Thailand’s great ruler

King Chulalongkorn also known as Rama V, one of Thailand’s greatest rulers and reformers, died 100 years ago today. For much of his reign, and especially when travelling, he kept diaries. Recently, Ohio State University acquired rare copies of many of these diaries and launched a project to digitalise them. This has just been completed and they are now all available on the internet - but in the original Thai language.

Chulalongkorn was born in 1853, in Bangkok, the eldest son of King Mongkut. Because Chulalongkorn was still a minor when his father died in 1868, Si Suriyawongse, one of Mongkut’s closest advisers, was appointed regent until his coming of age in 1873. The young Chulalongkorn took the unprecedented step of travelling abroad - to Singapore, Java and British India - to observe European methods of administration, some of which he would later use to modernise his country.

King Chulalongkorn’s early reforms included the abolition of slavery, the closure of gambling houses, the establishing of an auditory office (to replace the corrupt tax system in place) and a privy council based on the British example. He also chartered a Council of State to act as a legislative body, though this proved ineffective and was later disbanded. His early years of rule were characterised by internal power battles, and having to deal with insurgencies on the borders with China. However, in time he set about wholesale administrative reforms, overturning the traditional methods that had been in place for centuries. He established a royal military academy to train troops in the Western fashion; he founded a Department of Education; and he implemented a title deed act confirming peasants’ claim to their land.

Thailand’s first railroad - from Bangkok to Ayutthaya - was opened in 1896. And it was also during Chulalongkorn’s reign that the traditional lunar system was replaced by the Western calendar, and that a modern system of coins and banknotes was introduced. He also declared religious freedom, allowing Christianity and Islam to be practiced in the Buddhist country. During his reign, Siam lost territory, now in Malaysia, Myanmar and Cambodia, but, by playing off Britain against France, he managed to preserve the country’s independence - confirmed by a convention, signed in 1896, guaranteeing Siam as a buffer state between British and French possessions.

According to Wikipedia’s biography, Chulalongkorn took four of his half-sisters (Mongkut’s daughters) as wives, and had 149 other consorts and concubines. Between them they bore him 33 sons and 44 daughters. He died a century ago today, on 23 October 1910 (a day commemorated with a national holiday). A few years later the country’s first university was founded and named in his honour - Chulalongkorn University. For more biographical information see Wikipedia or The Royal Thai Embassy (Singapore).

Earlier this month, Ohio University Libraries announced, via its Southeast Asia Collection Blog, that it had completed a project to digitalise 24 volumes of Chulalongkorn’s diary, spanning the years 1876 to 1887, as well as many more volumes of travel writings. These are all now available at Internet Archive - but only in the original Thai language. The project was funded or supported by the US Department of Education, the David K Wyatt Thai Collection, Digital Initiatives, Lyrasis, and Internet Archive itself.

King Chulalongkorn ruled the Kingdom of Siam with ‘a remarkable astuteness and foresight at a time of extraordinary danger and change in Southeast Asia’, the Blog explains, and his diary and travel writings ‘constitute one of the single-most important collections of primary sources on the period’. Even in Thailand these works are quite rare, it says, and accessible only to a handful of scholars.

Notwithstanding the Ohio Libraries information, there are some published editions of Chulalongkorn’s diaries which are still in print in Thailand and read today, such as the diary of his trip to Europe, Klai Ban (Far from Home), according to a feature on the King in the Pattaya Mail.

There appears to be no translations into English of Chulalongkorn’s diary or travel writing, but a review in English of a French translation of his diary or travel writing to Java in 1896 can be found on the Persee website. The review says of the translated text, ‘this is no dry-as-dust official memoir. Instead Chulalongkorn springs to life vividly from these pages as a perceptive and shrewd observer of the colonial scene as much at home amongst the frock-coated and bejewelled denizens of the ubiquitous Dutch clubs, as in the Kongsi of the Kapitan Cina [captains of Chinese enclaves] and the kratons [palaces] of the Central Javanese rulers.’

I complained to Chev

Julia Ward Howe died a century ago today. Little remembered, she was well known in her lifetime as a writer and social campaigner, particularly against slavery, and for the early women’s movement. Two biographies, ninety years apart in their writing, quote extensively from her diaries. Only the newer of the biographies, however, uncovers the extent of her domestic unhappiness.

