A most excellent person

Today marks the 320th anniversary of the death of John Evelyn, a contemporary and friend of Samuel Pepys, who described him as a ‘most excellent person’. He was a writer, gardener, and a diarist, and his diaries, spanning 50 years, are considered of historical importance. Here is the draft chapter on Evelyn from London in Diaries (see an earlier Diary Review article for more about this yet-to-published book).

John Evelyn - a most excellent person
John Evelyn is another famous 17th century London diarist, though his diaries reveal a far less colourful character than Pepys, and show none of the latter’s wide-ranging curiosity, nor his introspection, nor his love of gossip. The two lived contemporaneously - Evelyn was born before Pepys and died after him - and were friends, mentioning each other in their diaries. But what Evelyn’s diary lacks in colour and entertainment, it makes up for in time span and historical importance. He was much interested in London’s development, its new squares, houses and gardens, and, after the Great Fire, he was involved with rebuilding the city.

Evelyn was born in 1620 at Wotton, near Dorking in Surrey, the large family estate founded originally on wealth accumulated after his great-grandfather brought the invention of gunpowder to England. John would, eventually, inherit Wotton, but not until the end of his life, in 1699. John spent much of his childhood near Lewes in Sussex with his mother’s parents, and declined to go to Eton. He was admitted into the Middle Temple in 1637, and also became a fellow commoner at Balliol College, Oxford, though he left without taking a degree. After his father’s death in 1640, Evelyn inherited sufficient wealth to allow him to live independently.

These were, though, confusing times in England, especially for a Royalist like Evelyn. After a very brief involvement with the Royalist army, he managed to gain permission to go abroad, where he stayed - in France and Italy - for several years to avoid the Civil War. In Paris, in 1647, he married the 12 year old Mary Browne, daughter of the English ambassador. He returned to England soon after, but did not live with his wife for several years. In 1652, the couple moved into Sayes Court, Deptford. This was a property, once leased from the crown by his father-in-law, but which had been seized by Parliament, and which Evelyn had had to buy back. In time, he rebuilt the house and developed a beautiful garden. This latter was a project that would lead to his serious interest in botany and garden history, and the writing of an encyclopaedia of gardens and gardening practices - Elysium Britannicum.

Here is Pepys, a lifelong friend of Evelyn, describing a visit to Sayes Court some years later (in 1665): ‘ . . . and so I by water to Deptford, and there made a visit to Mr Evelyn, who, among other things, showed me most excellent painting in little; in distemper, Indian incke, water colours: graveing; and, above all, the whole secret of mezzo-tinto, and the manner of it, which is very pretty, and good things done with it. He read to me very much also of his discourse, he hath been many years and now is about, about Guardenage; which will be a most noble and pleasant piece. He read me part of a play or two of his making, very good, but not as he conceits them, I think, to be. He showed me his Hortus Hyemalis; leaves laid up in a book of several plants kept dry, which preserve colour, however, and look very finely, better than any Herball. In fine, a most excellent person he is, and must be allowed a little for a little conceitedness; but he may well be so, being a man so much above others.’

After the Restoration of the monarchy in 1660, Evelyn was favoured by Charles II, though he never sought or held high rank. Instead, he busied himself with various minor posts usually aimed at improving public life, whether by licensing hackney coaches, developing sewers, reforming the streets, regulating the Royal Mint, or re-planning London after the great fire. He was a founder member of the Royal Society. Under the Catholic King James II, he became alarmed by attacks on the English Church, which led him to concur with the revolution of 1688 that brought William of Orange to the throne. Towards the end of his life, in 1695, he was made treasurer of Greenwich hospital for old sailors.

Writing was surely Evelyn’s main passion. His early works were largely Royalist tracts, but other, mostly scientific, books soon followed. He wrote pioneering works on tree cultivation (Sylva, or a Discourse of Forest Trees), soils (A Philosophical Discourse of Earth) and pollution (Fumifugium). His later works tended to be more concerned with culture, art, and religion, with titles such as Sculpture: or the History and Art of Chalcography and Engraving in Copper, and Numismata - A discourse of medals, antient and modern. An 800-page history of religion was published after his death.

