Remarks and collections

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Young Boswell in London

‘It is very curious to think that I have now been in London several weeks without ever enjoying the delightful sex, although I am surrounded with numbers of free-hearted ladies of all kinds.’ This is a young James Boswell - who died 230 years ago today - having just arrived in the capital city writing rather candidly in his diary. Indeed, he kept diaries for most of his life. Two of his travel diaries - one about Corsica and another, with Samuel Johnson, about the Hebrides - were published in his lifetime, and very much helped develop his literary career, which was to culminate with a biography of Johnson. However, most of Boswell’s diaries - including his so-called London Journal - were considered lost for more than a hundred years, and not published until the second half of the 20th century.

Boswell was born in Edinburgh in 1740 into a strict family, his father, Lord Auchinleck, being a lawyer and eventually a senior judge, and his mother a Calvinist. He studied at Edinburgh and Glasgow universities before escaping to London, where he discovered much about society, women, and himself. When his father arrived to fetch him back, he was suffering with gonorrhoea, the first of many bouts he was to contract in his life.

Having come of age, Boswell returned to London in 1762 determined to secure a commission in the foot guards. There he fell in with Andrew Erskine, an army officer, and George Dempster, a young, wealthy, and newly-elected MP from Scotland. Among many others, he met Oliver Goldsmith and the radical politician John Wilkes. Towards the end of his sojourn in the capital, he became firm friends with Samuel Johnson, 30 years his senior. They would meet and spend significant amounts of time together until the end of Johnson’s life in 1784.

Having given up the idea of an army commission, Boswell moved to Utrecht in 1763 to continue studying law, but then embarked on a Grand Tour around Europe. On his way he became more friendly with Wilkes, he was exiled in Italy, and he met Jean-Jacques Rousseau, who persuaded him of Corsica’s right to liberty from Genoa. This idea underpinned his first successful book - published in 1768 - that gave an account of his experiences on the island, and of his friendship with the independence leader Pasquale Paoli: An Account of Corsica, The Journal of a Tour to That Island, and Memoirs of Pascal Paoli.

Boswell moved back to Edinburgh, where he completed his law studies, and where he went on to practise as an advocate for the best part of two decades. He married his cousin, Margaret Montgomerie, with whom he had two sons and three daughters who survived into adulthood. He also had at least two extramarital children. A couple of years after inheriting the Auchinleck title on the death of his father in 1782, Boswell moved his family to London. He was called to the English bar from the Inner Temple, but rarely practised, preferring to focus on his writing.

For several years after the first book on Corsica, Boswell’s only published writings were essays in a periodical called London Journal, under the title The Hypochondriack. However, a year after Johnson’s death, he edited a diary he had kept of a tour he took with Johnson in the Highlands and Western islands of Scotland. Johnson, himself, had already published an account of that tour - Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland - ten years earlier. Whereas Johnson’s writing was generalised and philosophical, Boswell’s diary - The Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides - proved to be more entertaining, both anecdotal and gossipy, as well as rich in observant detail.

The Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides was a commercial success, foreshadowing Boswell’s future, and now famous, biography - The Life of Samuel Johnson - first published by Charles Dilly in 1791. Gordon Turnbull’s entry for Boswell in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography says The Life ‘remains the most famous biography in any language, one of Western literature’s most germinal achievements: unprecedented in its time in its depth of research and its extensive use of private correspondence and recorded conversation, it sought to dramatize its subject in his authorial greatness and formidable social presence, and at the same time treat him with a profound sympathy and inhabit his inner life.’ (Many editions of this are freely available online at Internet Archive.)

Boswell’s last years are known to have been rather unhappy ones. His wife died in 1789, and though his children loved him dearly, he was unsatisfied with his achievements. He drank excessively and continued to indulge in other vices. Moreover, his eccentricities became increasingly self-indulgent making him a difficult guest. He lived to see a second edition of The Life of Samuel Johnson in 1793, but died on 19 May 1795. Further information is readily available at Wikipedia, NNDB, or Thomas Frandzen’s Boswell website.

Both Boswell’s early published diaries - The Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides and An Account of Corsica - can be found online at Internet Archive. It was not until the 20th century that any more diaries came to light. After Boswell’s death, his executors, and then his heirs, considered it prudent to keep his papers secret (because they contained details of intimacy). They were then kept in the archives at the Auchinleck estate for many years, until they passed from one great grand-daughter to another who, having married Lord Talbot de Malahide, lived at Malahide Castle, north of Dublin. There, in the 1920s, a large stash of Boswell’s private papers was discovered, including diaries. They were bought by the American collector Ralph H. Isham, and are now mostly archived at Yale University’s Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library. The story of how Isham acquired Boswell’s papers and how they were brought to publication is the subject of more than one book.

Boswell’s London Journal, 1762-1763 - the first of many Boswell publications by Yale - was edited by the Boswell scholar, Frederick A. Pottle, and came out in 1950. The publishers (Yale in the US and Heinemann in the UK) did not hold back in their admiration: ‘The Boswell Papers are the largest and most important find of English literary manuscripts ever made;’ and, ‘The incredible fact about Boswell’s London Journal is that it is an entirely new book.’ Today, this is the most famous and popular of Boswell’s published journals. Perhaps because it is the only one that survived expurgation by family members - and is a racy read. Boswell’s comings and goings as a young man (he was only 22) in London are interesting enough, but it is the way he examines his own psyche, and records the dilemmas he finds there, particularly those of a sexual nature, that makes this book so extraordinary for its time. Indeed, this constant self-examination by Boswell of Boswell feels very modern.

Here are several extracts from Boswell’s London Journal (which can be freely borrowed digitally at Internet Archive.)

26 November 1762
‘I was much difficulted about lodgings. A variety I am sure I saw, I dare say fifty. I was amused in this way. At last I fixed in Downing Street, Westminster. I took a lodging up two pair of stairs with the use of a handsome parlour all the forenoon, for which I agreed to pay forty guineas a year [later bargained down to £22], but I took it for a fortnight first, by way of a trial. I also made bargain that I should dine with the family whenever I pleased, at a shilling a time. [. . .] The street was a genteel street, within a few steps of the Parade; near the House of Commons, and very healthful.’

14 December 1762
‘It is very curious to think that I have now been in London several weeks without ever enjoying the delightful sex, although I am surrounded with numbers of free-hearted ladies of all kinds: from the splendid Madam at fifty guineas a night, down to the civil nymph with white-thread stockings who tramps along the Strand and will resign her engaging person to your honour for a pint of wine and a shilling. Manifold are the reasons for this my present wonderful continence. I am upon a plan of economy, and therefore cannot be at the expense of first-rate dames. I have suffered severely from loathsome distemper, and therefore shudder at the thoughts of running any risk of having it again. Besides, the surgeons’ fees in this city come very high. But the greatest reason of all is that fortune, or rather benignant Venus, has smiled upon me and favoured me so far that I have had the most delicious intrigues with women of beauty, sentiment, and spirit, perfectly suited to my romantic genius.’

15 December 1762
‘The enemies of the people of England who would have them considered in the worst light represent them as selfish, beef-eaters, and cruel. In this view I resolved today to be a true-born Old Englishman. I went into the City to Dolly’s Steak-house in Paternoster Row and swallowed my dinner by myself to fulfill [sic] the charge of selfishness; I had a large fat beefsteak to fulfil the charge of beef-eating; and I went at five o’clock to the Royal Cockpit in St James’s Park and saw cock-fighting for about five hours to fulfill [sic] the charge of cruelty.

A beefsteak-house is a most excellent place to dine at. You come in there to a warm, comfortable, large room, where a number of people are sitting at table. You take whatever place you find empty; call for what you like, which you get well and cleverly dressed. You may either chat or not as you like. Nobody minds you, and you pay very reasonably. My dinner (beef, bread and beer and waiter) was only a shilling. The waiters make a great deal of money by these pennies. Indeed, I admire the English for attending to small sums, as many smalls make a great, according to the proverb.