Julia Ward was born in New York City in 1819, into an established New England family. Her father was a banker, and her oldest brother, Samuel, would marry into the wealthy Astor family. In 1843, the by now accomplished socialite married the serious Samuel Gridley Howe nearly 20 years her senior. He was a hero of the Greek war for independence (which had led to his being known as The Chevalier or simply Chev), and had become a pioneer educator of blind and handicapped children. They had five children that survived into adulthood, but the marriage was always strained.

In 1848, some of Julia’s poems appeared in anthologies, and in 1854 she published, anonymously, her own collection under the title Passion Flowers. Nathaniel Hawthorne wrote that the book seemed ‘to let out a whole history of domestic unhappiness. . . . What does her husband think of it?’ Indeed later, in her journal, she wrote: ‘I have been married twenty years today. In the course of that time I have never known my husband to approve of any act of mine which I myself valued. Books - poems - essays - everything has been contemptible in his eyes because not his way of doing things. . . I am much grieved and disconcerted.’

Julia continued to publish poems, as well as travel and biographical writing, and a play of hers was performed in 1857. During the 1850s, also, she was drawn into the anti-slavery movement, being a member of the short-lived Free-Soil Party. And when the civil war broke out, she joined the Sanitary Commission which had been formed to coordinate the volunteer efforts of women for the Union states. In 1862 The Atlantic Monthly published Battle Hymn of the Republic, an abolitionist hymn, for which she wrote the words, though not the music (composed by William Steffe in 1856). It was much sung during the war, and has remained a very popular American patriotic song - indeed, Wikipedia’s entry on the hymn is four or five times longer than the one on Julia herself.

In 1868 Howe founded the New England Women’s Suffrage Association, and the following year was involved in forming the American Woman Suffrage Association (AWSA). And the year after that she was the first to proclaim a Mother’s Day. For the next 20 years, she co-edited AWSA’s magazine, Woman’s Journal. In 1898, she became the first woman to be elected to the American Academy of Arts. She died 100 years ago today on 17 October 1910. Further biographical information is available from the websites of The Celebration of Women Writers or The Dictionary of Unitarian and Universalist Biography.

A recent biography published by Continuum in 2006 - Diva Julia: The Public Romance and Private Agony of Julia Ward Howe by Valarie H Ziegler - quotes often from diaries kept by Julia intermittently. Ziegler says: ‘Diary entries in the 1860s and 1870s continued to disclose scenes of fierce family warfare - of children loyal to their father and furious with their mother, of a wife so distraught with her husband that every moment in his home was filled with agony.’ And here is one example:

‘Diary entries in November and December 1865,’ Ziegler says, ‘give further insight into the squabbles that marked the Howes’ domestic lives. Their lease on their Chestnut Street house - where Sammy [a sixth child] had been born and died - had expired, and Julia noted with sadness her last day in the house on November 3. By November 4, she was already unhappy with Chev’s behaviour in their new residence at 19 Boylston. Her diary noted that she “was very angry with Chev, who is carrying out his plan of putting a hearth & grate in the parlour, entirely against my wishes.” This was a prelude to the battle of the furnace that would transpire in December.

On December 18, Julia observed in her diary, “I complained to Chev this morning of the severe cold of the parlour, last evening, with no unkind intention.” Chev was not sympathetic. “He retorted furiously, saying that it was all my fault, the result of my want of system. I told him these repeated chills wd shorten my life.” Chev answered that dirt in the house would shorten his life. Julia had had enough. “I said, ‘it does not seem to.’ He left, and Maud cried, and Flossy attacked me most severely.” . . .

Julia’s diary December 19 recorded that she was “very melancholy on account of yesterday’s disagreement.” ’

Further on in Ziegler’s book (available for view on Googlebooks) there is an entertaining description of how three of Julia’s children squabbled over the writing of their mother’s biography. This was published in two volumes some 90 years earlier, in 1916, by Houghton Mifflin with the title - Julia Ward Howe 1819-1910. Laura E Richards and Maud Howe Elliott are credited with being the authors ‘assisted by’ Florence Howe Hall. The books are freely available online at Internet Archive (as well as on The Celebration of Women Writers website), and also include extensive quotes from Julia’s diaries. (According to Ziegler, though, Laura’s early drafts of the book contained even more diary extracts but they were edited out for being less entertaining than Julia’s letters.)

Here are several diary entries (as they appear in the 1916 biography) from the last days of 1866.

