were not loaded. The victims were fired at from the right side of the road, being shot through the right breast; all were wounded in the same place, except one who had not a gun-shot wound about him, but was killed by a hatchet or tomahock a-cross the neck, under the hinder part of his scull; never was greater or more wanton barbarity perpetrated, as appears by these poor creatures, who, it is evident, have been all scalped alive; for their hands, respectively, were clasped together under their polls, and their limbs were horridly distorted, truly expressive of the agonies in which they died: in this manner they froze, not unlike figures, or statues, which are variously displayed on pedestals in the gardens of the curious. The ranger was stripped naked, as he came into the world; the soldiers were not, except two, who had their new cloathing on them; these (that is the coats only) were taken: I am told this is a distinction always made between regulars and others; the head of the man who escaped the fire; was flayed before he received his coup mortel, which is evident from this circumstance, that, after the intire cap was taken off, the hinder part of the scull was wantonly broken into small pieces; the ranger’s body was all marked with a stick, and some blood in hieroglyphic characters, which shewed that great deliberation was used in this barbarous dirty work. The bloodhounds came on snow-shoes, or rackets, the country being now so deep with snow, as to render it impossible to march without them; they returned towards Gaspereau, and we imagine they came from Mirrimichie, there being no settlement of them (as we suppose) nearer to us on that side of the country.

Our men were buried this afternoon, and, as we could not break or stretch their limbs, the sleigh was covered intirely with boards, and a large pit was made in the snow, to the depth of several feet, where they are to remain for some time; for the earth is so impenetrably bound up with frost, that it is impracticable to break ground, even with pickaxes or crow-irons; their funeral was very decent, and all the Officers attended them to the burying-place. Our men appear greatly irritated at the inhuman lot of their friends, and express the greatest concern lest we should not permit them to make reprisals, whenever a favourable opportunity may offer. In these northern countries, any people that happen to die after the winter sets-in are only left under the snow until the beginning of summer, for spring I cannot call it, there being no such season in this part of the world. With respect to fresh provisions of any kind, it is also customary to kill them about the middle of November, and leave them in an airy out-house, or other place where the frost will soon affect them; so that there is nothing more common than to eat beef, mutton, or poultry, in March or April, that were dead five months before: hares and fowl, as soon as killed, are hung up in their skins and feathers, and without being drawn, until they are wanted; at which time, by steeping them (or any butcher’s meat) for a time in cold water, and not merely immerging, as some writers and travellers aver, they become pliable, and fit for any purpose that the cook may require.’

10 July 1759
‘Being on a working-party this morning at our batteries, I had a most agreeable prospect of the city of Quebec, for the first time; it is a very fair object for our artillery, particularly the lower town, whose buildings are closer, and more compact than the upper. Some time after we were settled at work, a soldier of the 48th regiment, who had an intention to desert, went to an adjoining wood, where an Officer and a number of men were detached to make fascines; he told the Officer he was sent to desire that he and his party would return to the redoubt where we were employed, and in their absence he took an old canoe that he found on the shore, and crossed the river in our view; a boat put off from the enemy, and took him safe to land. Our batteries are in great forwardness; the two first are to mount six guns and five mortars, and will, in a few days, be in readiness to open. About six o’clock the garrison began to cannonade and bombard us, and continued their fire, almost without intermission, until one o’clock in the afternoon, at which time the working-parties were relieved. Our soldiers told me they numbered one hundred and twenty-two shot and twenty-seven shells, yet we had not a man killed or wounded. Before we reached our camp, we had a violent thunder-storm attended with hail and rain, which laid our incampment under water: the hail-stones were uncommonly large; on this occasion the men were served with rum, pursuant to the General’s regulations.

Dalling’s light infantry are ordered on duty this night at the batteries, and the redoubt adjoining to them. The enemy have brought down a mortar or two to the left of their intrenchments, from which they discharged several shells at our ships, though without any effect.’

The Diary Junction

God save the Queen

‘Here again after another week of “progress” as it is called, through Ontario - that is, being bucketed from one place to another by night & going through the round of being received at the station, addresses presented, a procession round the town, reception at the Fair grounds, an attempt to go round the exhibits in the midst of a huge crowd, a long luncheon with nothing possible to eat, & visits to various schools, hospitals, convents & other institutions. We live our days to the tune of God save the Queen, from the moment the train stops till it departs.’ This is from the diary of Lady Aberdeen, born 160 years ago today, who was a philanthropist and social reformer active throughout her life, at various times in Scotland, Canada and Ireland. This particular extract shows Lady Aberdeen expressing a rare weariness of public life; otherwise her Canada diary (the only one published) is a veritable catalogue of the activities of her husband (governor general of Canada) and her own philanthropic pursuits and concerns.

Ishbel Maria Marjoribanks was born on 15 March 1857 the fifth of seven children in a prominent Scottish landowning family. Her father was a partner in a brewing business as well as a Liberal MP. She spent her childhood on the family estate in Invernesshire and in London, receiving her education from governesses and tutors. Her father opposed her attending the newly-founded Girton College for women at Cambridge University. In 1877, she married  John Campbell Hamilton-Gordon, Earl of Aberdeen; they had five children (four of whom survived into adulthood), dividing their time between London and Aberdeenshire.

Lady Aberdeen was an active social campaigner with an interest in encouraging emigration to the British Empire. To that end, she established the Onward and Upward Association to help domestic servants take correspondence courses. In 1883, she became the first president of the Aberdeen Ladies’ Union which, among other things, sponsored young women emigrating to Canada. She also became head of the Women’s Liberal Federation, supporting women’s suffrage. In 1890, the Aberdeens toured across Canada, and bought a homestead, the Coldstream Ranch, in British Columbia which, later, would become recognised for pioneering commercial fruit growing in the region.

In 1893, Lord Aberdeen was appointed governor general of Canada. Once settled there, Lady Aberdeen quickly became engaged in planning social events, in support of her husband, and for her own philanthropic concerns. She travelled extensively, attending many events and collecting information for her husband; and was more politically active than any of her predecessors. She became the first president of the International Council of Women, the founder of the National Council of Women of Canada, and the first sponsor of the Women’s Art Association of Canada.

