First circumnavigation of the globe

Half a millennium ago this very day, the Portuguese explorer Ferdinand Magellan launched a Spanish expedition that would complete the first ever circumnavigation of the world - it is, thus, one of the most famous exploration voyages in history. Magellan himself, however, was killed in a battle with native Philippines, and four of the expeditions five ships, along with most of their crews, were lost. Antonio Pigafetta, an Italian scholar and explorer, kept a journal of the entire journey. Although the original was lost, four manuscript copies - one in Italian and three in French - survived. Of these, one held by Yale University is considered the most complete and handsomely produced. Digital images of this are freely available online, as are texts of the journal in English.

On 10 August 1519, Magellan set sail with 270 men and five ships - the Armada de Molucca - from Seville, descending the Guadalquivir River to Sanlúcar de Barrameda, at the mouth of the river, where they remained more than five weeks before finally setting sail on 20 September. The main goal of the expedition - largely financed by King Charles I of Spain - was to find a western route to the Moluccas or Spice Islands (as the eastern route was controlled by Portugal under the terms of a treaty). The expedition crossed the Atlantic and discovered the strait that bears Magellan’s name, allowing it to pass South America into the Pacific Ocean (which Magellan named).

The fleet reached the Philippines, where it remained for some while, engaging frequently with the local indigenous people, some of whom were friendly and some not. Magellan was murdered in a battle on 27 April 1521, as were many others. Within a few weeks, the fleet was reduced to two ships, with Juan Sebastián Elcano eventually captaining the Victoria. By November, the expedition had reached the Moluccas - completing its mission. The following month, Elcano sailed for Europe, but the other ship - Trinidad - remained behind for repairs, and was eventually captured by the Portuguese then wrecked in a storm. After numerous other hardships during the three years, not least mutinies, starvation, scurvy, storms, only 18 men and the one ship (the Victoria) completed the return trip to Spain, arriving at Seville on 8 September 1922. Further details are available at Wikipedia.

One of the 18 survivors of the voyage was the Italian Pigafetta (see The Diary Junction) whose detailed journal has become the most important primary source of information about the expedition. He was born into a rich family in Vicenza in northeast Italy, around 1480-1491 (his exact birthdate being unknown). He studied astronomy, geography and cartography before serving the Knights of Rhodes on board their vessels. Until 1519, he accompanied the papal nuncio, Monsignor Francesco Chieregati, to Spain. He was in Seville when he heard of Magellan’s forthcoming expedition and was taken on as a supernumerary with a modest salary. He was wounded in the same skirmish as Magellan was killed, but survived the expedition, and returned to the Republic of Venice where he wrote up his journal, and made handwritten copies for distribution to European monarchs. He died around 1531.

Although the original journal kept by Pigafetta has long since been lost, four hand-written copies of the manuscript have survived into modern times - three in French and one in Italian. At least one of these can be viewed online at the World Digital Library, which says of it: ‘This version, in French, is from the library of Yale University, and is the most complete and handsomely produced of the four surviving manuscripts. It includes 23 beautifully drawn and illuminated maps.’

Published versions of Pigafetta’s journal have appeared over the years in various forms. An English translation (by Lord Stanley of Alderley) was issued by the Hakluyt Society in 1874 - see Internet Archive. But in 1906, a more rigorous edition was published by The Arthur H. Clark Company as Magellan’s Voyage Around the World (also available at Internet Archive). This was translated, edited and extensively annotated by James Alexander Robertson, who says: ‘The present edition first gives the English reader access to a translation of the true text of Pigafetta [. . .] together with the original Italian of Pigafetta [. . .] (the oldest and most complete of the four existing manuscripts).’ For more on the 500th anniversary of the Magellan voyage see The Magellan Project, España Global, VCentenario or The Daily Beast

Meanwhile here is an extract - detailing the death of Magellan - from the 1906 edition in English of Pigafetta’s text.

26-27 April 1521
‘On Friday, April twenty-six, Zula, a chief of the island of Matan [Mactan, and island in the Philippines] sent one of his sons to present two goats to the captain-general, and to say that he would send him all that he had promised, but that he had not been able to send it to him because of the other chief Cilapulapu, who refused to obey the king of Spagnia. He requested the captain to send him only one boatload of men on the next night, so that they might help him and fight against the other chief. The captain-general decided to go thither with three boatloads. We begged him repeatedly not to go, but he, like a good shepherd, refused to abandon his flock. At midnight, sixty men of us set out armed with corselets and helmets, together with the Christian king, the prince, some of the chief men, and twenty or thirty balanguais. We reached Matan three hours before dawn. The captain did not wish to fight then, but sent a message to the natives by the Moro to the effect that if they would obey the king of Spagnia, recognize the Christian king as their sovereign, and pay us our tribute, he would be their friend; but that if they wished otherwise, they should wait to see how our lances wounded. They replied that if we had lances they had lances of bamboo and stakes hardened with fire. [They asked us] not to proceed to attack them at once, but to wait until morning, so that they might have more men. They said that in order to induce us to go in search of them; for they had dug certain pitholes between the houses in order that we might fall into them. When morning came forty-nine of us leaped into the water up to our thighs, and walked through water for more than two crossbow flights before we could reach the shore. The boats could not approach nearer because of certain rocks in the water. The other eleven men remained behind to guard the boats. When we reached land, those men had formed in three divisions to the number of more than one thousand five hundred persons. When they saw us, they charged down upon us with exceeding loud cries, two divisions on our flanks and the other on our front. When the captain saw that, he formed us into two divisions, and thus did we begin to fight. The musketeers and crossbowmen shot from a distance for about a half-hour, but uselessly; for the shots only passed through the shields which were made of thin wood and the arms [of the bearers]. The captain cried to them, “Cease firing! cease firing!” but his order was not at all heeded. When the natives saw that we were shooting our muskets to no purpose, crying out they determined to stand firm, but they redoubled their shouts. When our muskets were discharged, the natives would never stand still, but leaped hither and thither, covering themselves with their shields. They shot so many arrows at us and hurled so many bamboo spears (some of them tipped with iron) at the captain-general, besides pointed stakes hardened with fire, stones, and mud, that we could scarcely defend ourselves. Seeing that, the captain-general sent some men to burn their houses in order to terrify them. When they saw their houses burning, they were roused to greater fury. Two of our men were killed near the houses, while we burned twenty or thirty houses. So many of them charged down upon us that they shot the captain through the right leg with a poisoned arrow. On that account, he ordered us to retire slowly, but the men took to flight, except six or eight of us who remained with the captain. The natives shot only at our legs, for the latter were bare; and so many were the spears and stones that they hurled at us, that we could offer no resistance. The mortars in the boats could not aid us as they were too far away. So we continued to retire for more than a good crossbow flight from the shore always fighting up to our knees in the water. The natives continued to pursue us, and picking up the same spear four or six times, hurled it at us again and again. Recognizing the captain, so many turned upon him that they knocked his helmet off his head twice, but he always stood firmly like a good knight, together with some others. Thus did we fight for more than one hour, refusing to retire farther. An Indian hurled a bamboo spear into the captain’s face, but the latter immediately killed him with his lance, which he left in the Indian’s body. Then, trying to lay hand on sword, he could draw it out but halfway, because he had been wounded in the arm with a bamboo spear. When the natives saw that, they all hurled themselves upon him. One of them wounded him on the left leg with a large cutlass, which resembles a scimitar, only being larger. That caused the captain to fall face downward, when immediately they rushed upon him with iron and bamboo spears and with their cutlasses, until they killed our mirror, our light, our comfort, and our true guide. When they wounded him, he turned back many times to see whether we were all in the boats. Thereupon, beholding him dead, we, wounded, retreated, as best we could, to the boats, which were already pulling off. The Christian king would have aided us, but the captain charged him before we landed, not to leave his balanghai, but to stay to see how we fought. When the king learned that the captain was dead, he wept. Had it not been for that unfortunate captain, not a single one of us would have been saved in the boats, for while he was fighting the others retired to the boats. I hope through [the efforts of] your most illustrious Lordship that the fame of so noble a captain will not become effaced in our times. Among the other virtues which he possessed, he was more constant than ever any one else in the greatest of adversity. He endured hunger better than all the others, and more accurately than any man in the world did he understand sea charts and navigation. And that this was the truth was seen openly, for no other had had so much natural talent nor the boldness to learn how to circumnavigate the world, as he had almost done. That battle was fought on Saturday, April twenty-seven, 1521. The captain desired to fight on Saturday, because it was the day especially holy to him. Eight of our men were killed with him in that battle, and four Indians, who had become Christians and who had come afterward to aid us were killed by the mortars of the boats. Of the enemy, only fifteen were killed, while many of us were wounded.

In the afternoon the Christian king sent a message with our consent to the people of Matan, to the effect that if they would give us the captain and the other men who had been killed, we would give them as much merchandise as they wished. They answered that they would not give up such a man, as we imagined [they would do], and that they would not give him for all the riches in the world, but that they intended to keep him as a memorial.’

