Do what thou wilt

‘Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law [. . .] I am aflame with the brandy of the thought that I am the sublimest Mystic in all history, that I am the Word of an Aeon, that I am the Beast, the Man, Six Hundred Sixty and Six, the self-crowned God whom men shall worship and blaspheme for centuries.’ This is none other than the infamous and charismatic Aleister Crowley - born 150 years ago today - writing in a magical diary he kept while at the Abbey of Thelema, in Sicily, a commune he set up for his own sexual magic rituals. I have a personal link with Crowley - recorded in my own diaries - in that, when young, I wrote a play about him, and this involved an interview with one of Crowley’s cronies, Gerald Yorke, and researching his library of Crowley papers at the Warburg Institute.

Aleister Crowley was born on 12 October 1875 in Leamington Spa, Warwickshire, into a religious family, his parents being Plymouth Brethren. His father died when he was 11, and he was cared for by an uncle, said to have been publicly philanthropic but surreptitiously cruel. Crowley attended a school in Streatham for a while (see also London Cross, my online book of a walk across London), as well as Malvern College and Tonbridge School briefly, before entering Trinity College, Cambridge. There he spent his time pursuing non-academic interests - mountaineering, for example, playing chess, and writing and publishing poetry - which, with money inherited from his father’s brewing business, he could afford to do.

While climbing in Switzerland, and expounding his increasingly spiritual ideas to fellow climbers, Crowley made contacts which led him to a magical society in London called the Golden Dawn, and its leader Samuel Liddell Mathers, a learned occultist. Crowley learned much about ceremonial magic from Liddell, but also from another of the society’s members, Allan Bennet, who he invited to live with him in his London flat.

In 1899, Crowley purchased a property on the south-east side of Loch Ness, renaming it Boleskine House, where he set up his own magical operations and rituals. Crowley travelled to Mexico, to go climbing, and to Ceylon, Burma and India to study Buddhist practices. In 1904, he married Rose Edith Kelly, the sister of his artist friend Gerald Festus Kelly. While honeymooning in Cairo, Crowley claimed to have been contacted by a supernatural entity named Aiwass, who provided him with a scared text he called The Book of the Law. Over the next few years, and using the text, he helped set up a new magical order, called the A∴A∴; and he became the leader of the British section of a German order Ordo Templi Orientis. He was a prolific writer, producing poetry, articles, and short stories, as well as spiritually-based texts. Rose had three children by Crowley, but he divorced her in 1909, on the grounds of his own adultery. Crowley was never other than extremely promiscuous, and later in life regularly changed partners, calling each new lover his scarlet woman.

During the First World War, Crowley decamped to the United States, where he earned money by writing and giving astronomical readings. Apart from continuing his sex-based spiritual investigations, he also took up painting and campaigned for Germany (though later he claimed he was working as a British spy). Back in Europe, in 1920, he established the Abbey of Thelema, a spiritual community in Cefalù, Sicily, where he lived with his acolytes and their children, developing his rituals and magical practices, many of them involving sex. By this time, his addiction to drugs, heroin and cocaine, had come to dominate his daily life. Still, new followers continued to arrive - some famous like the film star Jane Wolfe - and all of them were initiated into the Abbey’s bizarre practices. There was little concern at the Abbey for health and safety, with one baby (born to Crowley and his consort Leah Hirsig) and a young man dying there. (Another woman at the abbey also gave Crowley a child at this time, Astarte, who was alive until 2014 - the longest lived of Crowley’s known children.)

In time, the British media got to hear about Crowley, and stories on his depraved practices appeared in newspapers and magazines. He was dubbed the wickedest man in the world and such like. Although he denied many accusations, he was too poor to sue. It didn’t help his reputation when he published a novel called Diary of a Drug Fiend. News of activities at the Abbey finally filtered through to Italy’s Fascist government. Crowley was given a deportation notice, and the commune soon closed without him. He and Hirsig moved to Tunisia, where Crowley began writing his so-called autohagiography, The Confessions of Aleister Crowley, parts of which were first published in 1929. Around the same time, he published one of his most significant works, Magick in Theory and Practice, and he became friends with Gerald Yorke, who began organising his finances.

Having moved around from Tunis, to Paris and London a lot, he moved to Berlin for a while in 1930, returning to London a year or two later. There, he launched several court cases against those he felt had libelled him, and won some of them. Nevertheless, Crowley was declared bankrupt in 1935; and, with few contributions arriving from his magical society links any longer, he was chronically short of money. He published Equinox of the Gods, containing a facsimile of The Book of the Law, which sold well. During the Second World War, he removed to Torquay until he tired of it and returned to London, only settling in Hastings in 1944. There he took a young Kenneth Grant as his secretary, and also appointed John Symonds as his literary executor. Crowley died in 1947, and his funeral was held at Brighton Crematorium - a dozen people attended.

There is much information about Crowley scattered across the internet, at Wikipedia, at the Harry Ransom Center (which holds a large Crowley archive), Vigilant Citizen, Controverscial.Com, Open Culture (with video documentary), and Thelamapedia.

Crowley left behind a large number of writings: a score of poetry books, many magical texts or Libri (teachings, methodologies, practices, or Thelemic scripture), short stories, and autobiographical works. A bibliography can be found at Wikipedia and at The Hermetic Library. Among his autobiographical writings are a number of diaries, which are all archived at the Yorke Collection in the Warburg Institute, London. Not all the archived diaries, however, are original manuscripts, but typescripts made from the originals (now lost) under the guidance of Crowley’s friend Gerald Yorke (who later bequeathed all the material to the Warburg).

Crowley’s diaries were not, for the most part, written with the aim of publication. However, in his lifetime, he did publish portions, for their magical significance, in The Equinox - the official organ of his organisation, A ∴ A ∴. - many editions of this can be read online. The Hermetic Library has a list of Crowley’s diaries, though not all the works on the list can be considered diaries in any but the loosest of senses. Crowley’s one novel, Diary of a Drug Fiend, is thought to be autobiographical, however the text bears little relation to an actual diary. Otherwise, Crowley’s various diaries have made their way into publication in different forms.

The most significant of Crowley’s diaries that have emerged in published form can be found in The Magical Record of the Beast 666, subtitled The Diaries of Aleister Crowley 1914-1920 edited with ‘copious annotations’ by John Symonds and Kenneth Grant (Duckworth, 1972). In fact, this includes two separate diaries: Rex de Arte Regia kept by Crowley in New York from 1914-1918 to record his sexual operations and his efforts to perfect sexual magic; and The Magical Record of the Beast, a more general diary Crowley kept in 1920 mostly at Cefalù. At the time of writing, a pdf of the book can be read online here.)

The Magical Diaries of Aleister Crowley, edited by Stephen Skinner (Neville Spearman, 1979) covers the year 1923, in Tunisia, after his expulsion from Italy. (An American version can be previewed at Amazon or Googlebooks, and a review can be read Obsidian Magazine). Otherwise, there is a text called The Amalantrah Working, a kind of diary from the first half of 1918, describing, indeed quoting, a series of hash/opium-induced visions and trance-communications received by the oddly-named Roddie Minor, who was at that time acting as Crowley’s scarlet woman. At some stage during the proceedings, Crowley underwent a form of experience involving a large-headed entity now known to occultists as Lam. The name derives from the Tibetan word for ‘way’ or ‘path’, and later Crowley was to draw a portrait of him/it that has become famous. Finally, a further diary, a fragment really, concerns a visit Crowley made to Lisbon in 1930 and his meeting with the writer Fernanda Pessoa. The text can be read within a paper by Marco Pasi’s available at Internet Archive. The paper, incidentally, provides an excellent overview of Crowley’s diary legacy.

From Rex de Arte Regia
16 January 1915
‘Weather like a fine day in May. Light of gas stove. Margaret Pitcher. A young pretty-stupid wide-mouthed flat-faced slim-bodied harlotry. Fair hair. Fine fat juicy Yoni. Object: Money. I invoked Ic-zod-heh-ca at the same time, thinking thus to propitiate the gnomes [earth elementals who preside over hidden treasure]. And I offer him a portion of the Sacrament. The ceremony was not good, as the girl was even more concentrated than I on the object of the Operation. But the Elixir [semen] was copious, well-formed, and of very pleasing quality. It was a fairly orgiastic rite, considering all.’

22 August 1916
‘Object: To become the greatest of all the Magi. Operation of long-since-unheard-of vehemence. Elixir of miraculous strength and sweetness. Mental concentration, Samadhic in intensity.’

12 October 1917
‘Object: ‘Io Pan!’ Operation: Orgie from 8.15 circa, continuous work, aided by C[ocaine] and B[randy]. Wonderful. Elixir admirable in all ways.’

From The Magical Record of the Beast
19 May 1920
‘I have been thinking over the question of the routine of the Abbey, both as to daily life and as to disciples. I want a minimum of things which disturb, and at the same time enough to breed Order. Daily Life: 1. Alostrael to proclaim the Law on waking. 2. Adoration of Ra. 3. Grace before breakfast at 7.00 a.m. 4. ditto dinner, noon. 5. Adoration of Ra. 6 and 7, ditto supper at 6.00 p.m. 8. Ritual work.

For newcomers: First week, 1, three days’ hospitality. 2. One day’s silence. 3, Three days’ instruction. 4. The Magical Oath, followed by four weeks’ silence and work. Sixth week, 5, one day’s instruction. 6. Six days’ Vision. Seventh and ninth weeks, 7. three weeks’ silence and work. Tenth week, 8, one week’s instruction and repose. Eleventh and thirteenth weeks, 9, as 7. This makes one Quarter. At the end, the survivor revises the whole period, and takes new counsel and Oath accordingly; but no routine can be appointed for this further period; all will depend on what seems advisable.

