Live ten times happier

Jonathan Swift, that great Anglo-Irish satirist, man of pamphlets, died 280 years ago. His name is best remembered for Gulliver’s Travels, which has remained a classic of English literature for three centuries. However, a series of letters he wrote, in journal form, to his lifelong friend Esther Johnson, is also still very much in print - as Journal to Stella - and oft analysed, for what it says about Swift, himself, and London in the last years of Queen Anne’s reign.

Swift was born of Anglo-Irish parents in Dublin in 1667, several months after the death of his father. His mother returned to England, leaving Jonathan with an uncle. He was educated at Kilkenny Grammar, one of the best schools in Ireland at the time, and at Trinity College, Dublin, where he became friends with William Congreve. When political troubles in Ireland forced him to leave for England in 1688, his mother helped him get a position as secretary to Sir William Temple, a retired diplomat (soon to move and settle at Moor Park, Farnham). Swift remained at Moor Park for the best part of ten years, although he did return to Ireland, for two sojourns, become ordained as a priest in the Church of Ireland. Temple trusted Swift with important commissions, and introduced him to King William III. He also tutored Esther Johnson (or Stella), the daughter of Temple’s sister, worked on Temple’s memoirs, and developed his own poetical and satirical writings.

Temple died in 1699, and Swift failed to find a new position, so he returned to Dublin where he obtained a living and became prebend of Dunlavin in St Patrick’s Cathedral. He persuaded Esther Johnson, 20 by this time, and Rebecca Dingley, another friend from Temple’s household, to leave England and live with him in Dunlavin. As chaplain to Lord Berkeley, he spent much of his time in Dublin and travelled to London frequently over the next ten years. Swift’s first political pamphlet, published anonymously, was titled A Discourse on the Contests and Dissentions in Athens and Rome. A Tale of a Tub followed, again anonymously, although Swift was increasingly known to be the author. His works were very popular, yet severely frowned on by the church - even though he, himself, was, in fact, more loyal to church than politics.

Despite his Whig background and sensibilities, from about 1710, he became a key writer for the new Tory government under Robert Harley, attracted by Harley’s commitment to be more supportive of the Church of Ireland. Harley, indeed, had already recruited another important writer of the day, Daniel Defoe, to the Tory cause. Swift took over as editor of the Tory journal, The Examiner, and he wrote a significant pamphlet for the Tories - The Conduct of the Allies - that helped win a vote for peace with France in Parliament. His reward was not a position within the English church - Queen Anne and others had been too scandalised by A Tale of the Tub - but the deanery of St Patrick’s Cathedral in Dublin.

Swift’s elevated position with the Tories did not last long. The death of Queen Anne and the accession of George I in 1714 led the Whigs back into power, and saw Tory leaders tried for treason for conducting secret negotiations with France. Swift withdrew to Dublin and his deanery, somewhat spurned by the Anglo-Irish Whig community. He turned his pen and satire to Irish affairs, much to the government’s frustration, with works such as Proposal for Universal Use of Irish Manufacture (1720) and Drapier’s Letters (1724). During these years, he also wrote his most famous and lasting work, Gulliver’s Travels, or, more accurately, Travels into Several Remote Nations of the World, in Four Parts, By Lemuel Gulliver, first a surgeon, and then a captain of several ships. He took the manuscript of this with him to London in 1726, and stayed with friends, including Alexander Pope, who helped him publish it anonymously. It was hugely popular, and went through several reprints, and by the following year had been translated into French, German and Dutch.

Swift returned to London one last time, in 1727, staying with Pope, but when he heard Esther Johnson was dying, he raced back to Ireland. She died the following January. More dark satire followed from his pen, notably, in 1729, A Modest Proposal for Preventing the Children of Poor People From Being a Burthen to Their Parents or Country, and for Making Them Beneficial to the Publick. In the latter years of his life, Swift’s health failed in several ways, physically and mentally. He died on 19 October 1745, and was laid to rest next to Esther, according to his wishes, in St Patrick’s. Further biographical information can be found at Wikipedia, the 1911 Encyclopaedia Britannica, Luminarium or reviews of Jonathan Swift: His life and His World by Leo Damrosch (at The Guardian, The New York Times).

There is no evidence that Swift kept a diary of any significance. Although The National Archives records that the Forster Collection at the V&A Museum holds ‘diary, literary MSS, personal accounts, corresp and copies of letters’, there is no reference at all in biographies to any diary kept by Swift. However, one of his most memorable and long-lasting works has been called a ‘journal’, at least since the 19th century - The Journal to Stella. And this work is included in William Matthews’ definitive British Diaries: An Annotated Bibliography of British Diaries Written Between 1442 and 1942. Indeed, Matthews says it is ‘the best reflection of social life in time of Queen Anne’. The Journal to Stella contains a series of letters written by Swift to Esther (and occasionally her companion, Dingley) between 1710 and 1713. Most biographers agree that Swift had some kind of lifelong relationship with Esther, while some argue they may have been secretly married.

Most of these letters were first published in the 18th century (1768), in a set of Swift’s collected works edited by his relation, Deane Swift. However, it was not until the end of the 19th century, I think, that they were collated together by Frederick Ryland into a single volume (the second in a series of Swift’s Prose Works) and given the title The Journal to Stella. Around a third of the letters remain extant, and are held by the British Library, but the majority have been lost, and so for them Deane Swift’s collected works remains the best source. Many further editions of The Journal to Stella have been published. Most recently, Cambridge University Press has brought out ‘the first critical edition for 50 years’, which, it says, ‘sheds new light on Swift, his relationships and the historical period’. Older editions can be read freely online at Internet Archive.

Here are several extracts from The Journal to Stella as edited by Aitken. (MD is short for ‘My Dears’ and is used by Swift rather fluidly to stand for both Stella and Mrs. Dingley, but also for Stella alone.)

9 October 1711
‘I was forced to lie down at twelve to-day, and mend my night’s sleep: I slept till after two, and then sent for a bit of mutton and pot of ale from the next cook’s shop, and had no stomach. I went out at four, and called to see Biddy Floyd, which I had not done these three months: she is something marked, but has recovered her complexion quite, and looks very well. Then I sat the evening with Mrs. Vanhomrigh, and drank coffee, and ate an egg. I likewise took a new lodging to-day, not liking a ground-floor, nor the ill smell, and other circumstances. I lodge, or shall lodge, by Leicester Fields, and pay ten shillings a week; that won’t hold out long, faith. I shall lie here but one night more. It rained terribly till one o’clock to-day. I lie, for I shall lie here two nights, till Thursday, and then remove. Did I tell you that my friend Mrs. Barton has a brother drowned, that went on the expedition with Jack Hill? He was a lieutenant-colonel, and a coxcomb; and she keeps her chamber in form, and the servants say she receives no messages. - Answer MD’s letter, Presto, d’ye hear? No, says Presto, I won’t yet, I’m busy; you’re a saucy rogue. Who talks?’

12 October 1711
‘Mrs. Vanhomrigh has changed her lodging as well as I. She found she had got with a bawd, and removed. I dined with her to-day; for though she boards, her landlady does not dine with her. I am grown a mighty lover of herrings; but they are much smaller here than with you. In the afternoon I visited an old major-general, and ate six oysters; then sat an hour with Mrs. Colledge, the joiner’s daughter that was hanged; it was the joiner was hanged, and not his daughter; with Thompson’s wife, a magistrate. There was the famous Mrs. Floyd of Chester, who, I think, is the handsomest woman (except MD) that ever I saw. She told me that twenty people had sent her the verses upon Biddy, as meant to her: and, indeed, in point of handsomeness, she deserves them much better. I will not go to Windsor to-morrow, and so I told the Secretary to-day. I hate the thoughts of Saturday and Sunday suppers with Lord Treasurer. Jack Hill is come home from his unfortunate expedition, and is, I think, now at Windsor: I have not yet seen him. He is privately blamed by his own friends for want of conduct. He called a council of war, and therein it was determined to come back. But they say a general should not do that, because the officers will always give their opinion for returning, since the blame will not lie upon them, but the general. I pity him heartily. Bernage received his commission to-day.’