At five I filled my pockets with gingerbread and apples (quite the method), put on my old clothes and laced hat, laid by my watch, purse and pocket-book, and with oaken stick in my hand sallied to the pit. I was too soon there. So I went into a low inn, sat down amongst a parcel of arrant blackguards, and drank some beer. [. . .] I then went to the cockpit, which is a circular room in the middle of which the cocks fight. It is seated round with rows gradually rising. The pit and the seats are all covered with mat. The cocks, nicely cut and dressed and armed with silver heels, are set down and fight with amazing bitterness and resolution. Some of them were quickly dispatched. One pair fought three-quarters of an hour. The uproar and noise of betting is prodigious. A great deal of money made a quick circulation from hand to hand. There was a number of professed gamblers there. An old cunning dog whose face I had seen at Newmarket sat by me a while. I told him I knew nothing of the matter. “Sir,” said he, “you have as good a chance as anybody.” [. . .] I was shocked to see the distraction and anxiety of the betters. I was sorry for the poor cocks. I looked around to see if any of the spectators pitied them when mangled and torn in a most cruel manner, but I could not observe the smallest relenting sign in any countenance. I was therefore not ill pleased to see them endure mental torment. Thus did I complete my true English day, and came home pretty much fatigued and pretty much confounded at the strange turn of this people.’

17 December 1762
‘I mentioned to Sheridan [Thomas Sheridan, actor, and father of Richard Brinsley Sheridan] how difficult it was to be acquainted with people of fashion in London: that they have a reserve and a forbidding shyness to strangers. He accounted for it thus: “The strangers that come here are idle and unemployed; they don’t know what to do, and they are anxious to get acquaintances. Whereas the genteel people, who have lived long in town, have got acquaintances enough; their time is all filled up. And till they find a man particularly worth knowing, they are very backward. But when you once get their friendship, you have them firm to you.” ’

19 January 1763
‘This was a day eagerly expected by [George] Dempster [a young and wealthy, newly-elected MP from Scotland], [Andrew] Erskine [a lieutenant], and I, as it was fixed as the period of our gratifying a whim proposed by me: which was that on the first day of the new tragedy called Elvira’s being acted, we three should walk from the one end of London to the other, dine at Dolly’s, and be in the theatre at night; and as the play would probably be bad, and as Mr David Malloch, the author, who has changed his name to David Mallet, Esq. was an arrant puppy, we determined to exert ourselves in damning it.

I this morning felt the stronger symptoms of the sad distemper, yet I was unwilling to imagine such a thing. However, the severe exercise of today, joined with hearty eating and drinking, I was sure would confirm or remove my suspicions.

We walked up to Hyde Park Corner, from whence we set out at ten. Our spirits were high with the notion of the adventure, and the variety that we met with as we went is amazing. As the Spectator observes, one end of London is like a different country from the other in look and in manners. We eat an excellent breakfast at the Somerset Coffee-house. We turned down Gracechurch Street and went up on the top of London Bridge, from whence we viewed with a pleasing horror the rude and terrible appearance of the river, partly froze up, partly covered with enormous shoals of floating ice which often crashed against each other. [. . .] We went half a mile beyond the turnpike at Whitechapel, which completed our course, and went into a little public house and drank some warm white wine with aromatic spices, pepper and cinnamon. We were pleased with the neat houses upon the road. [. . .] We had some port, and drank damnation to the play and eternal remorse to the author. We then went to the Bedford Coffee-house and had coffee and tea; and just as the doors opened at four o’clock, we sallied into the house, planted ourselves in the middle of the pit, and with oaken cudgels in our hands and shrill-sounding catcalls in our pockets, sat ready prepared, with a generous resentment in our breasts against dullness and impudence, to be the swift ministers of vengeance. [. . .] [The three of them went on to write a highly critical pamphlet about Elvira.]

The evening was passed most cheerfully. When I got home, though, then came sorrow. Too, too plain was Signor Gonorrhoea.’

25 March 1763
‘As I was coming home this night, I felt carnal inclinations raging through my frame. I determined to gratify them. I went to St James’s Park, and, like Sir John Brute [a character from John Vanbrugh’s The Provoked Wife], picked up a whore. For the first time did I engage in armour, which I found but a dull satisfaction. She who submitted to my lusty embraces was a young Shropshire girl, only seventeen, very well-looked, her name Elizabeth Parker. Poor thing, she has a sad time of it!’

3 May 1763
‘I walked up to the Tower in order see Mr Wilkes come out. [Wilkes, a radical journalist and MP, who had been arrested on a general warrant that soon proved inadequate to keep him in prison]. But he was gone. I then thought I should see prisoners of one kind or another, so went to Newgate. I stepped into a sort of court before the cells. They are surely most dismal places. There are three rows of ‘em, four in a row, all above each other. They have double iron windows, and within these, strong iron rails; and in these dark mansions are the unhappy criminals confined. I did not go in, but stood in the court, where were a number of strange blackguard beings with sad countenances, most of them being friends and acquaintances of those under sentence of death. [. . .]

Erskine and I dined at the renowned Donaldon’s, where we were heartily entertained. All this afternoon I felt myself still more melancholy, Newgate being upon my mind like a black cloud.’

4 May 1763
‘My curiosity to see the melancholy spectacle of the executions was so strong that I could not resist it, although I was sensible that I would suffer much from it. In my younger years I had read in the Lives of the Convicts so much about Tyburn that I had a sort of horrid eagerness to be there. [. . .] I got upon a scaffold very near the fatal tree, so that [I] could clearly see all the dismal scene. There was a most prodigious crowd of spectators. I was most terribly shocked, and thrown into a very deep melancholy.’

19 July 1763
‘At eleven I went to St Paul’s Church; walked up to the whispering gallery, which is a most curious thing. I had here the mortification to observe the noble paintings in the ceiling of the Cupola area a good deal damaged by the moisture of winter, I then went up to the roof of the Cupola, and went out upon the leads, and walked around it. I went up to the highest storey of roof. Here I had the immense prospect of London and its environs. London gave me no great idea. I just saw a prodigious group of tiled roofs and narrow lanes opening here and there, for the streets and beauty of the buildings cannot be observed on account of the distance. The Thames and the country around, the beautiful hills of Hampstead and of Highgate looked very fine. And yet I did not feel the same enthusiasm that I have felt some time ago at viewing these rich prospects.’

30 July 1763
‘Mr [Samuel] Johnson and I took a boat and sailed down the silver Thames. I asked him if a knowledge of the Greek and Roman languages was necessary. He said, “By all means; for they who know them have a very great advantage over those who do not. Nay, it is surprising what a difference it makes upon people in the intercourse of life which does not appear to be much connected with it.’

“And yet,” said I “people will go through the world very well and do their business very well without them.”

“Why,” said he, “that may be true where they could not possibly be of any use; for instance, this boy rows us as well without literature as if he could sing the song which Orpheus sung to the Argonauts, who were the first sailors in the world.” He then said to the boy, “What would you give, Sir, to know about the Argonauts?”

“Sir,” he said, “I would give what I have.” The reply pleased Mr Johnson much, and we gave him a double fare.

“Sir,” he said, “a desire of knowledge is the natural feeling of mankind; and every man who is not debauched would give all that he has to get knowledge.”

We landed at the Old Swan and walked to Billingsgate, where we took oars and moved smoothly along the river. We were entertained with the immense number and variety of ships that were lying at anchor. It was a pleasant day, and when we got clear out into the country, we were charmed with the beautiful fields on each side of the river. [. . .]

