Rushing through the water

‘Still the strong wind and we expect to sight the ‘Farallones’ lighthouse this afternoon. It is so exciting rushing through the water, when every hour brings us nearer our destination. 2 pm, two sails in sight, and land reported from aloft, it is the lighthouse!’ This is Maud Berridge, a Victorian lady, whose diaries of life on board her husband’s clipper sailing to and from Australia, have just been published by Bloomsbury. The vast majority of historical maritime diaries extant today were written by captains or their assistants, so it is refreshing to see life on board from the female perspective for a change. According to Bloomsbury, Maud is ‘an open-minded and engaging companion’, and ‘her resilience, humour and delight in new experiences shines through her writing.’ The Daily Mail judges the diary with a tad more romanticism, seeing Maud’s ‘steadfast and unselfpitying intrepidness’ as ‘an inspiration for all who are willing to go to the ends of the Earth for the one they love’.

Maud Berridge was born in Shrewsbury, the county town of Shropshire near the Welsh border, in 1845, into a well-connected family (her mother being a goddaughter of the prime minister Robert Peel). The early 1850s saw her living with her mother in Warwick, this was after her father and two brothers had left to seek their fortunes in Australia. Maud married Henry Berridge, a master mariner, in 1869, who was employed by Greens Blackwall Line. Over 20 years he captained several three-masted clippers, the Walmer Castle, Highflier and Superb, often on voyages to Melbourne. On several occasions, Maud accompanied him. The first time was only a few months after their marriage, but the second was not until 10 years later, when their two sons were also on board. The last trip was probably in 1886-1887. Henry died soon after, in 1991, and Maud survived him for 16 years, living in London. She died in 1907.

During some of Maud’s voyages she kept a diary. Two of these have survived and were deposited at the National Maritime Museum by Maud’s son in 1948: a fragment from the 1880-1881 voyage, and a full account of the 1883-1884 voyage. Maud’s great-granddaughter, Sally Berridge, has edited the two diaries and used them as the core material in a book published earlier this year by Bloomsbury: The Epic Voyages of Maud Berridge: The seafaring diaries of a Victorian lady. Although the book feels like a personal project (it includes a letter Maud has composed for her long-gone relative), it is also very well researched with chapters on 19th century sailing ships, Maud’s other voyages (i.e. the ones for which there is no extant diary) and several appendices. There is also a generous collection of photographs and a few of Maud’s own illustrations.

The Epic Voyages of Maud Berridge can be previewed at Googlebooks, and Sally Berridge herself has written an article about it for The Sydney Morning Herald (with diary extracts). Elsewhere, a review can be read at the Daily Mail website. It concludes with this: ‘[Maud Berridge’s] steadfast and unselfpitying intrepidness remains an inspiration for all who are willing to go to the ends of the Earth for the one they love.’

With thanks to Bloomsbury, here are three extracts from the diaries.

15 February 1883
‘We weighed anchor at about 8 o’clock and proceeded on tow as far as Deal, which we reached at about 3 in the afternoon. The weather still very boisterous, and the tide and wind being against us, we anchored until tomorrow. The first Pilot left us today, taking an immense budget of letters. I am writing in the Saloon at 9 pm. The lamps are lighted and the passengers are nearly all seated round the table with books, work or games. I have just played backgammon with a young fellow who told me he was going to New South Wales to learn sheep farming. The gentleman rejoices in very red hair and moustache, and he has already been christened ‘The Golden Pheasant’. The dwarf has received the name of ‘General’. All jokes at his expense he takes most good-humouredly and joins in the laugh.’

2 April 1883
‘As the ship is steadier and the weather fine, there are preparations going on for theatricals to come tomorrow evening. Bombastes Furioso has been rehearsed for a week or two by four of the gentlemen. All morning I have been at work on a muslin cap for ‘Dastafenia’, making some braids of flax to represent hair and flowing curls. With the aid of a little rouge, my cotton dressing gown, an apron, mittens etc Mr Parkin was a very good ‘get up’.

It is wonderful the resources one has to fly to on board ship for fancy dress. The king’s crown was tin, decorated with little figures, a crimson shirt, white ducks, sea boots turned over with brown paper, and a ladies fur-lined cloak turned inside out made quite a regal-looking personage. The Prime Minister had a wig with a queue, knee breeches, low shoes with large pasteboard buckles. The coat trimmed with ruffles at neck and waist, also an imitation gold lace made out of rope, the effect of which was admirable. I made a bouquet of artificial flowers for a man to give a lady after the singing of ‘For ever and for ever’, which we had a strong suspicion was a burlesque on the young lady who practices [sic] so assiduously. We all enjoyed the play, which went off without a hitch, and was only too short. Lat 17º 35’ Long 29º 45’ Distance 199.’

2 October 1883
‘Still the strong wind and we expect to sight the ‘Farallones’ lighthouse this afternoon. It is so exciting rushing through the water, when every hour brings us nearer our destination. 2 pm, two sails in sight, and land reported from aloft, it is the lighthouse! 2.30 the lighthouse is distinctly visible, getting nearer every moment. A range of forbidding-looking rocks with the lighthouse perched on the highest, 350 feet high.

The Pilot cutter sighted about 3.30. The Pilot was watched with the greatest anxiety and curiosity. A square-built, fresh-coloured man with wide-awake hat, goatee beard and square-toed boots, he has not a superfluous word for anyone, while we were brimful of excitement and would like to ask a hundred questions!

Our voyage to ’Frisco is virtually at an end, we are entering the ‘Golden Gate’ after nightfall, a great disappointment, but I must begin a new book with our introduction to California!’

Einstein’s wonderful day

‘One of the finest days of my life. Radiant skies. Toledo like a fairy tale. An enthusiastic old man, who had supposedly written something of import about (Goy) El Greco, guides us. [. . .] Small garden with vistas near synagogue. Magnificent painting by El Greco in small church (burial of a nobleman) is among the profoundest images I have ever seen. Wonderful day.’ This is from the private travel diary of one the world’s most famous scientists, Albert Einstein. Although not accustomed to keeping a diary, he started doing so, in his 40s, when travelling. Of six extant diaries, two have been published - and are freely available online as part of The Digital Einstein Papers. However, Princeton University Press has just published a more comprehensive edition of the diary Einstein kept on a tour to the Far East, Palestine and Spain. Never intended for publication, the diary reveals Einstein unguardedly expressing joy, as in the above extract, but also a degree of racism that has been much discussed by reviewers of the new book.

Einstein was born in 1879 in Ulm, in the Kingdom of Württemberg in the German Empire (now in the federal state of Baden-Württemberg). Within a few months, the family had moved to Munich where his father and uncle founded a company manufacturing electrical equipment. Though Jewish by birth, he attended a Catholic school for several years before enrolling in the secondary school, Luitpold Gymnasium. When his father was forced to sell his business, the family moved to Italy, and Einstein continued his education in Switzerland, where he trained as a maths and physics teacher. In 1901, he became a Swiss citizen, and, unable to get a teaching job, joined the Swiss Patent Office. He married Mileva Marić, a fellow student, in 1903 and they had two sons. (However, in 1987, it was discovered that Marić had also given birth earlier to Einstein’s illegitimate daughter but that the baby had either died or been given up for adoption.)

In 1905, Einstein completed his doctor’s degree; he also published several groundbreaking papers, not least one on special relativity including what would become the famous equation E=mc². International recognition followed swiftly, with an associate professorship at the University of Zurich, and a full professorship at the Charles-Ferdinand University in Prague. In 1914, he was appointed director of the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Physics in Berlin (a post he retained until 1932). After several years of separation, he divorced Marić, and married his cousin Elsa Löwenthal. (For an insight into their life together see Harry Kessler’s diaries - Dined with the Einsteins.) In 1922, Einstein was awarded, after some delay, the 1921 Nobel Prize in Physics ‘for his services to Theoretical Physics, and especially for his discovery of the law of the photoelectric effect’.

From the 1920s, Einstein was working towards a unified field theory which, apart from gravitation, was also to include electrodynamics. Although he never succeeded in this grand task, he continued to provide lasting contributions to statistical mechanics, special relativity, quantum mechanics, physical cosmology among other branches of maths and physics. He received many honorary doctorate degrees in science, medicine and philosophy from European and American universities, as well as fellowships or memberships of leading scientific academies. He travelled widely, meeting other scientists, and giving lectures. Sailing back to Europe from a trip to the US in 1933, he learned of new German laws barring Jews from holding academic positions, and decided he could not return to Berlin. Other countries, particularly Britain, sought to give him residency. However, he chose to take up American citizenship, and a position at the newly-founded Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey, to which he remained affiliated for the rest of his life.

Einstein was an active Zionist. He helped establish the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, which opened in 1925, and was among its first governors. Much later, in 1952, he was invited to take up the ceremonial post of President of Israel, though he turned this down. He was also an outspoken advocate for the idea of a world government, and he was a pacifist. However, on the eve of World War II, he famously sent a letter to President Franklin D. Roosevelt alerting him to Germany’s potential to develop an atomic bomb and urging the US to begin research into similar techniques. Later, he campaigned to warn of the danger of nuclear arms. Wikipedia says he published more than 300 scientific papers and more than 150 non-scientific works in his lifetime. He died in 1955. Further information is also available at Princeton University Press, the Nobel Prize website, Biography.com, Encyclopaedia Britannica. There are also many biographies available at Internet Archive and Googlebooks.

There is no evidence that Einstein was a diarist by habit but, in the 1920s, he started to keep diaries when travelling. There are six diaries extant from five trips, the first written during his 1922-1923 journey to the Far East, Palestine and Spain, a second written in South America in 1925, and the other four written during three consecutive winter trips to the USA between late 1930 and early 1933. The first two of the six have been published in volumes 13 and 14 respectively of The Collected Papers of Albert Einstein, produced by the Einstein Papers Project, and published by Princeton University Press.

The Einstein Papers Project was established in 1986 by Princeton University Press and the Hebrew University of Jerusalem ‘to assemble, preserve, translate, and publish papers selected from the literary estate of Albert Einstein’ (based in Pasadena, California, at the California Institute of Technology). The volumes are published in the original German, but also in English translation. The Collected Works series has only reached the mid-1920s, and so, presumably, it will be some years before the USA diaries are published. All the hardback volumes are also being made freely available online through The Digital Einstein Papers, hosted by Princeton University Press. Thus, both the first two diaries can be found online, buried deep within the volumes (Far East, Palestine and Spain, and South America).

