A librarian’s business

Humfrey Wanley, an English librarian, palaeographer and scholar of Old English, died 300 years ago today. He was employed by manuscript collectors and was the first keeper of the Harleian Library. He left behind a rather unusual diary: although little more than a banal record of a librarian’s day-by-day business in the early 18th century, it is considered an important record for the history of book collecting.

Wanley was born in Coventry in 1672, the youngest son of the clergyman and author Nathaniel Wanley. Apprenticed to a Coventry draper while still in his teens, he developed an extraordinary fascination with medieval manuscripts, teaching himself to read and copy ancient hands in every spare moment. His talent attracted the attention of William Lloyd, whose patronage enabled him to enter Oxford in 1695. Although he never took a degree, his remarkable expertise in palaeography quickly earned him a place as an assistant in the Bodleian Library; there he began work that established him as the foremost Anglo-Saxon manuscript scholar of his generation.

During the following decade Wanley became indispensable to the study and cataloguing of England’s medieval manuscripts. He travelled widely in search of Anglo-Saxon books, compiled the pioneering catalogue of Old English manuscripts published in 1705, and gained the confidence of the great manuscript collector Robert Harley. From 1708 he served as keeper of the Harleian Library, helping to build one of Britain’s greatest manuscript collections, now preserved in the British Library. His meticulous cataloguing and formidable knowledge of early English texts made him one of the founders of modern manuscript scholarship.

Wanley married Anna Bourchier, the widowed Bernard Martin Berenclow, at St Swithin, London Stone, in 1705. Their three children all died in infancy, and Anna herself died in 1722. He later married Ann Lloyd. Frequently troubled by poor health, Wanley nevertheless continued working almost until the end of his life. He died of dropsy in London on 6 July 1726 and was buried in St Marylebone Parish Church. Further biographical information is available from Wikipedia, Kemble College, The British Academy or an article in The Scribe Unbound.

Wanley’s diary covers the final eleven years of his life, from March 1715 until June 1726. Kept primarily as a working journal, it records his daily dealings with booksellers, collectors, scholars and aristocratic patrons, especially the Harleys, alongside visits to auctions, coffee houses and libraries. Rather than offering introspective reflections, it provides an unusually detailed picture of the London book trade, the formation of great manuscript collections and the practical business of scholarship in the early eighteenth century. It has become an indispensable source for historians of books, libraries and antiquarian learning.

Although long known to scholars in manuscript, the diary was not published until 1966, when the Bibliographical Society issued The Diary of Humfrey Wanley, 1715-1726 in two volumes, edited by C. E. Wright and Ruth C. Wright. The full text can be read online at Internet Archive. Here are several extracts - including a part of the introduction - that give a flavour of the full published work.

Introduction: ‘Humfrey Wanley’s Diary or Journal, here printed for the first time in its entirety, was kept by him while Library-Keeper in the service of Robert Harley, 1st Earl of Oxford, and Edward, his son, the 2nd Earl, and runs from 2 March 1714/15 to 23 June 1726, with, however, a considerable gap (except for one entry under 18 July 1716) between 22 August 1715 and 11 January 1719/20, when the Diary was resumed by my Lord Harley’s Order. It records the visits of, or to, booksellers and dealers, and negotiations with them; lists of manuscripts and printed books offered for sale, purchased, or received by gift; conversations with various people about library business; the visits of scholars and others to the Library, either as students there or as sightseers, and so on. It is in fact a record of the day-by-day business of a working librarian and is in no sense, therefore, a diary such as Pepys’s or Evelyn’s: apart from occasional references to his health, Wanley’s allusions to personal affairs are few, for instance, a reference to the sudden death of his wife (on 3 January 1721/22) - ‘my late grievous Calamity’ under the entry 15 January 1721/22 - and to the death of his landlady (under 10 November 1724), but a simple direct style, happy choice of descriptive word and phrase, skill in recounting an incident (such as the oft-quoted Warburton-Genoa Arms ‘frolick’ under 13 July 1720), a sarcastic, caustic tongue and occasional use of ‘asides’ (as when he says that Mr. Hugh Thomas ‘came to Study, as he think’s’ combined with the interest of the subject matter (at any rate to all those whose ways lie in the paths of librarianship) make it absorbing reading. The entry under 11 January 1719/20 suggests that when the Diary was begun in 1715 it was done so by Edward Harley’s instructions and that it was, in a certain sense, intended to be an official record of his work as custodian of the Library. It is preserved in two quarto-size volumes in the Lansdowne Collection.’

10 June 1715

‘My noble Lord Oxford was pleased to bring in an Original Letter of the Elector Palatin to Qu. Anne: and an Extract from a letter of the late Emperor of Morocco to her Majestie, in Arabic; with an English Version.’

14 June 1715

‘My Noble Lord Oxford was pleased to send in an Original Letter of Louise Princess of Holstein to Queen Anne.’

15 June 1715

‘My Noble Lord Oxford was pleased to send in an Original [letter] of Victor Amedeo the present King of Sicily, to himself.’

4 May 1720.

‘I went to Stafford-house, upon information that there are two very fine MSS which will be sold at the Sale of the late Earl of Stafford’s things, which Commence’s to morrow. I found the one to be a sort of Breviary, the other to be a kind of Diurnal, both very finely Illuminated.

A Letter was Sent to Mr Tanner, desiring him to attend my Lord this day by two of the clock. (in Order to receive my Lord’s Commissions for Buying at the Sale abovementioned).

Mr Sanderson sent me a Letter, with the Price he putt’s upon his Things; which price I think too dear, because very many of them His Lordship doth not want, or intend’s to buy: many other’s he hath already; and the remainder not considerable enough to induce him to part with so much as Mr Sanderson ask’s.

I went to Mr Warner the Goldsmith, desiring him to execute my Lords Commission for buying the MSS. abovementioned, and some other things at Stafford-house, which he readily undertook. I also bought of him the old Gyllyngham-Silver-Spoon for my Lord.’

28 June 1721

A Letter sent to Mr Noel, about a time when he is to wait upon my Lord.

Mr Charles Davis brought a MS. mostly Hebrew, written by a Christian, and partly Latin; being upon the Subject of Conjuration. I rejected it now; as I remember I did before about 7 or 8 years ago.

Mr Bogdani came, & took away the old Leaves he left with me.

Mr Cart came, enquiring about Mr Morley & A Bp. Sancrofts Papers.

Mr Bacon came, & told me that he had lately seen in a Booksellers Hands, one part of a Septi-partite Indenture between King Henry VII, and others, dated 16 July, anno regni 19, which is to be sold. But that the Seal & Bosses are taken off. I desired him to buy it for my Lord as cheap as he can; & he promised to do so.’

Trapped in a comical maze

‘Ten minutes after seeing the neurologist, I can’t get out of the car park. At Glasgow Queen Elizabeth University Hospital, I drive round and around a little multi-storey block for half an hour, unable to discern an exit. [. . .] So, I begin the year of dread and hope, trapped in a comical maze, in a comical car with a quizzical look on my face.’ This is from the diary - recently published in paperback - kept by Justin Currie, a Scottish singer and songwriter best known as a founding member of the rock band Del Amitri.

Currie was born in Glasgow in 1964. His father, John Currie, was an acclaimed choral conductor who served as chorusmaster of the Royal Scottish National Orchestra Chorus before later becoming music director of the Los Angeles Master Chorale. Music formed part of Currie’s upbringing, although he was drawn more towards songwriting. He formed his first band while at school in Glasgow. 

In the early 1980s, he famously placed a handwritten notice in a Glasgow music shop seeking musicians, an advertisement that led to the formation of Del Amitri, with Currie the band’s bassist, lead singer and principal songwriter. Success came gradually, but albums including Waking Hours, Change Everything and Twisted produced a string of hit singles, among them Nothing Ever Happens, Always the Last to Know and Roll to Me, while Del Amitri ultimately sold more than six million records worldwide.

Alongside his work with Del Amitri, Currie developed a successful solo career, releasing four studio albums between 2007 and 2017. His succes is said to be based on the exceptional quality of his songwriting, admired for its emotional honesty, dry humour and literary sophistication. His lyrics often examine ageing, relationships, disappointment and resilience - all with a rare combination of self-deprecation and poetic precision. 

Following a lengthy hiatus, Del Amitri returned with Fatal Mistakes in 2021, the groups highest-charting record for three decades, before resuming extensive touring in Britain, Europe and North America. In 2022, Currie was diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease - after noticing an increasingly obvious tremor in his right hand. Rather than retreating from public life, he continued to perform while adapting to the challenges of the condition. 

