What could become of me

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

20 September 1825 

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

21 September 1825

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

22 September 1825

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

20 March 1843

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

13 February 1851

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

20 ]une 1857

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

21 June 1857

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

7 December 1867

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

Incredibly fantastic

Lili Elbe, a Danish painter and famously a transgender woman, was born 140 years ago today. She wrote an autobiographical memoir - Man into Woman: An Authentic Record of a Change of Sex - which was first published in English in 1933 and included substantial extracts from her diaries. Norman Haire, a medical practitioner and sexologist, who provided an introduction to the book, starts by noting that this story ‘must seem incredibly fantastic’.

Einar Wegener was born in Vejle, Denmark, on 28 December 1882, the son of a spice merchant. Little seems to be known about his early life, but he attended the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts in Copenhagen. There, he met Gerda Gottlieb. They married in 1905, and both worked as illustrators, Einar producing landscape paintings while Gottlieb illustrated for books and fashion magazines. Einar won the Neuhausens prize in 1907 and exhibited at the Vejle Art Museum in Denmark, among other places. In time, Gottlieb became famous for her paintings of beautiful women with haunting eyes and chic clothes. The story goes that Wegener first started dressing in women’s clothes to stand in for Gottlieb’s models.

The couple travelled in France and Italy, before settling in Paris, where Wegener felt freer to entertain at home or appear in public dressed as a woman. Over time, the female side of his personality became increasingly important, leading him to research his behaviour, and to consult doctors. In 1930, physicians found that he had more female than male hormones (and therefore may have had what is now known as Klinefelter syndrome). That same year, he began to undergo a series of experimental surgical procedures, to remove his testicles and penis and to transplant ovaries and a uterus into his body. In October 1930, a Danish court annulled his marriage, and he was able to have his sex and name legally changed, to Lili Ilse Elvenes. The pseudonym Lili Elbe first came from a Danish newspaper article. She died in 1931, not long after the fifth procedure. Further information can be found at Wikipedia and Encyclopaedia Britannica.

Not long after Elbe’s death, in 1932, the story of his/her transition was published in Danish, and it was soon translated into German and English. The English version (translated from the German by  H. J. Stenning) was published in 1933 by Jarrolds as Man into Woman: An Authentic Record of a Change of Sex with the subtitle The true story of the miraculous transformation of the Danish painter Einar Wegener (Andreas Sparre). The book is freely available at Internet Archive. An introduction is provided by Norman Haire who was a medical practitioner and sexologist. He writes: ‘To the reader unfamiliar with the unhappy byways of sexual pathology, the story told in this book must seem incredibly fantastic. [. . .]

The story of this strange case has been written by Niels Hoyer, partly from his own knowledge, partly from material dictated by Lili herself, partly from Lili's diaries, and partly from letters written by Lili and other persons concerned. The biographer states that the surgeon who performed the operation has passed his account of the case as correct.’

In fact, Niels Hoyer was a pseudonym for a friend of Elbe’s, but the text was written by Elbe herself. Throughout, and very confusingly, he/she uses various names for her male and female sides, as well as pseudonyms for everyone else. Much discussion of these names, and of the work in general and many other issues connected with it can be found in a scholarly edition of the work published in 2020 by Bloomsbury (edited by Pamela L. Caughie and Sabine Meyer). There is also a companion website where the texts can be read online - Lili Elbe Digital Archive.

In her original text, Elbe quotes from her diaries extensively and from those kept by Gottlieb. However, she never tells us much about her diaries, her diary-writing habit, nor does she date most of the quoted entries. However she does tell us a bit about Gerda’s diary: ‘During these days Grete began to keep a diary. Every evening she recorded therein her observations, and the experiences which crowded thickly upon her in the company of the new Lili, in simple, almost fumbling sentences, seeking the way of her friend - this difficult, wonderful way upon which Lili had scarcely ventured to take the first step. Here is a leaf from the diary that she started: “Lili bears everything with incredible patience. True, she whimpers every morning, and even yet believe. . .  Or is it that she will not yet show that she believes?” ’

Here is one example of how Elbe used her own diary in writing Man into Woman (NB: Evidently in the narrative, she refers to herself in the third person, with Andreas being her male side and Lili her female side.)

