Only you, my diary

‘Only you, my diary, know that it is here I show my fears, weaknesses, my complaints, my disillusions. I feel I cannot be weak outside because others depend on me. I rest my head here and weep. Henry asked me to help him with his work. Gonzalo asks me to join political revolutions. I live in a period of dissolution and disentegration. Even art today is not considered a vocation, a profession, a religion, but a neurosis, a disease, an “escape”. I titled this diary “drifting”. I thought I too would dissolve for a little while, but ultimately I become whole again.’

This is Anaїs Nin writing in August 1936. The same year she would begin to edit her earlier diaries with a view to publishing them. However, it would be another three decades before a first volume reached print, and when it did, Karl Shapiro, a Pulitzer Prize-winning poet, would write: ‘For a generation the literary world on both sides of the Atlantic has lived with the rumour of an extraordinary diary. Earlier readers of the manuscript dicussed it with breathtaking superlatives as a work that would take its place with the great revelations of literature. A significant section of this diary is at last in print and it appears that the great claims made for it are justified.’

Today - the 120th anniversary of her birth - seems a good day to remember Nin, one of the great literary diarists.

Anaїs Nin was born in France on 21 February 1903. Her parents, of mixed and partly Cuban heritage, were both music professionals. When they separated, their mother took Anaїs and her two brothers to New York City. At 20, she married a banker, Hugh Guiler, who later illustrated some of her books and went on to become a film maker. The couple moved to Paris in 1924, where Nin began writing fiction and where she fell in with the Villa Seurat group, which included the writers Henry Miller and Lawrence Durrell (‘Larry’ in the diary). She had many love affairs, often with well known literary figures, but her relationship with Miller was more constant than most.

In 1932, Nin’s D. H. Lawrence: An Unprofessional Study was published with a limited print run. Also, in the mid-1930s, she began therapy with Otto Rank, a one-time pupil of Sigmund Freud. Despite Rank being 20 years older, she had an affair with him lasting several years (for more see The Diary Review article Nothing but the eyes). Thereafter, Nin published several novellas and collections of short stories, such as House of Incest (1936), Winter of Artifice (1939) and Under a Glass Bell (1944). Also in the 1940s, she began to write short erotic stories, though these were not published until the 1970s (Delta of Venus and Little Birds).

In 1939, Nin and Guiler relocated to New York. In 1946, Nin met the actor Rupert Pole, 16 years her junior; and in 1955 she married him in Arizona. The couple went to live in California, though Pole was unaware that Nin was already married; and Guiler, to whom Nin returned to in New York often, remained ignorant of the marriage to Pole. Nin, eventually, had her marriage to Pole annulled because of the legal complications of both husbands claiming her as a dependent on their tax returns. Nin continued to live with Pole, though, until her death in 1977, and Pole became her literary executor.

Throughout her life, starting aged 14, Nin was a committed, almost obsessed, diary writer. According to Wikipedia’s entry on The Diary of Anaïs Nin, the diary became ‘her best friend and confidante’. And, ‘despite the attempts of her mother, therapists Rene Allendy and Otto Rank, and writer Henry Miller, to break [her] of her dependence on the diary, she would continue to keep a diary up until her death in 1977’.

Already in the early 1930s, encouraged by her friends, especially Lawrence Durrell (see, also, A book out of these scraps), Nin began editing her diaries with a view to publication. However, it was not until 1966 that a first volume (covering the years 1931-1934) appeared, published by Harcourt Brace Jovanovich. Over the next decade or so, six more volumes in the same series would be published, each one edited by Nin herself; and these would later be referred to as the ‘expurgated’ version of Nin’s diary. (In the UK, they were published by Peter Owen and titled The Journals of Anaïs Nin.)

After her death, several volumes of Nin’s earlier diaries, i.e. from 1914 to 1931, were published, and then after Guiler’s death, in 1985, Pole commissioned unexpurgated versions of the journals. There have been several of these: Henry and June, Incest, Fire, and Nearer The Moon, all subtitled From a Journal of Love.

Further information on Nin is readily available across the web, at Wikipedia, The Official Anaïs Nin Blog, and Sky Blue Press. Excerpts from her diaries are also readily available, at Googlebooks for example, and on the fan sites.

The following extracts about diary writing itself are taken from The Journals of Anaïs Nin - Volume Two, i.e. the second published edition of the expurgated diaries.

August 1936
‘Conflict with diary-writing. While I write in the diary I cannot write a book. I try to flow in a dual manner, to keep recording and to invent at the same time, to transform. The two activities are antithetical. If I were a real diarist, like Pepys or Amiel, I would be satisfied to record, but I am not, I want to fill in, transform, project, expand, deepen, I want this ultimate flowering that comes of creation. As I read the diary I was aware of all that I have left unsaid which can only be said with creative work, by lingering, expanding, developing. [. . .]

After I wrote here the other day on art versus diary, I felt the danger of putting art into the diary. It might kill its greatest quality, its naturalness. I must split up and do something apart - it is a need. No consciousness of perfection must enter the diary. Good-bye completeness. My plan of writing up a Day and a Night until I reach perfection.’

Fall 1937
‘Larry began to look over the volumes I took out of the tin box. But I began to feel uneasy, agitated, and we talked first. His first remark was: “Why, that is as terrifying as Nijinsky.” We had all been reading Nijinsky’s diary. Larry went away with an armful of volumes after saying: “You are a strange person, sitting there, surrounded by your black notebooks.”

I feel right about the diary. I will not stop. It is a necessity. But why does Henry attack it? He says I give good justifications for it each time but that he does not believe them.

Nijinsky, writing just before all connections broke with human beings. . .

Larry with his keen eyes, saying: “I have only smelled the diary writing, just read a page here and there. You have done it, the real female writing. It is a tragic work. You restore tragedy which the world has lost. Go on. Don’t stop. I’m sick of hearing about art. What you have done nobody has done. It is amazing. It is new.” ’  (See The Diary Review for more on Nijinsky’s diary.)

November 1937
‘Because of Henry’s description of the whalelike diary, Larry calls me “the Whale”. And signs himself: “your ever-admiring limpet.” [. . .]

Have gone to work on abridged edition of the diary. [. . .]

Henry has been collecting subscriptions to publish the first volume of the diary, and the first one he received was from André Maurois, who added that, however, he did not want all of the fifty-four volumes, his house was too full of books. In between these visits I arranged all the diaries I want to edit in one box so I can plunge into them easily.’

This article is a slightly revised version of one first published on 21 February 2013.

A stir in consequence

‘John Morgan with a large body of cavalry said to be at Glasgow & marching on Lex[ington] expected tonight. The whole town is in a stir in consequence.’ This is from the Civil War diary kept by Frances Dallam Peter, born 180 years ago today. She died when only 21, from an epileptic seizure, but her diary - published recently with a scholarly introduction and many annotations - is considered to provide ‘valuable insights’ and ‘a unique feminine perspective’ on the war.

Frances Dallam Peter was born into a large family in Lexington, Kentucky, on 28 January 1843. Her mother was related to William Paca, the Governor Maryland who signed the US Declaration of Independence. Her father was a medical scientist born in England; he served during the Civil War as a senior surgeon and administrator of the military hospitals in the area. Frances (or Frank as her family called her) was considered a talented, charming girl, interested in reading, drawing and writing. She went to school at the Sayre Female Institute. However, she suffered epileptic seizures which restricted her ability to develop any significant life beyond the family home. She died of a seizure in 1864 when only 21 years old. 

Peter is remembered today wholly because of a diary - scrap paper composed of military hospital supply sheets stitched together with thread - that she kept from the age 10 until her death. The diary is notable for containing no self-pity regarding her medical condition but rather is preoccupied with events beyond her domestic affairs (family members, for example, remain relatively minor players in the diary). She expresses many and forthright opinions on the politics and military matters of the day. Indeed, it seems that her diary served as a means for her to respond to and interact with the outside world. Although parts of the diary appeared in 1976, a much fuller and annotated version was published in 2021 by The University Press of Kentucky as A Union Woman in Civil War Kentucky: The Diary of Frances Peter (edited by John David Smith and William Cooper Jr.). Much of it can be previewed at Googlebooks. 

Kentucky Press provides this description of the work: ‘[Peter’s] candid diary chronicles Kentucky’s invasion by Confederates under General Braxton Bragg in 1862, Lexington’s monthlong occupation by General Edmund Kirby Smith, and changes in attitude among the enslaved population following the Emancipation Proclamation. As troops from both North and South took turns holding the city, she repeatedly emphasized the rightness of the Union cause and minced no words in expressing her disdain for “the secesh” [i.e. supporters of the Confederacy].

Peter articulates many concerns common to Kentucky Unionists. Though she was an ardent supporter of the war against the Confederacy, Peter also worried that Lincoln’s use of authority exceeded his constitutional rights. Her own attitudes toward Black people were ambiguous, as was the case with many people in that time. Peter’s descriptions of daily events in an occupied city provide valuable insights and a unique feminine perspective on an underappreciated aspect of the war. Until her death in 1864, Peter conscientiously recorded the position and deportment of both Union and Confederate soldiers, incidents at the military hospitals, and stories from the countryside. Her account of a torn and divided region is a window to the war through the gaze of a young woman of intelligence and substance.’