When the Liberal Party returned to power in 1906, Lord Aberdeen served as Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, until 1915. Lady Aberdeen continued her programme of social reform in Ireland, pioneering the Women’s National Health Association and becoming active in efforts to improve children’s health and preventing the spread of tuberculosis. After retirement to their home in Scotland, the Aberdeens continued to be involved in various social causes. They also wrote a memoir together - We Twa. Lady Aberdeen died in 1939, five years after her husband. For further information see Wikipedia, The Canadian Encyclopedia, or Undiscovered Scotland.

Twenty or so years after her death, The Champlain Society, Toronto, published The Canadian Journal of Lady Aberdeen, 1893-1898, as edited by John Saywell. All 600 pages, including a 100-page biography, can be found online at the website of the University of Toronto (although navigation through the pages is a bit rudimentary). Here are several extracts.

24 December 1893
‘We had our first service in our dear new little wooden chapel to-day. The men have been working night & day to get it finished by Christmas Day & they have done it. H.E. read prayers this morning & this evening Mr Winfield took the evening service. It is quite simple of varnished pine wood, a dark red drugget on floor, dull red & green windows & chairs for seats. We feel already that it will make all the difference to us. H.E. has put it up entirely himself, although the Government offered to pay, but we wanted no questions about this asked in Parliament. It will cost about $2000 (between £400 & £500) & then there is the little organ to come.

A busy evening preparing Christmas presents & stockings. A white blanket coat trimmed with red makes an excellent costume for Santa Claus to make his rounds - but Archie’s dog “Lady” thought I was a burglar & growled vigorously.’

25 December 1893
‘Such a horrible muggy day for our first Canadian Christmas. Yesterday & to-day it has been thawing vigorously - & in the space of a few days there have been differences of temperatures of 60°, which are rather trying. Great lamentations over no skating or snow sports for to-day.

We had a delightful home-like service in the new Chapel, conducted by Mr Winfield, who pending the time that he gets a charge is to be appointed chaplain & tutor to Archie & Marjorie in Latin & English Literature. We are very fortunate in finding him here ready to hand - he is an Oxford man & took orders in the English Church - was in W. Africa, the Bermudas, New Brunswick & then here in connection with the Reformed Episcopalian Church a small body seceding from the Anglican church on account of High Church doctrine. It is supposed that there is not much in the way of ritualistic practices, but v. High Church teaching. Mr Winfield has latterly felt it utterly unsatisfactory to belong to a Church without a past & without a future & so resigned his charge & has joined the Presbyterian Church. But he reads the English service in new chapel quite willingly. He is a cultured man, & is v. fond of children having one little boy of his own of eight. He is a great admirer of H.D.

The children had a day of games with Cosmo in their company all day. We went over to the Cottage to see Carry this afternoon - it was raining though it had begun to freeze again - & it was ridiculous to see the rain freezing as it fell & making it quite difficult to shut one’s umbrella.

Marjorie has made a lot of wonderfully neat Christmas presents this year - & has sent 15 home & given twenty here. She made a little bookcase for me & a printed maple leaf almanack for her Father - & lots of pretty little things for people in the house. Archie carved a ruler for me very well, & made a little model cottage covered with birch bark & thatched with straw as a letter box for his Father.

For the staff we had some enamelled maple leaf brooches & pins made by Birks which were eminently successful. Lord Ava was most lavish in his presents all round. We had a Christmas tree decoration for the dinner table to-night which looked well, with the Irish silver-gilt potato rings.’

30 December 1893
‘Photograph of all our party taken this morning on garden steps - first in furs & then in blanket coats by Topley. Luncheon at 12 then off with children to Assault at Arms given by Governor-General’s Foot-Guards at Opera House. This regiment a militia regiment which excites Capt. Kindersley’s ire inasmuch as it has adopted a uniform v. nearly resembling the Coldstream Guards. One man, Sergeant-Major Morgans, an old soldier from home did wonderful sword feats cutting a piece of lead two inches thick right through with one blow - cutting a stick hung on two loops of paper, suspended on two razors without cutting the paper & so on - a good deal of fencing & sword & bayonet encounters which greatly amused children.’

10 December 1894
‘First-rate lecture this afternoon in connection with Montreal Women’s Club by Dr James Cameron on the deformities & ill health caused by improper postures adopted by children in sitting & standing. Drawing room to-night - about 300 to 400 people - very pretty ceremony & all well carried out - held in Art Association Rooms lent us for purpose. Veils & feathers worn as a rule. This is the first time there has been a Drawing Room held here for many years & it has caused much discussion.’

3 February 1896
‘Some doubt has been expressed as to whether our historical fancy dress Ball should proceed because of the mourning. But as it is fixed for a month after Prince Henry’s death, as its being put off would not only entail loss not only on the tradesmen but on the guests who have gone to a good deal of trouble in ordering their dresses, & as postponement to after Lent would be very precarious seeing the state of political affairs, we think there can be no doubt about its going on. It is to be on the 17th, the last possible day before Lent, & now people are fairly interested in it. At the outset, the project had a good deal of cold water dashed at it - there was not time - people would not dress - people had not the money & so on. Then when we arranged with Montreal costumiers to provide dresses for gentlemen from $5 to $10, wigs & shoes extra & to give designs for costumes for ladies free, leaving them to have them made up, there came the political crisis. The costumiers came & took rooms at Ottawa & sat there & waited, but no one came - everybody was at the House.

Dr Bourinot, the clerk of the House of Commons (and a great authority on constitutional history), has been my mainstay. He suggested all the personages we might represent and their characteristics & has entered into the whole affair with enthusiasm. To tell the honest truth, we started this idea of having a Ball representing the outstanding periods of Canadian history, with the hope that it might lead to the young people reading up a bit & that it might divert Ottawa gossip at least into past times, away from all the painful & humiliating episodes of the present political situation & the everlasting discussion of hockey & winter sports varied with Ottawa society scandal. It was a sort of forlorn hope, but actually it appears to be succeeding - the last fortnight has made a great difference & now you hear everyone anxious to trace out the lineage & deeds of General this & Admiral that & of Madame la Marquise or the others. We had a meeting of the ladies who have undertaken to organise dances representing the various periods last Saturday & ascertained their views on various points. I enclose a copy of what we have put in the papers on this point.’