When we got to Greenwich, I felt great pleasure in being at the place which Mr Johnson celebrates in his London: a Poem. I had the poem in my pocket, and read the passage on the banks of the Thames, and literally “kissed the consecrated earth.” ’

4 August 1763
‘This is now my last day in London before I set out upon my travels, and makes a very important period in my journal. Let me recollect my life since this journal began. Has it not passed like a dream? Yes, but I have been attaining a knowledge of the world. I came to town to go into the Guards. How different is my scheme now! I am upon a less pleasurable but a more rational and lasting plan. Let me pursue it with steadiness and I may be a man of dignity. My mind is strangely agitated. I am happy to think of going upon my travels and seeing the diversity of foreign parts; and yet my feeble mind shrinks somewhat at the idea of leaving Britain in so very short a time from the moment in which I now make this remark. How strange must I feel myself in foreign parts. My mind too is gloomy and dejected at the thoughts of leaving London, where I am so comfortably situated and where I have enjoyed most happiness. However, I shall be the happier for being abroad, as long as I live. Let me be manly. Let me commit myself to the care of my merciful creator.’

This article is a slightly revised version of one first published on 19 May 2015.

Weeds don’t spoil

‘My [90th] birthday. [. . .] It is unusual, I believe, for persons of this age to retain possession of their faculties, or so much of them as I do. The Germans have an uncomplimentary saying: “Weeds don’t spoil” ’. This is Henry Crabb Robinson, one of the most interesting and entertaining of 19th century diarists, who was born a quarter of a millenium ago today. He trained as a lawyer, but an inheritance left him wealthy enough to pursue a life of cultured leisure. He was a great theatre-goer, knew a lot of literary types - was on very good terms with William Wordsworth, for example, with whom he travelled often - and was one of the first to recognise William’s Blake’s genius.

Robinson was born in Bury St Edmunds on 13 May 1775, the son of a tanner. He attended private schools, and was articled to a lawyer in Colchester when 15, and subsequently to another in London. In 1796, he was left an inheritance which allowed him to travel to the Continent frequently. Between 1800 and 1805 he studied in Germany, meeting, among others, Goethe and Schiller. He operated as a war correspondent for The Times for a short while during the Peninsular War, and, on his return to London, finished his legal training and was called to the bar.

Through an old friend, Catherine, who had married the writer and abolitionist Thomas Clarkson, Robinson was introduced into London literary society; and, in time, his own breakfast parties became famous. After retiring in 1828, he continued to take part in public affairs and to travel often. In 1828 he was one of the founding members of London University; and, in 1837, he revisited Italy on a tour with Wordsworth. He never married, but lived to an old age, dying in 1867. Further biographical information is available from Wikipedia, Encyclopaedia Britannica, or Peter Landry’s Bluepete website. The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography has a good short biography (but requires a login).

Robinson left behind a large amount of papers including the following: brief journals covering the period to 1810, a much fuller home diary (begun in 1811, and continued to within five days of his death - 35 volumes), and a collection of 30 tour journals. The papers were edited by Thomas Sadler and published by Macmillan in 1869 in three volumes as Diary, Reminiscences and Correspondence of Henry Crabb Robinson. And it is thanks largely to these volumes that Robsinson is remembered today, for his diaries are full of important detail about the central figures of the English romantic movement, not only Wordsworth, but Coleridge, Charles Lamb and William Blake. Of the latter, he was an early admirer, writing in his diary: ‘Shall I call Blake artist, genius, mystic or madman? Probably he is all’. Moreover, his diaries are also prized for their information about the London theatre in the first half of the 19th century (see the Society for Theatre Research’s 1966 volume: The London theatre 1811-1866: Selections from the diary of Henry Crabb Robinson.)

All three volumes of Diary, Reminiscences and Correspondence can be read at Internet Archive (Vol 1, Vol 2, Vol 3). Here are a few extracts.

7 December 1831
‘Brighton. Accompanied [John James] Masquerier [a British painter] to a concert, which afforded me really a great pleasure. I heard Paganini [Niccolò Paganini, an Italian musician and composer]. Having scarcely any sensibility to music, I could not expect great enjoyment from any music, however fine; and, after all, I felt more surprise at the performance than enjoyment. The professional men, I understand, universally think more highly of Paganini than the public do. He is really an object of wonder. His appearance announces something extraordinary. His figure and face amount to caricature. He is a tall slim figure, with limbs which remind one of a spider; his face very thin, his forehead broad, his eyes grey and piercing, with bushy eyebrows; his nose thin and long, his cheeks hollow, and his chin sharp and narrow. His face forms a sort of triangle. His hands the oddest imaginable, fingers of enormous length, and thumbs bending backwards.

It is, perhaps, in a great measure from the length of finger and thumb that his fiddle is also a sort of lute. He came forward and played, from notes, his own compositions. Of the music, as such, I know nothing. The sounds were wonderful. He produced high notes very faint, which resembled the chirruping of birds, and then in an instant, with a startling change, rich and melodious notes, approaching those of the bass viol. It was difficult to believe that this great variety of sounds proceeded from one instrument. The effect was heightened by his extravagant gesticulation and whimsical attitudes. He sometimes played with his fingers, as on a harp, and sometimes struck the cords with his bow, as if it were a drum-stick, sometimes sticking his elbow into his chest, and sometimes flourishing his bow. Oftentimes the sounds were sharp, like those of musical glasses, and only now and then really delicious to my vulgar ear, which is gratified merely by the flute and other melodious instruments, and has little sense of harmony.’

9 June 1833
‘Liverpool. At twelve I got upon an omnibus, and was driven up a steep hill to the place where the steam-carriages start. We travelled in the second class of carriages. There were five carriages linked together, in each of which were placed open seats for the traveller, four and four facing each other; but not all were full; and, besides, there was a close carriage, and also a machine for luggage. The fare was four shillings for the thirty-one miles. Everything went on so rapidly, that I had scarcely the power of observation. The road begins at an excavation through rock, and is to a certain extent insulated from the adjacent country. It is occasionally placed on bridges, and frequently intersected by ordinary roads. Not quite a perfect level is preserved. On setting off there is a slight jolt, arising from the chain catching each carriage, but, once in motion, we proceeded as smoothly as possible. For a minute or two the pace is gentle, and is constantly varying. The machine produces little smoke or steam. First in order is the tall chimney; then the boiler, a barrel-like vessel; then an oblong reservoir of water; then a vehicle for coals; and then comes, of a length infinitely extendible, the train of carriages. If all the seats had been filled, our train would have carried about 150 passengers; but a gentleman assured me at Chester that he went with a thousand persons to Newton fair. There must have been two engines then. I have heard since that two thousand persons and more went to and from the fair that day. But two thousand only, at three shillings each way, would have produced £600! But, after all, the expense is so great, that it is considered uncertain whether the establishment will ultimately remunerate the proprietors. Yet I have heard that it already yields the shareholders a dividend of nine per cent. And Bills have passed for making railroads between London and Birmingham, and Birmingham and Liverpool. What a change will it produce in the intercourse! One conveyance will take between 100 and 200 passengers, and the journey will be made in a forenoon! Of the rapidity of the journey I had better experience on my return; but I may say now, that, stoppages included, it may certainly be made at the rate of twenty miles an hour!

I should have observed before that the most remarkable movements of the journey are those in which trains pass one another. The rapidity is such that there is no recognizing the features of a traveller. On several occasions, the noise of the passing engine was like the whizzing of a rocket. Guards are stationed in the road, holding flags, to give notice to the drivers when to stop. Near Newton, I noticed an inscription recording the memorable death of Huskisson.’

26 December 1836
‘Brighton. This was a remarkable day. So much snow fell, that not a coach either set out for or arrived from London - an incident almost unheard of in this place. Parties were put off and engagements broken without complaint. The Masqueriers, with whom I am staying, expected friends to dinner, but they could not come. Nevertheless, we had here Mr Edmonds, the worthy Scotch schoolmaster, Mr and Mrs Dill, and a Miss Robinson; and, with the assistance of whist, the afternoon went off comfortably enough. Of course, during a part of the day, I was occupied in reading.’