Purpose into my life

‘She put purpose into my life - the life of a spoiled bachelor congressman who was also a successful trial lawyer and a hero of the last war who tended to be too carefree and frivolous. In 11 years I jumped from congressman to President.’ This is Ferdinand Marcos, the president of the Philippines, writing in a diary about his wife, Imelda. Marcos was soon to introduce martial law, and the couple’s increasingly lavish lifestyle would also lead to them both being reviled. Although Marcos died in exile 30 years ago, Imelda returned to the Philippines eventually, continued a political career, and is celebrating her 90th birthday today.

Imelda Remedios Visitacion Romualdez was born on 2 July 1929 in Manila, Philippines. She was the oldest child of her father, a lawyer, and her mother, a dressmaker, though she had older siblings by her father’s earlier marriage. Her mother died when she was nine, and her father moved the family back to his own home city of Tacloban in the province of Leyte. She attended Holy Infant School from 1938 to 1944. She was crowned a local beauty queen when aged around 18. While studying at the Divine Word University, also in Tacloban, she taught at a local Chinese high school. She also enrolled for a while at a college of music. In the early 1950s, Imelda moved to Manila to live with a cousin who was a politician. She worked as a sales girl before her relatives found her a job at the Central Bank. She also came joint first in a Manila beauty contest, and continued singing lessons.

In 1954, Imelda met Ferdinand Marcos, a member of the House of Representatives, and 11 days later they were married in a small civil ceremony. Over the next decade or so, they had three children, and established themselves as one of the country’s most important political couples. In 1965, Ferdinand Marcos was elected president, and glamorous Imelda was likened to John Kennedy’s wife Jacqueline. However, the couple’s popularity started to wane as Marcos, in his second term, declared martial law, and Imelda’s spending on lavish projects seemed out of control. Chief among their critics was opposition leader Benigno Aquino, Jr, an old friend of Imelda’s. He was imprisoned, and then exiled to the US. Despite warnings from Imelda, he risked a return to the Philippines in 1983 but was assassinated by government forces at Manila airport.

When an election was called in 1986, opposition to Marcos rallied around Aquino’s widow, Corazon. Although Marcos claimed victory in the elections, the military withdrew its support from him when evidence of massive voting fraud emerged. The Marcos couple fled to Hawaii, and an extraordinary collection of shoes left behind by Imelda came to symbolise the excesses and corruption of the Marcos regime. Marcos died in 1989, and Imelda was subject to various ongoing embezzlement and graft charges (in the US and Philippines). However, she eventually made a return to her home country, where she unsuccessfully campaigned for president. She did win a place in Congress between 1995 and 1998, and was again elected to congress in 2010 and 2013. In 2018, she was convicted of seven counts of graft and sentence to 42 years in prison, though it is considered unlikely she will see any jail time (given her age, and the appeal processes). Further information is available from Encyclopaedia Britannica, Wikipedia, Biography.com, The New York Times.

Although I can find no evidence that Imelda Marcos kept a diary, her husband certainly did, from the beginning of 1970. His manuscript diaries appear to have been left behind when the Marcos couple went into exile, and were discovered at the Malacañang Palace. They then found their way, mysteriously it seems, into the hands of the American journalist William C. Rempel, who then based a book on them: Delusions of a Dictator: the mind of Marcos as revealed in his secret diaries (Little, Brown, 1993).

In a 2013 article for Rappler, Rempel says this: ‘It was nearly 25 years ago that I got my first look at the diary of Ferdinand Marcos. I was an investigative reporter with the Los Angeles Times when about 3,000 pages of diary and other presidential papers were delivered to me in instalments - on street corners, at a restaurant, in the lobby of an office building - all very cloak-and-dagger. The documents were a journalist’s gold mine. I found bribery receipts and coded accounting reports recording official corruption. There were poems and love notes to First Lady Imelda and the Marcos children interspersed among Ferdinand’s plans for repression and dictatorship. The diary itself contained the president’s private musings about power and his messianic calling to “save the Philippines” from an exaggerated threat of communist insurgency. Here, too, was compelling evidence of Marcos plots against political rivals, the press, and anyone who dared to criticize his administration. But what caught me most by surprise were the lies - blatant, bald-faced, and occasionally comical. It turns out that while Ferdinand Marcos was lying to the world and to the Philippine people, he was also lying to his own diary.’

Rempel maintains his own website, but there is very little activity on it, nor is there any further information about the diaries. The celebrated Filipino historian Ambeth Raymundo Ocampo is said to be editing the diaries for publication, and he has spoken in public about them on several occasions. A selection of extracts from Marcos’s diary can be found online at the Inquirer.net; and even more can be found at The Philippine Diary Project. The diary extracts provided by The Philippine Diary Project come from ‘xeroxed copies of the diaries’ that were ‘written in longhand, more often than not, on official stationery.’ Indeed, alongside the transcribed diary extracts, it includes images of the diary pages. The following extracts, all mentioning Imelda, come from The Philippine Diary Project, except for those dated 2 and 12 June 1972 which I’ve taken from Inquirer.net.

13 January 1970
‘Imelda has a mass in the right breast and worries us because the doctors say that while there has been no change, an operation to remove it and to find out if it is malignant may be necessary.

I am suffering from pain in the right groin after golf. I hope it is not hernia. I see the doctor tomorrow.

And we were on a project to have another baby, a boy if possible. Massive injections of hormones for Imelda is necessary if we are to have a baby and this is not good for her growth in the breast which might develop into something serious with these hormones.’

19 January 1970
‘Imelda is strong enough to play host to her crowd nightly. We have just eaten Chinese lugao and lumpia brought in by Joe and Betty Campos. I liked most the bajo or powdered beef tapa and the seeweed for the lumpia. It is now 11:00 PM. Last night we went to bed at 11:30 PM. Read De Gaulle’s war memoirs up to 1:30 P.M. after writing my diary.

I must soon write my war memoirs while the events are still fresh in my mind.’

2 June 1972
‘Imelda is suffering from pain and from a deep sense of loss and sorrow for the abortion about which I have told her. She feels inadequate and has been crying her eyes out.

I have shed no tears for my unborn child, but I have vowed that I shall cure this sick society that has brought about the anguish of my wife, which caused the abortion. For the media has been vicious - it has condemned for a crime not charged, foisted gossip as truth and disregarded the rights of fair and impartial trial.

And this sick man who has committed perjury, libel and bribery has done me at least one favor. He has opened my eyes to this illness of our society that may yet destroy it. And my duty and mission is now to cure that illness.’

12 June 1972
‘Imelda and I have been reminiscing in bed - the long tortuous road from Congress to the presidency, the sacrifices, her tears, pain and hard work that went into our struggle for power.

She put purpose into my life - the life of a spoiled bachelor congressman who was also a successful trial lawyer and a hero of the last war who tended to be too carefree and frivolous.

In 11 years I jumped from congressman to President.’

17 September 1972
‘We escaped the loneliness of the palace for this old Antillan house now known as Ang Maharlika, the State Guest House several blocks from the palace. It has been restored beautifully by Imelda and is a symbol of Philippine culture in the last century. Almost all our antique valuables have been transferred here.

The departure of our children has made the palace a ghostly unbearable place.’

21 September 1972
‘Delayed by the hurried visit of Joe Aspiras and Meling Barbero who came from the Northern bloc of congressmen and senators who want to know if there is going to be Martial Law in 48 hours as predicted by Ninoy Aquino.

Of course Imelda and I denied it.’

22 September 1972
‘Sec. Juan Ponce Enrile was ambushed near Wack-Wack at about 8:00 pm tonight. It was a good thing he was riding in his security car as a protective measure. His first car which he usually uses was the one riddled by bullets from a car parked in ambush.

He is now at his DND office. I have advised him to stay there.

And I have doubled the security of Imelda in the Nayon Pilipino where she is giving dinner to the UPI and AP as well as other wire services.

This makes the martial law proclamation a necessity.

Imelda arrived at 11:35 PM in my Electra bullet proof car to be told that Johnny had been ambushed, it is all over the radio.

Congress is not adjourning tonight as the conference committee on the Tariff and Customs Code could not agree on a common version. They adjourn tomorrow.

I conferred with Speaker Villareal, Roces, Yñiguez and Barbero who are going to Moscow and they are ready to leave on Sunday. So they are decided to finish the session same.

Senate President Gil Puyat insists that the next special session be early January.

And they will not be able to pass the urgent bills like the rehabilitation bill.’

23 September 1972
‘Things have moved according to plan although out of the total 200 target personalities in the plan only 52 have been arrested, including the three senators, Aquino, Diokno and Mitra and Chino Roces and Teddy Locsin.

At 7:15 PM I finally appeared on a nationwide TV and Radio broadcast to announce the proclamation of martial law, the general orders and instructions.

I place them in Envelope XXXV-C

I was supposed to broadcast at 12:00AM but technical difficulties prevented it. We had closed all TV stations. We had to clear KBS which broadcast it live. VOP and PBS broadcast it by radio nationwide.

The broadcast turned out rather well and Mons. Gaviola as well as the [illegible] friends liked it. But my most exacting critic, Imelda, found it impressing. I watched the replay at 9:00 PM.’