Reviews of the published diary can be read at Emerging Civil War and Civil War Books and Authors.

Here are several extracts from the published diary of Frances Peter.

19 February 1862
‘Last evening a short time after the salute was fired a large crowd was seen to assemble at Mrs Morgans . . . & several soldiers were seen to search the house. We learnt to day that the occasion was this. While the guns were firing Frank Key or as he is called Key Morgan with two or three other boys went to the janitor of the college [Transylvania] and got the key to the door leading on the roof on pretext that a ball had been thrown up there, & hoisted a secession flag on the college. The janitor saw it and cut it down & by order of the teacher Mr. Patterson put it in a cellar till it could be delivered to the authorities, but a Mrs John Dudley who lives near the college told Morgan who got the flag & took it home & having secreted it made the best of his way off. Some soldiers however had seen the flag on the college and came to inquire the cause of its being there, which having learnt they searched Mrs Morgans house found the flag which they tore up and divided among themselves. They got the names of the boys concerned & will probably arrest them. Mr. Patterson this morning suspended them until a faculty meeting could be held when they (the boys) will probably be expelled.’

22 February 1862
‘Washington’s birthday has dawned dark & cloudy as if the elements sympathized with the loss that Dr. Dudley’s death will be to Lexington. His body is expected here Monday. Coburn’s regiment has received marching orders.’

25 February 1862
‘Col. E. Dudley’s body arrived here Sunday and was attended from the cars to the Oddfellows Hall by the Mayor, Councilmen and crowd of citizens. The funeral oration was pronounced by Mr. Brank today at the Oddfellows Hall where the body lay in state. The 33rd Indiana, Col Coburn, the Lex Blues, Cap Wilgris, Odd fellows & masons, with some of the old Infantry Chasseurs, formed part of the procession with some of Dr. Dudleys men who came with him & a great many carriages. It was the largest funeral ever seen here (except Henry Clay’s).’

16 April 1862
‘They have taken the house near the college that was used for a hospital by De Courcy for a hospital for some of the soldiers here & Mr. John Dudley who occupied one half of the place received orders to move & left this morning, a good riddance. The 42 Ohio Col Shelton & the 18th Ky. Col Warner are here at the fairground. It was discovered the other day that one of Lindsay’s [22nd Ky.] men who was left at the hospital had the smallpox & there has been no end to the trouble that was had getting a place to put him.’

12 July 1862
‘John Morgan with a large body of cavalry said to be at Glasgow & marching on Lex[ington] expected tonight. The whole town is in a stir in consequence. Gen Boyle sent a dispatch that men should be sent out to meet Morgan. The Home Guards, Provost Guard & volunteers from the hospital with a battery that arrived the other day went out on duty. A company came to night from Cynthiana. A dispatch was sent this evening to Cincinatti for troops. For several days the atmosphere has presented a very hazy, smoky appearance & at times a slight smell as of burning was perceptible. We heard this evening that Lebanon had been burnt by Morgan.’

Battle of Quebec

‘I dined this day with Capt. Law, the principal engineer, whom in the morning I made prisoner, but in a few hours I was, in my turn, made prisoner. Capt. Law has treated me with great politeness and ingenuity.’ This is one of the last entries in a campaign diary kept by Captain Return J. Meigs during an ill-fated expedition, led by Benedict, to capture British-held Quebec in the early years of the American Revolution. Meigs, though taken prisoner, was released within months. He went on to play a significant role during the war (being commended at one point by George Washington), and, subsequently, as a Cherokee agent in Tennessee. He died exactly two centuries ago today.

Meigs was born into a large family in Middletown, Connecticut, in 1740. His father was a hatter (see here for an explanation of the strange first name). As a young man he went into a trading business. He married Joanna Winborn in 1764. They had four children, but she died in 1773. The following year, he married Grace Starr, with whom he had two children who survived infancy. He served in the local militia, achieving the rank of lieutenant in 1772 and captain in 1774.

In 1775, after the Battle of Lexington at the start of the American Revolution, Meigs led a company of light infantry to Boston where he was appointed major in the Continental Army. Later the same year, he accompanied Colonel Benedict Arnold on his 1,000-man expedition through Maine to rally Canadians to the independence cause. During the brief and calamitous assault on Quebec City (the first major defeat of the war for the Americans), on 31 December, Meigs was captured. He remained a British prisoner until May 1776 when he was paroled. After Meigs was formally exchanged in early 1777, he returned to active service as major of the 3rd Connecticut Regiment of the newly organised Connecticut Line, though before long he was commanding the the 6th Connecticut Regiment.

Meigs is best remember for leading a raid (now called the Meigs Raid) against the British forces in Sag Harbor, New York, in May 1777. It burned 12 ships and took 90 prisoners without losing a single man. The U.S. Congress awarded him a presentation sword for his heroism. He was made colonel (of the 6th Connecticut Regiment) and became acting commander of the 1st Connecticut Brigade. He put down an incipient mutiny and was reward with the written thanks of Gen. George Washington. Meigs was retired from the army in 1781. After the war, he was appointed surveyor of the Ohio Company of Associates. In 1788 he was an American pioneer to the Northwest Territory, and drew up the code of regulation used until the formal creation of the Northwest Territory the following year.

In 1801, Meigs moved to Tennessee to fill the combined position of agent to the Cherokee Nation and military agent for the United States War Department. Though his role as military agent ended in 1813, he remained a Cherokee agent - promoting the well-being of the indigenous people - until his death on 28 January 1823. His son, Return J. Meigs, Jr., was elected as Ohio governor and later, by the legislature, as U.S. Senator. Further information is available at Wikipedia and the Meigs Family History site.

Early on in his army career, during the calamitous expedition to Quebec, Meigs kept a detailed diary. This was eventually published nearly a century later in 1864 as Journal of the Expedition against Quebec under command of Col. Benedict Arnold in the year 1775, and is freely available at Internet Archive. (Also available online are at least two further journals kept during the same campaign: one written by Captain Simeon Thayer and the other by Captain William Humphrey.) Here, though, are several entries from Meigs’ journal (including the last, written after his capture).

2 October 1775
‘In the morning proceeded up the river, and at 10 o’clock arrived at Scohegin Falls, where is a carrying-place of 250 paces, which lies across a small island in the river. Here I waited for my division to come up, and encamped on the west side the river, opposite the island, with Captain Goodrich. It rained in the night. I turned out, and put on my clothes, and lay down again, and slept well till morning. Our course in general, from the mouth of the river to this place, has been from north to northeast.’

30 December 1775
‘This morning, between the hours of 1 and three o’clock in the morning, our train threw into the city about 30 shells, which produced a number of shells and a brisk cannonade, which continued all the day. As it had been determined to make an attack upon the city, the ladders being ready, and the weather stormy, which was thought best for our purpose, the troops are ordered to parade at two o’clock to-morrow morning.’

31 December 1775
‘[. . .] I now come to Col. Arnold’s division, which was to proceed to the attack in the following manner. A lieutenant and 30 men were to march in front, as an advanced guard; then the artillery company, with a field piece mounted on a sled; then the main body, of which Capt. Morgan’s company was first. The advanced party were to open when arrived near the battery, which was raised upon a wharf, which we were obliged to attack in our way; and when our field piece had given them a shot or two, the advanced party were to rush forward, with the ladders, and force the battery above mentioned, while Capt. Morgan’s company was to march round the wharf, if possible, on the ice. But the snow being deep, the piece of artillery was brought on very slow, and we were finally obliged to leave it behind; and, to add to the delay, the main body were led wrong, there being no road, the way dark and intricate, among stores, houses, boats, and wharves, and harrassed at the same time with a constant fire of the enemy from the walls, which killed and wounded numbers of our men, without our being able to annoy them in the least from our situation. The field piece not coming up, the advanced party, with Captain Morgan’s company, attacked the battery, some firing into the port holes or kind of embrasures, while others scaled the battery with ladders, and immediately took possession of it, with the guard, consisting of 30 men. This attack was executed with so much despatch, that the enemy only discharged one of their cannon. In this attack we lost but one or two men, the enemy lost about the same number. In the attack of this battery, Col. Arnold received a wound in one of his legs, with a musket ball, and was carried to the General Hospital. [. . .]

His honor, Brigadier-General Montgomery was shot through both his thighs and through his head. His body was taken up the next day. An elegant coffin was prepared, and lie was decently interred the next Thursday after. 

I am informed that when his body was taken up, his features were not in the least distorted, but his countenance appeared regular, serene, and placid, like the soul that late had animated it.

The General was tall and slender, well limbed, of genteel, easy, graceful, manly address. He had the voluntary love, esteem, and confidence of the whole army.

His death, though honourable, is lamented, not only as the death of an amiable, worthy friend, but as an experienced, brave general, whose country suffers greatly by such a loss at this time. The native goodness and rectitude of his heart might easily be seen in his actions. His sentiments, which appeared on every occasion, were fraught with that unaffected goodness, which plainly discovered the goodness of the heart from whence they flowed.

In the afternoon the officers were confined in the Seminary, and well accommodated with bedding. The soldiers were confined in the Recollets, or Jesuits' College. I dined this day with Capt. Law, the principal engineer, whom in the morning I made prisoner, but in a few hours I was, in my turn, made prisoner. Capt. Law has treated me with great politeness and ingenuity. In my return from Capt. Law’s quarters, I called at the house of Mr. ___ Munroe, who politely invited me to live at his house, if I could have permission.’

