Founding Father Franklin

Today marks the 320th anniversary of the birth of Benjamin Franklin. From humble origins, he not only became a very wealthy businessmen, but also a scientist of distinction, postmaster to American colonies, an international statesman and one of the founding fathers of the United States - in short a giant of 18th century American history. He wrote much and often through his life, but not often in diary form - a brief journal of a journey by ship when he was returning from England for the first time as a young man, and no more than fragments later in his life.

Franklin was born in Boston, Massachusetts, on 17 January 1706, one of 10 children born to Josiah Franklin with his second wife, Abiah Folger. He attended Boston Latin School briefly, but went to work for his father very young, at age 12 being apprenticed to his brother James, a printer. In 1721, James founded The New-England Courant, an independent newspaper. When told he couldn’t write letters for publication in the paper, Franklin adopted the pseudonym of Mrs. Silence Dogood, a middle-aged widow, whose letters were published. When his brother was jailed for a few weeks, he took over the newspaper and had Mrs. Dogood (quoting Cato’s Letters) proclaim: ‘Without freedom of thought there can be no such thing as wisdom and no such thing as public liberty without freedom of speech.’

Aged still only 17, he absconded from his apprenticeship, running away to Philadelphia where he worked in printing shops. He caught the attention of the Pennsylvania Governor Sir William Keith who offered to help him set up a new newspaper if he went to London to acquire the necessary printing equipment. But, having made the journey, he soon found Keith had failed to deliver any letters of credit or introductions. He found employment with a printer, and enjoyed much of what London had to offer. Eventually, with the promise of a clerkship from the merchant Thomas Denham, he returned to Philadelphia in 1726. Aged 21, he launched Junto, a discussion group whose members sought ways to help improve their community - the idea was, in part, based on his experience of English coffee houses. One of the group’s early ventures was to set up a subscription library, which, in time, became the Library Company of Philadelphia.

On Denham’s death, Franklin formed a partnership with a friend, in 1728, setting up a new printing house. Within a couple of years, though, he had borrowed money to buy his partner out, and to become sole proprietor. One of the company’s first successes was to win an order to print all of Pennsylvania’s paper currency, a business it would soon secure in other colonies too. The company invested in further profitable ventures, including the Pennsylvania Gazette, published by Franklin from 1729 and generally acknowledged as among the best of the colonial newspapers, and Poor Richard’s Almanack, printed annually from 1732 to 1757. Franklin’s business ventures spread, as he developed franchises and partnerships with other printers in the Carolinas, New York and the British West Indies.

In 1730, Franklin entered into a common-law marriage with Deborah Read. He had known her since she was 15 and he 17, and, before leaving for London, had promised to marry her. However, while in London, she married a man who had then fled the country, leaving her unable to remarry. Franklin brought with him to the union an illegitimate son, and he had a further two children with Deborah, though one of them died in childhood. By the late 1740s, Franklin was a very wealthy man, and decided to retire from any direct involvement in business and to become a Gentleman, occupying himself with various cultural pursuits, not least science experiments. He is credited with a number of innovations, such as the Franklin stove and the lightning rod, as well as demonstrating that lightning and electricity are identical.

In 1753, Franklin moved directly into public service as deputy postmaster for the Colonies, a position he held for over 20 years. However, from 1757 until 1774, he lived in London (apart from a two year return to Philadelphia in 1762-1764) where he acted as the colonial representative for Pennsylvania in a dispute over lands held by the Penn family. Deborah having remained in America, he and William resided with a widow, Margaret Stevenson, near Charing Cross, and mixed in elevated social circles. Firmly loyal to the Crown at this stage (he managed to get his son William appointed royal governor of New Jersey), he was at pains to bridge the growing divide between Britain and her colonies, and is said to have written over 100 newspaper articles between 1765 and 1775 trying to explain each side to the other.

On his return to America, the War of Independence had already broken out. In 1776, he helped to draft, and was then a signatory to, the Declaration of Independence. William, however, remained loyal to Britain, causing a rift that lasted for the rest of Franklin’s life. Later that year, Franklin and two others were appointed to represent America in France. He negotiated the Franco-American Alliance which provided for military cooperation between the two countries against Britain, and he ensured significant French subsidies to America. In 1783, as American ambassador to France, Franklin signed the Treaty of Paris, ending the American War of Independence. Having been very loved, and very happy in France, he returned, once again, to America in 1785, but received only a lukewarm welcome. He died in 1790.

Encyclopædia Britannica gives this assessment of the man: ‘Franklin was not only the most famous American in the 18th century but also one of the most famous figures in the Western world of the 18th century; indeed, he is one of the most celebrated and influential Americans who has ever lived. Although one is apt to think of Franklin exclusively as an inventor, as an early version of Thomas Edison, which he was, his 18th-century fame came not simply from his many inventions but, more important, from his fundamental contributions to the science of electricity. If there had been a Nobel Prize for Physics in the 18th century, Franklin would have been a contender. Enhancing his fame was the fact that he was an American, a simple man from an obscure background who emerged from the wilds of America to dazzle the entire intellectual world. Most Europeans in the 18th century thought of America as a primitive, undeveloped place full of forests and savages and scarcely capable of producing enlightened thinkers. Yet Franklin’s electrical discoveries in the mid-18th century had surpassed the achievements of the most sophisticated scientists of Europe. Franklin became a living example of the natural untutored genius of the New World that was free from the encumbrances of a decadent and tired Old World - an image that he later parlayed into French support for the American Revolution.’ Further biographical information is readily available at Wikipedia, the BBC, US History, PBS, or Franklin’s own autobiography.

Franklin wrote many texts through his life, not least his autobiography which has been published and republished often. One version, readily available at Internet Archive, is The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin - the Unmutilitated and Correct Version Compiled and Edited with Notes by John Bigelow published by G. P. Putnam’s & Sons in 1916. This edition includes one of the rather few Franklin diaries - the Benjamin Franklin Journal of a voyage from England to Philadelphia 1726. The same text can be sourced elsewhere online, at American History, and the Online Library of Liberty (where it can be found in the first of 12 volumes of The Works of Benjamin Franklin).

Here are several extracts from that diary.

22 July 1726
‘Yesterday in the afternoon we left London, and came to an anchor off Gravesend about eleven at night. I lay ashore all night, and this morning took a walk up to the Windmill Hill, from whence I had an agreeable prospect of the country for above twenty miles round, and two or three reaches of the river, with ships and boats sailing both up and down, and Tilbury Fort on the other side, which commands the river and passage to London. This Gravesend is a cursed biting place; the chief dependence of the people being the advantage they make of imposing upon strangers. If you buy anything of them, and give half what they ask, you pay twice as much as the thing is worth. Thank God, we shall leave it tomorrow.’

23 July 1726
‘This day we weighed anchor and fell down with the tide, there being little or no wind. In the afternoon we had a fresh gale, that brought us down to Margate, where we shall lie at anchor this night. Most of the passengers are very sick. Saw several porpoises, &c.’

24 July 1726
‘This morning we weighed anchor, and coming to the Downs, we set our pilot ashore at Deal, and passed through. And now, whilst I write this, sitting upon the quarterdeck, I have methinks one of the pleasantest scenes in the world before me. Tis a fine, clear day, and we are going away before the wind with an easy, pleasant gale. We have near fifteen sail of ships in sight, and I may say in company. On the left hand appears the coast of France at a distance, and on the right is the town and castle of Dover, with the green hills and chalky cliffs of England, to which we must now bid farewell. Albion, farewell!’

27 July 1726
‘This morning, the wind blowing very hard at West, we stood in for the land, in order to make some harbour. About noon we took on board a pilot out of a fishing shallop, who brought the ship into Spithead off Portsmouth. The captain, Mr. Denham, and myself went on shore, and, during the little time we stayed, I made some observations on the place.

Portsmouth has a fine harbour. The entrance is so narrow that you may throw a stone from Fort to Fort; yet it is near ten fathom deep, and bold close to; but within there is room enough for five hundred, or, for aught l know, a thousand sail of ships. The town is strongly fortified, being encompassed with a high wall and a deep and broad ditch, and two gates, that are entered over drawbridges; besides several forts, batteries of large cannon, and other outworks, the names of which I know not, nor had I time to take so strict a view as to be able to describe them. In war time, the town has a garrison of 10,000 men; but at present ’tis only manned by about 100 Invalids. Notwithstanding the English have so many fleets of men-of-war at sea at this time, I counted in this harbour above thirty sail of 2nd, 3rd, and 4th Rates, that lay by unrigged, but easily fitted out upon occasion, all their masts and rigging lying marked and numbered in storehouses at hand. The King’s yards and docks employ abundance of men, who, even in peace time, are constantly building and refitting men-of-war for the King’s Service.