27 December 1866
‘Let me live until to-morrow, and not be ridiculous! I have a dinner party and an evening party to-day and night, and knowing myself to be a fool for my pains, am fain to desire that others may not find it out and reproach me as they discover it.

Got hold of Fichte [German philosopher] a little which rested my weary brain.

My party proved very pleasant and friendly.’

29 December 1866
‘I read last night at the Club a poem, ‘The Rich Man’s Library,’ which contrasts material and mental wealth, much to the disparagement of the former. I felt as if I ought to read it, having inwardly resolved never again to disregard that inner prompting which leaves us no doubt as to the authority of certain acts which present themselves to us for accomplishment. Having read the poem, however, I felt doubtful whether after all I had done well to read it in that company. I will hope, however, that it may prove not to have been utterly useless. The imperfection of that which we try to do well sometimes reacts severely upon us and discourages us from further effort. It should not.’

31 December 1866
‘Ran about all day, but studied and wrote also. “Farewell, old Diary, farewell, old Year! Good, happy and auspicious to me and mine, and to mankind, I prayed that you might be, and such I think you have been. To you have brought valued experience and renewed study. You have introduced me to Fichte, you have given me the honor of a new responsibility, you have made me acquainted with some excellent personages, among them Baron McKaye, a youth of high and noble nature; Perabo, an artist of real genius. . . You have taught me new lessons of the true meaning and discipline of life, the which should make me more patient in all endurance, more strenuous in all endeavor. You have shown me more clearly the line of demarcation between different talents, pursuits, and characters. So I thank and bless your good days, looking to the Supreme from whom we receive all things.

The most noticeable events of the year just passed, so far as I am concerned, are the following: the invitation received by me to read at the Century Club in New York. This reading was hindered by the death of my brother-in-law, J. N. Howe. The death of dear Uncle John. My journey to Washington to get Chev the Greek appointment. Gurowski’s death. Attendance at the American Academy of Science at Northampton in August. The editorship of the new weekly. My study of Fichte’s ‘Sittenlehre’ and the appearance of my essay on the ‘Ideal State’ in the ‘Christian Examiner.’ My reading at Lexington for the Monument Association. My being appointed a delegate from the Indiana Place Church to the Boston Conference of Unitarian and other Christian Churches. My readings at Northampton, Washington, and elsewhere are all set down in their place.

The bitter opposition of my family renders this service a very difficult and painful one for me. I do not, therefore, seek occasions of performing it, not being quite clear as to the extent to which they ought to limit my efficiency; but when the word and the time come together I always try to give the one to the other and always shall. God instruct whichever of us is in the wrong about this. And may God keep mean and personal passions far removed from me in the coming years. The teaching of life has of late done much to wean me from them, but the true human requires culture and the false human suppression every day of our lives and as long as we live.’

The Great Earl of Cork

It is 444 years to the day since the birth of Richard Boyle, the First and ‘Great’ Earl of Cork, a British entrepreneur and politician who made his name and his fortune in the British colony of Ireland. He had many children, several of whom became famous. He was also a diary writer, and left behind an extensive archive of papers, now held by the National Library of Ireland.

Boyle was born on 13 October 1566 in Canterbury, and studied at Cambridge and the Middle Temple. While still in his young 20s, he decided to seek his fortune in Ireland. There he obtained a legal, and financially lucrative, appointment; and, in 1595, he married Joan Apsley, from a wealthy Limerick family, though she died during childbirth a few years later. Having accrued land and wealth, he lost it during the Munster rebellion in 1598.

Boyle was oliged to return to London, where, after a while, he was imprisoned on charges of embezzlement concerning his past activities in Ireland. He was acquitted, and then returned to Ireland on being appointed by Queen Elizabeth I as clerk of the council of Munster.

In 1602, he bought Sir Walter Raleigh’s large holdings in Cork, Waterford and Tipperary (including Lismore Castle), and then set about improving the lands and businesses, creating trade and founding towns. He also married again, to Catherine Fenton, who bore him many children, including Robert Boyle, today called the father of modern chemistry, and Roger Boyle, a soldier and dramatist, who also kept a diary - see Height and raptures.

In 1620, Richard Boyle was created Earl of Cork, and in 1629, he was appointed one of the lord justices of Ireland. Two years later he became lord high treasurer. But then, in 1933, began a long conflict with Thomas Wentworth, the new lord deputy of Ireland, which led to a decline in Boyle’s privileges and in his income. Boyle patiently opposed Wentworth and his harsh rule, and later testified against him when brought to trial by Parliament.