Many little matters

Today marks the 250th anniversary of the birth of David Elisha Davy, an antiquarian who spent the most part of his life travelling around the English county of Suffolk in order to collect detailed information on the county’s history. Although he never wrote that history, the collection of his manuscripts in the British Library today constitute a unique resource of materials for modern Suffolk historians. More than a century after his death, a pocket diary he kept while on his travels was found in a second hand bookshop. In it, Davy wrote about how his little book should be a ‘Companion in my Excursions’ so that ‘many little matters will then be preserved’.

Davy was born on 16 June 1769 the son of a farmer in Suffolk. His uncle, Eleazar Davy of Yoxford, sheriff of the county in 1770, who had no children of his own, paid for his education. He was schooled at Bungay grammar, and then at Yoxford under Samuel Forster. He matriculated from Pembroke College, Cambridge in 1785, graduated in 1790, and was ordained deacon in 1792. Although he worked for a while as a curate, he abandoned the church; in 1803, on the death of his uncle, he took over his estates, based at Yoxford, borrowing money to hold onto the debt-laden properties. He served as a local magistrate and as deputy lieutenant.

However, around 1805, Davy took up what would become his life’s work, gathering an immense collection of antiquarian and genealogical details for a history of Suffolk. Together with his friend Henry Jermyn, he painstakingly toured the country, taking notes and issuing questionnaires. Mounting debts led him to place his estate in the hands of a bank, thereafter he decamped from Yoxford to a friend’s house at Ufford, near Woodbridge. When Jermyn died in 1820, Davy took up with the Revd John Wareyn Darby as companion.

Although Davy published a few historical works anonymously, he never actually published a history of Suffolk. Nevertheless, it is the large collection (131 manuscript volumes) of information he amassed that remains his abiding legacy. He died in 1851, not having married; almost all of his manuscripts (and much correspondence) were soon to find their way to the British Museum (along with those written by Jermyn which had been given to the museum in 1830). There is not much further information about Davy online, other than at Wikipedia and the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (log-in required).

Davy also left behind a diary. This was found in 1979 by John Blatchly, headmaster of Ipswich School and a noted Suffolk historian, in a secondhand bookshop. He published an article on the diary in the Proceedings of the Suffolk Institute of Arcaeology and History in 1981 (which can be read online). The following year the diary was published, as edited by Blatchly for the Suffolk Records Society, with the title A Journal of Excursions Through the County of Suffolk, 1823–1844 (The Boydell Press). In his introduction, Blatchly explains more about the diary:

‘My discovery of Davy’s Journal on a North Norfolk bookseller’s shelves in October 1979 was, I like to think, providential. Its beginning coincides with that of its author’s exile from his inherited estate and home, The Grove, Yoxford. He had not kept a diary during the years of his travels with Henry Jermyn of Sibton, and the preface written in 1823 tells of a conscious decision that this little book should be ‘Companion in my Excursions’ so that ‘many little matters will then be preserved’ which would not otherwise find a place in his Collections. And so it accompanied him for more than 4,000 miles. Davy was not one to allow a personal preference or opinion to intruded into his formal work but the Journal is quite different; private feelings are not excluded and we are permitted more than a glimpse of a man who, after his resignation from public office, lived very privately. In reading the Journal we are far from feeling that we are trespassing, but we do gain a revealing insight into his methods of work and travel, his family and friendship, and the reception he enjoyed from acquaintances. We learn much, too, about the temperament and madders of this gentleman antiquary whose work should and may still earn him greater fame than hitherto; his reticence only is to blame for any neglect hitherto.’

And here is a sample of the kind of daily entries Davy made into his pocket diary.

29 March 1823
‘Barlee sent me in his gig to Pakefield Church, 6 Miles. I there took some additional Notes both in the church, & churchyard, copying the Verses in the latter, & rubbing off the two brasses still remaining in the former. I had not time to examine the Registers; but compleated the church notes for this Parish.’
 
8 April 1823
‘Went from Wrentham by the Mail Coach to Kirkley, where I took full church notes, not forgetting to examine the church chest, which I found the key of. Did not meet with the Registers, & had not time to enquire after them.

Went again into Pakefield Church to compleat rubbing off the brass of J. Bowff, which I had before left incompleat: So that I shall not have occasion to visit this church again.

Walked back to Wrentham. 7 Miles.’

10 April 1823
‘Walked from Wrentham to Brampton Church 4 Miles. Went into the church, took some few notes, before omitted, & from the head stones in the churchyard:

Returned by Uggeshall 1 1/2 Mile, to look again at the inscription on the Steeple, & to see whether I had copied it correctly. To Wrentham 3 Miles.’

17 April 1823
‘Went from Wrentham by the Mail Coach to Kirkley, 6 Miles; walked from thence by Mutford Bridge to Oulton Church, 3 Miles; Took full notes there, both inside & out, & rubbed off the three brasses in the Chancel, in completing which I was near 5 hours employed. Had not time to enquire after the Registers & Terrier. In my way through the Village of Oulton, I observed on a low building on the left hand side of the way a shield of Arms cut in stone, but they seem to have been lately coloured over with black & white, & I took no account of them. These must be examined & enquired into, when I go after the Registers & Terrier. They probably belong to some School or
Almshouse.

Walked back to Wrentham, 8 Miles.’

18 April 1823
‘Went in Barlee’s gig with my sister to Southwold, & took the opportunity of being there, to copy the Inscriptions on the Head stones in the churchyard. I had intended to go into the church to take some further notes there, & to rub off again the brass there, that which I now have, been very imperfect, but I had not time.’
 
17 May 1823
‘Having occasion to see Mr. Robinson, I walked to his new House on the Heath, which he has lately built in a most singular situation. It stands in Dunwich, on the bare heath, about a quarter of a Mile from the Sea, & on so bad a Soil & so bleak a spot, that none of the trees, of which he had planted many, have hitherto grown. From thence I went to Dunwich, & took a few notes, all that were necessary, of the remains of All Sts. Church there. Distance there & back 8 Miles.’

22 September 1827
‘At the Parsonage at Hoxne. Walked to Syleham Church, to get the brasses there, & to pick up any other small matters I might have left at my former visit, & what might have been placed there since.

From Syleham Church walked to Brockdish Church, to see whether there was any thing in the churchyard which might be useful. I did not go into the church. From Brockdish, I walked on to Thorp Abbot’s; went into the church there, but found not a single memorial within, nor anything in my way without the church. Returned to Hoxne by the Water Mill.’

24 September 1827
‘Doughty drove me to Wingfield Church, where I found a great treat; & having the whole morning to myself, I employed it in the church, from I obtained full notes.

I afterwards walked to the Castle, which I had not seen years for more than 30 years; but had only time to reconnoitre the outsid

The Incumbent of Wingfield resides at Hoxne & has the Registers with him there. I was therefore obliged to postpone the examination of them.’

25 September 1827
‘Went, with Doughty to Denham, where I got some few further notes from the church there. I afterwards borrowed my friend’s gig, & went to Horham & Redlingfield Churches, to reexamine & pick up what I could there. I was rather surprized to find all the by roads in that neighbourhood so good.’

14 July 1831
‘I went by the Mail this morning to Little Glemham, having agreed to meet Darby there to proceed with him on to Iken & Snape. Arriving at Glemham before 7 o’clock, I had a good opportunity of visiting the church, which I had not seen for more than 20 years: besides I was very anxious to get impressions of the 3 brasses, in the Dormitory, upon the Glemhams. These I obtained, together with such other notes as I found, beyond my former ones. I was more than 2 hours in doing all this, & had then to wait half an hour for my companion, who at last arrived, when we proceeded on thro’ Blaxhall, where we stopped opposite to the Ship Public house there to look at a coat of arms carved on Oak, & fixed to the front of a cottage: these were formerly in Sudborn Hall; it was bought by the present owner abt. 30 years ago at an auction in the parish; & contains the arms & quarterings of Sr. Michael Stanhope Knt. a former owner of the Hall. We found the road from hence to Iken very heavy & bad, & were obliged to walk a good part of the way, & when we got to Iken, had some distance to go to obtain the key of the church, for which we were ill repaid, for the church contains not a single inscription, or monumental memorial of any kind: we found a few inscriptions in the churchyard: the building stands in a singular situation; on an elevated bank by the side of the river, far away from any house, & in the most inconvenient position for the population, which fortunately is but small.’

7 July 1833
‘Being resident for a few days at Aldeburgh, I of course paid a visit to the church, where I found several new monuments &c. as well within as without. In the churchyard I found considerable gleanings: the names on the head stones I had not before taken.’

State of mental anguish

‘We are all in a state of mental anguish. We feel we are forgotten by everyone, abandoned to our own resources and at the mercy of this man. Is it possible that no one will raise a finger to save the Imperial family? Where are those who have remained loyal to the Czar? Why do they delay?’ This is from the diary of Pierre Gilliard, born 140 years ago today, who was tutor to the children of the last Russian emperor, Nicholas II. Nicholas, his wife, and their children would all be murdered a couple of months later. Gilliard’s diary is considered by some to be the ‘best, first-hand account of the life of the last Imperial family’.