‘Only one thing troubled her rather more than she liked. In contrast to Grete’s and Andreas’ women friends, who had long since accepted Lili as one of themselves, with few exceptions, all the male friends of Andreas avoided Lili. Grete, who had expected help and sympathy for Lili from them most of all, and in this belief had revealed Lili’s existence to them, was very distressed over this failure on the part of Andreas’ friends, all the more so as just at that time the whole secret of Andreas and Lili was divulged in Copenhagen through the indiscretion of a Parisian woman friend and eventually published in unreserved fashion by an organ of the Press. Lili learned of this by accident. All her gaiety vanished again. For many days she would not stir out of her attic. She paid no heed to anything, and could not understand why none of Andreas' friends found their way to her. A little entry in her diary tells of this:

“How is it possible that all Andreas’ friends here have left me in the lurch? That they all avoid me as if I were a pariah? What have I done to them? Andreas was always ready to help them. He was always a reliable friend. And now one of them says that just because he esteemed Andreas so highly he could never recognize Lili. Lili would always stand between him and Andreas. He would shudder at offering her his hand. This sentiment is nothing but an eruption of overweening masculinity. And another excuses himself with other subterfuges. One could not be seen walking with Lili in the streets without compromising himself. Copenhagen was too small to show oneself publicly with such a pitiful creature, unmolested and unsuspected.” ’

And here is another example.

‘Lili now realized that the crisis through which she had passed, especially when she was first in Denmark, and from the effects of which she was still suffering, was a natural consequence of the implantation which had been carried out upon her. She perceived how her whole cerebral function had received a new direction.

She confided all this to her diary:

“In the first months after my operation it was necessary above all else to recuperate. When this had happened to some extent, the physical change in me began. My breasts formed, my hips changed and became softer and rounder. And at the same time other forces began to stir in my brain and to choke whatever remnants of Andreas still remained there. A new emotional life was arising within me.” ’

Danish flight pioneer

The Danish watchmaker Christian Hansen Ellehammer - born 150 years ago today - is not a name immediately associated with the history of aviation. However, the successful development of an early motorcycle brought him funds to indulge an interest in powered flight. He built the world’s first air-cooled radial engine, and other innovations - the triplane and helicopter - followed. Thanks to a diary-keeping cousin, we have first hand contemporary reports, albeit brief, of key moments in the testing of Ellehammer’s prototypes.

Ellehammer was born on 14 June 1871 in Bakkebølle, Denmark. He was apprenticed as a watchmaker, and then moved to Copenhagen where he worked as an electronics mechanic. In 1898, he established a company to produce electronic machinery. The first of his own successful design/inventions was a motorcycle called the ‘Elleham’ with the engine situated beneath the seating, similar in fact to the Vespa scooter 40 years later. This was a commercial success, and provided him with sufficient funds to experiment with powered flight. 

Using calculations derived from birds, Ellehammer developed an engine lightweight enough to lift himself in the air - this was the world’s first radial engine (with three cylinders). For the wings, he experimented with kites, finally arriving at a shape similar to hang gliders of the future. On 28 August 1906, Ellehammer’s cousin Lars recorded (in an old form of the Danish language) the first successful flight with a brief entry. Translated - and many thanks to Historic Wings for this information - it reads: ‘Tried with Ellehammer on board but without take off. Changed the engine timing with more preignition. Lifted off the ground then with Ellehammer on board we got momentarily off, making it 12 degrees [around the center pole].’

Two weeks later, on 12 September, they were trying again with an 18 hp engine (as opposed to the 9 hp used earlier). Lars’s diary: ‘Wind at 2-3 meters per second. Wind direction northeast.  Flew the whole way around. Hovered with the front and rear wheels [off the ground] traveling approximately [a distance of] 42 meters, reaching an altitude of 1 ½ feet high, as it came up against the [strong] wind.  Ellehammer was on board the whole time.  I took photos of it in flight . . .’

Ellehammer made over 200 flights from 1906 to 1909 in a tethered plane, all without serious accident. Step by step, he increased the engine power and refined the design, developing a monoplane, a semi-biplane and a helicopter. In 1908, he won a prize for an 11 second flight in front of Prince Henry of Prussia but, by this time, he was hearing news of more successful developments taking place in other countries. Nevertheless, he continued inventing, developing a special carburettor, a stationary air-cooled engine for airplanes, and a pump for fire extinguishers. Around 1920, he built a laboratory designed by a new firm of influential Danish architects. He died in 1946. In 1986, he was inducted into the International Air & Space Hall of Fame at the San Diego Air & Space Museum. There is very little biographical information about Ellehammer online in English other than at Wikipedia (see also an English translation of the Danish entry) and Historic Wings.