1 January 1776
‘This whole day in the Seminary. The first day I knew confinement. I hope I shall bear it with becoming fortitude. Major M’Kenzie brought General Montgomery’s knee-buckles and Mr. M’Pherson’s gold broach and made a present of them to me, which I highly value for the sake of their late worthy owners.’

De Wolf’s last stand

James Madison DeWolf, a surgeon with the US army regiment that fought and lost the famous Battle of the Little Big Horn, was born 180 years ago today. He is only remembered today because he left behind eyewitness accounts - a diary and letters - of the three to four months leading up to his death. (See also Calhoun in the Black Hills.)

DeWolf was born in Mehoopany, Pennsylvania, on 14 January 1843. He worked as a farmer until the start of the American Civil War, when, aged 17, he enlisted in the Union Army. He saw combat at the First Battle of Bull Run; and, he was promoted to Corporal. Severely wounded in the arm, he was discharged in October 1862. Two years later, he re-enlisted and served in the artillery until 1865. A few months later, though, he went to work for the regular United States Army. He was promoted from private to hospital steward. In 1871, he married Fannie J. Downing at Camp Warner, Oregon Territory.

In the early 1870s, DeWolf determined on a career in medicine, and appealed to be allowed to study at Harvard Medical School. He graduated in 1875. Although discharged from the army, he was re-employed on contract as a private physician. Later that year, he was appointed to Fort Totten, and the following spring he was assigned to Major Marcus Reno's battalion. At the Battle of the Little Big Horn (also known as Custer’s Last Stand) he was shot from his horse and then - according to Wikipedia - scalped next to his orderly in full view of the retreating cavalry. 

Dewolf is only remembered today because he left behind eyewitness testimony - in a diary and letters - of the battle. This was published by University of Oklahoma Press in 2017 as A Surgeon with Custer at the Little Big Horn: James DeWolf’s Diary and Letters, 1876 (edited by Todd E. Harburn). Some pages can be sampled at Googlebooks and Amazon. They can also be read in full online at the website of the State Historical Society of North Dakota in a transcript titled: The Diary and Letters of Dr James M. Dewolf, acting assistant surgeon, US Army; his record of the Sioux expedition of 1876 as kept until his death (transcribed and with editorial notes by Luce Edwards). 

Here’s part of the publisher’s blurb for A Surgeon with Custer:

‘While researchers have known of DeWolf’s diary for many years, few details have surfaced about the man himself. In A Surgeon with Custer at the Little Big Horn, Todd E. Harburn bridges this gap, providing a detailed biography of DeWolf as well as extensive editorial insight into his writings. As one of the most highly educated men who traveled with Custer, the surgeon was well equipped to compose articulate descriptions of the 1876 campaign against the Indians, a fateful journey that began for him at Fort Lincoln, Dakota Territory, and ended on the battlefield in eastern Montana Territory. In letters to his beloved wife, Fannie, and in diary entries - reproduced in this volume exactly as he wrote them - DeWolf describes the terrain, weather conditions, and medical needs that he and his companions encountered along the way.

After DeWolf’s death, his colleague Dr. Henry Porter, who survived the conflict, retrieved his diary and sent it to DeWolf’s widow. Later, the DeWolf family donated it to the Little Bighorn Battlefield National Monument. Now available in this accessible and fully annotated format, the diary, along with the DeWolf’s personal correspondence, serves as a unique primary resource for information about the Little Big Horn campaign and medical practices on the western frontier.’

Here are several sample extracts.

24 May 1876
‘Young Mens Buttes at 5 AM went 8 miles & crossed stream nearly dry 8 miles or 9 miles camped in a valley on Heart River passed a butte 3 miles from camp, no unusual incident see the usual amount of chase of Antelope by the Hounds band plays at every fish in the stream camped at 3 P.M. had to bridge the coolie 8 miles back Marched 18 miles’

7 June 1876
‘5 AM to 8 P.M. 32 miles about go direct across to Powder River from O’Fallon Creek keep up on the divides a bad pass & several deep ravines about 4 miles from Powder river steep banks & liable to wash would be impassable in wet weather. Cloudy & cool all day some fine misty rain not enough to wet the ground found several remnants of Buffalo carcases that Indians had killed game getting scarce no doubt due to the presence of Indians in the vicinity found some wild Heilatrope as found in Oregon some sage brush and some Rolling Prairie & Badlands.’

8 June 1876
‘Remain in camp on Powder River Genl Terry & 2 Co Cav start for Boat at mouth of river fair’

19 June 1876
‘41/2 to 4 P.M. 33 miles marched 91/2 miles back from the river on the bluffs 8 miles along river bottom then the balance on Bluffs tlie last mile was dreadful badlands & almost impassable found lots of Agates some pretty’

24 June 1876 [De Wolf’s last entry]
‘5 A.M. to 7 P.M. 3 hour halt, marched 10 miles & large branch nearly as large as main stream found another 7 miles beyond marched within a few miles of the forks found lots of new signs old camps in profusion they begin not to be so high’

Vampira - The first Goth?

Maila Nurmi - considered by her biographer niece to be the ‘architect of the Goth phenomenon’ - was born a century ago today. For a few years, in the 1950s, her character Vampira famously became television’s first horror host, but, by the 1960s, she had faded out of favour. Of late two books - both claiming to access to her private diaries - have refocused attention on her brief career in the spotlight, and he role in the early days of the Goth movement. 

Nurmi was born in Gloucester, Massachusetts, on 11 December 1922, into a family with Finnish roots (though as an adult she claimed for a while that she had been born in Finland). Her family relocated to Ashtabula, Ohio, before settling in Astoria, Oregon, a city with a large Finnish community. Her father worked as a lecturer and editor; her mother was a journalist and translator. On leaving Astoria High School in 1940, she moved first to Los Angeles then to New York to become an actress. She modelled for painters (not least Man Ray), and played roles on Broadway. Significantly, she appeared in the horror-themed midnight show Spook Scandals, in a role requiring her to scream, faint, and lie in a coffin. Wikipedia notes that in 1944 she was fired by Mae West from the cast of Catherine Was Great because West feared being upstaged.

In 1949, Nurmi married Dean Riesner, a screen writer and former child actor. She was to get married twice more to actors, John Brinkley in 1958, and Fabrizio Mioni in 1961. In the early 1950s, was supporting herself mainly by posing for pin-up photos in men’s magazines, and by working as a hat-check girl on Hollywood's Sunset Strip. However, one night she attended a masquerade - with her long raven black hair, pale white skin and a tight black dress (a costume inspired by The New Yorker cartoons of Charles Addams) - and caught the eye of television producer Hunt Stromberg, Jr.. Subsequently, he hired her to host a series of horror stories - and it was Riesner who came up with the name Vampira. She was an immediate success, and even earned herself an Emmy Award nomination in 1954 for Most Outstanding Female Personality. According to IMDB, fan clubs sprouted up all over the world. She appeared in Life and Newsweek among other magazines, and was generally much in demand as the ‘Queen of Horror’. 

By the end of the decade, though Nurmi had fallen out of favour, and she was only appearing in low quality movies. She turned away from entertainment to earn a living in trade, selling linoleum, for a time, and jewellery. In the early 1980s, she became involved in a TV project to revise the Vampira character. She fell out with the producers who renamed their programme Elvira’s Movie Macabre. Nurmi sued but, eventually, lost the case. However, her spirit had been awakened, so to speak, and she made some brief appearances on stage, and she recorded two singles. In 2001, she opened a website selling autographed memorabilia. Otherwise, she lived modestly in Southern California, where she dabbled in painting and became passionately involved in animal protection rights. She died in 2008.

Further information is available from a biography written by her niece Sandra Nurmi - Glamour Ghoul: The Passions and Pain of the Real Vampira, Maila Nurmi (Feral House, 2021). Some pages can be previewed at Amazon. Here is the blurb: ‘Maila Nurmi, the beautiful and sheltered daughter of Finnish immigrants, stepped off the bus in 1941 Los Angeles intent on finding fame and fortune. She found men eager to take advantage of her innocence and beauty but was determined to find success and love. Her inspired design and portrayal of a vampire won a costume contest that lead to a small role on the Red Skelton show which grew into a persona that brought her the notoriety she desired yet trapped her in a character she could never truly escape. This is Malia’s story. Her diaries, notes, and ephemera and family stories bring new insights to her relationships with Orson Welles, James Dean, and Marlon Brando. Sandra - Malia’s niece - fills in the nuances of her life prior to fame and her struggles after the limelight faded and she found a new community within the burgeoning Los Angeles punk scene who embraced her as their own.’

This book is a work of love, for Sandra long idolised her aunt from afar. She considers her a ‘pioneer’, ‘the architect of the Goth phenomenon’. The two were estranged for more than 30 years before re-meeting in 1989. Then, another 20 years or so later, Sandra learned of her aunt’s death, and was the one to deal with the ‘final arrangements’. She saved all of Maila’s writings, scattered about the floors, and in drawers, bags - including a diary. And it is with these that she put together Glamour Ghoul. 