However, he also started to keep a diary. The resulting text was first published in hardback by New Modern in August 2025 as The Tremolo Diaries: Life on the Road and Other Diseases.The book, the publisher says, ‘is a beautiful and unique meditation on illness and aging. It is a twilight years reflection on band life in the 21st Century. It’s a travelogue around the world’s art galleries, parks, bars and sites of natural beauty. And most importantly, it is about love and friendship, adversity and courage, life and loss.’

The work has since been released as a paperback which can be previewed at Googlebooks; reviews can be read here and here. The diary itself falls into two sections structured around an arduous American support tour in 2023 and a more rewarding European tour in 2024. The entries are mostly dated ‘Day 1’, ‘Day 2’, ‘Day 3’ and so on although the underlying chronology can usually be reconstructed from the tour itinerary. 

18 January 2022

‘Ten minutes after seeing the neurologist, I can’t get out of the car park. At Glasgow Queen Elizabeth University Hospital, I drive round and around a little multi-storey block for half an hour, unable to discern an exit.

The neurologist, a frank young man whose kind manner was compromised by his surgical mask, had just asked me an odd question. ‘Why are you here?’

It had occurred to me then that he was terrified of dropping the P-bomb.

‘Well, my GP and I strongly suspect Parkinson’s,’ I reply. I can see the mans face, or the sliver of his face that remains uncovered, visibly relax.

‘I can do a brain scan today,’ he says, ‘but we won’t find anything. However, in that event, I will not tell you that you don’t have Parkinson’s. Or I can see you in a year.’

I opt for the year of half-knowing, half-hoping.

As I leave his tidy little room, I say, ‘So, you’re saying I have Parkinson’s, but you can’t confirm the diagnosis for a year. How do you know?’

‘Relax your arms by your side,’ he says, and my right hand gently trembles at my hip, as if it’s remembering something tricky.

‘Now lift your hands to shoulder height.’

The tremor stops.

‘That’s how?’

So, I begin the year of dread and hope, trapped in a comical maze, in a comical car with a quizzical look on my face. And twelve months later, I sail out of the same place secure in the knowledge I’m ill, and emboldened by the pleasant surprise that they have pills for this sort of thing.

I decide I’m going to keep working, keep touring, keep playing, despite the uneasy feeling that another man is growing inside me, slowly seizing the means of control. It’s as if your own shadow has leapt from the ground and buried itself within you. And this shadow has malevolent intent. He may share my shape, but now we’re combined, it’s a fight to find out who has the most valid claim.’

2 June 2023

‘Day 1. It’s 10 a.m. and we’re back in Cincinnati, parked inside the venue compound. I load my backpack and go backstage for a shower, drying myself with paper towels from a dispenser by the sink. I stroll out offsite and pay ten bucks to access an arts and crafts fair set up on the venue’s periphery. It’s a sea of dreadful tat: leather goods, tie-dyed rags and truly repugnant artwork. It’s heaving with bovine white flesh, ambling about in a retail daze. I sit under an oak and gaze at the river, half-boiled in my denim. One good thing: tonight’s shed is covered. But the heat is still fierce, its prison walls all around you, inches from your skin.

A harmony group start up from an open-sided enclosure, warbling a countrified Have You Ever Seen the Rain? Not today, chaps, no. Over my shoulder, I spot a lurid portrait of Elton John rendered in violent puce and electric blue. Jimi Hendrix and Willie Nelson hang beside him, equally disfigured. The band treble and birds sing. The man sharing my picnic bench is speaking in the broad twang of the South and I recall someone telling me that Cincinnati - situated in Ohio but on the Kentucky border - has a dual personality: half Yankee, half Confederate. There are ants and red spider mites crawling through my leg hair and I go down to the riverbank where two large geese guard three fluffy yellow chicks. A red speedboat bumps past and the sun drills down as the boat’s wake laps at the rocks with surprising violence. Seven waves, then silence. The geese take to the water honking a message I cannot fathom. Black spiders judder about at my feet as cotton-tufted seeds stream by on the breeze looking for somewhere to take root. I check out the band - mandolin, guitar and bass fiddle with a distinctly White Christian vibe - but shade is in short supply, so I go looking for the first food of the day. My morning pill has taken hold, so I’m alive for a few hours, the lowering proximity of the Ghastly Affliction held temporarily at bay. Make hay, make hay.

As I wend my way back to Bus World, I search for a hat. I need something straw with a wide brim. All I see are trinkets and future landfill disguised as objets d’art. I weave through baseball-hatted men slurping beer from plastic beakers, their wives in dime-store shorts and T’s, ponytails threaded through white sun visors. It's an army of consumption. Bored and dazed, killing time.’

Sir Haggard’s diaries

Sir Henry Rider Haggard, the British author of many an adventure story set in colonial Africa, often in sympathy with the native populations, was born 170 years ago today. He may have kept a private diary when younger, but the only diary extracts to have been published - Private Diaries and Diary of an African Journey - date from the last decade of his life. In the latter book, Haggard records an interesting conversation with the wife of South Africa’s first Prime Minister about the country’s future.

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

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

Although Haggard failed to get elected to Parliament in 1895, he became involved with reform in the agricultural sector, sitting on land use commissions, and occasionally travelling to the colonies. Apart from his many fiction works, he wrote several non-fiction books, including Rural England (1902) and an autobiography (The Days of My Life, 1926). He was knighted in 1912 and made a KBE in 1919. He died in 1925. Further biographical information about Haggard can be found at Wikipedia and Encyclopaedia Britannica. The Days of My Life is available at Internet Archive or at Project Gutenberg Australia.

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

The full work can be digitally borrowed from Internet Archive. Here are two extracts.

22 June 1921

‘By the lake side, Blagdon. Again my birthday. I am now 65! Alas how swiftly the years go by and I sink into old age. Disguise the truth as one will, it remains a melancholy truth that for me middle age has followed youth into the limbo of the past leaving at best but a few short years of life to be travelled before the last eclipse. Every year my friends grow fewer. Of the small number who still write to me upon my birthday my sister Ella was always one. And Ella has gone whither soon all of my generation must follow her.’

30 March 1917

‘I said to Kipling at the Athenaeum today that I trusted that we should not be expected to inhabit that region in the next world which was occupied by Germans. He replied that he was quite convinced that we should find none in any hell that he and I might land in. I think so too; whatever our sins we have not deserved that!

Rudyard Kipling and Martin Conway¹ were lunching together. Afterwards Conway came into the billiard room downstairs and informed me that Rudyard Kipling had been talking with admiration and amazement of the MS. of the story Yva, which I had given to him to read, saying that it was as full of go and imagination as though I had been sixteen instead of sixty.

Later Rudyard turned up and repeated this and more. He said to me that he had read the whole thing at a sitting ‘interlineations and all’, really read it, and that its grip and ‘freshness’ astonished him. He lay upon a sofa with those slippery sheets before him, unable to leave it, and thought it a remarkable work of imagination - really a new thing. I asked him if he had any criticisms to make. He said that he would not venture to offer any - there was the work - in a way outside of criticism - as good as anything I had ever done - or words to that effect. Evidently too, he meant all he said. This from such a man is complimentary, especially as he is not prodigal of compliments, but I am sure that when it appears the public - or rather the critics - will not discover these virtues in the book. It is not their fashion to praise my work. However, I am glad that the tale pleases its first reader so completely. The truth is that he (Kipling) has imagination, vision and can understand, amongst other things that Romance may be the vehicle of much that does not appear to the casual reader.’

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

This article is a slightly revised version of one first published on 22 June 2016.

Drawing on the flat system

Almost 50 years after the death of the Scottish artist Duncan Grant, a previously unknown diary was discovered among family papers and later sold at auction. The diary/notebook, covering the whole of 1911, fetched £13,750 - more than seventeen times its estimate - and provides a rare first-hand record of the young artist’s life before he became one of the defining painters of the Bloomsbury Group.

Grant was born near Aviemore in the Scottish Highlands in 1885. The son of a British Army officer, he spent parts of his childhood in India and Burma before returning to England. After studying at Westminster School of Art he travelled in Europe, where he encountered the work of Cézanne, Matisse and other modern French artists whose influence would shape his own developing style. Prior to the First World War, he had become closely associated with the Bloomsbury Group. 

Grant formed friendships with Virginia Woolf (see One wave after another, Vanessa Bell, Lytton Strachey (Strachey’s new biography), John Maynard Keynes and many other leading literary and artistic figures of the period. As well as painting, he designed textiles, stage sets, murals and decorative schemes, becoming one of the most versatile artists of his generation. He spent much of his adult life at Charleston in Sussex with Vanessa Bell, creating one of the most celebrated artistic households in Britain. Although fashions in art changed dramatically during his long career, he remained active well into old age and continued painting almost until the end of his life. He died in 1978. Further information is available from Wikipedia, the Tate and Charleston.