Saw Diana renewed tonight, the loveliest slim maiden, rich pale gold in a sea of blue shaded into pink, green, orange, and violet with clouds of ever delicate tone of purple and grey, in every form from solid banks to films of mist.

Her disappearance in the Hell below Amenti, where I suspect her of conduction with Tum, has been the signal for me to renew activity. Made a volcano panel. I wrote The Moralist.’

26 May 1920
‘3.40 a.m. It has been a trying night. I wrote two poems. Leah screamed terribly for over an hour until, twenty minutes ago, I felt it inhuman not to stop it, and so, in the impossibility of getting the doctor’s permission, I gave her about ⅛ grain of heroin under the tongue. She is now calm. I thought heroin better than my only alternative, ether, as he has been giving her laudanum, and ether is irritating to the system, and so contra-indicated in anything like enteritis (P.S. It acted splendidly, with no bad reaction.)

3.45 a.m. I notice that Language itself testifies to the soundness of my ontological theories; for the adjective of Naught is Naughty! Wrote two more poems.

11.00 p.m. Leah is still very ill; and this doctor rather trimmer. I think, without much confidence in himself. A tiring day, though I slept off some arrears.’

18 June 1920 [a few sentences from a much longer entry]
‘10:30 p.m. I accuse myself of not keeping my Diary properly. There ought to be a discoverable relation between my health, my worldly affairs, and the tone of my thoughts. For even Absolute Ego in eruption makes the relation between its modes of illusion a ‘true’, or harmonious one; for all moods are alike to It, despair a theme of pastime equally with exaltation. [. . .]

Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law

10:36 p.m. I beginning a new MS book. My Magical Diary has been very voluminous in these last weeks; I seem to find that it is the sole mode of my initiated expression. I don’t write regular essays on a definite subject, or issue regularly planned instructions. This is presumably normal to my tense and exalted state, to the violent Motion proper to the resolution of all symbols. [. . .]

I am drunk with the pride-absinthe that I am great, the greatest man of my century, its best poet, its mightiest mage, its subtlest philosopher, nor any the less for that classed among the very few well eminent mountain-climbing, in chess-play, and in love.

I am aflame with the brandy of the thought that I am the sublimest Mystic in all history, that I am the Word of an Aeon, that I am the Beast, the Man, Six Hundred Sixty and Six, the self-crowned God whom men shall worship and blaspheme for centuries that are yet wound on Time’s spool, yea, I am insane as if with hashish in my Egomania and Folly of Greatness, that is yet Fact steel-hard, gold-glittering, silver-pure; I want to be yet more than this. [. . .]’


Aleister Crowley and me

In the late 1970s - when I was but a young man - I came across Aleister Crowley’s writings, and found his life so interesting and theatrical that I thought to write a play about his time at the Abbey of Thelema. I had access to some of Crowley’s books at the Warburg Institute, London, and I interviewed Gerald Yorke an elderly man who had been a close associate of Crowley’s. I did not know, until talking to Yorke, that a play about Crowley had already been written by Snoo Wilson. That play - The Beast - had been commissioned by the Royal Shakespeare Company but seemed to have faded from view soon after it was staged. With very few theatres/companies willing to consider unsolicited plays, the market for my play was limited to say the least. The most receptive theatre at the time, the most welcoming for new playwrights, was The Bush, in London, where Jenny Topper was the director. But I had no luck there, or anywhere else.

Two years later, in early 1982, I found myself at The Bush to see a revival of Wilson’s play, retitled The Number of the Beast. It was hard to believe there was no link between The Bush having seen/read my Aleister Crowley play in mid-1979, and its commissioning of Wilson to revise his play on the very same subject. On entering the theatre, I was bemused to find the set looking rather like the one I had proposed for my play - i.e. the Abbey of Thelema. Indeed, I soon discovered that the play had been rewritten so that most of the action actually took place at the Abbey - just as in my own play. Coincidence? It seems unlikely. Any how, here are several extracts from my own diary (all available online) about my researching/writing the play, and about seeing Snoo Wilson’s revised version.

29 January 1979
‘Gerald Yorke enthralled me for hours. He told me tales to make the blood curdle. We took tea in the drawing room: marmalade sandwiches, biscuits and tea, no sugar. The man of means took trouble with his words but his laugh rocked me off balance. He seemed pleased that I wasn’t just another occult freak, but dismayed that I wasn’t a Thelemite. He said he had intended once to walk across to China, but found marriage better for his feet. My Aleister Crowley play project moves one step forward. Will, I ever start to write. Yorke told me that Snoo Wilson has already written a play on Crowley, a farce. I had to explain that I’d never written a play before, but that it was simply a challenge I’d set myself.’

22 February 1979
‘Pushing myself to get two or three pages of Crowley’s life written each day. The clickety clack of the typewriter seems to be the secondary thing that I do between the cleaning and the cooking and the talking or the playing. The translation of my imagination into scenes on paper is the most difficult - creating characters, working with them, showing them up through conversations. Then there is the swamp of stage directions that are the length of a novel in themselves. In capital letters stand out bold. And now, with a new ribbon in the clickety-clack machine, their blackness is overwhelming. How can I will myself to work eight-ten hours a day when the ideas run out. I have to search all the books for the next scene or spark of talk. I resort to a cigarette or cup of coffee or leave the house. Today, for example, I went to the Warburg and spent two hours submerged in Crowley in Therion, in The Beast 666, in the Great Hand of Boleskine. I handled some manuscripts typed by Leah Hirsig - ‘Record of the Abbey of Thelema’. She describes in detail the incidents relating to Betty May’s expulsion from the Abbey. It’s perfect. There was also a folder with letters written to and from AC, some about blackmail, money and debts. I touched with care AC’s magical (or drug) record for a period of two weeks at Fontainebleu in March 1922. In intricate detail, he recorded the times and amounts of cocaine and heroin he took. He also recorded conversations with himself, justifying the next dose, and how he felt he should be able to use drugs forever without becoming addicted, but nevertheless intended to wean himself off them. He noted, for example, how he would excuse an extra does of heroin because it soothed his asthma. He does continue to fascinate me, and I would like to get access to more of his papers.’

24 June 1979
‘Colin read my Crowley play. Jenny Topper at the Bush read it, and now there is nothing left of it. A dead play. No one wants it. The characters are unshaped, there is no theatrical development etc etc yawn yawn. Colin thinks I should go on writing stories. Ha ha, did you hear the one about the man called Frederic [my estranged father] who wanted to be a writer.’

20 February 1982
‘ ‘The Beast’ by Snoo Wilson was initially commissioned by the RSC almost a decade ago. In its original form it was nothing more than a farce but now it’s been extensively rewritten so that the bulk of the play takes place at the Abbey of Thelema. On entering the Bush theatre I was agreeable surprised to see a set much as the one I had imagined for my own play about Aleister Crowley. All the action takes place outside the rundown barn-temple. The acting was first class, although the writing and direction left little room for the characters to be truly difficult or even unlikeable. John Stride playing Crowley refused to shave his head but would have given a better and truer performance if had.’

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

State-created crime

One Rev. John William Horsley was born 170 years ago today. Although not much remembered, he was a social reformer of great character - as much at home helping inmates in Clerkenwell prison as making room for children to play in his church or guiding groups of parishioners on nature walks in Switzerland. Distinguished by a very large beard, he became a significant figure in Southwark, where he served as mayor for a year. In the late 1880s, he published a remarkable book - Jottings from Jail - to help ‘remove that ignorance of what our prisons and prisoners are’ and to suggest ways in which all ‘should feel their responsibility for the existence of crime and sin and misery’. One chapter in the book is based on a diary he kept towards the end of his term as prison chaplain. In one entry - many others of which are enlivened by a near-bitter sarcasm - he argues: ‘There is such a thing as State-created crime.’

Horsley was born on 14 June 1845 in Dunkirk, near Canterbury, Kent, the eldest son of a churchman. He was educated at King’s School, Canterbury, and at Pembroke College, Oxford. After teaching for a few years, he was made assistant curate in Witney, and then, in 1875, moved to be curate of St Michael’s, Shoreditch. A growing interest in social issues led him first to an appointment as chaplain at Clerkenwell prison, where he served from 1876 to its closure in 1886. In 1877, he married Mary Sophia Codd, the eldest daughter of Captain Codd, governor of the prison. They had two sons and five daughters, though Mary died young, in 1890.

Subsequently, Horsley worked for the Waifs and Strays Society (later, The Children’s Society). After becoming vicar of Holy Trinity, Woolwich, he began campaigning for improved housing and sanitation in the area. By 1894, he had become rector of St Peter’s, Walworth. Here, he is well remembered for clearing the church’s great crypt so as to transform it into a playground for poor children in the neighbourhood. He believed that working for the welfare of children, defending their rights and recognising their importance, was a key to reducing crime. To set an example, he became a total abstainer, and campaigned actively for the Church of England Temperance Society, as he did for the Anti-Gambling League.

Horsley went on to serve as chairman for Southwark’s public health committee and for its largest workhouse. In 1905, when the new diocese of Southwark was created he became honorary canon of the cathedral; and, in 1909, he was mayor of Southwark. Two years later, he retired to the vicarage of Detling, near Maidstone, only resigning in mid-1921, just months before his death. He had been an enthusiastic alpinist and naturalist during his life, and had regularly taken groups of his parishioners for walking tours in Switzerland. There is very limited further information about Horsley readily available online - much of this bio has come from the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (which requires log-in). Jack McInroy also has some information on his Walworth Saint Peter Blog. That said, Horsley’s autobiography (up to 1910 or so) can be read freely at Internet Archive.

