Rid of such monsters

‘I have omitted to mention the execution of the Cato Street conspirators [concerning a plot to murder all the British cabinet ministers and the Prime Minister Lord Liverpool], which took place on the 1st of this month. Thistlewood & 4 other of the leaders were hanged & beheaded, exhibiting to the last the most hardened & brutal want of religion or any proper feeling. One really ought to thank God that the world is rid of such monsters, for their avowals of guilt on the scaffold & when they were brought up for judgement were quite terrific. Six others, who pleaded guilty, were sent off the night before for transportation for life to Botany Bay.’ This is from the diaries of Harriet Arbuthnot who died tragically young 230 years ago today. She married a much older man, a minister in the government, and found politics, especially Tory politics, much to her liking. Because of her very close friendship with the first Duke of Wellington, her very detailed and opinionated diaries are considered an important historical resource. 

Harriet Fane was born on 10 September 1793, the youngest daughter in a well-off family living near Grantham in Lincolnshire. Her father died when she was nine, but the family fortunes improved considerably in her late teens when her mother inherited estates in Hampshire and Dorset. Aged 20, she married Charles Arbuthnot, some 26 years her elder, who had been a member of parliament since 1795. She soon became fascinated by politics, supporting Tory causes, enjoying success as a political hostess. 

Although Harriet’s marriage was considered a happy one, she also formed close relationships with other older, powerful men, such as Lord Castlereagh (who was foreign secretary from 1812 to 1822) and particularly with the Anglo-Irish peer, the Duke of Wellington (who became Prime Minister in the 1820s). In 1823, her husband was given the Department of Woods and Forests, a position which gave him charge of the Royal parks and gardens and thus boosted the couple’s social status. She died suddenly of cholera in 1834, aged just 40. Further information is available at Wikipedia.

Harriet Arbuthnot is best remembered for her diaries, kept from 1820 until 1832, in which she which wrote about the politics and society of the day in extensive detail. Specifically, they contain much of interest to biographers of the Duke of Wellington. The diaries were first published by Macmillan & Co in 1950 in two volumes as The Journal of Mrs. Arbuthnot, 1820-1832 (edited by Francis Bamford and Gerald Wellesley, 7th Duke of Wellington). Volume 1 (1820-1825) can be digitally borrowed from Internet Archive. A discussion of the diaries by Dr Stephen Lee can be found on The History of Government blog - Lee says they are ‘one of the most extraordinary documents we have on the internal dynamics of elite politics in the early 19th century’.

Here are several extracts from the published diaries, including the very first entry. 

1820
‘It has often been a matter of great regret to me that, in all the years that I have been married & from circumstances have been living so much among the leading men of the day, it had never occurred to me to keep a journal. I have constantly heard so many things that it would be interesting to remember, the greater part of which, from their succeeding each other so rapidly, I have already forgotten. I have now determined to conquer my natural laziness & make it a rule from this time forth to write down all that occurs to me, or that I hear of in public affairs that is interesting to me. I begin with the reign of George the 4th, the 1st of February, 1820.’

2 February 1820
‘A council held at Carlton House for the new King’s declaration. Mr. Arbuthnot attended & told me the King appeared extremely ill & was so much agitated he could hardly go thro’ the necessary forms.’

9 February 1820
‘The King recovering from his severe illness, but still very unwell & not able to attend to business. The Duke of W[ellingto]n called on me & told me the King was determined to dismiss the ministers if they did not consent to attempt a divorce for him [King George IV was trying to persuade Parliament to grant him a divorce from his estranged wife Queen Caroline]. They equally determined not to do so. He likewise told me that the Vice-Chancellor misled the King by making him believe the Whigs would try to consent to try the divorce. Saw Fred: Ponsonby & Charles Greville who asserted that the Whigs in a body would vote strongly against a divorce. Dined at the Russian Ambassador’s; Madame de Lieven played & Count Pahlen sung most beautifully.’

12 February 1820
‘Every thing still doubtful about the dismissal of ministers. The King saw Ld Castlereagh & ordered the immediate recall of Count Munster & Ld Stewart. He appeared perfectly resolved upon trying the divorce.’

27 March 1820
‘Walter Scott dined with us & met the Duke of Wellington. We had only Sir Henry Hardinge in addition, & our evening was very agreeable between Scott’s Highland stories & the Duke’s accounts of some of his battles. Mr. Arbuthnot met Scott some days after, who said he had been enchanted at hearing Caesar descant on the art of war.’

28 March 1820
‘Went into the country for the Easter holidays. We went to the Duke of Dorset’s at Drayton in Northamptonshire, which is three miles from our own farm. While we were there a farmer in the neighbourhood offered Mr. A. £1.00 for a calf three months old, which he refused & for which I thought him very foolish. This rather shews that the agricultural interest is not at so low an ebb as is thought by some, when a common farmer could afford to offer such a price on such a mere speculation.’

3 May 1820
‘My sister, Mrs. Chaplin, came to London on her way to the sea & staid two days. She has been confined by illness to a couch for near three years & is now, I hope, quite recovering. She well deserves to be restored to perfect health, for she has borne this long & grievous confinement without ever uttering a murmur or expressing the slightest feeling of impatience.

I have omitted to mention the execution of the Cato Street conspirators [concerning a plot to murder all the British cabinet ministers and the Prime Minister Lord Liverpool], which took place on the 1st of this month. Thistlewood & 4 other of the leaders were hanged & beheaded, exhibiting to the last the most hardened & brutal want of religion or any proper feeling. One really ought to thank God that the world is rid of such monsters, for their avowals of guilt on the scaffold & when they were brought up for judgement were quite terrific. Six others, who pleaded guilty, were sent off the night before for transportation for life to Botany Bay.

My brother Cecil, who had never seen an execution, told me he had a great curiosity on this occasion & went. He wished very much to see how they would behave; but, when they were tied up, he felt so nervous & in fact felt so much more than they themselves did that he retired into a corner of the room & hid himself that he might not see the drop fall, which excited great contempt in the people who were in the room with him; amongst whom was one woman, young & pretty & very decent looking, who kept her eyes fixed on it all the time &, when they had hung a few seconds, exclaimed, “There’s two on them not dead yet”.!!’

Longing after damsens

Samuel Ward, a sixteenth century religious scholar who spent all his working life at Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge, died 380 years ago today. As with Margaret Hoby who was born one year before Ward and died 10 years earlier - see After private prayers - much of what we know about Ward today comes from a diary he left behind. This, like Hoby’s, is largely concerned with Ward’s religious life, but whereas Hoby’s simply provides a record of her actions, Ward’s is much richer in terms of psychology since he writes so much about his own sins, many of them trivial, such as ‘longing after damsens’!

Ward was born at Bishop’s Middleham, Durham, in 1572. He studied and then taught at Cambridge University, rising to become Master of Sidney Sussex College. He married a widow with one child in the early 1620s. As a Puritan, he wrote widely on doctrinal issues, such as baptism. He was one of the scholars involved with the translation and preparation of the King James version of the Bible. He served as part of the English Calvinist delegation to the Synod of Dort.

When the First English Civil War broke out he fell out with the Presbyterian majority, and, in 1643, along with others, was imprisoned in St. John’s College. When his health gave way, he was permitted to retire to his own college. He died on 7 September later that same year. Further information is available from Wikipedia, the 1895-1900 edition of Dictionary of National Biography, or the University of Cambridge.

Intermittently, Ward kept a confessional diary, and this has survived down the centuries, and is held by Sidney Sussex College. It was published in 1933 by The American Society of Church History as part of Two Elizabethan Puritan Diaries by Richard Rogers and Samuel Ward, edited by M. M. Knappen. This can be digitally borrowed at Internet Archive. Since then it has been reprinted, and reissued in different guises, serving as an important first hand source of historical information on the King James Bible. Most recently, the University of Cambridge has made every page of the notebook freely available online through its digital library. The following transcribed quotes are taken from a 1966 reprint of Two Elizabethan Puritan Diaries. (Any trailing dots within the extracts come from the original source.)

13 May 1595
‘My little pity of the boy who was whipt in the hall. My desire of preferment over much. My adulterous dream. Think thow how that this is not our home in this world, in which we are straungers, one not knowing anotheres speach and language. Think how bad a thing it is to goo to bed without prayer, and remember to call on God at goyng to our prayers in the Chappell.’

8 August 1596
‘. . . Also my longing after damsens when I made my vow not to eat in the orchard. Oh, that I could so long after Godes graces . . .’

25 August 1596
‘. . . My extreme anger the day before att John Mourton for taking the axeltree out of my glob . . .’

27 August 1596
‘. . . Also my pride in thinking of the new colledg, wheras it is not licky I should have any place ther. Also my stomaching of Cuthbert and Holland agayne, and my grudging att ther remembrance my disease. . .’

3 September 1596
‘My complayning to Mr. Pott and Mr. Glover of Mr. Hutchinson, and my proud thoughtes with Mr. Montague when he said we should go se the crocodile. Also my proud and wild thoughtes in that I had so many places offrd, as one by Sir Hornby. Truly when God is favorable and merciful to me I begin to be proud and to attribute to myne oven desert sathanically. My unthankfulness for Godes benefits. My immoderate desire of the meat left for the sizer.’