The newly discovered diary covers the year 1911, when Grant was twenty-six years old and beginning to establish himself professionally. It emerged from the papers of the family of art historian John Woodeson and appears to be the only diary of Grant’s currently known to survive. It was put up for auction by Gorringe’s (Lewes) in March 2025 with a high estimate of £800 - and sold for £11,000! According to newspaper reports at the time, it was bought by a private buyer - see Scottish Field.

Rather than a reflective journal, the diary is essentially a working notebook, recording appointments, journeys, paintings, meals, exhibitions and encounters with friends. The entries reveal a busy existence centred on art and friendship. Grant frequently notes meetings with Adrian Stephen, Henry Lamb and other members of his circle. He worked steadily throughout the year, recording progress on paintings and occasionally making brief observations about artistic technique. One entry describes work on a composition of dancers and notes that a ‘system of colour appears plain & simple’, adding the intriguing remark: ‘Drawing on the flat system.’ Elsewhere he records painting a child, sketching friends, travelling to Cambridge, dining at restaurants, attending exhibitions and taking Turkish baths.

The diary also captures Grant moving through the wider world beyond Bloomsbury. In June 1911 he recorded attending the Coronation procession of George V and Queen Mary, later remarking on the evening celebrations and noting that ‘the illuminations were fine’. Other entries describe continental travel, including visits to Segesta, Palermo and Monreale in Sicily. The notebook even contains a pencil sketch of a standing nude, reinforcing its character as a working artist’s personal record rather than a conventional diary.

The following extracts from the notebook have been (amateurishly) transcribed from the images made available by Gorringe’s at the time of the auction.  

21 January 1911

‘My 26th birthday. Mother gave me this book as a present, also a cushion & a sponge. Aunt [?] 10/-. Adrian 2 photos. At studio by 10. Visit from Adrian. Painted dancing women. Lunch at 29. Again painted dancing women. Tea at ABC. Adrian. (Peacock. Melincourt). Home to dinner. Aunt returned from Switzerland. Daddy to dinner.’

23 January 1911

‘Dark day. Up late. 11. Painted dancers after lunch the red figure. System of colour appears plain & simple. Drawing on the flat system.’

24 January 1911

‘Bright day. Adrian to breakfast. He afterwards to Cambridge. Painted child. Lunch ABC with Henry Lamb all afternoon. Tea ABC. A back [too]. Drew him. Dinner at 29.’

22 June 1911

‘Full breakfast at 6. I visited the Coronation Procession. Took a position in Trafalgar Sq. I then walked up [the Haymarket?] & from Jermyn Street to St James’s Sq. Had a T. Bath at 8 [?] at about 12:30 & saw the procession from Pall Mall [. . .] Fitzroy Sq.’

Pioneer of amateur radio

Born 140 years ago today, Eugen Gerald Marcuse was one of the early experimenters with amateur radio. Long before the BBC launched its Empire Service, Marcuse was experimenting with short-wave broadcasts, transmitting speech and music to listeners across the British Empire and beyond. Although Marcuse is remembered today as a radio pioneer rather than a diarist, a single youthful journal of his from 1903 has survived and is catalogued at the British Library.

Marcuse was born in Sutton, Surrey, on 4 June 1886, one of three children. After attending local schools he entered the Crystal Palace School of Engineering in 1903 before serving an apprenticeship with Ruston and Proctor of Lincoln, manufacturers of steam engines, road rollers and tractors. His work took him abroad and, while still a young man, he developed an interest in the emerging technology of wireless communication. By 1913 he had obtained an experimental wireless licence and was conducting his own transmissions using equipment assembled from commercially available parts.

Following the First World War, Marcuse resumed his radio activities and soon became a leading figure in British amateur radio. Operating under the call sign 2NM and later G2NM, he participated in the pioneering transatlantic tests of the early 1920s and became one of the first British amateurs to establish two-way communication across the Atlantic. In 1925 he played a role in the formation of the International Amateur Radio Union and was elected one of its vice-presidents. He also relayed messages from the Hamilton Rice expedition in the Brazilian interior, earning recognition from the Royal Geographical Society.

The achievement for which he is best remembered came in 1927 when he began transmitting programmes of speech and music across the Empire using short-wave radio. These experimental broadcasts reached listeners throughout the world and anticipated by several years the BBC’s own Empire Service. Marcuse continued his radio work from Sonning-on-Thames and later Bosham, Sussex. During the Second World War he assisted the Radio Security Service, helping organise amateur volunteers who monitored radio transmissions on behalf of the authorities. He remained active in amateur radio throughout his life and died on 6 October 1961. Further information is most readily available from a pdf document available at the RADARC website.

Although Marcuse could not have claimed to be a diarist, there is a single surviving youthful journal from 1903 written during his studies at the Mechanical Engineering School, Einbeck, Germany. The 56-page volume - The Diary of Gerald Marcuse - was translated and edited by David Fry (a radio operator) according to the British Library, and published in the UK in 2022. However, there appears to be no trace online of its contents. Similarly, there’s an absence of information about a second David Fry book on Marcuse: in 2023, he seems to have published a fuller biography: Gerald Eugen Marcuse, G2NM: Pioneer of Radio.

The absence of accessible diary entries means that Marcuse’s own voice survives more readily through a taped interview recorded in the RADARC document, a year before his death. Looking back on his pioneering broadcasts, he recalled: ‘Everybody clamoured for Big Ben and nobody would give me a recording. I had to wait until 12.00 - it was the only time in those days they did it.’ Elsewhere he cheerfully admitted to ignoring official restrictions: ‘Your licence permitted you to rebroadcast? It didn’t, but I did not care in those days.’ 

Perhaps the most charming anecdote concerned the origins of his Empire broadcasts. Marcuse remembered receiving a letter from a listener in Bermuda who wrote: ‘I am enchanted with your voice which I hear every Sunday morning and I have three lovely daughters and a flourishing business. If you would like to come over you can have the pick of the daughters and the business.’

Inside Stalin’s Russia

Sir Reader Bullard, a British career diplomat whose final posting was as Ambassador in Tehran, died 40 years ago today. He served as Consul-General in Moscow and Leningrad in the 1930s, quietly observing, and recording in his diary, Stalin’s regime become increasingly more repressive. He published an autobiography in his lifetime, but the diary of his Russia period remained unpublished until edited by his son, Julian, and brought out by Day Books in 2000.

Bullard was born in 1885 in London, the son of a tally clerk. After grammar school, a brief period as a pupil teacher and two years at Queen’s College, Cambridge, he joined the Levant consular service of the Foreign Office in 1906. He started his career in Constantinople, first in the consulate-general and then in the embassy as a student interpreter. Subsequently, he was stationed at Basra, Mesopotamia, and later accompanied Sir Percy Fox on two missions to Tehran. After time in Britain, he returned to Iraq in May 1920 as military governor of Baghdad, with the rank of major.

Bullard spent two years back in London with the new Middle East department of the Colonial Office, set up by the colonial secretary, Winston Churchill. He married Miriam Smith in 1921, with whom he had five children. He went on to serve as Consul in Jeddah (1923-25), Athens, (1925-28), and Addis Ababa (1928). He was then appointed Consul-General in Moscow (1930), and in Leningrad (1931-34). After the Soviet Union, Bullard also took postings in Rabat and, eventually, as Ambassador in Tehran from 1939 to 1946. He was knighted in 1936.

After retiring from the diplomatic service, Bullard became Director of the Institute of Commonwealth Studies in Oxford, and a member of the governing body of School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), University of London. He wrote Britain and the Middle East (Hutchinson, 1951) and his autobiography The Camels Must Go (Faber, 1961). E. C. Hodgkin gives this assessment of the man: ‘But it was for his personality that Bullard was chiefly remembered. He was a humble man. Short and stocky, with a craggy face and deep set eyes, he gave an immediate impression of rock-like solidity. A tireless worker, deeply conscious of his country’s past and of the highest standards she had the right to demand from her servants, he was no less conscientious in his attention to detail.’ He died on 24 May 1976. A little further information is available from Wikipedia or St Anthony’s College website.

While in Russia, Bullard kept a fairly detailed diary of his day-to-day doings. These were edited by his son and daughter-in-law, Julian and Margaret Bullard, and published by Day Books in 2000: Inside Stalin’s Russia: The Diaries of Reader Bullard 1930-1934. The publisher says the diaries ‘paint an unforgettable picture of Russia, its politics and people, in the critical years when Stalin was tightening his grip on power.’ In a foreword, Douglas Hurd (Foreign Secretary 1989-1995) observes that Bullard’s ‘laid-back style is particularly suited to the business of exploring and experiencing the Soviet system. Bullard did not come to Moscow with any prejudice against that system, if anything the reverse; but his natural shrewdness prevented him from being deceived. There are no denunciations of the cruelty which he began to find around him, just the straightforward record of the facts.’ A review of the book can be found at The Guardian.