Gilliard was born on 16 May 1879 in Fiez, Switzerland, near the border with France. Little seems to be known of his early life, but he became a teacher and tutor of the French language. In 1904, he travelled to Russia to work for the family of Duke George of Leuchtenberg, who was related to the royal family. By the following year, he had been engaged as tutor for the elder children of Tsar Nicholas II - the Grand Duchesses Olga and Tatiana Nikolaevna. Having grown fond of the family, he stayed with them after the revolution in 1917 during their exile to Siberia. However, he was prevented from continuing to do so when they were again moved, to Ekaterinburg, in May that year. After the infamous murders, he remained in Siberia until the White Army arrived, and for a further three years, assisting Nikolai Sokolov with his investigations of the murders.

In 1919, Gilliard married Aleksandra Tegleva who had served as nanny to the Tsar’s youngest daughter, Grand Duchess Anastasia. In 1920, he returned to Switzerland where he became a French professor at the University of Lausanne. In the mid-1920s, he and his wife became involved in assessing - and ultimately rejecting - a claim by Anna Anderson that she was the Grand Duchess Anastasia (her burial place having remained unknown during the Communist era). Gilliard was awarded the French Legion of Honor. He suffered a severe car accident in 1958, from which he never fully recovered, and he died in 1962. A little further information is available Wikipedia, Alexander Palace, or History of Royal Women.

Gilliard is remembered today because of his involvement in refuting Anderson’s claim but also because he kept a diary of the hugely eventful time he spent with the Russian royal family. Initially published in French, it was translated into English (F. Appleby Holt) and published in 1921 by Hutchinson & Co as Thirteen Years at the Russian Court - A Personal Record of the Last Years and Death of the Car Nicholas II and his Family. This is freely available online at Internet Archive and at the Alexander Palace website. The Tsar and the Tsarina both also kept diaries, right up until their last days, which have also been published - see Hope remains above all and Death of the Romanovs respectively.

Bob Atchison on the Alexander Palace website says this: ‘The best, first-hand account of the life of the last Imperial family of Russia was written by Pierre Gilliard, French tutor to the Tsar’s children. He wrote “Thirteen Years at the Russian Court” to refute the the misleading and false books he discovered upon his return to Western Europe. He criticized the “absurdities and falsehoods” he found that were accepted as truths and endeavored to put things right by publishing this book. His goal was to “to bring Nicholas II and his family back to life.” Since this book was written the opening of Soviet archives has expanded our understanding of the facts surrounding [the] murder of the Romanovs in Ekaterinburg. For example, Pierre[’s] secret and heroic efforts in smuggling messages, money and jewels in and out on behalf of the family at great risk to his own safety has been revealed.’ Here are several extracts from Gilliard’s diary.

25 January 1918
‘Tatiana Nicolaievna’s birthday. Te Deum in the house. Fine winter’s day; sunshine; 15° Réaumur. Went on building the snow mountain as usual. The soldiers of the guard came to help us.’

2 February 1918
‘23° R. below zero. Prince Dolgorouky and I watered the snow mountain. We carried thirty buckets of water. It was so cold that the water froze on the way from the kitchen tap to the mountain. Our buckets and the snow mountain “steamed.” To-morrow the children can begin tobogganing.’

4 February 1918
‘The thermometer is said to have dropped last night below 30° Reaumur (37° Centigrade). Terrible wind. The Grand-Duchesses’ bedroom is a real ice-house.’

8 February 1918
‘The soldiers’ committee has to-day decided to replace Pankratof by a Bolshevik commissary from Moscow. Things are going from bad to worse. It appears that there is no longer a state of war between Soviet Russia and Germany, Austria, and Bulgaria. The army is to be disbanded, but Lenin and Trotsky have not yet signed the peace.’

13 February 1918
‘The Czar tells me that the demobilisation of the army has begun, several classes having already been disbanded. All the old soldiers (the most friendly) are to leave us. The Czar seems very depressed at this prospect; the change may have disastrous results for us.’

25 February 1918
‘Colonel Kobylinsky has received a telegram informing him that, from March 1st, “Nicholas Romanoff and his family must be put on soldiers’ rations and that each member of the family will receive 600 roubles per month drawn from the interest of their personal estate.” Hitherto their expenses have been paid by the state. As the family consists of seven persons, the whole household will have to be run on 4,200 roubles a month.’

5 March 1918
‘Yesterday the soldiers, with a hang-dog look (for they felt it was a mean task), began to destroy the snow mountain with picks. The children are disconsolate.’
 
15 March 1918
‘The townspeople, hearing of our situation, find various ways of sending us eggs, sweetmeats, and delicacies.’

17 March 1918
‘To-day is Carnival Sunday. Everyone is merry. The sledges pass to and fro under our windows; sound of bells, mouth-organs, and singing. . . The children wistfully watch the fun. They have begun to grow bored and find their captivity irksome. They walk round the courtyard, fenced in by its high paling through which they can see nothing. Since the destruction of their snow mountain their only distraction is sawing and cutting wood.

The arrogance of the soldiers is inconceivable; those who have left have been replaced by a pack of blackguardly-looking young men.

In spite of the daily increase of their sufferings, Their Majesties still cherish hope that among their loyal friends some may be found to attempt their release. Never was the situation more favourable for escape, for there is as yet no representative of the Bolshevik Government at Tobolsk. With the complicity of Colonel Kobylinsky, already on our side, it would be easy to trick the insolent but careless vigilance of our guards. All that is required is the organised and resolute efforts of a few bold spirits outside. We have repeatedly urged upon the Czar the necessity of being prepared for any turn of events. He insists on two conditions which greatly complicate matters: he will not hear of the family being separated or leaving Russian territory.

One day the Czarina said to me in this connection: “I wouldn’t leave Russia on any consideration, for it seems to me that to go abroad would be to break our last link with the past, which would then be dead for ever.” ’

10 April 1918
A “full sitting” of our guard, at which the Bolshevik commissary reveals the extent of his powers. He has the right to have anyone opposing his orders shot within twenty-four hours and without trial. The soldiers let him enter the house.’

15 April 1918
‘Alexis Nicolaivitch in great pain yesterday and to-day. It is one of his severe attacks of haemophilia.’

24 April 1918
‘We are all in a state of mental anguish. We feel we are forgotten by everyone, abandoned to our own resources and at the mercy of this man. Is it possible that no one will raise a finger to save the Imperial family? Where are those who have remained loyal to the Czar? Why do they delay?’

25 April 1918
‘Shortly before three o’clock, as I was going along the passage, I met two servants sobbing. They told me that Yakovlef has come to tell the Czar that he is taking him away. What can be happening? I dare not go up without being summoned, and went back to my room. Almost immediately Tatiana Nicolaievna knocked at my door. She was in tears, and told me Her Majesty was asking for me. I followed her. The Czarina was alone, greatly upset. She confirmed what I had heard, that Yakovlef has been sent from Moscow to take the Czar away and is to leave to-night.

29 April 1918
‘The children have received a letter from the Czarina from Tioumen The journey has been very trying. Horses up to their chests in water crossing the rivers. Wheels broken several times.’

3 May 1918
‘Colonel Kobylinsky has received a telegram saying that the travellers have been detained at Ekaterinburg. What has happened?’

The League is the solution

‘Today may be epoch marking in the history of the World. The Peace Conference opened its sessions in Paris with the representatives of the civilized world assembled around the board. It is announced there that the League of Nations will be one of the first - the first - number in the order of business.’ So wrote Breckinridge Long, an American civil servant, on 18 January 1919. A week later - exactly a century ago today - the Conference formally agreed to set up the new international organisation.

A history of the League of Nations can be found at the website of United Nations Office at Geneva. It says the League was ‘born with the will of the victors of the First World War to avoid a repeat of a devastating war’, and that its objective was ‘to maintain universal peace within the framework of the fundamental principles of the Pact accepted by its Members - to develop cooperation among nations and to guarantee them peace and security’.

Wikipedia, of course, also has an article on the League. It explains that even while the First World War was still underway a number of governments and groups had already started developing plans to change the way international relations were carried out. The idea for the League itself appears to have originated with the British Foreign Secretary Edward Grey, but was taken up by US President Woodrow Wilson. The Paris Peace Conference, convened to build a lasting peace, approved a proposal for the creation of a League of Nations on 25 January 1919; and it came into formal existence a year later on 10 January 1920 (holding its first assembly - see photo - the same month).

In 1919, Breckinridge Long, an American civil servant, was working for the US state department, though he would soon leave it to campaign (unsuccessfully) to become a senator.  Later, in 1933, he would be appointed ambassador to Italy by his friend Franklin Delano Roosevelt). He is largely remembered, Wikipedia says, for obstructing - not always legitimately - the inflow of refugees during the Second World War, a policy for which he was subsequently criticised and demoted. A PBS profile on the man says this: ‘Ultimately, the effect of the immigration policies set by Long’s department was that, during American involvement in the war, 90 percent of the quota places available to immigrants from countries under German and Italian control were never filled. If they had been, an additional 190,000 people could have escaped the atrocities being committed by the Nazis.’

In 1966 University of Nebraska Press published a selection of his diary entries from 1939-1944 - The War Diary of Breckinridge Long. Long’s papers are archived at the Library of Congress, and a further unpublished selection of his diary entries, from much earlier, about the Paris Peace Conference, have been made available online thanks to Charles T. Evans, Professor of History at Northern Virginia Community College. Here are a couple of them.