26 September 1896
‘Here again after another week of “progress” as it is called, through Ontario - that is, being bucketed from one place to another by night & going through the round of being received at the station, addresses presented, a procession round the town, reception at the Fair grounds, an attempt to go round the exhibits in the midst of a huge crowd, a long luncheon with nothing possible to eat, & visits to various schools, hospitals, convents & other institutions. We live our days to the tune of God save the Queen, from the moment the train stops till it departs, & one sometimes wonders inwardly whether the moment will not arrive when instead of keeping up an inane smile, we will not seize someone & turn then round & shake them or do something desperate to make at least a change.

I fear this is all horridly ungrateful, for everybody has been most kind & people have vied one with another to see who could do most for us. I think there has been a general desire to show that the feeling of the country was not with Sir Charles in his attack on H.E.

The long talked of debate come off last Monday evening, just when we were leaving. Everybody was prepared for a long evening of it - the old gentleman made a carefully prepared speech & kept himself mostly within bounds & was only pulled up twice, by the Speaker for speaking disrespectfully of H.E. Capt. Sinclair who was present, thought he spoke better than Laurier, who seemed rather taken unawares. Several of the Liberal leaders were ready with speeches, but when Laurier sat down, no one on the Opposition side got up & to the amazement of everybody, the debate collapsed. Neither Foster, Haggart or Ives were even present & the Conservative party generally had made up its mind not to support their leader in this. So he has made rather a mess of his great constitutional question. It seems rather a pity that the opinions of some of those most interested in the matter & also the despatches to & from the Colonial Office should not be put on record so as to ensure the same line being kept for the future. But doubtless there is safety in allowing the subject to drop now & we at least may be amply satisfied with the result.

Our tour this week comprised Peterborough, Stratford-on-Avon, Goderich, Tavistock, Brantford, Woodstock & Lindsay. The Shows have been very good & the fruit superb, especially the apples over which the proprietor of Coldstream is apt to linger considerably. The English market is found to be far away the best & for the best apples from Goderich they have been getting 17/- a barrel.

The local authorities are not quite sufficiently alive to the danger of crowds trying to converge on one centre & we have had several escapes from accidents owing to platforms etc. being not sufficiently strong. At Peterborough the platform was fairly stormed & it collapsed - it was not high, & no one was hurt, not even an old gentleman of over 90 who was precipitated down. At Stratford we had to pass from the Rink (where the addresses were presented & where there was a great crowd, although it was but 9.30 a.m.) back to our carriage across a wooden bridge some 20 feet high. The crowd got flurried & would not move on - more & more came pressing on from the Rink & the bridge began cracking & swaying in horrible style with all these people on it. However the cracking frightened them on happily in time - next day another platform began to crack & at the evening reception at Goderich, the crowd became utterly unmanageable & fought with the militia who had been brought in by Capt. Wilberforce’s request to help keep the passage way. The mayor sent for the police & threatened to arrest any more who gave trouble, but there was great discomfort & the poor wretches who struggled through to the so-called “reception” & to present addresses looked decidedly dishevelled & irritable. The Irish gave a nice address there about Home Industries. To make things better, the electric light went out & we finished our entertainment by the light of a single oil lamp. The militia did very well that night. We were ensconced in a retreat consecrated to Mr Walker of Walkerville’s whiskey & ale. It was bitterly cold for two days & I have succeeded in bring back a baddish cold. H.E. has kept very well, I am thankful to say & we have slept on the car throughout, the Grand Trunk kindly lending us another car. At Tavistock I found myself suddenly announced by H.E. to make a German speech at 9 a.m. without any meditation, as he had been told that the inhabitants were mainly German. I don’t believe.’

Canada for the British

Today marks the double centenary of the birth of Jeffrey Amherst, a British soldier with an illustrious career. His crowning achievement was to orchestrate Britain’s conquest of New France, ousting the French; subsequently, he became the first British governor general of the territories that eventually became Canada. He kept a diary for many years, though this was not discovered until the 1920s. There have been two editions - one in 1931, freely available online, and another in 2015 - both published in North America where there seems to be more interest in Amherst than in the UK.

The son of a lawyer, Amherst was born in Sevenoaks, England, on 29 January 1717. Aged 12, he was appointed a page to the Duke of Dorset at nearby Knole. Subsequently, in 1731, the Duke secured Amherst a commission, through Sir John Ligonier, as an ensign in the 1st foot guards, though it seems he spent his formative years in Ireland in Major-General Ligonier’s horse regiment in Ireland. Amherst saw his first active service as aide-de-camp to Ligonier in Germany during the War of the Austrian Succession, being promoted to lieutenant colonel in late 1745. He then joined the staff of William Augustus, Duke of Cumberland, for whom he organised intelligence matters. In 1753, he married Jane Dalison; following her death, he married Elizabeth Cary in 1767 - neither union produced any children.

Amherst’s first involvement in the Seven Years War took him to Germany, but when Ligonier became commander-in chief of the British forces, he was appointed to command an expedition against the French fortress of Louisbourg on Cape Breton Island (off the North American Atlantic coast, then one of the most important commercial and military centres of New France). Supported by a naval squadron, Amherst safely landed 14,000 men ashore in 1758, putting Louisbourg under siege. The town fell in seven weeks, and, soon after, Amherst was named as commander-in-chief of British forces in North America. Amherst proved more successful than his predecessors in persuading the North American colonies to support the war effort with men and finance. In mid-1760, he launched a three-pronged invasion of Canada, all converging on Montreal. The capitulation of Montreal in September marked the end of French rule in what would become Canada.

Amherst’s conquest of Canada for the British is considered his finest achievement. Having been appointed Governor-General of British North America, based in New York, he oversaw the dispatch of troops to the West Indies leading to the capture of Dominica, Martinique and Cuba in 1761-1762. In 1759, he had been named governor of Virginia (on a non-resident basis) and in 1761 he was knighted. However, his tenure as Governor-General was marred by a failure to deal well with the Native Americans. Growing unrest among many of the tribes in the Ohio Valley and Great Lakes region grew into, what became known as, Pontiac’s War in early 1763. One notorious episode, in particular, scarred his record: an attempt to infect Indians with smallpox by providing them with contaminated blankets. A long-standing request to be relieved of his command was soon granted, and he returned to England, where there was more criticism of his handling of the Pontiac War than he had expected. Around this time, he commissioned a new family house - which he called Montreal House - on the family estate near Sevenoaks.