28 December 1836
‘The papers to-day are full of the snow-storm. The ordinary mails were stopped in every part of the country.’

3 May 1850
‘I read early a speech by [Frederick William] Robertson [a charismatic preacher] to the Brighton Working Class Association, in which infidelity of a very dangerous kind had sprung up. His speech shows great practical ability. He managed a difficult subject very ably, but it will not be satisfactory either to the orthodox or the ultra-liberal.

I went to Mr Cookson, who is one of the executors of Mr Wordsworth, and with whom I had an interesting conversation about Wordsworth’s arrangements for the publication of his poems. He has commissioned Dr Christopher Wordsworth to write his Life, a brief Memoir merely illustrative of his poems. And in a paper given to the Doctor, he wrote that his sons, son-in-law, his dear friend Miss Fenwick, Mr Carter, and Mr Robinson, who had travelled with him, “would gladly contribute their aid by communicating any facts within their knowledge.” ’

18 February 1851
‘At Masquerier’s, Brighton. We had calls soon after breakfast. The one to be mentioned was that of [Michael] Faraday, one of the most remarkable men of the day, the very greatest of our discoverers in chemistry, a perfect lecturer in the unaffected simplicity and intelligent clearness of his statement; so that the learned are instructed and the ignorant charmed. His personal character is admirable. When he was young, poor, and altogether unknown, Masquerier was kind to him; and now that he is a great man he does not forget his old friend.’

29 November 1852
‘I went to Robertson’s, and had two hours of interesting chat with him on his position here in the pulpit; also about Lady Byron. He speaks of her as the noblest woman he ever knew.’

17 August 1853
‘Dr King wrote to me, informing me of the death of Robertson, of Brighton. Take him for all in all, the best preacher I ever saw in a pulpit; that is, uniting the greatest number of excellences, originality, piety, freedom of thought, and warmth of love. His style colloquial and very scriptural. He combined light of the intellect with warmth of the affections in a pre-eminent degree.’

13 September 1853
‘Brighton. Dr King called, and in the evening I called by desire on Lady Byron - a call which I enjoyed, and which may have consequences. Recollecting her history, as the widow of the most famous, though not the greatest, poet of England in our day, I felt an interest in going to her; and that interest was greatly heightened when I left her. From all I have heard of her, I consider her one of the best women of the day. Her means and her good will both great. “She lives to do good,” says Dr. King, and I believe this to be true. She wanted my opinion as to the mode of doing justice to Robertson’s memory. She spoke of him as having a better head on matters of business than any one else she ever knew. She said, “I have consulted lawyers on matters of difficulty, but Robertson seemed better able to give me advice. He unravelled everything and explained everything at once as no one else did.” ’

13 May 1865
‘My birthday. To-day I complete my ninetieth year. When people hear of my age, they affect to doubt my veracity, and call me a wonder. It is unusual, I believe, for persons of this age to retain possession of their faculties, or so much of them as I do. The Germans have an uncomplimentary saying : “Weeds don’t spoil.” ’

This article is a slightly revised version of one first published on 13 May 2015.

Folly, ignorance, idleness

‘Early in life, at the age of fifteen, I had commenced the dangerous habit of keeping a journal and this I maintained for ten years. The volumes remained in my possession unregarded - never looked at - till 1870, when I examined them, and, with many blushes, destroyed them.’ Alas, the great British novelist Anthony Trollope - born 210 years ago today - did not leave behind any diaries, only an autobiography with tantalising snippets about the journals he used to keep.

Trollope was born on 24 April 1815, in London, England, into a family of declining fortunes. His father, Thomas Anthony Trollope, was a barrister who struggled with financial management, while his mother, Frances Trollope, later became a successful writer. The family’s unstable income and eventual move to Belgium after financial ruin affected Anthony’s early years. He attended several schools, including Harrow and Winchester, but his time there was marked by unhappiness and bullying.

In 1834, Trollope began working as a junior clerk at the General Post Office, enduring several years of poverty before being transferred to Ireland in 1841, which improved his circumstances. During his postal career, he helped introduce the pillar box system, first in the Channel Islands, later spreading to Britain and Ireland. He wrote in the early morning hours before work, maintaining a disciplined schedule that allowed him to produce a vast body of literature. His first novel, The Macdermots of Ballycloran (1847), gained little attention, but he achieved fame with The Warden (1855), the first of what became known as the Barsetshire series.

Trollope married Rose Heseltine in 1844, and the couple had two sons, Henry and Frederick. He enjoyed a stable family life and often drew on domestic and clerical settings in his fiction. His works are known for their realism, detailed characterisations, and exploration of Victorian society’s moral and political issues. He remained prolific throughout his life, producing over 45 novels, numerous short stories, travel books, and essays. His political ambitions, including a failed run for Parliament in 1868, were less successful.

Trollope retired from the Post Office in 1867 to focus on writing full-time. He continued to publish steadily until his death in 1882. Though his popularity waned in the decades after his death, the 20th century saw a revival of interest in his work. Today, Trollope is considered one of the great chroniclers of Victorian England, admired for his insight into human behaviour and the intricacies of social life. His Barsetshire and Palliser novels remain widely read and studied. More information is readily available online at Wikipedia, Encyclopaedia Britannica and the Trollope Society.

An Autobiography by Trollope was first published in 1883 by William Blackwood and Sons, Edinburgh and London. Trollope completed the manuscript in 1879 and, after his death in 1882, his son Henry M. Trollope edited and arranged for its publication in 1883. This is freely available to read at Internet Archive.

On page 38, Trollope confesses: ‘Early in life, at the age of fifteen, I had commenced the dangerous habit of keeping a journal and this I maintained for ten years. The volumes remained in my possession unregarded - never looked at - till 1870, when I examined them, and, with many blushes, destroyed them. They convicted mo of folly, ignorance, indiscretion, idleness, extravagance, and conceit. But they had habituated me to the rapid use of pen and ink, and taught me how to express myself with facility.’

There is one other references to these journals later in the autobiography, and a further passage about ‘a little diary, with its dates and ruled spaces’ in which he seems to have set himself deadlines and recorded progress in writing the novels.

p48

‘I had often told myself since I left school that the only career in life within my reach was that of an author, and the only mode of authorship open to me that of a writer of novels. In the journal which I read and destroyed a few years since, I found the matter argued out before I had been in the Post Office two years. Parliament was out of the question. I had not means to go to the Bar. In official life, such as that to which I had been introduced, there did not seem to be any opening for real success. Pens and paper I could command. Poetry I did not believe to be within my grasp. The drama, too, which I would fain have chosen, I believed to be above me. For history, biography, or essay writing I had not sufficient erudition. But I thought it possible that I might write a novel. I had resolved very early that in that shape must the attempt be made. But the months and years ran on, and no attempt was made. And yet no day was passed without thoughts of attempting, and a mental acknowledgement of the disgrace of postponing it.’

p110

‘I have known authors whose lives have always been troublesome and painful because their tasks have never been done in time. They have ever been as boys struggling to learn their lesson as they entered the school gates. Publishers have distrusted them, and they have failed to write their best because they have seldom written at ease. I have done double their work, - though burdened with another profession, - and have done it almost without an effort. I have not once, through all my literary career, felt myself even in danger of being late with my task. I have known no anxiety as to ‘copy’. The needed pages far ahead - very far ahead - have almost always been in the drawer beside me. And that little diary, with its dates and ruled spaces, its record that must be seen, its daily, weekly demand upon my industry, has done all that for me.