5 September 1569
‘. . . My goying to the taverne with such lewd fellowes, albeyt I knew them not. How little greived was I att their swearing and othes and wyld talk. O Lord, thou knowest that I wished often to be ridd of their company. My little care of my health notwithstanding my disease grew upon me. . .’

6 August 1597
‘How little I was affected with hearing of the ill success of our Navy . . .’

25 December 1597
‘My lasines in not rising early inough to prepare myself to the worthy receit of the communion.’

5 November 1599
‘The like the Archbishop now hath performed in the choosing of this new - to be vicechancellor against the will of many in the University. Lord, turn all their plots and devices to thine own glory, and the good of thy church etc.’

This article is a slightly revised version of one first published on 7 September 2013.

Written in Elvish

Half a century ago today died the English fantasy writer, John Ronald Reuel Tolkien, best known for his novel, The Lord of the Rings. An archive of his papers is kept at the Bodleian Library, Oxford, and includes diaries. These have not, however, been published. Biographer Humphrey Carpenter has said that Tolkien used the diaries ‘chiefly as a record of sorrow and distress’, but also that they were written in Elvish.

Tolkien was born in 1892 in Bloemfontein in the Orange Free State (now Free State Province in South Africa) to an English bank manager and his wife, Mabel. Mabel took Tolkien, then aged three, and his younger brother, back to England; their father died before he could join them. The family then lived in Birmingham, and the boys were educated by Mabel, but she too died young. Thereafter, they were raised as Catholics by Mabel’s friend Fr. Francis Xavier Morgan of the Birmingham Oratory. Tolkien was sent to King Edward’s School, Birmingham, and then he studied at Exeter College, Oxford, switching after a while from classics to English. He married his teenage sweetheart, Edith, in 1916. They would have four children.

During the First World War, Tolkien served as a second lieutenant in the Lancashire Fusiliers, fighting in the Somme offensive. He contracted trench fever and was treated at a hospital in Birmingham. After the armistice in 1918, he worked briefly on the New English Dictionary project (later to become the Oxford English Dictionary), before becoming a reader in English Language at the University of Leeds, and then, from 1925, Professor of Anglo-Saxon at Pembroke College, Oxford University. From 1945 to 1959 he was Professor of English Language and Literature at Merton College, Oxford. It was at Oxford that he became a close friend of C. S. Lewis, author of the Narnia stories, and together they formed part of an informal literary discussion group known as the Inklings.

During his time at Pembroke, Tolkien wrote and published (1937) his first novel, The Hobbit. Unexpectedly popular with adults and children, the publisher (Allen and Unwin) asked for a sequel, which was eventually published in three volumes, in the mid-1950s, as The Lord of the Rings. This latter work became phenomenally successfully, and has remained so ever since. Academically, Tolkien published works on Chaucer and on the old English heroic epic Beowulf; and biographers are at pains to point out the links between the fantasy epic content of his novels and his scholarly work.

After retirement, Tolkien became increasingly discomforted by the attention of fans. He and Edith relocated to Bournemouth, then an upper middle class seaside resort; but, after Edith’s death in 1971, he moved back to rooms at Merton College until his own death on 2 September 1973. The internet is awash with Tolkien information, try, for example, The Tolkien Society, the Tolkien Library, the Leadership University, the BBC or Wikipedia.

Before his death, Tolkien negotiated the sale of some of his papers (those related to the then-published works) to Marquette University’s Raynor Library in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. However, after his death many other papers were donated to Oxford University’s Bodleian Library. Within this latter archive are a number of unpublished diaries kept by Tolkien. Although not publicly available, some researchers/

biographers have been allowed access, and their books on Tolkien contain a few quotes and references to the diaries. Notably, Humphrey Carpenter, who wrote the authorised biography, says Tolkien used the diaries ‘chiefly as a record of sorrow and distress, and when . . . his gloom dissipated he ceased to keep up the diary entries’. Some of the diaries were written in code, Carpenter explains at the end of biography, in the acknowledgements, and he thanks his wife for help in ‘de-coding’ them. Carpenter has also said elsewhere that Tolkien kept his diaries in ‘elvish’.

The few quotations from Tolkien’s diaries that do exist in the public domain, mostly undated, have been collated by the Tolkien Gateway. Here are three.

1 January 2010
‘Depressed and as much in dark as ever, [...] God help me. Feel weak and weary.’

1933 [on visiting Birmingham]
‘I pass over the pangs to me of passing through Hall Green - become a huge tram-ridden meaningless suburb, where I actually lost my way - and eventually down what is left of beloved lanes of childhood, and past the very gate of our cottage, now in the midst of a sea of new red-brick. The old mill still stands, and Mrs Hunt’s still sticks out into the road as it turns uphill; but the crossing beyond the now fenced-in pool, where the bluebell lane ran down into the mill lane, is now a dangerous crossing alive with motors and red lights. The White Ogre’s house (which the children were excited to see) is become a petrol station, and most of Short Avenue and the elms between it and the crossing have gone. How I envy those whose precious early scenery has not been exposed to such violent and peculiarly hideous change.’

August 1955
‘Venice seemed incredibly, elvishly lovely’; ‘contrary to legend and my belief, Italians . . . dislike exaggeration, superlatives, and adjectives of excessive praise. But they seem to answer to colour and poetic expression, if justified.’

This article is a slightly revised version of one first published on 2 September 2013.

A boisterous yeare

Ralph Josselin - an Essex vicar, teacher and farmer - died 340 years ago this month. Though not particularly familiar as a historical name, he is remembered as an important early diarist. Indeed, his diary, with its many details of rural life in the 17th century, inspired a major research project to document the history of the village where he lived, Earls Colne, all the documents for which have been made available online. The originator of this project, Alan Macfarlane, is also the modern editor of Josselin’s diary, and he suggests Josselin might in time be seen to stand beside other great English diarists.

Josselin was born in 1617 at Roxwell in Essex, the first son and third child of a farmer. His early education was at Bishop’s Stortford, and, by his own account, he wanted to be a clergyman from an early age. He studied at Jesus College, Cambridge, receiving his BA in 1636–1637. His father died around the same time, and Josselin spent the next few years supporting himself in teaching teacher and curate posts. In 1641 he became vicar of the parish of Earls Colne, Essex, where he stayed for the rest of his life, embracing many different roles, not least teacher and farmer. Josselin died in August 1683, and was buried at Earls Colne on 30 August. Further information is available from Wikipedia and English Historical Fiction Authors.

Most of what we know today about Josselin comes from his diary, first edited by E. Hockliffe and published in 1908 by the Camden Society for the Royal Historical Society. According to Hockliffe’s preface in that edition, less than half the original diary was included since many entries were of ‘no interest whatever - endless thanks to God for his goodness - ‘to mee and mine,’ prayers, notes about the weather or his sermons, innumerable references to his constant ‘rheums’  and ‘poses,’ trivial details of every day life, records of visits to his friends etc. etc.’ The aim was ‘to extract so much personal detail as is required to give a picture of the actual life of the author, and to include everything that possesses any historical interest.’ The author’s spelling was ‘carefully preserved’. In the earlier years, Josselin made entries frequently, often daily, but from about 1665 onwards there was usually only one entry a week.

Hockliffe concludes his preface: ‘A kindly if somewhat self-seeking figure [Josselin] lives again in the pages of this diary, and when his story ceases abruptiy on July 27, 1683, with a broken entry, we feel with real sorrow that we have parted from a friend.’

According to the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (log-in required), the Camden Society’s scholarly edition omitted almost three-quarters of the original; the Josselin that emerged from it was ‘very much the public man, whose comments on the great religious and political issues of his day were what most merited attention’. ‘He was a moderate parliamentarian,’ the ODNB continues, ‘active in electioneering and petitioning and worried by the emergence of more radical groups like the Levellers, and served for a brief spell as a chaplain in the parliamentarian army and assisted locally with the implementation of measures for the reform of the church and augmentation of livings; he suffered plundering by royalist troops for his active organization of the defence of the village in 1648 at the siege of Colchester. Although unhappy at the king’s execution, he retained his support for what he called the ‘honest party’ even after the Restoration. Josselin’s well-informed comments on political events both in England and on the continent (on which he made an annual end-of-year report in his diary) reflect the social depth to political knowledge in mid-seventeenth-century England.’

Renewed examination of the manuscript diary in the 1960s led to a much fuller edition in 1976: The diary of Ralph Josselin, 1616-1683 edited by Alan Macfarlane and published by Oxford University Press. The picture that emerges from this modern edition allows the reader, the ODNB says, ‘to see Josselin properly in context, to sympathize with much that seems familiar in his life, and to puzzle over much that is foreign and strange.’ In particular, it shows him falling in love and marrying a wife, various emotions towards his children, chronic concerns about his finances (though a generous bequest from a wealthy parishioner helped establish him as a farmer in the mid-1640s) and his health, and an interest in public affairs, the weather, etc.

Of Macfarlane’s edition, the ODNB concludes: ‘By the time of [Josselin’s] death he had secured a comfortable material existence. But even to the end, his diary, maintained until the month before his death, reveals a man trying to fulfil his parochial duties, continually concerned with his children’s lives, receptive to political news (particularly of the fate of godly dissenters), and still, amid entries increasingly caught up with documenting his failing health, continuing to note, ‘God good to me’.’