14 October 1711
‘I was going to dine with Dr. Cockburn, but Sir Andrew Fountaine met me, and carried me to Mrs. Van’s, where I drank the last bottle of Raymond’s wine, admirable good, better than any I get among the Ministry. I must pick up time to answer this letter of MD’s; I’ll do it in a day or two for certain. - I am glad I am not at Windsor, for it is very cold, and I won’t have a fire till November. I am contriving how to stop up my grate with bricks. Patrick was drunk last night; but did not come to me, else I should have given him t’other cuff. I sat this evening with Mrs. Barton; it is the first day of her seeing company; but I made her merry enough, and we were three hours disputing upon Whig and Tory. She grieved for her brother only for form, and he was a sad dog. Is Stella well enough to go to church, pray? no numbings left? no darkness in your eyes? do you walk and exercise? Your exercise is ombre. - People are coming up to town: the Queen will be at Hampton Court in a week. Lady Betty Germaine, I hear, is come; and Lord Pembroke is coming: his wife is as big with child as she can tumble.’

15 October 1711
‘I sat at home till four this afternoon to-day writing, and ate a roll and butter; then visited Will Congreve an hour or two, and supped with Lord Treasurer, who came from Windsor to-day, and brought Prior with him. The Queen has thanked Prior for his good service in France, and promised to make him a Commissioner of the Customs. Several of that Commission are to be out; among the rest, my friend Sir Matthew Dudley. I can do nothing for him, he is so hated by the Ministry. Lord Treasurer kept me till twelve, so I need not tell you it is now late.’

16 October 1711
‘I dined to-day with Mr. Secretary at Dr. Coatesworth’s, where he now lodges till his house be got ready in Golden Square. One Boyer, a French dog, has abused me in a pamphlet, and I have got him up in a messenger’s hands: the Secretary promises me to swinge him. Lord Treasurer told me last night that he had the honour to be abused with me in a pamphlet. I must make that rogue an example, for warning to others. I was to see Jack Hill this morning, who made that unfortunate expedition; and there is still more misfortune; for that ship, which was admiral of his fleet, is blown up in the Thames, by an accident and carelessness of some rogue, who was going, as they think, to steal some gunpowder: five hundred men are lost. We don’t yet know the particulars. I am got home by seven, and am going to be busy, and you are going to play and supper; you live ten times happier than I; but I should live ten times happier than you if I were with MD.’

22 October 1711
‘I dined in the City to-day with Dr. Freind, at one of my printers: I inquired for Leigh, but could not find him: I have forgot what sort of apron you want. I must rout among your letters, a needle in a bottle of hay. I gave Sterne directions, but where to find him Lord knows. I have bespoken the spectacles; got a set of Examiners, and five pamphlets, which I have either written or contributed to, except the best, which is the vindication of the Duke of Marlborough, and is entirely of the author of the Atalantis. I have settled Dingley’s affair with Tooke, who has undertaken it, and understands it. I have bespoken a Miscellany: what would you have me do more? It cost me a shilling coming home; it rains terribly, and did so in the morning. Lord Treasurer has had an ill day, in much pain. He writes and does business in his chamber now he is ill: the man is bewitched: he desires to see me, and I’ll maul him, but he will not value it a rush. I am half weary of them all. I often burst out into these thoughts, and will certainly steal away as soon as I decently can. I have many friends, and many enemies; and the last are more constant in their nature. I have no shuddering at all to think of retiring to my old circumstances, if you can be easy; but I will always live in Ireland as I did the last time; I will not hunt for dinners there, nor converse with more than a very few.’

9 October 1712
‘I have left Windsor these ten days, and am deep in pills with asafoetida, and a steel bitter drink; and I find my head much better than it was. I was very much discouraged; for I used to be ill for three or four days together, ready to totter as I walked. I take eight pills a day, and have taken, I believe, a hundred and fifty already. The Queen, Lord Treasurer, Lady Masham, and I, were all ill together, but are now all better; only Lady Masham expects every day to lie in at Kensington. There was never such a lump of lies spread about the town together as now. I doubt not but you will have them in Dublin before this comes to you, and all without the least grounds of truth. I have been mightily put backward in something I am writing by my illness, but hope to fetch it up, so as to be ready when the Parliament meets. Lord Treasurer has had an ugly fit of the rheumatism, but is now near quite well. I was playing at one-and-thirty with him and his family t’other night. He gave us all twelvepence apiece to begin with: it put me in mind of Sir William Temple. I asked both him and Lady Masham seriously whether the Queen were at all inclined to a dropsy, and they positively assured me she was not: so did her physician Arbuthnot, who always attends her. Yet these devils have spread that she has holes in her legs, and runs at her navel, and I know not what. Arbuthnot has sent me from Windsor a pretty Discourse upon Lying, and I have ordered the printer to come for it. It is a proposal for publishing a curious piece, called The Art of Political Lying, in two volumes, etc. And then there is an abstract of the first volume, just like those pamphlets which they call The Works of the Learned. Pray get it when it comes out. The Queen has a little of the gout in one of her hands. I believe she will stay a month still at Windsor. Lord Treasurer showed me the kindest letter from her in the world, by which I picked out one secret, that there will be soon made some Knights of the Garter. You know another is fallen by Lord Godolphin’s death: he will be buried in a day or two at Westminster Abbey. I saw Tom Leigh in town once. The Bishop of Clogher has taken his lodging for the winter; they are all well. I hear there are in town abundance of people from Ireland; half a dozen bishops at least. The poor old Bishop of London, at past fourscore, fell down backward going upstairs, and I think broke or cracked his skull; yet is now recovering. The town is as empty as at midsummer; and if I had not occasion for physic, I would be at Windsor still. Did I tell you of Lord Rivers’s will? He has left legacies to about twenty paltry old whores by name, and not a farthing to any friend, dependent, or relation: he has left from his only child, Lady Barrymore, her mother’s estate, and given the whole to his heir-male, a popish priest, a second cousin, who is now Earl Rivers, and whom he used in his life like a footman. After him it goes to his chief wench and bastard. Lord Treasurer and Lord Chamberlain are executors of this hopeful will. I loved the man, and detest his memory. We hear nothing of peace yet: I believe verily the Dutch are so wilful, because they are told the Queen cannot live.’

This article is a slightly revised version of one first published on 19 October 2015.

Do what thou wilt

‘Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law [. . .] I am aflame with the brandy of the thought that I am the sublimest Mystic in all history, that I am the Word of an Aeon, that I am the Beast, the Man, Six Hundred Sixty and Six, the self-crowned God whom men shall worship and blaspheme for centuries.’ This is none other than the infamous and charismatic Aleister Crowley - born 150 years ago today - writing in a magical diary he kept while at the Abbey of Thelema, in Sicily, a commune he set up for his own sexual magic rituals. I have a personal link with Crowley - recorded in my own diaries - in that, when young, I wrote a play about him, and this involved an interview with one of Crowley’s cronies, Gerald Yorke, and researching his library of Crowley papers at the Warburg Institute.

Aleister Crowley was born on 12 October 1875 in Leamington Spa, Warwickshire, into a religious family, his parents being Plymouth Brethren. His father died when he was 11, and he was cared for by an uncle, said to have been publicly philanthropic but surreptitiously cruel. Crowley attended a school in Streatham for a while (see also London Cross, my online book of a walk across London), as well as Malvern College and Tonbridge School briefly, before entering Trinity College, Cambridge. There he spent his time pursuing non-academic interests - mountaineering, for example, playing chess, and writing and publishing poetry - which, with money inherited from his father’s brewing business, he could afford to do.