There are those who would be ashamed to subject themselves to such a taskmaster, and who think that the man who works with his imagination should allow himself to wait till inspiration moves him. When I have heard such doctrine preached, I have hardly been able to repress my scorn. To me it would not be more absurd if the shoemaker were to wait for inspiration, or the tallow-chandler for the divine moment of melting, if the man whose business it is to write has eaten too many good things, or has drunk too much, or smoked too many cigars, as men who write sometimes will do,- then his condition may be unfavourable for work; but so will be the condition of a shoemaker who has been similarly imprudent. I have sometimes thought that the inspiration wanted has been the remedy which time will give to the evil results of such imprudence. - Mens sana in corpora sano. The author wants that as does every other workman, - that and a habit of industry. I was once told that the surest aid to the writing of a book was a piece of cobbler’s wax on my chair. I certainly believe in the cobbler’s wax much more than the inspiration.’

What could become of me

‘What could become of me, and what will become of me? My powerful fantasy will drive me into the insane asylum, my violent temperament will make a suicide of me!’ This is Hans Christian Andersen, a prolific Danish writer, born 220 years ago today, best remembered for his fairy tales. From the age of 20, he kept meticulous diaries. These reveal youthful insecurities, and struggles with loneliness. They also document his extensive travels across Europe, and his encounters with influential figures, such as Charles Dickens.

Andersen was born in Odense, Denmark, on 2 April 1805 into a poor family. His father was a shoemaker, while his mother worked as a washerwoman. His father had literary aspirations and read literature, including fairy tales, to his son, but he died when Andersen was just 11. His mother would remarry, but aged 14, Andersen moved to Copenhagen to pursue a career in the arts, initially hoping to become an actor or singer. His striking soprano voice gained him some attention at the Royal Danish Theatre, but when it broke, he turned to writing. With support from patrons who recognised his talent, he received financial aid to attend school, though he struggled with the rigid curriculum. Encouraged by Jonas Collin, a director at the Royal Danish Theatre, he persevered and eventually turned to writing poetry, plays, and novels.

Andersen’s first major success came in 1829 with the publication of A Journey on Foot from Holmen’s Canal to the East Point of Amager, followed by plays and poetry collections. In 1835, he published his first collection of fairy tales, including The Princess and the Pea. Although initially overlooked by critics, these tales gained widespread recognition over time. Andersen drew inspiration from his own experiences and often portrayed themes of poverty and social exclusion. His later works included beloved classics such as The Little Mermaid, The Emperor’s New Clothes, and The Ugly Duckling. Over his lifetime, he wrote more than 150 fairy tales.

English translations of Andersen’s works brought him fame abroad, influencing authors like A. A. Milne and Beatrix Potter. He forged friendships with literary figures such as Charles Dickens and traveled extensively across Europe, Asia, and Africa. Despite his success, though, he remained deeply sensitive to criticism and struggled with feelings of loneliness throughout his life. He never married, though he formed close, sometimes unreciprocated attachments to both men and women. His later years were marked by declining health, but he continued to write and travel widely, enhancing his international fame. He died in 1875, in Copenhagen,  but left behind a literary legacy that has influenced generations of writers, filmmakers, and artists. Today, he is celebrated as Denmark’s national poet. Further biographical information is available online at Wikipedia, Encyclopaedia Britannica, and in his own autobiography (The Story of My Life) available at Internet Archive.

Andersen kept extensive and detailed diaries throughout his life. After his death, only excerpts were published in the early 20th century. A first major publication of his diaries came in a six-volume Danish edition, edited by H. Topsøe-Jensen (1926-1931). A more comprehensive Danish edition was published in 11 volumes, as edited by Helga Pedersen (1971-1976). Translations and more scholarly work on the diaries has emerged since then. The information and excerpts below come from The Diaries of Hans Christian Andersen selected and translated by Patricia L Conroy and Sven H. Rossel (published by University of Washington Press, 1990 - freely available for digital loan at Internet Archive.)

Andersen began his diary on 16 September 1825. ‘For the next thirty-five years’, the translators say in their preface, ‘nearly all of Andersen’s diaries are reports of his travels, both at home and abroad. They were often begun on the very day of departure and continued uninterrupted until the last, routine stages of his journey. Like his schoolboy diary, these travel diaries record extraordinary times in his life.’

Here is more from the preface: ‘In late August 1861, when Andersen was on the last leg of his journey home from a trip to Rome, word reached him that Jonas Collin, his benefactor and friend for thirty-nine years, had died. Saddened, he continued his journey to Copenhagen to attend the funeral. This time he did not cease writing his diary at the trip’s end but continued to make entries, reporting his impressions of a Copenhagen so familiar to him but now made alien by the absence of his good friend. From this point on, Andersen made of his diary an unbroken record of his life until the pen literally fell from his hand during his final illness. In these entries, Andersen is in his workaday world, among the people who mean most to him. It is particularly in these entries that the reader learns of his irascibility, his small vanities and petty tyrannies, as well as his capacity for friendship, his honesty, and his kindness.

No reader can come away from Andersen’s diaries without the feeling of having met both a remarkable artist and a remarkable man. In making our selections from his diaries, we, his translators, have tried to allow Andersen to document himself in both these regards for his English-speaking audience. We have naturally focused on those periods in his life that seemed to us especially interesting, but we have sought to fashion the excerpts so that they also include some of his more ordinary experiences - after all, his life was not all agony and ecstasy. 

His first diary, for example, shows the plight of a young man forced to play schoolboy for his own good. The diary from his trip to Rome in 1833-34 records the raw material that the young artist will soon use to forge his breakthrough novel, The Improvisator. Unfortunately, the few diaries that exist from 1835 to 1840 reflect little of Andersen’s productivity - he wrote three novels and numerous tales and singspiel - or his struggle for recognition. It is not until his trip to Greece and Turkey in 1840-41 that we encounter another treasure trove for those interested in the best of his travelogues, A Poet’s Bazaar. Later travel diaries show Andersen enjoying his acclaim abroad, visiting famous artists and nobility, and impatiently enduring the role of travel guide for Jonas Collin’s grandsons. 

We decided to translate the diaries from his two trips to England in their entirety because of their special interest for the English-speaking audience. The diaries of his last years are an interesting document of his struggle with old age, when his health deteriorated and failed. The diaries for this painful period show Andersen at his most admirable, bearing not only the discomfort of his illness but the gruesome medical treatment that was standard at that time. When he became too weak to hold a pen, his friend Mrs. Melchior made his entries for him, at first from dictation and then, when he fell silent, in her own words until he died.’

And here is the last paragraph from Rossel’s Introduction.

‘Andersen’s diaries interest posterity for two main reasons. Through them we learn of his reading, visits to museums and theaters, and musical experiences. Revealing how deeply he was part of the European literary and cultural tradition, his diaries constitute a source of the greatest significance. Likewise, one can find information about Andersen’s daily associates, what he learned and encountered, and what impact his environment had on him. Second, his diaries contain a poignant expression of human weakness as well as strength: nowhere does one come closer to the author than through these simple entries in which great and small philosophical speculations and impromptus are experienced and depicted side by side. Here one finds that strange mixture of precision, irony, and naïveté that is so characteristic of Andersen and his writing. His diaries present one of the strangest and most disparate artistic portraits in world literature.’

20 September 1825 

‘What could become of me, and what will become of me? My powerful fantasy will drive me into the insane asylum, my violent temperament will make a suicide of me! Before, the two of these together would have made a great writer! Oh God, do Your ways really prevail here on earth? Forgive me, God; I am unfair to You who have helped me in so many ways. Oh, You are God, so forgive and go on helping me. (God, I swear by my eternal salvation never again within my heart to mistrust Your fatherly hand, if only I might this time be promoted to the fourth form and to Elsinore.)’

21 September 1825

‘I was quite lucky in religion and Bible history, I was the best of all. Got a letter from Collin. Mrs. Meisling comforted me by saying that I would probably be promoted to the fourth form. Hope fills my breast! My God, I am again relying on You! (Vithusen and Frendrup have left.)’