Macfarlane, himself, in his introduction appears a bit mixed up in his opinion of the diary. He waxes lyrical: ‘Among many other topics to which he turns our attention are the following: accidents, food, geographical mobility, gifts, gossip, imagery, insanity, the poor, pregnancy, servants, wages. Anyone interested in the seventeenth-century thought and society is likely to find information of interest. An ordinary subject index cannot do justice to such a rich and complex document.’ And he adds, rather meaninglessly, ‘The Diary is, above all, unique as a total document.’

‘With all its redundancy and repetition,’ Macfarlane comments, the diary can ‘still be read straight through with great enjoyment’. But then he points out that ‘idiosyncrasies of grammar and style may, at first, provide difficulties,’ and that to reap ‘rich rewards’ the reader will have to ‘persevere and enter Josselin’s world, so strange and yet familiar’. Moreover, Macfarlane says that Josselin ‘does not emerge as lovable, or even endearing - his conscientious and suffering figure simply stands before us, to wonder at, pity and for all its frailty, respect.’

Finally, Macfarlane concludes, ‘posterity will judge [Josselin’s] right to stand besides Pepys, Heywood, Woodford, Kilvert - the great English Diarists of all time.’ Though, personally, I don’t think much of Macfarlane’s list of ‘great English Diarists’, Pepys apart of course. Much of Macfarlane’s modern edition is available to read online at Googlebooks. It is also available in a slightly awkward format - one web page for each day - on an extensive website concerning the parish of Earls Colne.

The 1908 edition of Josselin’s diary by Hockliffe is fully and freely available at Internet Archive, and it is from this that the following extracts have been taken. (These are almost all the diary excerpts for 1657 to be found in the 1908 edition, and take up little more than a couple of pages. By contrast, the modern edition requires more than a dozen pages to include all Josselin’s actual entries for that same year.) Josselin’s forecast that 1657 is likely to be a boisterous year, in the first of the extracts below, appears to have been proved true by his round-up of world events in the last of the extracts.

25 March 1657
‘When I come to view my estate this yeare, I find my expenses far deeper then divers yeares formerly, and my receipts more then ever, God bee blessed. Last year my estate was about 670l. I find I have about 590l. and I have pd for land to Mr Butcher 150l. and to Mr Weale 85l. which is in whole 235l. so yt I have had a great increase this yeare of 145l. or yr abouts, with the life & health of my family, no trouble in my estate; the Lords love in Christ is my life and joy. I have received in to my hand Mrs Maries land on which I am out 108l. 9s. This yeare 1657 is like to bee a boisterous yeare in the world.’

28 March 1657
‘Talke now of a king, the Lord bee our king and lawgiver.’

17 April 1657
‘Divers men bustle to make Xt king; truly Cromwell will carry it from him at present, but surely yt is a time when Xt shall reigne more then inwardly.’

19 April 1657
‘Heard this weeke the men that are to make Christ King were plotting agst the Protector, and that he seized on divers of them.’

7 May 1657
‘Heard as if Blake desired landmen to attempt the Canaries.’

15 May 1657
‘At night M. Hubbard of London with mee to teach two boys at 3l. per annum if they come.’

23 May 1657
‘John Eldred a scholler yt brought mee in 40s. yearly went from mee; the Lord will provide.’

17 July 1657
‘Protector proclaimed at Halsted by ye Sheriffs.

30 August 1657
‘This day I publisht the act about the Sabbath, the Lord doe good by it.’ [An act to punish ale-house keepers for profaning the Sabbath by permitting swearing, drunkenness, gaming etc. in their houses.]

9 September 1657
‘After hopes of a dry Sturbridge faire it rained very much, so that the wayes were exceeding heavy and dirtie, Mr H. had some hopes to make 500l. of his hops; the last yeare he made 790l.’

30 September 1657
‘A publiq fast in regard of the general visitacon by sicknes, wch was a feavor & ague very mortal in some places.’

8 October 1657
‘Being up, & riving logs, Mr Elliston came & told mee Dr Wright was most certainly dead, I had no warning of his sicknes, I was troubled that such a providence found mee not better imployed, and disposed, but I blesse God though I am like to loose 60l. per annum, yet yt is not much trouble.’

3-4 November 1657
‘Mr Cressener acquainted mee that my Lord of Oxfords Chaplain was come to town and he thought about the schoole. Mr R. H. made some proffers in it, and I desired to observe God therein, but my owne inclinations rather tend to lay it wholly by, desirous God would open some helpe to mee in carrying on the worke of the ministry.’

9 November 1657
‘Dr Pullein sent mee an offer to procure mee the schoole, if I would helpe him to his living; I had no desire thereto.’

17 November 1657
‘Mrs Marg: Harlakenden having laid out 120l. at London, about wedding clothes, her father being exceeding angry, I appeased him, so that though he chid her by letter for her vanitie, yett he paid the scores.’

25 November 1657
‘Rd my copies of my two fift parts of ye farme on Colne Green from my Cosin Josselin; yt purchase cost mee about 310l; God blesse it to mee & mine.’

27 November 1657
‘Dr Pullein was with mee, shewed mee his grant from my Lord; he lost the living, for which I am sorry, and I the schoole; Gods will be done; I doe not find any trouble on my spirit in it; he desired mee to teach the schoole till spring for halfe the proffits; I consented; Lord I blesse thee for that kindnes and mercy.’

3 December 1657
‘Spent some time in prayer at Mr Cresseners, the Lord good to mee yr in; about yt time at London, Dr Pullein’s busines was put to that issue, that if ye Earl of Oxford would stand by his present- acon of Dr Pullein, he might come into his living; the Lords name bee praised for this kindnes, the issue is in thy hand, oh Father.’

5 December 1657
‘Riding over to the Earl of Oxfords to Bently hall, and speaking with Dr Pullein, a full issue was put to that treaty about the schoole; I not having it, in wch disposall of God I desire to bee satisfied, and sitt down contentedly, knowing that he will order and direct every thing for good to mee; I was very sicke at night and vomited, which I judged a mercy to mee.’

8 December 1657
‘Talke as if some uprore in ye kingdom, the militia horse suddenly called togither and the army foot called of again towards the sea.’

12 December 1657
‘Saw a booke esp: of Welsh prophecies, which asserts that Cromwell is the great Conqueror that shall conquer Turke and Pope. I have many yeares on scripture grounds and revolutions judged him or his govermt and successors, but esp. my heart fixt on him, to bee most great; but sad will bee things to Sts and him; this booke of prophecies giveth mee no satisfaction, but perhaps may sett men a gadding to greaten him.’

15 December 1657
‘Mrs Margaret Harlakenden married to Mr John Eldred; her father kept the wedding three dayes, with much bounty; it was an action mixed with pietie and mirth; die. 18, the company departed the priory. God gave an emint answer of prayer to him & mee in providing her so good an housband beyond expectation; Mr Bridegroom gave mee 1l. & Mr H. 1l. God in mercy requite their love and bounty.’

27 December 1657
‘If it bee worth writing this tels yt raisins of ye sun were sold at 12, 14, 16, 18d. per pound.’

8 January 1657/1658
‘Received an order to bee an Assistant in Ejecting of Ministers & Jan. 8. schoolemrs for insufficiency; had the offer of two schollers, which I undertake to teach; the Lord helpe mee in all my callings.’

25 January 1657/1658
‘This day was the last of my 41 yeare, in which God hath been with mee and blessed mee, and though Dr Wrights death cutt mee short in the schoole, yett I find my heart quiett, rowling it selfe on God, and no way questioning his providence to take care of mee. God hath given mee three children instead of 3 more which I had buried, and thus my dreame of 3 shoots in my parlor cutt down and growing up againe is made good.

Abroad in the world matters are likely to bee sad, yet I find not the apostacy to increase; this yeare the Emp. of Germany died, and no other yet chosen in his stead; his son the K. of Hungary assisted Poland, wherby the Swedes are driven into Prussia. The P. of Transilvania forced to retreate home, and was deposed for his attempt to please ye Turke. Brandenburg made peace with the Pole and left Swede. The Moscovite was in a manner quiet this summer, yet the Swede brusht him a little in Livonia. Denmarke invaded the Swede in Bremeland, to his losse in Juitland; the Hollander proclaimed warre agst Portugal & tooke pt of the Brasile fleete. The English assisted France agst Spaine & gott footing in Flanders, the Venetians beate ye Turke, but in the winter he regained some Iles as Tenedos; the Turke hath issue male. The Q. of Spain delivered of a sonne, ye King 53 yeares old and no son til now; the affaires in Italy & Catalonia not very boisterous. The Spaniards invaded Portugal by land & tooke some places; thus warre breaks out, but no eminent matter was done in the world; the English Protector setled by Parliamt and a house of Lords in title erected January 20th.’

This article is a slightly revised version of one first published on 20 August 2013.

A life spent hunting

Today marks the 170th anniversary of the death of Colonel Peter Hawker. A military man by profession, his main love was hunting, and, somewhat remarkably, he left behind a diary in which he recorded - from his teens to his old age - daily kills totalling nearly 18,000 birds. In his own lifetime, he published - anonymously - diary extracts about his military service in Portugal, under Wellington, during the Peninsular War.