While climbing in Switzerland, and expounding his increasingly spiritual ideas to fellow climbers, Crowley made contacts which led him to a magical society in London called the Golden Dawn, and its leader Samuel Liddell Mathers, a learned occultist. Crowley learned much about ceremonial magic from Liddell, but also from another of the society’s members, Allan Bennet, who he invited to live with him in his London flat.

In 1899, Crowley purchased a property on the south-east side of Loch Ness, renaming it Boleskine House, where he set up his own magical operations and rituals. Crowley travelled to Mexico, to go climbing, and to Ceylon, Burma and India to study Buddhist practices. In 1904, he married Rose Edith Kelly, the sister of his artist friend Gerald Festus Kelly. While honeymooning in Cairo, Crowley claimed to have been contacted by a supernatural entity named Aiwass, who provided him with a scared text he called The Book of the Law. Over the next few years, and using the text, he helped set up a new magical order, called the A∴A∴; and he became the leader of the British section of a German order Ordo Templi Orientis. He was a prolific writer, producing poetry, articles, and short stories, as well as spiritually-based texts. Rose had three children by Crowley, but he divorced her in 1909, on the grounds of his own adultery. Crowley was never other than extremely promiscuous, and later in life regularly changed partners, calling each new lover his scarlet woman.

During the First World War, Crowley decamped to the United States, where he earned money by writing and giving astronomical readings. Apart from continuing his sex-based spiritual investigations, he also took up painting and campaigned for Germany (though later he claimed he was working as a British spy). Back in Europe, in 1920, he established the Abbey of Thelema, a spiritual community in Cefalù, Sicily, where he lived with his acolytes and their children, developing his rituals and magical practices, many of them involving sex. By this time, his addiction to drugs, heroin and cocaine, had come to dominate his daily life. Still, new followers continued to arrive - some famous like the film star Jane Wolfe - and all of them were initiated into the Abbey’s bizarre practices. There was little concern at the Abbey for health and safety, with one baby (born to Crowley and his consort Leah Hirsig) and a young man dying there. (Another woman at the abbey also gave Crowley a child at this time, Astarte, who was alive until 2014 - the longest lived of Crowley’s known children.)

In time, the British media got to hear about Crowley, and stories on his depraved practices appeared in newspapers and magazines. He was dubbed the wickedest man in the world and such like. Although he denied many accusations, he was too poor to sue. It didn’t help his reputation when he published a novel called Diary of a Drug Fiend. News of activities at the Abbey finally filtered through to Italy’s Fascist government. Crowley was given a deportation notice, and the commune soon closed without him. He and Hirsig moved to Tunisia, where Crowley began writing his so-called autohagiography, The Confessions of Aleister Crowley, parts of which were first published in 1929. Around the same time, he published one of his most significant works, Magick in Theory and Practice, and he became friends with Gerald Yorke, who began organising his finances.

Having moved around from Tunis, to Paris and London a lot, he moved to Berlin for a while in 1930, returning to London a year or two later. There, he launched several court cases against those he felt had libelled him, and won some of them. Nevertheless, Crowley was declared bankrupt in 1935; and, with few contributions arriving from his magical society links any longer, he was chronically short of money. He published Equinox of the Gods, containing a facsimile of The Book of the Law, which sold well. During the Second World War, he removed to Torquay until he tired of it and returned to London, only settling in Hastings in 1944. There he took a young Kenneth Grant as his secretary, and also appointed John Symonds as his literary executor. Crowley died in 1947, and his funeral was held at Brighton Crematorium - a dozen people attended.

There is much information about Crowley scattered across the internet, at Wikipedia, at the Harry Ransom Center (which holds a large Crowley archive), Vigilant Citizen, Controverscial.Com, Open Culture (with video documentary), and Thelamapedia.

Crowley left behind a large number of writings: a score of poetry books, many magical texts or Libri (teachings, methodologies, practices, or Thelemic scripture), short stories, and autobiographical works. A bibliography can be found at Wikipedia and at The Hermetic Library. Among his autobiographical writings are a number of diaries, which are all archived at the Yorke Collection in the Warburg Institute, London. Not all the archived diaries, however, are original manuscripts, but typescripts made from the originals (now lost) under the guidance of Crowley’s friend Gerald Yorke (who later bequeathed all the material to the Warburg).

Crowley’s diaries were not, for the most part, written with the aim of publication. However, in his lifetime, he did publish portions, for their magical significance, in The Equinox - the official organ of his organisation, A ∴ A ∴. - many editions of this can be read online. The Hermetic Library has a list of Crowley’s diaries, though not all the works on the list can be considered diaries in any but the loosest of senses. Crowley’s one novel, Diary of a Drug Fiend, is thought to be autobiographical, however the text bears little relation to an actual diary. Otherwise, Crowley’s various diaries have made their way into publication in different forms.

The most significant of Crowley’s diaries that have emerged in published form can be found in The Magical Record of the Beast 666, subtitled The Diaries of Aleister Crowley 1914-1920 edited with ‘copious annotations’ by John Symonds and Kenneth Grant (Duckworth, 1972). In fact, this includes two separate diaries: Rex de Arte Regia kept by Crowley in New York from 1914-1918 to record his sexual operations and his efforts to perfect sexual magic; and The Magical Record of the Beast, a more general diary Crowley kept in 1920 mostly at Cefalù. At the time of writing, a pdf of the book can be read online here.)

The Magical Diaries of Aleister Crowley, edited by Stephen Skinner (Neville Spearman, 1979) covers the year 1923, in Tunisia, after his expulsion from Italy. (An American version can be previewed at Amazon or Googlebooks, and a review can be read Obsidian Magazine). Otherwise, there is a text called The Amalantrah Working, a kind of diary from the first half of 1918, describing, indeed quoting, a series of hash/opium-induced visions and trance-communications received by the oddly-named Roddie Minor, who was at that time acting as Crowley’s scarlet woman. At some stage during the proceedings, Crowley underwent a form of experience involving a large-headed entity now known to occultists as Lam. The name derives from the Tibetan word for ‘way’ or ‘path’, and later Crowley was to draw a portrait of him/it that has become famous. Finally, a further diary, a fragment really, concerns a visit Crowley made to Lisbon in 1930 and his meeting with the writer Fernanda Pessoa. The text can be read within a paper by Marco Pasi’s available at Internet Archive. The paper, incidentally, provides an excellent overview of Crowley’s diary legacy.

From Rex de Arte Regia
16 January 1915
‘Weather like a fine day in May. Light of gas stove. Margaret Pitcher. A young pretty-stupid wide-mouthed flat-faced slim-bodied harlotry. Fair hair. Fine fat juicy Yoni. Object: Money. I invoked Ic-zod-heh-ca at the same time, thinking thus to propitiate the gnomes [earth elementals who preside over hidden treasure]. And I offer him a portion of the Sacrament. The ceremony was not good, as the girl was even more concentrated than I on the object of the Operation. But the Elixir [semen] was copious, well-formed, and of very pleasing quality. It was a fairly orgiastic rite, considering all.’

22 August 1916
‘Object: To become the greatest of all the Magi. Operation of long-since-unheard-of vehemence. Elixir of miraculous strength and sweetness. Mental concentration, Samadhic in intensity.’

12 October 1917
‘Object: ‘Io Pan!’ Operation: Orgie from 8.15 circa, continuous work, aided by C[ocaine] and B[randy]. Wonderful. Elixir admirable in all ways.’

From The Magical Record of the Beast
19 May 1920
‘I have been thinking over the question of the routine of the Abbey, both as to daily life and as to disciples. I want a minimum of things which disturb, and at the same time enough to breed Order. Daily Life: 1. Alostrael to proclaim the Law on waking. 2. Adoration of Ra. 3. Grace before breakfast at 7.00 a.m. 4. ditto dinner, noon. 5. Adoration of Ra. 6 and 7, ditto supper at 6.00 p.m. 8. Ritual work.