Amherst was promoted to lieutenant-general in 1765, though that same year he was displaced - much to his annoyance - from the governance of Virginia. He was made Lieutenant-General of the Ordnance in 1772 with a Privy Council seat. Although not holding the rank of commander-in-chief  he was still considered the foremost military authority in the country. However, Amherst declined twice to return to North America to take charge of the British forces trying to quell American nationalism. In 1776, he was raised to the peerage, and two years later was promoted to full general and commander-in-chief with a seat in the Cabinet. In 1780, he was in charge of the British army when it suppressed the Gordon Riots in London; but, with a change of government in 1782, he was dismissed from his post.

After war broke out again with France, Amherst was recalled as commander-in-chief in 1793, but by 1795 he had been replaced by the king’s son, Frederick, Duke of York. Subsequently, Amherst declined an earldom but was given the highest army rank of field marshal in 1796. He died 1797. Further information can be found at Wikipedia, Dictionary of Canadian Biography or the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (log-in required).

Amherst’s diaries were discovered, in 1925, among a large collection of letters and documents being made ready for removal after the family had sold Montreal House. They were edited by John Clarence Webster for publication in 1931 by the Ryerson Press (Toronto) and the University of Chicago Press as The Journal of Jeffery Amherst Recording the Military Career of General Amherst in America from 1758 to 1763. Much more recently, in 2015, the diaries were edited by Robert J. Andrews and published in two volumes by Michigan State University Press as The Journals of Jeffery Amherst, 1757-1763. According to Michigan State University Press, the latter book is the most comprehensive study of Amherst’s role in the Seven Years’ War to date.

According to Lorne Pierce, the publisher, who wrote a foreword for Webster’s book, Amherst’s journal consists of eighteen small volumes, measuring about six and one-half by four inches, inscribed in his own hand-writing. The published journal only starts with the eighth volume, when Amherst was serving in Germany, and received the King’s command to return to England and prepare for the expedition ordered to Louisbourg. It ends just prior to Amherst’s departure for England, in November 1763. The first seven volumes, Pierce explains, ‘deal with that part of his career which is of little or no interest to students of American history.’

Pierce also adds the following critique: ‘An interesting feature of Amherst’s Journal is the great variety of details which it records. He takes time to intersperse among the more important enterprises of his campaign such incidents as, the hanging of a deserter, the scalping of a sentry, notes on topography, unusual natural phenomena, records of visits to towns and hamlets, friendly calls on both humble and distinguished citizens, exchange of flags of truce, sending of despatches, the health of the regiments, homesickness among his troops and the making of spruce beer. Following a detailed order to one of the military Governors there will appear an expression of his personal grief over the loss of a valiant junior officer; jostling a despatch to London, or plans for the siege of an enemy fortification, one will encounter spicy comments on the lack of judgment, enterprise or some other practical virtue among his officers or men, and emphatic private judgments on a great variety of subjects. Altogether it is a unique document, and amid the crowding details there emerges Amherst himself, perhaps over cautious and deliberate, certainly nothing of the dashing commander, but at any rate a competent general, who knew what he was about and how to go about it, who was everywhere and always himself, certain of his plans and confident in his opinions.’

Here are several extracts from the Webster edition (which is freely available at Internet Archive).

20 March 1758
‘We saw three sail and one we took for a french Privateer which we chased. The weather was so calm we could not get up to her; we tryed an Eighteen Pounder to throw it as far as they could but it did not go above half way to her and in the evening I believe the Privateer got out her oars, for she got allmost out of sight and we gave over the chase. In the night it began to blow very hard and the 21st it blew hard and was very heavy. In the morning as we were going Eleven Nots an hour a ship was seen to Windward laying by within half a mile of us, & was taken at first for an English frigate. Capt. Rodney ordered the Mainsail to be hauled up immediately and ship to be cleared, and knew the ship to be a french one; directlv we began to fire he hoisted English colours, and on continuing to fire at him as he did not lower his sail his English ensign was blown away and he hoisted French. The Dublin fired five and twenty or thirty shots, and the frenchman three and some musketry and then struck. The first Lieut., Mr. Worth, went on board her and sent the captain who told us he came from L’Isle de Bourbon, had been four weeks on his Voyage and was laying by for fair weather to run into Brest which he said was twenty leagues from him, that he had seven hundred Thousand Pounds weight of Coffee, Part for the India Company and part for Monsr. LeBorde, Merchant at Bayonne, and some thousand Pounds of Logwood 40,000 P weight; his Vessel LeMonmartel of about 400 Tons and 73 men, officers included. All the men except the sick were brought on board just before night and 30 men sent with Lt. Worth into the Prize.’

13 June 1758
‘A fine morning but a most terrible day afterwards. We could not land anything. Getting our tools on shore last night we worked to clear a Road from the Right to the Left, I walked in the morning over the Front with M. McKullogh (McKellar) and ordered three Redoutes in front. At twelve about 200 came from the Town and got toward our Camp; we beat them back with 40 men and some of the Light Infantry before two Picquets got up to their assistance.’

15 June 1758
‘The Redoutes not finished, I ordered them to be palisaded. A good deal of firing in the night at sea. I sent away everything to Br. Wolfe that he asked, added to his Artillery two 18-inch and two 13-inch Mortars. I could not yet get any artillery on Shore. At night two deserters from Volontaires Etrangers, said the 13th they had 40 wounded in the Skirmish, 5 killed. Fine weather today. Sir C. Hardy came back and anchored off the Harbour, I was afraid last night as the Harbour was open the Enemy might have warped a Ship out and took our ordinance and Sloops at the Mackarel Cove and Lorembeck.’

30 June 1758
‘We continued working at the Road between the advanced Redoute and Green Hill — very heavy and tedious. A great deal of Cannonading all day and Skirmishing. The Enemy sunk four ships the 29th in the night in the Harbours Mouth, the Apollo, a two-decker was one, La Fidelle of 36 Guns another and La Pierre and La Biche of 16 Guns each the two others, and this last night they cut off most of their Masts. Remained in the Harbour 5 two deckers and one Frigate, Le Prudent, L’Entreprenant, Le Celebre, Le Bienfaisant, Le Capricieux, L’Arethuse Frigate, 36 Guns. At night we had a good deal of firing in the rear; some of the Marines at Kenning ton Cove thought they saw Indians. The Frigate 46 fired near 100 Shot at night at our Epaulement.’