Here are several extracts.

21 December 1930
‘The bag brought a pair of new skates which I have had screwed on to a pair of old boots. I went on the ice for the first time since 1914 (at Erzerum). I only fell over twice, but I can’t recover the one simple trick I had learned - the outside edge on the right foot.

The Chef de Protocol of the Diplomatic Corps is one Florinsky. It is said that his father was shot by the Reds and he never raised a finger. Asked how he could work with Bolsheviks after this, Florinsky is said to have asked if one’s father was run over by a tram should one cease to ride on trams?

A few evenings ago I went up to talk to Pott, and thinking that I might overlap his dessert I put a slab of chocolate (with almonds and raisins) into my pocket. I found Walker there and two Russian ballet- dancers. Pott and Walker danced with them to the sound of a gramophone, but I’m not sure that I wasn’t the feature of the evening, for I produced my chocolate, and the girls fell on it like dogs on a bone.

Last night Walker gave a party and invited the two ballet girls. The two girls greeted me with cries of ‘the chocolate grandpa!’ so if I had had any illusions about my value to the party they would have been dispelled.’

13 September 1932
‘Our messenger brought me a handbill which had been distributed to all the flats in his building. It orders each resident to collect six bottles, half a kilo of rags, half a kilo of bones, half a kilo of paper, three-quarters of a kilo of rubber, six kilos of old iron and one kilo of non-ferrous metal (brass, copper, etc.) and to hand them in. Quite impossible. Any scraps of old iron have been given in long ago. Paper is so short that the co-operatives give theirs customers fresh fish without paper. As for rubber - for a long time it has been impossible to buy a pair of galoshes unless you hand in an old pair.’

27 October 1932
‘The three maids report that all their clothes are falling to pieces and have put in an enormous list of things they want - at least enormous for this place where material is so short. There is not a yard of any material to be had.

Soermus, the Soviet violinist who visits England and combines his concerts with propaganda, is in some difficulty with his passport. Under the latest regulations, when a Soviet citizen returns from abroad his passport is taken from him, and if he wants to go abroad again he must apply for a new passport, and before it is granted he has to pass first a chistka, or purge, to find out exactly where the applicant has been and what he has done, and then an examination by a trio of communists. Mrs Soermus says her husband lives with his head in a musical cloud and notices nothing.

Woodhead has returned from another visit to the paper-mill. Two OGPU men who travelled part of the way with him had chickens and all sorts of things in their luggage. ‘The new bourgeoisie!’ one of them said to Woodhead. The mill, which ought to have begun operating two years ago, began in September and is making five tons of paper a day instead of forty-five tons. Woodhead attended an eight-hour meeting of about thirty men, only two of whom were engineers, the others were ‘Red’ directors, workmen etc. Woodhead refused to take any part in the discussion, which he described as worthless. To engage in the discussion would have been to admit that all these untrained people had a right to give an opinion on highly technical questions.’

This article is a slightly revised version of one first published on 24 May 2016.

Smooth as a bowling green

‘The road through it is smooth as a bowling green and the ride is all the way as delightful as man could wish.’ So wrote the American traveller Jabez Maud Fisher in 1776, clearly relieved to have found a decent stretch of English highway. His words (see An American Quaker in the British Isles: The Travel Journals of Jabez Maud Fisher, 1775-1779) feature in new research from the University of Cambridge, published this spring, which argues that the much-maligned turnpike trusts of the 18th century did far more to improve Britain’s roads than historians have generally acknowledged. Drawing on nearly 100 travellers’ diaries, the researchers suggest that ordinary road users cared less about speed than about avoiding mud, holes, broken wheels and the danger of being pitched into a ditch.

The study, by Leigh Shaw-Taylor, Alan Rosevear and Dan Bogart, examined comments scattered through diaries written between the mid-17th century and the early 19th century. These diarists often wrote with extraordinary feeling about the state of the roads. In 1698, the indefatigable traveller Celia Fiennes (see A remedy for laziness) described roads near Ely as ‘so full of holes and quicksands . . . a stranger then cannot easily escape the danger’. Elsewhere, travellers used terms such as ‘execrable’, ‘detestable’, ‘vile’ and ‘ruinous’ for roads which modern motorists, even when complaining about potholes, might hesitate to compare with today’s conditions.

Turnpike trusts emerged because parish authorities had proved unable to maintain the expanding road network. From the late 17th century onwards, trusts were authorised to collect tolls in return for maintaining specific roads. According to the Cambridge researchers, travellers’ diaries reveal measurable improvements once roads were turnpiked. Roads under turnpike management were substantially more likely to be judged ‘good’ or at least ‘acceptable’, while non-turnpiked roads remained notorious for deep ruts, flooding and mud.

What is striking, however, is the diarists’ emphasis on comfort rather than haste. Dr Alan Rosevear notes that travellers ‘rarely mentioned speed’. Instead, they worried about safety, jolting and exhaustion. The research argues that many journeys were social or recreational - visits to relations, tours into Wales or the Lake District, or attendance at assemblies and weddings. A traveller wanted to arrive upright and presentable, not necessarily dramatically earlier.

The diaries also chart the emergence of tourism. Better roads encouraged wealthier Britons to venture into areas previously considered remote or almost impassable. Regions such as Wales, the North of England and the Southwest benefited particularly from turnpike investment. Before the trusts, wheeled traffic in some of these districts had been nearly impossible in winter conditions.

The study is a welcome reminder that private journals often preserve aspects of everyday history overlooked by official records. A passing complaint about mud, a broken axle, or a terrifying descent into a flooded lane can illuminate an entire transport system. These diarists were not trying to write economic history, the study demonstrates, yet, through their candid observations, they documented one of the infrastructural transformations that helped underpin Britain’s industrial expansion.

Hammers inside my head

‘Saw the name Morecambe & Wise on the front of the theatre - first time on Broadway. Mind you, it won’t be there for long. We do the show tomorrow, so it will be taken down tomorrow night.’ This is Eric Morecambe, one half of the famous Morecambe and Wise comedy double act, writing in a fairly matter-of-fact diary he kept for a couple of years at the end of the 1960s. Today marks the centenary of his birth.

John Eric Bartholomew was born on 14 May 1926 in Morecambe, Lancashire, to working class parents. His mother encouraged him to leave school aged 13 to work as a child performer. By winning talent contests, he earned a place in a touring show, Youth Takes a Bow, in which Ernest Wiseman was also a comic prodigy. The two became close friends, and began to develop a double act, which became a regular feature in the show. During the last years of the Second World War, Wiseman joined the merchant navy, while Bartholomew was conscripted, in mid-1944, to become a so-called Bevin Boy and work in a coal mine in Accrington, though he was discharged as unfit after a year or so.

Bartholomew got together again with Wiseman once he was released from the merchant navy,  and in 1947 they joined Lord George Sanger’s variety circus, soon billing themselves as Morecambe (after his birthplace) and Wise. In 1952 Morecambe married Joan Bartlett, a dancer and daughter of a captain in the Royal Army Medical Corps. They had two children, and also adopted a third child. In 1954, Morecambe and Wise’s first television series, Running Wild, was not a great success, and for the next few years they continued stage performances, with much touring, including a half year in Australia. They were also regulars on television variety shows. In 1961, the television broadcaster ATV launched The Morecambe and Wise Show, written by Sid Green and Dick Hills, which ran until 1968, establishing the duo as comedy celebrities. During the same period, they appeared several times on the Ed Sullivan show in New York, attracting huge audiences.

In 1968, Morecambe had a heart attack, and took six months off work to recuperate, returning to the stage with Wise the following summer. The duo moved their television work to the BBC, with Eddie Braben as their writer, and stayed until 1978 - producing the now-legendary Christmas shows - before switching to Thames Television. Morecambe had a second heart attack in 1979, followed by a bypass operation. Though he continued with the double act, making a series of shows for Thames between 1980 and 1983, he started branching out, playing other roles and writing more. He died of a third heart attack in 1984. Further information is available from Wikipedia, Chortle, or the old Morecambe website.

For a couple of years, between 1967 and early 1969, Morecambe kept a diary. This was first published by HarperCollins in 2005 in William Cook’s Eric Morecambe Unseen, sub-titled The Lost Diaries, Jokes and Photographs. It was essentially a pictorial biography but the last chapters included the diary. Cook gives a very brief introduction to the diary. ‘A lot of Eric’s observations,’ he says, ‘are fairly matter of fact, but the more intimate entries cast fresh light on his work, while the descriptive passages read like a dry run for his future fiction. And although the private voice is a good deal graver and reflective than his public persona, the same impish sense of fun remains.’ Here are several examples from the diaries as published in Cook’s book.