Hawker was born in London in 1786, and was educated at Eton. Like his father and other forefathers, he entered military service, through the purchase of a commission in the 1st (Royal) Dragoons, switching after a couple of years to the 14th Light Dragoons, making captain when still only 17. He saw active service in the Peninsular War, but was obliged to retire after being wounded at Talavera, southwest of Madrid, and became a lieutenant-colonel in the North Hampshire militia.

Hawker was married twice, the first time in 1811 to Julia Barttelot by whom he had two sons and two daughters (although the elder son died in infancy). He was married for the second time in 1844 to Helen Susan the widow of Captain John Symonds. His family home was at Longparish, Hampshire, but he also had a cottage at Keyhaven on the Hampshire coast. He was a very keen sportsman, to say the least, and wrote the very popular, and much re-published, Instructions to Young Sportsmen. He also devised technical innovations for certain sporting guns, and, thanks to a great passion for music, invented hand moulds for the piano. He died on 7 August 1853. Further information can be found at Wikipedia and the New Forest Explorer website.

For most of his life, and starting young, Hawker kept a diary. From this, he selected extracts and published them anonymously in 1810 as Journal of a Regimental Officer during the Recent Campaign in Portugal and Spain under Lord Viscount Wellington (i.e. during the Peninsular War). This book is introduced by two short paragraphs called an ‘Advertisement’ which state: ‘The contents of the following pages (never intended for the public eye) were hastily noted down amidst the scenes attempted to be delineated; and the author’s sufferings from a wound have precluded him the possibility of afterwards correcting them. This candid statement will, it is hoped, plead for inaccuracies and frivolous incidents; and those persons who are most able to criticise will no doubt have the liberality to consider the disadvantages under which this narrative makes its appearance.’

After Hawker’s death, his family is said to have destroyed large parts of the diary, nevertheless extracts, particularly focusing on his sporting activities, were published, some forty years later, in two volumes: The Diary of Colonel Peter Hawker (Longmans, Green and Co., 1893). These (volumes one and two), and Journal of a Regimental Officer, are available online at Internet Archive.

The second volume of the diaries published in 1893 concludes with a list of the game Hawker recorded as having shot: from 1802-1853, he claimed 17,753 kills in all; over 7,000 partridges, 575 pheasants, 1329 ox-birds, 2,211 wigeon, 1,327 Brent geese, 2,116 snipes, as well as many other birds. Four types are distinguished by his having shot only one each in his life: stock-dove, Eider duck, avocet, hoopoe.

Here are a number of extracts, the first few (1802-1804) from the beginning of volume one; several in 1829 from the end of volume one; and several more from the end of volume two. They show an extraordinary preoccupation with hunting - from his teens to his deathbed.

27 June 1802
‘Arrived at Longparish House.’

September 1802
‘Altogether killed 200 head of game this month.

Instances of uncertainty in killing jack snipes: The first thirteen shots I had at these birds this year I killed without missing one; have since fired eight shots at one jack and missed them all.’

26 January 1803
‘Sketch of a bad day’s sport: Being in want of a couple of wild fowl, I went out with my man this morning about ten o’clock. The moment we arrived at the river 5 ducks and 1 wigeon flew up; we marked the former down, and just as we arrived near the place it began to snow very hard, which obliged us to secure our gunlocks with the skirts of our coats. No sooner had we done this than a mallard rose within three yards of me. I uncovered my gun and made all possible haste, and contrived to shoot before it had gone twenty yards, but missed it, which I imputed to the sight of my gun being hid by the snow. My man fired and brought it down, but we never could find it; and another mallard coming by me, I fired and struck him, insomuch that before he had flown a gunshot, he dropped apparently dead, but we were again equally unfortunate notwithstanding our dogs were with us. While we were loading, the 3 remaining ducks came by, a fair shot. Having reloaded, we went in search of them, but could not succeed. On our road home, coming through the meadow, the wigeon rose in the same place as before. I shot at it, and wounded it very much; we marked it down and sprung it again; it could hardly fly, from its wounds. Unluckily, my gun missed fire, and my man was unprepared, thinking it had fallen dead. We marked it into a hedge; before we had reached the place we spied a hawk that had followed it; from the same place the hawk was, the wigeon flew out of the hedge close under my feet. I fired at it, but, owing to agitation, had not taken a proper aim; however, a chance shot brought it to the ground; my dogs ran at it; it flew up again, but could not rise to any height, but continued to clear the hedges, and we never could find it again. To add to our misfortunes, we both tumbled into deep water.’

4 June 1803
‘Left Longparish House to join the 14th Light Dragoons on the march at Hythe.’

1 September 1803.
‘Folkestone. 4 partridges and 1 landrail. I went with Major Talbot and his brother: we were out from half-past four in the morning till eight at night, and walked above five hours before we saw the first brace of birds. Major Talbot killed a brace, and his brother 1 bird; a brace of birds and 1 rabbit were shot between us by means of firing at the same instant.’

18 February 1804
‘Left Folkestone to be quartered at Dover, till further orders.’

6 March 1804
‘Left Dover for Romney.’

3 May 1804
‘Romney. Went out in the evening, saw several very large shoals of curlews, but could not get near them; just as it grew dusk I laid myself down flat on the sands: every flock assembled into one prodigious large flight, and pitched within ten yards of me. I put them up with the expectation of killing not less than twenty, and my gun missed fire.’

14 June 1804
‘Romney. Shot an avoset (swimming). This is a bird rarely to be met with but on the Kentish coast. The above is its name in natural history; it is here known by the name of cobbler’s awl, owing to the form of the beak, which turns up at the end like the awl.’

1 September 1804
‘Romney. In a bad country we had never been in before Major Pigot and I bagged nine brace and a half of birds, exclusive of several we lost. We sprung one covey too small to fire at; Major Pigot picked out the old hen and I the cock, and bagged them both. There were sportsmen in almost every field. In the course of the day, my old dog Dick caught 8 hedgehogs.’

23 November 1804
‘Marched from Romney to be quartered at Guildford.’

2 December 1804
‘Left Guildford to stay a week at home at Longparish House.’

21 April 1829
‘After having been more or less unwell ever since I came to town, and several days confined to my bed and the sofa, I this day completed several repairs and improvements to the locks and breechings of my large gun, and got all safe away from the hornet’s nest which Joe Manton’s manufactory was in while he was in gaol, and this billet beset by ‘Philistines.’ His men worked under and for me, and had to keep an incessant eye lest anything should happen on the premises. No other workmen in London could have done such a job well to my fancy.’

28 April 1829
‘Longparish. I caught 24 brace of trout in a few hours, though the cold weather still continued.’

8 June 1829
‘London. The best Philharmonic ever known, and a duet between Sontag and Malibran considered the best piece of singing ever heard in this country.’

7 July 1829
‘Longparish. Took two hours’ fishing this evening, and killed 25 large trout.’

9 July 1829
‘Made a droll trial of a new-stocked duck gun, which was well done by my carpenter Keil. I knocked down, in seven shots, 6 bats and 1 moth. A duck at dusk flight may therefore know what to expect.’

10 July 1829
‘Fished and killed 20 very large trout indeed, and I then left off, not wanting any more fish to-day.’

20 April 1853
‘I may venture to say that I am getting on (though of course very, very slowly) towards the chance of recovery, for which prospect I have to thank Sir B. Brodie and an All-wise Providence.

Another remarkable circumstance - and a lucky one for me, who could eat nothing more nourishing than fish - the trout in our river, which were not even eatable when broiled till near July, have come in many months before their time, and ate better than I have known them to be for these last twenty years. One of my fishery tenants, Mr. Macleod, in the first week of March, had killed, in a severe winter’s day, 15 brace with a fly, and he kindly sent me a few as red and as good as salmon. This phenomenon is accounted for by the continued rains flooding all the low lands, and washing down constant winter food for the fish, which, notwithstanding the severe winter that afterwards cut up everything in March and April, never lost their high condition.’

23 April 1853
‘1 have been taken out for the last few days, for short drives in the carriage; but I am now a figure of skin and bone.’

24 April 1853
‘Another circumstance to record - Captain Duff and his friend came to my river to fish, and, in spite of the adverse weather, had a few days’ good sport; and, that is a miracle, every trout was better in season (though in April) than, for these twenty years, I have seen them - even than in June and July, the only time they have hitherto been fit to eat. They were quite red, firm, and full of curd - in short, delicious. Thus my lamentable illness has ‘cut me out of’ the best angling season on record, as well as the use of my new ignition punt gun at Keyhaven, in the finest hard weather we have had there since 1838.’

4 May 1853
‘Winter again; bitter cold gale of wind east by north. As I made but slow progress in the low and water-meadow situation of Longparish, I had made up my mind to forego all the comforts of the mansion for the more healthy air of my dear little cottage on the coast, and therefore I left Longparish for Keyhaven this day, after having passed twenty-five days and nights at the former place, without strength or appetite. We arrived at Keyhaven Cottage about six in the evening, after my very long absence from the 26th of October, 1852, up to this 4th of May, 1853. My good people were all delighted to see me, which they had made up their minds they should never do any more.’

5 May 1853
‘Keyhaven. Stephen Shuttler has done me justice in every possible way in my long absence, and kept everything in the very best order, in spite of awful floods; and then a north-pole winter in spring. N.B. Found the air here far pleasanter than at the other places. Thanks to God for all blessings up to this Holy Thursday — or Ascension Day — for 1853.’