6 July 1758
‘I went over all the works, asked the Admiral for four 32-Pounders to joyn Br. Wolfe which he readily granted. I changed the Guards, took 600 Men and 3 Companies of Grenadiers to the Right and 300 Men to Green Hill. I put a Subaltern and 24 in each Redoute, the works on the Right were continued and perfected; cannonading continued all day. At night Br. Wolfes Battery forced the Frigate to retire. We lost some few men by the cannonading and some wounded. The Admiral sent me a letter taken out of a French mans Pocket who was found drowned. A Sloop sailed out of the Harbour with a flag of truce to Sir C. Hardy, to carry some things to their wounded officers and Prisoners.’

6 September 1759
‘I sent a Scouting Party on the west to try to track the three People that the man of Ruggles reported he had seen the Tracks going down the Lake. Wrote Col Montresor to forward some tools &c demanded for Oswego. Capt Gray returned at night; said he had spyed out three boats at the Narrows, just as he was coming back; that he lowered his sail to wait for them but they stoped or, rather, seemed to go over to the Eastern Shore. I suppose a scalping Party, as they appeared just at night. I ordered the Guards on the batteaus to be particularly watchful, our Deserters of which they have two from Gages & one from the Inniskilling (who probably robbed Capt Williams) may have told them they can burn our boats. I ordered two boats with three Pounders, a Canoo of Indians, a whale boat of Rangers, 24 men & a Sub. of light Infantry in two whale boats to go early under the comand of the Capt. of Gages with the daily Guard of 60 men of that Regt; to march a body down the Eastern side of the Lake & come back on the West. If the Enemy land any people & draw up a boat they must find it.’

25 September 1760
‘Our Battery continued firing with good Success. Col Williamson began to fear his ammunition would fall short, as he has such a quantity on board the Onondaga. I therefore consulted with Lt Sinclair & the Seamen the best method of getting it out by night which was fixed on. In the Afternoon Mons Pouchot put a stop to our Preparations by Beating a Parley and sending me a Letter which I immediately answered & sent him terms of Capitulation by Capt Prescott for him to sign & send back to me, which he did. I ordered Lt Col Massey with three Companys of Grenadiers to take Possession of the Fort [Fort Levis on Isle Royale], the Garrison being Prisoners of War. I did not permit an Indian to go in. The Garrison that remained consisted of 291 including Officers. 12 men were killed with a Lt of Artillery & 35 were wounded.

Their Artillery consisted of twelve 12-Prs, two 8-Prs, thirteen 4-Prs, four 1 Pr & four Brass 6 Prs, besides several Guns with Trunions broke off, small Arms, and a great quantity of Powder & ball & provisions.’

Adieu to my youth

‘Pretty cold this morning but we must get the carriage repaired, which broke down last night about 12 oclock. Managed to get to the polling place about an hour and half before it closed. This is my birthday, it is now 21 years since I came into this world. “Adieu to my youth - ” ’ This is Sandford Fleming, the great Scots-Canadian railway engineer, born 190 years go today, who created the idea of a standard worldwide time. Although he kept a diary for most of his life, he rarely wrote more than a few words each day. A selection of his youthful diary entries - considered rather ‘laconic and factual’ - were published in 2009, but, according to one critic, shed more light on that period in Canadian history than on the great engineer to be.

Fleming was born on 7 January 1827 in Kirkcaldy, Scotland. Aged 14, he was apprenticed to a prominent Fifeshire surveyor and assisted in tracking new railway lines between Edinburgh, Perth and Dundee. In 1845, he and an elder brother emigrated to Canada; their parents followed a little later. After dallying in various colonial Canadian cities, such as Montreal and Ottawa, the brothers settled in Peterborough lodging with a cousin.

Fleming moved to Toronto, where he worked with a printing company while looking to further his engineering career, through securing his surveyor’s qualification and by taking on various commissions. He was also involved in founding the Canadian Institute, and is credited with designing Canada’s first postage stamp, costing three pennies and depicting a beaver, now the national animal of Canada. Fleming married Ann Jean Hall, daughter of the county’s sheriff, in 1855, and they had six children.

From 1852 onwards, Fleming took a prominent part in the development of railways in Upper Canada; from 1855 to 1863 he was chief engineer of the Northern Railway. In 1863, the colonial government of Nova Scotia appointed him chief railway engineer and charged him with construction of a line from Truro to Pictou. On refusing to entertain high bids for small contracts, he resigned his position and carried out the work as a contractor rather than a civil servant. In 1867 or so, he was appointed by the new dominion government to the post of engineer-in-chief of the Inter-Colonial Railway, a position he would hold until its completion in 1876.

Meanwhile, in 1871, the construction of a Canadian Pacific Railway had been made part of the bargain by which British Columbia was induced to enter the new dominion, and Fleming was appointed the project’s engineer-in-chief. The following year, he headed an expedition to find a practicable route. In 1880, with over 600 miles of railway completed and most of the engineering difficulties overcome, the government decided to form an agreement with the Canadian Pacific Railway Company, handing over the project - together with vast subsidies of land and money - to the new commercial company. The privatisation was a severe blow to Fleming, who was effectively dismissed. However, a few years later he became a director of the Canadian Pacific Railway.

From 1880, Fleming was chancellor of Queen’s University in Kingston, a position he retained until his death. Apart from remaining involved in various commercial projects, he continued to devote himself to Canadian and Imperial problems, such as the unification of time reckoning throughout the world (and, indeed, is credited with inventing the ideal of unification and time zones), and the construction of a state-owned system of telegraphs throughout the British empire. He was knighted by Queen Victoria in 1897. His final years were spent mostly at his house in Halifax. He died in 1915, leaving the house and its 95 acres to the city, an area now known as Sir Sandford Fleming Park. Further information on Fleming can be found at Wikipedia, Dictionary of Canadian Biography, Web Exhibits, Atlas of Alberta Railways, and Queen’s University.