The diary entries, though, are few and far between. There is one Sandra Nurmi refers to, from when Maila was 14. She couldn’t tell her father about an incident, Sandra explains, and instead wrote about it  - ‘in one of her journals’. She wrote, Sandra continues, ‘how the pastor’s roving hands affected the rest of her life making her more vigilant and distrustful.’ Otherwise, there is only one quotation of Nurmi's actual writing that Sandra provides which has a date (others are more memoir-like quotations), as follows:   

16 February 1956
‘Date at Thrifty with T.P. - one hr & 10 min. only - he played it sensuous. He left to rehearse with Piper Laurie. Is Osgood Perkins little boy playing hard to get?’

However, hot on the heels of Sandra’s book has come The Vampira Diaries, written and/or compiled by Jonny Coffin. This is available from the official Vampira website at a cost $89 for a limited edition of one of the 1,000 hand-stamped books. The publisher says: ‘This is sure to be a highly collectable Vampira treasure. The Vampira Diaries are a collection of Maila Nurmi’s personal diaries starting from the year 1953 during her Hollywood rise to fame with the groundbreaking Vampira Show. Featuring unearthed, never-before-seen photos, original scripts, news clips from her personal scrapbook, excerpts written in her own hand, and scores of rare photos from the inception of Vampira 1954-1956.’

A gushing review can be read at Vamp Jenn’s Corner blog; but, unfortunately, I can find no actual diary extracts from the book online.

Slavery in Brazil

’Last evening, when the rain was over and the moonlight tempted every one on deck, we had a long conversation with our pleasant travelling companion, Mr. Sinimbu, senator from the province of Alagôas, on the aspect of slavery in Brazil. It seems to me that we may have something to learn here in our own perplexities respecting the position of the black race among us, for the Brazilians are trying gradually and by instalments some of the experiments which are forced upon us without previous preparation.’ This is from an excellent diary kept by Elizabeth Agassiz - born 200 years ago today - while travelling in Brazil with her naturalist husband Louis.

Elizabeth Cabot Cary was born on 5 December 1822 into a large Boston Brahmin family that originally came to Massachusetts during the 17th century. As a consequence of her fragile health, she was tutored at home. In 1850 she married the recently-widowed Swiss naturalist Louis Agassiz (not to be confused with the later Louis Agassiz Fuertes who was named after him - see Puffins, pipits and plovers), becoming stepmother to his three children (though she had none of her own). From 1855 to 1863, she ran a school for girls in their Cambridge home. In addition to providing a needed supplement to the family income, this proved to be a pioneering effort in women’s education. She also became an indispensable assistant for her husband. Her notes on his lectures, for example, were the raw material of much of his published work, and she helped manage several of his expeditions, notably an expedition to Brazil financed by the Boston banker Nathaniel Thayer in 1865-1866 and the Hassler Expedition through the Strait of Magellan in 1871-1872. 

Together with her husband, Elizabeth founded the coeducational Anderson School of Natural History, a marine laboratory on Penikese Island in Buzzard’s Bay. For some years after Louis’s death in 1873, she devoted herself to the care of her grandchildren and to the writing of a memoir of her husband. In 1879 she helped open the Harvard Annex in Cambridge and was named president when it was incorporated as the Society for the Collegiate Instruction of Women. In 1894 the college was named Radcliffe and formally linked to Harvard University. She remained president until 1899, when she relinquished her formal duties. She died in 1907. Further information is available from Wikipedia, Encyclopaedia Britannica, or the Dictionary of Unitarian & Universalist Biography.

Elizabeth Agassiz wrote and published a couple of books on natural history, but also Journey in Brazil (Ticknor and Fields, 1868). This latter was a diary kept by her mostly but also by her husband during their travels in Brazil. Indeed, Louis introduces the work as follows: ‘One word as to the manner in which this volume has grown into its present shape, for it has been rather the natural growth of circumstances than the result of any preconceived design. Partly for the entertainment of her friends, partly with the idea that I might make some use of it in knitting together the scientific reports of my journey by a thread of narrative, Mrs. Agassiz began this diary. I soon fell into the habit of giving her daily the more general results of my scientific observations, knowing that she would allow nothing to be lost which was worth preserving. In consequence of this mode of working, our separate contributions have become so closely interwoven that we should hardly know how to disconnect them, and our common journal is therefore published, with the exception of a few unimportant changes, almost as it was originally written.’ 

The full work - which is very readable and gives insight into early Brazil - can be read freely online at Project Gutenberg. Here are several extracts.

6 May 1865
‘Yesterday, at the invitation of our friend Mr. B——, we ascended the famous Corcovado peak. Leaving the carriages at the terminus of the Larangeiras road, we made the farther ascent on horseback by a winding narrow path, which, though a very fair road for mountain travelling in ordinary weather, had been made exceedingly slippery by the late rains. The ride was lovely through the fragrant forest, with enchanting glimpses of view here and there, giving promise of what was before us. Occasionally a brook or a little cascade made pleasant music by the roadside, and when we stopped to rest our horses we heard the wind rustle softly in the stiff palms overhead. The beauty of vegetation is enhanced here by the singular character of the soil. The color of the earth is peculiar all about Rio; of a rich warm red, it seems to glow beneath the mass of vines and large-leaved plants above it, and every now and then crops out in vivid, striking contrast to the surrounding verdure. Frequently our path followed the base of such a bank, its deep ochre and vermilion tints looking all the softer for their framework of green. Among the larger growth, the Candelabra-tree (Cecropia) was conspicuous. The strangely regular structure of the branches and its silvery-tinted foliage make it stand out in bold relief from the darker background. It is a striking feature of the forest in this neighborhood.

A wide panoramic prospect always eludes description, but certainly few can combine such rare elements of beauty as the one from the summit of the Corcovado. The immense landlocked harbor, with its gateway open to the sea, the broad ocean beyond, the many islands, the circle of mountains with soft fleecy clouds floating about the nearer peaks, all these features make a wonderful picture. One great charm of this landscape consists in the fact, that, though very extensive, it is not so distant as to deprive objects of their individuality. After all, a very distant view is something like an inventory: so many dark, green patches, forests; so many lighter green patches, fields; so many white spots, lakes; so many silver threads, rivers, &c. But here special effects are not lost in the grandeur of the whole. On the extreme peak of the height a wall has been built around the edge, the descent on one side being so vertical that a false step might hurl one to instant destruction. At this wall we dismounted and lingered long, unwilling to leave the beautiful view before sunset. We were, however, anxious to return by daylight, and, to confess the truth, being a timorous and inexperienced rider at best, I was not without some anxiety as to the descent, for the latter part of the slippery road had been a sheer scramble. Putting a bold face on the matter, however, I resumed my seat, trying to look as if it were my habit to mount horses on the tops of high mountains and slide down to the bottom. This is really no inaccurate description of our descent for the first ten minutes, after which we regained the more level path at the little station called “the Païneiras.” We are told to-day that parties usually leave their horses at this station and ascend the rest of the way on foot, the road beyond that being so steep that it is considered unsafe for riding. However, we reached the plain without accident, and I look back upon yesterday’s ride with some complacency as a first lesson in mountain travelling.’

15 July 1865
‘A long botanizing excursion to-day among the Tijuca hills with Mr. Glaziou, director of the Passeio Publico, as guide. It has been a piece of the good fortune attending Mr. Agassiz thus far on this expedition to find in Mr. Glaziou a botanist whose practical familiarity with tropical plants is as thorough as his theoretical knowledge. He has undertaken to enrich our scientific stores with a large collection of such palms and other trees as illustrate the relation between the present tropical vegetation and the ancient geological forests. Such a collection will be invaluable as a basis for palæontological studies at the Museum of Comparative Zoölogy in Cambridge.’