7 May 1853
‘A total change of weather to south by west, and a pouring fall of rain all day; in the afternoon the cock flew round again to the north-east with the most furious increase of cold rain, and a heavy fall of snow - lamentable weather for my poor eyes and limbs. Instead of having a fair chance to breathe the good air here, I’ve been, ever since I entered the cottage, a close prisoner; could not even step into the garden.’

12 May 1853
‘Anniversary of my Douro affair, forty-four years ago. Cold and piercing north-easter, which is comparative luxury to the deadly poison of a white frost, insomuch that I suffered far less to-day, and my eyes got better.’

13-14 May 1853
‘Bitter white frosts again. But two hours’ fine weather on the 14th, when I got the sea air for the first time by being rowed down to Hurst and back. I came home refreshed, but much exhausted; and, on landing, who should be here but old Buckle, just arrived from Scotland. I was, however, not man enough to enjoy his ‘yarn’ as of old.’

18 May 1853
‘A beautiful day. Crossed to Yarmouth, and got driven to Freshwater for the fine sea air, but too weak to walk along the cliffs. Lots of ‘gents’ popping at rock birds and rifling the cormorants, and rookeries being stormed inland. All to tantalise me, like the gents having good sport angling the other day in view of my windows at Longparish, and I too ill to go out.’

26 May 1853
‘I sailed to Yarmouth, and got Butler’s excellent phaeton to the high lighthouse, and returned by Groves’s Hotel; but was so weak I could not enjoy my old paradise, Alum Bay, as before. The lighthouse is now kept by a Mr. Henderson, vice Coleraine, and the dangerous occupation of taking the eggs of rock birds is performed by a man named Lane, of the village below, called Weston, whose brother was lately killed in this awful pursuit.’

29 May 1853
‘Sunday. Being too weak to walk, I went in a donkey chaise to morning church at Milford (where, as well as at Longparish, Mrs. Hawker had me prayed for when expected not to recover), to return thanks to God for my escape from death in my long and dangerous illness, through which I had not been in church since the early part of last January, and never expected to be in church again, except on my way to the grave.’

July 1853
‘Longparish. From the 1st I have been so dreadfully ill that I could do nothing. My nights have been as awful as before.’

7 July 1853
‘The thunder and lightning all night caused such oppressive heat that no one could rest in bed. My sufferings could scarcely be conceived.’

8-14 July 1853
‘Too ill to get about save by quiet easy drives in the carriage, and to crawl out to look at all the grand repairs outside the house, which are now done. Attended by Dr. Hempsted twice a day, as my sufferings are alarming. We have had incessant wet weather ever since I returned to Longparish, and consequently the heavy water-meadow fogs oppressed me even more than those of London, from which I had retreated on the score of health. To-day, the 14th, Dr. Hempsted went from me to his other patient, the Earl of Portsmouth, for whom he had no hope, and who died this day at one o’clock. Peace to his soul!’

This article is a slightly revised version of one first published on 7 August 2013.

A nice little slot

‘I think some critics are uncomfortable with me because they have never been able to put me into a nice little slot. They haven’t been able to place me. But I’ve long since ceased to lose sleep over that. They’ve got their jobs to do, and I’ve got mine.’ This is from the diaries of the great British film director John Schlesinger who died 20 years ago today. The diaries - taped and written - have never been published but Schlesinger’s biographer, William J. Mann, refers to them repeatedly in his biography Edge of Midnight.

Schlesinger was born in 1926, in Hampstead, London, to wealthy Jewish parents - his father was a distinguished physician. He was educated at St Edmund’s School (Hindhead) and Uppingham School before enlisting in the British Army serving, during WW2, with the Royal Engineers. He became involved in making films on the front line, and he also entertained fellow troops with magic tricks. Subsequently, while at Balliol College, Oxford, he continued to make films and perform, not least with the Oxford University Dramatic Society.

In the early 1950s, Schlesinger appeared in various supporting roles for British films and television productions, but his directorial debut came in 1956 with a short documentary Sunday in the Park about London’s Hyde Park. Another followed, in 1958, about Benjamin Britten and the Aldeburgh Festival. He provided assistant directorial services on dozens of episodes for the TV series The Four Just Men, as well as a few for Danger Man. The early 1960s saw his career take off with several releases - Terminus, A Kind of Loving, Billy Liar, Darling and Far from the Madding Crowd - winning awards. In 1969, his film Midnight Cowboy won Oscars for Best Director and Best Picture. Through the 1970s and 1980s, he continued making successful films (and some not so successful), in Hollywood and Britain, as well as directing drama for television, and also sometimes in the London theatres.

Schlesinger’s final films were the intense drama Eye for an Eye (1996), about a revenge-driven mother, and The Next Best Thing (2000) starring Madonna and Rupert Everett. Schlesinger had come out as gay during the making of Midnight Cowboy, and he had a long term relationship with Michael Childers. He was appointed Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in the 1970 Birthday Honours for services to film. He died on 25 July 2003. Encyclopaedia Britannica has this brief assessment: ‘Although the films of his later career were less uniformly brilliant than those early films with which he made his reputation, Schlesinger left an enviable body of work.’ Further information is also available from Wikipedia and IMDB.

Schlesinger left behind a large volume of diary material, much of it tape-recorded rather than written. William J. Mann uses this material extensively in his biography - Edge of Midnight: The Life of John Schlesinger (Hutchinson, 2004). ‘I sorted through the tapes,’ he says in the biography, ‘they were intended for his own use, for writing his own memoir; he hadn’t expected anyone other than himself to hear them. Not for every film did John keep a detailed diary. There were gaps, but also some wonderful surprises: a rambling, intimate account of a holiday in South Africa with Michael; an on-the-set recording of rehearsals for The Believers; a tape left running after a radio interview had “officially” concluded. Not all of his diaries were tape-recorded: of his earlier work, he left mostly written records, often squeezed into the columns in his daily planners, a practice repeated again on his last film. Helpful and insightful as such written records were, however, they could not compare to the power of hearing his voice.’

Mann uses the written and taped diaries many times in the biography, but mostly by weaving very extracts phrases into his narrative rather than by providing whole and dated extracts. Nevertheless, here are few passages from Mann’s book (which can be digitally borrowed from Internet Archive) which include such excerpts from Schelsinger’s diaries.

***

‘He would learn, despite his kneejerk pessimism, to distance himself from criticism and rejection, for they would become the ever-present background chorus to his career. “I’ve often been dismissed,” he told his diary. “I think some critics are uncomfortable with me because they have never been able to put me into a nice little slot. They haven’t been able to place me. But I’ve long since ceased to lose sleep over that. They’ve got their jobs to do, and I’ve got mine.” ’ 

***

‘Gloria Swanson visited the set, courtesy of the Paramount publicity machine. “I think she didn’t really know what it was all about, what was going on around her, but she was very charming,” John recorded in his diary. “I never realized how small she was, nor that the beauty mark that has been so much her trademark was in fact a rather ugly, raised black mole, quite hideous on close inspection. I’m amazed a film star of such magnitude would have clung to it for so long, that it never registered what it really was.” ’

***

‘Camaraderie, in fact, extended from the grips and the technicians right up to the top. John liked his second American crew much better than his first: “This is not at all the Hollywood experience that I had somehow expected,” he recorded in his diary. I had expected bullshit. I had expected union problems. I had expected a kind of blaséness and I’ve found none of that. I suppose it’s the executives and the agents that sometimes turn me off the place, but I must say, working with these people has been an eye-opener.” ’

***

‘Watching Alan Bridges’ film The Hireling, with a script by Wolf Mankowitz, he also felt “homesick.” Musing to his diary, John wrote: “I felt once again a sense of terrible loss about the British cinema because when we do it well, we do it well. Much better, I think, than the average film made here.” ’ 

***

‘ “I have a very strong feeling that whatever the outcome of this picture [Yanks],” John recorded in his |diary, whether it’s commercially successful or not, I’m making the right move at this moment of my career.” Certainly, he was now enjoying being back in England, defying the odds in mounting a major film there - even if none of the money was British. “There is sheer pleasure in having won all our financial battles in getting the thing off the ground after an extremely depressing summer, when I really felt that it would never see the light of day.” ’

***

‘ “Vanessa [Redgrave] is without question one of the best actresses I’ve ever worked with,” John told his diary. “She is the consummate actress, able to take direction, really a wonderful musical instrument, so to speak, for a director to play.” ’

Descended from a bishop

Samuel Wilberforce, Bishop of Winchester and a force for Anglo-Catholocism in the mid-19th century, died 150 years ago today. His detailed diary underpins a three-part biography partly written by his son Reginald, though, unfortunately, it says nothing about his criticism of Darwin for which he is much remembered. Reginald, however, does include an anecdote about his father speaking at a British Association debate on Darwin: when he made a comment about monkeys in a zoo having no connection with his ancestors, a learned professor responded: ‘I would rather be descended from an ape than a bishop.’