The 190th anniversary of Fleming’s birth is being commemorated today with a so-called Google doodle - and this in turn has led to sudden spurt of attention by the media to the great (and largely forgotten in the UK until now) Scottish engineer - see The Telegraph, The Independent, India Today, or The Sun. Not so forgotten in Canada: in 2009, the Toronto-based publisher, Dundurn, brought out Sir Sandford Fleming - His Early Diaries, 1845-1853 by Jean Murray Cole (which can be previewed at Googlebooks). According to Cole, Fleming began his lifelong habit of keeping a journal in Scotland on 1 January 1845, just seven days before his 18th birthday. Her book contains the early journals (1845-1853) which, she says, ‘give a vivid picture of Fleming’s development and maturing as he sought to make a place for himself in the competitive atmosphere of Canada West in the 1840 and 1850s.’

Michael Peterman, a past professor of English at Trent University, begins his foreword to the diaries as follows: ‘It is with great pleasure that I write this Foreword to Sir Sandford Fleming: The Early Diaries. As the Chair of the Publications Committee of the Peterborough Historical Society for the past fifteen years, I have shared with my fellow committee members a commitment to see this project shaped and realized. It began as an idea in the mid-1990s, spurred on by Jean Murray Cole, who had studied Fleming’s life and admired his diaries in their home at Library and Archives Canada. We felt then that an annotated and accurate transcript of young Sandford’s early diaries would make a useful and informative addition to the record of life in pre-Confederation Canada. It would provide a view of the colony through the eyes of a young and ambitious Scottish immigrant as he struggled to make a place for himself in a new land, to find satisfying work for his talents, and to develop his professional interests. Laconic and factual as the diary entries often are, they take us into the texture of Fleming’s brave new world and alert us to the kind of community he had to deal with as he sought to make a career and place for himself. To him, Canada was “a marvellous world” and a ‘‘goodly land.” ’

Richard White, reviewing the diaries in The Canadian Historical Review (Volume 91, Number 3, September 2010), agrees with Peterman’s assessment that the laconic, factual nature of the entries leave rather a lot unsaid: ‘The problem is that the diaries say so little. They are brief daily entries that simply note the main activities of the day. Some are very short - ‘Christmas. Out sleighing. Good dinner at the Drs’ (25 December 1845), ‘At Timson’s yesterday. Very severe frost. Drawing class evening’ (13 Februaray 1849), ‘Preparing paper and diagrams for Saturday evening’ (20 March 1851). Others are more substantial - ‘Intended going over to the Island to set back meridian but wind blowing & exceedingly cold, called on Lieut de Moleyers who thinks that I had better finish my drawing of Gloucester Bay immediately while the weather is rough & attend to this afterward’ (19 January 1852). Such entries do reveal details that researchers of early engineering and surveying techniques might find useful, but they are still very short, rarely more than four or five lines of printed text, and they leave much unsaid. The months and years go by without much of Fleming’s character being revealed. One has the sense that almost anyone could have written these entries.’

However, White does not believe they are quite so valuable in providing a forecast of the man to come: ‘In time, though, the numerous mundane facts and details begin shaping into a sketchy picture of Fleming, and perhaps the most striking quality that emerges is how resourceful and capable a man he was. He arrived in Canada with several valuable skills - drawing, drafting, surveying, engraving - and he used them all to make a living. He pursued every opportunity, and every job he did seems to have brought him some recognition, and often the opportunity to do the same again. The entries also reveal a strong commitment to work. A large map of Toronto, which he surveyed, drew, and engraved in association with the Toronto printers Scobie & Balfour, was a multi-year project, on which he seems to have persevered with extraordinary tenacity. All in all, Fleming emerges as the essential self-made man who established himself through his own competence and effort. One gets glimpses of his humbleness too. In one of his few reflective entries Fleming looks back and marvels that ‘a poor boy came to this country 8½ years ago with his brother’ (6 September 1953) and that he is now so respected and financially secure. The entries are slim, to be sure, and the editor’s concluding claim that the diary offers ‘a clear forecast of the accomplishments of his later years’ overstates the matter, but something of the man emerges, no doubt.’

Nevertheless, White believes there might be value in the picture that the diaries draw of the period: ‘These hundreds of mundane details, taken together, also reveal something of the world Fleming inhabited - that intriguing period from the late 1840s to the 1850s that was such a critical moment in the modernization of English Canada - and although the editor makes little mention of this it could well be as important as what the diary says about Fleming.’

Here are several extracts from Sir Sandford Fleming - His Early Diaries, 1845-1853.

1 January 1845
‘I went to bed for the last time in the year 1844 at 11 oclock, and rose at ½ past 7 on new years day. Almost everyone you met said “good new year to ye” &c. Happy to say I saw noone drunk except a carter boy who I believed pretended more than anything else. I finished a sketch of ‘Ravenscraig Castle’ in the morning which Mr Crawford was to make arrangements with Mr Lizars about the engraving of it. Began in the evening to draw on stone Kirkcaldy harbour to be lithographed by Mr Bryson. My present wish is to write a sort of diary so that I can put down anything particular that happens or is of utility to recollect.’

January 1848
‘How strange it sounds, but it will soon be familiar to us. Poor 1847 is dead, is now numbered with the past, and all our deeds and actions, evil or good are sealed. Yes sealed with the great seal of time. Let us form a good resolution to live the lives of honest men, let us learn the way to do good, and walk upright. If it should be for no other purpose than to honour our Father and Mother dear, to comfort them in their old age. Surely we could not see their grey hair go with sorrow to the grave.’

1 January 1848
‘Last night David, Ann & I were at a wedding. The party were very merry, finished about 3 A.M. and most of us went to finish at another party. It is enough to say we got to bed about 7 oclock and got up about eleven. David and I called upon several friends during the day, being the usual custom.’

3 January 1848
‘At work again, engraving a view of St Peters Church, Cobourg. It is very tedious work. Would rather be in the country chopping. It may be so but one is never content with their present condition.’

4 January 1848
Again at St Peters in the forenoon, but think it as well to give it up, in the mean time, as it is not likely that I shall make a good job of it when my mind does not go along with it.’