6 January 1968
‘Waldorf Astoria, New York. Today is a hard day. Two or three run throughs at the theatre, now called the Ed Sullivan Theatre, on Broadway. Then a quick lunch and a music run in the afternoon. Saw the name Morecambe & Wise on the front of the theatre - first time on Broadway. Mind you, it won’t be there for long. We do the show tomorrow, so it will be taken down tomorrow night. Got back to the hotel and the phone is flashing. It’s Fred Harris, an Englishman who works in New York for the Grade Delfont office. We stayed in the Waldorf for drinks as it was too cold to go out. We got slowly pissed, then went and had a bowl of soup downstairs in the cafe. This would be 12.30am. I then said, “Goodnight.” He didn’t speak, got a cab and went home. I went back to my furnace of a room and fell asleep. I didn’t even switch on the TV.’

7 January 1968
‘Waldorf Astoria, New York, It’s thick snow outside. It’s thick hammers inside my head. However it’s show time this morning - got to get down to the Sullivan Theatre for 9.15am. Now to try and be funny at that time in the morning - believe me, there’s no such time. But it’s got to be done. This trip the weather has been really cold - fifteen below. I hope the plane will take off tomorrow. It could have cleared by then. Ern and I do the Sullivan again tonight. We will do the Marvo & Dolores [spoof magic act] bit. All the crew think it’s very funny. I think it will die, but I have been wrong before. We rehearse and hang about the theatre all day. Fred comes round before the show. The show is over, they say it’s gone well. I’m not happy about it nor is the Boy Wonder [Ernie], but they are - so much so, Ed asks us out to dinner with him that night. We go to Danny’s Hideaway on Lexington and have a very informal and most enjoyable evening. Bed around 12am.’

8 January 1968
‘Waldorf Astoria, New York. Well, I’m going back home tonight - back to the 35,000 feet up again bit and this time I’m not sorry. It’s 29 degrees below freezing, and that to me is cold. I’m going tonight on the ten o’clock flight from New York, but this time it’s BOAC. I’ve checked out of the hotel and took all my cases to the Essex House. Taxi at 7.15, airport at eight VIP room 8.30, 9.15 not drunk but happy. Great. Thirty five thousand feet up again, on the way home. Did the Sullivan last night and did well - maybe the best we have done. In a few moments the pilot has asked me to go up front while we are landing. This should be a thrill.’

16 January 1968
‘Today I went to the Delfont Grade office in Regent Street to meet Ernie and Billy Marsh. We had a long chat about future deals. I mentioned a tax saving scheme to Ernie and was rather surprised that he seemed quite interested, as since we have been married we have kept everything separate, and now Ernie is so close with information I never know what he is doing. All he does is secret! The idea is that we should both take out a policy on each other for £4,000 pa for ten years and after the ten years are up, for the next five years we are paid back at so much a year. At the end of the five years we will get £72,000 each - that of course is with profits. The beauty of it is that the £4,000 pa comes out of our different companies. If it comes out of the profits you are not taxed on the £4,000 at all. The only time you are taxed is when you start earning on the five yearly payments and by then we will have retired and will not be in the same earning capacity as we are now, so the tax will be less than now. I left the thought with the Boy Wonder, and I’ll wait to hear from him regards it, although I don’t think he will want to come across. Also if one of us dies, the other gets it, and Ern doesn’t look too well. It’s all a matter of pushing the money I’m earning now into the future.

Had lunch with Leslie Grade at Dickins & Jones. Very interesting as Leslie, who is a very shrewd man, had one or two propositions to offer - but with Leslie you have to think everything over for two or three days. Then you end up with the answer, which is nearly always, “Well, where does Leslie’s share come in?” But it’s in there somewhere!’

18 January 1968
‘Today I was asked to become President of Kimpton Players. It sounds like a football team, but it’s a group of amateur actors and actresses who do local shows for charity. It should be quite interesting. They are doing an old time music hall show in a few weeks time, so I’ll be getting a party together and going along. Ern and I had a meeting with our writers, Sid Green and Dick Hills, at Roger Hancock’s office. We went to talk over a film idea for this coming summer. After a few drinks, conversation loosened up and Sid and Dick came out with the idea of doing a film about gypsies, where Ern and I are something to do with the council, and we have the job of moving them on, off the land that they are on. Although they had a few good situations within the film I could see Ern was not too happy about it, and I must admit I wasn’t jumping for joy. It’s a good idea, but it’s an idea anyone could do. It’s not pure Morecambe & Wise. Over lunch I happened to mention an offbeat idea I had for a film, which all thought funny. At that point Sid said that if that was the type of film we were thinking in terms of, he was all for it. So it looks as if we may after all be doing a type of film that we are all keen to do. The boys went off to write it up. We meet again next week.’

This article is a slightly revised version of one first published on 14 May 2016.

Of Napoleon, and a turtle

Sir Neil Campbell, a British army officer who rose to become a colonial governor, was born 250 years ago today. He is largely remembered for a detailed and informative diary he kept while in charge of Napoleon Bonaparte during his exile on the island of Elba. That diary, first published in 1869, is the only extant diary left by Campbell, however a biographical memoir by his nephew, mentions another journal, and provides a single extract from it, about the capturing of a turtle at sea.

Campbell was born on 1 May 1776. His father was described as a ‘Highland gentleman of ancient lineage, and fair landed estate’. After being nurtured in his ‘wild ancestral home’, he began his army career by joining the 6th West India Regiment in 1797. After three years service in West Indies, he returned to England and was promoted to lieutenant, and then to major. He returned to the West Indies, to Jamaica, in 1807, and then, after a sojourn in England for health reasons, journeyed again to the West Indies in 1808, this time being appointed Deputy-Adjutant-General to the Forces in the Windward and Leeward Islands. He was present at the captures, from the French, of Martinique and Guadeloupe.

During the Peninsular War, Campbell was appointed colonel of the 16th Portuguese infantry, but in 1814, he was severely wounded at Fère-Champenoise in France. Later, the same year he was chosen to accompany Napoleon from Fontainebleau to Elba (where he had been exiled under the terms of the Treaty of Fontainebleau) with express orders from the British Foreign Secretary, Lord Castlereigh, that he was in no way to act as his jailer, but rather to allow the ex French emperor to take control of the island as a sovereign prince. Although, Campbell’s instructions also implied that he should not remain in Elba longer than necessary, he did promise to stay, at Napoleon’s request, until the termination of the congress of Vienna (which aimed to provide a long-term peace plan for Europe). It is thought that his presence on the island put the English naval captains off their guard, and thus enabled Napoleon to escape rather easily.

Campbell went on to serve at the battle of Waterloo, and during the occupation of France, from 1815 to 1818, he commanded the Hanseatic Legion, consisting of 3,000 volunteers. In 1825, he was appointed major-general, applied for a staff appointment, and was given the governorship of Sierra Leone, reaching the colony in May 1826. The following year, however, he died of a fever. Further information is available online from Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900 or Wikipedia.

Campbell is largely remembered today because of a diary he kept while in charge of the force escorting Napoleon to exile on Elba, and while remaining with him there - until his escape. The diary - published in 1869 by John Murray and freely available at Internet Archive - is titled: Napoleon at Fontainebleau and Elba being A Journal of Occurrences in 1814-1815 with Notes of Conversations by the late Major-General Sir Neil Campbell C. B. With a Memoir of the Life and Services of that Officer, By his Nephew Archibald Neil Campbell Maclachlan M. A.. The book, as the title implies, contains a biographical memoir about Campbell, rather formally written, as well as the journal kept by Campbell himself for a year from April 1814 to March 1815. The latter, in particular, is a valuable first hand account of Napoleon during his exile on Elba.

According to Ravenhall Books, which brought out a modern edition of Campbell’s diary in 2004: ‘It records events as Napoleon builds an empire in miniature on Elba and it keeps an eye on the coming and going of agents and would-be assassins. Frank and enlightening it also reveals much about the personality of Napoleon and of the tensions and subterfuge within the exiled community as Napoleon devises and implements his plans for an escape.’ Here are several extracts from the original 1869 publication.

5 May 1814
‘From daylight to breakfast at 10 P.M. Napoleon was on foot, inspecting the castles, storehouses, and magazines.

At 2 P.M.. he went into the interior on horseback, a distance of two leagues, and examined various country-houses.’