Although the first travel diary has already been published in print and online, Princeton University Press has now published a far more comprehensive edition - The Travel Diaries of Albert Einstein: The Far East, Palestine & Spain 1922-1923, as edited by Ze’ev Rosenkranz, senior editor and assistant director of the Einstein Papers Project. According to the publisher: ‘Quirky, succinct, and at times irreverent the entries record Einstein’s musings on science, philosophy, art, and politics, as well as his immediate impressions and broader thoughts on such events as his inaugural lecture at the future site of the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, a garden party hosted by the Japanese Empress, an audience with the King of Spain, and meetings with other prominent colleagues and statesmen.’

The handsomely-produced book (which can be previewed at Googlebooks) includes photographic images of every page of Einstein’s diary, extensive notes and references, and a long informative introduction by Rosenkranz. He explains, for example, how this diary and other papers were saved from the Germans: on hearing that Einstein could not return to Berlin in January 1933, his son-in-law removed the diary and other papers from Einstein’s office for safe-keeping in the French embassy, and for subsequent transfer by diplomatic pouch to Paris. He discusses why Einstein might have started to keep travel diaries at this point in time, and he argues that the diaries were never written with a view to publication (but, probably, for family members). He also analyses - and tries to explain - several entries in the diary in which Einstein expresses racist opinions. These particular entries, offering an unexpectedly darker side to Einstein's personality, have been widely reported in the press (see the BBC and the Mail Online - but also The New York Times).

Here are several extracts from the diary, courtesy of Princeton University Press. (NB: for simplicity, the annotations that appear in the original have been omitted.)

21 November 1922
‘Chrysanthemum festival at the imperial palace garden. Great difficulty in procuring a fitting frock coat along with top hat. The former from unknown donor via Mr. Barwald, who brought it personally; the latter from Mr. Yamamoto; far too small, so I had to carry it around in my hand the whole afternoon. We were with the foreign diplomats, who were arranged in a semicircle. Picked up and accompanied by the German embassy. Jap[anese] empress stepped around the inside of the semicircle and spoke a few words with husbands and wives from the embassies, with me a few kind words in French. Then refreshments in the garden at tables, where I was introduced to infinitely many people. Garden marvelous, artificial hills, water, picturesque autumn foliage. Chrysanthemums in booths properly lined up like soldiers. The hanging chrysanthemums are the most beautiful. In the evening, cozy evening at the Berliners’ charming japanese home. He, an intelligent political economist, she, a gracious, intelligent woman, true native of Berlin. Lazing about under such conditions is more tiring than working, but the Inagakis help us with touching solicitude.’

29 November 1922
‘While in shirtsleeves received a card from pastor Steinichen announcing his visit to keep me informed about Frau Schulze’s case. Changed and got dressed quickly, partly in his presence. Then the English physician Gordon-Munroe, who was attending Frau Schulze. Verified that wife’s psychosis is due to husband’s maltreatment (employee at the German Embassy). 10:30, tea ceremony in a fine Japanese home. Exactly prescribed ceremony for a meal to celebrate friendship. Glimpse into the contemplative cultural life of the Japanese. The man has written four thick volumes on the ceremony, which he proudly showed us. Then, reception by 10,000 students at Waseda University, founded by Okuma (?) in the spirit of democracy, with addresses. Lunch at hotel. Then lecture. Viewing of the institute. Interesting communication about electric-arc line-shift. At 6:30 reception by pedagogical societies. During farewells, greeting by female seminar participants outside. Sweet, cheerful scene of throngs in semi-darkness. Too much love and spoiling for one mortal. Arrival home dead tired.’

6 March 1923
‘Excursion to Toledo concealed through many lies. One of the finest days of my life. Radiant skies. Toledo like a fairy tale. An enthusiastic old man, who had supposedly written something of import about (Goy) El Greco, guides us. Streets and market place, views onto the city, the Tagus with stone bridges, stone-covered hills, charming plain, cathedral, synagogue, sunset on the homeward trip with glowing colors. Small garden with vistas near synagogue. Magnificent painting by El Greco in small church (burial of a nobleman) is among the profoundest images I have ever seen. Wonderful day.’

The three extracts immediately above are excerpted from THE TRAVEL DIARIES OF ALBERT EINSTEIN: The Far East, Palestine, & Spain 1922-1923 ed. by Ze’ev Rosenkranz. Editorial apparatus and diary translation copyright © 2018 by Princeton University Press. Travel diary, additional texts, and endpaper images copyright © 2018 by the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Reprinted by permission of Princeton University Press.

Cleese, also in a bikini

‘The last week has been spent filming in or around London, ending up at our traditional location - Walton-on-Thames - on Friday. It was less hot this time than in the past - I noticed this because for the last shot of the day I had to stand beside a fairly busy road clad in the It’s Man beard and moustache and a bikini. Next to me was John Cleese, also in a bikini.’ Laugh out loud, for this is the very funny Michael Palin, still in his 20s, who would go on to become a household name as a star of the Monty Python television series and films, and later as a travel presenter. Today he’s 75 - happy birthday!

Palin was born on 5 May 1943 in Ranmoor, Sheffield to an engineer and his wife; he had one sister, nine years older. He was educated at Shrewsbury School (like his father), and at Brasenose College, Oxford, where he read modern history. As a child he had shown some talent at acting, and he furthered this interest in Oxford by writing and performing comedy material, not least with Terry Jones. After completing his degree in 1965, he went to work in television, presenting a comedy pop show. The following year he married Helen Gibbons, they would have three children. For the next few years, he wrote many TV scripts, some with Terry Jones, for the likes of Ken Dod, Roy Hudd, and David Frost. He also wrote and appeared, with Eric Idle and Terry Jones, in the prize winning children’s show Do Not Adjust Your Set.

In 1969, Palin joined Graham Chapman, John Cleese, Terry Gilliam, Eric Idle and Terry Jones for a first series of the BBC’s Monty Python’s Flying Circus. Further series, films and books came thick and fast over the next five years or so, bringing fame to all of them. Thereafter, Palin continued to write for TV and film. In 1982, he wrote and starred in The Missionary, co-starring Maggie Smith, and this was followed by roles in Brazil (1984) and A Fish Called Wanda (1988) for which he won the BAFTA Award for Best Actor in a Supporting Role. From the late 1980s, however, and through to 2012, Palin has focused on presenting travel programmes, notably for the BBC, such as Around the World in 80 Days, Pole to Pole and Full Circle. He has completed eight series, each one accompanied by publication of a travel book. Most recently, he has presented one-off documentaries on art and history topics. He has also written several novels and children’s stories. In 2013, he was awarded the BAFTA Academy Fellowship Award. Further biographical information can be found at the Michael Palin website, Wikipedia, Screen Online, The Independent, or the BBC (Desert Island Discs audio recording from 1979).

Palin has been a committed diarist since his mid-20s. His motivation, he says, is simply ‘to keep a record of how I fill the days - Nothing more complicated than that.’ However, between 2006 and 2014, Weidenfeld & Nicolson has published three thick volumes of his diaries (all of which can be sampled at Googlebooks): The Python Years 1969-1979; Halfway To Hollywood: Diaries 1980-1988; Travelling to Work: Diaries 1988–1998. As with his Python movies and travel programmes, all have been highly popular, and much lauded. A few extracts can also be read on his own website, as can some tips for aspiring diarists.

Here is part of his introduction to the first volume (which gives an extract from a childhood diary, as well as a little insight as to why he began to keep a diary), as well as several excerpts from the same volume.

‘I have kept a diary, more or less continuously, since April 1969. I was twenty-five years old then, married for three years and with a six-month-old son. I had been writing comedy with Terry Jones since leaving university in 1965 and, in addition to contnbunng material to The Frost Report, Marty Feldman, The Two Ronnies and anyone else who’d take us, we had written and performed two series of Do Not Adjust Your Set (with Eric Idle, David Jason and Denise Coffey) and six episodes of The Complete and Utter History of Britain. Alter the last one went out in early 1969. John Cleese rang me.

“Well, you won’t be doing any more of those,” he predicted, accurately as it turned out, “so why don’t we think of something new.”

So it was that, quite coincidentally, Monty Python came into my life, only a month or so after the diary.

This was far from my first stab at keeping a regular account of how I spent my time. At the age of eleven I resolved to record each day of the year, and kept it up until the 18th of July. The style was staccato, and looking back now, quite surreal.

Letts Schoolboy's Diary, January, 1955
Tuesday, 18th. Big blow-up in prayers. Had easy prep. Listened to Goon Show. Got sore hand.
Monday 24th. Had fight with (form) VR. Got hit on nose. Did two sets of prep. Jolly hard! Cabbage for lunch. Watched TV.

At regular intervals I tried to resume the habit, but as I grew older keeping a diary seemed an irksome duty, like writing to one’s parents, and anyway, there was far too much going on in my teens and early twenties to have either the time or the inclination to write it all down. Yet there remained a nagging feeling that it was a small failure to let life go by without in some way documenting it. The feeling persisted as I grew older. All I lacked was the will-power.’

Palin then includes an anecdote about how he found the sudden will power to give up smoking which also gave him the impetus to re-start and maintain a diary. Palin continues:

‘There are times when I’ve resented the whole process, when I’ve felt lumpen, dull and inarticulate, when detail has slipped away and the whole exercise has seemed completely pointless. But the longer I’ve kept the diary the more inconceivable it has been to abandon it. Its become an effective and tenacious parasite, mutating over the years into something as germane to my life as an arm or a leg.

The motivation for keeping the diaries remains the same as it always was, to keep a record of how I fill the days. Nothing more complicated than that. Though this inevitably involves emotional reactions. I’ve never treated the diary as a confessional. Once I’ve noted the day’s events, usually the next morning, there’s little time left for soul-searching. [. . .]

This selection [i.e. 1969-1979] is culled from thirty-eight hand-written secretarial notebooks amounting to some five times the volume of material reproduced here. The early entries sit a little awkwardly as I search for a voice and a style that relies on more than lists of events. My reward for perseverance, often in the face of tempting discouragement, is to see the diary bed itself in and slowly begin to tell a story, with regular characters, a narrative, and a sense of continuity.

In the course of these diaries I grow up, my family grows up and Monty Python grows up. It was a great time to be alive.’

23 August 1970
‘The last week has been spent filming in or around London, ending up at our traditional location - Walton-on-Thames - on Friday. It was less hot this time than in the past - I noticed this because for the last shot of the day I had to stand beside a fairly busy road clad in the It’s Man beard and moustache and a bikini. Next to me was John Cleese, also in a bikini.’