In 1887, shortly after his role at Clerkenwell prison had come to an end, Horsley put together a collection of his thoughts and writings on the prison system. It was published by T. Fisher Unwin and called Jottings from Jail - notes and papers on prison matters (freely available at Internet Archive).

In the preface, Horsley states: ‘These jottings from jail are just what their name implies. Time certainly, ability probably, was and is wanting, if I contemplated something more ambitious, a more detailed record of the experiences and observation of a decade spent as a chaplain of a metropolitan prison into which there came about an hundred thousand men, women, and children of all sorts and conditions, from the wholesale murderer to the child remanded only to be helped out of misery into the possibility and prospect of happiness and usefulness. These are but notes that I made from time to time, or articles or papers that were produced on sundry occasions and for divers audiences whom I wished to interest in the phenomena of crime in order that they might work for its prevention or cure. [. . .] My aim is to remove that ignorance of what our prisons and prisoners are, which in our grandsires’ days was the hardly excusable excuse for the existence of iniquities now inconceivable; to create or sustain more interest in, and sympathy for, a large but often forgotten or despised class of our brethren, and to suggest ways in which all in their several stations should feel their responsibility for the existence of crime and sin and misery, and so labour for the removal or prevention of all that makes these evils common and almost inevitable.’

Also in the preface, Horsley thanks Miss Manville Fenn for the design of the cover: ‘It represents a selection from my private collection of burglarious implements; some jemmies or sticks (Anglice, crowbars), one of which was presented me by him whose autobiography opens this book because he thought “it would be safer with me than with him;” some twirls or skels (skeleton keys and picklocks); a wedge for securing doors from the inside, a steel one for safe work; some neddies or life-preservers; and the firearms that it has become fashionable to carry, more out of bravado and because the mock-hero Peace (a canting old liar when under my care) used one than from any determination or desire to use them.’

Inside the book there is one chapter called A Month’s Prison Notes which is, in fact, a diary kept by Horsley for a month. He explains: ‘When the approaching abolition of the prison made it probable that I should speedily be regretting my discharge almost as much as the prisoners hope for theirs, one of the many things in my mind was the wish that I had had time to keep a private as well as an official diary, and to have noted down from day to day such incidents or observations as might have been useful in many ways hereafter. [. . .] True, I had kept for nine years notes of all cases of attempted suicide, which were between three and four hundred a year, and of all other cases specially commended to my notice by the magistrates; true, also, that I have a large notebook full of statistics and all sorts of curious subjects coming to my notice in prison; true, also, that my memory is retentive; but yet a daily record of things of interest would have been useful. During my last August I therefore endeavoured to make such a daily record as might show the varied nature of the work, and teach those who are not connected officially with prison work in what direction their intercessions and kindly thoughts and actions might tend.’

The diary is notable not only for the facts and figures Horsley brings to light about the prison and its prisoners, but for his lively use of sarcasm to stress social/political points.

3 August 1885
‘Of nine fresh cases on the female side I find one is 18, one 19, two 20, one 21, and the average age of all nine is only 25.

A lad, aged 19, spends four shillings in fourpenny ale, and then after midnight runs out with his baby, aged 13 months, and tries to drown himself and it. His wife was a rope-ground girl, and aged 15 at her marriage. A stalwart, intellectual, and good living race is likely to arise from such parentage!

The next case to which I come is that of a lad of 17 who has attempted suicide. How? I got into a pond. Why? Because I wanted to go to sea. This sounds humorous, but it turns out that he was trying to frighten his parents into acquiescence with his wishes. [. . .]

A rescue-worker complains to me of how Bank Holiday upsets girls who have hitherto been quiet and contented in Homes. It is commonly observed. The memories of drinks and “larks” attached to that day will come crowding in.’

5 August 1885
‘A woman, aged 36, has been eight years free, but has suffered five and seven years’ penal servitude. She must have begun young! She was turned out of doors “for cheek” by her stepfather when she was 15, then fell in with thieves and got five years when 15 for robbing a man of £63 in the street. She is not old, but she has outlived the possibility of a schoolgirl being sent to penal servitude for her first theft. There is such a thing as State-created crime.

A woman, aged 27, remanded for drunkenness and trying to rescue her husband, who was apprehended for being drunk and assaulting the police when they both had been “chucked out” of a public curse. They had regular work and are in comfortable circumstances; but then one must enjoy Bank Holiday. They have had seven children; one is living: of course this has nothing to do with their intemperance.

Justice Manisty sentences a man to two years for outraging a child aged 10, and regrets the law does not allow him to give more. The same copy of the paper records an exactly similar case in America - only there the man got twenty years. Oh our beautiful and righteous laws! “Who steals my purse, steals trash” - but can get penal servitude for so doing. Who steals the virtue of a child - cannot be punished half so severely. Oh these laws! “Proputty, proputty, proputty, that’s what I hear ‘un say.” [A quote from Tennyson.] Protect our spoons of course as long as they exist, but a national tumult is necessary to get protection for our girls.’

6 August 1885
‘Girl, aged 17, remanded for a petty theft from her place, and that I may find a Home for her if she promises well. Her mother says she is beyond her control, runs away from her places and gets into bad company, and that she has never been right since she was 10, when a “man” got six months for violating her. Two other girls, aged 13 and 9, were similarly treated by him, being waylaid on their way home from school. He was an accountant.

Another girl of the same age and charged with a similar offence I send to another Home. Her mother is dead, her father in the workhouse, and she has been brought up in a workhouse school, which quite accounts for her dulness and obliquity of moral vision. The huge barrack schools are utter ruin for pauper girls in comparison with any other system. Why is the British rate-payer so slow to note that children in Sutton District School cost £30 a head, while in Cottage Homes, such as those at Marston Green, the cost is but £20 10s., and children boarded out (e.g., by the King’s Norton Union) cost but £10 9s. 10d. a head per annum? I suppose they like to go on paying highest for the worst system and results, rather than lowest for the best.

A third girl this morning will go hopefully into a Home. She is only 18, but has led an immoral life for six months, yet is modest and quiet in manner; an orphan likewise.

An ex-prisoner is sent to me by a lady that I may help him. I find in conversation that a man for whom he worked twenty months is kindly disposed towards him and is now manager to a large firm. Yet it had never occurred to him to call on him! Verily, some men’s idea of seeking employment is to lie on their back with their mouth open, expecting it to be filled.

“Do you remember me, sir?” Yes, I did. This prisoner, a young clerk who had embezzelled in consequence of his drinking habits, and in spite of a wife and two young children, was a boy under me in a good school, of good birth, and his uncle an Archdeacon.

Sent to a refuge M.C., who was discharged this morning from Millbank and came to see me. For nine years have I striven to keep her straight, and to sixteen Homes have I sent her. A perfectly hopeless case of dipsomania I fear, but one must work against hope if one cannot work with it.’

7 August 1885
‘A young man, crippled and with only one hand, a friendless clerk, is helped and taken in by Mr. Wheatley, of the St Giles’s Christian Mission. Trusted on an errand with a cheque he absconds. Eventually he gets work at Westminster, and plays his employer the same trick. When no spark of honesty or of gratitude is discoverable, what can be done?’

8 August 1885
‘A country girl, aged 19, immoral and shameless, though only a month in London. Admits that sheer laziness and dislike to work have brought her on the streets.’

9 August 1885
‘Five males and one female brought in yesterday for attempting suicide. But “trade was bad” with us yesterday, for only forty men and six women were admitted.’

11 August 1885
‘A young lady with eight aliases, and all addresses given found to be false, is resigned and martyroid because every word of hers is not believed against those of others.’

12 August 1885
‘I wonder if this flower-girl, aged 18, used to sing the popular song, “We are a happy family.” She is in for assaulting her mother with a poker, and has twice previously been in for drunkenness: the mother is living apart from her husband, and has spent ten months out of twelve in Millbank doing short terms for drunkenness: a younger brother and sister have been sent to Industrial Schools. Yet the wonder is that any members of some families do right, and not that many do wrong. On what a pinnacle of virtue, inaccessible to a countess, is the daughter of a convict father and gindrinking mother who keeps straight!

Twice this week have I written to the Reformatory and Refuge Union to set their special officer on children that I find to be living in houses of ill-fame, of which the denizens or keepers come here. In one case, at any rate, there seemed a dereliction of duty on the part of the police, who, when they apprehended the mother, should have rescued the children.

Fate is the convenient scapegoat of those whose “can’t” is a shuffling substitute for “won’t” or “don’t like.” This man is in for theft from a public-curse; he is badly consumptive through drinking long and heavily; his father died of alcoholic phthisis; he has often tried to abstain, but never for more than six weeks; he has been warned by a physician at a hospital of how he is committing suicide; but he “supposes it is Fate.” ’

14 August 1885
‘One does not lose the sound of Bank Holiday (nor of Derby Day) rapidly in prison. A woman in yesterday for being drunk and violent had been a teetotaller for nine months up to Bank Holiday. A man who cut his throat after Bank Holiday spent in a public-curse was only yesterday well enough to be brought up and remanded.