6 May 1814
‘At 7 A.M. he crossed the harbour in Captain Usher’s boat, proceeded on horseback across the island to Rio, and examined the mines, then ascended a number of hills and mountain-tops upon which there are ruins. After a ‘Te Deum’ in a chapel, we had breakfast. On our return we re-embarked in Captain Usher’s boat, but, instead of returning direct. Napoleon visited the watering place, the height opposite the citadel on which he proposes to establish a sea-battery, and a rock at the mouth of the harbour on which he also thinks of placing a tower.

In talking at dinner of his intention to take possession of a small island without inhabitants, which is about ten miles off the coast of Elba, Napoleon said, ‘Toute l’Europe dira que j’ai fait une conquête déjà.” He laughed at this.

Already he has all his plans in agitation; such as to convey water from the mountains to the city, to prepare a country-house, a house in Porto Ferrajo for himself, and another for the Princess Pauline, a stable for 150 horses, a lazaretto for vessels to perform quarantine, a depot for the salt, and another for the nets belonging to the fishery of the tunny.’

7 May 1814
‘From 5 to 10 A.M. Napoleon visited other parts of the town and fortifications on foot, then embarked in boats, and visited the different storehouses round the harbour.

In making the excursions into the country, yesterday and the day before, he was accompanied by a dozen officers. A captain of gendarmes and one of his Fourriers de Palais always rode in front; and, on two occasions, a sergeant’s party of gendarmes-à-pied went on about an English mile before.

On taking our places in the boat, some of us, following Bertrand’s example, kept off our hats; on which he told us to put them on, adding, ‘Nous sommes ici ensemble en soldat!’

The fishery of the tunny is carried on by the richest inhabitant of the island. This person, by his own industry, has, out of a state of extreme poverty, amassed a fortune. He employs a great proportion of the poor, and has much influence. The removal of the stores by Napoleon to a very inferior building, merely for the convenience of his horses, is likely to cause disgust; but this shows how little Napoleon permits reflection to check his desires.’

8 May 1814
‘Before landing from the frigate, Napoleon requested that a party of fifty marines might accompany him to remain on shore. This intention was afterwards changed; and one officer of marines and two sergeants, to act as orderlies, together with a lieutenant of the navy, were sent.

One of the sergeants, selected by himself, sleeps outside the door of his bedchamber, upon a mattrass, with his clothes on, and a sword at his side. A valet de chambre occupies another mattrass at the same place. If he lies down during the day, the sergeant is called to remain in the antechamber.’

22 May 1814
‘Napoleon told me that he had taken Malta by a coup de main; that the inhabitants were so intimidated ‘par le nom de ces républicains, mangeurs d’hommes,’ that they all took refuge within the fortifications, with cattle and every living animal in the island. This created so much confusion and dismay, that they were incapable of opposition.

He requested me to write to the consul at Algiers, to secure the respect due to his flag, agreeably to the treaty.’

23 May 1814
‘I have received a letter from the Admiral, dated Genoa, May 19, in which he states that he had sent transports to Savona for the Guards of Napoleon. He expects to be off this place in a few days, on his voyage to Sicily, with Lord William Bentinck on board. I shall take that opportunity of waiting upon them, to give every information in my power, and to obtain the advantage of their counsel.’

26 May 1814
‘This morning, at 6 A.M., Napoleon went quite unexpectedly on board of the French frigate ‘Dryade,’ and the crew hailed him with cries of ‘Vive l’Empereur!’ This, I am told, placed the captain in a very awkward situation. It was not a visit to the captain personally, for he had anchored on the preceding afternoon, and then Napoleon declined seeing him, when he waited upon him, until the following morning at 10 a.m. So that it was certainly done to try the disposition of the Navy, and to keep up a recollection of him in France.

Napoleon also visited the British frigate ‘Undaunted,’ and made a speech to the crew. He thanked them for the good-will with which they had performed their duties during the voyage, said that he felt himself under obligations to them for the period he had been on board, which he had passed so happily, and that he wished them every success and happiness. He sent them, in the course of the day, 1,000 bottles of wine and 1,000 dollars, and presented Captain Usher with a box containing his portrait set in diamonds. Napoleon speaks most gratefully to everyone of the facilities which have been granted to him by the British Government; and to myself personally he constantly expresses the sense he entertains of the superior qualities which the British nation possesses over every other.

Five British transports arrived here this morning from Savona, with about 750 volunteers of Napoleon’s Guards, his horses, and baggage.

To-day I informed General Bertrand that, in case either Napoleon himself or others might ascribe any underhand motive to my remaining here, I was ready to quit the island at once, should such be his wish; that I had only remained after the other Commissioners in order to procure for him those facilities which he had requested, through me, from the British Admiral.

After repeating my conversation to Napoleon, General Bertrand was directed to assure me that my remaining with him after the departure of the other Commissioners was indispensable for his protection and security, in obedience to Lord Castlereagh’s instructions; that even after the arrival of his troops and baggage, there was another article of the treaty not fulfilled, although guaranteed by the Allied Sovereigns, and the execution of which depended entirely upon His Britannic Majesty’s ships in the Mediterranean, viz. the security of his flag against insult from the powers of Barbary; that it would be necessary for me to communicate with the Consul at Algiers and the Admiral, as soon as possible, for that object. I requested that he would address the application to me in writing, and stated that I would prolong my stay in the hope of receiving further instructions from Lord Castlereagh, not having heard from his lordship since I left Fontainebleau.’

13 March 1815
‘About one in the morning a person with a lanthorn entered my room very silently, and told me that the prefect requested to see me immediately. In order to avoid all noise and observation, he led me by a back way, and through a stable, into the house. I found the Count in a state of extreme dismay, and occupied with his secretary. I sincerely participated in his feelings on hearing from him the intelligence he had just received from Aix and Valence, viz., that Napoleon had entered Grenoble upon the 7th at 8 p.m., and that General Marchand, with the staff and most of the officers, had retired. It may be inferred from this that the rest and the private soldiers have betrayed their duty.

This state of affairs is so serious, that I determined to go off immediately to Nice, in order to convey the earliest intimation of these melancholy circumstances to Lord William Bentinck at Genoa. I shall also report to him my observation as to the bad disposition of the troops at Antibes, and the little reliance that can be placed upon the regular army, so that he may prepare for the worst.

No actual disposition has been made by the Piedmontese for the passage of the long bridge over the Var, which separates them from Antibes.

Set off from Draguignan at 3 A.M., and arrived at Nice at 5 P.M. At 10 P.M. went on board of H.M.S. ‘Partridge’ at Villa Franca, but it blew so hard that she could not with safety attempt to beat out.

Lord Sunderland has arrived from Marseilles. There it is universally believed that  the English had favoured Napoleon’s return, and the people are furious against us.  the same idea also prevails everywhere in the South of France and in Piedmont. A newspaper of Turin, just arrived at Nice, states positively this to be the case!’

14 March 1815
‘Sailed out of Villa Franca at 6 A.M., and arrived at Genoa at 8 P.M.’

15 March 1815
‘Wrote Lord Burgbersh with news from Draguignan of the 13th inst., and mentioned a report of Napoleon having entered Lyons.

Madame Mère, as I am informed, states that Napoleon had three deputations from France before he consented to quit Elba.’

18 March 1815
‘H.M.S. ‘Aboukir’ sailed for Leghorn.’

19 March 1815
‘H.M.S. ‘Partridge’ left Genoa for Leghorn and Sicily.’

20 March 1815
‘Left Genoa. During the night robbed of my watch and between fifty and sixty guineas by brigands near Novi.’

21 March 1815
‘4 P.M. at Milan.’

22 March 1815
‘7 A.M. Domo d’Ossola. 7 P.M. Left the Simplon.’

23 March 1815
‘11 A.M. Sion. Carriage-wheel broke. 8 P.M. Vevay.’

24 March 1815
‘Midday, Morat. Overtook Mr. Perry, the courier, who had left Genoa the morning before me.’

25 March 1815
‘11 A.M. Basle. 7 P.M. Fribourg.’

26 March 1815
‘2 P.M. Rastadt. 5 P.M. Carlsruhe.’

27 March 1815
‘3 A.M. Manheim. Passed the Rhine.’

28 March 1815
‘10 A.M. Lisère; passed the Moselle in a flat.

4 P.M. Treves. At midnight, Luxembourg. Stopped four hours to pass through the fortress.’

29 March 1815
‘4 A.M. Left Luxembourg.’

30 March 1815
‘6 P.M. Brussels. Remained three hours.’

31 March 1815
‘6 P.M. Ostend. Sailed at 8 P.M. in H. M. brig ‘Rosario,’ Captain Peak.’

1 April 1815 [Last entry in published diary.]
‘9 A.M. Landed at Deal, and at 9 P.M. arrived in London. Next day had interviews with Lord Castlereagh, and with H. R. H. the Prince Regent at Carlton House.’