18 January 1919
‘Today may be epoch marking in the history of the World. The Peace Conference opened its sessions in Paris with the representatives of the civilized world assembled around the board. It is announced there that the League of Nations will be one of the first - the first - number in the order of business. President Wilson has won the first of his fights, and will no doubt prevail in establishing a League. It is necessary to the successful work of the Congress that the Nations represented should be in accord. How then could they be bound except by a League? Reverting to the Democratic platform of 1916 it is evident the President had in mind early in 1916 the general terms of peace and the evolution of a League of Nations. He has worked skillfully toward that object ever since.’

26 January 1919
‘The League of Nations. I think I see so clearly the President’s purpose in trying to establish it. The allied and associated governments have been held together by the danger of the common enemy. Now that has ceased to be a binding force. The centripedal forces are exchanged for centrifugal ones. Each nation, except us, has special and in many cases conflicting claims. They are impossible of settlement in detail by the present Conference because it will take too long. It must soon (in 2 or 3 months) adjourn. People are tired of war. They all want peace proclaimed. That means public opinion will soon force it to sign a peace and adjourn. That peace can in the nature of things be only a settlement of 1) The guilt of Germany, including the official persons; 2) The indemnities Germany & Austria must pay and the reparation they shall make; 3) General principles each nation can and will subscribe to as fundamental doctrines, the specific applications of which to certain cases will be determined by sub-committees which will report their findings and recommendations to the next succeeding body, the World Congress, which will receive them and determine the rights, and which will be the League of Nations in Congress assembled. It will be the authoritative body which will work out the details of the matters now before the Peace Conference. He sees the necessity of committing each nation to the general principles but first of having their agreement to the League and their concurrent acceptance of the condition that they shall submit all their differences to the court of last resort. Once the League is subscribed to, they are bound. Without that obligation they might not be able to agree to terms of Peace; one would be trading its desires and claims for the support of another; combinations, of which special interests of each of the combining parties would be the cement, would jeopardize the successful conclusion of all rights on a just basis. The League, once created, is the solution - & is the prime consideration. He sees it. His critics, who demand ‘peace first & then let’s consider the League’ do not see there can be no peace without it - at least no reasonable prospect of an immediate and proper peace without it.’

For another story connecting diaries and the League of Nations, but this time its latter days, see Sean Lester and the League.

This article is a revised version of one first published 10 years ago on 25 January 2009.

The father of anarchism

Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, considered by some to be the father of anarchism, was born 210 years ago today. He came from humble, rural origins, was largely self-taught, but nevertheless became one of the ideology’s most influential theorists. Intriguingly, although he kept a diary for the last 20 years of his life, it has never been edited or published, and only a few extracts are available in English - thanks to a biography by the Canadian writer George Woodcock.

Proudhon was born in Besançon, France, on 15 January 1809, the son of a poor tavern keeper. He lacked any early schooling, and was set to work as a cowherd, and in the tavern. Later, funds were found to send him to Besançon school for a while, when they ran out he was apprenticed to a printer. A thirst for learning, though, led him on to self-study at the local library, not least Latin. He went to work at the Gauthier press, becoming a proofreader. As such, his interest in politics was sparked by meeting the utopian socialist Charles Fourier, also from Besançon, whose book was being prepared for publication. Similarly, he also became friends with Gustave Fallot, a scholar from Montebéliard.

In 1830, Proudhon became certified as a journeyman compositor, but work was hard to come by. He spent a while in Paris, at the behest of Fallot, where he mingled with Fallot’s learned friends. When a cholera epidemic hit the capital, he returned to Besançon. After a printing venture failed, he decided to pursue a scholarly career, and subsequently won a bursary from the Academy of Besançon allowing him to return to study in Paris. In 1840, he published his first work Qu’est-ce que la propriété? (What Is Property?). In 1943, he moved to Lyon to work for a water transport company, and there became involved with a secret society of weavers called The Mutualists. He adopted some of their views on how associations of workers could bring about change, and later adopted the term Mutualism for his own form anarchism. In 1846, he published his most important work: Système des contradictions économiques ou philosophie de la misère (The System of Economic Contradictions, or The Philosophy of Poverty), in which he opposed some of the ideas of Karl Marx.

In early 1848, Proudhon travelled to Paris, where he edited anarchist periodicals and participated in the February uprising. He was elected to the Constituent Assembly of the Second Republic in June that year, but confined himself mainly to opposing the emergence of authoritarian tendencies. He tried to set up a people’s bank, but was imprisoned in 1849 for criticising the president, Charles-Louis Napoléon Bonaparte (later Napoleon III). The terms of his imprisonment were light, and he still managed to marry, have a first child, continue editing his papers, and even author two more books: Confessions d’un révolutionnaire (1849) and Idée générale de la révolution au XIXe siècle (1851).

Proudhon was released in 1852, but found his professional life hampered by the imperial police. His three volume De la justice dans la Révolution et dans l’église was seized, and he fled to Belgium. He was sentenced to prison in absentia, and remained in exile until 1862. Returning to Paris, he was again gaining influence among Paris craftsmen, and was among the founders of First International (or International Workingmen’s Association) aiming to unite a wide range of left-wing groups. He died in 1865. Wikipedia provides this summary assessment: ‘He was the first person to declare himself an anarchist, using that term and is widely regarded as one of the ideology’s most influential theorists. Proudhon is even considered by many to be the “father of anarchism” ’. Further biographical information is also available at Encyclopaedia Britannica, Anarchy Archives, Encyclopedia of Marxism or Spartacus Educational.

Proudhon was a committed diarist. He left behind 11 manuscript diaries covering the years from 1843 to 1964. They have never been edited or published (apart from a few extracts in the French periodical La Grande Revue in 1908). However, the Canadian writer and ‘anarchist thinker’, George Woodcock, used the diaries extensively in his 1956 work Pierre-Joseph Proudhon: a biography (Black Rose Books). This ran to a second and third edition (1987); the latter is freely available to view at Libcom.org (‘a resource for all people who wish to fight to improve their lives, their communities and their working conditions’ - i.e. anarchist communism).

Woodcock embedded the diary extracts into his prose, and so mostly they are undated. I’ve chosen the following extracts from the biography to provide examples of Proudhon’s diaries (which I’ve italicised).

‘Nothing is known about his first love beyond the references he himself makes, and these are inexplicit. “I know today,” he was to write in his diary for 1846, “what at twenty made my spirit so full, so loving, so enraptured: what made women seem to me so angelic, so divine; what in my dreams of love (wherein faith in God, in the immortal soul, in religious practice, mingled and combined with faith in infinite love) made my religion so precious to me. . . I was Christian because I was in love, in love because I was Christian - I mean religious.” ’

‘A second reason for doubting Marx’s influence lies in the marked difference between the methods advocated by the two men in connection with the idea of association. Proudhon was opposed to political action, and he hoped, unlike Marx, that the desirable changes in society could be brought about without violence. On the first point he remarks categorically in his diary for the spring of 1845: “The social revolution is seriously compromised if it comes through a political revolution.” On the second point he notes: “The workers, once they are organised and marching through work to the conquest of the world, should in no event make an uprising, but become all by invading all through the force of principle.” Again, he remarks: “No hatred, no hatred. Eliminate by principle.” And he adds a hope of being able “to dispossess the proprietors, at their solicitation and without indemnity.” The latter end he expects to achieve by the creation of economic associations for the exchange of products and for co-operative work, and the scene of the struggle he locates, not in the streets or the parliament house, but in the workshop. “The new socialist movement will begin by . . . the war of the workshop.” ’

‘A new interest which his increased prosperity allowed him to follow at this period was the stage, and many of the more interesting entries in the diary he began this year are concerned with the theatre. He regularly attended the Opera and the playhouses, and wrote perceptive and caustic comments on the performances. After hearing Rossini’s William Tell, for instance, he noted with discrimination: “Tragedy, comedy and music have independently reached a high point of perfection, but as they have not arrived there simultaneously, the performance cannot attain completeness.” And towards the great actress Rachel, whom he saw in Phedre, he reacted in shocked hostility. She seemed to him a personification of the romantic excesses which he regarded as the great disintegrating factor in French art and literature. “From the beginning to the end of the tragedy she acted like an old tart in love with a handsome boy, and in the grip of an attack of hysteria ... When Rachel moves you, it is by grating on your nerves, not by touching your feelings.” ’

‘Yet if he was never led into transports of love, there are enough indications to suggest that he was a more hopeful and a happier man for having met Euphrasie. A passage in his diary for July, 1847, indicates this in an oblique way. “A man marries a woman ten or twelve years younger than himself, in order that his youth may be prolonged all life long ... Up to 15 or 16 years, he has his father, mother and teacher, from 16 to 30 he is young, from 30 to 40 he is young again through his wife, after 40 he is so through his children. Thus youth exists always for man; it is a miracle of love and sympathy.” Euphrasie was fourteen years younger than Proudhon, and he was clearly hopeful of a renewal of mental vigour from his relationship with her.’