Went last night to get the police in a certain district to take up a scandalous case of a girl, about 13, living with and being taken out nightly by her mistress, a notorious prostitute. Suggested that the case might have been dealt with any time this last four years under the Industrial Schools Act Amendment Act (which will go down to posterity as Miss Ellice Hopkins’ Act, as the Criminal Law Amendment Act will be called Mr. Stead’s). But the inspector had never heard of the Act. Quite courteous and willing to take up the case, of which he knew a great deal, but was ignorant of the Act under which scores of children in London alone have been rescued from immoral surroundings. The fact is, if the police know that those at head-quarters desire that an Act should be enforced, they can and will enforce it; if they do not know, or know the contrary, they don’t.’

This article is a slightly revised version of one first published on 14 June 2015.

William Derham - natural philosopher

William Derham, an English clergyman and natural philosopher, died 230 years ago today. He was best known for his works on natural theology - trying to marry science with Christian ideology - and his early calculations of the speed of sound. Though not a diarist, he did keep weather records, moreover, he published commentaries on ‘meteorological diaries’ from as far afield as Naples and Bengal.

Derham was born in 1657 in Stoulton, Worcestershire. He showed an aptitude for learning from a young age, and was educated at Blockley Grammar School before entering Trinity College, Oxford, in 1675. He was ordained in 1681, and the following year became vicar of Wargrave, Berkshire, and from 1689 to 1735 he was Rector at Upminster, Essex. While at Upminster, in 1716, he became a Canon of Windsor - the vestry minutes show that thereafter he divided his time between those two places. His tenure at Upminster saw improvements to the church and its surroundings, and he was noted for his diligence in both pastoral and scholarly duties. 

Derham was deeply interested in natural philosophy and science. In 1696, he published his Artificial Clockmaker, which went through several editions. In 1703, he was elected a fellow of the Royal Society. In 1713, he published Physico-Theology: or, a Demonstration of the being and attributes of God, from his works of creation (freely available to read at Googlebooks). This was widely read and translated into several languages. Similar books followed: Astro-theology (1714) and Christo-theology (1730) followed. 

One of Derham’s most significant scientific contributions was to calculate the speed of sound by measuring the time lapse between the flash and report of distant cannon fire. He edited and published some of the posthumous works of Robert Hooke, helping to cement Hooke’s legacy as a pioneering scientist. Derham also studied insects and birds and corresponded with leading intellectuals of the age, including Sir Isaac Newton.

Although Derham married and had a family, few details of his personal life have survived time. In Upminster, he was known for his hospitality and engagement with scientific and theological discussions. He died on 5 April 1735. His writings, particularly in natural theology, would later be cited by thinkers such as William Paley, forming part of the intellectual groundwork for discussions on design in nature. His careful empirical studies and theological reflections positioned him as a bridge between the worlds of faith and emerging science in the early 18th century. See Wikipedia and the Barking and District Historical Society for further information.

Although there is no evidence that Derham was a diarist, he did leave behind his own weather records (see The Royal Society for images) as well as commentaries on the ‘meteorological diaries’ of others, such as this one with ‘diaries’ from Naples, Bengal and Christiana in 1727.

This remarkable day

‘The road was alive with ox carts returning from the fields, vendors selling coconuts - signaled by an upright palm frond - and women walking swiftly, balancing heavy loads on their heads. In a vast sugarcane field, a majestic Ceiba pentandra stood in solitary grandeur, a sight I captured in color photography to preserve the memory of this remarkable day.’ This is from a brief diary kept by the Canadian Brother Marie-Victorin on a 1941 field trip to Trinidad and Jamaica. Born 140 years ago today, he earned fame as a botanist, teacher but he was also a member of the Brothers of the Christian Schools, a Catholic lay congregation.

Conrad Kirouac was born on 3 April 1885, in Kingsey Falls, Quebec, and grew up in a devout Catholic family with a strong appreciation for nature. His early fascination with plants and the natural world was nurtured in the rural landscape of his childhood. At the age of 15, he joined the Brothers of the Christian Schools, adopting the name Marie-Victorin. His formal education took place within the religious order, where he trained as a teacher while continuing to cultivate his passion for botany.

Despite a lack of formal university training in science, Marie-Victorin became one of Canada’s foremost botanists. He taught at Mont-Saint-Louis College in Montreal while conducting independent research on Quebec’s flora. His groundbreaking work culminated in the publication of Flore laurentienne in 1935, a comprehensive study of the plant life of the St. Lawrence Valley that remains an essential reference in Canadian botany. His writing and teaching helped popularise scientific knowledge in French-speaking Canada, bridging the gap between academia and the public.

Marie-Victorin played a key role in establishing the Montreal Botanical Garden, which opened in 1931 under his guidance. He envisioned it as a centre for education, research, and conservation. His efforts secured support from both religious and secular authorities, reflecting his ability to unite diverse communities in the pursuit of scientific and cultural advancement. He was also instrumental in founding the Institut botanique de l’Université de Montréal, further solidifying his legacy in botanical education.

Beyond his scientific contributions, Brother Marie-Victorin was known for his wit, charisma, and ability to inspire students. He balanced his commitment to religious life with a deep curiosity about the natural world, advocating a harmonious relationship between science and faith. Tragically, he died in a car accident in 1944, but his influence endures through his writings, the institutions he helped create, and the continued study of Quebec’s plant life. Further information is available from Wikipedia, The Canadian Encyclopaedia, Canada’s History, or the Kirouac Family Association website.

Between the ages of 18 and 35, Brother Marie-Victorin kept notebooks full of thoughts on religion, education, botany, community life, his vocation, and his reading. The contents of these ten notebooks (over 800 pages) were not published until 2004 when Saint-Laurent brought out Mon miroir: journaux intimes, 1903-1920, as edited by Gilles Beaudet et Lucie Jasmin. During this period, the editors say, ‘we see the emergence of an extraordinary temperament, an exceptional being, an avant-garde spirit who would instil the spark of the Quiet Revolution in pre-war French Canada’. This is available to preview - in the original French - at Googlebooks.

There are also at least two other short journals - in typescript form and in French - kept by Marie-Victorin that are available to view and download at Internet Archive. There is the ‘travelogue’ of Brother Marie-Victorin on a trip to Barranquilla (Colombia), Jamaica, and Trinidad in 1941, ‘courtesy of the Division de la Gestion de Documents et des Archives at the Université de Montréal’. There is a longer document (which includes an English translation) titled Brother Marie-Victorin In Haiti Botany, concerning his first trip to Quisqueya (Hispaniola) 1938-1939. Moreover, in December 2022, the Caribbean Journal of Science included a paper “Out of Cuba” - The Additional Botanical Expeditions of Brother Marie-Victorin Across the Caribbean (1940-1942).

The following two extracts have been copied from the journal of the 1941 trip, and computer translated into English.

 24 April 1941

‘I leave Havana at six o’clock in the morning. My driver Juan leaves me stranded in the middle of a deserted street in Vedado. His engine sputters and then dies: “What bad luck!” he repeats, raising his arms to the sky.

I jump into a tram, then a taxi, and finally into the Pan-American limousine on Prado. And here I am at the airport. Fortunately, there’s a restaurateur who brings me down from the kitchen a good American breakfast!

Around nine o’clock we board a small plane that takes us to Cienfuegos, where we wait for an hour for the “Clipper” coming from Miami.

From Havana to Cienfuegos, I observe the country from above. Approaching Cienfuegos, there are lakes and lagoons where we have never botanized; it’s probably part of the Ciénaga system, but I doubt there are passable roads to get there.

From Cienfuegos to Jamaica, no incidents (except that we stay at 10,000 feet). No one is upset when, after flying over the mountains of St. Ann, we land in Kingston Bay amidst a landscape dominated by the tall Cephalocereus Swartzii of Port Royal. We disembark - or rather step out of the Clipper - for about ten minutes. The driver Folkes is there because he hasn’t received my letter. We arrange to meet in about fifteen days. Then I reboard the Clipper to cross the Caribbean Sea.

It’s almost evening when we arrive in Barranquilla (Colombia). The Prado Hotel, where everyone stays, is a marvel: terraces, swimming pool, gardens. What a shame that we leave again tomorrow morning at dawn. With someone named Appleton [. . .], I take a tour of the city.

The Black driver, “Panama,” is resourceful. As we pass by, we see the new port, the mouth of the Magdalena River, and flat boats powered by paddle wheels located at the rear-Mississippi-style. These boats travel up the river almost to Bogotá, but it takes a week!

The city is picturesque. The “red-light district,” quite extensive, is actually a “blue-light district.” Prostitution is legalized, and there’s a small stone building labeled “Prophylaxia,” where Venus comes weekly to chat with Esculapius. Most courtesans live alone in their homes. In the evening, as we pass by, their doors are open to reveal brightly lit rooms displaying naive luxury and ad hoc chromolithographs. They resemble shop windows. The love merchant - fully dressed, well-groomed and powdered - sits advantageously in her doorway with hands folded on her lap and her bed clearly visible behind her. A street lined with two rows of these priestesses is quite colorful, especially at night. I’ve seen similar scenes in Mérida in Yucatán.

At the Prado Hotel, several of us who “clipped” together are present, including a Basque American businessman with whom I dine [. . .]. An interesting man. There’s also an engineer from Davenport, Iowa here for constructing the American naval base in Port-of-Spain. He’s not too thrilled about leaving his family behind for one or maybe two years.’

9 May 1941

‘We departed Montego Bay at around 8 a.m., following the coastline. For a long stretch, we traveled past mangrove marshes and encountered a rich variety of coastal vegetation, including Batis maritima, Coccoloba uvifera, Tournefortia gnaphalodes, and Suriana maritima. The striking golden leather fern (Acrostichum aureum) spread in vast formations, reaching into the brackish water. In the drier areas, we observed Opuntia dillenii, Agave species, and a Guilandina.