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

How the other half lives

Today marks the centenary of the death of Jacob Riis, a Danish immigrant who shocked New York society in the late 1880s with his reportage on the city’s slums. He is particularly remembered for being the first person in the US to use photography - especially with newly developed flash techniques - to capture conditions in slum tenements. His 1890 book, How the Other Half Lives, is considered a pioneering work of photojournalism, i.e. in its use of photographic evidence to press for social reform. The book attracted the attention of Theodore Roosevelt, then serving as president of the New York Board of Police Commissioners, and led to the two becoming friends. Although not a committed diarist, Riis did keep pocket books at times, and he left behind at least two, both of which are held by New York Public Library. Although their contents have not been published, two recent biographies have made use of them.

Riis was born in Ribe, Denmark, in 1849, into a large family headed by his father, a school teacher. He became apprenticed as a carpenter, but in 1870, having been disappointed in love, and frustrated by local job opportunities, he emigrated to the United States. Life for Riis as an immigrant was tough. He moved around from place to place, often without money, looking for work. For a while, he achieved some stability jobbing as a carpenter among the Scandinavian communities in Western Philadelphia. He also had a successful turn as a salesman selling flatirons and fluting irons, but then found himself cheated out of his savings. Eventually, he chanced on a trainee position for the New York News Association which led to him being made editor of a weekly newspaper.

In 1876, Riis lost his job; and he went back to Denmark where he married his childhood sweetheart, Elizabeth, before returning to New York. They would have three children. Riis tried out several jobs before being offered a position as police reporter on the New York Tribune, work which took him into the most crime-ridden and impoverished streets of the city, particularly the infamous Mulberry Bend area. He became appalled by the abject living conditions, those which he saw around him, and which he himself had experienced. He worked at the Tribune until 1888, reporting often on the slum conditions; and although, subsequently, he took a position with the Evening Sun, he soon left journalism to become more of a full-time campaigner for social reform, to improve the lives of the poor.

As a police reporter, Riis had started to use camera images, taken by himself or by others under his supervision, to prove the truth of his words, to provide incontrovertible evidence of the existence of, for example, vagrant children, squalid housing and the disgraceful conditions in the tenements. But in the late 1880s, he began to experiment with the use of flashlight powder - a technique that was still very much in its infancy - which allowed him to take pictures of the interiors of shoddy housing, and of extreme poverty. These photographs shocked the New York middle and upper classes.

In 1890, Riis wrote the first and most influential of his published works: How the Other Half Lives: Studies among the Tenements of New York. This consisted of 25 chapters of reportage based on his own personal investigation, and 40 plates, 17 of which were direct halftone reproductions of photographs - which, despite their poor quality, proved more persuasive than any illustrations that had gone before. How the Other Half Lives has its own Wikipedia page, and the full text and photographs are widely available online, at Internet Archive, Bartleby and Authentic History.

Naomi Rosenblum, in her impressive tome A World History of Photography, explains Riis’s importance: ‘Before 1890, tracts on social problems in the United States had been largely religious in nature, stressing “redemption of the erring and sinful.” Such works usually were illustrated with engravings that at times acknowledged a photographic source and at others gave the artistic imagination free reign. After the appearance of How The Other Half Lives, however, photographic “evidence” became the rule for publications dealing with social problems even though the texts might still consider poverty to be the result of moral inadequacy rather than economic laws.’

Riis retired from journalism to devote, in fact, the rest of his life to raising awareness about New York City’s slums. His book brought him to the attention of Theodore Roosevelt, who served as president of the New York Board of Police Commissioners from 1895 to 1897, before becoming Governor Of New York State, and then President of the US. Roosevelt befriended Riis and, reportedly, went with Riis on some of his late-night adventures into the slums.

Riis continued to write books and articles, and he lectured extensively. In 1901 he published an autobiography, The Making of an American - which is freely available at Internet Archive. Elizabeth died in 1905; and Riis married again. With his second wife, Mary Phillips, he moved to a farm in Barre, Massachusetts in 1911. Riis himself died on 26 May 1914. Further information is available at Wikipedia or Harvard University Library. To see Riis’s photographs go to the Museum Syndicate or MOMA websites.