‘On the 23rd June he entered in his diary: “The Terror reigns in the capital, not a Terror like that of ’93, but the Terror of the civil and social war . . . What is happening here is what has always been seen: each new idea has its baptism; the first to propagate it - misunderstood and impatient, get themselves killed for too much philosophic independence.” ’

‘A much more disconcerting visitor was George Sand, who, in February, 1852, embarrassed Proudhon by calling on him and Marc Dufraisse. He was surprised to realise that this detested personification of feminist romanticism was not lacking in good qualities, and there is a certain compassion in the way he described her in his diary: “A long, cold, tired face; a woman of great good sense, great good heart and little passion, her speech curt, clear, positive and simple. G. Sand has burnt the candle at both ends, rather, I believe, from fancy than from sensuality or passion. . . . She is too mannish, too poised, too sedate. . . . Nothing in her, nothing, nothing of the feminine!” Yet these impressions seem to have been too fleeting to soften Proudhon’s hostile estimate of George Sand’s performance and influence, and in De la Justice a few years later he was to judge her work with extreme harshness.’

These entries - here as found in Woodcock’s biography - were all written in 1851.
‘3rd December. “Never has such an assault been committed on the good faith of a nation. . . . The insult is too sharp, the nation is lost if it gives in!”
4th December. “I rise at 5.30 in the morning: I have had a feverish and inflammatory sleep, with intolerable beating of the arteries. . . If I were free, I would bury myself under the ruins of the Republic with her faithful citizens, or else I would go to live far from a land unworthy of liberty.”
5th December. “How right I was, in 1843, to cry out against that absurdity of universal suffrage. No, the masses are not and will not for a long time be capable of a good action for themselves.”
10th December. “Through the defection of the working class, Paris has lost the battle.”
14th December. “She [Mme Suchet confirms the news of the] shooting of citizens taken at the barricades. . . Thus, he is not content to defend himself; he has not even recoiled before massacre, before crime. France is under oppression. The insolence of the conquerors knows no bounds; indignation is growing.”
15th December. “A sign of Parisian stupidity. Most people go about repeating, with B’s newspapers, that without the coup d’état, we should have had the revolution, that is to say, pillage, arson, murder, robbery. And they have under their eyes the atrocities, the nameless atrocities of the army!” ’

Curzon’s fate was sealed

‘[Leo] Amery related the important part he played in choice of Baldwin as PM in 1923. [. . .] Amery did not think Curzon suitable on personal grounds as PM. He went round to see Salisbury, who confessed that he had not previously thought that any alternative to Curzon was possible. But eventually he agreed to accepting Baldwin. Amery and Bridgeman immediately went round to Stamfordham’s house: he was already on way to Palace. They caught up with him in St James’s Park. There, standing for about twenty minutes, they convinced Stamfordham, and Curzon’s fate was sealed.’ Today is the 160th anniversary of the birth of Lord Curzon, he who had an illustrious career in India, and then, famously, fell out with Lord Kitchener. Twenty years later, Curzon looked to be a shoe-in for prime minister to replace the dying Bonar Law, but - as this anecdote from the newly-published diaries of Kenneth Rose shows - a few senior Tories with the ear of the Sovereign’s private secretary (Stamfordham) were able to change the course of history.

George Nathaniel, 1st Marquess Curzon, the eldest son of Lord Scarsdale, was born on 11 January 1859, at the family home, Kedlestone Hall, Derbyshire. He was ignored by his parents, and had a tyrannical governess. As a teenager, while riding, he suffered a serious spinal injury which left him needing to wear a corset for the rest of his life. He was educated at Eton and Balliol College, Oxford, where he was President of the Union. Curzon was soon researching and writing speeches for Lord Salisbury, who, on becoming prime minister, made him assistant private secretary. In 1886, he entered Parliament as Member for Southport. With Salisbury’s approval, Curzon spent much of the next four years travelling widely, largely in Asia, and publishing books on his findings.

In late 1891, Salisbury appointed Curzon to the post of under secretary of state for India. In 1895, he married Mary Victoria Leiter, the daughter of a Chicago millionaire, and they had three daughters before Mary died, tragically young, in 1906. Also in 1895, Curzon was promoted by Salisbury to under secretary of state for foreign affairs. Four years later, in 1899, he was appointed Viceroy of India. Although his career in India is described as illustrious, at the end he stood down from the Viceroyship following an acrimonious dispute with Lord Kitchener over the organisation of the Indian army. The dispute left him a political outcast for the best part of a decade. He remained busy, however, winning an election to be chancellor of the University of Oxford, a role he took on with zeal.

With the onset of war, Curzon joined the coalition cabinet of Herbert Asquith, and, then, under Lloyd George, took over as leader of the House of Lords with the office of lord president. In 1917, he married Grace Duggan, widow of a rich Argentinian rancher. In the postwar government led by Lloyd George, and then Bonar Law, he was appointed foreign secretary, and painstakingly dealt with the problems of postwar Europe and the near east. Many expected him to become prime minister when the ailing Bonar Law stepped down, but Stanley Baldwin was chosen instead. Curzon died two years later in 1925. Further information is available from Wikipedia, Encyclopaedia Britannica, or Gov.uk.

Although there is no obvious evidence among Curzon’s archived papers (as listed by the National Archives) that he left behind any diaries, the Richard Cocks Society (about which I can find nothing online) published, in 1985, a book called Lord Curzon’s Japan Diaries, as edited by Anthony Farrington (about which I also know nothing).

However, Kenneth Rose, who wrote a formidable biography of Curzon published in 1969 (Weidenfeld & Nicolson) called Superior Person; a portrait of Curzon and his circle in late Victorian England, was a diarist, and his diaries include several substantial entries about Curzon. Rose, who also penned an award-winning biography of King George V, died in 2014, but it is only now that a first collection of his diaries has just been published: Who’s In, Who’s Out: The Journals of Kenneth Rose: Volume One 1944-1979 (Weidenfeld & Nicholson) edited by D. R. Thorpe. Some pages can be previewed at both Googlebooks and Amazon.

Jane Ridley’s review of Journals in Literary Review says: ‘As a history of the Establishment in the second half of the 20th century, these journals will become indispensable and definitive. They are the equivalent for that period of the journals of Harold Nicolson and Chips Channon for the first half, combining sharp observation and anecdote with political and social insights. They are also extremely entertaining.’ And Philip Ziegler in The Spectator has this to say: ‘Kenneth Rose’s diaries do not make history and do not set out to do so. There are no significant revelations which will change the way we look at events or radically alter our judgments of important public figures.  But they do illuminate history and give it life. If one cannot be there oneself then Rose provides as good an apparatus for eaves-dropping as can well be conceived. He deserves our gratitude.’

Here are four extracts from Rose’s diaries about Curzon.

13 July 1950
‘Conversation with Count Sforza [Italian minister of foreign affairs] at Palazzo Chigi, Rome. I asked Sforza for an estimate of Curzon’s character and work. ‘I liked and respected Curzon, but I have never known a man of such blue blood who was so great a snob. Curzon worshipped titles, orders and decorations.’

I asked Sforza whether he had ever spoken to Curzon on subjects other than politics. ‘Generally I enjoy talking to British statesmen on outside subjects. I have talked to Bonar Law of the Canadian temperament, and to Ernest Bevin on religion. But Curzon was a monument, and one cannot speak informally to a monument!’

I asked Sforza how far one should take L.G.’s constant interference into consideration. ‘It is impossible to judge Curzon alone, because L.G. constantly opposed him. I know of no parallel case in which a PM so attacked his Foreign Minister. There was an immense difference in temperament. L.G. was an adventurer and loved confidential talks and secret agents. L.G. wanted his revenge on the upper classes.’

We discussed the conference at Lausanne, 1923. ‘To achieve success, a conference with a beaten enemy must be quick. But Curzon was very verbose, and while he talked, the Turks grew stronger.’ ’

1 May 1951
‘Conversation with Leo Amery [retired Conservative politician] in Eaton Square about Curzon. Amery saw little of him before World War I when the university was appealing for a large fund. Curzon was Chairman of the committee, and asked all its members to write begging letters to friends. Two or three weeks later he summoned them again, and like a schoolmaster asked each person in turn how many they had written. One replied three, another two, etc. And Amery was proud at having sent twenty (dictated) letters. Curzon looked round the committee in scorn. ‘I have written 3,000 letters,’ he said, ‘and all in my own hand!’

Curzon played a great part in bringing about conscription, but by the time he became Foreign Secretary in October 1919 he had lost his grip, and could only argue or write memoranda, never taking bold and immediate action.

Amery was a Secretary to Cabinet Committees. First Cabinet he ever attended was in December 1916. Curzon cleared his throat and began, ‘You may not be aware . . .’. At this point he was interrupted by Balfour. ‘It’s all right, George, we all know you have written a monumental work on Persia!’

In the Conservative Party, Curzon was mistrusted, e.g. House of Lords reform. Amery wanted Asquith to make extra peers and so be forced to reform compositions of the second chamber. But Curzon wanted exclusive H of Lords. In coalition from 1919 to 1922, the government was really in the hands of four men - Winston, Lloyd George, F.E. Smith and Austen Chamberlain. Curzon was rather out of it, and so felt no doubts about leaving coalition in 1922.