Gosport lies opposite to Portsmouth, and is near as big, if not bigger; but, except the fort at the mouth of the harbour, and a small outwork before the main street of the town, it is only defended by a mud wall, which surrounds it, and a trench or dry ditch of about ten feet depth and breadth. Portsmouth is a place of very little trade in peace time; it depending chiefly on fitting out men-of-war. Spithead is the place where the Fleet commonly anchor, and is a very good riding-place. The people of Portsmouth tell strange stories of the severity of one Gibson, who was governor of this place in the Queen’s time, to his soldiers, and show you a miserable dungeon by the town gate, which they call Johnny Gibson’s Hole, where, for trifling misdemeanors, he used to confine his soldiers till they were almost starved to death. It is a common maxim, that, without severe discipline, ’tis impossible to govern the licentious rabble of soldiery. I own, indeed, that if a commander finds he has not those qualities in him that will make him beloved by his people, he ought, by all means, to make use of such methods as will make them fear him, since one or the other (or both) is absolutely necessary; but Alexander and Caesar, those renowned generals, received more faithful service, and performed greater actions, by means of the love their soldiers bore them, than they could possibly have done, if, instead of being beloved and respected, they had been hated and feared by those they commanded.’

4 October 1726
‘Last night we struck a dolphin and this morning we found a flying-fish dead under the windlass. He is about the bigness of a small mackerel, a sharp head, a small mouth, and a tail forked somewhat like a dolphin, but the lowest branch much larger and longer than the other, and tinged with yellow. His back and sided of a darkish blue, his belly white, and his skin very thick. His wings are of a finny substance, about a span long, reaching, when close to his body from an inch below his gills to an inch above his tail. When they fly it is straight forward, (for they cannot readily turn,) a yard or two above the water; and perhaps fifty yards in the furthest before they dip into the water again, for they cannot support themselves in the air any longer than while their wings continue wet. These flying-fish are the common prey of the dolphin, who is their mortal enemy. When he pursues them, they rise and fly; and he keeps close under them till they drop, and then snaps them up immediately. They generally fly in flocks, four or five, or perhaps a dozen together and a dolphin is seldom caught without one or more in his belly. We put this flying-fish upon the hook, in hopes of catching one, but in a few minutes they got it off without hooking themselves; and they will not meddle with any other bait.’

5 October 1726
‘This morning we saw a heron, who had lodged aboard last night. It is a long-legged, long-necked bird, having, as they say, but one gut. They live upon fish, and will swallow a living eel thrice, sometimes, before it will remain in their body. The wind is west again. The ship’s crew was brought to a short allowance of water.’

6 October 1726
‘This morning abundance of grass, rock-weed, &c., passed by us; evident tokens that land is not far off. We hooked a dolphin this morning, made us a good breakfast. A sail passed by us about twelve o’clock, and nobody saw her till she was too far astern to be spoken with. It is very near calm; we saw another sail ahead this afternoon; but, night coming on, we could not speak with her, though we very much desired it; she stood to the northward, and it is possible might have informed us how far we are from land. Our artists on board are much at a loss. We hoisted our jack to her, but she took no notice of it.

7 October 1726
‘Last night, about nine o’clock sprung up a fine gale at northeast, which run us in our course at the rate of seven miles an hour all night. We were in hopes of seeing land this morning, but cannot. The water, which we thought was changed, is now as blue as the sky; so that, unless at that time we were running over some unknown shoal, our eyes strangely deceived us. All the reckonings have been out these several days; though the captain says it is his opinion we are yet a hundred leagues from land; for my part I know not what to think of it; we have run all this day at a great rate, and now night is come on we have no soundings. Sure the American continent is not all sunk under water since we left it.’

8 October 1726
‘The fair wind continues still; we ran all night in our course, sounding every four hours, but can find no ground yet, nor is the water changed by all this day’s run. This afternoon we saw an Irish Lord and a bird which flying looked like a yellow duck. These, they say, are not seen far from the coast. Other signs of lands have we none. Abundance of large porpoises ran by us this afternoon, and we were followed by a shoal of small ones, leaping out of the water as they approached. Towards evening we spied a sail ahead, and spoke with her just before dark. She was bound from New York for Jamaica and left Sandy Hook yesterday about noon, from which they reckon themselves forty-five leagues distant. By this we compute that we are not above thirty leagues from our Capes, and hope to see land to-morrow.’

9 October 1726
‘We have had the wind fair all the morning; at twelve o’clock we sounded, perceiving the water visibly changed, and struck ground at twenty-five fathoms, to our universal joy. After dinner one of our mess went up aloft to look out, and presently pronounced the long wished-for sound, LAND! LAND! In less than an hour we could decry it from the deck, appearing like tufts of trees. I could not discern it so soon as the rest; my eyes were dimmed with the suffusion of two small drops of joy. By three o’clock we were run in within two leagues of the land, and spied a small sail standing along shore. We would gladly have spoken with her, for our captain was unacquainted with the Coast, and knew not what land it was that we saw. We made all the sail we could to speak with her. We made a signal of distress; but all would not do, the ill-natured dog would not come near us. Then we stood off again till morning, not caring to venture too near.’

10 October 1726
‘This morning we stood in again for land; and we that had been here before all agreed that it was Cape Henlopen; about noon we were come very near, and to our great joy saw the pilot-boat come off to us, which was exceeding welcome. He brought on board about a peck of apples with him; they seemed the most delicious I ever tasted in my life; the salt provisions we had been used to gave them a relish. We had extraordinary fair wind all the afternoon, and ran above a hundred miles up the Delaware before ten at night. The country appears very pleasant to the eye, being covered with woods, except here and there a house and plantation. We cast anchor when the tide turned, about two miles below Newcastle, and there lay till the morning tide.’

11 October 1726
‘This morning we weighed anchor with a gentle breeze, and passed by Newcastle, whence they hailed us and bade us welcome. It is extreme find weather. The sun enlivens our stiff limbs with his glorious rays of warmth and brightness. The sky looks gay, with here and there a silver cloud. The fresh breezes from the woods refresh us; the immediate prospect of liberty, after so long and irksome confinement, ravishes us. In short, all things conspire to make this the most joyful day I ever knew. As we passed by Chester, some of the company went on shore, impatient once more to tread on terra firma, and designing for Philadelphia by land. Four of us remained on board, not caring for the fatigue of travel when we knew the voyage had much weakened us. About eight at night, the wind failing us, we cast anchor at Redbank six miles from Philadelphia, and thought we must be obliged to lie on board that night; but, some young Philadelphians happening to be out upon their pleasure in a boat, they came on board, and offered to take us up with them; we accepted of their kind proposal, and about ten o’clock landed at Philadelphia, heartily congratulating each upon our having happily completed so tedious and dangerous a voyage. Thank God!’

Much later in his life Franklin also kept a diary very occasionally, and fragments can be found in, for example, Memoirs of the Life and Writings of Benjamin Franklin (Volume 1 published in 1818). Here are a couple of extracts from that volume.

26 June 1784
‘Mr. Waltersdorff called on me, and acquainted me with a duel that had been fought yesterday morning, between a French officer, and a Swedish gentleman of that king’s suite, in which the latter was killed on the spot, and the other dangerously wounded: that the king does not resent it, as he thinks his subject was in the wrong.

He asked me if I had seen the king of Sweden? I had not yet had that honor. He said his behavior here was not liked: that he took little notice of his own ambassador, who, being acquainted with the usages of this court, was capable of advising him, but was not consulted. That he was always talking of himself, and vainly boasting of his revolution, though it was known to have been the work of M. de Vergennies. That they began to be tired of him here, and wished him gone; but he proposed staying till the 12th July. That he had now laid aside his project of invading Norway, as he found Denmark had made preparations to receive him. That he pretended the Danes had designed to invade Sweden, though it was a known fact that the Danes had made no military preparations, even for deface, till six months after his began. I asked if it was clear that he had had an intention to invade Norway? He said that the marching and disposition of his troops, and the fortifications he had erected, indicated it very plainly. He added, that Sweden was at present greatly distressed for provisions; that many people had actually died of hunger! That it was reported the king came here to borrow money, and to offer to sell Gottenburg to France; a thing not very probable.’