5 January 1848
‘Today I have commenced to design a Town Hall for the Town of Cobourg, as I promised when I was down last. It may never be of any pecuniary advantage to me but it is practice and they may probably take my unsold plans of Cobourg, as a sort of remuneration for me.’

6 January 1848
‘In the forenoon today I have been engaged sketching out a plan for the Town Hall at Cobourg. Afternoon I volunteered my services to take out two voters to the Township of Scott about 50 miles from Toronto. We started about 5 oclock P.M. and slept in Buffalo robes at the village of Stouffville 30 miles out.’

7 January 1848
‘Pretty cold this morning but we must get the carriage repaired, which broke down last night about 12 oclock. Managed to get to the polling place about an hour and half before it closed. This is my birthday, it is now 21 years since I came into this world. “Adieu to my youth - ” ’

8 January 1848
‘Winter morning - snowing. Started for Toronto, our ride was through the bush, only one house for about 10 miles. Arrived at Newmarket where the Hon Robert Baldwin is here with his party, they having defeated our friend Mr. Scobie by 260 majority. Went up to Sharon and saw David Willson & Temple.’

10 January 1848
‘Sunday is omitted in this Diary. It being near one before getting home I did not get up till near church time. Poor Mr. Russell confectioner was burnt out yesterday morning at 4 oclock. Lost all but the lives of his family. Today I have commenced at Scobie & Balfour again.’

11 January 1848
‘The balance of the 1st Quarters rent is due today amounting to £3.10. £1.10 being paid on taking the house. Reed 10/ from Scobie & Balfour to make up the balance. Mr. Holland promised to give me 4 dollars for making a plan for Mr Bethune.’

12 January 1848
‘Little Mr Buchan, Scobie & Balfour engraver had been drunk last night and cant work today. Silly fellow to spend his time and money, and breaking his constitution. Can it be possible that I shall be a drunkard; surely not. Paid the Jew £3/10 the Quarter rent.’

14 January 1848
‘The weather is unusually mild, it rained almost all day. In the evening a fire broke out in Yonge Street in a wooden house, but owing to the rain and the plentiful supply of water in the ditches, the fire was prevented from going farther.

15 January 1848
‘Last evening I saw along with Cochrane the sculptor, some plaster casts that have just been brought to town for the Society of Arts. There is some good things among them. Went over to John Buchans last night, he was just getting better from being drunk poor fellow. He has kept sober a long time now.’

17 January 1848
‘Today is Handsel Monday, if all is well there will be great merry makings at  Haugh Mills. Reed from Scobie & Balfour £2/10 paid Father £2/5. Last Wednesday I got from David 7 dollars to help pay the rent which with the other two makes 9 dollars I gave my Father that time & owe David $7. Engaged at Scobies just now making a title to the Newcastle & Colborne map. There is a vast deal of work at it, but shall try to make a good job.’

19 January 1848
‘In the afternoon today my Father, David, Mr Pollock & I went out to the Humber Mills about 16 miles out, to see them, they are to let or sell. It is a pretty place, a flour mill with two runs of stones just finished and a good saw mill with plenty of pine.’

26 January 1848
‘I have been thinking for some time that, the charcoal light of the magnetic battery might be brought to some practical use. I only require one experiment, but it would be an expensive one for me unless I could meet with a powerful battery, but I dont think there is one in Canada. It is to try if more than one light can be formed with one set of wires by masking the connection and interposing charcoal points. If this is the case, we have a good and cheap substitute for Gas, would give a much better light, and at least could be easily adapted to lighting streets or churches just by having a wire like the Telegraph ones, with a charcoal apparatus here & there. Worth trying.’

V happy with E

‘Oh E, how can I live separated from you? What have I done to us? If I stopped caring, I should never care for anything. If I stopped fearing this, I should fear nothing again.’ This is Charles Ritchie, a Canadian diplomat born 110 years ago today, writing in his diary - which he often did - of his love for the British writer Elizabeth Bowen. They lived very separate lives, often in different countries, and were both married, yet their passionate love for each other - documented in his diary and her letters - survived more than 30 years, indeed until Bowen’s death.

Ritchie was born in Halifax, Nova Scotia, on 23 September 1906. His father, a lawyer and 25 years older than his mother, died when he was 10. He was educated at a series of schools, at least one in England, before moving on to spend a considerable amount of time at universities in Halifax, Oxford and Harvard. While still a teenager, he had received an unexpected letter from Sir Robert Borden, then Canada’s Prime Minister and his father’s former friend. In the letter, Borden explained that he was hoping to set up a Canadian foreign service, and he suggested that Ritchie might like to consider working there. Thus, in mid-1934, Ritchie joined the Department of External Affairs. His first posting abroad came in 1936, to Washington, and then in early 1939 he was transferred to London.

According to Ritchie (in The Siren Years - see below), wartime London was a forcing ground for love and friendship, and so it proved for himself. In 1941, he met and fell in love with the writer Elizabeth Bowen. She had been married for 18 years, and was seven years older than Ritchie who had never been married. Their relationship would last more than 30 years, for the rest of Bowen’s life, surviving past the death of Bowen’s husband and through Ritchie’s own marriage (to Sylvia Smellie), though they would never spend more than a week or so together at any one time. After the war, in the mid-1950s, Ritchie was promoted to ambassador in Germany.

Subsequently, Ritchie served as Canada’s Permanent Representative to the United Nations (1958-1962), as ambassador in Washington (1962-1966), and as High Commissioner in London (1967-1971). On retiring he returned to Ottawa though he continued as a special adviser to the Privy Council. He also began editing his diaries for publication. He died in 1995. There is a very little detailed information about Ritchie readily available online, despite his prominence as a Canadian diplomat and diarist, but see Wikipedia, The Canadian Encyclopedia, The Independent’s obituary, or this Robert Fulford article.

The first collection of diary extracts Ritchie put together was published by Macmillan (as were all his diaries) in 1974 under the title The Siren Years: Undiplomatic Diaries, 1937-1945. See Googlebooks for a  preview and The Captive Reader for a review and extracts. An Appetite for Life: The Education of a Young Diarist, 1924-1927 followed in 1977 (see Googlebooks for a preview), as did Diplomatic Passport: More Undiplomatic Diaries, 1946-1962 in 1981, and Storm Signals: More Undiplomatic Diaries 1962-1971 in 1983. A compendium of the undiplomatic diaries was brought out in 2008 by McClellan & Steward - see Amazon. Also in 2008, Simon & Schuster published Love’s Civil War: Elizabeth Bowen and Charles Ritchie, Letters and Diaries, 1941-1973, as edited by Victoria Glendinning with Judith Robertson. See The Guardian for an article by Glendinning on her book.