22 September 1825

‘Studied Greek until 1 o’clock. After that invited to celebrate Ludvig’s birthday at the principal’s home. (I’ve given him 11 shillings’ worth of macaroons and a bouquet.) The children are quite fond of me. The principal and Hjarup told about a lot of shenanigans from their schooldays - fights and practical jokes. A carefree spirit, but not to my liking. Accompanied Pedersen home. Oh God, whatever are these people all about; oh, whom can one trust! Oh God, Your will with me be done; Your great world is boisterous and diverse.’

20 March 1843

‘Bad mood! Wrote to Mrs. Rowan that I wasn’t well and so couldn’t attend the soirée. Met a Danish engineer in the Café du Danemark. Wrote a letter to Holst and Mrs. Laessoe. Went to see Alexandre Dumas in the Hôtel de Paris on the Rue de Richelieu. He welcomed me with open arms, dressed in blue-striped shirt and baggy trousers! The bed was in the same room and unmade; the table, full of papers. We sat by the fireplace, and he was extremely charming and natural. He related that the king of Sweden, who had been a general along with his father, had invited him to Stockholm; he wanted to go there and then visit Copenhagen and St. Petersburg. He offered to take me tomorrow at 8:30 up to the Théâtre-Français and introduce me to Rachel. Then he presented me with a ticket for two in the first gallery in the Théâtre des Variétés, where they were performing The Petty Secrets of Paris. (There’s a good scene in this where the patrol is passing by and the man says: “My poor wife, she’s bored.” He looks up, and close to her shadow on the curtain can be seen the shadow of a man who is kissing her.) The entryway to the Passage de l’Opéra, very authentic. I think a similar, original Danish work could be written. Marriage to the Beat of a Drum, from the time of the Revolution; the young girl sang quite well; the last idea about the unhappy lover is funny. He says: “I want to stay a bachelor forever, just like my father!” Lastly, The Night of the Mardi-gras, a carnival skit. I took Theodor with me. We sat in front of stage center; close to us was a lady; everybody was staring at her; she was definitely an authoress or singer. Alexandre Dumas talked about Thorvaldsen, whom he had visited in Rome. Gave me a note to Vernet. Talked about Liszt and Thalberg; he rated the latter higher.’

13 February 1851

‘Lovely, sunny weather! Flags are waving; people and soldiers are strolling around in large groups. At one o'clock some of the artillery arrived - the Schultz Battery, which went straight out to the barracks in Christian’s Harbor. Here the decorations were especially lavish with wreaths, garlands and flags. An immense royal standard was stretched almost entirely across one of the streets. The Knippel Bridge was converted into two triumphal arches with trophies, Danish flags, shields with the names of heroes on them! The guard rails of the bridge were all lined with pikes and greenery on both sides; and there were vessels on both sides of the bridge, each one draped with countless numbers of flags. With its singularity and the surroundings, it was a more beautiful sight than even the triumphal arch on Old Square. (The fountain with the golden apples is turned on everyday.) Outside of the wholesaler Heering’s house there are a lot of flags hanging from the roof to the bulwark of the canal; the street has been decorated all the way to Amager Gate. I felt so good on this day. (Saw King Lear at the Royal Theater.)’

20 ]une 1857

‘Thunder and lightening last night. I drove with Dickens, who was headed for the city, and left him in Strood to get a shave. It was low tide; the sun-warmed foreshore glistened. It was the first warm summer morning here in England. Dickens told me that Shakespeare had set the scene here at Gad’s Hill because many pilgrims came here in those days, since it’s halfway between London and Dover. In the second scene of the first act of Henry IV, Part I, the prince says: “But, my lads, my lads, tomorrow morning, by four o’clock, early at Gadshill! There are pilgrims going to Canterbury with rich offerings, and traders riding to London with fat purses. I have vizards for you all; you have horses for yourselves. Gadshill lies tonight in Rochester. &” Two friends of Charles came out here in the afternoon. We played cricket on the lawn; I took a blow from the ball on one finger, so that it turned blue and the skin was broken. Diarrhea!’

21 June 1857

‘Letter from Miss Bushby and from Bentley. Wrote letters to Bentley, Count Reventlow-Criminil, Jette Collin and Mrs. Balling; they’ll be sent off tomorrow. It’s going better with my stomach. The weather is delightfully warm; I’m wearing summer trousers. Yesterday I read without trouble a story in English by W. Irving. Very warm, but it soon turned to rain. Albert Smith, the author of The Ascent of Mont Blanc, is here today on a visit; he seems lively and loquacious. In the evening, music by Miss Hogarth and Mary. I was very tired. Yesterday Dickens asked me so nicely not to depart before I had seen the performance they were giving for Jerrold’s widow; said he, his wife and daughters were so happy to have me with them. I was very moved; he embraced me, I kissed him on the forehead.’

7 December 1867

‘Sent letters to the king, to the Student Association and to the Craftmen’s Association in Slagelse. (There was no remembrance from the one in Copenhagen.) There was a storm last night; the snow is drifting. A large number of beggars, the last one, a drunk. Called on the shoemaker Gredsted, who seems to be prosperous, the newspaper publishers Dreyer and Lauritsen, along with Miss Susanne Bunkeflod. Dinner at Titular Councillor Mourier’s; I was seated next to his wife at the table. There was a toast to me; it was a lovely dinner. At 7:30 the president of the Music Association, the dentist Jensen and the businessman Christian Andersen arrived and took me to the elegantly illuminated main hall of City Hall, where there was a seat of honor for me. I was seated in the midst of all the ladies, and the only men in the vicinity were Unsgaard, Koch, Mourier and the bishop. The concert began with a song in my honor; later they did “In Denmark I Was Born” in four part harmony. Two young Poles, Julius and Henry Schloming, got up and played the violin. It was past 10 o’clock before the concert was over and past 12 o’clock before I was in bed.’

My guiding darkness

‘Perversion interests me most and is really my guiding darkness . . . I love to write of cruel deeds.’ This is Patricia Highsmith, who died 30 years ago today, confiding in a youthful diary about a preoccupation that would come to dominate her writing, and, indeed, inspire her to produce some of the most popular psychological crime stories of the 20th century. She did keep diaries and notebooks throughout her life, and although these were available to biographers in the past, they were not actually published until 2021.

 
Mary Patricia Plangman was born in Fort Worth, Texas, in 1921, the child of artists who divorced before she was born. Her mother soon married Stanley Highsmith, and the family moved to New York. She studied English composition at Barnard College, and found work at a comic publishers. Turning freelance allowed her to earn more money and to write her own short stories. She lived for a while in Mexico.

Highsmith published her first novel - Strangers on a Train - in 1950, to modest success. The famous film maker, Alfred Hitchcock, adapted the story in 1951, and the movie’s success rubbed off on Highsmith. Her second novel, The Price of Salt, a lesbian romance published under a pseudonym, Claire Morgan, came out in 1952. The Talented Mr. Ripley, probably her most famous novel nowadays, emerged soon after, in 1955. Many other psychological thrillers followed, but it was not until 1970 that she returned to Ripley, eventually completing five novels (the Ripliad) about her compelling anti-hero.

Highsmith never settled down for long with a partner, male or female, though she had many affairs. Her private life was constantly troubled, she moved around a lot, living in various parts of Europe. She drank and smoked to excess, and the older she got the more she preferred the company of cats (and snails, apparently!), while colleagues found her misanthropic and even cruel. For the last 14 years of her life she lived in Switzerland. She died there on 4 February 1995. Her archives are stored at Swiss Literary Archives in Bern - see also Swiss Info.

Further biographical information is available from Wikipedia, or from two biographies, available to preview through Googlebooks: Beautiful Shadow: a Life of Patricia Highsmith by Andrew Wilson (Bloomsbury, 2003) and The Talented Miss Highsmith: The Secret Life and Serious Art of Patricia Highsmith by Joan Schenkar (St Martin’s Press, 2009). See also reviews of the former at The Guardian, The New York Times; a review of the latter by Jeannette Winterson also at The New York Times, and an article by Schenkar at The Paris Review.