Amery related the important part he played in choice of Baldwin as PM in 1923. Amery had gone skiing and met Bonar Law passing through Paris on his return. Amery was told by Bonar Law that he must shortly resign premiership [owing to ill health]. Back in London as First Lord of the Admiralty, Amery was visited by Bridgeman, who had just seen Salisbury. Bridgman told Amery that Curzon was definitely to be PM. This was not unexpected as Curzon had been presiding over Cabinets in absence of B.L. (although B.L. would have preferred Cave to do so). Amery did not think Curzon suitable on personal grounds as PM. He went round to see Salisbury, who confessed that he had not previously thought that any alternative to Curzon was possible. But eventually he agreed to accepting Baldwin. Amery and Bridgeman immediately went round to Stamfordham’s house: he was already on way to Palace. They caught up with him in St James’s Park. There, standing for about twenty minutes, they convinced Stamfordham, and Curzon’s fate was sealed. Later that day Balfour arrived and suggested that Curzon being a peer should be offered as reason for choice of Baldwin: real reason was Curzon’s domineering temperament. Unfortunately, Stamfordham sent a clumsily worded telegram to Curzon, which caused him much unnecessary distress. Curzon was wonderfully magnanimous to Baldwin. Also to Amery, who had thought it his duty to deny Curzon’s greatest ambition.’

13 March 1952
‘Saw the Earl of Halifax about Curzon. Curzon was pathetic in his later years. He was often overruled by the Cabinet and that hurt him very much.

When Curzon laughed he did so from the waist and shook all over.

One day the Cabinet was discussing Oswald Mosley. Curzon expressed the hope that the Cabinet would not be deflected from its proper course by ‘the conduct of my sinister son-in-law’.

Even if Curzon had been in the House of Commons in 1923 he would still not have become Prime Minister. He was too unpopular in his own party.

Halifax agrees that Chamberlain wanted him, Halifax, to be Prime Minister in 1940 - ‘but this was a stupid plan for a variety of reasons'.

The day Curzon died in 1925, Halifax met Lord Salisbury in the street and said to him: ‘Were you a great friend of Curzon?’ Salisbury replied: ‘Yes, I suppose I was, if he had any.’

Halifax once casually mentioned to Curzon that he was going to look at the chateaux on the Loire. The next day he received sheets and sheets and sheets of information about them in Curzon’s own hand.’

24 August 1952
‘Conversation with Sir Thomas Beecham at his Edinburgh hotel, after hearing him conduct the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra. He drinks iced milk, and I am given sherry and a cigar at 5 p.m.

Much talk about politicians and music. On Curzon - ‘A great statesman, the last of the statesmen. Sometimes, owing to fatigue, he was reticent, restrained and brief. In congenial company, he shone. The three best conversationalists in England were Curzon, Balfour and Harry Cust. Delius was good in argument. George Bernard Shaw did not shine in conversation.

Neither A.J.B. nor Curzon were good at public speaking. Lansdowne was the worst of all at it - but the most charming. Winston Churchill spoke as if with pebbles in his mouth, and had an irritating trick of letting his voice rise at the end of a sentence.

What a pity Curzon did not succeed Bonar Law as PM. Instead, there was Baldwin, who led us onto the rocks, and Neville Chamberlain, who led us into the quicksands.’

Sutter’s Gold Rush

One hundred and seventy years ago today, President James Knox Polk confirmed to the US Congress that there was an abundance of gold on the west coast, in California. In fact, gold had been discovered nearly a year earlier at a mill owned by Johann August Sutter, a German immigrant. Sutter’s diary provides an interesting account of those early gold rush days.

It is widely accepted that the California Gold Rush began on 24 January 1848, when the metal was discovered by James Marshall, a carpenter and sawmill operator at Sutter’s Mill, Coloma, some 130 miles northwest of San Francisco. Rumours about the gold began to spread, first being published in a West Coast newspaper in March. Later that year, in August, the New York Herald, on the East Coast, reported that there was a major gold rush.

On 5 December 1848, the gold rush became official, as it were, when President Polk wrote to congress as follows: ‘The accounts of abundance of gold are of such an extraordinary character as would scarcely command belief were they not corroborated by the authentic reports of officers in the public service.’ And the news continued to spread so that eventually some 300,000 men, women, and children travelled to California - from the rest of the US in covered wagons, and from overseas by boat - often undergoing great hardships on the way. At first, the prospectors retrieved the gold from streams and riverbeds using simple techniques, such as panning, but more sophisticated production methods evolved over time.

The effects of the California Gold Rush were substantial, Wikipedia says. San Francisco grew from a hamlet to a boomtown, while roads, churches, schools and other towns were built all across the area. By 1850, California had been admitted as a state, and soon new methods of transportation, such as steamships and railroads, were being developed, as was the land for agriculture. The rest is history - today California is the richest of the United States, accounting for 13% of the US’s GDP.

There are many first hand accounts by forty-niners (the name given to those who made the journey to California in search of gold) in letters and diaries. The Virtual Museum of the City of San Francisco is a good place to start, as is The California Gold Country - Highway 49 Revisited. Gold Rush Saints: California Mormons and the Great Rush for Riches by Kenneth N. Owens, which can be previewed at Googlebooks, uses a lot of original diary material.

To return to Sutter, though, the mill owner. He was born in 1803 in Kandern, southwest Germany, but was schooled in Switzerland, and joined the Swiss army rising to the rank of captain. However, in 1934, he left Europe for the New World to escape creditors. After extensive travels in North America, he settled in California in 1839, then part of Mexico, where he founded New Helvetia colony near the Sacramento river. Although the discovery of gold happened on Sutter’s land, it was eventually to ruin him. His land and property were over-run and destroyed by gold diggers, and thereafter he spent many years and much money on legal battles trying to defend his ownership or in seeking compensation. He died in Washington in 1880, apparently a poor and embittered man.

Excerpts from Sutter’s diary first appeared in 1878 in the San Francisco Argonaut, and were then published by the Grabhorn Press in 1932 as The Diary of Johann August Sutter (with an introduction by Douglas S. Watson). This is freely available to read online at the Library of Congress website book, and many extracts can also be found at The Virtual Museum of the City of San Francisco website (which notes that the entries were probably written retrospectively).


28 January 1848
‘Marshall arrived in the evening, it was raining very heavy, but he told me he came on important business. After we was alone in a private Room he showed me the first Specimens of Gold, that is he was not certain if it was Gold or not, but he thought it might be; immediately I made the proof and found that it was 44 Gold. I told him even that most of all is 23 Carat Gold; he wished that I should come up with him immediately, but I told him that I have to give first my orders to the people in all my factories and shops.’

1 February 1848
‘Left for the Sawmill attended by a Baquero (Olimpio). Was absent 2d, 3d, 4th, & 5th. I examined myself everything and picked up a few Specimens of Gold myself in the tail race of the Sawmill; this Gold and others which Marshall and some of the other laborers gave to me (it was found while in my employ and Wages) I told them that I would a Ring got made of it soon as a Goldsmith would be here. I had a talk with my employed people all at the Sawmill. I told them that as they do know now that this Metal is Gold, I wished that they would do me the great favor and keep it secret only 6 weeks, because my large Flour Mill at Brighton would have been in Operation in such a time, 45 which undertaking would have been a fortune to me, and unfortunately the people would not keep it secret, and so I lost on this Mill at the lowest calculation about $25,000.’

7 March 1848.
‘The first party of Mormons, employed by me left for washing and digging Gold and very soon all followed, and left me only the sick and the lame behind. And at this time I could say that every body left me from the Clerk to the Cook. What for great Damages I had to suffer in my tannery which was just doing a profitable and extensive business, and the Vatts was left filled and a quantity of half finished leather was spoiled, likewise a large quantity of raw hides collected by the farmers and of my own killing. The same thing was in every branch of business which I carried on at the time. I began to harvest my wheat, while others was digging and washing Gold, but even the Indians could not be keeped longer at Work. They was impatient 46 to run to the mine, and other Indians had informed them of the Gold and its Value; and so I had to leave more as 2/3 of my harvest in the fields.’

19 May 1848
‘The great Rush from San Francisco arrived at the fort, all my friends and acquaintances filled up the houses and the whole fort, I had only a little Indian boy, to make them roasted Ripps etc. as my Cooks left me like every body else. The Merchants, Doctors, Lawyers, Sea Captains, Merchants etc. all came up and did not know what to do, all was in a Confusion, all left their wives and families in San francisco, and those which had none locked their Doors, abandoned their houses, offered them for sale cheap, a few hundred Dollars House & Lot (Lots which are worth now $100,000 and more), some of these men were just like greazy. Some of the Merchants has been the most 49 purdentest of the Whole, visited the Mines and returned immediately and began to do a very profitable business, and soon Vessels came from every where with all Kind of Merchandise, the whole old thrash which was laying for Years unsold, on the Coasts of South & Central America, Mexico Sandwich Islands etc. All found a good Market here. Mr. Brannan was erecting a very large Warehouse, and have done an immense business, connected with Howard & Green; S. Francisco.’

21 May 1848
‘Saml Kyburg errected or established the first Hotel in the fort in the larger building, and made a great deal of Money. A great Many traders deposited a great deal of goods in my Store (an Indian was the Key Keeper and performed very well). Afterwards every little Shanty became a Warehouse and Store; the fort was then a veritable Bazaar. As white people would not be employed at the Time 50 I had a few good Indians attending to the Ferry boat, and every night came up, and delivered the received Money for ferryage to me, after deduction for a few bottles of brandy, for the whole of them. Perhaps some white people at the time would not have acted so honestly.’