15 July 1784
‘The Duke de Chartres’s balloon went off this morning from St. Cloud, himself and three others in the gallery. It was foggy, and they were soon out of sight. But the machine being disordered, so that the trap or valve could not be opened to let out the expanding air, and fearing that the balloon would burst, they cut a hole in it which ripped larger, and they fell rapidly, but received no harm. They had been a vast height, met with a doud of snow, and a tornado which frightened them.’

This article is a slightly revised version of one first published on 17 January 2016.

A swagman’s life

‘Went down to the river to get eels. Didn’t catch any, but passed the time visiting with old Tom who still remembers the 1896 floods.’ So reads a typical entry in the diary of James Cox, an English-born swagman who spent decades tramping the rural roads of New Zealand’s North Island. Writing almost daily from the early 1880s through to the end of 1918, Cox documented a life of grinding poverty, manual labour, and quiet perseverance - producing one of the most detailed and revealing first-person records of colonial working-class life in the Southern Hemisphere. However, it was not until the 1990s that historian Miles Fairburn brought Cox’s diary to wider public attention in his acclaimed book Nearly Out of Heart and Hope: The Puzzle of a Colonial Labourer - published 30 years ago today.

Cox was born in 1846 into a Wiltshire farming family. Working as a clerical assistant in the Swindon office of the Great Western Railway, he became a proficient bookkeeper. In 1880, when his mother sold the farm, he suddenly decided to emigrate to New Zealand, part of a wave of working-class settlers drawn by the promise of work and land in the colonies. 

Over the next four decades, Cox lived a life of physical hardship and financial instability, rarely settling in one place for long - though the flax mills in Manawatu held him for a year or two. Living the life of a swagman, he found sporadic employment in rural labour - roadworks, clearing land, working as a gardener - and frequently relied on charity or relief work. He spent extended periods walking between towns or living in rudimentary shelters on the outskirts of small rural communities such as Carterton and Greytown in the Wairarapa region.

Cox never married and had no known family in New Zealand. He suffered from poor health in later life and lived out his final years in the Carter’s Home for Destitutes in Carterton. He died in July 1925. See National Library of New Zealand and Stuff for more biographical information. Despite his marginalised status, he left behind a remarkable record of his life in the form of a diary - one of the most significant first-person accounts of working-class life in New Zealand in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

Cox kept the near-daily diary from at least the early 1880s through to the end of 1918. Spanning thousands of pages, the diary is a considered an extraordinary document of colonial working-class life, chronicling everything from weather and wages to hunger, loneliness, local politics, and fleeting pleasures such as whisky, reading, or conversation. His entries are concise, factual, and repetitive, but they build cumulatively into a stark, honest portrait of precarity, endurance, and reflection on life at the social margins.

Historian Miles Fairburn brought Cox’s diary to wider public attention in his acclaimed book Nearly Out of Heart and Hope: The Puzzle of a Colonial Labourer (Auckland University Press, 1 August 1995) which can be previewed at Googlebooks. Fairburn used the diary as a primary source for a wider investigation into the structure of Cox’s life, identity, and thought. Rather than focusing solely on events, Fairburn asked why Cox lived the way he did and how his worldview was shaped by his extreme social isolation. The book is both a social history and a deep psychological and cultural reading of a unique document.

In the 2010s, a project led by the Alexander Turnbull Library and New Zealand historians turned Cox’s diary into a digital and public history initiative. Between 2013 and 2018, excerpts were posted daily on Twitter/X as part of Life 100 Years Ago, with each entry appearing exactly 100 years after its original date. This digital project brought Cox’s voice to a wide audience and positioned his diary as a rare chronicle of World War I-era life away from the battlefield. Here are a few brief extracts from the diary.

14 April 1892

‘Some showers in the night but cleared this morning and was bright and warm all day… I left Pahiatua this morning and walked through Eketahuna and to a roadmakers camp about 6 miles further where I am stopping. I had nothing since breakfast to eat but a bit of bread…’

15 April 1892

‘Good Friday. There was some rain in the night . . . I got my breakfast this morning at the camp and then walked through to Masterton . . . I am terribly footsore this evening . . .’

1902

‘I am no better off than when I came out to the colony ... hope in the coming years I may do better.’

25 April 1914

‘No work today, I loafed all day. It is pay‑day by the County Council. I got mine this afternoon £6.1.6.’

7 November 1914

‘Heard of farmers gathering in a meeting about conscription. Nearly all against it. I reckon they’ll not get it here.’

Undated (likely 1914–1916)

‘I walked to Greytown and bought some stores also had two whiskies and bought a bottle 7/- to have a nip where I want.’

Undated (likely 1914–1916)

‘The wind is southerly and chilly. I was inside until dinner time. This afternoon I walked to Carterton, changed books at the Library...’

3 August 1915

‘Went down to the river to get eels. Didn’t catch any, but passed the time visiting with old Tom who still remembers the 1896 floods.’

9 June 1916

‘Saw a lot of aeroplanes up this afternoon passing over Carterton. Hadn’t seen them fly before.’

15 February 1918

‘A strange humming in the night - it wasn’t the wind. Worried me till I realised it was the new telephone wires.’

31 December 1918

‘The end of the year finds me laid up in Carters House and of no more use but certainly much better off than I deserve to be.’

This article is a slightly revised version of one first published on 1 August 2015.

Wall Street palpitating

It is 150 years today since the death of George Templeton Strong, a New York lawyer remembered for his remarkable diary, which provides a near-daily description, a living history, of his city during the mid-19th century. He was as keen on writing about fire emergencies, financial panic (‘Wall Street has been palpitating uneasily all day’), and riots in the streets as he was about the nuisance of organ-grinders outside his house. Some say Strong’s is the greatest American diary in the nineteenth century.

Strong was born in his father’s house in Manhattan in 1820, and was educated at Columbia College. He trained as a lawyer, and joined his father’s firm, practicing as a real estate attorney. He married Ellen Ruggles in 1848, both of them keen amateur musicians, and moved into a house near Gramercy Park. They had one son (also George, but not born until 1856), who became a composer and painter and spent most of his adult life in Europe.

In the 1860s, and through the Civil War, Strong took on various public service roles, serving on the executive committee of the Sanitary Commission (a precursor of the American Red Cross), helping found the Union League Club of New York, and acting as a trustee of Columbia College. He was also a vestryman at Trinity Episcopal Church, and, from 1870 to 1874, president of the New York Philharmonic. He died relatively young, on 21 July 1875. A little further biographical information is available at Greenwich Village History, Mr Lincoln and New York, or Wikipedia.

Strong is mostly remembered for the daily diary he kept from the age of fifteen and for the next 40 years - amounting to some four million words. The manuscript diaries are held by the New-York Historical Society, and have been edited twice for publication. The first time was by Allan Nevins and Milton Halsey Thomas (four volumes, Macmillan, 1952) - all of which can be downloaded as pdfs from this website. This version was abridged into one volume in 1988 for publication by University of Washington Press. According to Nevins: ‘Strong was an artist who was consciously trying to render his own city, his own time, his own personality in such form that later generations could comprehend them.’ 

The diaries were also edited by Vera Brodsky Lawrence for her three volumes: Strong on Music: The New York Music Scene in the Days of George Templeton Strong (University of Chicago Press, 1988-1999).

A few extracts from Strong’s diary (taken from the Nevins/Thomas volumes) can be found at Googlebooks in The Civil War - The Third Year Told By Those Who Lived It, edited by Brooks D Simpson; and in Writing New York - a literary anthology, edited by Phillip Lopate. Lopate says Strong’s diary is ‘the greatest American diary in the nineteenth century’, remarkable not only for its length but for ‘the flavoursome precision of the writing’.

Here are several extracts culled from Writing New York.