In his foreword to The Siren Years, Ritchie explains how he came to be a diarist: ‘It was with adolescence that the diary addiction fixed its yoke on me - a yoke which in the succeeding fifty years I have never been able entirely to shake off, although there have been merciful intervals of abstinence. The habit had begun even earlier - had sprouted furtively when I was a schoolboy. Its seed was perhaps already sown when I would write on the front of school books, Charles Stewart Almon Ritchie, King’s Collegiate School, Windsor, Nova Scotia, Canada, North America, The World, The Universe, September 23rd, 1918, 3:17 p.m. - an early compulsion to fix myself in space and in time. Once given over to this mania there was no cure for it. With obstinate obsessiveness I continued to scribble away. Now the toppling piles of my old diaries are mountains of evidence against me, but I still postpone the moment to destroy them. Their writing and subsequent concealment were intentionally secretive - to have them discovered and read would have meant to be caught in the practice of “solitary vice.” ’

The following extracts from Ritchie’s diaries are all taken from Love’s Civil War except the first, which comes from The Siren Years.

28 September 1938.
‘We are now on the very edge of war. Already my feelings have changed since I last wrote. Perhaps I am already beginning to suffer from war blindness. I feel more and more part of my generation and my country and less an individual.

The war offers us no ideal worth dying for - we make no sacrifice for a noble cause. We fight with no faith in the future. It is too late to pretend (though we shall pretend) that we are defending the sanctity of international obligations or the freedom of individuals. We are fighting because we cannot go on any longer paying blackmail to a gangster. Whoever wins, we who belong to what we call “twentieth century civilization” are beaten before we start. We have had our chance since 1918 to make a more reasonable and safer world. Now we have to go and take our punishment for having missed that chance. We have willed the ends but we have not willed the means to attain those ends. That must be our epitaph.

Here in America it is “business as usual.” Tonight I have been listening to the radio for hours. It reflects the stream of normal American existence, the advertising, the baseball games, the swing music, but every few moments this stream is interrupted by a press bulletin from Europe. More mobilizations. Hitler may march before morning. These warnings from another world give Americans shivers down their spine, make them draw the curtains closer and huddle around their own fireside thanking God that they are safe from the storm outside.’

18 October 1941
‘My bed smells of her over-sweet violet scent. It is queer that she uses such an obvious scent - the perfume that goes with blondes and floating veils and sentiment . . .

I am reading The Death of the Heart in her special edition. It is an exact description of her house and of her husband. The position of the sofa in the drawing-room, the electric fire in his ‘study’ are all described exactly as they are. What is alarming is the husband is an unsparing portrait of A. I read this novel with most curious feelings as ‘a work of the imagination’; it has been destroyed for me by my knowledge of the particular circumstances. . . . She took that from here, she copied that turn of speech, that must be so-and-so, these thoughts go through my mind as I am reading. It is like eating an elaborate dish after seeing the materials of which it is made up lying about in the kitchen, or being so near the ballet that you can see the make-up.’

20 February 1947
‘V happy with E. We have spent the weekend huddled over the weak radiator and the whiskey bottle or on the enormous ‘made for love’ bed. It’s like life on board ship, we sally out on the windswept deck-like boulevards for a ‘blow’ and are glad to be back in this cabin-like flat - which more than anything else is like a suite on a luxury liner.’

16 October 1949 [Hotel de la Paix, Geneva]
‘To understand one’s own destiny, to have some framework in which to see this floating shifting mass of experience, to chart these currents, these shocks and depths and dangerous rocks, not to die without knowledge. Oh E, how can I live separated from you? What have I done to us? If I stopped caring, I should never care for anything. If I stopped fearing this, I should fear nothing again. . . In a dim way I like this feeling of being alone and taking up this monologue. I miss my wife. I want her. I am waiting for her. Yet this time of recuperation is quietly, sadly pleasant.’

9 February 1952
‘I think that part of my reaction of boredom and distaste for Spender’s book comes from being reminded by it of countless pages of similar self-absorption in my own diaries. When I first knew E, I was surprised and rather disconcerted by her lack of concern with her own ‘interesting personality’. I found it difficult to accept when she, the leading psychological novelist of the day, told me that she was not interested in people and their motives and characters. I now understand what she meant. The exercise no longer amuses me. In fact it is only from obstinacy that I write this private diary at all.’

18 August 1952
‘With me love for a woman is always linked with a need to betray that love; a compulsion which I dread and desire. But there are times when that interminable dialogue of marriage seems interminable. It gives one a feeling of pure pain to think that it must go on and on and on. I am pretty sure that I should feel that whoever I had married.’

17 June 1956
‘Sad, lonely, undemanding letter from E. The truth is that I am anaesthetized to this existence, even quite enjoy it. Someone said I look ten years younger. I am all right if I keep going - much more cheerful than this diary shows.’

11 March 1957
‘I cannot describe the state I was in yesterday (can it have been only yesterday?) when I flew back from Ireland - the hallucinatory depression, the complete undermining of all confidence, the corroding guilt and sorrow. I never expected to feel all this again. E says that it is a ‘natural’ consequence of our parting, but it went much deeper than that. . . She says she can’t bear to think of me sealed away from life. I can’t bear to think of that myself, and it is true; but if that last day is life, can I bear it? She says she feels it is some deficiency in her love which drove me to it, but isn’t it some deficiency in me? No, this strain was too great. I cannot forgive myself for my impatience, my unlovingness, my dry irritability, my inability to accept. Yet I can entirely forgive myself. I understand and must never forget that all my cut and dried plans are the amusement of a bored man and bear no relation to reality. No, it was heart-breaking. How can I bear the memory of that last morning at the Shelbourne. How can I ever forget it. Surely I can’t go on as I did before, yet I feel that is just what I will do; that the scales will form over my eyes, that merciful banality will set me off from life in my Cologne Nursing Home. Oh Elizabeth!’

The Diary Junction