25 December 1971
‘A rather fine, sunny morning, and for the first time in our marriage we woke on Christmas morning in our own home.

Thomas saw James across the road, and then they both saw Louise looking out of her window, and soon there was an impromptu gathering of little children comparing presents on the pavement outside our house. The quiet of the day, the sunny morning and the neighbours all talking made me feel very glad - about staying in London, and about living in Oak Village. If it doesn't sound too pedantic, I felt that this was how city life should be.’

31 December 1971
‘Harold Nicolson used to sum up his year on December 31st with a few pithy words. It’s a sort of diary writer’s reward for all those dull July 17ths and October 3rds. (Will I still be keeping my diary on Dec. 3Ist 1999? Now that’s the kind of thought which gives survival a new urgency.)

1971 was my fifth full year in television and certainly on the face of it we have achieved a lot. A TV series, which has reached the sort of national notoriety of TW3. ‘Monty Python’, ‘Silly Walks’, ‘And Now For Something Completely Different’, etc, have become household words. The TV series has won several awards during the year, including the Silver Rose of Montreux. The second Monty Python album has sold over 20,000 copies since release in October, and Monty Python’s Big Red Book completely sold out of both printings within two weeks. It has sold 55,000 copies, and 20,000 more are being printed for February. In London it was top of the bestseller lists. And finally the film which we made a year ago and were so unhappy about, looks like being equally successful.

From all this no-one can deny that Monty Python has been the most talked about TV show of 1971 - and here is the supreme irony, for we have not, until this month, recorded any new shows since October 1970.

The split between John and Eric and the rest of us has grown a little recently. It doesn’t prevent us all from sharing - and enjoying sharing - most of our attitudes, except for attitudes to work. It’s the usual story - John and Eric see Monty Python as a means to an end - money to buy freedom from work. Terry J is completely the opposite and feels that Python is an end in itself - i.e. work which he enjoys doing and which keeps him from the dangerous world of leisure. In between are Graham and myself.’

25 September 1975
‘I spent the lunch hour in a recording studio doing three voice-overs for Sanderson Wallpaper. I really did it because I wanted to keep my hand in and a voice-over, however dull or badly written it may be, at least requires a bit of application and a little bit of performing. It’s good practice. By the same token I’ve accepted an offer to appear as the guest on two editions of Just a Minute, a Radio 4 quiz game, next week.

Down to Regents Park for a Python meeting.

Eric was very positive and I could scarcely believe that it was the same Eric who had berated us all for turning Python into a money-obsessed, capitalist waste of time in this same room in February last year. Eric’s moods should really be ignored, but it’s impossible because he nearly always has a big effect on any meeting. Today it was nice, kind, helpful, constructive Eric.

John had just returned from three days in Biarritz. He was the same as ever, unable to resist a vindictive dig at T Gilliam (on the usual lines of us ‘carrying the animator’ for three years). This didn’t find much support amongst the gathering and squashed TG more than John intended.

Terry J had had a lunch with Michael White, who felt it would be suicidal for us not to make another film this year. Anne said that most ‘advice’ tended this way.’

24 August 1976
‘Chasing up and down corridors. A bit of sub-Errol Flynn work. Anti-swashbuckling. To be actually living these childhood dreams and fantasies - and getting paid handsomely for them - I have to pinch myself mentally to be sure its happening. Fifteen years ago Graham [Stuart-Harris] and I were lapping up all the films, good or bad, that hit Sheffield, and now here I am making the bloody things.

Eric (complete with specially printed T-shirt ’Jabberwocky - The New Python Movie’) and Susie the wet-lipped Aussie model, came to see us on set. Eric brought me a signed advance copy of the book which he says has already had massive re-orders, The Rutland Dirty Weekend Book (containing three pages by M Palin!), to be released next month. It’s a lavish production job - a combination of the Goodies and Python book designs over the last four years, but fused and improved.

I feel that it pre-empts more Python books - a particular area of comic book design has been capped by the Rutland book - and if the Python ‘periodical’ which is being heavily sold to us by Eric, is to be the work of these same designers, I fear it will look unoriginal - and that Python, far from creating a bandwagon, will appear to be climbing on one.

Sit in the sun and read more of The Final Days, chase up a few more corridors.’

28 September 1976
‘No Jabberwocking for me today, but my last day off, apart from Sundays, until late October. Letters, visit Anne Henshaw. She has her head down in the labyrinthine affairs of Python as usual. She reports that the sooner we start writing the Python film the better for some in the group - she says Graham especially seems to be at a loose end and drinking more, with several of his projects, TV series and his film of Bernard McKenna’s script, having collapsed.

Shopping in the King’s Road - have to give brief run-down on Python plans in almost every shop - the assistants all seem to recognise me and want to talk.

To BBC to meet Don Henderson - T Hughes’ selection for the RSM in ‘Across the Andes’. I’m in trepidation for this is a major role and I don’t even know the guy.

Fears allayed - he looks good - with a rather fierce, red face and a good sense of humour. He’s easy company and seems to understand the role well. Still no Dora - as Michele Dotrice turned down the role (the first artist to turn down a Ripping Yarns role this time around!).

Out to dinner in the evening with Robin S-H and Barbara. By a strange stroke of coincidence a Peruvian is present. I tell him about ‘Across the Andes by Frog’ - and to my amazement he tells me that the biggest frogs in the world live in Lake Titicaca, Peru, and that the frog is a common motif in old Peruvian carvings!’

23 September 1977
‘Squash with Terry Jones at five. Beaten again. I’m afraid. Then up to the Flask for a drink. Tell Terry J that I shall be writing the novel (hereinafter called ‘the work’) until Christmas. He doesn’t sound disappointed. Says that it will suit him, as he has further work to do on Chaucer, now his book has found a publisher. He’s just finished a translation of ‘The Prologue’, which TJ says he’s more excited about than the book.

Off to Abbotsley tomorrow for a quick burst of countryside, then back to London and the novel on Monday. A strange feeling - not knowing quite what will come out. I keep wanting to start - waking up in bed and composing cracking first six lines, then controlling myself.

Will I be able to keep the diary up? Will I choke on a surfeit of writing? Will the malfunctioning, non-reversing ribbon on my typewriter cut short a promising career? Watch these spaces . . .’

Carefully in oils

‘I have painted the portrait of a Duke in oils. I have made a very fine and careful portrait in oils of the Treasurer Lorenz Sterk; it was worth 25 fl. I presented it to him and in return he gave me 20 fl. and Susanna 1 fl. trinkgeld. Likewise painted the portrait of Jobst my host very finely and carefully in oils. He has now given me his for his. And his wife have I done again and made her portrait in oils.’ This is from a one-off diary kept by the great German artist Albrecht Dürer - who died all of 460 years ago today - while travelling to the Netherlands to meet Charles V, the new ruler of the Holy Roman Empire. The diary, first published in English in the late 19th century, has been likened to a ledger in which he ‘noted his expenses down to the last farthing’. More interestingly, perhaps, he also noted down income from the sale and barter of his own art works.

Dürer was born in 1471 into large family in Nuremburg. His father was a goldsmith, but his godfather, Anton Koberger, was a printer and publisher, eventually becoming the most successful publisher in Germany, owning 24 printing presses. His most famous publication was the Nuremberg Chronicle, published in 1493 in German and Latin editions, containing 1,800 woodcut illustrations, some of which young Albrecht might have worked on. He learned the basics of goldsmithing and drawing from his father, and showed such a precocious talent in drawing that he was apprenticed to the printmaker Michael Wolgemut from the age of 15.

From 1489, Dürer spent five years travelling around Germany, Switzerland and Italy, a journeyman, working and meeting other artists. In 1494, he married Agnes Frey, the daughter of a wealthy jeweller and musical instrument maker, and, settled in Nuremberg (although he visited Italy again in 1505-1507). He opened his own workshop to produce high quality prints, and was eventually elected a member of the Nuremberg Greater Council. He produced his famous Apocalypse series of woodcuts in 1498. During the next two decades, he produced further series such as Life of the Virgin, Great Passion and Little Passion. From around 1512, Emperor Maximilian I, ruler of the Holy Roman Empire, became his most important patron, and, later, the source of a pension.

In 1520-21, after Maxmillian’s death, Dürer travelled with his wife to the Netherlands to see Macmillan’s successor, Charles V, petitioning him to continue with the pension. In the latter years of his life, Dürer developed ideas of art theory and mathematics, published several books, Treatise of Measurement for example, and produced some monumental works such as the Four Apostles. He died on 6 April 1528. Further information can be found at the Albrecht Dürer website,
Wikipedia, NNDB, MacTutor, and Encyclopaedia Britannica.

For about one year, while travelling, for the last time in his life, to the Netherlands, Dürer kept a diary. This was first published in an English translation as part of the Literary Remains of Albrecht Dürer by William Martin Conway (Cambridge: At the University Press, 1889). The book - which is freely available at Internet Archive - has 30 chapters, 300 pages, with the diary taking up one chapter and around 30 pages.

The diary chapter starts with this introduction: ‘On the 12th of July 1520 a party of travellers, consisting of Albrecht Dürer, his wife, and her maid-servant, started away from Nürnberg along the Erlangen road. The maid’s name was Susanna and it was probably she who three years later married her master’s former apprentice, Georg Penz the socialist. Dürer carried two little books with him, the contents of both of which have descended to us either in whole or in part. In one of these books he jotted down items of expenditure and occasional miscellaneous records and impressions. The original volume has been lost, but an old copy of it remains in the Bamberg Library. The other was a sketch-book, and many of its leaves may still be seen in the public and private art-collections of Europe. The memorandum book, with its curious mixture of diary and accounts, is one of the most interesting volumes of the kind that have been preserved. It has interested many generations of students and is destined to interest many more. The following is a translation of it.’

And the chapter ends with this postscript: ‘It must be admitted that Dürer was not a man of very contented disposition. But for the ill-health it brought him his Netherlands journey had been most successful. It was doubtless enjoyable. He accomplished the main object for which he set out. His Pension was confirmed by the new Emperor. He added greatly to his fame. He saw the world. He was received everywhere with honour. The town-council of Antwerp, like that of Venice years before, tried to retain him permanently with them. They offered him a salary of 300 Philipsgulden a year with a house and freedom from taxation. But the love of home was strong in him and so he returned to spend his last years in the city of his birth. Henceforward he lived out an honoured, if somewhat premature, old age amongst his own people. His earthly journeys were at an end. There remained for him only the short passage to the tomb where his bones still rest, outside the gates of Nürnberg.’