Boyle died in 1643, having been chased off his lands during the Irish Rebellion of 1641. His sons, however, recovered the family estates after the suppression of the rebellion. Further biographical information is available at Wikipedia and The Peerage.

The National Library of Ireland holds a large Boyle family archive, called the Lismore Castle Papers - its catalogue runs to nearly 900 pages! Included are the diaries, letters and other papers of Richard Boyle. Many of these were first transcribed by Alexander Balloch Grosart, a Scottish clergyman and literary editor, over a century ago, and printed in 10 volumes for private circulation in the 1880s. They were titled The Lismore Papers, viz Autobiographical, Notes, Remembrances and Diaries of Sir Richard Boyle, First and ‘Great’ Earl of Cork.

All of the Grosart volumes are freely available at Internet Archive. Here is a sample of Boyle’s diary from early on in the first volume

1 March 1612
‘I agreed with mason John Hamon to fynish my outward gate of my house in yoghall & the chymney in my perler there; the stones being all hewed and made fytt before by my Irish mason; for which I paid him [. . .]’

3 March 1612
‘Captn Robert Tynt was married in my studdy in yoghall by my cozen Richard Boyle dean of Waterforde to my Kinswoman Mrs Elizabeth Boyle als. Seckerston widdow; and I gaue her unto him in marriadge, and I beseech god to bless them wth good agreement and many vertuous children.’

10 March 1612
‘I rodd to the assizes at waterforde.’

16 March 1612
‘The assizes began at yoghall.’

25 March 1612
‘I am to receave of Katulen ffitz gerrald of my tyeth money in Kerry [. . .] she hath not paid me.’

29 March 1612
‘I had a mortgage from Edward Walches great orchard over against my garden, and paid him other [. . .] for the release of his Interest in that garden, and in the North Abbey of yoghall; whereof I was in possession, at the perfecting his said assurance to me.’

A longer, and more accessible, entry from Boyle’s diary is available on the Library Ireland website in an article on Lismore Castle taken from the Dublin Penny Journal in 1833. This entry is dated just two months before Boyle’s death.

10 July 1643
‘This day the rebel Lieutenant, General Purcell, commanding again in chief, in revenge of his former defeat received at Cappoquin, reinforced his army to 7,000 foot, and 900 horse, with three pieces of ordnance, and drew again near to Cappoquin, and there continued four days, wasting and spoiling the country round about, but attempted nothing of any consequence. And when the 22d at night, that the Lord Viscount Muskrie came to the Irish army with some addition of new forces, they removed from Cappoquin in the night before my castle of Lismore, and on Saturday morning the 23d July, 1643, they began their battery from the church to the east of Lismore-house, and made a breach into my own house, which Captain Broadripp and my warders, being about 150, repaired stronger with earth than it was before, and shot there till the Thursday the 27th, and never durst attempt to enter the breach, my ordnance and musket shot from my castle did so apply them. Then they removed their battery to the south-west of my castle, and continued beating against my orchard wall, but never adventured into my orchard, my shot from my turrets did so continually beat and clear the curteyn of the wall. The 28th of July God sent my two sons, Dungarvan and Broghill, to land at Youghal, out of England, and the 29th they rode to the Lord of Inchiquins, who with the army were drawn to Tallagh, and staid there in expectation of Colonel Peyn, with his regiment from Tymolay, who failed to join, but Inchiquin, Dungarvan and Broghill, and Sir John Powlett, the Saturday in the evening (upon some other directions brought over by Dungarvan from his Majesty,) he made a treaty that evening with Muskrie and others, and the Saturday the 30th, they agreed upon a cessation for six days. Monday night, when they could not enter my house, they removed their siege and withdrew the ordnance and army - two or three barrels of powder - two or three pieces of ordnance of twenty-three pounds, and killed but one of my side, God be praised.’

When the battle rages

Today is the 200th anniversary of the birth of Charles Ash Windham, a British soldier who distinguished himself in Crimea, served in India, and became commander of the British Forces in Canada. While in Crimea, he kept a diary which was published over a century ago and is now freely available online. This is the third diarist - after Edward Cooper Hodge and Florence Nightingale - connected to the Crimean War to be featured by The Diary Junction Blog.