And then there is his diary which has come to overshadow all his other works. First edited by William Bray and published in two volumes by Henry Colburn in 1818 as Memoirs Illustrative of the Life and Writings of John Evelyn, comprising his Diary from 1641 to 1705/6, and a Selection of his Familiar Letters. A more complete and definitive edition comprising six volumes was edited by Esmond Samuel de Beer and published by Clarendon Press 1955. Experts acknowledge that some parts of Evelyn’s diaries were compiled at a later date from notes, and that because they show evidence of hindsight, they are more memoir than diary.

Though covering a period of over 50 years, Evelyn’s diary is not as long as Pepys’s, nor is it as entertaining or interesting. It is dry and factual, and mostly the entries are brief and unemotional - except on the death of a child. When Richard - aged but 5 - dies, Evelyn fills several pages with the precocious boy’s achievements, concluding with, ‘Here ends the joy of my life, and for which I go even mourning to the grave.’ 

Arthur Ponsonby, author of English Diaries, says this of Pepys and Evelyn: ‘Although the two diarists were contemporaries and friends, and although they came across many common acquaintances in their official and Court experiences, they did not live in the same stratum of society, and their method, their motive, their point of view, their manner and their characters were so completely different that except for the fact that they refer to the same people and the same events, the two celebrated journals that have been handed down to us have very little resemblance, and they seem to call for different moods in the reader.’

Birds and animals in St James’s Park
9 February 1665
Dined at my Lord Treasurer’s, the Earl of Southampton, in Bloomsbury, where he was building a noble square or piazza [London’s first square, or at least one of the earliest], a little town; his own house stands too low, some noble rooms, a pretty cedar chapel, a naked garden to the north, but good air. I had much discourse with his Lordship, whom I found to be a person of extraordinary parts, but a valetudinarian.

I went to St James’s Park, where I saw various animals, and examined the throat of the Onocrotylus, or pelican, a fowl between a stork and a swan; a melancholy waterfowl, brought from Astrakhan by the Russian Ambassador; it was diverting to see how he would toss up and turn a flat fish, plaice, or flounder, to get it right into his gullet at its lower beak, which, being filmy, stretches to a prodigious wideness when it devours a great fish. Here was also a small water-fowl, not bigger than a moorhen, that went almost quite erect, like the penguin of America; it would eat as much fish as its whole body weighed; I never saw so unsatiable a devourer, yet the body did not appear to swell the bigger. The solan geese here are also great devourers, and are said soon to exhaust all the fish in a pond. Here was a curious sort of poultry not much exceeding the size of a tame pigeon, with legs so short as their crops seemed to touch the earth; a milk-white raven; a stork, which was a rarity at this season, seeing he was loose, and could fly loftily; two Balearian cranes, one of which having had one of his legs broken and cut off above the knee, had a wooden or boxen leg and thigh, with a joint so accurately made that the creature could walk and use it as well as if it had been natural; it was made by a soldier. The park was at this time stored with numerous flocks of several sorts of ordinary and extraordinary wild fowl, breeding about the Decoy, which for being near so great a city, and among such a concourse of soldiers and people, is a singular and diverting thing. There were also deer of several countries, white; spotted like leopards; antelopes, an elk, red deer, roebucks, stags, Guinea goats, Arabian sheep, etc. There were withy-pots, or nests, for the wild fowl to lay their eggs in, a little above the surface of the water.

Burning an effigy of the pope
10 June 1673
We went, after dinner, to see the formal and formidable camp on Blackheath, raised to invade Holland; or, as others suspected for another design. Thence, to the Italian glass-house at Greenwich, where glass was blown of finer metal than that of Murano, at Venice.

5 November 1673
This night the youths of the city burned the Pope in effigy, after they had made procession with it in great triumph, they being displeased at the Duke for altering his religion and marrying an Italian lady. [The Duke of York, who later became King James II, had converted to Catholicism, and some weeks prior to this diary entry married a 15 year old Italian princess, Mary of Modena.]