It is worth noting that in the biographical memoir section of the book, there is mention of another journal kept by Campbell during his journey to the Windward and Leeward Islands in 1808. Here is what the memoir says about that journal, including an extract from it (although I can find no further information about this journal anywhere else).

‘A Journal kept by him during the voyage, and illustrated by plans and drawings, relates the usual incidents on board a troopship of that period, sailing from Woolwich to Barbadoes, and passing by Porto Santo, Madeira, and Teneriffe. The ‘Creole’ mounted twelve six-pounders and two nine-pounders; had a crew of twenty-four men, including master and mate; and carried, besides Lieutenant-Colonel Campbell and his servant, a detachment of Artillery, consisting of five officers and forty-six men. At the Downs she joined company with 150 sail, many of them transports destined for Spain; but soon after, weighing anchor from thence, the convoy was caught by a tremendous gale, which effectually dispersed it, and blew over several of the vessels - the ‘Creole’ among them - to the French coast near Boulogne, though with no ultimate loss. On November 2nd, off Lymington, a detachment of Foreign Artillery, consisting of one sergeant and twenty-sis men, was taken in.

On the 4th the ‘Creole’ passed through a fleet of light transports beating up Channel. ‘These are probably,’ Colonel Campbell notes, ‘the ships returning from France, after landing the French troops agreeably to the Convention of Cintra.’ ‘On the 18th, the day being a dead calm, the boat was lowered to pursue a turtle, which was spied 800 yards from the ship. Two hands rowed, I took the helm, and the master sat in the bow of the boat ready to seize him. As he seemed to be asleep upon the surface of the water, we approached him with as little noise as possible. When the boat almost touched him, the mate suddenly grasped him by one of his fore-fins, and tossed him into the boat. The exploit being witnessed from the ship, we were welcomed by a loud cheer in exultation of our success. The appearance of the ship with all its sails set, indolently bending from one side to another, her deck and sides crowded with men, the sea clear and smooth as glass, and the delightful warmth of the day, were truly beautiful and cheering to our spirits. There was no small anxiety to view the prize - sailors and soldiers, women and children, all crowding about us to satisfy their curiosity. The turtle was laid on his back upon the deck, to the joy of every one. In course of the evening we made three attempts after other turtle, but none of them succeeded. They were not asleep, and, when we approached within a few yards, lifted up their heads, surveyed us, and disappeared.’

This article is a slightly revised version of one first published on 1 May 2016.

William Godwin’s diary

The English writer and philosopher William Godwin, an early proponent of idealistic liberalism, died 190 years ago today. He is, perhaps, better remembered for his daughter, Mary, who married the poet Percy Shelley and wrote Frankenstein. Godwin kept a diary throughout his life. Although the daily entries are little more than lists of names and places and books read, the diary as a whole is considered of ‘immense importance to researchers of history, politics, literature, and women’s studies’.

Godwin was born in 1756 in Wisbech, Cambridgeshire, into a large family of religious dissenters. Educated into a strict Calvinism, he finished his schooling at the Hoxton Academy, and served as minister in several places before returning to London. But by then he had shed his religion in favour of an idealistic liberalism based on the sovereignty and competence of reason to determine right choice. In order to further his new ideas, he set out on a writing career, contributing to political journals and associating with radical societies. He also tried setting up a school, and writing novels, though these early ventures did not come to much.

In 1793, Godwin published Enquiry concerning Political Justice, and its Influence on General Virtue and Happiness - now considered his greatest work - setting out his positive vision for an anarchist society of small, decentralised communities. After the writings of Edmund Burke and Thomas Paine, it was one of the most influential responses to the French Revolution. He followed this with a (hugely successful) novel - Things as They Are; or, The Adventures of Caleb Williams - which some consider the first ever thriller. In 1795, Godwin and Mary Wollstonecraft, who he had first met some years earlier and who now had a daughter, became intimately involved. She fell pregnant by Godwin, and the two married in London in 1797. Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin was born within a few months, but her mother died ten days later.

That same year, 1797, Godwin published a collection of essays entitled The Enquirer; and he wrote a biography of his wife, published as Memoirs of the Author of a Vindication of the Rights of Woman (though it was not very well received for being too revelatory). After producing a third and final edition of Political Justice, he turned to literature and history, trying his hand at plays, another novel and a life of Chaucer. In 1801, he married his neighbour Mary Jane Clairmont, who brought two children into the household (in addition to Godwin’s daughter and step-daughter). However, she proved an ill-tempered stepmother and was inhospitable to some of Godwin’s friends. This union produced a son for Godwin, David, who went on to become a journalist but died young from cholera.

In 1805, to secure a better financial situation, the Godwins, with help from friends, began running a children’s bookshop. Godwin wrote a variety of books - fables, histories, dictionaries - for the shop, while his wife saw to the business end, and translated books from French. In 1812, Godwin became a kind of mentor to Percy Shelley, who then visited the house often, and who provided much needed funds (borrowed against his future expectations) in support of Godwin and his family. In 1814, however, Shelley eloped with Godwin’s 16-year-old daughter Mary to the Continent. They returned to England and married in 1816 (after the death of Shelley’s first wife). Only a couple of years later, Mary Shelley’s book Frankenstein, dedicated to Godwin, would be published.

The most notable publications of Godwin’s later career were Of Population, a belated attempt to refute Thomas Malthus’s 1798 An Essay on the Principle of Population - itself a response to Godwin’s ideas (see more on Malthus’s diary at The cost of men and food); History of the Commonwealth of England, from its Commencement to the Restoration of Charles II in four volumes; and Thoughts on Man, his Nature, Productions and Discoveries. Godwin died on 7 April 1836. For more information see Wikipedia, Stanford Encyclopaedia of Philosophy, or University of Oxford podcasts.

Godwin kept a diary for most of his life, leaving behind 32 octavo notebooks now held by the Abinger Collection of manuscripts in the Bodleian Library, Oxford. Although each diary entry - 1788-1836 - is no more than a short list of names, places etc., and often no more than a few words, the entire text has been considered important enough to be fully digitised, analysed and uploaded to a dedicated website hosted by the Bodleian.  This was funded, between 2007 and 2010, by the Leverhulme Trust and others under the direction of Oxford’s David O’Shaughnessy and Mark Philp and Victoria Myers from Pepperdine University, California.

According to the project: ‘The diary is a resource of immense importance to researchers of history, politics, literature, and women’s studies. It maps the radical intellectual and political life of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, as well as providing extensive evidence on publishing relations, conversational coteries, artistic circles and theatrical production over the same period.  One can also trace the developing relationships of one of the most important families in British literature, Godwin’s own [. . .]. Many of the most important figures in British cultural history feature in its pages, including Anna Barbauld, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Charles James Fox, William Hazlitt, Thomas Holcroft, Elizabeth Inchbald, Charles and Mary Lamb, Mary Robinson, Richard Brinsley Sheridan, William Wordsworth, and many others.’

The website offers - freely - an image of every page and a transcription of the text. Moreover, for every person, place, publication, play, meal etc. mentioned in the diary, there is a link to further detailed notes and collated lists of other mentions in the diary of the same subject. Often times, nearly every word of a diary entry is a highlighted link to further information. An introduction to the website can be found here, and an example of how the diary has been used can be seen at the Shelley’s Ghost exhibition website. (See also Write. Read Homer about Mary Shelley’s diaries.)

Although they make little sense divorced of the links and explanations provided by the William Godwin Diary website, here are a few examples of Godwin’s diary entries.

8 March 1790
‘House of Commons: Tobacco act, Capt. Williams’s Petition, Quebec’

13 November 1791
‘Correct. Dyson & Dibbin call; // talk of virtue & disinterest. Dine at Johnson’s, with Paine, Shovet & Wolstencraft; talk of monarchy, Tooke, Johnson, Voltaire, pursuits & religion. Sup at Helcroft’s:’

28 July 1792
‘Write 2 pages, on prosperity. Finish Merchant of Venice: Much Ado, 3 acts. Miss Godwin at tea.’

23 August 1792
‘Walk to Rumford, 3 hours: stage to town, breakfast at miss Godwin’s: dine at Mr Marshal’s. See Cross Partners’

4 February 1795
‘Call on mrs Jennings: tea Johnson’s, Kentish Town.’

9 July 1795
‘Breakfast at Buckingham: dine at Watford: tea Fawcet’s, Hedge Grove, sleep: see Wilson, Smith, &c.’

7 September 1808
‘Church-yard: walk to Thatcham: dine at Woolhampton: tea Theal, sleep. George Dandin.’

10 April 1816
‘Dine at Darlington: pass Durham: sleep at Newcastle—intelligent bailiff, pleasing gentleman, Cumberland farmer.’