For newcomers: First week, 1, three days’ hospitality. 2. One day’s silence. 3, Three days’ instruction. 4. The Magical Oath, followed by four weeks’ silence and work. Sixth week, 5, one day’s instruction. 6. Six days’ Vision. Seventh and ninth weeks, 7. three weeks’ silence and work. Tenth week, 8, one week’s instruction and repose. Eleventh and thirteenth weeks, 9, as 7. This makes one Quarter. At the end, the survivor revises the whole period, and takes new counsel and Oath accordingly; but no routine can be appointed for this further period; all will depend on what seems advisable.

Saw Diana renewed tonight, the loveliest slim maiden, rich pale gold in a sea of blue shaded into pink, green, orange, and violet with clouds of ever delicate tone of purple and grey, in every form from solid banks to films of mist.

Her disappearance in the Hell below Amenti, where I suspect her of conduction with Tum, has been the signal for me to renew activity. Made a volcano panel. I wrote The Moralist.’

26 May 1920
‘3.40 a.m. It has been a trying night. I wrote two poems. Leah screamed terribly for over an hour until, twenty minutes ago, I felt it inhuman not to stop it, and so, in the impossibility of getting the doctor’s permission, I gave her about ⅛ grain of heroin under the tongue. She is now calm. I thought heroin better than my only alternative, ether, as he has been giving her laudanum, and ether is irritating to the system, and so contra-indicated in anything like enteritis (P.S. It acted splendidly, with no bad reaction.)

3.45 a.m. I notice that Language itself testifies to the soundness of my ontological theories; for the adjective of Naught is Naughty! Wrote two more poems.

11.00 p.m. Leah is still very ill; and this doctor rather trimmer. I think, without much confidence in himself. A tiring day, though I slept off some arrears.’

18 June 1920 [a few sentences from a much longer entry]
‘10:30 p.m. I accuse myself of not keeping my Diary properly. There ought to be a discoverable relation between my health, my worldly affairs, and the tone of my thoughts. For even Absolute Ego in eruption makes the relation between its modes of illusion a ‘true’, or harmonious one; for all moods are alike to It, despair a theme of pastime equally with exaltation. [. . .]

Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law

10:36 p.m. I beginning a new MS book. My Magical Diary has been very voluminous in these last weeks; I seem to find that it is the sole mode of my initiated expression. I don’t write regular essays on a definite subject, or issue regularly planned instructions. This is presumably normal to my tense and exalted state, to the violent Motion proper to the resolution of all symbols. [. . .]

I am drunk with the pride-absinthe that I am great, the greatest man of my century, its best poet, its mightiest mage, its subtlest philosopher, nor any the less for that classed among the very few well eminent mountain-climbing, in chess-play, and in love.

I am aflame with the brandy of the thought that I am the sublimest Mystic in all history, that I am the Word of an Aeon, that I am the Beast, the Man, Six Hundred Sixty and Six, the self-crowned God whom men shall worship and blaspheme for centuries that are yet wound on Time’s spool, yea, I am insane as if with hashish in my Egomania and Folly of Greatness, that is yet Fact steel-hard, gold-glittering, silver-pure; I want to be yet more than this. [. . .]’


Aleister Crowley and me

In the late 1970s - when I was but a young man - I came across Aleister Crowley’s writings, and found his life so interesting and theatrical that I thought to write a play about his time at the Abbey of Thelema. I had access to some of Crowley’s books at the Warburg Institute, London, and I interviewed Gerald Yorke an elderly man who had been a close associate of Crowley’s. I did not know, until talking to Yorke, that a play about Crowley had already been written by Snoo Wilson. That play - The Beast - had been commissioned by the Royal Shakespeare Company but seemed to have faded from view soon after it was staged. With very few theatres/companies willing to consider unsolicited plays, the market for my play was limited to say the least. The most receptive theatre at the time, the most welcoming for new playwrights, was The Bush, in London, where Jenny Topper was the director. But I had no luck there, or anywhere else.

Two years later, in early 1982, I found myself at The Bush to see a revival of Wilson’s play, retitled The Number of the Beast. It was hard to believe there was no link between The Bush having seen/read my Aleister Crowley play in mid-1979, and its commissioning of Wilson to revise his play on the very same subject. On entering the theatre, I was bemused to find the set looking rather like the one I had proposed for my play - i.e. the Abbey of Thelema. Indeed, I soon discovered that the play had been rewritten so that most of the action actually took place at the Abbey - just as in my own play. Coincidence? It seems unlikely. Any how, here are several extracts from my own diary (all available online) about my researching/writing the play, and about seeing Snoo Wilson’s revised version.

29 January 1979
‘Gerald Yorke enthralled me for hours. He told me tales to make the blood curdle. We took tea in the drawing room: marmalade sandwiches, biscuits and tea, no sugar. The man of means took trouble with his words but his laugh rocked me off balance. He seemed pleased that I wasn’t just another occult freak, but dismayed that I wasn’t a Thelemite. He said he had intended once to walk across to China, but found marriage better for his feet. My Aleister Crowley play project moves one step forward. Will, I ever start to write. Yorke told me that Snoo Wilson has already written a play on Crowley, a farce. I had to explain that I’d never written a play before, but that it was simply a challenge I’d set myself.’

22 February 1979
‘Pushing myself to get two or three pages of Crowley’s life written each day. The clickety clack of the typewriter seems to be the secondary thing that I do between the cleaning and the cooking and the talking or the playing. The translation of my imagination into scenes on paper is the most difficult - creating characters, working with them, showing them up through conversations. Then there is the swamp of stage directions that are the length of a novel in themselves. In capital letters stand out bold. And now, with a new ribbon in the clickety-clack machine, their blackness is overwhelming. How can I will myself to work eight-ten hours a day when the ideas run out. I have to search all the books for the next scene or spark of talk. I resort to a cigarette or cup of coffee or leave the house. Today, for example, I went to the Warburg and spent two hours submerged in Crowley in Therion, in The Beast 666, in the Great Hand of Boleskine. I handled some manuscripts typed by Leah Hirsig - ‘Record of the Abbey of Thelema’. She describes in detail the incidents relating to Betty May’s expulsion from the Abbey. It’s perfect. There was also a folder with letters written to and from AC, some about blackmail, money and debts. I touched with care AC’s magical (or drug) record for a period of two weeks at Fontainebleu in March 1922. In intricate detail, he recorded the times and amounts of cocaine and heroin he took. He also recorded conversations with himself, justifying the next dose, and how he felt he should be able to use drugs forever without becoming addicted, but nevertheless intended to wean himself off them. He noted, for example, how he would excuse an extra does of heroin because it soothed his asthma. He does continue to fascinate me, and I would like to get access to more of his papers.’

24 June 1979
‘Colin read my Crowley play. Jenny Topper at the Bush read it, and now there is nothing left of it. A dead play. No one wants it. The characters are unshaped, there is no theatrical development etc etc yawn yawn. Colin thinks I should go on writing stories. Ha ha, did you hear the one about the man called Frederic [my estranged father] who wanted to be a writer.’

20 February 1982
‘ ‘The Beast’ by Snoo Wilson was initially commissioned by the RSC almost a decade ago. In its original form it was nothing more than a farce but now it’s been extensively rewritten so that the bulk of the play takes place at the Abbey of Thelema. On entering the Bush theatre I was agreeable surprised to see a set much as the one I had imagined for my own play about Aleister Crowley. All the action takes place outside the rundown barn-temple. The acting was first class, although the writing and direction left little room for the characters to be truly difficult or even unlikeable. John Stride playing Crowley refused to shave his head but would have given a better and truer performance if had.’