Practising for a siege at Windsor
21 August 1674
In one of the meadows at the foot of the long Terrace below the Castle [Windsor], works were thrown up to show the King a representation of the city of Maestricht, newly taken by the French. Bastians, bulwarks, ramparts, palisadoes, graffs, horn-works, counter-scarps, etc., were constructed. It was attacked by the Duke of Monmouth (newly come from the real siege) and the Duke of York, with a little army, to show their skill in tactics. On Saturday night they made their approaches, opened trenches, raised batteries, took the counter-scarp and ravelin, after a stout defense; great guns fired on both sides, grenadoes shot, mines sprung, parties sent out, attempts of raising the siege, prisoners taken, parleys; and, in short, all the circumstances of a formal siege, to appearance, and, what is most strange all without disorder, or ill accident, to the great satisfaction of a thousand spectators. Being night, it made a formidable show. The siege being over, I went with Mr Pepys back to London, where we arrived about three in the morning.

11 May 1676
I dined with Mr Charleton, and went to see Mr Montague’s new palace, near Bloomsbury, built by Mr Hooke, of our Society, after the French manner [now the site of the British Museum].

From Enfield to Bellsize House in Hampstead
2 June 1676
I went with my Lord Chamberlain to see a garden, at Enfield town; thence, to Mr Secretary Coventry’s lodge in the Chase. It is a very pretty place, the house commodious, the gardens handsome, and our entertainment very free, there being none but my Lord and myself. That which I most wondered at was, that, in the compass of twenty-five miles, yet within fourteen of London, there is not a house, barn, church, or building, besides three lodges. To this Lodge are three great ponds, and some few inclosures, the rest a solitary desert, yet stored with no less than 3,000 deer. These are pretty retreats for gentlemen, especially for those who are studious and lovers of privacy. 

We returned in the evening by Hampstead; to see Lord Wotton’s house and garden (Bellsize House), built with vast expense by Mr O’Neale, an Irish gentleman who married Lord Wotton’s mother, Lady Stanhope. The furniture is very particular for Indian cabinets, porcelain, and other solid and noble movables. The gallery very fine, the gardens very large, but ill kept, yet woody and chargeable The soil a cold weeping clay, not answering the expense.

9 October 1676
I went with Mrs. Godolphin and my wife to Blackwall, to see some Indian curiosities; the streets being slippery, I fell against a piece of timber with such violence that I could not speak nor fetch my breath for some space; being carried into a house and let blood, I was removed to the water-side and so home, where, after a day’s rest, I recovered.

Dining with Pepys at the Tower
18 April 1678
I went to see new Bedlam Hospital, magnificently built, and most sweetly placed in Moorfields, since the dreadful fire in London.

4 June 1679
I dined with Mr Pepys in the Tower, he having been committed by the House of Commons for misdemeanours in the Admiralty when he was secretary; I believe he was unjustly charged.

3 July 1679
Sending a piece of venison to Mr Pepys, still a prisoner, I went and dined with him.

14 September 1681
Dined with Sir Stephen Fox, who proposed to me the purchasing of Chelsea College, which his Majesty had sometime since given to our Society, and would now purchase it again to build a hospital; or infirmary for soldiers there, in which he desired my assistance as one of the Council of the Royal Society.

4 August 1682
With Sir Stephen Fox, to survey the foundations of the Royal Hospital begun at Chelsea.

An innumerable assembly of drinking people 
1 May 1683
I went to Blackheath, to see the new fair, being the first procured by the Lord Dartmouth. This was the first day, pretended for the sale of cattle, but I think in truth to enrich the new tavern at the bowling-green, erected by Snape, his Majesty’s farrier, a man full of projects. There appeared nothing but an innumerable assembly of drinking people from London, peddlars, etc., and I suppose it too near London to be of any great use to the country.

30 October 1683
I went to Kew to visit Sir Henry Capell, brother to the late Earl of Essex; but he being gone to Cashiobury, after I had seen his garden [later to become the famous Kew Gardens] and the alterations therein, I returned home. He had repaired his house, roofed his hall with a kind of cupola, and in a niche was an artificial fountain; but the room seems to me overmelancholy, yet might be much improved by having the walls well painted á fresco. The two green houses for oranges and myrtles, communicating with the rooms below, are very well contrived. There is a cupola made with pole-work between two elms at the end of a walk, which being covered by plashing the trees to them, is very pretty; for the rest there are too many fir trees in the garden.

Streets of booths on the frozen Thames
1 January 1684
The weather continuing intolerably severe, streets of booths were set up on the Thames; the air was so very cold and thick, as of many years there had not been the like. The smallpox was very mortal.