The New York Public Library holds an extensive archive of Riis’s papers, which, it says, includes diaries that ‘cover Riis’s early years in the U.S. as well as his later business and personal affairs’. It gives further details, as follows: ‘Riis’s pocket diaries (2 volumes) for the years 1871-1875 were written almost exclusively in Danish and document his early years in the United States and his search for employment. One English entry in August of 1875 records Riis’s purchase of the South Brooklyn News for six hundred dollars. Six memorandum books kept by Riis in 1882-1902 include research notes, lecture schedules, business and personal expenses, and travel notes from a trip to England in 1893.’

Although Riis’s two pocket diaries are available to read on microfilm at the New York Public Library, none of his diary texts have been published. However, there are a couple of modern biographies of Riis which refer to, and quote from, these diaries. In 2007, New Press, New York, published Rediscovering Jacob Riis: Exposure Journalism and Photography in Turn-of-the-Century New York by Bonnie Yochelson and Daniel Czitrom. For reviews, see H-Net, Picturing US History, or University of Chicagao Press.

A slightly earlier biography in Danish by Tom Buk-Swienty was first published in Denmark in 2005. This was then translated into English by Tom’s wife Annette Buk-Swienty for publication in the US by W W Norton in 2007 as The Other Half: The Life of Jacob Riis and the World of Immigrant America. For informative reviews of this book see Barnes and Noble, Kirkus, and Robert Siegel’s article on the NPR website.

In the latter, Siegel says: ‘Buk-Swienty studied Riis’ diaries and says he found the moment when the Danish carpenter, not yet a reporter, became an American, mentally. He says it happened when Riis learned that the girl back home, the one he had been pining for, had gotten engaged to a Danish military hero. “He was shocked,” Buk-Swienty says. “That came for him as a total surprise, and his world, you could say, went dark for a few days.” Riis wrote about his sorrow in Danish, but a few days later, he began to write his diary in English. “It’s very remarkable,” Buk-Swienty says. “You can see that something is changing in this man.”

Mock and real turtles

‘The difference between an author who picks up his material everywhere but does not work it up into an organic whole and one who does that is, it seems to me, like the difference between mock turtle and real turtle.’ This is 21 year old Søren Kierkegaard writing in the journal that he would keep for all of his short life. Today is a good day for remembering him - Denmark’s most important philosopher, dubbed by some as the father of existentialism - for it is the bicentenary of his birth.

Kierkegaard was born in Copenhagen on 5 May 1813, the youngest of several children. His father had grown up poor in Jutland, but moved to the capital city and made his fortune. Søren spent ten years studying theology at Copenhagen University and eventually graduated in 1840 two years after his father died, leaving him rich enough not to work. Biographers consider this period to have been most important for his spiritual development. In September 1840, Kierkegaard became engaged to Regine Olsen, who was only 17 at the time. Regretting his action, and thinking he had done wrong, he withdrew from the engagement and went to Berlin for six months. Regine married happily, but Kierkegaard never forgot her and later dedicated the whole of his literary oeuvre to her.

On returning from Berlin, Kierkegaard published Either/Or under a pseudonym, which presented, for the first time, his basic ideas on existential philosophy. Later, he published important critiques of Hegel and of the German Romantics. Having undergone something of a spiritual crisis, he focused, during his final years, on attacking complacency within the Church of Denmark through newspaper articles in Fædrelandet (The Fatherland) and self-published pamphlets under the title, Øjeblikket (The Moment or The Instant). In autumn 1855, he collapsed on the street and died within a few weeks - aged only 42.

The website of the Christian Classics Ethereal Society summarises his influence as follows: ‘Kierkegaard’s resistance to creating an all-embracing system of thought has resulted in a rich variety of influence on twentieth century philosophy and literature. Jaspers, Heidegger and Sartre were all heavily influenced by his work, and existentialism owes much to Kierkegaard’s thought, drawing on his analysis of freedom and angst. Although he didn’t write much overtly political work, Marxists like Marcuse and Lukacs have shown interest in Kierkegaard’s writings. He has also influenced theological studies, especially the work of Karl Barth, and he is admired for his literary innovations.’ Further information on Kierkegaard is also available from Wikipedia, the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, or D Anthony Storm’s Kierkekaard website.

Throughout Kierkegaard’s adult life he kept a diary, more full of philosophical and religious musings, and of thoughts on his literary projects than descriptions of his daily life. There are over 7,000 diary pages, all of which have been edited and published in Danish in many volumes. A selection of extracts chosen and translated into English by Alexander Dru was published by Oxford University Press in 1938. A fuller version - though still not the complete journal - was edited and translated by Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong for publication by Indiana University Press from 1967. Meanwhile, the Søren Kierkegaard Research Centre Foundation in Copenhagen is working on a definitive edition of all Kierkegaard’s writings, including the journal, which will then be translated into several languages. A summary of the journal’s contents, analysis and many extracts can be found online at Storm’s website; and Natural Thinker has even more.