This article is a slightly revised version of one first published on 12 October 2015.

An embarrassing incident

On a hot August afternoon in 1871, the Reverend Canon Arthur Charles Copeman and his brother-in-law trudged from Mont Dol to St Malo, their clerical coats ill-suited to the summer sun. Copeman, already known in Norwich as vicar of St Andrew’s and a meticulous keeper of journals, carried with him the habit of noting each day’s encounters. Three of his diaries have now entered the British Library, one of which is the focus of an Untold Tales blog - A Victorian holiday embarrassment.

Copeman was born in 1824 at Coltishall in Norfolk, the son of Edward Breese Copeman and his wife Elizabeth. He studied medicine before deciding on a career in the church. After ordination he served in Norfolk and was appointed vicar of St Andrew’s, Norwich, a position he retained for the rest of his life. He was made an honorary canon of Norwich Cathedral and acted for a time as rural dean. 

In his parish, Copeman was an active figure, overseeing improvements to the church and dedicating a stained glass window in 1869. He married and had children, the best known being Sydney Monckton Copeman, later a leading figure in public health and a fellow of the Royal Society. Arthur Copeman died at the St Andrew’s parsonage in Norwich in 1896. There is very little further information online about Copeman other than at Wikitree, and in three of his diaries, recently added to the British Library’s collections - see A Victorian holiday embarrassment in the British Library’s Untold Lives collection.

Two of the diaries describe the daily life of an English clergyman, recording the rhythm of parish work, family duties and social engagements in Norwich during the mid- and late-Victorian decades. The third is different in tone and scope, ‘a month-long tour around Brittany with his brother-in-law, seeing the sights.’

The holiday diary, written in the summer of 1871, gives a candid picture of middle-class travel in France just after the Franco-Prussian War. Copeman recorded the practicalities of inns, meals and transport alongside sharp observations of landscape and people. Two weeks into the trip the pair walked from Mont Dol to the town of St Malo. I will let the narrative in the Untold Lives piece take up the story (with direct quotes from Copeman’s diary embedded). 

‘ “We found a congeries of little wooden cells ranged on the sea-ward side of a gentle slope which was thronged with ye ladies & gentlemen of S. Malo with whom it appears the favourite and fashionable promenade - and an office for the issue of bathing tickets which was beset with applicants.”

Having secured a bathing ticket, the pair were pleasantly surprised to find it entitled them to temporary possession of two of the beach huts, together with towels and bathing costumes.

The Reverend was particularly taken with the available attire, enthusing it was “of the simplest construction but of imposing & indescribable effect”. Once within this pair of loose blue shorts and sleeved “gaberdine” top, he thought he would have been unrecognisable to even his closest friends.  However, Copeman believed he and his companion attracted “the admiring inspection of the promenade” as [they] made their way down to the sea.

And yet, their favoured bathing suits would prove to be their undoing.

“When emerging after a delightful bathe, we found our wondrous costume clinging everywhere tenaciously to the skin & bringing out in strong relief every irregularity of a development somewhat obtrusively bony.”

Shocked by the betrayal of their previously modest attire, the pair “took fright & with a leap & a run we regained our dressing houses whence were heard roars of convulsive laughter till we re-appeared in civilised attire”.’

My imagination flies

‘I just said - “My imagination flies, like Noah’s dove, from the ark of my mind . . . and finds no place on which to rest the sole of her foot except Coleridge - Wordsworth and Southey.” ’ This is a young Thomas De Quincey, author of Confessions of English Opium-Eater, born 240 years ago today, confessing to his diary how he yearned to meet the Lake Poets. Later, of course, he would meet them; and some of his most important contributions to literature would be writing about those very poets. Unfortunately, it seems, he only kept that one diary - not published until the 20th century - for a few months in 1803.

Thomas was born in Manchester on 15 August 1785. His father, Quincey, also Thomas, was a successful merchant. In 1796, three years after the death of an elder sister and then his father, his mother moved to Bath and changed the family name to De Quincey. Thomas was enrolled in a series of schools, and proved a precocious student. During 1800-1801, he came into contact with various literary figures, and became keen on the poets Coleridge and Wordsworth. Having been refused permission to enter Oxford early, he absconded from Manchester grammar in 1802. His family, accepting the decision, allowed him one guinea a week, and he set off on a walking tour in North Wales.

De Quincey, however, soon lost his regular guinea by failing to write letters home. He borrowed money, went to London, where he preferred destitution to the prospect of family constraints. He later claimed to have been protected and comforted, innocently, by a young prostitute whom he celebrated in Confessions. Eventually, though, in early 1803, he was found by friends, and returned home. He was sent to stay in Everton, near Liverpool, for several months, and was then allowed to go to Worcester College, Oxford, on a reduced income. On the final day of his exams in 1808, he suffered a loss of nerve, and fled to London. During his student years, he had become acquainted with Coleridge and Wordsworth, and, in 1809, moved to Grasmere, in the Lake District, where he lived in Dove Cottage (once occupied by the Wordsworths - see Daffodils so beautiful). He studied German literature, planned an ambitious philosophical work, and travelled occasionally to London or Edinburgh.

De Quincey had first tried opium during a visit to London in 1804, apparently to ease the pain of toothache. By 1813, or so, his irregular use of the drug had become a daily habit. By the following year, he had begun an affair with Margaret, 18 at the time, who bore him a child in 1816. They married the following year, and would go on to have seven more children. However, De Quincey’s meagre income was failing, so he turned to journalism, finding employment as editor for a weekly Tory newspaper, The Westmorland Gazette. He proved poor at meeting deadlines, and, after a little more than a year, he relinquished the post. A position writing for Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine was even more short-lived.

In the summer of 1821, he took lodgings in London, where he worked on Confessions of an English Opium-Eater, an account of his early life and opium addiction that appeared in the September and October issues of the London Magazine. His Confessions were an immediate success, and attracted nationwide attention. They were published in book form in 1822, and regularly reissued in his own life time, and ever since. Over the next five years, he published upwards of 20 essays for the magazine, but money problems persisted. In 1825, he was evicted from Fox Ghyll, Rydal (which he’d taken on when more money was coming in from the London Magazine), and went to live with Margaret’s parents. By 1830, the family had relocated to Edinburgh, where De Quincey was regularly contributing to Blackwood’s Magazine, but then mostly to Tait’s Edinburgh Magazine - often but a hair’s breadth from debtors’ prison.

From 1840 or so, De Quincey’s life became more stable, as his eldest daughter, Margaret, took charge of her father’s affairs and finances. Over the next decade and more, he published regularly: a series of reminiscences of the Lake Poets in Tait’s is considered one of his most important works. He also went back to Blackwood’s contributing several works including a sequel to Confesssions. From 1850, most of his work was being published by James Hogg in The Instructor. Ticknor and Fields of Boston, US, undertook to publish a collected edition of De Quincey’s works. The 22 volumes were poorly organised and flawed, which prompted Hogg to suggest that De Quincey himself work on a revised edition of his own writings. This task - including a much lengthened Confessions - took up most of the rest of his working life. It was while working on the fourteenth and last volume that he died, in 1859. Further information on De Quincey can be found at Wikipedia, Historic UK, reviews of Morrison’s biography (The English Opium Eater) such as at The Guardian or The Washington Post, or Encyclopaedia Britannica. Confessions of an Opium-Eater is freely available at Internet Archive.

De Quincey kept a diary for a few short months, during his sojourn in Everton, before going to Oxford. It was first edited by Horace A. Eaton, Professor of English at Syracuse University in the US and published by Noel Douglas in 1927 as A Diary of Thomas De Quincey - Here reproduced in replica as well as in print from the original manuscript in the possession of the Reverend C. H. Steel. According to the book’s editor, the diary, 101 pages long, is contained in ‘a shabby little volume in quarto, with torn leaves and untidy scribbled pages, partly filled with a list of books’. Substantial further information about the diary can be found at the National Archives website. Here are a few sample extracts from the 1927 edition.