23 November 1851
‘Fearful calamity at a public school in Ninth Ward Thursday afternoon, a false alarm of fire, a panic, a stampede downstairs of 1,800 children, and near fifty killed on the spot and many more wounded - a massacre of the innocents. The stair banisters gave way, and the children fell into the square well round which the stairs wound, where the heap of killed and wounded lay for hours before help could reach them. The doors opened inwards. The bodies were piled up to the top of the doors; they did not dare burst them open and had to cut them slowly away with knives.’

5 July 1852
‘Have been at home all day writing. Tonight went on the roof awhile. It’s a beautiful sight the city presents. In every direction one incessant sparkle of fire balls, rockets, roman candles, and stars of all colors shooting thick into the air and disappearing for miles around, with now and then a glare of coloured light coming out in some neighbourhood where fireworks on a large scale are going off. A foreigner would put it in his book of travels as one of the marvels of New York, and compare it to a swarm of tropical fireflies gleaming in and out through a Brazilian forest.’

23 November 1855
‘I must ascertain whether the mighty bug-destroyer Lyons has no modification of his cockroach powder that will exterminate organ-grinders. We suffer peculiarly here, for the street is very quiet, and they play all round the square before they leave it and are more or less audible at each successive station. I have been undergoing the performances of one of the tribe for an hour and a half and have heard “Casta Diva,” “Ah, Non Giunge,” the first chorus of Ernani, and some platitude from the Trovatore languidly ground out six times each. It makes me feel homicidal. If Abel had gone about with hand organs, I shouldn’t censure Cain so very harshly. There goes “Casta Diva” for the seventh time!’

14 October 1857
‘We have burst. All the banks declined paying specie this morning, with the ridiculous exception of the Chemical, which is a little private shaving-shop of the Joneses with no depositors but its own stockholders.

Wall Street has been palpitating uneasily all day, but the first effect of the suspension is, of course, to make men breathe more freely. A special session is confidently expected, and the meeting of merchants at the Exchange at 3:30 P.M. appointed a committee that has gone to Albany to lay the case before Governor King. He ought to decline interference, but were I in his place I dare say my virtue would give way.

My great anxiety has been for the savings banks. Saw the officers of the two in which I feel a special interest (the Bleecker Street and Seaman’s). Both were suicidally paying specie and thus inviting depositors to come forward to get the gold they could get nowhere else and could sell at a premium. The latter changes from specie to bills tomorrow; the former did so this afternoon. All the savings banks are to do so tomorrow. The run has been very formidable; some say not so severe as it was yesterday, but bad enough. I think they will get through.’

14 July 1863
‘Eleven P.M. Fire bells clanking, as they have clanked at intervals through the evening. Plenty of rumours throughout the day and evening, but nothing very precise or authentic. There have been sundry collisions between the rabble and the authorities, civil and military. Mob fired upon. It generally runs, but on one occasion appears to have rallied, charged the police and militia, and forced them back in disorder. The people are waking up, and by tomorrow there will adequate organization to protect property and life. Many details come in of yesterday’s brutal, cowardly ruffianism and plunder. Shops were cleaned out and a black man hanged in Carmine Street, for no offence but that of Nigritude. Opdyke’s house again attacked this morning by a roaming handful of Irish blackguards. Two or three gentlemen who chanced to be passing saved it from sack by a vigorous charge and dispersed the popular uprising (as the Herald, World, and News call it), with their walking sticks and their fists.

Walked uptown perforce, for no cars and few omnibi were running. They are suppressed by threats of burning railroad and omnibus stables, the drivers being wanted to reinforce the mob. Tiffany’s shop, Ball & Black’s, and a few other Broadway establishments are closed. (Here I am interrupted by a report of a fire near at hand, and a great glare on the houses across the Park. Sally forth, and find the Eighteenth Ward station house, Twenty-second Street, near First Avenue, in full blaze. A splendid blaze it made, but I did not venture below Second Avenue, finding myself in a crowd of Celtic spectators disgorged by the circumjacent tenement houses. They were exulting over the damage to “them bloody police,” and so on. I thought discretion the better part of curiosity. Distance lent enchantment to that view.)

At 823 with Bellows four to six; then home. At eight to Union League Club. Rumor it’s to be attacked tonight. Some say there is to be a great mischief tonight and that the rabble is getting the upper hand. Home at ten and sent for by Dudley Field, Jr., to confer about an expected attack on his house and his father’s, which adjoin each other in this street just below Lexington Avenue. He has a party there with muskets and talks of fearful trouble before morning, but he is always a blower and a very poor devil. Fire bells again again at twelve-fifteen. No light of conflagration is visible. [. . .]

A good deal of yelling to the eastward just now. The Fields and their near neighbour, Colonel Frank Howe, are as likely to be attacked by this traitor-guilded mob as any people I know. If they are, we shall see trouble in this quarter, and Gramercy Park will acquire historical associations. O, how tired I am! But I feel reluctant to go to bed. I believe I dozed off a minute or two. There came something like two reports of artillery, perhaps only falling walls. There go two jolly Celts along the street, singing a genuine Celtic howl, something about “Tim O’Laggerty,” with a refrain of pure Erse. Long live the sovereigns of New York, Brian Boroo redivivus and multiplied. Paddy has left his Egypt - Connaught - and reigns in this promised land of milk and honey and perfect freedom. Hurrah, there goes a strong squad of police marching eastward down this street, followed by a company of infantry with gleaming bayonets. One A.M. Fire bells again, southeastward, “Swinging slow with sullen roar.” Now they are silent, and I shall go to bed, at least for a season.’

This article is a slightly revised version of one first published on 21 July 2015.

Better than Proust’s madeleine

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Charlie instead of Concord

‘[Suu Kyi] came back after a hot trek in the sun to some village or other smelling strongly of cheap scent. It’s usual for enthusiastic ladies to spray Ma Ma with perfume [. . .] She said you know Ma Thanegi I’ve gone up in the world, they sprayed me with Charlie instead of Concord.’ This is part of a diary kept by Ma Thanegi, the personal assistant of Aung San Suu Kyi, during the early years campaigning for democracy in Burma. Today, Suu Kyi - the once celebrated global symbol of resistance to tyranny - turns 80.

Born in Rangoon (now Yangon) on 19 June 1945, Suu Kyi was the daughter of General Aung San, revered as the founder of modern Burma and architect of its independence from Britain. He was assassinated in 1947 when Suu Kyi was only two. Educated in Burma and later in New Delhi, Suu Kyi studied philosophy, politics and economics at Oxford. After graduating, she lived in New York City, where she worked at the United Nations, primarily on budget matters. 

In 1972, Suu Kyi married Michael Aris, a Cuban-born Englishman and a scholar of Tibetan culture, then living in Bhutan. They had one son the following year, and another in 1977. The family relocated regularly, living in Bhutan, Japan and India, but settling mostly in England. Between 1985 and 1987, she was working toward an M. Phil degree in Burmese literature at the School of Oriental and African Studies in London (and was elected an Honorary Fellow in 1990).

In 1988, Suu Kyi returned to Burma to care for her ailing mother but was soon swept up into the popular uprising against the military regime. After the bloody suppression of the 8888 Uprising, she emerged as the leader of the newly formed National League for Democracy (NLD). Though tens of thousands of demonstrators were killed, and the country placed under martial law by the State Law and Order Restoration Council (SLORC), Suu Kyi continued to campaign across the country. It was during these chaotic months that Ma Thanegi, then an artist aligned with pro-democracy painters, joined Suu Kyi as her assistant - and diarist, at the request of Suu Kyi’s husband to help keep him informed back in England.

Suu Kyi was first placed under house arrest in 1989, and spent nearly 15 of the next 21 years in detention, winning the 1991 Nobel Peace Prize while confined. Released in 2010, she led the NLD to a historic election win in 2015, becoming Myanmar’s de facto civilian leader. Her international standing plummeted after she defended the military’s brutal crackdown on the Rohingya in 2017, denying allegations of genocide at the International Court of Justice. 

In February 2021, the military staged another coup, arrested Suu Kyi, and later sentenced her to 33 years in prison on politically motivated charges. Some sentences were reduced in 2023, and she was moved to house arrest due to health concerns. As of 2025, she remains incommunicado at age 79, while the NLD has been effectively dismantled and Myanmar continues to descend into civil conflict between the junta and pro-democracy forces. Further information is available at Wikipedia, the BBC and Encyclopaedia Britannica.