30 July 1865
‘Off Maceió. Last evening, when the rain was over and the moonlight tempted every one on deck, we had a long conversation with our pleasant travelling companion, Mr. Sinimbu, senator from the province of Alagôas, on the aspect of slavery in Brazil. It seems to me that we may have something to learn here in our own perplexities respecting the position of the black race among us, for the Brazilians are trying gradually and by installments some of the experiments which are forced upon us without previous preparation. The absence of all restraint upon the free blacks, the fact that they are eligible to office, and that all professional careers are open to them, without prejudice on the ground of color, enables one to form some opinion as to their ability and capacity for development. Mr. Sinimbu tells us that here the result is on the whole in their favor; he says that the free blacks compare well in intelligence and activity with the Brazilians and Portuguese. But it must be remembered, in making the comparison with reference to our own country, that here they are brought into contact with a less energetic and powerful race than the Anglo-Saxon. Mr. Sinimbu believes that emancipation is to be accomplished in Brazil by a gradual process which has already begun. A large number of slaves are freed every year by the wills of their masters; a still larger number buy their own freedom annually; and as there is no longer any importation of blacks, the inevitable result of this must be the natural death of slavery. Unhappily, the process is a slow one, and in the mean while slavery is doing its evil work, debasing and enfeebling alike whites and blacks. The Brazilians themselves do not deny this, and one constantly hears them lament the necessity of sending their children away to be educated, on account of the injurious association with the house-servants. In fact, although politically slavery has a more hopeful aspect here than elsewhere, the institution from a moral point of view has some of its most revolting characters in this country, and looks, if possible, more odious than it did in the States. The other day, in the neighborhood of Rio, I had an opportunity of seeing a marriage between two negroes, whose owner made the religious, or, as it appeared to me on this occasion, irreligious ceremony, obligatory. The bride, who was as black as jet, was dressed in white muslin, with a veil of coarse white lace, such as the negro women make themselves, and the husband was in a white linen suit. She looked, and I think she really felt, diffident, for there were a good many strangers present, and her position was embarrassing. The Portuguese priest, a bold, insolent-looking man, called them up and rattled over the marriage service with most irreverent speed, stopping now and then to scold them both, but especially the woman, because she did not speak loud enough and did not take the whole thing in the same coarse, rough way that he did. When he ordered them to come up and kneel at the altar, his tone was more suggestive of cursing than praying, and having uttered his blessing he hurled an amen at them, slammed the prayer-book down on the altar, whiffed out the candles, and turned the bride and bridegroom out of the chapel with as little ceremony as one would have kicked out a dog. As the bride came out, half crying, half smiling, her mother met her and showered her with rose-leaves, and so this act of consecration, in which the mother’s benediction seemed the only grace, was over. I thought what a strange confusion there must be in these poor creature’s minds, if they thought about it at all. They are told that the relation between man and wife is a sin, unless confirmed by the sacred rite of marriage; they come to hear a bad man gabble over them words which they cannot understand, mingled with taunts and abuse which they understand only too well, and side by side with their own children grow up the little fair-skinned slaves to tell them practically that the white man does not keep himself the law he imposes on them. What a monstrous lie the whole system must seem to them if they are ever led to think about it at all. I am far from supposing that the instance I have given should be taken as representing the state of religious instruction on plantations generally. No doubt there are good priests who improve and instruct their black parishioners; but it does not follow because religious services are provided on a plantation, the ceremony of marriage observed, &c., that there is anything which deserves the name of religious instruction. It would be unjust not to add the better side of the question in this particular instance. The man was free, and I was told that the woman received her liberty and a piece of land from her master as her marriage dower.’

I flied the highest

‘I ran in the wind and played be a horse, and had a lovely time in the woods with Anna and Lizzie. We were fairies, and made gowns and paper wings. I “flied” the highest of all.’ This is Louisa Alcott - famous for being the author of the American classic Little Women - born 190 years ago today. She was writing in the diary then as a young girl, aged 11, but would go on to keep a diary for  much of her life. This diary, apart from documenting her own life, says much about the New England Transcendentalist movement her father was involved with.

Alcott was born in Germantown, Pennsylvania, on 29 November 1832. She spent her childhood in Boston and in Concord, Massachusetts, being schooled, with three sisters, at home by her father, a New England Transcendentalist. For three years, they were part of the Utopian Fruitlands community. When this failed, they were helped out by her father’s friend, Ralph Waldo Emerson; money problems, though, were never far away. Louisa started writing early, mostly poetry and short stories. Flower Fables, her first book, was published when she was just 22.

In 1862, Alcott, an avowed abolitionist, went to Washington to work as a nurse during the Civil War, but her service lasted only a few weeks, as she nearly died from typhoid. She never recovered full health again. A book of her letters at the time, called Hospital Letters, brought her a first taste of literary fame. She began writing stories for Atlantic Monthly. Her most famous work, Little Women, written in 1868, and set at Orchard House, is still popular today. Alcott continued writing children’s books - though she yearned to do more serious fiction - because the family needed the income. In all, she published over 30 books and collections of stories.

Alcott died, aged 55, in 1888, just two days after her father. Further information is available from Wikipedia, the website for Louisa May Alcott’s Orchard House (‘one of the oldest, most authentically-preserved historic house museums in America’) or The Dictionary of Unitarian and Universalist Biography.

From an early age through to the end of her life, Alcott kept a diary which she never intended for publication. Parts of it first appeared a year after her death in Louisa May Alcott Her Life, Letters and Journals edited by Ednah D. Cheney and published by Roberts Brothers in Boston. This book was continually reprinted before and after the publisher was taken over by Little, Brown in 1898. A first unabridged edition of Alcott’s diaries appeared a century later in 1989 when University of Georgia Press brought out The Journals of Louisa May Alcott edited by Madeleine B. Stern. Her Life, Letters and Journals is freely available at Internet Archive, and some of the more recent publication can be previewed at Googlebooks and Amazon.

1 September 1843
‘I rose at five and had my bath. I love cold water! Then we had our singing-lesson with Mr Lane. After breakfast I washed dishes, and ran on the hill till nine, and had some thoughts, it was so beautiful up there. Did my lessons, wrote and spelt and did sums; and Mr Lane read a story, “The Judicious Father”: How a rich girl told a poor girl not to look over the fence at the flowers, and was cross to her because she was unhappy. The father heard her do it, and made the girls change clothes. The poor one was glad to do it, and he told her to keep them. But the rich one was very sad; for she had to wear the old ones a week, and after that she was good to shabby girls. I liked it very much, and I shall be kind to poor people.

Father asked us what was God’s noblest work. Anna said men, but I said babies. Men are often bad; babies never are. We had a long talk, and I felt better after it, and cleared up.

We had bread and fruit for dinner. I read and walked and played till supper-time. We sung in the evening. As I went to bed the moon came up very brightly and looked at me. I felt sad because I have been cross to day, and did not mind Mother. I cried, and then I felt better, and said that piece from Mrs Sigourney, “I must not tease my mother.” I get to sleep saying poetry, I know a great deal.’

14 September 1843
‘Mr Parker Pillsbury came, and we talked about the poor slaves. I had a music lesson with Miss F. I hate her, she is so fussy. I ran in the wind and played be a horse, and had a lovely time in the woods with Anna and Lizzie. We were fairies, and made gowns and paper wings. I “flied” the highest of all. In the evening they talked about travelling. I thought about Father going to England, [. . .]

It rained when I went to bed, and made a pretty noise on the roof.’

8 October 1843
‘When I woke up, the first thought I got was, “It’s Mother s birthday: I must be very good.” I ran and wished her a happy birthday, and gave her my kiss. After breakfast we gave her our presents. I had a moss cross and a piece of poetry for her.

We did not have any school, and played in the woods and got red leaves. In the evening we danced and sung, and I read a story about “Contentment.” I wish I was rich, I was good, and we were all a happy family this day.’

4 January 1863
‘I shall record the events of a day as a sample of the days I spend:

Up at six, dress by gaslight, run through my ward and throw up the windows, though the men grumble and shiver; but the air is bad enough to breed a pestilence; and as no notice is taken of our frequent appeals for better ventilation, I must do what I can. Poke up the fire, add blankets, joke, coax, and command; but continue to open doors and windows as if life depended upon it. Mine does, and doubtless many another, for a more perfect pestilence-box than this house I never saw, cold, damp, dirty, full of vile odors from wounds, kitchens, wash-rooms, and stables. No competent head, male or female, to right matters, and a jumble of good, bad, and indifferent nurses, surgeons, and attendants, to complicate the chaos still more.

After this unwelcome progress through my stifling ward, I go to breakfast with what appetite I may; find the uninvitable fried beef, salt butter, husky bread, and washy coffee; listen to the clack of eight women and a dozen men, the first silly, stupid, or possessed of one idea; the last absorbed with their breakfast and themselves to a degree that is both ludicrous and provoking, for all the dishes are ordered down the table full and returned empty; the conversation is entirely among themselves, and each announces his opinion with an air of importance that frequently causes me to choke in my cup, or bolt my meals with undignified speed lest a laugh betray to these famous beings that a “chiel’s amang them takin’ notes.”

Till noon I trot, trot, giving out rations, cutting up food for helpless “boys,” washing faces, teaching my attendants how beds are made or floors are swept, dressing wounds, taking Dr F. P.’s orders (privately wishing all the time that he would be more gentle with my big babies), dusting tables, sewing bandages, keeping my tray tidy, rushing up and down after pillows, bed-linen, sponges, books, and directions, till it seems as if I would joyfully pay down all I possess for fifteen minutes’ rest. At twelve the big bell rings, and up comes dinner for the boys, who are always ready for it and never entirely satisfied. Soup, meat, potatoes, and bread is the bill of fare. Charley Thayer, the attendant, travels up and down the room serving out the rations, saving little for himself, yet always thoughtful of his mates, and patient as a woman with their helplessness. When dinner is over, some sleep, many read, and others want letters written. This I like to do, for they put in such odd things, and express their ideas so comically, I have great fun interiorally, while as grave as possible exteriorally. A few of the men word their paragraphs well and make excellent letters. John’s was the best of all I wrote. The answering of letters from friends after some one had died is the saddest and hardest duty a nurse has to do.

Supper at five sets every one to running that can run; and when that flurry is over, all settle down for the evening amusements, which consist of newspapers, gossip, the doctor’s last round, and, for such as need them, the final doses for the night. At nine the bell rings, gas is turned down, and day nurses go to bed. Night nurses go on duty, and sleep and death have the house to themselves.

My work is changed to night watching, or half night and half day, from twelve to twelve. I like it, as it leaves me time for a morning run, which is what I need to keep well; for bad air, food, and water, work and watching, are getting to be too much for me. I trot up and down the streets in all directions, sometimes to the Heights, then half way to Washington, again to the hill, over which the long trains of army wagons are constantly vanishing and ambulances appearing. That way the fighting lies, and I long to follow.