4 May 1803
‘Read 99 pages of “Accusg Spirit; - walked into the lanes; - met a fellow who counterfeited drunkenness or lunacy or idiocy; - I say counterfeited, because I am well convinced he was some vile outcast of society - a pest and disgrace to humanity. I was just on the point of hittg him a dab on his disgustg face when a gentleman (coming up) alarmed him and saved me trouble.’

5 May 1803
‘Last night I imaged to myself the heroine of the novel dying on an island of a lake, the chamber-windows (opening on a lawn) set wide open - and the sweet blooming roses breathing yr odours on her dying senses.[. . .]

Last night too I image myself looking through a glass. “What do you see?” I see a man in the dim and shadowy perspective and (as it were) in a dream. He passes along in silence, and the hues of sorrow appear on his countenance. Who is he? A man darkly wonderful - above the beings of this world; but whether that shadow of him, which you saw, be ye shadow of a man long since passed away or of one yet hid in futurity, I may not tell you.’

3 June 1803
‘Rise between 11 and 12 - go to W’s; - read out “Henry the Fourth”; (part 1st) which Mrs. E. pronounces “a very pretty play.” Almost immediately after this is finished  . . . dinner is announced; - I go without seeing Mr. W.; walk, by French prison and lane, to windmill on shore; - turn back along shore; cross over to French prison; - go to C’s; - dine there again by myself; - open a volume of the Encyclopaedia; read 2 pages of the life of Frederick the Great of Prussia . . . containing the origin of his acquaintance with Voltaire - his mode of spending the time as described by Voltaire; then read the article “French” (language) in the same volume; - open no other book; - go to W’s; ring and ask if the ladies are really gone, as they talked of doing, to Mossley; - find they are gone in spite of the rain; - walk to Everton; - find postman at door; - decypher a letter; - lend Miss B. 2s 3d to pay the postage of one; - the other (2s 2d) she leaves unpaid, though I offered to lend her the money; - both come from the coast of Africa; - Miss B. seems wild with joy; - has received money I suppose; I drink coffee.’

15 June 1803
‘I just said - “My imagination flies, like Noah’s dove, from the ark of my mind . . . and finds no place on which to rest the sole of her foot except Coleridge - Wordsworth and Southey.” This morning (and indeed many times before) I said - “Bacon’s mind appears to me like a great abyss - on the brink of which the imagination startles and shudders to look down” - Of that gilded fly of Corsica - Bonaparte - I said just now (what I have applied to others too - using it as a general curse) “May he be thirsty to all eternity - and have nothing but cups of damnation to drink.” ’

This article is a slightly revised version of one first published on 15 August 2015.

Missing Tom and Kate

Today marks the 30th anniversary of the tragic death of the British mountain climber, Alison Hargreaves. Having scaled Everest without the aid of sherpas or bottled oxygen, she was intent on completing similar climbs of the second and third highest mountains, K2 and Kangchenjunga, but she died on the descent from the K2 summit. Her diaries, as used by David Rose and Ed Douglas in their biography, Regions of the Heart, reveal a woman constantly torn between love of her two children and her obsession not only to climb, but to make her mark as a mountain climber.

Hargreaves was born in 1962, and grew up in Belper, Derbyshire, the middle child of three. Her family were often out walking on the English hills, and aged nine she had raced ahead of them to be the first to the summit of Britain’s highest mountain, Ben Nevis. She was introduced to rock climbing aged 13, preferring to climb than to study for Oxford as her parents had done. Aged 16, while working in a climbing shop, she met amateur climber Jim Ballard, nearly twice her age. She left home two years later to live with him. The couple ran an outdoor equipment shop, while Hargreaves trained and climbed in her spare time. By her mid-20s, she had climbed in the Himalayas, but in 1988 - the year she married Jim - she was back in the Alps, notably climbing the north face of the Eiger while six months pregnant with Tom. Her second child, Kate, was born two years later.

By 1993, Alison and Jim were in so much debt they had to leave their house. They relocated to live in Switzerland, in an old Land Rover, so that Hargreaves could continue to climb. That year she became the first person ever to scale the six north faces of the Alps alone and in one season. This brought her media and sponsorship attention. She wrote a book about the feat - A Hard Day’s Summer - but it was poorly received, and money problems continued.

Hargreaves decided that her next project - for personal and financial reasons - should be Everest. She bailed on a first attempt in 1994 fearing frostbite, but a second attempt in May 1995 succeeded, making her the first woman to reach the summit alone and without supplementary oxygen (the first man was Reinhold Messner - see Death on Nanga Parbat). She quickly made further plans to conquer the second two highest mountains in the world (K2 and Kangchenjunga). After a brief trip back to see her family in the UK, she returned to the Himalayas in June to join an American team with a permit to climb K2. For weeks, stormy weather kept the team at base camp. By August, remnants of the team had joined up with members of other teams from Canada and New Zealand. Peter Hillary, son of Edmund who along with Tenzing Norgay completed the first successful ascent of Mount Everest (see On top of Mount Everest), was also there with a Spanish team.

On 13 August, Hillary decided to turn back and go down, forecasting a change in weather conditions. However, Hargreaves and Spaniard Javier Olivar saw fine weather and made for the summit, reaching it at 6.45pm, making Hargreaves the first woman to conquer both Everest and K2 without supplemental oxygen or support. Four other climbers reached the summit behind them; but, then, all six died in a violent storm on the way down. A seventh climber that had turned back below the summit died later from the effects of exposure. The next day two other Spanish climbers, lower down, saw debris equipment, and a body in the distance, and concluded it was Hargreaves who had been blown off the mountain in the storm.

Hillary, in an interview with The Independent, noted that a bizarre chemistry had developed among the several expeditions on the mountain ‘that meant they were going for the summit no matter what’. Of Alison, in particular, he said: ‘[She] was a brilliant climber but she had tremendous commercial pressures on her and she became obsessed. When you spoke to her it was clear that climbing came first and everything else was secondary.’

Further information is available from Wikipedia, Encyclopedia.com, a Guardian interview with Jim Ballard, the BBC, or The Independent’s obituary. Alison and Jim’s son, Tom, later became the first person to climb solo all six major north faces of the Alps in one winter - see The Telegraph, for example.

Hargreaves left behind a large volume of diary material which, apparently, was fought over by her husband on one side and her parents on the other. In any case, two journalist/climbers, David Rose and Ed Douglas were given access to them for their sympathetic biography Regions of the Heart - The Triumph and Tragedy of Alison Hargreaves (Michael Joseph, 1999).

The authors say: ‘Alison’s diaries provide a record of her life which is well in excess of a million words. For the period 1973-92, the quotations from them found here were copied by us from the originals, which were left at Meerbrook Lea when the house was repossessed in 1993 and rescued by her parents. Later diary entries were published in her own A Hard Day’s Summer (Hodder & Stoughton, 1994) and Jim Ballard’s One and two Halves to K2 (BBC Books, 1996).’

Unfortunately, their book quotes very few actual diary entries, and rarely do they come referenced with a date. The following diary-focused extracts in Regions of the Heart can all be found in the last chapter, Nemesis.

‘ ‘I’ve been missing Tom and Kate today,’ she wrote in her diary as early as 3 July, ‘probably because I have had time to think about them. I’ve half felt like not wanting really to stay and finish this “job off” - but I don’t know if or when I’ll get another chance, so I might regret it.’ ’

‘Cooney remembers her returning in tears on 11 July from one of the agonizingly short telephone calls she made on the satellite phone to her children. ‘I spoke for two and a half minutes,’ she wrote miserably in her diary.’ ’

‘ ‘I am feeling pressure back home,’ she wrote in her diary on 5 August at the height of her crisis. ‘Why I failed, what went wrong. Personally it doesn’t matter but I worry about how everyone else will see it.’ Except, of course, that how others saw her was very important indeed to her self-esteem, and for Alison failure was bitterly personal.’