Extracts from Ma Thanegi’s 1989-1990 diaries are quoted extensively in Peter Popham’s biography The Lady and the Peacock (Doubleday, 2011 - see Googlebooks), and they offer an earthy, unsentimental portrait of the woman once hailed as ‘the Burmese Gandhi’. 

Here is how Popham introduces, in his ‘Afterword’, this diary material: ‘There are many things about Suu’s life that are fascinating and instructive. It is extraordinary to observe a woman emerge from the comforts and duties of a suburban life in her early forties and take on a stature and role unimaginable even a year before. [. . .] Within months of accepting the leadership of the democratic movement she was already a legend throughout her country. But it never went to her head. I obtained proof of that when an acquaintance in London, who unfortunately I cannot name, gave me the diaries kept during Suu’s campaigning trips in 1989 by Ma Thanegi, her close companion. Suu’s radiant humanity shines out of those pages, along with her good humour, her stoicism, her appreciation of modern lavatories, and her frequent explosions of temper.’

Popham goes on to say that he met Ma Thanegi three times, and that when he told her he’d been given a copy of her diaries and planned to use them in his book, ’she did not demur’. He then explains how he believes he was betrayed by Ma Thanegi during an undercover trip to Burma in 2010, and how this led to his expulsion (before being able to conclude an interview with Suu Kyi). Ma Thanegi had spent three years in prison, and when released in the mid-1990s, had shown herself to be far more of a critic of Suu Kyi than a friend. Popham suggests she had been ‘won round’ by the country’s military intelligence. Suu Kyi herself did not cooperate with Popham in writing the biography, but Ma Thanegi’s diaries do provide a unique and substantial primary resource. 

Popham reproduces extracts without academic referencing. However, what emerges is a vivid, often intimate account of life on the campaign trail - packed roads, military harassment, star-filled nights, and soft-boiled eggs eaten before dawn. Thanegi is not reverent: she describes Suu Kyi’s tantrums, fatigue, and wistfulness as much as her charisma. There are detailed accounts of wardrobe choices and comic tales of being sprayed with knock-off perfume by well-meaning villagers.

Here are a few entries from Ma Thanegi’s diaries, mostly undated as quoted by Popham.

‘Gandhi is Suu Kyi’s role model and hero. Everyone knew it was going to be dangerous: some of the students had the Tharana Gon sutra chanted over them to prepare themselves for sudden death, a mantra recited in Buddhist ritual over the body of the deceased. Some became monks or nuns for a few days in preparation.’

***

‘Great harassment in Bassein, [. . .] armed soldiers barred the way out of the house we were staying in, only allowing us out in twos and threes to visit friends etc.’

***

‘An Australian senator came to see Ma Ma at 8am, [General Saw Maung had] told him elections would be held soon, after discussions with parties . . . Spent the whole night at Ma Ma’s place. Ma Ma up and down stairs whole evening, signing letters, seeing to papers, books. Dr Michael phoned after Ma Ma finished writing a letter to him.’

***

‘Left Rangoon at 4.45 am, fifteen minutes late. Ma Ma a bit annoyed. She was sleepy in the early part of the morning. I held her down by the shoulders on bumpy roads: fragile and light as a papier-mâché doll. Forced to stop unplanned at Pyawbwe . . . Ma Ma VERY annoyed. Stopped for sugarcane juice at Tat-kone: delicious! Ma Ma loved it. Lunch at Ye Tar Shay. People in the villages amazed and overjoyed to see Ma Ma. Ate lunch, fried rice ordered from Chinese restaurant next door.’

***

‘Ma Ma looked so wistful when I swiped chilli suace and onions from under her very nose. Later I relented and picked out onions sans sauce for her. Chilli sauce v. unhealthy stuff in Burma.’

***

11 February 1989

‘She wore green plaid longyi, white jacket, green cardigan with matching scarf and gloves. Got up (had to) at 4.30. Left for Loilam at 5.30, after I insisted she eat soft-boiled eggs.

At her request I borrowed a tape of Fifties and Sixties songs to listen to on the way, coincidentally the same we were listening to in Rangoon. I remember her singing along loudly ‘Love you more than I can say’ as she scooted upstairs. We sang along with the tape on the way: ‘Seven lonely days.’ etc.

Ma Ma v. annoyed at easy going plans. There was supposed to be a convoy on the road ‘for our protection’ but there was no one in sight. We reached Loilam without seeing any. Ma Ma hit the roof.’

***

‘Wonderful sight at Dukgo: as we entered the town the local NLD had issued red NLD caps and we marched in singing a democratic song which was also blared out from one car. We pushed in front of the MI’s videos and still cameras. Ma Ma had been saying for days how she was on the brink of losing her voice but it came on full, clear and strong as she started to talk at the NLD office, amplified out into the road, and she sounded darn mad.

While Ma Ma was talking, people crept up to listen at the side of the road. Police and soldiers told them to get back but we told them to come up and listen. Planned for Ma Ma to walk to jail to visit prisoners but when she came out of the NLD office such a large crowd followed her that we were afraid the police - who hurried to the police station and closed the gates - would say we were invading it and shoot us down. So many kids and women in the crowd that we decided just to pass the police station and jail by.

We walked out of town, crowds following, and I was afraid we would be walking all the way home. But at last, with the last goodbye, Ma Ma got into the car.

Had engine trouble all the way: water pipe broke late afternoon. Stopped for a while at Jundasar at a rice mill. Also we had to stop near a stream just before Dai-oo. Large pack of stray dogs - one of the boys shouted at them about 2/88. SLORC’s rule banning groups of more than five gathering together . . . [. . .]

Ma Ma sat in car and asked if I didn’t feel a sense of unreality about all we are doing. I said, dealing with stupid people can get us caught up in weeks of stupidity, no wonder it makes us all feel so weird.’

***

24 March 1989

‘Left Rangoon 6 am by boat [. . .] Reached Kim Yang Gaung in evening but no one came out of their houses. The whole place deserted, people peeping from deep inside darkened huts, only a few dogs going about their business. Learned that a local man who was democratic-minded was shot dead through forehead by army sergeant or corporal one week ago.

From there a long cart ride to Let Khote Kon. Easier to have gone on by boat but one of the NLD organisers felt we should visit that place and he was right. Ma Ma made speech in compound of a dainty little old lady named Ma Yin Nu. A very big crowd. I gave Ma Yin Nu a photo of Ma Ma . . .

Equally long cart ride back to boat, though it felt longer. Soon it became very dark. We never saw such large stars. As usual I pestered Ma Ma, telling her the names of my favourites. Halfway along our cart met a bunch of armed soldiers, five or six, who rudely called out to us, asking who we were, where we were going etc. There were about six carts in our caravan, our boys were travelling behind us but immediately they brought their cart up and parked between us and the soldiers. . .

Back on the boat at 8.30 pm and found out that we couldn’t leave because it was overloaded with people - NLD people from the villages we had visited had come along for the ride. Damn. And the tide was going out. We slept on moored boat, one corner partitioned off with two mosquito nets where Ma Ma and I curled up unwashed.’

***

‘Ma Ma getting to know well the Burmese character, the bad side. Said she is fed up to the teeth with pushy egoistic stupid people. She is getting to know the true Burmese character and is getting depressed by it. I have a feeling she is too idealistic and emotionally vulnerable. Easy-going as we Burmese are, we are totally selfish, ostrich-like in dealing with unpleasantness and very short-sighted.

When she is in a pensive mood I would search her face and feel a deep sorrow that so many burdens are on this frail-looking and gentle person. I think she needs to be more cynical to deal with the Burmese and of course hard-hearted to some extent. She feels hurt when people complain about the rudeness of our boys, I tell her politeness would not penetrate the thick skulls and dim minds of these people.

She came back after a hot trek in the sun to some village or other smelling strongly of cheap scent. It’s usual for enthusiastic ladies to spray Ma Ma with perfume that they all think is great, and the perfumes are either something called Concord or Charlie. Charlie is slightly more expensive, or Tea Rose, the scent of rose, and we are beginning to recognise these three. Ma Ma is more often sprayed with Concord and we hate this spray business. These ladies are not too careful where they aim the nozzle. Sometimes it gets into her face or her mouth, she has to be careful about moving her face or it would go into her eyes. She said you know Ma Thanegi I’ve gone up in the world, they sprayed me with Charlie instead of Concord.’