Turning inland, we visited a beautiful waterfall surrounded by a lush environment of Grias cauliflora, coconut palms (Cocos nucifera), Calyptronoma swartzii, and the towering Ceiba pentandra. This scenic location, frequented by tourists, displayed an impressive array of tropical flora. We then dined in St. Ann’s Bay before continuing our journey through Fern Gully, a narrow ravine renowned for its towering ferns. The dense, non-arborescent fern species, including Dryopteris, lined the route, adding to the area’s allure. Despite its fame, the tourist literature exaggerates the prevalence of this type of vegetation across Jamaica, as the island’s flora is far more diverse.

Upon exiting Fern Gully, we emerged onto a verdant plateau dotted with large trees. The landscape, with its scattered Roystonea jamaicensis palms stretching toward the sky, evoked the temperate countryside of Quebec’s Eastern Townships. As is common in the region, much of this beautiful land belonged to a few wealthy landowners. Our route led us through these cool, picturesque valleys before ascending Mount Diablo. Along the way, we encountered Brassia maculata, a terrestrial orchid in full bloom, its pale flowers offered for sale in neat bundles by local children. They also sold Hippeastrum puniceum, adding vibrant color to the roadside stalls.

Leaving the plateau behind, I noted the presence of Rhytidophyllum tomentosum, Bletia, Lantana camara, and a remarkable abundance of epiphytic bromeliads (Hohenbergia or Vriesia) clinging to tree branches. As we made our return journey through Spanish Town toward Kingston, the evening light cast a golden glow over the landscape. The road was alive with ox carts returning from the fields, vendors selling coconuts - signaled by an upright palm frond - and women walking swiftly, balancing heavy loads on their heads. In a vast sugarcane field, a majestic Ceiba pentandra stood in solitary grandeur, a sight I captured in color photography to preserve the memory of this remarkable day.’

Clumsy by being over-sincere

‘If as a diarist he is often clumsy by being over-sincere, as a student he devotes too much effort to transcribing his sources and too little to considering their interrelations.’ This was written by a biographer of the diaries of Franz Xaver von Baader, born 260 years ago today. A German philosopher, theologian, physician, and mining engineer, he was renowned for his contributions to mysticism and Christian theosophy. Although he kept diaries, they are predominantly religious and philosophical in content; moreover, they only seem to have been published in the original German.

Baader was born on 27 March 1765, in Munich, the third son of Franz Peter Baader, the court physician to the Elector of Bavaria. Like his father, he pursued medical studies, at the universities of Ingolstadt and Vienna, briefly practicing medicine before moving to England to study mineralogy and engineering (1792-1796). There, he developed an interest in philosophy and theology. In 1820, he retired from his engineering career, and thereafter published one Fermenta Cognitionis in six parts from 1822 to 1825, in which he combats modern philosophy and recommends the study of Böhme.

In 1826, Baader was appointed professor of philosophy and speculative theology at the newly established University of Munich. ​In 1838, he publicly opposed the interference of the Roman Catholic Church in civil matters and, in consequence, was interdicted from lecturing on the philosophy of religion for three years.

Baader’s personal life was marked by his deep spirituality and intellectual pursuits. He was influenced by the mystical writings of Jacob Böhme and Neoplatonism. His philosophical approach combined elements of mysticism, theosophy, and Catholic theology, distinguishing him from other German philosophers of his era. He died in Munich, unmarried, in 1841. Further information can be found at New Advent, Prabook and Wikipedia.

Baader certainly kept journals - published in the original German as Tag und Studien Bücher. They are predominantly religious and philosophical in content; however, his youth diaries - Jugendtagebücher - are said to offer a more valuable personal perspective. After his death, between 1851 and 1860, his works were collected and edited by a number of his disciples and published in 16 volumes - his diaries are in volume XI. Although I cannot find any extracts from his diaries online, Dennis Osborn Leuer does discuss - in a biographical paper available online at Oxford University Research Archive - Baader’s diaries and their relevance (in the Life and Works of Franz von Baader, 1976)

The Beginnings of Baader’s Naturphilosophie: Religion and Nature in the Tagebücher

‘Baader’s Journal’s of 1786-1793 are primarily, as he declares them to be, private documents of self-development. This is only formally contradicted by their semi-public character: they were seemingly modelled on contemporary confessions such as Lavater’s (published) Geheimes Tagebuch and copies of Baader’s rather studied étalage du moi were sent directly to his religious preceptor, J. M. Sailer. Secondarily, Baader’s journals are notebooks on his studies. If as a diarist he is often clumsy by being over-sincere, as a student he devotes too much effort to transcribing his sources and too little to considering their interrelations. For these reasons, and because of their dual character, the journals at first sight appear shapeless. Having said this much, and in awareness of the lack of coherence even in Baader’s formal writings, his diary would seem an inauspicious place to begin organizing the fragments of his Naturphilosophie into an intelligible structure. But such early writings are normally understood in terms of the author’s characteristic statements, that is, in terms of the ideas which survived. In this perspective, Baader’s journals show not only the varied intellectual ambience of early Romanticism, but, in embryonic growth, the enduring major theme of Naturphilosophie. Stated briefly, that theme was the intuited unity of spirit (Geist) and nature (Natur). Once alleged, it spoke for the corresponding philosophical union of religion (or psychology) and natural science, which became the very task of Naturphilosophie.’

Malcolm X uninterrupted

Malcolm X, one of the US’s most influential black activists, was assassinated 60 years ago today. He was not yet 40. Having come from a deprived background, turned criminal and spent years in prison, he educated himself sufficiently to become a Muslim minister and human rights activist. Indeed, in the year or two before his death, he had become a figure of international importance. For a few months in 1964, while visiting countries in Africa and the Middle East, he kept a detailed diary. This was edited by one of his daughters, Ilyasah Shabazz, and the journalist Herb Boyd, before being published by Third World Press. On publication, Boyd praised the diary for being ‘Malcolm, uninterrupted, without any kind of editorial interference’.

Malcolm Little was born in 1925 in  Omaha, Nebraska, the fourth of seven children. His father was an outspoken Baptist lay speaker who brought his children up to be self-reliant and proud of their race. White racist threats and attacks blighted family life, leading his father to relocate a couple of times. In 1929, their home was burnt down; a year or two later his father died (his mother, Louise, believing he had been murdered). Later, when Louise was committed to hospital, the children were separated and sent to foster homes.

Until his early 20s, Little held a variety of jobs while living with his half-sister in Boston. He moved to Harlem, New York City, in 1943, and became involved with various criminal activities. After committing several robberies back in Boston, and being arrested, he was jailed at Charlestown State Prison in 1946. While inside, he became a voracious reader; and, thanks to his siblings, turned to a newly-formed religious movement, Nation of Islam, that worked to improve the lot of African Americans, and, ultimately, the return of the African diaspora to Africa. He soon was communicating regularly, by letter, with the movement’s leader, Elijah Muhammad. In 1950, he began signing his name Malcolm X (the X, he explained, signified the true African family name that he could never know).

Malcolm X’s rise through Nation of Islam came swiftly after his parole in 1952. He was first made assistant minister of the Temple Number One in Detroit, but then established Boston’s Temple Number 11, and expanded Temple Number 12 in Philadelphia, before being selected to lead Temple Number 7 in Harlem. He continued to launch new temples, and was a powerful presence and recruiter for the organisation. In 1955, he met Better Sanders; they married in 1958, and they had six children.

Malcolm X first became a significant public figure in 1957, when he took control of a crowd of people protesting at police brutality against a National of Islam member, Johnson Hinton. By this time, also, Malcolm X had become a person of interest to both the FBI and the New York City police. The media began reporting on his activities, and, in 1960, several African nations invited him to official functions linked to a meeting of United Nations General Assembly. In particular, Fidel Castro, Cuba’s leader, held one-to-one talks with Malcolm X and invited him to visit Cuba.

After a period of tension with Muhammad, Malcolm X broke from Nation of Islam in 1964. He founded Muslim Mosque, Inc, and Organization of Afro-American Unity. He gave his famous ‘The Ballot or the Bullet’ speech, and he converted to Sunni Islam. That same year he went on a pilgrimage to Mecca, and he met the Saudi Arabian leader, Prince Faisal. While increasingly he was becoming an international figure (with extensive visits in Africa, as well as to France and the UK), tensions at home with the Nation of Islam led to death threats, and, eventually, his murder. He was assassinated on 21 February 1965 in Manhattan’s Audubon Ballroom where he was preparing to address the Organization of Afro-American Unity. Three Nation of Islam members were convicted of the murder. Subsequently, various conspiracies were alleged, not least that an FBI infiltrator might have exacerbated tensions between Malcolm X and Muhammad. Also, one of the organisation’s Boston ministers later admitted that he might have helped stoke up the atmosphere which ultimately led to the murder.

Wikipedia’s biography has this to say about Malcolm X’s legacy: ‘[He] has been described as one of the greatest and most influential African Americans in history. He is credited with raising the self-esteem of black Americans and reconnecting them with their African heritage. He is largely responsible for the spread of Islam in the black community in the United States. Many African Americans, especially those who lived in cities in the Northern and Western United States, felt that Malcolm X articulated their complaints concerning inequality better than the mainstream civil rights movement did. [. . .] In the late 1960s, increasingly radical black activists based their movements largely on Malcolm X and his teachings. The Black Power movement, the Black Arts Movement, and the widespread adoption of the slogan “Black is beautiful” can all trace their roots to Malcolm X.’ Further information can also be found at the official Malcolm X website.