‘On 5 August, with the porters ready to start carrying her equipment down the glacier next day, she wrote of how she missed the children. She’d now spent more than a hundred days of 1995 away from Tom and Kate. Yet there was still a desire for the mountain, too. ‘It eats away at me - wanting the children and wanting K2,’ she wrote. ‘I feel like I’m pulled in two. Maybe they’d be happier if Mum was around but maybe summiting K2 would help make a better future for them. Long term, having me back safe and sound is surely more important.’ ’ [It’s not clear from the authors’ text whether this last is an actual diary entry or not.]

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

Midges very troublesome

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

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

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

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

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

Here are several extracts.

‘1871

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


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


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


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


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


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


Wednesday 14 June - Did Essence Block.


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


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


Saturday 17 June - Worked hard. Did three blocks.


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


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


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


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

5 March 1891, Stafford Terrace

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

18 March 1894, Stafford Terrace


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

11 June 1898, Stafford Terrace

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

19 August 1904, Drumlanford, Ayrshire.

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

22 November 1908, Stafford Terrace


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

26 November 1909, Stafford Terrace


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

Boglice round the neck

‘At the Crown, Sir Christopher told of killing the wormes with burnt oyle (elsewhere mentiond) and of curing his Lady of a thrush by hanging a bag of live boglice about her neck.’ This is a short extract from the diary of the remarkable polymath, Robert Hooke, born 380 years ago today. He was a scientist, philosopher, architect and inventor, distinguishing himself in many fields. He served as curator of experiments of the Royal Society and was a surveyor to the City of London after the Great Fire, helping his friend Sir Christopher Wren to rebuild St Paul’s Cathedral. For a decade or so, he kept a diary, which is a rich, dense record of that period in his life. In it are mentioned hundreds of taverns and coffee houses where he had meetings, and the names of thousands of people with whom he came into contact. He also describes, in passing, inventions, innovations, discoveries, and potential medical cures (such as Wren’s cure for thrush!).

Hooke was born on 28 July 1635 (18 July Old Style) at Freshwater on the Isle of Wight, the son of a churchman. He was educated at Westminster School and, thanks to a scholarship, at Christ Church, Oxford. He worked as an assistant for the scientist Robert Boyle between 1657 and 1662, and then became curator of experiments at the Royal Society. In 1663, he was made a fellow of the Society. In this mid-1660s period he was lecturing on subjects such as mechanics and geometry, and publishing books such as Micrographia with elaborate drawings of objects viewed through a microscope, and Cometa on the nature of comets.

After the great fire in 1666, Hooke was appointed one of three surveyors of London to supervise rebuilding works, and he himself designed some new buildings, such as Bethlehem Hospital. He was great friends with Christopher Wren, and they collaborated often, for example, on St Paul’s Cathedral, whose dome uses a method of construction conceived by Hooke. In the 1670s, Hooke seems to have been at odds with other scientists, including Newton and Huygens; and he and the Royal Society were the subject of Shadwell’s satirical play The Virtuoso. In 1677, Hooke took over as secretary of the Society. The following year he published Lectures De Potentia Bestitutiva or Of Spring, which described the law of elasticity, later known as Hooke’s Law. He was also responsible for a variety of other important scientific understandings, including phenomenon of diffraction.

In the 1680s, Hooke was involved in a further dispute with Newton over the latter’s Principia which was published without any recognition of Hooke’s contribution to the theories on planetary motions. Hooke never married, but he did have mistresses, including his niece whom he had cared for since she was 11. (In fact, Hooke recorded his sexual activity in the diary - see Felicity Henderson’s blog post for more on this. ) Hooke died in 1703. Further information is available from Wikipedia, Royal Museums Greenwich, Westminster School’s Robert Hooke website, Felicity Henderson’s blog on Hooke, or UCMP’s page on Hooke.

Robert Hooke began keeping a journal (or memorandum book) on 10 March 1672, and continued until May 1683. It’s considered the most important record of Hooke’s life, and is held by Guildhall Library, London. The manuscript was transcribed and published by Henry W. Robinson and Walter Adams as The Diary of Robert Hooke (Taylor & Francis, 1935). The editors explain that the diary has a somewhat tortuous (and partly unknown) history.

For most of the first year, the entries are mainly concerned with the weather, but these give way to more general entries recording notable events and the author’s own activities. Each entry becomes, in fact, a dense record of Hooke’s movements and meetings, often difficult to interpret without further contextual information. By 1679, his stamina in recording the busy days begins to wane, and the entries become noticeably shorter, sometimes just one or two lines. The entry for Monday 28 June 1680, for example, reads: ‘Spent most of my time in considering all matters.’ The editors note that the diary is replete with chaotic punctuation (a full stop after every two or three words, as if, they add, Hooke had rested his pen on the paper while thinking up the next words to write).

Well over 100 taverns and coffee houses are mentioned in the published version of Hooke’s diary, all listed at the back; and there is also a biographical index with around 2,000 names. Dr Felicity Henderson, of Exeter University, who is currently editing the diary for a new edition to be published by Oxford University Press, has already made available, with the Royal Society, an annotated collection of Hooke’s diary entries which were omitted from the Robinson/Adams edition, i.e. from March to July 1672 and from January 1681 to May 1683. 

Here are several samples of Hooke’s diary style, taken from the 1935 publication.

18 May 1675
‘At Sir J. Mores. Player and Oliver Dogs. at Holburne conduit. - in quest of Sir Chr: Wren at Lords house. Mr. Colwall walked with Titus. Gave Grace chocolatt. Discoursed with Sir Chr: Wren. Noe money but to contribute towards his losse by wells and account. Dind with Boyl. Walkd with Scarborough in the park. Met with Montacue. Told Sir Christopher my Longitude inventions. Met the King in the Park. he shewd watch, affirmed it very good.’

25 May 1675
‘At Dr. Busbys. With the King and shewd my watch with a magnet with which he was well pleased and Invited me to come to him. Dind at Busbys. At Dr. Hameys £10. At Dr. Whitakers. Fine children. Mayer and his wife at Storys. Went home. Severall Disputes with Tompion urged him forward with watch - the rest of the week I forgot but I received the Double pendulum Sea clock and had a box made by Coffin for it, I hung it by strings. I shewd it Tompion upon Sunday when I drank Dulwich water. And upon Monday I went to the King. I was introduced by Colonel Titus. The King very well pleased I knew not what to ask. He went into his closet. Tompion and Harry with me I shewd it Sir Chr. Wren. Sir Chr. Wren unwilling to let me have any money though Woodroof had £50, unwilling I should have any room in Gallery at Whitehall, would have thrust me into the park.’

17 June 1675
‘At Mr. Montacues and at the ground with Mr. Russell and Montacue. Noe councell. Society Read Dr. Grew. Outlandish physitian. Oldenburg a Rascall. I propounded my theory about the digestion of liquors, about Putrefaction, about the parts of Liquors working one upon another etc. Received from Brounker order for receiving from Chest. Received it from Collonel Richards. Received also Hay Grains his bowle of silver from him. Gave J. Clay 5 shill.’

23 August 1675
‘R. Smith here about Dr. Hamey. With Andrews to Sir Ch. Wren about sand and rubble for Paules. Delivered back to Martin, Simsons book and Hobbs de mirabilibus Pecci. With Sir Ch: Wren to Lord Mayors to Bedlam. To Physicians Colledge. To Paules wharf. Coles at Hearnes. At Mrs. Mayors. Heard of Bloodworth’s sicknesse at Garaways.’