9 January 1684
I went across the Thames on the ice, now become so thick as to bear not only streets of booths, in which they roasted meat, and had divers shops of wares, quite across as in a town, but coaches, carts, and horses passed over. So I went from Westminster stairs to Lambeth, and dined with the Archbishop. [. . .] After dinner and discourse with his Grace till evening prayers, Sir George Wheeler and I walked over the ice from Lambeth stairs to the Horseferry.

24 January 1684
The frost continues more and more severe, the Thames before London was still planted with booths in formal streets, all sorts of trades and shops furnished, and full of commodities, even to a printing press, where the people and ladies took a fancy to have their names printed, and the day and year set down when printed on the Thames: this humor took so universally, that it was estimated that the printer gained £5 a day, for printing a line only, at sixpence a name, besides what he got by ballads, etc. 

Coaches plied from Westminster to the Temple, and from several other stairs to and fro, as in the streets, sleds, sliding with skates, a bull-baiting, horse and coach-races, puppet-plays and interludes, cooks, tippling, and other lewd places, so that it seemed to be a bacchanalian triumph, or carnival on the water, while it was a severe judgment on the land, the trees not only splitting as if the lightning struck, but men and cattle perishing in divers places, and the very seas so locked up with ice, that no vessels could stir out or come in. The fowls, fish, and birds, and all our exotic plants and greens, universally perishing. 

The air full of the fuliginous steam of sea-coal
Many parks of deer were destroyed, and all sorts of fuel so dear, that there were great contributions to preserve the poor alive. Nor was this severe weather much less intense in most parts of Europe, even as far as Spain and the most southern tracts. London, by reason of the excessive coldness of the air hindering the ascent of the smoke, was so filled with the fuliginous steam of the sea-coal, that hardly could one see across the street, and this filling the lungs with its gross particles, exceedingly obstructed the breast, so as one could scarcely breathe. Here was no water to be had from the pipes and engines, nor could the brewers and divers other tradesmen work, and every moment was full of disastrous accidents.

Building about the city too disproportionate for the nation
12 June 1684
I went to advise and give directions about the building of two streets in Berkeley Garden, reserving the house and as much of the garden as the breadth of the house. In the meantime, I could not but deplore that sweet place (by far the most noble gardens, courts, and accommodations, stately porticos, etc., anywhere about the town) should be so much straitened and turned into tenements. But that magnificent pile and gardens contiguous to it, built by the late Lord Chancellor Clarendon, being all demolished, and designed for piazzas and buildings, was some excuse for my Lady Berkeley’s resolution of letting out her ground also for so excessive a price as was offered, advancing near £1,000 per annum in mere ground rents; to such a mad intemperance was the age come of building about a city, by far too disproportionate already to the nation: I having in my time seen it almost as large again as it was within my memory.

Fire on and in the river for the Queen’s birthday
15 November 1684
Being the Queen’s birthday, there were fireworks on the Thames before Whitehall, with pageants of castles, forts, and other devices of girandolas, serpents, the King and Queen’s arms and mottoes, all represented in fire, such as had not been seen here. But the most remarkable was the several fires and skirmishes in the very water, which actually moved a long way, burning under the water, now and then appearing above it, giving reports like muskets and cannon, with grenades and innumerable other devices. It is said it cost £1,500. It was concluded with a ball, where all the young ladies and gallants danced in the great hall. The court had not been seen so brave and rich in apparel since his Majesty’s Restoration.

7 December 1684
I went to see the new church at St James’s, elegantly built; the altar was especially adorned, the white marble inclosure curiously and richly carved, the flowers and garlands about the walls by Mr Gibbons, in wood: a pelican with her young at her breast; just over the altar in the carved compartment and border environing the purple velvet fringed with I. H. S. richly embroidered, and most noble plate, were given by Sir R. Geere, to the value ( as was said) of £200. There was no altar anywhere in England, nor has there been any abroad, more handsomely adorned.

Buried at Westminster without any pomp
14 February 1685
The King [Charles II had died on 6 February] was this night very obscurely buried in a vault under Henry VII’s Chapel at Westminster, without any manner of pomp, and soon forgotten after all this vanity, and the face of the whole Court was exceedingly changed into a more solemn and moral behavior; the new King [James II] affecting neither profaneness nor buffoonery. All the great officers broke their staves over the grave, according to form.