In 1964, during two trips to Africa and the Middle East, Malcolm X kept a detailed diary. This did not emerge into the public domain until some years later (when found with other archival material). It was edited by Herb Boyd, a journalist and associate of Malcolm X’s, and one of Malcolm’s daughters, Ilyasah Shabazz, and published as The Diary of Malcolm X by Third World Press. However, in 2013, with publication due in November, a corporation representing Malcolm X’s wife and his heirs (other than the daughter Ilyasah, obviously) claimed the book was being published without the family’s permission, and went to court to stop Third World Press. The poet and black activist, Haki R. Madhubuti, who owns the Press, claimed he had a valid legal contract, and that any delay would put the company in financial jeopardy. See Publishers Weekly or The Guardian for more on this. There is also a Wikipedia entry for the diary itself.

The foreword and introduction of the book can be read freely online at Amazon. Here are a few paragraphs taken from the introduction.

‘From the middle of April to the end of May and later from July to November of 1964, Malcolm X (El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz) kept an extensive meticulous diary of his journeys to Africa and the Middle East, including his pilgrimage to Mecca.

While his diary has been discussed and occasionally cited [. . .], it exists mainly in the archives of the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture in Harlem, where it is available for scholars and researchers.

The diary came to the Schomburg several years ago after a circuitous route from Florida where it was among Malcolm’s possessions in a storage bin, and then from San Francisco where an auction house was preparing to put the lot up for bids. Fortunately, the family, through its attorney, was able to rescue the valuable memorabilia, and to house a good portion of it at the Schomburg.

Malcolm was a keen collector of keepsakes, documents, books, newspapers, films, and, of course, the record of his life. Volumes I and II of his diary total more than 200 pages in microfilm.’ [See San Francisco Bay View for more on the Malcolm X materials.]

On publication of the diary, Herb Boyd said: ‘The diary humanizes [Malcolm X] in a way that some of these other scholars set out to do . . . This is Malcolm, uninterrupted, without any kind of editorial interference. . . The diary is certainly the most critical thing that he left behind that has not been examined.’ And, Madhubuti said: ‘It’s one of the most important books that we’ve published.’

Henry Louis Gates, Jr., Director, The Du Bois Institute for African and African American Research, Harvard University, was more expansive: ‘The publication of The Diary of Malcolm X is a great historical event in African American intellectual history. Reading these entries has the effect of overhearing a profound thinker’s most private and uncensored thoughts about everything from his split with Elijah Muhammad to the cost of 16mm film in Accra. I found this a riveting and deeply moving experience, one that only made me even sadder at the senselessness of his assassination. Every student of Malcolm X, and the history of black political leadership, should read this compelling book.’

Here is one extract from the published diary.

17 April 1964

[Saudi Arabia]

‘El Jumah prayers: crowded, all colors, bowing in unison - not conscious of color (race) around whites for 1 st time in my life. The whites don’t seem white - Islam actually removed differences - Persian (white) followed me around, offering the hospitality of eating with his family - pilgrims from Nigeria & Ghana, very vocal & confident. Sudanese quiet confidence. No one seems to believe that a Muslim could come from America (a convert?).

2 bros from Eritrea (Ethiop) now living in Riyadh, schooled in Cairo. Ethiopia has 18 million people, 10 million are Muslims. I just finished chicken & potatoes with my hands in airport restaurant (2 Jordanian refugees met later at Mina post office).

The masses are Muslims, but the gov [governor] is Christian. The time of Hajj makes all true Muslims very pious. Some came in groups, ranks, ate in circles & in ranks, from each others plate, ate & slept as one.

I haven’t seen any U.S. newspapers since leaving the States Monday—all colors here, none force [themselves] on others, yet none feel neglected or ignored, and still “birds of the same color stay primarily together.”

Out of the thick darkness comes sudden light. My, how fortune can change. I felt blue, and after saying my sunset (Maghreb) prayers I laid down - the Persians were friendly, insisting that I share fruit & tea with them. I felt alone, lonely - then it dawned on me I should call Dr. Omar Azzam: after showing the officials my letter from Dr. [Mahmoud Youssef] Sharwarbi, they finally got Dr. Azzam on the phone. He came over immediately, got me released thru the airport (and passport) officials, and took me to his home, where I met his father (Azzam Pasha) his uncle (chemist), book on the chemical science that proves the myths of Islam & secretary of the Arab League - Never have I met a more educated, intellectual than Azzam Pasha [illegible], his vast reservoir of knowledge and its variety, seemed unlimited - racial lineage & descendants of M [Prophet Muhammad] family, both black & white (color complexions) differences in Muslim world, only to the extent it has been influenced by West. He gave me his room at the Jeddah Palace while he stayed with his son. Such hospitality. Never so honored.’

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

The Gordon Riots

‘The people meet accordingly 40 or 50000 and marched through the City to the house of Lords & Commons, burned L.Fs Chappell Warwick St D° and 20 of the Rabbell behaved very ill at my door took refuge in Mr Davitts house untill they were gone’. This is from the diary of William Mawhood, a London draper and Catholic, on the day that the Gordon Riots began. The riots emerged out of widescale protest against the Papists Act 1778 - this was intended to reduce official discrimination against British Catholics. The diary is said to be of particular value for its first hand account of ‘the extent to which Catholics of the period were able to take part in civic and cultural life’.

Mahwood was born to a successful draper and his wife in London on 8 December 1724, the youngest of three surviving children. He was educated at the English College, St Omer, France. He followed his father into the drapery profession, inheriting a shop and house in London. He married Dorothy Kroger, daughter of a brewer, in 1751. The couple had six children that survived into adulthood. The family also owned some 35 acres of land in Finchley.

Mawhood was appointed surveyor of the highways for Finchley for the years 1772 and 1773, supervising the road repairs carried out by local men as required by act of parliament. The Mahwoods were recent converts to catholicism, and worshipped at St Bartholomew’s, Smithfield, though there is no record of them suffering discrimination of any sort. They did, however, get caught up in the anti-Catholic Gordon Riots of 1780, with damage to their property, while, at the same time, providing a safe house in Finchley for Bishop Challoner.

Mawhood’s final years were not without their problems. While stricken with palsy and bedridden, his daughter Maria - a nun at the English convent in Bruges - was forced to seek refuge in London in 1790. In 1796, his son Charles threatened to take out a commission of lunacy against him; and his elder son William John continued to request financial assistance. The Finchley estate was sold in 1793, and Mawhood moved into a house in Portman Place, Paddington. He died there in 1797, and was buried in St Bartholomew’s. A little more information can be gleaned from Wikipedia or the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (log-in required).

Mahwood kept diaries from the age of 40, amassing 49 notebooks (4,000 pages and half a million words).  The first entry is dated 14 July 1764, and the last 18 October 1790. Although the early notebooks are largely filled with business memoranda, he gradually got into the habit of adding notes of a personal or family interest. A selection from these diaries was published by the Catholic Record Society in 1956 - Selections from the Diary Note-books of William Mawhood, Woollen-draper of London, for the Years 1764-1790. According to the ODNB: ‘The diary of William Mawhood is of particular value for its evidence of the daily life of a Catholic family of the ‘middling sort’, and of the extent to which Catholics of the period were able to take part in civic and cultural life.’ The full work can be read online at Issuu. Here are several extracts.

1 June 1780

‘Mr Read my Presser gave me a hand Bill of Lord George for the people to meet in St Georges feilds at 10 O’Ck’

2 June 1780

‘the people meet accordingly 40 or 50000 and marched through the City to the house of Lords & Commons, burned L.Fs Chappell Warwick St D° and 20 of the Rabbell behaved very ill at my door took refuge in Mr Davitts house untill they were gone’

3 June 1780

‘Mr Fazakerley called before breakfast says L.Fs is burnt down &c &c Self went with Mr Pellett found it true Called & See Mr Brown Sacerdos & See Bishop Chaloner and Mr Bolton who had called on me this Morn that Bishop Chanoler might come to Finchly. I offered him my house which he Accepted, hired William to drive me, sent him at 12 O’Ck on horseback to Finchley with a Letter to Mrs Mawhood that the Bishop would come in the Afternoon. She Dory and Lucy came to Tea, after all Except Son Chas went back to Finchly, found the Bishop there he came in Lady Strutton [Stourton] Chariot’

4 June 1780

‘The Bishop said &c at Breakfast Mr Lamb Agent called walked over the Garding &c says times will mend and we shall be redressed, he stayed over an hour, Son Chas came on horseback after Dinner Vespers &c. Mumford and Chas wrode out Son Chas sent for Town, 7 O’Ck’