Ordered to keep my room, being threatened with pneumonia. Sharp pain in the side, cough, fever, and dizziness. A pleasant prospect for a lonely soul five hundred miles from home! Sit and sew on the boys’ clothes, write letters, sleep, and read; try to talk and keep merry, but fail decidedly, as day after day goes, and I feel no better. Dream awfully, and wake unrefreshed, think of home, and wonder if I am to die here, as Mrs R., the matron, is likely to do. Feel too miserable to care much what becomes of me. Dr S. creaks up twice a day to feel my pulse, give me doses, and ask if I am at all consumptive, or some other cheering question. Dr O. examines my lungs and looks sober. Dr J. haunts the room, coming by day and night with wood, cologne, books, and messes, like a motherly little man as he is. Nurses fussy and anxious, matron dying, and everything very gloomy. They want me to go home, but I won t yet.’

27 April 1872
‘Mr Emerson died at 9 P.M. suddenly. Our best and greatest American gone. The nearest and dearest friend Father has ever had, and the man who has helped me most by his life, his books, his society. I can never tell all he has been to me, from the time I sang Mignon’s song under his window (a little girl) and wrote letters a la Bettine to him, my Goethe, at fifteen, up through my hard years, when his essays on Self-Reliance, Character, Compensation, Love, and Friendship helped me to understand myself and life, and God and Nature. Illustrious and beloved friend, good-by!’

This article is a slightly revised version of one first published on 29 November 2012.

They cheered lustily

Today marks the bicentenary of the birth of Rutherford B Hayes. He became the 19th president of the US, but only after one of the most controversial elections in US history, and he was one of the few presidents who kept a diary while in office. In his first entry, after finally winning the presidency, he noted that ‘the colored hack-drivers and others cheered lustily’; and that his policy would be ‘trust, peace, and to put aside the bayonet’.

Rutherford Birchard Hayes was born on 4 October 1822, in Delaware, Ohio, the son of a storekeeper who died 10 weeks before his son’s birth. His mother, Sophia Birchard, cared for him and one sister without remarrying. After briefly reading law in Columbus, Ohio, Hayes moved to Harvard Law School in 1843. He was admitted to the Ohio bar in 1845 and soon after opened his own law office. By 1851, though, he had moved to Cincinnati, and opened another law firm with a partner; and the following year he married Lucy Webb, whose Methodist, teetotal, and abolitionist beliefs would affect his own. They had three children.

In 1858, after increasingly representing slaves fleeing over the border from Kentucky, still a slave state then, Hayes found his political reputation growing. He was appointed city solicitor for Cincinnati, a post he held until 1861, when he left politics to fight in the Civil War for the Union Army. He was wounded several times, earning a reputation for bravery, and was promoted to major general. After the war, he served in the US Congress from 1865 to 1867 as a Republican, and then was elected Governor of Ohio for two consecutive terms, from 1868 to 1872. Thereafter, he returned to law for a few years before being returned again as state governor in 1876.

However, Hayes’s third term as governor was short lived since that same year he ran for president. Although he lost the popular vote to Democrat Samuel Tilden, he won the presidency after a Congressional commission awarded him 20 disputed electoral votes. The so-called Compromise of 1877 resulted in the Democrats acquiescing to Hayes’s election and Hayes accepting the end of military occupation of the South. This was one of the most contentious elections in US history.

Hayes’s presidency was characterised by meritocratic government, equal treatment without regard to race, and improvement through education. He is remembered for ordering federal troops out of Southern capitals as reconstruction came to an end, and for using troops to quell the Great Railroad Strike of 1877. He also began a process of civil service reform. He remained president until 4 March 1881, and, as he had pledged, did not seek re-election. During a period of active retirement, he continued to work towards extending children’s education and prison reform. He died in 1893. Further biographical information is available online from, among other sites, the Hayes Presidential Center, the Miller Center and Wikipedia.

Hayes kept a diary throughout his life from the age of 12 (and, apparently, was one of only three presidents to do so while in office - as far as is known). The diaries were edited by Charles Richard Williams and published in five volumes by Ohio State Archæological and Historical Society in 1922 as The Diary and Letters of Rutherford B. Hayes, Nineteenth President of the United States. These volumes are all out of copyright and available at Internet Archive. Also, the Rutherford B. Hayes Presidential Center has made available the 3,000 pages of text in a form that can be searched by keyword or browsed page by page. 

The following extracts are taken from the Center’s website, and most of them are highlighted as ‘memorable quotes’; however, the last extract - dating to the first days of his Presidency - is taken from Volume III.

19 June 1841
‘I will put down a few of my present hopes and designs for the sake of keeping them safe. I do not intend to leave here until about a year after I graduate, when I expect to commence the study of law. Before then I wish to become a master of logic and rhetoric and to obtain a good knowledge of history. To accomplish these objects I am willing to study hard, in which case I believe I can make, at least, a tolerable debater. It is another intention of mine, that after I have commenced in life, whatever may be my ability or station, to preserve a reputation for honesty and benevolence; and if ever I am a public man I will never do anything inconsistent with the character of a true friend and good citizen. To become such a man I shall necessarily have to live in accordance with the precepts of the Bible, which I firmly believe, although I have never made them strictly the “rule of my conduct.” Thus ends this long dry chapter on self.’

27 February 1853
‘Almost two months married. The great step of life which makes or mars the whole after journey, has been happily taken. The dear friend who is to share with me the joys and ills of our earthly being grows steadily nearer and dearer to me. A better wife I never hoped to have. Our little differences in points of taste or preference are readily adjusted, and judging by the past I do not see how our tender and affectionate relations can be disturbed by any jar. She bears with my “innocent peculiarities” so kindly, so lovingly; is so studious in providing for my little wants; is - is, in short, so true a wife that I cannot think it possible that any shadow of disappointment will ever cloud the prospect,save only such calamities as are the common allotment of Providence to all. Let me strive to be as true to her as she is to me.’

6 November 1853
‘On Friday, the 4th, at 2 P. M., Lucy gave birth to our first child - a son. I hoped, and had a presentiment almost, that the little one would be a boy. How I love Lucy, the mother of my boy! Sweetheart and wife, she had been before, loved tenderly and strongly as such, but the new feeling is more “home-felt,” quiet, substantial, and satisfying. For the “lad” my feeling has yet to grow a great deal. I prize him and rejoiced to have him, and when I take him in my arms begin to feel a father’s love and interest, hope and pride, enough to know what the feeling will be if not what it is. I think what is to be his future, his life. How strange a mystery all this is! This to me is the beginning of a new life. A happy one, I believe.’

15 May 1861
‘Judge Matthews and I have agreed to go into the service for the war, if possible into the same regiment. I spoke my feelings to him, which he said were his also, viz., that this was a just and necessary war and that it demanded the whole power of the country; that I would prefer to go into it if I knew I was to die or be killed in the course of it, than to live through and after it without taking any part in it.’

14 March 1877
‘We left Columbus soon afternoon, Thursday, March 1, for Washington on a special car; having, in fact, two cars of Colonel Tom Scott, attached to the regular passenger train. In our party were William Henry Smith, ex-Governor Noyes, General Young, General Grosvenor, [and] Colonel H. C. Corbin.

The evening before, we had a reception at the State House given by the people of Columbus. A large crowd followed us to the depot. We were escorted by the college cadets. I made a short speech which was well received. Crowds met us at Newark, Dennison, Steubenville, and other points. The enthusiasm was greater than I have seen in Ohio before. At Marysville(?), near Harrisburg, we were wakened to hear the news that the two houses had counted the last State and that I was declared elected!

We reached Washington about 9:30 A. M. General and Senator Sherman met us at the depot, and we were driven directly to Senator Sherman’s house. After breakfast I called with Senator Sherman on President Grant.

It was arranged that I should in the evening, before the state dinner at the White House, be sworn by the Chief Justice to prevent an interregnum between Sunday noon (the 4th) and the inauguration, Monday. This was the advice of Secretary Fish and the President. I did not altogether approve but acquiesced.

I then drove with Senator Sherman to the Capitol. The colored hack-drivers and others cheered lustily.  I went into the Vice-President’s room and many Senators and Representatives were introduced to me. Several Northern men, S. S. Cox and other Democrats, and still more Southern men.

Saturday and Sunday [I] saw Senators and Representatives and others, and [received] many suggestions on the Cabinet. Blaine urged Fry. Hamlin much vexed and grieved when I told him I couldn’t appoint Fry. Blaine seemed to claim it, as a condition of good relations with me. Cameron and Logan [were] greatly urged all day. I told Cameron I could not appoint him. Too many of the old Cabinet had good claims to remain, to recognize one without appointing more than would be advisable. I accordingly nominated: Wm. M. Evarts, New York, State; John Sherman, Ohio, Treasury; Carl Schurz, Missouri, Interior; General Charles Devens, Massachusetts, Attorney-General; D. M. Key, Tennessee, Postmaster-General; George W. McCrary, Iowa, War; R. W. Thompson, Indiana, Navy.