This article is a much revised version of one first published on 19 June 2015.

Remarks and collections

Thomas Hearne, Oxford scholar and librarian, died all of 290 years ago today. He is highly regarded for his editions of historical works which he managed to continue publishing throughout his life - this despite falling out of favour with the university authorities for refusing to take oaths of allegiance to the crown. Apart from his valuable chronicles, Hearne’s diaries are also highly rated, not only for providing much information on books/manuscripts and intellectual history, but for portraits of eminent scholars and academic figures of the day. They are also a good read: Hearne is quite unguarded in his opinions, and he recounts interesting news items of the day, as well as amusing anecdotes.

Hearne was born at Littlefield Green in Berkshire, in 1678, the son of a parish clerk. He received an early education thanks to a wealthy neighbour. Later he was educated at St Edmund Hall, Oxford, where he studied classical history, philology, and geography, graduating in 1699. He came to the attention of the principal, Dr John Mill, for whom he did transcription work. In 1701, he was taken on as an assistant by John Hudson, the newly appointed librarian of the Bodleian Library, and set to work on a planned edition of Thomas Hyde’s Bodleian catalogue of printed books. (Hudson, however, gave up this project, and when the catalogue was finally published in 1738 by a successor to Hudson, Hearne’s work was uncredited.)

Soon after joining the library, Hearne published his first book, Reliquiae Bodleianae (1703), a collection of correspondence between the library’s founder, Sir Thomas Bodley, and his first librarian, Thomas James. Hearne also published, with Hudson’s help, editions of Latin classics; undertook bibliographical research for many visiting scholars, such as Jeremy Collier and Bishop Francis Atterbury; and contributed to various important historical chronicles and literary works. By 1712, he had risen to second librarian; but, thereafter, he failed to advance further in the university because he proclaimed himself nonjuror, i.e. he refused to take oaths of allegiance to King George I (a requirement of higher offices). Indeed, his written reflections on nonjurism and nonjurors became increasingly problematic for the university, and caused mounting tension with Hudson. Eventually, in 1716, having failed to take a legally-required oath, he was dismissed from his position in the Bodleian; the door locks were even changed to bar him entry.

Subsequently, Hearne was denied use of the university imprint, and measures were put in place to forbid him printing from Bodleian manuscripts. He was also persecuted for a short while by the university authorities. Nevertheless, he managed to pursue a living for himself as a private publisher, using historical manuscripts from other libraries, such as the Ashmolean, and Trinity College in Cambridge. Also, he had a considerable following among collectors and scholars who assisted in bringing many of his works to publication.

Hearne fell ill in 1735 and died, unmarried, in his lodgings at St Edmund Hall on 10 June. His library was sold soon after, and (ironically) his diaries, correspondence, and manuscript collection ended up at the Bodleian Library. The fullest biography of Hearne online can be found at the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (though log-in is required); otherwise Wikipedia, Berkshire History have briefer bios.

According to the ODNB, Hearne’s reputation today rests especially on his diaries, a series of 145 octavo diary volumes, written between 1705 and 1735, which he entitled ‘Remarks and collections’. The ODNB says: ‘[These] are filled with detailed information about books and manuscripts, contemporary scholarship, and intellectual history. They also contain lively if politically prejudiced portraits of the lives of late seventeenth- and early eighteenth-century scholars and antiquaries and autobiographical pieces. Though less accessible today (as workbooks, the diaries are also filled with scholarly and bibliographical detail) than the more urbane diaries of Evelyn and Pepys, Hearne’s volumes are still rewarding when read entire.’

Hearne’s ‘Remarks and collections’ was first edited by Philip Bliss and published, in 1857, as Reliquiæ Hearnianæ: The Remains of Thomas Hearne being extracts from his MS. Diaries (two volumes). This was republished in 1869 in three volumes. Then C. E. Doble and others edited the diaries for the Oxford Historical Society’s edition in 11 volumes (1885-1921). The original Bliss edition can be read online at Googlebooks or Internet Archive, and the Doble editions can also be found at Internet Archive. Images from Hearne’s manuscript diaries can be viewed at the Digital Bodleian website. Here, though, are several extracts taken from the 1857 edition.

14 September 1705
‘I was told last night that in the great fire at London was burnt a MS. Bible curiously illuminated, like the historical part of the Bible in Bodley’s archives, and that ’twas valued at 1500 libs.’

21 September 1705
‘Last night I was with Mr. Wotton (who writ the Essay on Ancient and Modern Learning) at the tavern, together with Mr. Thwaites, and Mr. Willis. Mr. Wotton is a person of general learning, a great talker and braggadocio, but of little judgement in any one particular science. He told me, he had begun sometime since to translate Graeve’s Rom. Demarius, but had not finished, and could not tell whether he should ever perfect it.

Mr. Wotton told me, Mr. Baker of St. John’s col. Cambridge had writ the history and antiquities of that college; and that he is every ways qualified (being a very industrious and judicious man) to write that hist. and antiq. of that university. He told me also, that he really believed Cambridge to me much later than Oxon.’

27 November 1713
‘Mr. Tompion of London, one of the most eminent persons for making clocks and watches, that have been produced in the last age, dyed last week. Indeed he was the most famous, and the most skillfull person at this art in the whole world, and first of all brought watches to any thing of perfection. He was originally a blacksmith, but a gentleman imploying him to mend his clock, he did it extraordinary well, and told the gentleman that he believed he could make such another himself. Accordingly he did so, and this was his first beginning, he living then in Buckinghamshire. He afterwards got a great name, lived in London, was acquainted with the famous Dr. Hooke, grew rich, and lived to a great age. He had a strange working head, and was well seen in mathematicks.’

22 April 1715
‘This morning was a total ecclipse of the sun. It began after eight o’clock. But the sky being not clear, the observations that were designed were in a very great measure hindered. There were many papers printed, before it happened, about it. This inserted [described in a footnote], is done by D. Halley. It was very dark when it happened. The birds flocked to the trees as they do at night. Many people used candles in their houses as in the night.’

19 February 1716
‘This has been such a severe winter, that the like hath not been known since the year 1683/4. In some respects it exceeded that. For tho’ the frost did not last so long as it did at that time, yet there was a much greater and deeper snow. Indeed it was the biggest snow that ever I knew: as it was also the severest frost that ever I have been sensible of. It began on Monday Dec. 5th, and continued till Friday, Feb 10th following, which is almost ten weeks, before there was an entire thaw. Indeed it began to thaw two or three times, but then the frost soon began again with more violence, and there was withall a very sharp and cold and high wind for some days. When it first began to thaw, and afterwards to freeze again, it made the ways extreme slippery and dangerous, and divers accidents happened.’

23 August 1716
‘Sir Christopher Wren says the ways of making mortar with hair came into fashion in queen Elizabeth’s time. Sir Christ. says there were no masons in London when he was a young man. Sir Christ. is about 85 years of age.’

13 December 1716
‘I had this day a hint given me as if the present vice-chancellor and some others (to be sure some of our heads of houses) have a mind to force open my chamber, and to sieze upon my papers.’

18 April 1719
‘A present has been made me of a book called The Antiquities of Barkshire, by Elias Ashmole, esq. London, printed for E. Curll, in Fleet-street, 1719. 8vo in three volumes. It was given me by my good friend Thomas Rawlinson, esq. As soon as I opened it, and looked into it, I was amazed at the abominable impudence, ignorance, and carelessness of the publisher, and I can hardly ascribe all this to any one else than to that villain Curll. Mr. Ashmole is made to have written abundance of things since his death. All is ascribed to him, and yet a very great part of what is mentioned happened since he died. For, as many of the persons died after him, so the inscriptions mentioned in this book were made and fixed since his death also. Besides, what is taken from Mr. Ashmole is most fraudulently done. The epitaphs are falsely printed, and his words and sense most horribly perverted. What Mr. Ashmole did was done very carefully, as appears from the original in the museum, where also are his exact draughts of the most considerable monuments, of which there is no notice in this strange rhapsody. I call it a rhapsody, because there is no method nor judgement observed in it, nor one dram of true learning. Some things are taken from my edition of Leland, but falsely printed, and I cannot but complain of the injury done me.’