 11 September 1834
‘The reason I cannot really say that I positively enjoy nature is that I do not quite realize what it is that I enjoy. A work of art, on the other hand, I can grasp. I can - if I may put it this way - find that Archimedian point, and as soon as I have found it, everything is readily clear for me. Then I am able to pursue this one main idea and see how all the details serve to illuminate it. I see the author’s whole individuality as if it were the sea, in which every single detail is reflected. The author’s spirit is kindred to me; he is very probably far superior to me, I am sure, but yet he is limited as I am. The works of the deity are too great for me; I always get lost in the details. This is the reason, too, why people’s exclamations on observing nature: It’s lovely, tremendous, etc. - are so frivolous. They are all too anthropomorphic; they come to a stop with the external; they are unable to express inwardness, depth. In this connection, also, it seems most remarkable to me that the great geniuses among the poets (such as Ossian and Homer) are represented as blind. Of course, it makes no difference to me whether they actually were blind or not. I only make a point of the fact that people have imagined them to be blind, for this would seem to indicate that what they saw when they sang the beauty of nature was not seen with the external eye but was revealed to their inward intuition. How remarkable that one of the best, yes, the very best writer about bees was blind from early youth. It seems to indicate that however much one believes in the importance of the observation of externals, he had found that [Archimedian] point and now by a purely spiritual activity had deduced from this all the details and had reconstructed them analogously to nature.’

12 September 1834
‘I am amazed that (as far as I know) no one has ever treated the idea of a “master-thief,” an idea that certainly would lend itself very well to dramatic treatment. We cannot help noting that almost every country has had the idea of such a thief, that an ideal of a thief has hovered before all of them; and we also see that however different Fra Diavolo may be from Peer Mikkelsen or Morten Frederiksen, they still have certain features in common. Thus many of the stories circulating about thieves are attributed by some to Peer Mikkelsen, by others to Morten Frederiksen, by others to someone else, etc., although it is impossible to decide definitely to which of them they really belong. This shows that men have imagined a certain ideal of a thief with some broad general features which have then been attributed to this or that actual thief. We must especially bear in mind that wickedness, a propensity for stealing, etc. were not considered to be the one and only core of the idea. On the contrary, the master-thief has also been thought of as one endowed with natural goodness, kindness, charitableness, together with extraordinary bearing, cunning, ingenuity, one who really does not steal just to steal, that is, in order to get hold of another person’s possessions, but for some other reason. Frequently we may think of him as someone who is displeased with the established order and who now expresses his grievance by violating the rights of others, seeking thereby an occasion to mystify and affront the authorities. In this respect it is noteworthy that he is thought of as stealing from the rich to help the poor (as is told of Peer Mikkelsen), which does indeed indicate magnanimity, and that he never steals for his own advantage. In addition, we could very well imagine him to have a warm affection for the opposite sex, for example Forster (Feuerbach, part II), something that on the one hand indicates a bright spot in his character and on the other gives him and his life a romantic quality which is required in order to distinguish him from the simple thief - whether he steals in order to provide, if possible, a better future in his beloved’s arms (like Forster) or whether in his activity as a thief he is conscious of being an opponent of the established order or an avenger against the authorities of some injustice perhaps committed by them against him. His girl walks by his side like a guardian angel and helps him in his troubles while the authorities are in pursuit to capture him, and the populace, on the other hand, regards him suspiciously as one who is, after all, a thief, although perhaps an inner voice sometimes speaks in his defense, and at the same time he finds no encouragement and comfort among the other thieves since they are far inferior to him and are dominated by viciousness. The only possible association he can have with them is solely for the purpose of using them to achieve his aims; otherwise he must despise them.’

22 November 1834
‘The difference between an author who picks up his material everywhere but does not work it up into an organic whole and one who does that is, it seems to me, like the difference between mock turtle and real turtle. The meat from some parts of the real turtle tastes like veal, from other parts like chicken, but it is all together in one organism. All these various kinds of meat are found in mock turtle, but that which binds the separate parts is a sauce, which still is often more nourishing than the jargon which takes its place in a lot of writing.’