5 June 1780

‘Set off for Town at 1/2 past 6 O’Ck called Mrs Hanne’s for 2 Shirts for Bishop found the house Shut knocked several times Nobody at home Called then on Mr Brown all Except Mr Nicolas gone away and moved all their goods, Mr Brown Boye took me to a Mr Lee of Harpur St where Mr Lindow and Rice are but both out Mr Brown’s boy says Moorfields is burned down &c he came at 9 O’Ck says poor Mr Lindow walks aboute the Room as if out if his Sences brought Lining for my Visiter, who was much affected with these times, at 7 O’Ck received a Letter Express from Son Chas by Robinson’s Horsler that it was strongly reported my House would be fired by Lord G. Gordons Blew cockade Banditti, Mrs Mawhood and Self Set of in our Coach arrived at Lord G. Germains office for assistance, neither Ld Germain nor Mr De Gray there the Messenger advised me to the War office went there neither Mr Jenkinson or Lewis there See a Clerk all most the top of the house but he said no assistance could be given me unless Signed by a Justice of the peace but said in case of distress I must send to the Tower or The Savoue [Savoy] Barracks came home with Mr Atkins who informed me he Expected Maberlys house would be that night levelled for his assistance and taking a person at the Sardinian Embasadors, found it difficult getting through the Streets being the Kings birthday, Stopt a Long lane being fearfull of coming directly to my house Mr Atkins went brought word all was safe we then went home found Cap. Thornton Edwards Coldwell and my familly in the utmost fears, being (by then) advised to quit the house. Got Mr Gaisford and a Gard from Robinson’s and arrived Mrs Mawhood and Self at Finchley at 11 O’Ck gave the Gard 2/6. Gaisford Sleept at Finchley, everyone robd on the road but ourselves’

10 May 1785

‘at breakfast I spoke before them all that Chas should stay to his Sister, So youre all to be Old Maids, and I an Old bacheldor for my father will not give us more than Maria had &c &c I told the Girles that I wished them not to give Eares to his nonsince as he wanted Everything himself that my design was to Settle everyone on an Equal footing provided they married with my approbation, to which the Girles were satisfied, Chas left us abruptly and said he would speak to me when I came down into the Shop: he did so. and his discource displeased me much, I attacked him aboute the Maid Servt and his familiarities which he acknowledgd but denied that he had any camel knowledge of her he said if he married all his Attention should be to his Wife, and that he would still have his own will so far as not to do what I ordered, if he thought otherwise than I did, he said would go and speak to the Bishop I told him he had better leave the affair to me that I was to call by Appointment as next Sunday, but least I should trick him just before dinner he did call on the Bishop, and at his return he called me into the Counting house and told me the Bishop said his Neice’s affections were fixt on some other person Dory and Bett drank Tea with Mr & Mrs Lynch Chas behaved as usual, but rather grave he Stayed at home the Even’

4 July 1785

‘Mr Creighton called At 12 o’Ck and said he had been at Burfords several days and that he had heard Son Wm Ship is arrived at Halifax, he dined with us altho he wished to be Excused because Mr Jno Burford was in Town, and he had promissed to dine there, therefore he went away as soon as he had Dined and said he would call to drinking Tea at 5 o’Ck but as I mentioned that Dory Bett and Lucy was to Drink Tea at Mrs Coxs highgate he then said hed calld on tuesday when he should See the Ladies I told him I should be in town toMorrow on which he again promised to call at 5 this day; at 1/2 past 4 Mr Burford Servant called with their and Mr Creightons Compliments but that as Burfords dined so late he could not come, at 1/4 after 8 Burfords and Creighton all came by our house on horseback with their great Dog and another, and as I happened to open our gate at that instant our Dog Popp flew on theirs and their Dog Bitt popp on his Leg Mr and Mrs Burfords make no Appology but Creighton rode up to the gate and did, I cut him very short saying my Dog was to blaim and shut the gate’

I pray increase my estate

Robert Woodford, a Northamptonshire lawyer, died all of 370 years ago today. He would surely have been forgotten had it not been for one of his diaries surviving down the centuries through the family, and then finding its way to an Oxford University archive. In print for the first time in 2012, its publisher makes some grand claims: the diary provides a ‘unique insight into the puritan psyche and way of life’; and it is ‘a fascinating source for the study of opposition to the Personal Rule of Charles I’.

Robert Woodford was born in 1606 in Northamptonshire, and educated at Brixworth School. He became a provincial lawyer, and married Hannah Haunch in 1635. They had many children, only a few of whom survived childhood. In 1636, he was elected steward of Northampton. He died on 15 November 1654. There is very little further biographical information available online about Woodford, except at Stephen Butt’s Woodforde family website.

However, Woodford is remembered today because he kept a diary which was passed down through the family for centuries. In 1970, Oliver Heighes Woodforde donated it to New College, Oxford. The diary begins in August 1637 and ends in August 1641, and appears to be the sole survivor of several other, possibly four-year, diaries. It contains 588 pages with approximately 89,000 words. The Diary of Robert Woodford 1637-1641, edited by John Fielding (Camden Fifth Series, Volume 42), was published by Cambridge University Press for The Royal Historical Society in 2012. However, it’s a bit pricey at over £50!

Here is the publisher’s blurb: ‘Woodford’s diary, here published in full for the first time with an introduction, provides a unique insight into the puritan psyche and way of life. Woodford is remarkable for the consistency of his worldview, interpreting all experience through the spectacles of godly predestinarianism. His journal is a fascinating source for the study of opposition to the Personal Rule of Charles I and its importance in the formation of Civil War allegiance, demonstrating that the Popish Plot version of politics, held by parliamentary opposition leaders in the 1620s, had by the 1630s been adopted by provincial people from the lower classes. Woodford went further than some of his contemporaries in taking the view that, even before the outbreak of the Bishops’ Wars, government policies had discredited episcopacy and cast grave doubt on the king's religious soundness. Conversely, he regarded parliament as the seat of virtue and potential saviour of the nation.’

A note inside the diary states: ‘who ever finds this booke (if lost) I pray be sparinge in looking into it, & send it to Robte Woodford at Northampton.’

20 August 1637 [first entry]
‘I prayed alone and I and my deare wife prayed in private this morninge to beseech the Lord for his blessing uppon the sacrament of Baptisme to our poore child this that the inward grace might goe a longe with the outward signe &, and that the Lord would make it an Instrument of some service to him in his Church in time to come and a Comfort to us the parents and surely the Lord hath heard us in m[er]cye we prayed not to be hindred in our sanctifcacon of his Sabath this day & to order Conveniences &. Mr ffisher preached in the morninge, but my hart somewhat heavy Lord p[ar]don my dulnes.’

26 September 1637
‘I would give some present to new Mr Maior but want some money. Lord I pray thee increase my estate in thy due time for the Lords sake Amen.’

10 October 1637
‘my wives breasts sore still with chopping [cracks in skin]. I pray unto the Lord for cure in his time my Clyent Some came to me with this P[ro]vidence’

16 October 1637
‘I was with Mr Bullivant at the George & dranke some wormewood beare, & with Mr Rushworth I was very ill after I had supped oh Lord p[ar]don my fayling & make me very watchfull for the Lords sake Amen.’

7 June 1638
‘The small pox are much in London, but the sicknesse at a very Low ebbe blessed be god though they come hether from many p[ar]tes of the Country that are infected.’

8 June 1638
‘The towne very full of people. Mr Robins fayles to pay me money.’

9 June 1638
‘The Lord doth graciously carry me on through diffcultyes: he is with me in the fire & in the water blessed be his name.’

23 October 1638
‘my deare child is still very sick, but the Lord is able to recover her, I now pr[e]pare for my Journey into the Country to morrow, & prayed for my Comfortable arrival at North[amp]ton & for favor in the eyes of the Maior & Bayleifes there & for presrvacon from the devouringe pestilence’

According to the Woodforde family website: ‘Many members of the Woodforde family have written about their history, from Robert Woodforde in Leicestershire in the 15th Century to the owner of this website in the 21st Century, constituting over five hundred year's of literary work. [. . .] Almost every generation has left diaries. These include Robert Woodforde, the 17th Century puritan of Northamptonshire, his son Dr Samuel Woodforde the Divine and founder of the Royal Society, and of course the Revd James Woodforde [author of Diary of a Country Parson].’

This article is a slightly revised version of one first published on 15 November 2014.

Most somber events

‘For weeks I have been tormented by witnessing these most somber events of our century (and perhaps of my whole life); it enrages me to belong to a nation that is so powerless today. . . There are moments - when one reflects upon Hitler’s flag flying over the Acropolis - of doubt that we shall ever see the victory so longed for by all free spirits. Yet there have been centuries in history when evil triumphed, when independent thinking was asleep, when moral and material progress were halted. So it is possible that Europe is now on the eve of such an age of obscurantism and misery.’ This is from the chilling diary of Raymond-Raoul Lambert, born 130 years ago today,  a prominent Jewish leader during the Vichy regime. 

Lambert was born on 10 August 1894 in Montmorency, near Paris. He fought in WWI (and later in WW2). During the 1930s, he participated in several organisations helping refugees leaving Germany, and acted as secretary-general of the Comité d’Assistance aux Réfugiés, becoming chief editor of Univers Israélite. In 1941 he was nominated director-general of the Union Générale des Israélites de France (UGIF) in the then unoccupied zone. Subsequently, he became chief of UGIF for the whole of France. 

Despite his official roles, Lambert clandestinely connected with Jewish underground resistance groups and Catholic circles that assisted Jews in evading persecution. His resistance activities included protesting against the confiscation of Jewish property by the Nazis. In August 1943, Lambert and his family - wife Simone Lambert and four children - were arrested and deported to Auschwitz where they were gassed on arrival. A little further information on Lambert’s life is available at Encyclopaedia.com.

However a more comprehensive source is the published diary of Lambert himself: Diary of a Witness 1940-1943, as translated from the French by Isabel Best, and as edited by Richard I. Cohen (published by Ivan R. Dee, Chicago, in association with The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in 1985). This can be read freely online at Internet Archive (with log-in), and a review can be read in Holocaust and Genocide Studies at Oxford Academic. NB: Lambert is known to have kept diaries during earlier periods of his life but these seem to have been lost.