27 April 1816
‘Breakfast at Carlisle: coach to Penrith: chaise along Ulswater: dine at Wordsworth’s: call, w. him, on Jackson; adv. Wakefield: circuit of Grasmere. Derwent Coleridge dines: write to M J & Thos Moore.’

1 November 1830
‘Essays, revise. Homer, v. 395. Museum; Du Bartas: theatre, Henry V. 60 / 65’

This article is a slightly revised version of one first published on 7 April 2016.

A disappointed man

William Bagshaw Stevens, born 270 years go today, died laughing. But, in his relatively short life, he had been an ineffective headmaster of Repton School, a failed poet, and a disappointed lover. Ironically, perhaps, he is best remembered for a journal he kept, one in which he chronicled his disappointments so candidly that one can hardly imagine he would ever have wanted to see it published. Nevertheless, it was kept safe and passed down the generations, and was finally published in the mid-20th century - its editor describing the work as the journal of a disappointed man.

William Bagshaw Stevens was born on 15 March 1756 in Abingdon, Berkshire, the son of an apothecary and surgeon. He studied at Magdalen College, Oxford, and after graduating in 1776 went to teach at Repton School, Derbyshire, succeeding to the post of headmaster. He took deacon’s orders, and was appointed domestic chaplain by Sir Robert Burdett of nearby Foremark Hall (but didn’t take priest’s orders until 1798). 

Having published a volume of verse in 1775 (Poems, consisting of Indian Odes and Miscellaneous Pieces), Stevens published a second in 1782, but it was not reviewed well. Hugh Brogan, however, in his brief biography for the Oxford National Dictionary of Biography (log-in required), says: ‘Stevens was a better poet than his contemporaries knew. Some of his verse was still unpublished 200 years after his death, but, if the whole of it is read, he emerges as a man of real talent, humour, wit, and feeling, though trapped in the limbo of poetic diction that the great Romantics would soon blow apart.’

A promise by Sir Robert to bestow a good living on Stevens came to nothing over the years, and Stevens considered himself too poor to marry - though he did pursue liaisons with some passion. Repton School languished under his headship, as he was, it is said, naturally idle and neglectful of his duties. He did keep up a connection with Magdalen College, and for short periods later in life was a fellow and praelector of moral philosophy. Only in his last year did he attain a rectory (Seckington) and a nearby vicarage (Kingsbury) in Warwickshire, thanks to Sir Robert’s grandson and heir. Stevens died in 1800, from a fit of laughing at the antics of an Italian and his monkey in the village high street! (This knowledge comes from an unpublished journal kept by Stevens’ sister who lived with him - as reported by Galbraith, see below.) Further biographical information can be gleaned from an old version of the Dictionary of National Biography.

Stevens left behind six octavo volumes of a diary he had been keeping since his 37th birthday. This was not published until 1965, when Oxford University Press brought out The Journal of the Rev. William Bagshaw Stevens, as edited by Georgina Galbraith. In her introduction, Galbraith explains how the manuscripts had survived through various generations, well cared-for but quite unexamined, until they were sold in 1957 to Huntington Library, where she found them when researching Repton. The manuscripts are marred, Galbraith says, by many deletions (removal of leaves, blackening out, crossings out etc), especially in the first volume, mostly about his neighbours and benefactors, the Burdetts. She believes most of these deletions were made by Rev. Thomas Bosvile, Stevens’s closest friend, because it would have been dangerous to leave about attacks on the family who were supporting Stevens’s sister.

Many of Stevens’s entries - especially the longer ones - are simply the contents of letters he received or sent, and many shorter entries simply state who he dined with or visited, or where he preached. However, he does write with candid intimacy about his love for Fanny Coutts - a story with a bitter, sad ending - so much so in fact that it’s surely unlikely he would have wanted these diaries to have become public. Galbraith notes that the journal is one of a disappointed man, ‘disappointed in every one of his activities’. Here are several extracts from the published book, including the first few entries and the last three.

15 March 1792
‘On this day I commenced my thirty-seventh year. May God of his mercy grant that the remainder of my Life be spent more agreably to his Will, and with more satisfaction to myself than the former Part has been! . . .’

16 March 1792
‘Dined at the Mitre on Turbot and Claret in consequence of a Wager between Sir R. Burdett and Mr Pyott. Sir R. had laid that old Ashly would live to the 17th of this month. The Bet was made on the 17th of last March. Ashly is now in his 92nd Year. . .’

17 March 1792
‘Drank Tea at Spilsbury’s. Dalrymple there. Much conversation upon the Slave Trade. Dalrymple and Dodsly defended the Trade strongly upon the ground of Policy. I cannot but think that the Policy which disclaims honesty, humanity and religion is not the policy of a Good Man or a Great Minded Nation; but the Policy of a Thief, a Highwayman, and a Murderer.’

18 March 1792
‘After service at Foremark set out for Ashford for the sale of Mr Bullock’s Library on Monday. Spent the evening alone at Wirksworth.’

19 March 1792
‘Reached Bakewell by 10 o’Clock. Found that the Books, a mere collection of trash, would not be sold till Wednesday. Viewed Bakewell Church, a curious structure with a Saxon arched doorway, and an octagon Steeple. The Church contains some of the Richest Monuments in the Kingdom with a very singular large Saxon Font adorned with the Images of Saints in relief.’

14 August 1792
‘All went to Chee Tor, a most romantic, lovely spot - dined on the grass by the head of a Spring - ‘Lady Burdett, You have not performed your promise. You have not given me Fanny’s Picture.’ ‘That’s not my fault. You should have asked me for it.’

Jones and I were to go to the Isle of Man the next day - postponed our Journey that I might get Fanny’s Picture copied. It was agreed to leave Buxton on Saturday and go all together to Foremark. Lady Burdett hoped I would go with them to Tunbridge.’ 

30 July 1792
‘Rowed on Windemere round Christians Island. Curwen and his attendant fleet passed by us - The Bishop of Landaff’s Seat - Wilberforce’s pretty Cottage - The lake said to be 14 miles long and in some places two across, surrounded with magnificent well-wooded Hills - a glorious scene -After dinner rode to Coniston Water of much inferior merit to Windemere. Observed the Ruins of an old Abbey near Hawkshead. Coniston Water about 7 miles from Windemere. The Old Man, a huge Mountain against which the Clouds are continually dashing, appeared at Windemere to stand on its edge. At Coniston we were near it; it stood on the far side of the head of that Lake. Walked in the Evening to Gill Force, a Cascade near the Inn at Ambleside. Thought when filled by a thunderstorm with water, superior to the cascade of Tivoli, it falls in the shape of a Y about 50 yards.’

15 August 1794
‘Before breakfast met Fanny in the Grove. She had found great Comfort, she said, in having talked with me on the Subject. I was the only Person that ever inspired her with a desire of communicating her grief. O that I had the power of pouring balm into your wounded affections. What would I not do? But my Heart was not without an ‘emballed heaviness.’ I thanked her for the ingenuous tale and tender confession of her unfortunate Passion. It was worthy of her. As to myself, if I could do nothing to soothe her Grief, she might be certain I would not abuse her Confidence. I would listen to her for ever and mingle tears with hers. She had one comfort, at least, that Her sorrows were not now shut up in her own breast. Yes, in me she confided. To a younger Person she could not with propriety have unbosomed herself, but she was sometimes amazed at the impulse she had long felt to communicate her Distress of Mind to me. I spoke feelingly. She felt the force of my feelings. ‘You allow me to consider you as my Friend. You may safely place Confidence in me. Fanny, you may have occasion to pity me but shall never blush for me. It shall be the peculiar satisfaction of my Life, my Pride and my Glory to compell You in despite of yourself to esteem me.’ [. . .]

After breakfast again walked with Fanny. Her Heart, she said, was a great deal lightened. It was her duty to struggle with her grief. She wished I could be with her, wished I knew more of her Father, spoke enthusiastically of Him. When You are no longer with us in your Walks You will often think of us, We shall think and talk of You, and we shall know that you think of us, and this will be a great Comfort.’

15 March 1796
‘I am now Forty. . . A Fool at Forty is a Fool indeed. Dined at the Widow’s. - late home.’

1 February 1797
‘Gouty Pains in my feet - return home - Burdett with me. In his usual kind manner he gave me the Horse that brought Jones and Me from the Isle of Wight. He cost Burdett 60 guineas.’

1 April 1800
‘Leave Tamworth - dine at Wolferston’s. Home.’

5 April 1800
‘To Donnington.’

6 April 1800
‘Dine at Ingleby.’

This article is a slightly revised version of one first published on 15 March 2016.