Nearly 100 years later, in 1971, a handsome edition of the diary was published by Lund Humphries in the UK and the New York Graphic Society in the US: Albrecht Dürer: Diary of his Journey to the Netherlands 1520-1521 Accompanied by the silverpoint sketchbook and paintings and drawings made during his journey. In an introduction, J-A Goris and G Marlier provide the following description and commentary:

‘The Diary which Dürer compiled during the twelve months of his absence from Nuremberg is neither a simple narrative of his impressions on the journey nor a detailed description of the sights he witnessed. It is, in effect, a very precise ledger in which the artist noted his expenses down to the last farthing: his travelling expenses, the cost of board and lodging, the various purchases he made, the money he lost at gambling or spent at the cabarets and spas. And with the same care he recorded everything that could properly be considered as gains, that is to say the sums derived from the sale of his own paintings, drawings and engravings, in that order of importance as far as his receipts are concerned. Sometimes the artist would barter his works, exchanging a set of his engravings for some objet d’art or other object. Dürer also kept a detailed account of the various gifts he made or received. [. . .]

Besides the purely financial data, Dürer could not avoid making a number of observations on what he had seen in the Netherlands. Thus, he describes at some length the great procession he witnessed in Antwerp; or again, the treasures brought from Mexico that he saw exhibited at the Palace in Brussels. Further on, he relates in somewhat pompous fashion the serious risks he took in Zeeland; and shortly before his return he suddenly interrupts his book-keeping to improvise a pathetic lament on the tragedy of Luther and Christianity. The Diary of his journey also tells us in a very direct way much about Durer’s character.’

And here are several extracts, as found in the 1889 edition of Literary Remains of Albrecht Dürer.

12-15 July 1520
’On Thursday after Kilian’s, I, Albrecht Dürer, at my own charges and costs, took myself and my wife (and maid Susanna) away to the Netherlands. And the same day, after passing through Erlangen, we put up for the night at Baiersdorf and spent there 3 pounds less 6 pfennigs.

Next day, Friday, we came to Forchheim and there I paid 22 pf. for the convoy.

Thence I journeyed to Bamberg where I presented the Bishop (Georg III. Schenk von Limburg) with a Madonna painting, a Life of our Lady, an Apocalypse, and a florin’s worth of engravings. He invited me as his guest, gave me a Toll-pass and three letters of introduction and paid my bill at the Inn, where I had spent about a florin.

I paid 6 florins in gold to the boatman who took me from Bamberg to Frankfurt.

Master Lukas Benedict and Hans the painter sent me wine.

4 pf. for bread and 13 pf. as leaving gifts.

Then I travelled from Bamberg to Eltman and I showed my pass and they let me go toll-free. Thence we passed by Zeil. I spent in the meantime 21 pf. Next I came to Hassfurt and presented my pass and they let me go toll-free.

I paid 1 fl. into the Bishop of Bamberg’s Chancery.

Next I came to Theres to the (Benedictine) monastery, and I showed my pass and they also let me go on. Then we journeyed to Unter-Euerheim where I stayed the night and spent 1 pf.

From thence we travelled to Mainberg and I presented my pass and they let me go toll-free.

We came next to Schweinfurt, where Doctor (Jorg) Rebart invited me, and he gave us wine in the boat. They let me also pass toll-free. A roast fowl 10 pf.; 18 pf. in the kitchen and for the child.

Then we travelled to Volkach and I showed my pass and journeyed on, and we came to Schwarzach and there we stopped the night and I spent 22 pf.’

19 August 1520
‘On the Sunday after our dear Lady’s Assumption I saw the great 19 Aug. Procession from the Church of our Lady at Antwerp, when the whole town of every craft and rank was assembled, each dressed in his best according to his rank. And all ranks and guilds had their signs, by which they might be known. In the intervals great costly pole-candles were borne, and their long old Frankish trumpets of silver. There were also in the German fashion many pipers and drummers. All the instruments were loudly and noisily blown and beaten.

I saw the Procession pass along the street, the people being arranged in rows, each man some distance from his neighbour, but the rows close one behind another. There were the Goldsmiths, the Painters, the Masons, the Broderers, the Sculptors, the Joiners, the Carpenters, the Sailors, the Fishermen, the Butchers, the Leatherers, the Clothmakers, the Bakers, the Tailors, the Cordwainers -indeed workmen of all kinds, and many craftsmen and dealers who work for their livelihood. Likewise the shopkeepers and merchants and their assistants of all kinds were there. After these came the shooters with guns, bows, and crossbows and the horsemen and foot-soldiers also. Then followed the watch of the Lords Magistrates. Then came a fine troop all in red, nobly and splendidly clad. Before them however went all the religious Orders and the members of some Foundations very devoutly, all in their different robes.

A very large company of widows also took part in this procession. They support themselves with their own hands and observe a special rule. They were all dressed from head to foot in white linen garments, made expressly for the occasion, very sorrowful to see. Among them I saw some very stately persons. Last of all came the Chapter of our Lady’s Church with all their clergy, scholars, and treasurers. Twenty persons bore the image of the Virgin Mary with the Lord Jesus, adorned in the costliest manner, to the honour of the Lord God.

In this Procession very many delightful things were shown, most splendidly got up. Waggons were drawn along with masques upon ships and other structures. Behind them came the company of the Prophets in their order and scenes from the New Testament, such as the Annunciation, the Three Holy Kings riding on great camels and on other rare beasts, very well arranged; also how our Lady fled to Egypt - very devout - and many other things, which for shortness I omit. At the end came a great Dragon which St Margaret and her maidens led by a girdle; she was especially beautiful, behind her came St George with his squire, a very goodly knight in armour. In this host also rode boys and maidens most finely and splendidly dressed in the costumes of many lands, representing various Saints. From beginning to end the Procession lasted more than two hours before it was gone past our house. And so many things were there that I could never write them all in a book, so I let it well alone.’

23 October 1520
‘On the 23rd day of October, King Karl was crowned at Aachen. There I saw all manner of lordly splendour, more magnificent than anything that those who live in our parts have seen - all, as it has been described. I gave Mathes 2 fl. worth of art-wares, and I gave Stephan (Etienne Luillier), one of Lady Margaret’s chamberlains, 3 prints. I bought a cedarwood rosary for 1 fl. 10 white pf. I gave 1 st. to little Hans in the stable, and 1 st. to the child in the house. I lost 2½ st. at play; spent 2 st.; paid the barber 2 st. I have again changed 1 fl. I gave away 7 white pf. in the house at leaving and travelled from Aachen to Jfibers and thence to —. I paid 4 st. for two eyeglasses; played away 2 st. in an embossed silver king (ein Silbem gestempften König). I bought 2 ox-horns for 8 white pf.’

12 May 1521
‘On Sunday after our Lord’s Ascension-day Master Dietrich, the Antwerp glasspainter, invited me and asked many others to meet me; and amongst them especially Alexander the goldsmith, a rich, stately man, and we had a costly feast and they did me great honour. I made the portrait in charcoal of Master Marx, the goldsmith who lives at Bruges. I bought a broad cap for 36 st. I paid Paul Geiger 1 fl. to take my little box to Nürnberg and 4 st. for the letter. I took the portrait of Ambrosius Hochstetter in charcoal and dined with him. I have also eaten with Tomasin at least six times. I bought some wooden dishes and platters for 3 st. I paid the apothecary 12 st. I gave away two copies of the Life of our Lady - the one to the foreign surgeon, the other to Marx’s house-servant. I also paid the Doctor 8 st. I paid 4 st. for cleaning an old cap, lost 4 st. at play. I paid 2 fl. for a new cap, and have exchanged the first cap, because it was clumsy, and added 6 st. more for another.

I have painted the portrait of a Duke in oils. I have made a very fine and careful portrait in oils of the Treasurer Lorenz Sterk; it was worth 25 fl. I presented it to him and in return he gave me 20 fl. and Susanna 1 fl. trinkgeld. Likewise painted the portrait of Jobst my host very finely and carefully in oils. He has now given me his for his. And his wife have I done again and made her portrait in oils.’

The Diary Junction

My entire soul

‘Could I have already during this year explored my entire soul, and is there no longer anything in me that interests me?’ This is from the diary of a precocious 18 year old student who would go on to become not only a leading existential philosopher but one of France’s foremost 20th century intellectuals - Simone de Beauvoir. It is only in the last ten years or so, though, that some of her personal diaries have been published in English, thanks to the University of Illinois Press and The Beauvoir Series.

De Beauvoir was born into a wealthy Parisian family on 9 January 1908. She studied at the Sorbonne where she met Jean-Paul Sartre. Thereafter, she and Sartre were to remain a couple for the rest of their lives, although they lived apart and had various other lovers. During the 1930s and through the Second World War, de Beauvoir taught at several schools, in Marseilles, Rouen and then, in Paris. After the war, with Sartre, she founded the magazine Les Temps Modernes, and she travelled widely, in Europe, the US, North Africa and China. Her first novel, L'Invitée, published in 1943, was based on the story of one of Sartre’s affair.

In 1949, De Beauvoir published what would become a classic of feminist literature and her most famous work: The Second Sex. She became involved with the feminist movement from the late 1960s. Between 1958 and the early 1970s, she published various autobiographical works, and, after Satre died in 1980, she published her memoir of Sartre’s last years, Adieux: A Farewell to Sartre. She herself died in 1986. Further information is available from Wikipedia, the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy, The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, The Paris Review, or The Quarterly Conversation.

In 1947, de Beauvoir spent four months in the US, a sojourn which resulted in her publishing L’Amérique au Jour le Jour in 1948. This was translated into English by Patrick Dudley and published by Gerald Duckworth in 1952 as America Day by Day. Although usually promoted as a diary, with entries for each day, de Beauvoir explains in her preface that, in fact, the text was written retrospectively: ‘In place of a study that it would be presumptuous for me to attempt, I can at least give faithful testimony here of what I saw. Just as a concrete experience embraces both subject and object, so I have not sought to eliminate myself from this account: it would not be a true one did it not take into consideration those peculiar, personal circumstances in which each discovery was made. That is why I have adopted the style of a diary; although retrospective, this journal, reconstructed with the help of some notes, letters and still-fresh memories, is scrupulously exact. I have respected the chronological order of my astonishment, admirations, indignations, hesitations and mistakes. It often happened that my first impressions did not become clear until later on in my journey. But I must point out that no isolated passage expresses a definite opinion; besides which, I often never reached a definite point of view, and it is my indecisions, additions and corrections, taken as a whole, that combine to form my opinion. There was no process of selection involved in the development of this story: it is the story of what happened to me, neither more nor less. This is what I saw and how I saw it; I have not tried to say more.’ A more recent edition of America Day by Day, translated by Carol Cosman (University of California Press, 2000), can be previewed at Googlebooks.