22 May 1685
Oates [Titus Oates instigated the fictitious Popish plot that led to several executions before being found out], who had but two days before been pilloried at several places and whipped at the cart’s tail from Newgate to Aldgate, was this day placed on a sledge, being not able to go by reason of so late scourging, and dragged from prison to Tyburn, and whipped again all the way, which some thought to be severe and extraordinary; but, if he was guilty of the perjuries, and so of the death of many innocents (as I fear he was), his punishment was but what he deserved. I chanced to pass just as execution was doing on him. A strange revolution!

The Apothecaries’ garden at Chelsea
7 August 1685
I went to see Mr Watts, keeper of the Apothecaries’ garden of simples at Chelsea [now the Chelsea Physic Garden], where there is a collection of innumerable rarities of that sort particularly, besides many rare annuals, the tree bearing Jesuit’s bark, which had done such wonders in quartan agues [fevers/chills]. What was very ingenious was the subterranean heat, conveyed by a stove under the conservatory, all vaulted with brick, so as he has the doors and windows open in the hardest frosts, secluding only the snow.

19 January 1686
This night was burnt to the ground my Lord Montague’s palace in Bloomsbury, than which for painting and furniture there was nothing more glorious in England. This happened by the negligence of a servant airing, as they call it, some of the goods by the fire in a moist season; indeed, so wet and mild a season had scarce been seen in man’s memory.

Shells, insects, animals - all destined for the British Museum
16 December 1686
I carried the Countess of Sunderland to see the rarities of one Mr Charlton in the Middle Temple, who showed us such a collection as I had never seen in all my travels abroad either of private gentlemen, or princes. It consisted of miniatures, drawings, shells, insects, medals, natural things, animals (of which divers, I think 100, were kept in glasses of spirits of wine), minerals, precious stones, vessels, curiosities in amber, crystal, agate, etc.; all being very perfect and rare of their kind, especially his books of birds, fish, flowers, and shells, drawn and miniatured to the life. He told us that one book stood him in £300; it was painted by that excellent workman, whom the late Gaston, Duke of Orleans, employed. This gentleman’s whole collection, gathered by himself, traveling over most parts of Europe, is estimated at £8,ooo. He appeared to be a modest and obliging person. [This collection was later bought by Sir Hans Sloane and formed part of the British Museum.]

16 March 1687
I saw a trial of those devilish, murdering, mischief doing engines called bombs, shot out of the mortar piece on Blackheath. The distance that they are cast, the destruction they make where they fall, is prodigious.

Coronation of King William and Queen Mary 
11 April 1689
I saw the procession to and from the Abbey Church of Westminster, with the great feast in Westminster Hall, at the coronation of King William and Queen Mary [after the flight of James II]. [. . .] The Parliament men had scaffolds and places which took up the one whole side of the Hall. When the King and Queen had dined, the ceremony of the Champion, and other services by tenure were performed. The Parliament men were feasted in the Exchequer chamber, and had each of them a gold medal given them, worth five-and-forty shillings. [. . .]

Much of the splendor of the proceeding was abated by the absence of divers who should have contributed to it, there being but five Bishops, four Judges (no more being yet sworn), and several noblemen and great ladies wanting; the feast, however, was magnificent. The next day the House of Commons went and kissed their new Majesties’ hands in the Banqueting House.

8 July 1689
I sat for my picture to Mr Kneller, for Mr Pepys, late Secretary to the Admiralty, holding my ‘Sylva’ [his book] in my right hand. It was on his long and earnest request, and is placed in his library. Kneller never painted in a more masterly manner.

Buildings destroyed by a storm and a fire
11 July 1689
I dined at Lord Clarendon’s, it being his lady’s wedding day, when about three in the afternoon there was an unusual and violent storm of thunder, rain, and wind; many boats on the Thames were overwhelmed, and such was the impetuosity of the wind as to carry up the waves in pillars and spouts most dreadful to behold, rooting up trees and ruining some houses. The Countess of Sunderland afterward told me that it extended as far as Althorpe at the very time, which is seventy miles from London. It did no harm at Deptford, but at Greenwich it did much mischief.