The chief disappointment among the influential men of the party was with Conkling, Blaine, Cameron, Logan, and their followers. They were very bitter. The opposition was chiefly to Evarts, Key, and especially Schurz. Speeches were made, and an attempt to combine with the Democrats to defeat the confirmation of the nominations only failed to be formidable by [reason of] the resolute support of the Southern Senators like Gordon, Lamar, and Hill. After a few days the public opinion of the country was shown by the press to be strongly with me. All of the nominations were confirmed by almost a unanimous vote.

The expressions of satisfaction from all parts of the country are most gratifying. The press and the private correspondence of Rogers [private secretary] and myself are full of it.

My policy is trust, peace, and to put aside the bayonet. I do not think the wise policy is to decide contested elections in the States by the use of the national army.’

This article is a slightly revised version of one first published on 4 October 2012.

As if I were flying

’For the first time I have broken out from the cage which encloses me, and opened a shutter to the outside world. I have touched things which I hoped were there but I have never dared to show. I am so happy for this picture. It is as if I were flying. I feel no chains. I can fly higher and higher because the bars of my cage are broken.’ This is Ingrid Bergman, the great Swedish actress, who died 40 years ago today. She lived a colourful and international life, starring in many now classic and iconic films. Although there are no published editions of any diaries (at least not in English), several of the many biographies written about her do contain a few brief extracts, such as the undated one above.

Bergman was born in Stockholm, Sweden, in 1915. Her German mother died when Ingrid was just 3, and her father raised her, taking many photographs of his daughter, and encouraging her to pose. He died when she was 12, and she was left to the care first of an unmarried aunt who died within months and then the family of another relation. She earned a scholarship to the state-sponsored Royal Dramatic Theatre School (as Greta Garbo had done some years earlier) but left long before her three-year study period had concluded to take up professional work for a Swedish film studio. She played small roles in several films but was soon starring in others, not least Intermezzo, created for her by director Gustaf Molander. In 1937, when still only 21, she married a dentist, Petter Lindström. They had one daughter, but eventually divorced.

In 1939, Bergman starred in a Hollywood version of Intermezzo which brought her international fame, as well as in such now-iconic movies as Casablanca, For Whom the Bell Tolls, and Gaslight (for which she won an Academy Award for best actress). In the mid-40s, she starred in two films directed by Alfred Hitchcock - Spellbound and Notorious. During the filming of Stromboli, released in 1950, Bergman began a love affair with the Italian director Roberto Rossellini. They had a child out of wedlock (she had not yet managed to finalise her divorce from Molander and marry Rossellini), which caused a scandal in Hollywood and prompted her to stay in Europe. 

However, by 1956, Bergman was back in the US, making Anastasia for which she won a second Academy Award for best actress. She won one further Academy Award in 1974 for best supporting actress in Murder on the Orient Express. In 1978, she starred in Autumn Sonata, directed by her countryman and namesake, Ingmar Bergman (who, confusingly, was married to another Ingrid, his fifth wife) - see A dishcloth round my soul. Having suffered from cancer for some eight years, Bergman died on 29 August 1982, her 67th birthday.

Wikipedia has these assessments of her life: ‘Biographer Donald Spoto said she was “arguably the most international star in the history of entertainment”. [. . .] Hollywood saw her as a unique actress who was completely natural in style, and without need for make-up. Film critic James Agee wrote that she “not only bears a startling resemblance to an imaginable human being; she really knows how to act, in a blend of poetic grace with quiet realism”. Film historian David Thomson, said she “always strove to be a ‘true’ woman and many filmgoers identified with her.” [. . .] According to her daughter, Isabella Rossellini, her mother had a deep sense of freedom and independence. . . “She was able to integrate so many cultures . . . she is not even American but she is totally part of American culture like she is totally part of the Swedish, Italian, French, European film making.” ’ Further information is also available at Encyclopaedia Britannica, Biography.com, or IMDB.

There are many published biographies of Bergman, and some of them make tantalising but brief mention of diaries she must have kept at different times in her life. Charlotte Chandler, for example, in Ingrid Bergman, A Personal Biography (Simon & Schuster, 2007) refers to a childhood diary in these two passages:

‘Ingrid was fourteen when Uncle Gunnar gave her a handsome leather-bound diary with a metal lock, which had her name embossed on it so there could be no mistake as to whom it belonged. For a number of years it remained her closest confidant. She called it “Dear Book.” “Uncle Gunnar told me if I wrote down my thoughts, I would have a record of them which would, years later, surprise me. I learned that even the next day, I might be surprised by what was important to me the night before. I had put down thoughts I didn’t even know I was thinking. The act of having written them down, then of seeing them written down, usually placed it in my memory, forever. I could tell my diary all of my hopes and dreams and feelings. I never had to tell my dreams to anyone because I could tell my diary. I never felt the need to lock it. No one in my family would ever have looked in it.” ’

‘Over the years,’ Chandler goes on to write, ‘Ingrid and her diary had grown apart. She gradually confided less of her innermost feelings than she had done in Stockholm and in her first years in Hollywood. As she had more exciting events to tell her diary, she told it less. She no longer took time at night to pour her heart into “Dear Book.” She found herself not taking time and not making time. One day, Ingrid looked at her diary and was shocked to find she had been writing words, not feelings, abbreviated thoughts, and she had been “guarded, careful.” “I was no longer open. My diary must have been bored by me. Had I changed? Somehow, I no longer felt the same bond with my diary. It wasn’t that I told lies to my diary. That would have been really terrible. It was more that I was evasive. What you don’t tell is a lie, too.” ’

Spoto - author of Notorious : the life of Ingrid Bergman (HarperCollins, 1997) - gives a couple of verbatim quotes from her youthful diary.

‘For the very first time people asked for my autograph. [The crew] all praise me, and I must keep my head with all these compliments. I only wish I had been really good in every scene. In the rehearsals I think it is good, but then there is a take and somehow it is not the same. One thing that made me happy was that Sten Undgren, the actor who plays my clergyman lover, believes our love scenes are so passionate that possibly they will not get past the censor.’

1935 (her first premiere at the Skandia Theater was forthcoming)
‘I am insecure and secure at the same time, I am unsure about all the publicity there has been. I hope the public will think I can live up to it. What would Mama and Papa have said if they could see me here in my loneliness? I long to be able to creep into someone’s arms to find protection and comfort and love.’

In Ingrid Bergman - The Life, Career and Public Image (McFarland & Co, 2012), David Smit says: ‘In her diary, Bergman is practically ecstatic about her experience on the film: “You can’t get everything on a platter, you have to pay for everything. I paid with Rage in Heaven for Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. I would have paid anything for this picture.” She goes on to claim that she has never been happier, that she will never get a better part, a better director, a better leading man, and a better cameraman. With these people she can give herself over entirely to her work.’ And he quotes an entry from her diary (also available in other biographies:

January-March 1941
‘For the first time I have broken out from the cage which encloses me, and opened a shutter to the outside world. I have touched things which I hoped were there but I have never dared to show. I am so happy for this picture. It is as if I were flying. I feel no chains. I can fly higher and higher because the bars of my cage are broken.’

Finally, there is Bergman’s own book: Ingrid Bergman: My Story written with Alan Burgess (Thorndike Press, 1980). Bergman’s diary is mentioned half a dozen times, mostly in regard to her time on the film Stromboli, but the only actual quotes provided are no more than single words. 

McGovern’s landing skills

‘On our takeoff today we had a tire blow out - the right main gear tire, but it went out after we cleared the field or rather just as we left the field. We went on to the target knowing that we had a rough landing and perhaps a crack up waiting for us on our return.’ This is from a diary kept by US Presidential Nominee George McGovern during his Air Corps days in the Second World War. In the same diary entry, McGovern, who was born 100 years ago today, goes on to explain how he managed to land ‘O.K. without damaging the plane in the least’.

McGovern was born on 19 July 1922 in Avon, South Dakota, to the local pastor and his wife. He was schooled locally, developing an enthusiasm for debating, and then enrolled at Dakota Wesleyan University in Mitchell. In mid-1942, he enlisted in the US Army Air Corps, flying many combat missions in Europe (earning himself the Distinguished Flying Cross). He married Eleanor Stegeberg, and they would have five children together. He was discharged from the Air Corps in mid-1945; he then returned to Dakota Wesleyan University, graduating in 1946. He earned a Ph.D. in history at Northwestern University, Evanston, and later taught at his alma mater.

McGovern was active in Democratic politics from about 1948, and by 1957 had been elected to the U.S. House of Representatives. After losing an election for a Senate seat in South Dakota in 1960, he served for two years as the director of the Food for Peace Program under President Kennedy. He won election to the Senate in 1962 and was reelected in 1968. By then he had emerged as one of the leading opponents to US involvement in Indochina.

McGovern helped enact party reforms that gave increased representation to minority groups, and supported by these groups he won the Presidential Nomination. However, he failed to hold onto many traditional party supporters, and the incumbent Richard Nixon was able to defeat him by a sizeable margin in the 1972 presidential election. McGovern was reelected to the Senate in 1974, though lost it in 1980. After a return to lecturing, he declared himself a candidate for the 1984 Democratic Presidential Nomination, but dropped out after the Massachusetts primary. 