However, more than 20 years after her death, the University of Illinois Press has published - as part of The Beauvoir Series - edited versions of bona fide diaries she kept at different times in her life. In 2006, it published an English translation (by Barbara Klaw) of de Beauvoir’s Cahiers de Jeunesse 1926-1927 as Diary of a Philosophy Student: 1926-1927. Some pages can be previewed online at Googlebooks. And two years later it brought out Wartime Diary (translated by Anne Deing Cordero) covering the period from September 1939 to January 1941. The publisher says of this latter volume: ‘Wartime Diary gives English readers unabridged access to one of the scandalous texts that threaten to overturn traditional views of Beauvoir’s life and work. The account in Beauvoir’s Wartime Diary of her clandestine affair with Jacques Bost and sexual relationships with various young women challenges the conventional picture of Beauvoir as the devoted companion of Jean-Paul Sartre, just as her account of completing her novel She Came to Stay at a time when Sartre’s philosophy in Being and Nothingness was barely begun calls into question the traditional view of Beauvoir’s novel as merely illustrating Sartre’s philosophy. Most important, the Wartime Diary provides an exciting account of Beauvoir’s philosophical transformation from the prewar solipsism of She Came to Stay to the postwar political engagement of The Second Sex.’

The first two of the following extracts are taken from Diary of a Philosophy Student: 1926-1927, and the last two are taken from the 1952 edition of America Day by Day.

9 August 1926
‘Could I have already during this year explored my entire soul, and is there no longer anything in me that interests me? Such indifference, such great disgust, is such lassitude natural or the proof that I am incurably mediocre? It is in solitude that being shows its worth.’

14 September 1926
‘I know now that I would be capable of seeing this work through to the end, but the effort is so useless! I myself am useless! Nothing about me matters to me any longer. Alone in me is this desire more necessary than life. Yesterday, in this barely familiar countryside, that I chose on purpose to avoid the assault of memories from a dead past, I believed myself to be so far from everything, so near and so far from him! Anxiety of knowing that the future will not give me what [I] ask of it. The countryside was really beautiful upon my return, like a thing that one sees for the first time. This morning, memories give me peace, tranquil security . . . and yet I do not even know what my face looks like in the mind of those who think of me. For others, what am I? Can one guess my veritable being behind the words that I have said? One never knows a being, since even if one knows all the elements in him, the unique manner in which the synthesis is formed is perceived only by the being himself, and it is this alone that matters. But one could know an exact symbol for him. How does the symbol for me look? And the place that it occupies? Wait. . .’

26 January 1947
‘In the dead of night and in my deep slumber a voice spoke without words: “Something has happened.” I was asleep and I did not know whether it was joy or catastrophe that had overtaken me. Perhaps I was dead as so often happens in my dreams, perhaps I would wake on the other side of the grave. Opening my eyes I felt frightened. Then I remembered: this was not altogether the world of beyond. This was New York.

This was no mirage. New York was here, it was real.

Suddenly the truth burst on me through the deep blue sky, the soft, damp air. It was even more triumphant than the doubtful enchantments of the night before. It was nine o’clock on a Sunday morning, the streets were deserted, one or two neon signs still glowed. But there was not a person in sight, not a car in the street; nothing to break the rectilinear course of Eighth Avenue. Cubes, prisms, and parallelograms - the streets were concrete abstract designs, their surface looked like the abstract intersection made by two books; building materials had neither density nor texture; space itself had been poured into the moulds. I did not move. I looked. At last I was here, New York belonged to me. I felt again that joy I had known for fifteen years. I was leaving the station, and from the top of the monumental stairway I saw all the roofs of Marseilles spread out below me; I had a year, two years to pass alone in an unknown city; I did not move and I looked down, thinking: it is a strange town. It is my future and it will be my past. Between these houses that have existed for years without me are streets laid out for thousands of people to whom I do not, and never did, belong. But now I am walking, going down Broadway. It’s me all right. I walk in streets that were not built for me, and where my life has not yet left its tracks; here is no perfume of the past. No one knows of my presence; I am still a ghost, and I glide through the city without disturbing anyone. And yet henceforth my life would conform to the layout of the streets and houses; New York would belong to me, and I to it.

I drank an orange juice at a counter and sat down in a shoe-shiner’s booth on one of three armchairs raised on a short flight of steps; little by little I came to life and grew accustomed to the city. The surfaces were now facades, the solids houses. In the roadway dust and old newspapers were drifting on the wind. After Washington Square all mathematics went by the board. Right angles are broken, streets are no longer numbered but named, lines get curved and confused. I was lost as though in some European town. The houses have only three or four floors, and deep colours varying between red, ochre and black; washing hangs out to dry on fire escapes that zig-zag up the buildings. Washing that promises sun, shoe-shine men posted at street corners, terraced roofs - they vaguely recall some southern town, and yet the faded red of the houses reminds one of London fogs. But this district does not resemble anything I know. I feel I shall love it.

The landscape changes. The word landscape is appropriate to this city abandoned by men and invaded by the sky - the sky that soars above the skyscrapers, plunges down into the long straight streets, and is too vast for the city to annex it. Everywhere the sky overflows; a mountain sky. I walk between high cliffs in the depths of a canyon where the sun never strikes; there is the tang of salt in the air. The history of man is not inscribed on these buildings whose equilibrium is so nicely calculated: they are nearer to prehistoric caverns than the houses of Paris or Rome. In Paris, in Rome, history has percolated to the very roots of the soil. Beneath the underground railways, the drains and heating plants, the rock is virgin, not touched by man. Between this rock and the open sky, Wall Street and Broadway, deep in the shadows of their gigantic buildings, belong to nature. The little russet church, with its cemetery filled with flat tombstones, is as unexpected and as moving in the middle of Broadway as some Calvary on the wild seashore.

The sun was so beautiful, the waters of the Hudson so green, that I got on the boat which takes the provincials from the Middle West to the Statue of Liberty. But I did not get off at the little island which looks like a small fort. I only wished to see the Battery as I had so often seen it at the cinema. I saw it. From a distance its campaniles seem fragile. They rest so exactly on their vertical slopes that the slightest tremor would make them collapse like card houses. As the boat approaches, their foundations appear firmer. But their steepness still fascinates. What fun to bombard them!

Hundreds of restaurants, but on Sunday all are closed. The one I eventually found was crowded; I ate hastily, pressed by the waitress. . . ’

17 May 1947
‘This the last day I would spend in Chicago. This morning I went to see the museum again, and the splendid lake on which white sails sparkled. A young mulatto had fallen fast asleep in the sun-drenched grass with straw hat over his eye. A grey-blue mist was thinning gradually over the massive buildings of the Loop, so that they no longer seemed to weight the earth. But the blackness was not banished: beside the harbour where the brightly-varnished boats lay still and slumbered, at the edge of satin waters, there were enormous heaps of dust and coal; warehouses streaked with railways and with trucks loaded with black blocks. I crossed an avenue where shining automobiles were moving swiftly, and went towards the canals. I found myself in a subterranean world; it was roofed by a road and very much darker there than underneath the El. It was lit with lamps, and there was a proper street with shops and bars on sidewalks where neon signs shone at midday; I saw in my mind’s eye the brilliance of the sun and the blue waters, and this subterranean city strongly reminded me of the film Metropolis. The street brought me back to the Loop, in which, alas! I wandered for the last time.

I should miss Chicago. I did not see it at all in the same way as I saw New York, so that I could not compare them. Instead of getting to know a lot of people and many places, I preferred to profit by the friends I had, which gave me a deeper appreciation of at least one of its aspects. My experience was very limited. I did not return to the “smart” districts, of which I had caught a glimpse the first time I passed through; I did not set foot in any of the chic nightclubs, nor did I have any contact with the University, which is most interesting, I was told. But because I had taken up a definite approach I came to be quite intimate with the city, in a way that I had been unable to achieve in New York. At all events it would only be a memory to-morrow. And in three days’ time the whole of America would be but a memory. Slowly my phantom had taken on bodily shape; I had seen the blood flow through its veins, and I was happy when its heart began to beat like a human heart. But now it was becoming disembodied with alarming speed.’

The Diary Junction

At sea with Von Löwenstern

‘The Thames has been formally blockaded. All merchant ships are being stopped. Sailors have taken over two transports to America with riggings and ship’s provisions. The ships’ officers have been arrested and are being held hostage.’ This is a taster from the diaries of Hermann Ludwig von Löwenstern, an Estonian sailor who took part in Russia’s first naval expedition round the world, and who was born 240 years ago today. The diaries have been published in German and English thanks to Victoria Joan Moessner, professor of German at the University of Alaska Fairbanks.

Von Löwenstern was born in Estonia on 13 November 1777, the fourth of ten children. He entered the Russian naval service at 15, first as a volunteer, then as a midshipman. He was in England, during a sailor’s revolt, in 1797, and from there, in 1799, he sailed with the Russian navy to Gibraltar, Sicily, Greece, Turkey, and the Crimea. In 1801, he traveled overland to St. Petersburg and Reval, where he received permission to leave Russian service and enter the French. In 1802, with his father’s financial help, he moved to Paris, where he decided against joining Napoleon’s troops, but, nevertheless enjoyed the city’s sights as well as a love affair with his innkeeper.

In early 1803, von Löwenstern returned to Estonia by way of the universities in Leipzig and Jena before journeying on to Berlin, where he learned of Russia’s proposed voyage around the world. He returned to St. Petersburg, where he was readmitted to the Russian Navy, and appointed fourth officer on the lead ship, Nadezhda. The expedition sailed via Tenerife, Brazil, Japan, China and Scotland before returning to Russia in 1806. He retired from the navy in 1815, married Wilhelmina von Essen, and took over running several estates in Estonia. He died in 1836. There is no further biographical information readily available online, although there is a Wikipedia article in German about his father (who had the same name).

Von Löwenstern kept a personal diary from the age of 20 until his late 30s (when he retired from seafaring), but he never intended it for publication. Indeed, the diary remained unpublished in English until, that is, Moessner edited and translated parts for her book: First Russian Voyage around the World: The Journal of Hermann Ludwig von Löwenstern 1803-1806 (University of Alaska Press, 2003). The publisher’s blurb states: ‘Because Löwenstern never published his diary, it was not submitted to the official censorship process that scrutinized and altered all publications in Tsarist Russia. Thus it contains frank descriptions of historical events, arguments, sightings, and opinions that were left out or removed from other accounts that were subject to editorial scrutiny. His diary makes a particularly critical contribution to our knowledge about the history and politics of nineteenth-century Russia and the lands visited by the expedition.’