This article is a revised version of one first published 10 years ago on 5 December 2008.

Death of the Romanovs

One hundred years ago today the Russian imperial Romanov family and its attendants, all under house arrest at Ekaterinburg 1,000 km east of Moscow, were were shot, bayoneted and clubbed to death, as ordered by the new ruling Bolshevik party, headed by Vladimir Lenin. Among the murdered were Tsar Nicholas II, his wife Tsaritsa Alexandra and their five children. Both the Tsar and the Tsarina kept diaries - see Hope remains above all for extracts from the Tsar’s (dull) diaries - but to mark this anniversary I have chosen the very last (and also very dull) diary entries penned by the Tsaritsa - Alexandra Feodorovna - as found in The Last Diary of Tsaritsa Alexandra.

Alix Viktoria Helene Luise Beatrix was born in 1872, the sixth child (of seven) born to Louis IV, Grand Duke of Hesse and by Rhine (part of the German Empire), and his first wife Princess Alice of the UK, the second daughter of Queen Victoria and Albert. Her early life is said to have been carefree and happy, but when six years old she, and other members of the family, fell ill with diphtheria. Her mother and one sister died leaving Alix reserved and withdrawn. She and her siblings grew close to their British cousins, spending holidays with Queen Victoria. The British queen intended Alix to marry her grandson Prince Albert Victor, who was second in line to the British throne, but Alix had fallen in love, years earlier, with Grand Duke Nicholas, heir to the throne of Russia. Despite many obstacles, the two eventually married in 1894, and, on being accepted into the Russian Orthodox Church, Alix took the name Alexandra Feodorovna, and she became the Russian Tsaritsa and Empress.

There is a substantial literature on the Tsar and Tsarina, and much information online, not least at the extensive Alexander Palace Time Machine. See Hope remains above all for further biography links. Wikipedia has an extensive entry on the murder of the Romanov family. It explains how the Bolsheviks revealed the death of Nicholas II but kept secret the other murders, and how it was only in 1979 that the bodies were discovered. It would be another 10 years, in the glasnost period, before the full details of that night - 16-17 July 1918 - were revealed to the West.

After Alexandra’s death, hundreds of letters she wrote to her husband were found at Ekaterinburg. These have been much employed by historians to help explain the unfolding of events prior to the  Russian Revolution. But, like her husband, Alexandra also seems to have kept diaries all her life. With the demise of the Soviet state, several of these, long hidden in the Moscow archives, came to light, including for the years 1887-1892, 1894 and 1916-1918. They are mostly written in English, though her native language was German (and she spoke fluent Russian). Only one of these, however, has been published in English (others have been translated into Russian and/or Dutch - see a discussion at the Alexander Palace Forum ), notably The Last Diary of Tsaritsa Alexandra, as edited by Vladimir A. Zozlov and Vladimir M. Khrustalëv (Yale University Press 1997).

According to Yale University Press: ‘The 1918 Diary takes us into [the Tsarista’s] private world, revealing the care she lavished on her children during this period of revolutionary turmoil, how she felt toward her husband, Tsar Nicholas, and what she imagined about the profound struggle - between past and present, old and new worlds, the sacred and the profane - then occurring over the destiny of Russia. The diary reveals that even in her most intimate reflections, she remained the representative of a great system of belief that had prevailed for hundreds of years in Russia and that she and Nicholas hoped to perpetuate. We see in painful detail the tragic daily confrontation between this system of belief and the reality of the modern world that had, in every sense, broken free of her and Nicholas’s control.’

Robert K. Massie, a US historian and biographer, provides an informative introduction to the Last Diary: ‘Its cryptic, unemotional style stands in sharp contrast to the tumultuous style of her letters. Here she is creating, for herself alone, a simple record of the highlights of each day: the weather and temperature; family illnesses and health; meals; periods and subjects of study; visitors (welcome and unwelcome); books read; games played. Her religious faith is evident. On the diary’s first page, she displays her effort to master the numerical system of Old Church Slavonic (different from everyday Russian, which uses Arabic numerals). Through the diary, she records saint’s days, feast days, and other religious holidays. Every religious service held by the family in Tobolsk and Ekaterinburg is set down. Usually, her feelings about an event break through only in a highly abbreviated form. Nevertheless, despite its style and brevity, the diary is filled with poignancy and drama. Alexandra does not know what is going to happen; the modern reader does. Fleshed out by our knowledge from other sources, this diary gives a clear picture of these grim weeks and tells us much about the character of this much-criticized, reclusive, and melancholy woman.’

The book also contains a short essay by Jonathan Brent (then editorial director at Yale University Press) on the diary itself in which he explains its rather pedantic form, its preoccupation with numbers and the use of coded language. He writes: ‘Alexandra’s diary brings the inexorable, predetermined succession of days, anniversaries, hours, and minutes - numbers following one another seemingly without end - into relation with the daily, unpredictable contingencies of the weather, her children’s temperatures, and the chaotic events of the Revolution. We see the empress presiding over a world within a world, which is given simple form in her daily observations.’ And, a little further on he says: ‘Although Alexandra’s incessant jottings of time, place, weather, holidays, and anniversaries may seem, at first glance, of little or no importance, they are, upon reflection, what give this little book unique significance as a text. The diary records not only the empress’s own day-by-day descent into the maelstrom of revolution and the modern world, but principally her symbolic accommodation of the new and her resistance to the destruction of a traditional order of thought, action, and belief.’

Here are the last seven entries in the Tsarista’s last diary (though I have left out the temperature and time notes that accompany each entry in the published work).

10 July 1918
‘Sunny morning.

Went out in the afternoon with the others, ideal weather; very strong back & leg ache fr. kidneys probably.

2 day the others have no meat & live upon Kharitonov’s Tobolsk remaining meagre provisions.

Took a bath.

bezique. They still find excuses not to bring Vladimir Nikolaevich’

11 July 1918
‘The Ox Command, insisted to see us all at 10, but kept us waiting 20 m. as was breakfasting &c eating cheese

wont permit us to have any more any cream. Workmen turned up outside & began putting up iron railings before our only open window. Always fright of our climbing out no doubt or getting into contact with the sentry. Strong pains continue. Greyish weather.

Brought me for 6 days, but so little only suffices for putting in the soup.

The Bull very rude to Kharitonov.

Remained in bed all day. Lunched only, as they brought the meat so late. Anastasia read to me whilst the others went out. Lovely weather.’

12 July 1918
‘Bright sunshine - in the afternoon then were severel showers 6c short thunderstorms.

The others went out twice, Maria remained with me, I spent the day on my bed & got into it again at 9:30. Lovely evening. Every day one of the girls reads to me Spir. Readings, i.e. Complete Yearly Cycle of Brief Homilies for Each Day of the Year (Grig. Diachenko).

Constantly hear artillery passing, infantry & twice cavalry during the course of this week. Also troops marching with music - twice it seems to have been the Austrian prisoners who are marching against the Chechs (also our former prisoners) who are with the troops coming through Siberia & not far fr. here now. Wounded daily arrive to the town.’

13 July 1918
‘Beautiful morning. I spent the day as yesterday lying on the bed, as back aches when move about.

Others went out twice. Anastasia remained with me in the afternoon. One says Nagorny & Sednyov have been sent out of this government, instead of giving them back to us.

At 6:30 Baby had his first bath since Tobolsk. He managed to get in & out alone, climbs also alone in & out of bed, but can only stand on one foot as yet. 9:45 I went to bed again.

Rained in the night.

Heard three revolver shots in the night.

14 July 1918
‘Beautiful summers morning. Scarcely slept because of back & legs. Had the joy of an obednitsa - the young Priest for the 2nd time.

The others walked - Olga with me. Spend the day on the bed again Tatiana stayed with me in the afternoon.

Spir. Readings, Book of the Prophet Hosea, ch. 4-14, Pr. Joel 1- the end.

tea - tatted all day & laid patiences. Played a little bezique in the eveing, they put my long straw couch in the big room so it was less tiring for me.

Took a bath & went to bed.’

15 July 1918
‘Greyish morning. Later sunshine. Lunched on the couch in the big room, as women came to clean the floors, then lay on my bed again & read with Maria J. Sirach 26-31. They went out twice as usual. In the morning Tatiana read to me Spir. Readings. Still no Vladimir Nikolaevich - at 6:30 Baby had his second bath - Bezique. Went to bed 10:15.

of warmth at 10:30 evening.

Heard the report of an artillery shot in the night & several revolver shots.’

16 July 1918
‘Grey morning, later lovely sunshine. Baby has a slight cold. All went out 1/2 hour in the morning, Olga & I arranged our medicines. Tatiana read Spir. Readings. They went out. Tatiana stayed with me Sc we read: Bk. of the Pr. Amos and Pr. Obadiah. Tatted. Every moring the Command, comes to our rooms, at last after a week brought eggs again for Baby.

Supper.

Suddenly Lyonka Sednyov was fetched to go & see his Uncle & flew off - wonder whether its true & we shall see the boy back again!

Played bezique with Nicholas.

to bed. 15 degrees.’