In April 1998, President Bill Clinton nominated McGovern for a three-year stint as US ambassador to the UN Agencies for Food and Agriculture, serving in Rome. In 2000, he set up - with fellow former senator Robert Dole - the Congress-funded International Food for Education and Nutrition Program. In 2001, McGovern was appointed as the first UN global ambassador on world hunger by the World Food Programme. He continued to campaign on political issues, and to write political/history books, not least his last, a biography of Abraham Lincoln. He died in 2012. Further information is really available from Wikipedia, Encyclopaedia Britannica or the US Congress website.

There is no evidence that McGovern was a diarist, but for a brief period, during the war, he kept a lively journal. This was only published posthumously as My Life in Service: The World War II Diary of George McGovern (Franklin Square Press, 2016). The publisher says: ‘[The book] features a facsimile of the diary George McGovern kept from his first days of basic training until the end of the war. Hastily jotted down in his exacting hand whenever he had the impulse to put his thoughts on paper, the pages convey the immediacy of McGovern’s wartime experiences. Each lined sheet is decorated with illustrations, alongside aphorisms on battle and democracy from some of history’s greatest minds. This document powerfully evokes an era, while it predicts the man George McGovern would become.’

Publishers Weekly says: ‘The bravery McGovern demonstrated in wartime, displayed in this unique diary, was mirrored in his service of over two decades in the House of Representatives and Senate, in his 1972 campaign for President, and in his drive to speak out against the Vietnam War, making him a valiant spokesman for a nation in troubled times.’

And a review in the Middle West Review provides some details: ‘The South Dakotan’s diary entries were expansive early on, describing train travel, housing facilities, fellow recruits, rifle training, bayonet practice, gas mask drills, guard duty, weather, and food. As his training continued in several different places in 1943 and 1944, the entries became shorter and less descriptive. Once in combat, McGovern recorded almost every flight in plain, straightforward language, omitting heroics and seldom referring to feelings and emotions or offering comments on the ultimate meaning of it all. Readers get a good sense of the seriousness, sense of purpose, and matter-of-fact dedication that American aviators like him brought to the task.’

There seem to be no previews of the book online, nor can I find any extracts from the diary - other than this one in The Smithsonian.

17 December 1944
‘Another oil refinery today - the one at Oswiecim and Odertal in the Blechhammer flak area. This makes nine missions for me. We really got this one the hard way. On our takeoff today we had a tire blow out - the right main gear tire, but it went out after we cleared the field or rather just as we left the field. We went on to the target knowing that we had a rough landing and perhaps a crack up waiting for us on our return. While going to the target we lost our manifold pressure on no. 2 engine but pulled enough power on the other three to go into the target and get back. The air force lost ten ships to fighters and several to flak but we came through without a scratch. When we got back to base I had everybody but the copilot, the engineer, and myself go back to the waist and brace themselves for the landing. We made sure that all the loose objects were tied down securely. As soon as we touched the runway I chopped the throttle on the side of the good wheel and advanced the throttle on the side of the blown tire at the same time holding down the left brake. We made the landing O.K. without damaging the plane in the least. Needless to say old terra firma felt plenty good. My copilot today was Lt. Brown and the bombardier was Lt. McGrahan. These two boys and Sam recommended me for the D.F.C. because of the landing but I don’t feel as though I deserve a medal as yet.’

First Lady of Texas

‘Decided to get off in Matlock, 6:40 P.M. A mountainous and beautiful place - and a nice hotel - “New Bath” - with a pleasant garden. So many of the lower classes seem to be traveling hereabouts - just tiny little journeys. There is a grand piano here in Matlock. I am aching to touch it!’ This is from the diaries of Miss Ima Hogg, a wealthy Texan, who travelled to Europe several times in her youth. She would go on to become one of the country’s most famous philanthropists - and earn the moniker First Lady of Texas. Her diaries are due to be published for the first time in September 2022.

Hogg was born into a wealthy, political family in Mineola, Texas, on 10 July 1882, though she spent much of her early life in Austin. When she was eight years old, her father was elected governor. After her mother died of tuberculosis in 1895, she attended the Coronal Institute in San Marcos, and in 1899 she began studying at the University of Texas. An accomplished piano player from an early age, she moved to Europe in 1907, not long after her father had died, to further study music in Berlin and Vienna, until 1909. Returning to the United States, she was severely depressed for some years, an experience that inspired her to found - with money from oil strikes on Hogg land - the Houston Child Guidance Center and the Hogg Foundation for Mental Health (at the University of Texas).

In 1943 Hogg, a lifelong Democrat, was appointed to the Houston school board, where she worked to establish symphony concerts for schoolchildren, to get equal pay for teachers regardless of sex or race, and to set up a painting-to-music programmes in public schools. In 1946 she again became president of the Houston Symphony Society, a post she held until 1956, and in 1948 she became the first woman president of the Philosophical Society of Texas. 

Hogg was also philanthropic when it came to art: since the 1920s she had been studying and collecting early American art and antiques, and in 1966 she presented her collection (as well as Bayou Bend, the River Oaks mansion she and her brothers had built in 1927) to the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston. In the 1950s, she restored the Hogg family home at Varner Plantation near West Columbia, and in 1958 she presented it to the state of Texas; and, in the 1960s, she restored the Winedale Inn, a nineteenth-century stagecoach stop at Round Top, Texas, which she gave to the University of Texas. She died, aged 93, in 1975. Further information is available from Wikipedia (which says she was known as the First Lady of Texas), Texas State Historical Association, and East Texas History.

Later this year, Texas A&M University Press is publishing Grand Tours and the Great War: Ima Hogg’s Diaries, 1907-1918, as edited by Virginia Bernhard. Extracts from five of Ima Hogg’s youthful diaries (1907, 1908, 1910, 1914, and 1918) are included in the book which, the publisher says, records ‘her first tour of Europe, a year studying piano in Berlin, a tour of Europe with her brother Mike, a summer in London on the eve of the Great War, and her travels in New York as the war drew to a close.’ Although most of Hogg’s diaries have remained unpublished until now, a few diary extracts, were published in 2016, in The Southwestern Historical Quarterly (Vol. 119, No. 3, January, 2016) - Ima Hogg in Europe, 1914: A Texan Experiences the Beginning of the Great War which can be found online at Jstor (log-in required).

A few brief extracts from the diaries can also be found online at The Ima Hogg Blog, curated by Bernhard, which is the source for the following. 

10 July 1907
‘Windsor Castle. Drove over - coached to Windsor - Left our trunks - two apiece! - at the hotel, taking only suitcases for our tour up through Scotland. Just as we got in. . . down came torrents of rain. But we went on just the same though it was terribly cold, too. Started at 10:30 got to Windsor 2:30. St. George’s Chapel with Princess Charlotte monument & Henry VIII burial place. White Tower where the order of the garter organized, building in which Merry Wives of Windsor was first played. Then the beautiful view towards Eton from the steps - where I turned my ankle & scrambled up by Mr. Scott’s coat sleeves. Dreadfully caught more cold. Holbein’s portrait (one of them) Henry VIII hangs in the castle. . . Started for Oxford at 5:55 P.M. There at 9:00.

And Mr. Scott was no doubt happy to help.’

19 August 1907
‘Monday. Munich. Hotel Linfelder.

Out looking - got lost - having left my dear old Baedecker somewhere - reached hotel 3:30 P.M. tired hot & hungry. . .’

21 August 1907, Munich
‘Four o’clock Tristan & Isolde! Started from hotel in a carriage at 3:30 in plenty of time. . .

[. . .]

Had dinner between 2nd and 3rd Acts....

Came home decided on leaving out Vienna & staying for Cycle - if my ticket could be redeemed.’

3 September 1907, Innsbruck
‘Here in the rain. Rode the train 2nd class with the cook in my compartment of some Frau Grafin who was herself 1st class. My companion and I carried on an animated dialogue in German - most enlightening!

Great to find the crowd here - only the men arrived this morning.’

11 August 1910
‘Stratford. It was warm and the town has not grown in my favor since 1907.

We visited Shakespeare’s birthplace and then his burial in the church. At the Golden Lion (starred in 1906 Baedeker) 

We had an insufficient and poor lunch @ 2/6 and in disgust with everything returned to Warwick on the 2:08 train. That afternoon we read and wrote. I reviewed “Kenilworth.” After our delicious dinner, we walked out to the bridge near the castle. It was some sort of a holiday - a brass band was playing discords, and a happy, well-behaved crowd were running and pushing the poor performers along.’

12 August 1910
‘Off Friday morning. Went by trolley then to Milverton.

Arrived in Kenilworth 10:40.

Drove a mile and a half to the castle /6 d. These romantic and very beautiful ruins we saw to the best advantage, for after a walk about them, we drove on the way to the station, with the tilting ground, had a fine view of the whole castle, where the lake used to be. Merwyn Tower was the scene of Amy’s life in the castle.

In Warwick, by the way, he & the Earl of Leicester are buried.

Left Kenilworth 12:25 noon.

After innumerable changes arrived in Ambergate at 4:30 P.M. to find that we should have to go farther in order to coach to Haddon Hall, & Chatsworth. We spent the time there until 6:18 P.M. - walked, drank tea and admired this promising beginning of the Peak - Bought tickets to Rowsley, but decided to get off in Matlock, 6:40 P.M. A mountainous and beautiful place - and a nice hotel - “New Bath” - with a pleasant garden. So many of the lower classes seem to be traveling hereabouts - just tiny little journeys. There is a grand piano here in Matlock. I am aching to touch it!’