10 April, 1691
This night, a sudden and terrible fire burned down all the buildings over the stone gallery at Whitehall to the water side, beginning at the apartment of the late Duchess of Portsmouth (which had been pulled down and rebuilt no less than three times to please her), and consuming other lodgings of such lewd creatures, who debauched both King Charles II. and others, and were his destruction.

Great auction of pictures at Whitehall
21 June 1693
I saw a great auction of pictures in the Banqueting house, Whitehall. They had been my Lord Melford’s, now Ambassador from King James at Rome, and engaged to his creditors here. Lord Mulgrave and Sir Edward Seymour came to my house, and desired me to go with them to the sale. Divers more of the great lords, etc., were there, and bought pictures dear enough. There were some very excellent of Vandyke, Rubens, and Bassan. Lord Godolphin bought the picture of the Boys, by Murillo the Spaniard, for 80 guineas, dear enough; my nephew Glanville, the old Earl of Arundel’s head by Rubens, for £20. Growing late, I did not stay till all were sold.

5 October 1694
I went to St Paul’s to see the choir, now finished as to the stone work, and the scaffold struck both without and within, in that part. Some exceptions might perhaps be taken as to the placing columns on pilasters at the east tribunal. As to the rest it is a piece of architecture without reproach. The pulling out the forms, like drawers, from under the stalls, is ingenious. I went also to see the building beginning near St Giles’s, where seven streets make a star from a Doric pillar placed in the middle of a circular area; said to be built by Mr Neale, introducer of the late lotteries, in imitation of those at Venice, now set up here, for himself twice, and now one for the State.

A death, a fire, a storm and a fog
5 March 1695
I went to see the ceremony. Never was so universal a mourning; all the Parliament men had cloaks given them, and four hundred poor women; all the streets hung and the middle of the street boarded and covered with black cloth. There were all the nobility, mayor, aldermen, judges, etc. [Queen Mary II had died of smallpox two months earlier.]

5 January 1698
Whitehall burned, nothing but walls and ruins left. [In fact, Inigo Jones’s Banqueting House survived the fire.]

26 March 1699
After an extraordinary storm, there came up the Thames a whale which was fifty-six feet long. Such, and a larger of the spout kind, was killed there forty years ago (June 1658). That year died Cromwell.

15 November 1699
There happened this week so thick a mist and fog, that people lost their way in the streets, it being so intense that no light of candles, or torches, yielded any (or but very little) direction. I was in it, and in danger. Robberies were committed between the very lights which were fixed between London and Kensington on both sides, and while coaches and travelers were passing. It began about four in the afternoon, and was quite gone by eight, without any wind to disperse it. At the Thames, they beat drums to direct the watermen to make the shore.

The death of Samuel Pepys
26 May 1703
This day died Mr Samuel Pepys, a very worthy, industrious and curious person, none in England exceeding him in knowledge of the navy, in which he had passed through all the most considerable offices. Clerk of the Acts and Secretary of the Admiralty, all which he performed with great integrity. When King James II went out of England, he laid down his office, and would serve no more; but withdrawing himself from all public affairs, he lived at Clapham with his partner, Mr Hewer, formerly his clerk, in a very noble house and sweet place, where he enjoyed the fruit of his labors in great prosperity. He was universally beloved, hospitable, generous, learned in many things, skilled in music, a very great cherisher of learned men of whom he had the conversation. His library and collection of other curiosities were of the most considerable, the models of ships especially.

26-27 November 1703
The effects of the hurricane and tempest of wind, rain, and lightning, through all the nation, especially London, were very dismal. Many houses demolished, and people killed. As to my own losses, the subversion of woods and timber, both ornamental and valuable, through my whole estate, and about my house the woods crowning the garden mount, the growing along the park meadow, the damage to my own dwelling, farms, and outhouses, is almost tragical, not to be paralleled, with anything happening in our age. I am not able to describe it; but submit to the pleasure of Almighty God.

31 October, 1705
I am this day arrived to the 85th year of my age. Lord teach me so to number my days to come, that I may apply them to wisdom!

See also Modesty, prudence, piety, and Virtues and imperfections.

This article is a slightly revised version of one first published on 27 February 2016.

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.