A review of the three-volume edition of the diaries in the original German (also edited by Moessner) can be read at the Edwin Mellen Press website. It states: ‘The reader is given a day-by-day account of a Baltic German Russian naval officer’s life during the age of global scientific exploration in the course of the age of Napoleon, as he matures from midshipman to captain of a Turkish ship taken as a prize in the Black Sea.’

More recently, however, Moessner has translated into English, edited and published the rest of von Löwenstern’s diaries as The Diaries of Hermann Ludwig von Löwenstern: 1793-1803 and 1806-1815 (Page Publishing, 2014, - a US vanity press). A press release for the book can be read at PRWeb, and some pages of the book itself can be viewed at Googlebooks. Here are several extracts.

24 May 1797
‘The Thames has been formally blockaded. All merchant ships are being stopped. Sailors have taken over two transports to America with riggings and ship’s provisions. The ships’ officers have been arrested and are being held hostage, as Parker with the delegates has declared, for the lives of the imprisoned delegates on land. They undressed a Chirurius [surgeon], smeared him with tar, sprinkled with feathers, and towed him on land behind a jolly boat. They have insulted many officers in the most sensitive manner and dunked a couple midshipmen in the water from the end of a yardarm. The delegates have a president whom they choose every day anew. Unfortunately, the entire English fleet is in rebellion.’

5 June 1797
‘We sailed with a fresh wind toward Texel to show the Dutch that, even though the sailors in England were revolting, the sea was nevertheless not empty of English ships.’

19 June 1797
‘If you compare here to England, everything in Copenhagen seems bad and tasteless and especially desolate and empty. From Bodisco I learned that brave Reimers has died.’

7 July 1798
‘In Texel we counted over seventeen ships of war. While turning in the evolutions, one English ship after another sailed past us, a nice view. The disputes about the remarks that each one of us made help pass the time.’

9 August 1798
‘I went on land with Demidoff in his small four-oared boat. We were in danger of losing our lives several times with that small thing. The mast was too tall and the sail too large. We sailed into the river. After buying myself a hat, and we had bought ourselves several items, the wind became brisk. That is why we hurried to get out of the current. Ungern was along. The heavy breakers at the mouth thwarted our plan. We were pigheaded enough, even though the English on the shore called to us that we would surely capsize, to attempt to go through the breakers; until soaked to the skin with the boat full of water, we were hurtled back. That cold bath had brought us to our senses.

[Note on the edge of the page] Demidoff drowned in the same boat in the Neva.

The current was against us. We therefore had to leave the boat at the mouth and go on foot back to Yarmouth. We hurried to use the theater tickets we had received for a comedy. That cold bath and our quick pace had stirred up my blood. The heat in the theater made me dizzy and I fainted. My comrades, with the help of several Englishmen, carried me out of the theater to an inn where we spent the night.’

7 September 1799
‘After a very quiet trip, we dropped anchor at five o’clock in the evening on the roadstead in Naples. The Turks, without landing any place, sailed straight to Constantinople. The view of the city is very beautiful; the city rises like an amphitheater up to St. Elmo. Vesuvius contributes greatly to Naples’s beauty. We found two Russian frigates and an English warship ahead of us.’

26 February 1800
‘My present way of life is as follows: Mornings I get up depending on my watch, early or late, drink my coffee; and smoking tobacco, I chat [with others] and go up and down during the morning, because you cannot get anything to read here at all. Immediately after table at two o’clock I go on land to my music master, stay there an hour, and afterwards visit Budberg, Fanaberia, or Salaguboff. If I find a boat, I usually go on board at five o’clock. In the evening I study my seamanship. After the evening meal I drink a glass of grog and go to bed in good time. Thus, one day follows the next. Only seldom do I visit Count Mammona (or Mammont, as the others call him) because I cannot speak the language. Sometimes I also go, if I have to wait for a boat, to the casino (actually an inn) and watch the hazard game. Sometimes I amuse myself by excursions in the six-rudder longboat, etc.’

5 March 1800
‘The feeling is oppressive to be admonished to pay when one has no money. My music master asked me today for two dahlias, which I owe him for past hours. I had to turn him down, and request his patience. I do not have a heller in cash, and I do not know where I should get the money in order to pay my old teacher.’

The Diary Junction

Dust all day like a fog

‘Bus at 8 on stomachs empty save for peanuts. Good seats and smuggled luggage. Bloody driver. Second bus constantly en panne. A Chinese attached to it savagely beaten up by Jap with starting handle. Lovely mountain passes. Hunting boxes in firs. A little snow. New untouched road. One concrete bridge made. No work going on elsewhere. Soup at Lungwha, where there is a good yamen, bright colours, much mistletoe. Dust all day like a fog.’ This is from an early travel diary kept by Peter Fleming, born 110 years ago today, on one of his several trips to Asia, and China in particular. Although his travel and historical books were best sellers in the mid-20th century, he is not well remembered today, unlike his famous brother Ian.

Fleming was born on the last day of May in 1907, one of four brothers. His father was a barrister and Member of Parliament, but he was killed in action in 1917. Peter was schooled at Eton, and often spent weekends with his grandparents at Nettlebed, Oxfordshire. He studied at Christ Church, Oxford, where he became president of the drama society and editor of Isis. He graduated in 1929 with a first-class degree in English. After a short period with the family firm in New York, and an expedition to Guatemala, he returned to London where, in 1931, he became assistant literary editor for The Spectator. Soon after, though he was given leave to attend an Institute of Pacific Relations conference, involving travel across Russia and China. In 1932, he joined a hair-brained expedition to Brazil, supposedly in search of a missing explorer, and persuaded The Times to take him on as an unpaid special correspondent. The journey led to his first book - Brazilian Adventure (1933) - which was well received in the UK and the US.

Two further journeys to Asia followed. After the first - during which he achieved an interview with Chaing Kai-shek (see also Chiang Kai-shek’s diaries) - he published One’s Company (1934). The second journey undertaken on foot and ponies with a Swiss traveller Ella Maillart and which took seven months, led to his 1936 book News from Tartary. In 1935, Fleming married Celia Johnson - an actress who would later become famous for her role in Brief Encounter (1945). They had three children. In 1936, he joined the staff of The Times, and subsequently travelled, with Johnson, to report on the Sino-Japanese War. During the Second World War, he served with the Grenadier Guards, but was seconded to intelligence duties, in Norway, Egypt, Greece and Burma.

After the war, Fleming settled at Merrimoles, a house he had built near his grandparents’ old home at Nettlebed, and in the middle of a large estate inherited from an uncle. There he continued to write for The Times and he contributed a column for The Spectator signed under the pseudnym Strix. Several historical books followed, as did his involvement with the running of Reading University. After the death of his brother, Ian, in 1964, he joined the board of Glidrose, which was managing the literary rights of the James Bond novels. Peter Fleming died in 1971. Further information is available from Wikipedia, University of Reading, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (log-in required) or the British Resistance Archive.

Peter Fleming appears to have been an intermittent diarist. Duff Hart-Davis refers often to Fleming’s diary in the biography of his godfather (see Googlebooks); and the University of Reading lists a number of diary manuscripts in its Fleming archive. However, the only diary extracts that Fleming himself prepared for print were in 1952, when his friend Rupert Hart-Davis (Duff’s father), a publisher, brought out A Forgotten Journey. This was reprinted in 2009, by Tauris Parke, as To Peking: A Forgotten Journey from Moscow to Manchuria (available to preview at Googlebooks). Here are several extracts taken from the 1952 edition.

6 September 1934
‘At 10 o’clock we set out for a kolhoz [collective farm]. It was a biggish village lying in flat but slightly rolling country. The white Ukrainian houses with thatched roofs and tiny unopenable windows looked very pleasant in the sunshine. We were soon taken in charge by the local party secretary, a tough, insular young man, the power in that place. We tasted their honey and prodded their pigs and Mogs drove one of their buggies. The farm produces mostly vegetables. 20% of its produce is sold at a nominal price to the Government, the rest in the open market. Fertiliser supplied by the Government had had a good effect. There was a small land tax. The most interesting thing was the degree of kulakism allowed now. Everyone had his own garden or allotment and was allowed to keep pigs or cows, though no one as it happened had more than two or three of either; potatoes were 3 kopeks per kg. to the Government, 50 in the open market; 70% of the workers were women. We saw rather polite children eating bortsch in the crêche, and the cooperative store, which sold almost nothing except vodka, matches, and very shoddy clothes. Almost all the houses had the radio. In the one we went into the walls were prettily painted; Kaganovitch [then, and up to the time of going to press, a member of the Politburo] shared the wall with an ikon. Everything reasonably clean. We lunched in their eating-place off bortsch, black bread, potatoes, tomatoes, and melons.

When we got back George and I went over some flats with an architect, who said that the work done to his designs was about 30% unsatisfactory. Architects have a pretty free hand here. The flats all seemed to me good: light and spacious and cheap. In the first there was a man, a pre-war Bolshevik, who had done 13 years’ solitary confinement but conspicuously possessed a sense of humour. He had his shackles hanging up in his bedroom. Then there was one belonging to an architect with some rather amusing pictures done by the tenant; it was refreshing to find evidence of some sort of taste somewhere. He had Robinson Crusoe on his bookshelf. I heard some children exclaiming at it in a shop yesterday; it is in brisk demand here. Then there was another poorer flat, but still quite adequate.

After that we went to the races, which turned out to be trotting races. They were fairly well attended and there was some primitive system of betting. But not much enthusiasm. The jockeys were fantastic mid-Victorian figures, and had great difficulty in preventing the scratch horses from galloping, which they are allowed to do for only four strides. The jockeys are professionals, but the horses amateurs from the farms, which race against each other.

We were to have flown to Rostov tomorrow, but the wind is considered too high. So we must catch a train at 3 a.m.

Later.
It didn’t of course turn up till 4, and proved to be without the advertised dining car. We boarded it stupid with fatigue, after wandering about the streets for a long time. They were empty save for a certain number of indefinite night-watchmen sitting on chairs in front of doors. There was also an old man who suddenly stooped, picked up a fragment of newspaper from the gutter, and put it on a window sill. I thought he was going to roll a cigarette, but he produced instead a little bird from his pocket and wrapped it up in the paper. It had hit the telegraph wires and cut its head. He was very sorry for it, but I don’t know what good the newspaper was. The head waiter at the hotel was a romantic figure, an effective ex-prospector, ex-East Side waiter, ex-stage dancer in U.S.A. The depression had driven him back to Russia. Got to sleep about 5 in the morning.’