Windham, the fourth son of Admiral William Windham, of Felbrigg Hall, Norfolk, was born on 8 October 1810. Educated at the Royal Military College, Sandhurst, he entered the Coldstream Guards at the age of 16. He served in Canada during Papineau’s rebellion against British treatment of French-Canadians, and rose through the army ranks to Captain and Lieut.-Colonel in 1846. In 1849 he retired on half pay and, in the same year, married Marianne Catherine Emily, daughter of Admiral Sir John Beresford.

On the outbreak of the Crimean War, Windham was appointed Assistant Quartermaster-General to the 4th Division, commanded by Sir George Cathcart and then Lord Raglan. He is best remembered for his part in the assault on Redan, one of the Russian fortifications at Sebastopol. Subsequently, he was appointed Governor of a part of Sebastopol. On returning to England, he was knighted, and served briefly as an MP, before being sent to Calcutta during the Indian Mutiny, where he defended the town of Cawnpore, and was in command of Lahore until his return to England in 1861. 

Windham was knighted in 1865, and married for a second time in 1866. The following year he sailed again to Canada to serve as commander of the British Forces there. He died at Jacksonville, Florida, in 1870. The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography has the only detailed biography of Windham online (though a subscription or library card is required for access). A little further information is available from the auctioneer Christies (which sold a vase given to Windham by his ‘friends in Warwickshire for his services during the Crimean War’)

In 1897, Kegan Paul, Trench, Trübner published The Crimean Diary and Letters of Lieut.-General Sir Charles Ash Windham, K.C.B with an introduction by Sir William Howard Russell. This is freely available online at Internet Archive, and is the source of the following extracts: the first three entries in the diary, and then two from a few weeks later (chosen because the dates match those of extracts used for the earlier blog article on Edward Cooper Hodge about the charges of the light and heavy brigades.

1 September 1854
‘Arrived at Constantinople this morning, and heard that the Army was embarking for Sebastopol, and would probably sail on the 3rd. The French and English have suffered severely from sickness in Bulgaria. For my part I never felt better, and I sincerely hope I may be preserved to return home; but, above all things, I do earnestly pray that God will grant me strength and courage to behave as becomes a man and a soldier, come what may. It will be my first battle, and no man can say what effect that may have on him, so I repeat that, above all things, I pray for a stout heart and a clear head when the battle rages fiercest, particularly should we be unsuccessful.’

2 September 1854
‘Anniversary of the death of a great English soldier, Oliver Cromwell. I wonder what he would do if at Varna? I had a long and interesting talk, last evening, after dinner with the General [Sir George Cathcart]. He told me all he intended doing, and I am convinced that he is perfectly right in his views.’

3 September 1854
‘Went on shore and saw Lord Raglan, Sir George Brown, General Airey, Admirals Dundas and Lyons. Drew some necessaries for servants and the detachment of the 46th Regiment, now on board here. I did what I could to find out what I had to do, but, as to this, got but little information. I was glad to see Lord Raglan looking so well, and as to General Brown, he looks the freshest man here; and I do not doubt he will lead the Light Division “like a good ‘un.” For my part, what I fear is the condition of the men. They are so dispirited and downcast by sickness that I very much question their fighting in the resolute way I am sure they would have fought had this expedition been undertaken months ago. I think that, from a strategical point of view, Odessa is the place to attack. Why we should choose to fight the Russians with a strong fortification to assist them, instead of fighting them with an open town near us that would probably offer no resistance, is more than I can understand. From what I can learn the French seem to be opposed to the attack (on Sebastopol); the English think it too late in the year, and a great many of our superior officers look upon it as hazardous and doubtful. And no one seems in the right spirit to do it. The French have lost a frightful number of men by sickness, and will only be able to embark twenty thousand ; we shall send twenty-two or twenty-three thousand, and I understand the Turks will send ten thousand. One thing is certain, we must all do our best.