Wilberforce was born in Clapham, London, the third son of William Wilberforce (also a diarist, see - God’s work against slavery). He studied mathematics and classics at Oriel College, Oxford, where he became associated with the Oxford Movement. In 1828 he married Emily Sargent, and they had five children that survived infancy, but then Emily herself died young, in 1841. The year of his marriage he was ordained and appointed curate-in-charge at Checkenden near Henley-on-Thames. Two years later he took over as rector of Brighstone, Isle of Wight.

Wilberforce published hymns and sermons as well as stories and tracts on social subjects. In the second half of the 1830s, he edited the letters and journals of Henry Martyn (see - My unprofitable life), and co-authored with his brother, Robert, a biography of his father. He rose up the church ranks quickly, becoming archdeacon of Surrey and canon of Winchester, and served as rector of Alverstoke, Hampshire, between 1840 and 1845. In 1841, he was appointed chaplain to Prince Albert, and in 1847 became Lord High Almoner to Queen Victoria, a post he held until 1869.

In the mid-1840s, Wilberforce became Dean of Westminster and Bishop of Oxford. When John Henry Newman, leader of the Oxford Movement, converted to Roman Catholicism, Wilberforce used his influence to try to keep the Movement together. He was a frequent critic of liberal bishops and is particularly remembered for attacking Darwin’s theory of evolution. In the 1850s, he founded one of the first Anglican theological colleges. In 1869, he was appointed Bishop of Winchester. He died on 19 July 1873. See Wikipedia, the Winchester Cathedral website or Anglican History for further biographical information.

For much of his life, Wilberforce kept a fairly detailed diary. This was used, and quoted, extensively for a three volume biography - Life of the Right Reverend Samuel Wilberforce - put together first by A. R. Ashwell, and then, after Ashwell’s death, by Wilberforce’s son, Reginald (John Murray, 1880-1882). All three volumes are freely available at Internet Archive.

Here are several extracts from Wilberforce’s diary, showing his politicking, his easy relations with royalty, and a good deal of self-analysis too. Only once, as far as I can tell, does Wilberforce mention Darwin in his diary. Reginald’s text, accompanying that one mention, bemoans the lack of any further reports by his father on the Darwin debate, but does include an interesting anecdote.

4 February 1855
‘Prepared sermon for St. Mary’s, Princes Street, Lambeth a most miserable population in Lambeth, through which I passed which quickened me in my sermon. To Chapel Royal in the afternoon, and walked back with Gladstone. Lord John has ‘utterly’ failed in forming a Ministry. Thank God. Lord Palmerston now sent for. He was invited by Lord Derby to join with Gladstone and Sidney Herbert. At first he was unwilling, and at night declined. Gladstone and Sidney Herbert ready to serve. Gladstone though feeling acutely the evil of Shaftesbury’s suggested Bishops would not feel clear on that ground of refusing not a fair constitutional ground. Dined with the Bishop of London. He agrees as to Convocation course. The Archbishop came to him yesterday. Had heard from Dean Elliott, and others, as to impropriety of allowing Convocation to meet in Ministerial interregnum. Second letter by a friend from Shaftesbury who is to move about it in the House of Lords to-morrow. The Bishop (London) said he thought Lord Aberdeen’s letter settled it. That he was in till another appointed and no right to suppose there would be a change; rather insulting to Lord Aberdeen and not very civil to the Queen (whose will he expressed) now to alter. The Archbishop: ‘Quite a relief to find that your opinion; it was my first opinion, and I shall be prepared to state it to-morrow in the House.’ ’

7 February 1855
‘Off to Windsor, to Chapter (of the Garter), and saw the Queen afterwards. She was cheerful and very affable. Went after Chapter to Clewer. Long conversation with Mrs. Monsell. Things quiet in House; but Miss –– very unsettled in mind. Fear that she will ultimately Romanize. Dear –– is acted on by these women far too much, and kept from heartily and with a strong English tone putting down the sentimentalism which leads to Rome. Dear fellow! he is good, and gentle, and loving beyond praise. But I am always trying to keep him from that perilous neighbourhood.

In the evening a large party. I had a talk with Lord Aberdeen about Palmerston’s Church preferment. Suppose Montagu Villiers must be a Bishop. But Palmerston will beware of Shaftesbury, for fear of Gladstone, &c. Lord Aberdeen natural, simple, good, and honest as ever. A longish talk on politics with good Stockmar, Lord Aberdeen’s honesty, Lord Palmerston’s ambition. He agreed with me that Lord Palmerston was a great take-in, but that it was necessary that bubbles should burst. He would have much preferred seeing Gladstone and Herbert join with Lord Derby. On the Continent it is constitutional liberty which is reproached by our failure at Sebastopol. They say, If England with all her strength cannot make head against the Autocrat, who could that has a constitutional Government, &c.? As to the Royal Family, he said, ‘The Prince of Wales is the strongest of all. He can bear great fatigue. He takes most after his father’s family. The Princess Royal is a thorough Brunswick. She is very clever indeed, has great imagination and varied powers; her picture of “The New Year” full of ability, &c. Prince Albert is not a strong man; a little would throw him down. The Duke of Kent was the ablest of that family. The Duke of Cambridge and King William the Fourth the kindest but the most stupid.’

20 March 1856
‘To Windsor Castle. The Confirmation of Princess Royal interesting she devout, composed, earnest; youngest sister much affected the Queen and Prince also. The Queen spoke most kindly to me after: all very kind. On to London large Confirmation at St. James’s  felt constrained, and very unlike my own. Then to London House. Met Dr. Todd, who spoke hopefully of Bishop. Saw him, very low, very affecting state, spoke of himself as dying. I certain to succeed him, and no one to whom he could more happily entrust his Diocese, &c. About himself, his keen sight of past sins; no hope but simply in Christ’s sacrifice for him. A great struggle between conscience and faith. Pray for me. A most affecting sight in one so good. How awful to all the vision of sin in the light of God’s countenance.’

23 March 1856
‘Very low all day, blessed Easter day as it was. But felt so bitterly my desolateness: my darling Emily gone or all would be too gladsome for earth. My Herbert! Robert and Henry worse than gone. Beloved Mrs. Sargent 76; Ella married. The three boys, will they be taken as they grow up? God’s will be done.’

20 May 1860
‘Up in good time and prepared sermon on ‘All are yours.’ Preached at St. James’s, great crowd; collected 176l. Then back to my rooms and finished (Darwin review) [for the Quarterly Review]. Walked across the Park with Gladstone, he rather subdued; he said, ‘If the next twenty years alter as much the position of those who govern England, &c.’

Reginald Wilberforce’s text accompanying the above diary extract says this: ‘From June 27 to July 3 the British Association was at Oxford: it is much to be regretted that the reports of the debates are of the most meagre description. From those which we possess, it is to be gathered that the Bishop on two occasions took part in the discussions. First in the Geographical Section, when, after the reading of some of Dr. Livingstone’s recent letters, Mr. Craufurd, the President of the Ethnological Society, argued against the scheme of extending commerce and Christianity in Central Africa, on the ground of the great difficulties that had to be overcome and of the incapacity of the natives to receive such benefits. The Bishop spoke against these inferences, and, when supporting an opposite view, carried his audience by the force of his argument. Secondly, in the Zoology and Botany Section, where a discussion took place on the soundness or unsoundness of the Darwinian theory. The Bishop, who, as the last-quoted Diary entry shows, had just reviewed Mr. Darwin’s work ‘On the Origin of Species by means of Natural Selection,’ made a long and eloquent speech condemning Mr. Darwin’s theory as unphilosophical and as founded on fancy, and he denied that any one instance had been produced by Mr. Darwin which showed that the alleged change from one species to another had ever taken place. In the course of this speech, which made a great impression, the Bishop said, that whatever certain people might believe, he would not look at the monkeys in the Zoological as connected with his ancestors, a remark that drew from a certain learned professor the retort, ‘I would rather be descended from an ape than a bishop.’

14 July 1863
‘Survey my Life. What wonderful advantages - my father’s son, his favourite, and so, companion. My good mother, such surroundings. My love for my blessed one, compassing me with an atmosphere of holiness - my ordination - my married life - my ministerial. Checkendon, its bliss, arid its work opening my heart. Brighstone, Alverstoke, the Archdeaconry, the Deanery, Bishopric, friends. My stripping bare in 1841. My children. Herbert’s death-bed. How has God dealt, and what have I really done - for HIM? Miserere Domine is all my cry.

Cuddesdon Chapel. After meditation on Death, resolve:
(I) to take periodic times for renewing this meditation;
(II) to strive to live more in the sight of Death;
(III) to commend myself more entirely as dying creature into the Hand of the only Lord of Life.’

This article is a slightly revised version of one first published on 19 July 2013.

Audience with the King

‘Audience of the King [Edward VII], . . [He] kept me for about twenty minutes, talking about Japan, the Garter mission, and gardens, such as Batsford, La Mortola & Miss Alice Rothschild’s at Grasse. I told him that Okuma had said that if Russia did not evacuate N. Manchuria, Japan would ask for an explanation. He also spoke of the troubles in Russia, and comparing those with the [French] revolution of 1789 I hazarded the opinion that the Russian Emperor’s ministers were better prepared than those of Louis XVI to put down rebellion. He spoke of my not returning to China, but that at present there was no post which could be given me. My services must not be lost. I replied that I had no desire to retire if I could be of use, and he said I must consider myself en disponibilité.’ This is from the diaries of Sir Ernest Mason Satow, a British scholar and diplomat born 180 years ago today, particularly remembered for his role in developing Anglo-Japanese relations.