7 September 1934
‘Started at 10 for a big agricultural implement factory. Here work appeared to be proceeding rather spasmodically, under conditions which are very enlightened on paper. The things that interested me most were that 43% of the workers are women; that each shock brigade, controlled by its own brigadier, pillories bad workers by name with bad caricatures on its notice-board - another echo of the Moscow Park stuff; that every worker’s rest period of an hour is preceded by 5 minutes compulsory P.T.; that Shock Workers have a silly little banner on their bit of machinery. Chiefly, in fact, the Montessorian atmosphere. In the club library questions and answers were posted on the notice-board. One was, “Where can I study man’s struggle for existence?” The answer was “Fill up a form and in the meantime read these books.” Another was “Why no books by Jules Verne, Mayne Reid, and Fenimore Cooper?” The answer was that Verne was all to the good, but Cooper and Reid misrepresented American exploitation of the indigenes and were chauvinistic and imperialistic. We saw also workers’ flats and a closed shop, where white bread was selling for 60 kopeks instead of 10 roubles and meat for 3 roubles instead of 9. Had the usual dilatory lunch, then George went to interview a judge while Mogs and I sat in a public garden and read and talked.

Then we all went on the Don in a motor boat with the director of Intourist, an insufferable young American-educated candidate for the Communist party. This is holding a purge tomorrow, and he is therefore aggressively orthodox. He also seems unhappy here. We bathed in shallow black mud, very nice though I spiked my foot on a fish bone and lost a cuff link. The sky was lovely coming back. I had a glass of sour wine with Boris, who told me he got 60 roubles an hour for coaching actors who had to play the part of foreigners - e.g. Cooper in Tempo. There is a lot of money to be made in the theatre, and it seems to hold a pretty high position in cultural life.

After dinner we went to a cinema, probably the worst I have ever seen. It began with a black blurred picture of salvage work in the Black Sea, devoid of interest or comprehensibility. Then there was a fearful comedy, sooty and prehistoric. We walked out.’

1 December 1934
‘Wasted the morning waiting for Tumanov the detective, who had promised to take us round the opium dens. Met Yankovsky from N. Korea, who had some wonderful hunting photographs and was nice. Also the Vremya journalist, who seemed perplexed about Roerich having been run out. Also the Red railway worker, who said he was going to stay in Harbin but that 80% of the others were going back: a very vague man. The nice desk man, having applied for a rise on 40 dollars, is going after 9 years to turn porter in the hopes of earning more. The Italian consul turned up, a charming droll with an eyeglass and an inexhaustible fund of anecdotes. We bought some presents for Debedeev’s family and had an enormous lunch with Bryner and his kind wife, talking till dusk about Kolchak, whose betrayal Bryner’s brother, then in British uniform as a liaison officer, knew all about; and about Roerich and about Kaspe. Then K. saw the doctor and was forced to go to bed, and I wrote some letters and gave them to Lady Muriel Paget, who was going through on the express and seemed very nice and effective. She had one amusing rumour about Mme. Chiang. A local journalist turned up, a truculent and gloomy man, possibly drunk. He blamed Chambon over the Kaspe business.’

19 December 1934
‘Bus at 8 on stomachs empty save for peanuts. Good seats and smuggled luggage. Bloody driver. Second bus constantly en panne. A Chinese attached to it savagely beaten up by Jap with starting handle. Lovely mountain passes. Hunting boxes in firs. A little snow. New untouched road. One concrete bridge made. No work going on elsewhere. Soup at Lungwha, where there is a good yamen, bright colours, much mistletoe. Dust all day like a fog. Took streets too fast. Carts on ice. Camels. Suddenly came on Chengteh. First the club-shaped rock, then Tashi Lumpo (now fronted with Manchukuo barracks), then palace pagoda. Gave names and ages to Military Mission man, then walked through busier fuller [than on my last visit in 1933] streets to Conard, who was delightful and lodged us in luxury. The sad Lewisohn also there, leaving tomorrow. In clover, but police on our trail.’

16 December 1934
‘Good Chinese breakfast with Chow. First meal since light lunch yesterday. Drove to bus station (one pagoda, one big Jap restaurant). Via Mission. Saw Mrs. B_, drawn mouth, sandy, bad with Chow. Bus starts late. Slow, uneven journey, delayed by breakdowns of truck. Mountains and donkeys. Sweet cakes at one halt. Peanuts and Manchus at another. One man has a little owl in a cage. Boy holds new-born calf by its tail. All stare. Soldiers in bus friendly. Fat Jap hits Chinese for no great cause. Lovely blue at twilight. Pass long bulbous caravan of donkeys, mules, and ponies carrying cotton. Alternately sleepy and exalted. Thick with dust.’

To smell the roses

‘It’s a book about enjoying, not dreading retirement. And yes, it’s about stopping - stopping, at long last, to smell the roses. We’ve done just that.’ This is the much-honoured educator and priest Theodore M. Hesburgh introducing the diary of his travels, with Ned Joyce, round the world. Ted, as he was known, was president the University of Notre Dame for 35 years, and Ned was his vice-president for the same period - a period during which Notre Dame became one of the top universities in the United States.

Hesburgh was born in Syracuse, New York  on 25 May 1917. After finishing high school, he entered the Holy Cross seminary on the University of Notre Dame campus, in the very north of Indiana state. He was sent to Rome to study for advanced degrees in philosophy and theology, but with the start of the Second World War he returned to the United States where he was ordained at Notre Dame in 1943. He studied for his doctorate in sacred theology at the Catholic University of America in Washington D. C.. Subsequently, he was sent back to Notre Dame to teach naval officers under wartime training, and to serve as chaplain to returning veterans.

In 1948, Hesburgh became head of the department of theology at Notre Dame; and the following year he was named as executive vice-president. From 1952, he was the university’s president, serving for 35 years in that capacity (with vice-president Ned Joyce, also a priest, serving the same long term) and having the most profound and long-lasting positive impact on the university’s growth and status. For example, he liberalised the rules of student life, promoted academic freedom, helped make Notre Dame one of the top universities in the country, doubling its enrolment and greatly increasing its funds. He was also responsible for overseeing the admittance of women students, and for transferring its governance from the Holy Cross to a mixed lay and religious board.

But Hesburgh played a much wider role in public affairs, holding more than a dozen appointments to bodies such as the National Science Foundation, the Civil Rights Commission, the Select Commission on Immigration and Refugee Policy, and the Overseas Development Council. He was a key figure in the student movement against the Vietnam war, and for 15 years served as the permanent Vatican representative to the International Atomic Energy Agency.  In 1964, he was awarded the Medal of Freedom, the nation’s highest honour, by President Lyndon Johnson. After retirement from Notre Dame, he continued to serve on public bodies, and received many public honours - indeed he holds the Guinness Book of World Records title for largest number of honorary degrees, having been awarded 150 (all are listed in his Wikipedia entry!). He died in 2015. Further biographical information is available online thanks to Notre Dame (which is holding a mass today to celebrate Hesburgh’s centenary), The New York Times, Encyclopedia.com, Encyclopædia Britannica and The Catholic World Report.

In their first year of retirement, 1987-1988, Hesburgh and Ned Joyce went on various excursions to all parts of the world, including South America, Asia and Antartica. Hesburgh kept a detailed diary of their journeys, which was then published by Doubleday in 1992 as Travels with Ted & Ned. Ted opens his introduction to the diary as follows: ‘This is obviously a book about travel and two seventy-year-old Holy Cross priests who did the traveling. It was the way we chose to begin our retirement after working together for thirty-five years as president and executive vice president of the University of Notre Dame. Our friends call us Ted and Ned.’ And he concludes it with this: ‘This book, therefore, isn’t just about travel, as much fun as travel can be. Fundamentally it’s a book about totally changing one’s ordinary, lifelong way of living without coming apart at the seams. It’s a book about enjoying, not dreading retirement. And yes, it’s about stopping - stopping, at long last, to smell the roses. We’ve done just that.’ A few pages can be previewed at Amazon.

As travel diaries go, it’s not the most scintillating of reads, rather mundane in fact (and Coca-Cola heavy!), as the following extracts reveal.

12 November 1987
‘Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. We had a wake-up call at 5:30 this morning for those who wanted to see the Rio harbor from afar. I got up for it, but it was too foggy and I took one look and went back to bed. We landed here about 7:30 and were finally off the ship at nine o’clock. Gustavo de Sá, a fine young fellow who’s Coca-Cola’s public relations man in Rio, smoothed our way through customs and delivered us to the Othon Hotel on Copacabana beach. Our rooms, one atop the other on the eighth and ninth floors, have a magnificent panoramic view - Corcovado, the mountain with the famous statue of Christ the Savior on its top, plus the whole bay and the beach.

Our main activity today was nailing down all the reservations we’re going to need between now and December 6, the day we return to the United States. It was no easy task, even though we knew, generally, where we wanted to be and when. Because of a strike, all the computers at the airport were down. Fortunately, the travel department at Coca-Cola came through for us - as they have done several times before.

Once we had the nitty gritty travel details out of the way, I went out to buy a topaz for my ever-faithful secretary, Helen Hosinski, who will have to type all of these notes. Again, thanks to Coca-Cola, I not only found a fine stone at a third of the price it would cost in the states, but at a 25 percent discount as well. As you probably know, Brazil leads the world in the production of semiprecious gemstones.

Rio looks a lot better than it did when I was here several years ago with the Chase Manhattan Bank board. Yet the country is in terrible financial shape and the most familiar gripe is about the economy. Somehow, though, most people on the street appear to be happy. It probably has something to do with the customary upbeat attitude of the people who live in Rio. They call themselves Cariocas, which means people who put happiness and good times ahead of work and worry.

We were warned repeatedly not to walk alone on the beach or to take along anything of value that could be easily snatched. The explanation was that there is so much poverty here that those who are accustomed to living by their wits are using them a little too broadly these days.

Tonight we had dinner at the home of Roberto Marinho, often described as the most important person in Brazil. He’s the editor of O Globo, one of the two main newspapers in the country. In addition, he owns about sixty radio and television stations and, more important, has donated airtime to the teaching of reading and writing to illiterates. Roberto is also a member of our International Advisory Council for the Kellogg Institute of International Studies at Notre Dame. I met him for the first time a few years ago when he and I received honorary degrees from the University of Brasilia.