One of many extraordinary things about Patricia Highsmith was an obsession with documenting her own life. Having decided not to destroy her diaries, she left behind some 8,000 handwritten pages, in 37 work notebooks or cahiers (1938-1992), and 18 personal diaries (1940-1984). These diaries were mined thoroughly by the biographers, Wilson and Schenkar, but it was not until 2021 that Liveright published Patricia Highsmith: Her Diaries and Notebooks: 1941-1995 as meticulously edited by her longtime editor Anna von Planta. 

The publisher says of the book: ‘In these pages, we see Highsmith reflecting on good and evil, loneliness and intimacy, sexuality and sacrifice, love and murder. We see her tumultuous romantic relationships play out alongside her acquaintances with other writers including Jane Bowles, Aaron Copland, John Gielgud, Truman Capote, Carson McCullers, Arthur Koestler, and W. H. Auden. And in her skewering of McCarthy-era America, her prickly disparagement of contemporary art, her fixation on love and writing, and ever-percolating prejudices, we see the famously secretive Highsmith revealing the roots of her psychological angst and acuity. Written in her inimitable and dazzling prose and offering all the pleasures of Highsmith’s novels, these are one of the most compulsively readable literary diaries to be published in generations - and yield, at last an unparalleled, unfiltered, unforgettable picture of this enigmatic, iconic, trailblazing author's true self.’ Some pages can be previewed at Amazon, and a review can be read here.

Wilson’s biography - which is generally rated more highly than Schenkar’s - refers to Highsmith’s diaries constantly, and always provides the exact source (i.e. whether from a cahier or a private journal, and with the exact date). However, he rarely provides any complete or long quotations from the diaries, choosing instead to incorporate phrases within his own text.

Here is part of Wilson’s introduction: ‘Her work explores the motif of the double or splintered self. The changeable nature of identity fascinated her both philosophically and personally. “I had a strong feeling tonight . . . that I was many faceted like a ball of glass, or like the eye of a fly.” ’ [14 February 1942] [. . .]

Her private notebooks can be seen to represent, if not an authentic self, at least an identity that is somehow more substantial than the one she chose to show to the outside world. In addition to keeping incredibly detailed diaries, she recorded her creative ideas, observations and experiences in what she called her “cahiers” or working journals. [ . . .]

Many writers’ diaries are works of self-mythology, often more fantastical than their own fiction, but after checking Highsmith’s documents with other archival sources and information gleaned from my interviews, it is clear that her private journals were written without artifice. Her voice was tormented, self-critical but, significantly, brutally honest. She kept a diary, she said, because she was interested in analysing the motivation of her behaviour. “I cannot do this without dropping dried peas behind me to help me retrace my course, to point a straight line in the darkness.” [21 September 1949] Throughout her life she toyed with the idea of burning these most personal of journals, and although she was given the opportunity to incinerate any incriminating material before her death, she only chose to destroy a few letters from one of her younger lovers.’

Here are three extracts from Highsmith’s diaries taken from Wilson’s biography.

27 August 1942
‘Perversion interests me most and is really my guiding darkness . . . I love to write of cruel deeds. Murder fascinates me . . . Physical cruelty appeals to me mostly. It is visual & dramatic. Mental cruelty is a torture, even for me, to think of. I have known too much of it myself.’

25 October 1942
‘I believe people should be allowed to go the whole hog with their perversions, abnormalities, unhappinesses, [. . .] Mad people are the only active people, they have built the world.’

18 November 1942
‘The Lesbian, the classic Lesbian, never seeks her equal in life. She is . . . the soi-disant male, who does not expect his match in his mate, who would rather use her as the base-on-the-earth which he can never be.’

And here are several extracts from the published diaries.

23 March 1941

‘I met an insufferable young woman from school on my way to Billie’s. She was going to Temple Emanu-El for a meeting of young gays. What a thing to do on Sunday! My good angel tells me that would be better - but my God! I’ll take the devil! Billie very sweet - kisses, etc. She tells me that she likes me a lot. That she wants me. I feel very attracted to her. But I told her I was in love with Helen at school. Billie was very sad - I didn’t allow her to touch me - anyways, we decided not to see each other for a month. She gave me a little gold chain for my wrist. I won’t wear it - and I - I gave her nothing but one cent.’

19 May 1941

‘Work! Work! I’m not even reading the papers. A ship sank. 190 Americans. Hitler, perhaps. Everyone is talking about Germany’s victory. We’ve just entered the war. + I read Julius Caesar, Measure for Measure - etc. It’s exciting to study like this: all day! Other men’s thoughts.’

1 June 1941

‘A ghostly day - no ordinary people on the streets because everyone’s out of the city. I wonder what Va.’s doing? + I learned a lot - Don’t want to write stories about stupid, useless people. There are so many things crying out to be described. + Graham here 10:00. We talked quietly. The situations and circumstances at the camps are unbelievable/A sentry shot two men obeying his orders! We listened to records. He was wearing my slippers. They look nice on his feet. I’m happy.’

23 July 1941

‘Spent this night with Buffie as I knew I would. Arrived about five - she gave me a gorgeous pair of cufflinks - gold with a brown stone. Rather large. Then we picked up Irving D. & Billy Somebody & went to Spivy’s anniversary party. Then home. I’m not in love. Can’t even say I wish I were. Buffie is so damned “bandbox,” as Constable so aptly put it.’

26 July 1941

‘Caught the bus at 10:50 last evening. Graham along to see me off. Hot tiresome trip. I feel blue. Thinking constantly of Rosalind & not at all of Buffie. I am an ungrateful fickle little bastard. It’s so much fun to ride along, letting one’s mind build things like an Erector Set, and being quite alone as the miles go past, enjoying cigarettes & coffee, and thinking of possible stories, and of Rosalind, and of the busy, active, amusing, and wild life before me - not only next semester, when I shall work like hell, but for all time. I have a great destiny before me - a world of pleasures and accomplishments, beauty and love.’

14 September 1941

‘Things are coming to a crisis, Stanley says. Mother is nervous, again talks of removing me from school. I shall be lost. All the jobs I want require a B.A. She is jealous of my friends. Constantly making comparisons between herself & them and jealous too of my courtesy to Jeva & Marjorie when they come over. And could I possibly be in love with my own mother? Perhaps in some incredible way I am. And it is the recalcitrance in all of us that shows in my ingratitude for my mother’s over-zealous effort to please me, and to do things for me. It is the old story of things being too simple - and of our refusal to throw our love to the easiest and most deserving and most logical object.’

5 December 1941

‘Friday: Gloomy day. Short school. Went to Lola’s at 6:00. Gillespie, [Toni] Hughes, Buffie (whom I scarcely spoke to), Jimmie Stern & many Frenchmen. Also Melcarth. Thence to Barnard. Mary S. (also there) said Helen was the cutest thing she’d seen in years. That my taste was in my mouth. I didn’t know what she meant. Helen has all the warmth - and she wore her gray suit tight because she knows I love it - and we could not keep our eyes or our hands off each other all evening and it was all very beautiful. She loves me - she said so - in the cold air outdoors. And she means it. Why should I lie? I miss her so when I’m away an hour I can’t see straight. The first time I’ve been in love - the terrific physical appeal plus my love of her - God what a perilous combination!’

This article is a revised version of one first published on 204 February 2015.

The champion of reason

‘I want to be known as the greatest champion of reason and the greatest enemy of religion.’ This is Ayn Rand, a Russian-American writer and philosopher, born 120 years ago today. Her few novels were extremely popular in their day, and she developed a philosophical system, Objectivism, which also drew many admirers. She kept notebooks for much of her life, jotting thoughts about her novels and philosophy, and these were edited and published in the 1990s as Journals of Ayn Rand.