Satow was born on 30 June 1843 to an ethnically German father and an English mother in Clapton, North London. He was educated at Mill Hill School and University College London, studying languages, and then joined the British Legation as a student interpreter. After training in Beijing, he was posted to Japan, to assist the British Minister Harry Smith Parkes. Satow published an article on the country’s political structure in the Japan Times’ British Policy section, and, once translated into Japanese, proved unusually influential. He became a secretary of the British legation in Japan in 1868.

Subsequently, Satow was agent, and then minister, to Siam (1884 to 1888), minister to Uruguay (1888 to 1893) and envoy to Morocco (1893 to 1895), Japan (1895 to 1900) and China (1900 to 1906) where he handled the Boxer Rebellion. In 1906, having been knighted in 1902, he returned to the UK where he was made a Privy Councillor. He left the Foreign Office, and moved to the village of Ottery St. Mary in Devon, but continued to act as British member of the permanent court of arbitration (1906 to 1912) and as one of the British plenipotentiaries at the second peace conference (1907), both at The Hague. Although unmarried, he had three children with his common law wife, Takeda Kané, in Japan, though one died in infancy and the other died aged 4. Satow, himself, died in 1929. Further biographical information is available at Wikipedia, The Gale Review and the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (log-in required).

Apart from publishing several books on diplomacy and foreign policy, Satow kept diaries all his life - from 1861 to 1926. Some 47 handwritten volumes are held at the Public Record Office at Kew, West London, in accordance with his wishes. (Many of his rare Japanese books are now part of the Oriental collection of the Cambridge University Library and his collection of Japanese prints are in the British Museum.) A selection of Satow’s diaries were first edited by Ian Ruxton and published in 1998 by Edwin Mellen Press as The Diaries and Letters of Sir Ernest Mason Satow (1843-1929): a Scholar-Diplomat in East Asia. According to the publisher: ‘Sir Ernest Satow was the doyen of the British scholar-diplomats of the Meiji era in Japan. Satow’s genius made him a colossal figure of his time, deeply respected by the Japanese who knew of his profound scholarship and knowledge of their country, and the desired representative of Britain in Tokyo where he was appointed Minister in 1895-1900. His presence in Tokyo assisted the process of coming to an agreement in the negotiations of Anglo-Japan Alliance of 1902.’

More recently, Ruxton has taken it upon himself to edit, annotate and publish the diaries in a series of more comprehensive editions, most of which can be previewed at Googlebooks. These include: The Diaries of Sir Ernest Mason Satow, 1883-1888: A Diplomat in Siam, Japan, Britain and Elsewhere; The Diaries of Sir Ernest Satow 1889-1895: Uruguay and Morocco; The Diaries of Sir Ernest Satow British Minister in Tokyo (1895-1900); and The Diaries of Sir Ernest Satow British Envoy in Peking in Tokyo (1900-03). 

Here are several extracts (stripped of many footnote numbers).

24 October 1895
‘Telegram from Lord Salisbury instructing me to inquire of the Japse Govt, what explanation they have to give of “Thales” [a steamer that had been detained by the Japanese government]. Wrote a private note to Itō to say I shld. speak to F. M [foreign Minister Saionji] this afternoon, and hoping that he wld. be prepared to undertake that full satisfaction wld. be given by the Japse. Govt.

Münter [representative of Armstrong-Mitchell Co. Ltd.] came to call. Gave me the following information about Japse. plans. 4 1st class battle-ships of 15,000 tons; 3 1st class cruisers of 7000, 4 2nd class of 4500 like the Yoshino besides smaller craft. The cost to be 180,000,000 well, the Diet wld. be asked to vote, 50,000,000 being for armaments. He wants my good word. Perhaps the American people, consisting of Dun, Denison and Williams might be placated by giving them orders for the armour plates needed for the battleship wch. is to be constructed in Japan (1 cruiser of each class here also) The Japanese are guided by sentiment of gratitude for protection to Japse. interests during the war, and to [Henry Willard] Denison for his services in negotiating the Treaty of Shimonoseki. Williams has gone back to America to get plans.

Replied to him that I could not tout, as that wld not be worthy of a great Power like England, but wld. drop a hint that the performances of the Yoshino at the Yalu fight had pleased English people very much, and that if the Japanese being of the same opinion as to the superior qualities of English-built ships, go to England for their new vessels, English nation will be gratified at this mark of appreciation of what they can do. So as to let Itō understand that I am not merely proudly indifferent.

Münter said that as far as he could learn the Manne Dept, are all in favour of English ships. The French are quite out of it 1st the Unebi capsized and another built in France could never do her proper speed, in fact the unfortunate Chishima. She was left for a whole year on the hands of the builders, who finally had to make a sacrifice of part of the contract price

(What I said to Münter I said also to Thomson the other day.)

I added to Münter that I could not promise to speak at any precise time, but must watch my opportunity.

Dined with [British railway engineer Charles A. W.] Pownalls.’

25 July 1906
‘Audience of the King, to which I was introduced by Lord Ed[ward]. Pelham Clinton, whom I reminded that several years ago at Windsor he lent me a pair of knee breeches, Saburō having forgotten to put them in my portmanteau.

The King kept me for about twenty minutes, talking about Japan, the Garter mission, and gardens, such as Batsford, La Mortola & Miss Alice Rothschild’s at Grasse. I told him that Okuma had said that if Russia did not evacuate N. Manchuria, Japan would ask for an explanation. He also spoke of the troubles in Russia, and comparing those with the [French] revolution of 1789 I hazarded the opinion that the Russian Emperor’s ministers were better prepared than those of Louis XVI to put down rebellion.

He spoke of my not returning to China, but that at present there was no post which could be given me. My services must not be lost. I replied that I had no desire to retire if I could be of use, and he said I must consider myself en disponibilité. He asked about MacDonald, whether he was still as thin as he was. I said he was fairly well, except sometimes a little stomach trouble. If I might say so, I thought he was the right man in the right place. The Japanese liked his straightforward manners, and a soldier was well-suited to be Ambassador of a country where the military element was so powerful. He then talked of the staff, Geo[rge]. Barclay, who I said was an excellent worker, Francis Lindley & his wife. Then I praised Carnegie & the King remembered that he had a pretty wife. He asked about Jordan, who I said had a good knowledge of Chinese affairs, having been long at Peking before he went to Seoul. He asked me about China, & I was proceeding to say something about her waking up, when he interrupted me by saying that he had read my private letters. Then he mentioned Sir Edward Grey as an excellent Foreign Minister, in which I concurred, adding Lord Lansdowne’s name. So he asked me whether I had seen him, to which I said No, as I thought he was out of town. No, said H.M. he was here last night & spoke in the debate on the Army in the House of Lords, which shows that he is well-informed, for that part of the debate was not reported in the “Times” of this morning. On my going away he said that my services would receive recognition.

Later in the day, while Bliss was with me, came an official notice from the Clerk of the Council & a private letter also (Almeric Fitzroy) that I am to be sworn of the Privy Council on the 28th which was what H[is].M[ajesty]. meant.

Went on to Emma Sturges, who kept me to lunch: and told her what the King had said about my future. (However it turns out I shall be contented.) Then to Gould, the dentist, to have my teeth cleaned or scaled as they call it: found a young assistant named Sergeant in his absence. Then back to Jermyn Street, where Bliss came & talked in his interesting manner, and then to call on Mrs. Ker at 11 Pelham Place near Thurloe Square. Returning left a card on Count Mutsu at the Japanese Embassy and met Milne Cheetham at the door, and we had half an hour’s talk. He believes he will be sent to Buenos Aires at the end of the year. While he was with me came a note from Mr. John Morley, asking me to name a choice of days in the first part of next week. I wrote back that I was entirely free and would leave it to him to fix the day & hour. Mme. Vieugué has been writing & telegraphing to me to go to tea or dinner, but I am engaged every day.’

2 August 1906
‘Capt. W.F. O’Connor, the trade agent at Gyantse [Tibet], called by appointment. He wanted me to tell him about the Dalai Lama being allowed to return to Lhasa with an escort of Russian Buriats, and the payment of the Tibetan indemnity by China, both of which he considered were valuable cards in the Chinese game. I replied that these were topics on which the India Office could inform him if they wished to, and that as he did not come to me accredited by his own official superiors, I did not consider myself authorized to say anything. He lamented the refusal of H.M.G. to allow an agent to be stationed at Lhasa, and thought we had sacrificed 3000 men for nothing. I disagreed with him, and told him that when the adhesion agreement was published he would see how good our position is. As to the suzerainty question, as it had been omitted from the adhesion agreement, the argument might be used that it did not exist, as was argued by the Boers in relation to the South African Convention of 1884. We could not always expect to get our own ideas adopted by our official superiors, and I had often experienced that myself. He is a tall, thin, sandy haired youngish man of say 30 or 35, very opiniative and given to argufying; was evidently much dissatisfied that I did not at once tell him all I knew and sympathize with his ideas.

To lunch with Sam [Satow]; he has an old attendant who was apprenticed many years ago to old Frederick Toulmin’s dispenser, and knew all the Upper Clapton families of 50 years ago: they kept their carriages and considered themselves aristocratic!