According to the publisher at the time of publication, Lambert’s diary had been among the most important untranslated records of the experience of French Jews in the Holocaust. Lambert, was, in the words of the historian Michael Marrus, ‘arguably the most important Jewish official in contact with the Vichy government and the Germans.’ National Catholic Reporter says: ‘Lambert was a complex and flawed man who was asked to take on grave responsibilities. His decisions have been, and will be, judged by history, but readers of [his diary] will emerge with respect for his courage in wrestling with the idolatry of loyalty as the reality of the Vichy regime undermines the “humane culture” of France.’

The editor of the diary, Best, states: ‘Lambert has left behind a candid, humane document of a man who firmly believed in a vision of service to his country and his co-religionists. A man of letters and action, his diary illuminates the destiny of a French Jew who struggled to make sense of a dramatically changing world while he held firm to the legacy of 150 years of emancipation.’

Here is another extract from the Best’s introduction followed by several extracts from the diary itself.

‘Written by a man who from his youth was actively engaged in the affairs of his country and the destiny of his co-religionists, the diary has no humor or levity, maintaining throughout a rhythm of seriousness and intensity. It transmits Lambert’s internal conflict and struggle to understand how his vision of France could withstand the ideological revolution of Vichy, and evokes his pain and revulsion at efforts to turn the Jews into pariahs of the society he so cherished. The diary also captures Lambert’s inability to accept this new status as it reveals his deep attachment to French literature and traditions, to the writings of Stendhal, Romain Rolland, André Gide, Maurice Barres, and so many others. Indeed, his world of associations and cultural habits was shaped almost exclusively by French writers and thinkers and only minimally by Jewish sources. Yet he felt a continuing sense of loyalty to and identification with both worlds and failed to see any point of conflict between them. Suddenly confronted with the French about-face, Lambert was left reeling and searching for answers. Thus the relatively minor role the Nazis play in his diary. For him the shattered universe he confronts is that of the historic relationship between France and French Jewry, nurtured over generations and sealed in endless forms of dedication to the common cause. Diary of a Witness is riveted with these preoccupations, making it a seminal document for the study of French Jewry in modern times in general and during the Holocaust in particular.’

12 July 1940
‘After the past four weeks, which have seen unfold the most tragic events in our history, and for me the most terrible anxieties I have ever known, I am trying to recover my intellectual balance, to regain my awareness of the passage of time. So naturally I thought of the notebooks, which, during the Great War, saved me from inertia and despair.

As an officer assigned to a central administrative unit, I was not directly involved in the fighting, but I have witnessed the disarray and paralysis of my country’s central nervous systems. I have been most dreadfully worried about the fate of my wife and our three sons, who are my whole life and my only reasons now to go on living and struggling - for even though the real danger is gone, at least for the moment, the future will bring serious problems.

I should begin by putting down matter-of-factly, as well as I can remember clearly, the details of my odyssey from Paris to Nîmes; as I owed it to myself to be during that time, I am aware of having been lucid, energetic, and concerned to do my duty. 

Until June 10: Still in the technical section of the Colonial Troops, captain tor a month now (and very happy about it), stationed at the Hotel des Invalides. On May 19 I decided to have Simone and the children evacuated to Bellac, more because ot the danger of air raids than the strategic situation. Left alone in Paris, I waited. Several alarms.

Monday, June 3: At 1:30 P.M., aerial bombardment of Paris, targeting the Citroën factory, which was hit; some bombs in my Auteuil neighborhood, in Coussin Street where Lionel has been going to school. . . So the evacuation is justified and I accept the separation. One official statement after another announces disaster in overly enigmatic terms.

June 10: At 11 a.m. I go with my superior, Commandant Pascot, to the Eighth Department office of the ministry under which we work. . .  They are moving out, without letting us know. They were just going to forget about us. The General Headquarters staff has already left Paris, during the night. Destination: Candé, near Blois. It’s up to us to find transportation: a dump truck belonging to one of my noncommissioned officers -he deals in fertilizer; the cars of two of our secretaries. The commandant goes to Ribérac this evening to kiss his wife, then catch up with us at Candé. I am to leave in the morning with the office things and the files.

By evening Paris is emptying out, its public buildings are dead. The winds of defeat are already blowing. At street corners women sit on bundles, waiting for the taxis, all of which are gone. At St. Lazare train station, floods of refugees. “They” have reached Pontoise and Nantes. I go on calmly arranging our departure. We [are to] meet at 8:30 A.M., unless there are suspicious noises during the night.

June 11: I awake to one of the most horrible sensations of my life, a feeling of being smothered, of dying all alone. The maid rouses me at 6 A.M.: gas attack! I open the window. Paris is drowning in a black, stifling fog that is plunging the sky and the streets into mourning. . . It smells of oil and soot, but it’s not a gas attack. It is oil fumes from the storage tanks that have been set on fire from Rouen to Bonnières, along with smoke with which the Boche [the Germans] are screening their crossing of the Seine. . . It feels like being crushed by something sinister, and I truly sense that Paris will never be the same again. This deep gloom is our defeat. In the street people's faces have black spots from the soot and eyes outlined in black. The few souls still passing by are running like crazy toward the train stations.

We leave Invalides at 10:30. I requisition gasoline from the military school. We head for Candé by the Orleans highway, which I know well. . . The spectacle there is dumbfounding, a whole people in flight. The road is hopelessly jammed: workers fleeing on bicycles, on foot, pushing wheelbarrows, cars full to bursting. . . With my lieutenant I go ahead on foot to restore some order and make a way through, but there are no longer any police or any authority that people recognize, and of course no priority possible for the military either. Lunch is in a ditch where we are forced to wait for an hour coming out of Longjumeau. By evening we are at Étampes. My second-in-command and my men sleep in the vehicles, which I have parked off the highway on a dead-end road, since it would be dangerous to keep going at night. I take the responsibility for this; we will get there when we can, and we are more than seventy kilometers [forty-five miles] beyond the enemy’s reach on the ground. For myself, in a nearby house I am able to find a free bed on which to stretch out. My experience of the previous war is serving me well; the filling station on the square in Étampes is overwhelmed but is obliged to give me gasoline to continue my journey. Senator Breton, traveling in his Bugatti, is sleeping in the open air, and there is no more bread to be found. . . I scrape together what I can for dinner with my men.’

2 October 1940
‘One of the most depressing memories of my life. This morning I read in the newspaper: “The Council of Ministers continued study and finalization of the Statut on the Jews. . .” So it is possible that within a few days I shall see my citizenship reduced, and that my sons, who are French by birth, culture, and faith, will find themselves brutally and cruelly cast out of the French community. . . Is this possible? I cannot believe it. France is no longer France. I repeat to myself that Germany is in charge here, trying still to excuse this offense against an entire history - but I cannot yet realize that it is true.’

9 October 1940
‘I am in Luchon on an assignment for the refugee committee, since I have again taken up social work in order to earn my children’s daily bread.

Here I found about a thousand unfortunate Jews from Holland and Belgium, in poverty and anguish, but the future for them looks even more fearful than the present.

The papers this morning published the decree, signed by Pétain, that has abrogated the Crémieux Decree. The Jews of Algeria are no longer French citizens. . . The Marshal has dishonored himself. What shame and what infamy! In Algeria a father who lost his son in the war is no longer a French citizen, because he is Jewish. . . So this is the armistice with honor. I am incapable of realizing that such an injustice is done, I am so ashamed of my country. Ah! if I didn’t have a wife, three sons, and graves to care for on this soil that is still French, how well I would know the way to action, to revolt and struggle for what makes life precious!’

10 May 1941
‘For weeks I have been tormented by witnessing these most somber events of our century (and perhaps of my whole life); it enrages me to belong to a nation that is so powerless today. . . There are moments - when one reflects upon Hitler’s flag flying over the Acropolis - of doubt that we shall ever see the victory so longed for by all free spirits. Yet there have been centuries in history when evil triumphed, when independent thinking was asleep, when moral and material progress were halted. So it is possible that Europe is now on the eve of such an age of obscurantism and misery. It seems that nothing on land is capable of standing up to the mechanized strength of the Reich. What then? The decision will only come on the sea or in the air, when the time comes that the United States and the British Empire can bombard the industrial centers of central Europe, day and night, until its peoples beg for mercy. I don’t see any such possibility for at least two years. And I tell myself, without being pessimistic, that it is not an absolute certainty.

The old world will not be reborn. Perhaps the victory of the evil forces will give birth, after a long time, to a new world. Can the tiny cell that my family represents survive that long, in the midst of chaos?

So I fear for the future of my children, and my fears are particularly those of a Frenchman, a French Jew. Fortunately my sons are not yet adults. What means should they be given to defend themselves in four or five years? I accept this suffering for myself, because I hope in spite of all to sec the dawn of freedom once again, but for them - I don’t want them to suffer, and I just assume they will not face debasement and discrimination. It’s a problem - such grievous cruelty that I refuse to be resigned to it for the moment. I’m either an optimist or a coward.

In view of the persecutions being initiated by the new order in France, against foreigners in general and foreign Jews in particular, in light of what has happened elsewhere, in view of racist laws and the “Commission on Jewish Affairs” being run in Vichy from Berlin, I wonder whether this collaboration won’t bring about a yet more rigorous Statut. A history of racism in France from 1939 to 194? will have to be written. . . There are days when I don’t dare listen to the official bulletins on the radio; they wound me, because I still feel French and call myself a Frenchman. If I didn't have my wife and my three sons, I should be sorry not to have “died honorably in action,” or sorry to have survived my mother.’