Alisa Zinovievna Rosenbaum was born on 2 February 1905 in St Petersburg into a wealthy Jewish family. The October Revolution and Bolshevik rule led to the family’s property being confiscated, and to them fleeing as far as the Crimean Peninsula. After graduating from high school there, Alisa returned, with her family, to Petrograd, where she was one of the first women to enrol in the state university, majoring in history. Subsequently, she studied for a year at the State Technicum for Screen Arts in Leningrad. Around this time, she adopted the surname Rand, and took her first name as Ayn.

In 1926, Rand went to visit relatives in the US, staying a few months in Chicago, before heading for Hollywood. There she did odd jobs, worked as a junior scriptwriter, and met a young actor Fank O’Connor who she married just before her visa ran out. She became an American citizen in 1931; several attempts to bring her family members to the US, though, failed.

In the early 1930s, Rand sold a screenplay to Universal Studios, and had a play produced on Broadway (later turned into a film by Paramount). Her first, partly autobiographical, novel - We the Living - was published in 1936. Although not a success at the time, later, when her other novels sold so well, Rand issued a revised edition which went on to sell over three million copies.

By the 1940s, Rand had become politically active; and she volunteered for the presidential campaign of Republican Wendell Wilkie. She took on speaking appointments, and came into contact with other free market-leaning intellectuals. Her first major success as a writer came with The Fountainhead, published in 1943, a novel of romance and philosophy. Warner Bros hired her to write a screenplay for a film version (which came out in 1949). Subsequently, she was hired by Hal Wallis (who had produced Casablanca for Warner) as a screenwriter and script-doctor for his own, new production company. One of her projects was to write a screenplay about the development of the atomic bomb - although the film never got made. Meanwhile, her political activities led her to become associated with other anti-Communist writers.

In 1951, Rand moved to New York where she established a group of admirers, including Nathan Blumenthal (later Nathaniel Branden) and his wife Barbara, and Barbara’s cousin Leonard Peikoff. By 1954, she and Nathaniel were having an affair with the full knowledge of their spouses. Atlas Shrugged, considered Rand’s most important work, was published in 1957, and became an international bestseller. More than any other of her novels, Atlas Shrugged was rich in her developing ideas on philosophy, a system she called Objectivism.

Thereafter, Rand eschewed fiction in favour of promoting her philosophical ideas, by writing books, giving lectures, and often taking controversial stances on political issues (wholeheartedly rejecting religion, for example, and supporting the right to abortion). In 1958, Branden established the Nathaniel Branden Lectures (later Institute) to promote Rand’s philosophy. This expanded considerably, until it was offering courses in 80 cities; but, in 1968, Rand denounced Branden and publicly broke off with him and the Institute.

After an operation for lung cancer in 1974, Rand’s work activities declined. Her husband died in 1979, and she passed away in 1982, leaving her estate to Peikoff. Further biographical information can be found at the Internet Encyclopaedia of Philosophy, Encyclopaedia Britannica, or Wikipedia. Wikipedia also has an extensive article on Rand’s Objectivism

Soon after Rand’s death, Peikoff released extracts from her notebooks for publication in two magazines The Objectivist Forum and The Intellectual Activist. Then, in 1997, Dutton released Journals of Ayn Rand, edited by David Harriman with Peikoff’s approval. The book has its own Wikipedia entry, which states: ‘Some reviewers considered it an interesting source of information for readers with an interest in Rand, but several scholars criticized Harriman’s editing as being too heavy-handed and insufficiently acknowledged in the published text.’

In a foreword, Peikoff explains: ‘Ayn Rand’s Journals - my name for her notes to herself through the decade - is the bulk of her still unpublished work, arranged chronologically. [. . .] The Journals contain most of AR’s notes for her three main novels - along with some early material, some notes made between The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged, and some notes from her final decades.’

He continues: ‘If the primary value of the Journals to us is the evidence it furnishes of AR’s growth, a second value is the evidence that her growth was a product of thinking - in the art of which the Journals may serve as a textbook. The subtitle of this book really ought to be: How to Answer Your Own Questions.’

In his preface, Harriman says: ‘In a note to herself at the age of twenty-three, AR wrote: “From now on - no thought whatever about yourself, only about your work. You are only a writing engine. Don’t stop, until you really and honestly know that you cannot go on.” Throughout her long career, she remained true to this pledge - she was a “writing engine”. With the publication of her journals, we can now see the “writing behind the writing” and appreciate fully the prodigious effort that went into her published work. AR’s notes, typically handwritten, were spread among numerous boxes of papers she left behind at her death in 1982. My editing of this material has consisted of selection, organization, line editing, and insertion of explanatory comments. Selection. This book presents AR’s working journals - i.e. the notes in which she developed her literary and philosophical ideas. Notes of a personal nature will be included in a forthcoming authorized biography.’

Many if not most of the entries in Journals of Ayn Rand (which can be previewed online at Googlebooks) are not dated, and those that are tend to be more associated with her philosophical musings (as opposed to those about her novels). Here are a few samples (the last concerns her work for Hal Wallis on the atomic bomb screenplay).

9 April 1934
‘The human race has only two unlimited capacities: for suffering and for lying. I want to fight religion as the root of all human lying and the only excuse for suffering.

I believe - and I want to gather all the facts to illustrate this - that the worst curse on mankind is the ability to consider ideals as something quite abstract and detached from one’s everyday life. The ability to live and think quite differently, thus eliminating thinking from your actual life. This applied not to deliberate and conscious hypocrites, but to those more dangerous and hopeless ones who, alone with themselves and to themselves, tolerate a complete break between their convictions and their lives, and still believe that they have convictions. To them, either their ideals or their lives are worthless - and usually both.

I hold religion mainly responsible for this. I want to prove that religion breaks a character before it’s formed, in childhood, by teaching a child lies before he knows what a lie is, by breaking him of the habit of thinking before he has begun to think, by making him a hypocrite before he knows any other possible attitude to life. [. . .]

Why are men so afraid of pure, logical reasoning? Why do they have a profound, ferocious hatred of it? Are instincts and emotions necessarily beyond the control of plain thinking? Or were they trained to be? Why is a complete harmony between mind and emotions impossible? Isn’t it merely a matter of strict mental honesty? And who stands at the very bottom denying such honesty? Isn’t it the church?

I want to be known as the greatest champion of reason and the greatest enemy of religion.’

6 November 1944
‘The art of writing is the art of doing what you think you’re doing. This is not as simple as it sounds. It implies a very difficult undertaking: the necessity to think. And it implies the requirement to think out three separate, very hard problems: What is it you want to say? How are you going to say it? Have you really said it?

It’s a coldly intellectual process. If your emotions do not proceed from your intellect, you will not be able to apply it, even if you know all the rules. The mental ability of a writer determines the literary level of his output. If you grasp only home problems well, you’ll only be a writer of good homey stories. (But what about Tolstoy?)’

25 January 1946
‘Interview with Mrs Oppenheimer: Test was referred to as “Trinity”. Test was on a Monday - the next Saturday Mrs. Oppenheimer gave a party - evening dress. Mood was one of relief. After Hiroshima they did not feel like celebrating. The Oppenheimers were the first family to move to Los Alamos. [The town] had about 30 people then - a big dormitory for scientists in one of the schoolrooms. The Oppenheimers lived in one of the masters’ houses of the old school. Community life was much friendlier and more harmonious than in other cities - higher mental level. Dr Oppenheimer took job only on condition that his essential workers would know the secret. A great part of their work was spent in meetings and conferences. At first, scientists were afraid of possible German atomic research, but later learned there was none. Scientists worked in order to save lives and end the war. Was it in order to beat the Germans to the discovery? “Good God, no!” ’

This article is a slightly revised version of one first published on 2 February 2015.