6 June 1719
‘Last Sunday died Edmund Dunch, of Little Wittenham, in Berks, esq. parliament for Wallingford, being about 40 years of age. He was a very great gamester, and had a little before lost about 30 libs. in one night gaming. He had otherwise good qualities. By gaming most of the estate is gone. He was drawn into gaming purely to please his lady. King James I. said to one of the Dunches (for ’tis an old family) when his majesty asked his name, and he answered Dunch, “Ay, (saith the king), Dunch by name, and Dunce by nature.” ’

This article is a slightly revised version of one first published on 10 June 2015.

By golly, what a day!

‘By golly, what a day! It is seldom that days which one has anticipated in imagination for weeks or months ever measure up to one’s expectations, but this one has gone far beyond.’ This is Joseph Clark Grew - a career American diplomat who died 80 years ago today - starting a long diary entry about the day he took up a posting as ambassador to Japan. He served for nearly a decade in Tokyo, up to and including Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbour, after which he was interned for some months. Once back in the US, he published his diaries under the title Ten Years in Japan.   

Grew was born in 1880, in Boston, Massachusetts, into a prominent New England family with deep roots in American history. He was raised in an environment that valued public service and international awareness, and he received his early education at the private Groton School in Massachusetts, a training ground for many future American leaders. He went on to attend Harvard University, graduating in 1902 with a degree in history.

Grew joined the US Foreign Service in 1904 and quickly proved his competence in various international postings. Early assignments included Cairo, Mexico City, and Berlin, where he gained experience in complex diplomatic environments. His career advanced steadily, and he was posted to major European capitals, including a significant tenure in Vienna. Grew served as secretary of the American delegation to the Versailles Peace Conference in 1919, an important early career milestone. In 1927, he was appointed Ambassador to Switzerland, and later, to Turkey. 

Grew married Alice Perry, the daughter of a US Navy admiral, in 1905, and they would have four children. Alice often accompanied Grew on his foreign postings and played a supportive role in his career, hosting social functions, for example, that were essential to diplomatic work.

Perhaps Grew’s most consequential role was as US Ambassador to Japan from 1932 to 1941. He witnessed firsthand the rising tensions between the US and Japan and attempted to avert the drift toward war. After the attack on Pearl Harbor in December 1941, he was interned in Japan for several months before being repatriated. He then served as Under Secretary of State and played a key role in shaping post-war U.S. policy toward Japan.

Grew retired in 1945 and spent his later years writing and reflecting on his diplomatic service. He died on 25 May 1965, just two days before his 85th birthday, leaving behind a legacy as one of America’s most experienced and thoughtful diplomats. Further information is available from Wikipedia and The New York Times.

Grew kept detailed diaries for much of his working life. In 1944, after returning from Tokyo, Hammond, Hammond & Co published a first volume of his diary entries: Ten Years in Japan - a contemporary record drawn from the Diaries and Private and Official Papers of Joseph C. Grew. This can be read freely online at Internet Archive. Subsequently, in 1952, Houghton, Mifflin published Turbulent Era: A Diplomatic Record of Forty Years, 1904-1945. This comprehensive two volume selection of Grew’s diary entries, as edited by Walter Johnson, can also be read online. The following entry, detailing his first day as American ambassador to Japan, is taken from Ten Years in Japan.

6 June 1932

‘Tokyo. By golly, what a day! It is seldom that days which one has anticipated in imagination for weeks or months ever measure up to one’s expectations, but this one has gone far beyond. I was up at the absurd hour of 4:45 a.m., hating to miss a trick. Thick fog and only the shadowy form of other ships to be seen. We had skirted along the coast of Japan last evening and had anchored in the roads of Yokohama sometime during the night after the foghorn had wailed drearily for an hour or more. Then, at 5:30, pandemonium: the stewards banging with full force at every cabin door and shouting in raucous voices for us to get up and meet the quarantine officer, and five minutes later repeating the performance. Those stewards certainly know how to carry out their orders with the utmost thoroughness, but I wonder if others don’t get the same results without making you want to punch them on the nose for the way they do it.

Anyway, we did meet the quarantine officer at 6 a.m., although it was quite unnecessary for Alice and our daughter Elsie (who had slept for only two hours) to have dressed so early, as a special Japanese officer had been deputed to look after us and he went through our passports with Parsons without seeing us at all. Another Japanese officer examined our police dog, Kim, and issued a special health certificate, while still a third man took charge of our baggage. It was all done with quiet efficiency and the least possible bother.

Then, even before we docked at 7, the reception began. Yesterday there had been a flight of welcoming radiograms. This morning one deputation after another came on board and to our cabins. These visitors included half a dozen Japanese newspaper correspondents and photographers, and finally the good Edwin Neville, Counsellor of the Embassy, and his wife. We posed for photographs and were asked questions by the press; naturally I refused to say a word about politics, but my answers to their innocent questions were later adroitly manipulated into a quoted interview, the Japan Times bearing headlines, MR. GREW GIVES AN INTERVIEW, which began out of a clear sky: ‘I have written a book called Sport and Travel in the Far East but I know hardly anything about the present Japan. I hope to get down to serious study when I’m settled in my new post. Mrs. Grew’s mother, who was a daughter of Commodore Perry . . .’ etc., etc. Some mother-in-law!

Well, we took leave of Captain Ahlin of the President Coolidge and motored to Tokyo in a drizzling rain, but the ugliness of the route was lost on me as Neville and I, who drove together, had too many interesting things to talk about. Then the Embassy. Big bushes, smooth green lawns, flowers, fountains, tessellated pools, and the buildings themselves, four of them, white with black ironwork trimmings, already framed in luxuriant trees - a real oasis in the more or less ugly surroundings of the new-grown city. The residence is on the crest of a hill looking down on the chancery and the dormitories, to which one descends on little stepping-stones through a thick grove of leafy woods. As for the interior of the residence, when we had explored it with the Nevilles, examined the furniture and curtains and the thick luxurious carpets in the big salon and the little salon and the still littler salon, the smoking-room with its wonderful wainscoting, its many bookshelves and abundant deep cupboards (where at least I shall have space enough to file and store, separate and catalogue, to my heart’s content), the loggia, the banquet hall, the private dining-room, the cloakroom, and the seven bedrooms and the four bathrooms, the ironing-room, sewing-room, and storerooms - while Elsie emitted little shrieks of delight and Kim wagged his entire acceptance of the new situation - I asked Alice how many cons she found, and she answered: ‘Not a single con; they’re all pros.’

We all went to the chancery, passing the swimming pool on the way. I met all the staff and then received the principal American correspondents: Babb, of the Associated Press; Byas, of the New York Times; Vaughn, of the United Press; Fleisher, of the Japan Advertiser. We chatted, and I spoke of my hope for the closest cooperation which would be of mutual benefit and urged them to drop in often. Colonel McIlroy and Captain Johnson, the Military and Naval Attachés, told Neville that their regulations required them to call on me in full uniform, but I sent back word I hoped they would forget their regulations, as we could have a much pleasanter and more satisfactory chat if they would cut out the gold lace, which would undoubtedly leave me tongue-tied.

Maya Lindsley Poole and Parsons came to lunch. I didn’t know Maya until she introduced herself at table. It was amusing to remember that when she was pointed out to me at the Copley Hall dance in January, 1904, as the girl who had just returned from Japan, and later when I asked to be introduced to ‘the girl who had just returned from Japan,’ I was led up to Alice instead.

At 3, Neville came to take me to the Diet to call on Viscount Saito, who could not leave the session to receive me at the Gaimusho, or Foreign Office. He is old - over seventy, I believe - and looks old and tired. Conversation was halting, and he seemed to have too much on his mind to concentrate, but he is decidedly distinguished; he was formerly an admiral in the Navy and Governor-General of Korea, and has now stepped into the breach as Prime Minister and Minister for Foreign Affairs to tide over, with his personal prestige, and probably temporarily, a difficult cabinet situation. I stayed a very short time, knowing that he was busy in the session and that we could talk only platitudes; left with him notes asking for audiences with the Emperor and Empress, copies of my letters of credence and the letters of recall of Cameron Forbes, my predecessor, and a copy of my proposed speech to the Emperor. As Neville liked it, we sent it in. Afterwards I called on Baron de Bassompierre, the Belgian Ambassador and Dean of the Diplomatic Corps - very pleasant.