Dropped into St. Paul’s [Cathedral] to have a glance at the decorations. St. George’s Chapel for the order of St. Michael & George did not impress me much, and the banners of the Knights look too new, as they cannot help doing. It seems a useless expense.

Left a card for Sir Edward Seymour at Queen Anne’s mansions, and went down to Chislehurst to dine with Arthur & Agneta [Allen]. A violent thunderstorm broke out just before I left.’

The Golding condition

It is 30 years since the death of William Golding, the great British writer, author of Lord of the Flies. A large literary archive containing two decades’ worth of daily diary entries remains privately held by his family, and only snippets have been made public thanks to a biography by John Carey. However, Carey has claimed that Golding’s diary is unique ‘as an author’s systematic exploration of his unconscious and examination of his conscious life’. What a shame, then, that none of Golding’s diaries have yet been edited for publication, not only for what he has to say about the human condition, but what they have to say about the Golding condition.

Golding was born in Cornwall in 1911, but grew up at his family home in Marlborough, Wiltshire. He studied at Marlborough Grammar School, where his father was a science teacher, and at Oxford University, transferring, after two years, from natural sciences to English literature. He published a first book of poems in 1934, the same year he graduated; and he married Ann Brookfield in 1939 with whom he had two children. He served with the Royal Navy during the war, and, after it, he returned to teaching at Bishop Wordsworth’s School in Salisbury, and to writing.

In 1953, Golding sent a manuscript to Faber & Faber of London, which was reportedly rescued from the trash by a new editor, Charles Monteith. Lord of the Flies was published the following year, and was soon followed by other novels, including The Inheritors, Pincher Martin and Free Fall. In 1958, he and Ann moved to live in Bowerchalke, Wiltshire, where they would remain for nearly 30 years. In 1961-1962, he went to the US as a writer-in residence. The trip brought him some fame and wealth, prompting him to give up teaching on his return. His next novel The Spire was published in 1964, and The Pyramid in 1967, but these books were followed by a fallow and difficult writing period, one which would last until the second half of the 1970s.

From the late 1970s, though, Golding’s literary reputation began to sore, first with Darkness Visible, which won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize, then with Rites of Passage which won the booker, and then with the Nobel Literary Prize in 1983. In 1985, the Goldings moved to a house called Tullimaar in Cornwall. Also that year, Faber & Faber published Golding’s An Egyptian Journal, and thereafter it published two sequels to Rites of Passage. Golding died on 19 June 1993, and was buried in Bowerchalke. A little further biographical information is available at Wikipedia, the Nobel Prize website, and at a Golding website run by his family.

In 2009, there was a resurgence of media interest in Golding when Faber & Faber published a first biography of the writer, by John Carey, professor of literature at Oxford University. Initial publicity for the book focused on a revelation, found in the archive, that Golding considered he had attempted, as an undergraduate, to rape a 15-year-old girlfriend - see The Guardian, or The Independent. The biography, though, has been much acclaimed. William Boyd, reviewing the book for The New York Times says: ‘Carey [. . .] writes with great wit and lucidity as well as authority and compassionate insight. Perhaps because he has had the opportunity of reading the mass of Golding’s unpublished intimate journals, he brings unusual understanding to the complex and deeply troubled man who lies behind the intriguing but undeniably idiosyncratic novels.’ He concludes by calling the biography ‘superb’. Much of it can be previewed at Googlebooks.

Golding’s diaries - 5,000 pages of them written every day for over 20 years - are part of the Golding archive, which is still kept privately by the family. Carey was the first researcher to be given access to this archive. Of the diaries, he says this: ‘Besides being an intimate account of his private life, and a treasure-house of memories of his childhood and youth, the journal is a behind-the-scenes revelation of the writer’s craft, reporting each day on the progress of whatever novel he is at work on, tracing its origins, trying out alternative plot-lines, and criticizing, often violently, what he has written so far. Further, he began the journal as a dream diary, and though his waking life gradually came to dominate, he continued to record dreams almost to the end, together with his interpretations and identification of the incidents they recalled. As an author’s systematic exploration of his unconscious and examination of his conscious life, Golding’s journal is, I think, unique.’ Carey’s other main source was the correspondence between Golding and his editor at Faber & Faber, Charles Monteith.

Although the biography relies so heavily on Golding’s diaries (and there is a long list of diary dates at the back of the book provided as information sources), Carey rarely uses significant verbatim extracts: here and there, one can find phrases quoted to illustrate a point, but there are less than a handful of longer extracts. There are, however, further insights into the journal. From 1971, Carey says, when Golding found himself unable to work on a new book, he occupied himself with various displacement activities, and one of these was keeping a journal, ‘which he wrote up every day, usually before 10am, recording everything from metaphysical speculations to the weekly trip to Salisbury for Ann to get her hair done’.

Carey continues: ‘He realized that the journal was “little but an effort to relieve the sorrow, the grief, the pain” of not being able to write a book, and its pointlessness often dismayed him. “I don’t seem to do anything else”, he fretted. He invented comic nicknames (“Pewter” and “Bolonius”) for the “ridiculous and wearisome” everyday self who filled its pages with reams of mundane detail. But at least his daily stint made him feel he was still, in some some sense, a writer. At the present rate, he worked out in April 1972, he would clock up 182,500 words in just half a year, “the equivalent, more or less, of all the books I’ve written”. Eventually, the journal stretched to two and a half million words.’

Golding published one so-called journal in his lifetime - An Egyptian Journal - but as Carey notes this was not actually a diary text at all: ‘It is natural to imagine that An Egyptian Journal is the journal he kept while in Egypt. But that is not so. The journal he kept day by day on the Hani is cursory, consisting of disjointed notes with occasional outbursts of impatience (“One feels really more and more like giving up”; “My God. The silly sods have run out of fuel.”) An Egyptian Journal was commotion recollected in tranquility. Turning his notes into a book took months. He talked it over with Ann, and decided that what was needed was “a sort of complex sewing-job”, amplifying his jottings, and interspersing new material to “make it vivid”.’

A very few extracts from the journals are available online at the William Golding website and at Faber & Faber. Here, though, are two extracts from Golding’s diary taken from Carey’s biography. The first, dated 10 April 1972 I think, consists of some recollections about the poet and Faber man, T. S. Eliot; and the second is an extract included by Carey in his postscript, though I cannot work out its date.

‘Eliot was fairly impressive in a Donnish sort of way, but not excessively so. Charles [Monreith] led Ann and me to see him as to a god. We sat fairly mum while he talked of umbrellas and rubber trees. Later he informed me that Simon in Lord of the Flies must be cut to the bone. ‘We cannot portray a saint, Mr Ah. But for evil we need only to look into our own hearts’. The silly old twit. As if I hadn’t known that. Another time at a Faber cocktail party Frazer [G. S. Fraser] the Anthologist cannoned into my back so that I bowed forward and spilt champagne down Mr Eliot’s trousers while he was saying, “No, no, no” to Arthur Koestler. Thus I not only worshipped at the god’s shrine but poured a libation, not to say an anointment. He leapt back with an agility startling in one so mummified, striking out at his salt and pepper Edwardian trousers. I cannot say that we were intimate friends.’

‘One day, if my literary reputation holds up, people will examine my life, and they will come to the conclusion that I am a monster and possibly they will finally say tout comprendre and all that. They will think they know all but they won’t. No matter how deep they dig they won’t reach the root that has made me a monster in deed, word and thought. No one but I knows that, or suffers it. This is not guilt, it is self knowledge.’

In the postscript to his biography, Carey asks, ‘What would [Golding] have thought about his private journals being made public, as it is in this book?’ He answers his own question by suggesting that Golding knew at the deepest level that he was writing for an audience, and that he knew some parts would cause pain and embarrassment. Carey also tries to give a sense of the Golding he found in the diary: ‘How, then, would I characterize him as he comes across in the journal? The emotion he felt most vividly and often behind his disguise was, I think, fear, on a scale varying from mild anxiety to terror. He had been a sensitive, frightened child, and he grew into a sensitive, frightened man.’

But, all we really have in the public domain of Golding’s vast diary is the information and sparse quotes as filtered through Carey. And these few actual snippets only serve to whet one’s appetite for more. It seems a shame, a great loss indeed, that there is no project - as far as I am aware of - to edit or publish his diaries. While I can understand the family’s wish for privacy, and, perhaps, to control the world’s image of Golding, there are several excellent reasons, surely, why his diaries ought to be published. Firstly, and foremostly, he was an acknowledged, world class, great writer and so in all likelihood there is a lot of great writing in them.

Secondly, the diaries contain far more of Golding’s thoughts about the world and the human condition than he polished and crafted for the novels. Thirdly, there must be many an insight about literary creativity in general, and, more specifically, about the creativity behind his novels (though, admittedly, Carey has mined this vein fairly thoroughly).

Fourthly - most fascinating of all - is that, like the most interesting of all diaries, Golding’s are personal, intimate, and self-analytical, not written (at least directly) for publication, which means they are likely to give a fascinating and deeper insight into the man. They may not give us all of the root that made him ‘a monster in deed, word and thought’, indeed the reverse is likely to be true, but they will tell us far more than we already know about the Golding condition.

This article is a slightly revised version of one first published on 19 June 2013.