16 August 1677
‘Smart here about Hold, a note to be at East India house tomorrow. To founders in Bedlam for 2 ballances. Sent Tom to Scowen. At Sir Chr. Wrens. Passd Mr. Marshalls bill for Coleman street. Dind with Marshall and Oliver. to Rowlisons at Miter. At Home, Henshaw, Hoskins, Hill, Hawk, Whistler, Aubery. At the Crown, Sir Christopher told of killing the wormes with burnt oyle (elsewhere mentiond) and of curing his Lady of a thrush by hanging a bag of live boglice about her neck. Discoursed about theory of the Moon which I explained. Sir Christopher told his way of solving Keplers problem by the Cycloeid.’

10 August 1678
‘Received a note from Tillotson to Direct masons at Paules, the Bishop of Londons kindnesse. Directed Lamb about universall map. Calld at Lever Pits to fetch back a bad globe. at Gerrards, Goldsmith at Holburn bridge, Bloomsberry, Sir Ch. Wrens, to Paules. at Childs with Sir Ch. Wren, told him my designes of mapps, my equation of springs. took of Pit book of Education 2sh., borrowd Sansoms 43 mapps. Haak here. Grace bound Bocconi and Oughtred. Began introduction to Atlas from Lamb 4 sheets of the North Col. hemisphere. ill and melancholy.’

The Diary Junction

Better than Proust’s madeleine

‘I am startled to find that on the last page of my diary for 1980 I myself wrote: “There will be a nuclear war in the next decade.” And then in capital letters, as if the lower case formulation was still inadequate: “WE WILL SEE A NUCLEAR WAR IN THIS DECADE.” ’ This is from the youthful diaries of British historian Timothy Garton Ash - celebrating his 70th birthday today. It’s one of a few diary entries he revealed in a 1997 book - The File: A Personal History - based on his time in Berlin and a report compiled on him then by the East German secret police.

Garton Ash was born on 12 July 1955. His father, John, had been a Royal Artillery officer, one of the first to land in Normandy on D-Day, and later a finance expert advising schools in the independent sector. Timothy himself was schooled at Sherborne, and then studied modern history at Oxford University. He moved to Berlin, in the early 1980s, to further his postgraduate research, and then travelled widely through Eastern Europe reporting on the emancipation of Central Europe from communism. He was appointed foreign editor of the Spectator, but also wrote for The Times and The Independent.

Since 1990, Garton Ash has been a Fellow of St Antony’s College, Oxford, and, since 2004, Professor of European Studies at the University of Oxford, where he is also the Isaiah Berlin Professorial Fellow. In the US, he maintains a part-time residence at the Hoover Institution (Stanford University). There is very little personal information about Garton Ash readily available online other than that he is married to Danuta, has two children, and is based in Oxford. More readily available - at Wikipedia, for example, is information on his fellowships and awards.

After authoring, in the 1980s and early 1990s, several books on the recent history of central Europe, Garton Ash turned his attention to a more personal story. He discovered that the Stasi had kept a detailed file on his activities and movements while living in Berlin, and he returned to the city to look into the file, and, ultimately to write and publish a book on his findings - The File: A Personal History (HarperCollins 1997, republished by Atlantic Books in 2009, with a new afterword).

‘In this memoir,’ the publisher says, ‘Garton Ash describes what it was like to rediscover his younger self through the eyes of the Stasi, and then to go on to confront those who actually informed against him to the secret police. Moving from document to remembrance, from the offices of British intelligence to the living rooms of retired Stasi officers, The File is a personal narrative as gripping, as disquieting, and as morally provocative as any fiction by George Orwell or Graham Greene. And it is all true.’

Of interest to me, to this web site, is that Garton Ash kept a diary during his Berlin years (I’ve no idea whether he has continued to keep one in the 30 odd years since - I hope so), and used that diary to inform and colour his literary and moral adventures in Stasi-land. Unfortunately, however, he rarely quotes from his diary at any length, preferring to cite it as the source of some piece of information about his whereabouts or feelings or thoughts. However, here are a few short extracts, as quoted in The File directly from his diary.

In the first pages of the book, Garton Ash reproduces a Stasi observation report on him for 6 October 1979 when he made a trip to East Berlin. He follows this by describing the contents of his own diary for that day, which has Claudia ‘cheeky in red beret and blue uniform coat’. ‘Over Friedrichstrasse,’ his diary continues, ‘searched down to the soles of my shoes (Duckers. Officer very impressed.)’ He then continues with memories of the day before quoting this, also from his diary of that day: ‘Becoming yet more intimate . . . The torchlit procession. The cold, cold east wind. Our warmth. The maze - encircled. Slipping through the columns, evading the policemen. Finally to ‘Ganymed’. Tolerable dinner. C. re. her ‘Jobben’. Her political activity. We cross back via Friedrichstr. To Diener’s . . . c.0300 at Uhlandstr. Daniel, desperate and pale-faced before the flat door - locked out!’

At the end of this introductory chapter Garton Ash writes: ‘The Stasi’s observation report, my own diary entry: two versions of one day in a life. The “object” described with the cold outward eye of the secret policeman and my own subjective, allusive, emotional self-description. But what a gift to memory is a Stasi file. Far better than Proust’s madeleine.’

Garton Ash’s diary continues to inform and enrich his story in the book, part memoir, part analysis, part drama (in the sense that he confronts several of the people who had informed on him years earlier, and considers at length whether to mention their real names or not). But, as I’ve said, he rarely quotes more than a few words. Here’s some further, very brief, extracts from later in the book when he’s heading for Poland to cover the rise of Solidarity.

- ‘Poland was what journalists call a “breaking story”. To follow such a story is like being lashed to the saddlestraps of a racehorse at full gallop: very exciting, but you don’t get the best view of the race. Yet I tried to achieve a view from the Grandstand, even an aerial view, and to understand the story as part of history. The history of the present. For me, Poland was also a cause. “Poland is my Spain” I wrote in my diary on Christmas Eve 1980.’

- ‘On the day I left East Berlin, my diary records: “It seems to me now odds-on that the Russians will march into Poland. (And the Germans? Dr D. today says Ja.)” ’

- ‘I am startled to find that on the last page of my diary for 1980 I myself wrote: “There will be a nuclear war in the next decade.” And then in capital letters, as if the lower case formulation was still inadequate: “WE WILL SEE A NUCLEAR WAR IN THIS DECADE.” ’

As mentioned above, Garton Ash appears once only in my own diaries. This was in September 2005, and I was much taken up with my failure to get any attention for a novel I’d written and self-published, Kip Fenn - Reflections (more recently re-self-published in three volumes under the title Not a Brave New World - a trilogy in three wives). I had been very excited about this novel - the fictional memoir of an international diplomat, but one set in the future, spanning the whole of the 21st century, and very much focused on political and social issues, particularly the rich-poor divide. Despite its original format and story-line, I’d been unable to get anyone in the publishing industry to even glance at it, let alone take it seriously. 

That particular day, I noted in my diary several stories in The Guardian, all of which related directly to themes in my novel, in particular Garton Ash’s: Decivilisation is not as far away as we like to think.
Garton Ash concluded that article as follows: ‘In political preaching mode, we may take [hurricane] Katrina as an appeal to get serious about addressing these challenges, which means the great blocs and the great powers of the world [. . .] reaching for a new level of international cooperation.’ Yes, ‘Reaching for a new level of international cooperation’ was precisely the main and urgent theme of my novel.

I also note in my diary that day how the media was giving a lot of attention to the UN’s 60th birthday, and calling for an increase in the amount of aid to the developed world - again this was also major theme in my novel. Indeed, the career of the narrator, Kip Fenn, in my novel leads him to become head of a major new UN agency designed to fund sustainable development in developing countries to counteract the worst effects of climate change.

This article is a revised version of one first published on 12 July 2015.