Then, at 5, Alice had the entire staff with wives and daughters to tea - sixty-five people. What a staff! And what a situation that enabled us to give a reception, with buffet, for sixty-five people on the very day of our arrival! Cam Forbes’ Japanese servants are all on the job and functioning like clockwork; I suppose we shall keep them all.

Bingham and Parsons came to dinner. The latter is to stay with us until he can get his apartment in one of the dormitories into shape. I have written up the day while the initial impressions are still fresh, and now, thank heaven, I shall hit the hay at 10:30 and hit it hard.’

An arch-druid was buryed

‘At the Royal Society. Mr. Collison showed me a Druid bead of glass, enameled, found at Henbury, near Macclesfield. Henbury is the old grave, as our Saxon ancestors would call an old long barrow, where an arch-druid was buryed, and I suppose this ornament belonged to one. They wore such hanging from their neck.’ This is from the diaries of William Stukeley, an English antiquarian, physician and Anglican clergyman, who died 250 years ago today. Though trained as a physician, his life’s work - reflected in his diaries - was to explore and study the country’s antiquities. He is credited with pioneering the scholarly investigation of prehistoric monuments such as Stonehenge.

Born in 1687, in Holbeach, Lincolnshire, Stukeley grew up in an era of expanding scientific curiosity. His early education at Stamford School set the stage for a lifetime of intellectual pursuit, and in 1703, he entered Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, where he studied medicine and developed a fascination with antiquities. By 1710, he had qualified as a physician, establishing a practice in Boston, Lincolnshire. 

However, Stukeley’s interest in ancient monuments soon drew him away from medicine, and over the next decade he made extensive tours across Britain, meticulously sketching and documenting prehistoric sites. His travels led him to Stonehenge in 1719, where he undertook a first systematic study. After moving to London, he joined the Royal Society and became friends with Isaac Newton. The 1720s marked a period of intense study and fieldwork. He co-founded the Society of Roman Knights, dedicated to the study of Roman Britain, and became increasingly involved in Freemasonry. 

By 1721, Stukeley had been elected a Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians, this despite his continuing focus on antiquities rather than medicine. In 1724, he published Itinerarium Curiosum, a richly illustrated account of his travels. His life took a turn in 1726 when he married Frances Williamson (with whom he would have three daughters) and moved to Grantham. In 1739, two years after his first wife’s death, Stukeley married Elizabeth, daughter of Thomas Gale, dean of York, who brought a substantial marriage portion to the union. In 1740, he published Stonehenge: A Temple Restor’d to the British Druids, proposing that these monuments were built by ancient Druids.

In late 1747, Stukeley became the rector for St George the Martyr, Queen Square, a parish in Bloomsbury, London, and soon after moved permanently to the city. In 1753, he was selected as a trustee to help establish the British Museum, reflecting his standing in London antiquarian circles. He was also involved in the running of the Foundling Hospital. One of his last books, in 1752, was a memoir of Newton in which he mentions how a falling apple inspired the theory of gravitation. He died on 3 March 1765. Further information is available from Wikipedia, Encyclopaedia Britannica, and the BBC.

Stukeley was an inveterate diary keeper. The Spalding Gentlemen’s Society holds a collection of his papers covering the years 1740 to 1751, and the Bodleian Archives & Manuscripts houses other papers including diaries. Many diary entries can be found in the three volumes of The Family Memoirs of the Rev. William Stukeley as edited by the Surtees Society in the 1880s. These volumes (available at Internet Archive) remain an important source for researchers studying Stukeley’s life and work, as well as for those interested in the development of antiquarian studies and archaeology in 18th-century Britain. Volume 1 contains an autobiographical memoir and some chronological diary extracts from his early life, as well as correspondence. Volumes 2 and 3, however, are not structured as a chronological survey of his life, but by geographical counties (each county chapter including different kinds of texts, inc. diaries).

Here are some diary extracts as found in volume 2.

26 May 1743

‘Mrs. Lepla told me of a Roman urn dug up at Thorney Abby, with the ashes, which they buryed again. She says there’s a high raised gravel road, Roman, from Thorney to Ely, which, I doubt not, belonged to the Carsdike navigation, bringing corn from Cambridg. She says they dig up much antidiluvian oak there, of huge dimensions. They made a maypole of one, together with deers’ horns and nuts.’

4 November 1744

‘Dined with the Archbishop of York in his journey to town. His Grace told me Mr. Roger Gale dyed with a prophecy in his mouth, according to report of the country, viz., that it would be a most excessively wet harvest, for so it proved in the north this year, though with us it was very favourable. Mr. Hill told us he ordered a certain oak tree to be cut down, brought into his yard, and to be sawn into planks, a fortnight before his death. No one knew his purpose till he dyed, and then a paper was found directing they should dig a grave for him in such a place in the churchyard 8 foot deep or deeper if the springs hindered not. They should plank the bottom of it with those oak planks. He ordered his coffin to be made of a certain shape which he drew out upon paper, which being laid upon the planks was to be bricked round the height of the coffin, and a particular large blew stone which he mentioned laid over the whole, then to be filled up with earth and fresh sods laid so as that it might not be discernible where he was laid, that he might be the sooner forgot, as he exprest it.’

December 1748

‘A dog was taken from London in a ship, carried to Newcastle, some victuals given him, and let goe at the same time that a letter was put into the post to his master at London. The dog never had been at Newcastle before, yet was at home before the letter. Many are the instances of this nature, well attested. Therefore I conclude providence has extended some universal principle to all animals, which we are apt to call instinct, like that of attraction, gravitation, cohesion, electricity, &c., imparted to mere matter. This principle overrules animals, and irresistibly draws them on to pursue the ends purposed by them, or to which they are designed by providence, without variation, such as bees making their inimitable combs, birds making the nests peculiar to their kind, &c, whilst man acts spontaneously and of his own free will, and therefore only accountable for his actions. Many like storys are told of cats, a more unlikely creature than dogs, which I know to be true.’

16 February 1749

‘At the Royal Society. Mr. Collison showed me a Druid bead of glass, enameled, found at Henbury, near Macclesfield. Henbury is the old grave, as our Saxon ancestors would call an old long barrow, where an arch-druid was buryed, and I suppose this ornament belonged to one. They wore such hanging from their neck. Henbury is at the head of the river Pever. Henshaw, the next town, old wood. A great forest hard by, and a very open country too.’

24 July 1749

‘My wife, daughters, Mrs. Wade and I, went to Waltham Cross. We saw the two posts remaining which I set down 25 years ago to guard the noble edifice. Nevertheless it has very much suffered since that time. We visited the Abby. The front of the great gate-house remains, and some part of the north side of the abbatial buildings. The present cellar is part of the old cloysters, as thought; ’tis arched at top. At the very end of it, they have fixed up against the wall the side of king Harold’s tomb; ’tis a black stone with a grotesc head carved on it, and some cherubims. We saw the famous tulip tree, now in flower. The east of the present church has exactly the same appearance as that of Crowland. In both places they have pulled down the choir and transept. Crowland first church was exactly the same as what now remains here. They were both magnificent cathedrals of the first style; semicircular arches, great pillars. The building on the south is said to have belonged to the nuns of Cheshunt. We visited the old house at the end of the town, said to have been the house where the famous John Fox the martyrologist lived, whose family still remains in the town. There is his picture; and Archbishop Cranmer lived in the same place; his study remains. Mr. Fowler, the curate, showed me an old town book from the dissolution; mention of the last abbot, Robert Fuller.’

28 January 1752

‘Rode to Cheshunt; observed a Hebrew inscription over a door in Hockley in the hole ; an inscription by Clarkenwel. The two posts remain which I set up at Waltham cross 30 years agoe, and without them this curious fabric had been quite demolished by this time. The lord of the manor, instead of repairing it, as he ought to do, gave leave for the adjacent alehouse to build against it and take part of it away. The 4 Swans there belonged to Waltham Abby. The suit of rooms where the chimnys are were made for the tenants to meet in on court days, and to lodg pilgrims in. I take it that 4 swans with a cross were the arms of king Harold, and he had a mistress, whom he called swan’s neck, who only could find his body out among the slain.’

25 January 1759 

‘At the Antiquarian Society. A pot of English coins of Henry II. found near Southampton, some cut in half for halfpennys, some in quarters for farthings.’