Our young Coca-Cola friend, Gustavo, and his girlfriend, Cristiana, who works in Marinho Enterprises, were also invited to Roberto’s house for dinner. The other invitees were Father Laercio Dias de Moura, a Jesuit who is rector of the Catholic University here, and Walter Poyares and his wife, Maria Lucia. He is a professor of communications and a top adviser to Roberto.

The Marinho home is almost impossible to describe. First of all, it’s high on a hill with a wonderful view of the statue of Christ the Savior. At night the view is even more spectacular, because the statue is lighted. The house is set in the middle of a primitive jungle forest with a stream running through it. Inside, the walls are hung with one of the best art collections in Brazil.

Roberto is in his eighties, but looks much younger. When we arrived, he said “Tonight we speak French.” His younger wife, Ruth, prepared a very tasty dinner to go along with the conversation, which included a discussion of our Kellogg Institute at Notre Dame. During the course of the conversation I tried to persuade Roberto to come to our next meeting. By the way, Ned and I dressed up in black tonight, the first time we’ve done this in the last six weeks.’

16 November 1987
‘Rio de Janiero, Brazil. Shortly after 5:30 A.M. we celebrated our last Mass in Rio. We arrived at the airport around seven and after an hour’s delay were in Brasilia by 9:30. As usual, we were met by someone from Coca-Cola, a driver named Jonas, who spoke only Portuguese, but understood my Spanish perfectly. I told him that this was Ned’s first visit to Brasilia, and I think Jonas tried extra hard to make sure that Ned saw everything.

First we went up in the TV tower in the middle of town so that Ned could get a look at the whole government setup, which runs on north-south and east-west axes. Once we had grasped the layout, we did a quick drive-by tour of all the main buildings. These included the cathedral, the Senate, the House of Deputies, all sixteen ministries, the Supreme Court, the Presidential Palace, and, later on, the president’s residence.

The city has grown a great deal since I was last here. It now has about 1.2 million inhabitants. That makes it much smaller than either Rio or Sao Paulo, but it must be remembered that Brazilia [sic] was carved out of the jungle from scratch. When I was here the first time more than twenty years ago, it was just a barren plain and everything was full of red dust. Today, there are lawns and flowers and greenery everywhere. Because the city was planned, it has much better buildings, housing, roads, and general organization than either Rio or Sao Paulo. The buildings were designed by Oscar Niemeyer, perhaps the most famous architect in Brazil.

For lunch we had currasco [sic], a first experience for Ned. This typical Brazilian dish is a combination of pork, lamb, chicken, beef, and sausages, all barbecued. It’s served with rice and farina, a coarse flour concoction, and, of course, cold beer. I remembered the restaurant from my last visit. It had a reputation then for the best currasco [sic] in town, and it was apparent to both of us that the quality had not diminished. Ned was hooked immediately.

After lunch, we made quick stops at the Coca-Cola office, the university, where we spent a few minutes with the rector, Dr. Cristovan, and the American Embassy, where we stayed just long enough to find out from the Marine guard that Notre Dame had beaten Alabama last Saturday. Then it was on to the airport for our flight to Sao Paulo, where we will stay just long enough to have a chat with Chris Lund, a Notre Dame alumnus from the States.

Chris and his daughter Carmen, a Notre Dame student, met us at the Sao Paulo airport and took us to the family home on the outskirts of town. We had a long talk, mainly about the scholarship that he is setting up for Latin American students, especially those here in Brazil. After that, it was off to bed in the guesthouse.’

17 November 1987
‘Sao Paulo, Brazil. This was our final day in Brazil. We were up at 6:30 A.M. for Mass with the family and household staff. After a continental breakfast, we dropped Chris off at the Brazilian Chamber of Commerce office, where he is president for Sao Paulo, the largest council in Brazil. Then it was on to the airport. The horrendous traffic doubled our travel time compared with the day before. Once there, we found a Miami paper and learned that we really clobbered Alabama last Saturday. This news was especially welcomed by Ned, who looked after Notre Dame athletics for all those thirty-five years he was executive vice president, and for whom the lean years of the early 1980s were still a fresh memory.

Our flight to Santiago, Chile, took about four hours in a 737. At the airport, waiting to welcome us, were our good friends Father George Canepa, a Chilean Holy Cross priest, and Father Charlie Delaney, a classmate of Ned’s. Ned stayed with Charlie, who is in charge of seminarian formation here, and I moved in with George. When I arrived at the Casa Santa Maria, my billet for the stay here, I called Helen back at the office to catch up with the news. I also asked her to arrange for overcoats for Ned and me in New York, where we’ll be arriving in about three weeks with nothing but summer clothes.

Tonight, Ned and I had dinner with Alejandro Foxley and his wife, Giselle, at their home. Father Ernie Bartell, director of the Kellogg Institute, also joined us, so there was a lot of shop talk, as might be imagined. Mostly, we discussed the new Hesburgh International Building at Notre Dame, which will house our Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies as well as the Kellogg Institute for International Studies. Both these institutes are doing very important work, and in the years ahead I will be devoting a great deal of time to them, as chairman of their International Advisory Boards.’

22 January 1988
‘En Route to Acapulco. This morning we woke up to as calm a sea as we have seen so far. The Pacific is living up to its name. A whole school of dolphins was cavorting off the port side as a number of ships, mainly tankers, passed by en route to Panama. Off the starboard side, we see long rows of mountains on the coastline, as well as a number of islands out at sea. It’s a beautiful sunny day, with the temperature in the high 80s. I finished Sayonara before turning in last night, and now I’m beginning Allan Bloom’s The Closing of the American Mind and continuing with Burghardt’s Preaching. While I was up on the sports deck reading this morning, I ran into Herb Kaplow. We had a two-hour bull session out in the sun. He and I have known each other for a long time, going back to the late 1950s and the 1960s when I was on the Civil Rights Commission.’

13 February 1988
‘En Route to Milford Sound. We awoke to another slightly overcast day, about 75 to 80 degrees on deck, but getting warmer. The sea is calm. There is only a slight 5-knot wind coming in from the east. We are cruising down the west coast of South Island, having come almost 500 miles since leaving Wellington last night. We’re moving along at 28.5 knots.

This morning we passed Mount Cook. At about 12,000 feet, it is the highest point in New Zealand. As we made our way down the coast toward Milford Sound, the coastline was about twenty miles off our port side, very mountainous, like the coast of Chile, with some snowcapped peaks as well.

Rudyard Kipling called Milford Sound the eighth wonder of the world. It was formed many millions of years ago when the sea flooded a giant glacial valley. It’s really a fjord that is dominated by a miter peak over a mile high. Pembroke Peak is even a bit higher. From these two peaks, precipitous rock walls plunge deeply into the water. The water is 180 feet deep at the entrance to the sound and 1,680 feet deep at its head.

Fog descended down off the peaks, along with rain, as we approached the head of the sound. Nevertheless, we were able to make out the Milford Sound Hotel and most of the outstanding sights along the way. The scenery was quite spectacular, much like the Norwegian fjords. When we reached the middle of the fjord, we turned around and retraced our route. At 45 degrees south, Milford Sound is the farthest south we will sail on our journey across the world, although we’ll come close to this latitude as we round the bottom of Australia near Melbourne.

Two pastoral consultations took about an hour and a half today. With this many people and particularly the age group, which seems to average around sixty-five, one encounters a wide variety of problems - but opportunities too. Ned and I generally wear a cross on our coat collars, as military chaplains do, so people will know what we’re about, even if they have no need for our services. Cardinal Suahard of Paris expressed it very well, I think, when he spoke of the effect one can have merely by being visible. He called it “the apostolate of one’s presence.” Or as my old Holy Cross friend Charley Sheedy used to say, “Just being there helps.” ’

17 March 1988
‘Singapore is the world’s busiest harbor. Over 30,000 ships call here each year, with one leaving every ten minutes. Singapore was literally nothing until the visionary Sir Stamford Raffles arrived here in 1819 and got the ruling sultan to allow the British East India Company to establish a trading post at the mouth of the Singapore River. A few years later, the British had control of the whole island.

Singapore enjoys the second-highest standard of living in the Orient after Japan. Of the total population of 2.5 million, 77 percent are Chinese, 16 percent Malay, and 5 percent Indian. About 1 percent are Eurasians. The main languages here are Malay, Mandarin Chinese, and Tamil (spoken in southern India and parts of Sri Lanka).

Our tour today began with a ride through downtown streets full of high rises and luxury hotels. Because of the scarcity of land, 85 percent of the population here lives in high-rise apartments. Over 60 percent of the population is under the age of twenty. The average family here has about two children. As one goes over the long causeway, one can look to the right (eastward) to the Pacific Ocean and the South China Sea. To the left (westward) is the Indian Ocean and the Strait of Malacca.

Our first stop was the old palace of the Sultan of Johore (presently king of Malaysia). It makes the White House look like an outhouse. We then visited the mosque, always a major landmark in any Muslim country. Here the Muslims make up about 55 percent of the total population. We visited a rubber plantation, where we saw the rubber flowing from the trees. Then we went to a rubber factory to see how they form the latex into big white blocks of rubber. From there we moved on to visit plantations where they grow cacao, coffee, bananas, and palms for palm oil.

After lunch at a Holiday Inn in Johore Bahru, we stopped at a memorial to those who were killed in World War II, then went back to the ship for Mass. I had Liam O’Murchu, alias Bill Murphy, give a homily in honor of St. Patrick. Bill is the only authentic Irishman on board, so I thought he should do the talking. I’m only half Irish, and Ned is in Katmandu. Anyway, Bill gave a great homily.’

28 March 1988
‘En Route to Tianjin. We woke up this morning to what was probably the worst weather we’ve experienced. The sea was full of whitecaps, the wind was strong, and the rain was pelting down as we passed offshore of Shanghai. To make matters worse, there was fog in all directions, so we couldn’t see anything.

Played bridge for an hour and a half this afternoon, and for a change Ernie and I beat Ned and Faye. I can’t claim it as a great victory, though, because in over 4,000 points scored on both sides, we won by only 30.

The captain invited us to dinner in his private dining room tonight. We had been invited once before, but couldn’t go. This time we did, and it was very nice. As a memento of the occasion, each of us received a necktie with the Cunard logo. This captain understands and practices public relations as well as anyone I’ve ever met. He’ll be a hard act to follow. (Unfortunately, he died of cancer within a year.)