25 October 1854
‘Horsford had just pointed out to me the confused masses of French upon the hill to our right, and I had just gone to point out the same to the General, when up galloped Captain Ewart, of the 93rd, and ordered us (the 4th Division) off to Balaclava. We got under arms immediately, and, on arriving at the scene of action, were informed that the Turks had run off to a man without firing a shot [a footnote by the Russell states: ‘This information was quite erroneous. The Turks defended No. 1 Redoubt very gallantly, and lost heavily’] running straight through our Cavalry Camp. The Russians instantly took possession of the position, but abandoned the greater portion of it on our approach. The cavalry instantly went into action, and the Heavy Brigade did very well. Unfortunately the Light Brigade was ordered to charge, and they did so gallantly; but, being received by three times their numbers and three batteries of artillery, besides riflemen, they got cut up and driven back, losing about half their number. The 4th Division got there just as this charge was being made, and the Russians abandoned two of the redoubts, retaining only the one furthest to the eastward. Captain Nolan, who took the orders to Lord Cardigan, was killed, charging at the head of the Light Cavalry. Although a good fellow, from all I can learn, his conduct was inexcusable. His whole object appears to have been to have a charge at the Russians at any cost ; but he could not have chosen a worse time. After the fight was over, and we had been pounded for the better portion of the day, we returned at night to camp, abandoning our original line as too extensive. My leg wonderfully painful all day, but I held on.’

26 October 1854
‘The Russians, rendered daring by their success against the Turks yesterday, made to-day a sortie against the 2nd Division. We (4th Division) turned out, but were not wanted, as the Russians soon beat a retreat, getting a handsome mauling, and losing 500 men in killed and wounded. They could not stand the fire, and, though they got up their guns, did not fire a shot with them. General Bosquet came down, but too late for the fun. I rode forward and joined the skirmishers of the 2nd Division for a few minutes. Leg still very bad.’

Diary briefs

Jimmy Carter’s White House Diary - Macmillan, The New York Times,

Marilyn Monroe’s Fragments - Macmillan, The Guardian

Lieutenant Wootton’s First World War diary - BBC

Tommy’s Peace: A Family Diary 1919-33 - Random House Group

Crew diaries reunited with vessel after 150 years - BBC

My dear little girl

Elizabeth Gaskell, a popular writer of socially realistic novels and ghostly short stories, was born 200 years today. For a while, before becoming a novelist, she tried keeping a diary. She wasn’t very good at it, managing only 11 entries in total, over five years. Nevertheless, the diary is an exceptional one, for it focuses exclusively on Gaskell’s observations, thoughts, uncertainties about, and love of, her baby daughter. In over two years of writing for The Diary Junction Blog, I do not recall any one of my 300 articles being about a diarist’s babies or his/her children’s development.

Elizabeth Stevenson was born on 29 September 1810, in Chelsea, the eighth and last of her parents’ children and only the second to survive infancy. Her mother died months after her birth, and baby Elizabeth moved to live with an aunt, Hannah Lumb, in Knutsford, Cheshire. She visited her father, who remarried, rarely, and was sent away to school for a few years, but Knutsford always remained her home.

After her father died in 1826, Elizabeth spent some time in Newcastle upon Tyne at the home of the Rev William Turner, a relation and a famous Unitarian minister who was a founder of the Literary and Philosophical Society. The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography says he was humane, generous and eccentric, and ‘undoubtedly influenced her moral, humanitarian, and political outlook’.

In 1830, Elizabeth married William Gaskell, another Unitarian minister, and they set up home in Manchester, then a very depressed town. Her husband’s work drew her into direct contact with the poor, whom she helped in many way. Her first surviving daughter, Marianne, was born in 1834 and she had three more daughters (a son born in 1844 died before he was a year old).

Gaskell may have taken up writing as a relief from the sorry of her son dying, but in any case she completed her first novel in 1847 - Mary Barton: A Tale of Manchester Life - which was published anonymously the following year, to great acclaim. Charles Dickens was impressed with the novel, for its social realism and tight plot, and subsequently published Gaskell’s work - including her next novel, Cranford, and her famed ghost stories - in his magazines, Household Words and All the Year Round.

In 1850, the Gaskells moved to Plymouth Grove, also in Manchester, where their house became the hub of a busy social circle. Visitors included John Ruskin, Mary Howitt, and Charlotte Brontë with whom Gaskell developed a particular friendship. When Brontë died in 1855, her husband urged Gaskell to write her biography, and this was published in 1857. In the 1850s, too, Gaskell started travelling, taking tours to European countries, usually without her husband but accompanied by one of her daughters.

Mrs Gaskell’s last and longest work - Wives and Daughters - was unfinished when she died in 1865 but published the following year. Further biographical information is available on The Gaskell Society website, or at Wikipedia. A detailed entry on Gaskell from the Dictionary of Literary Biography is available online at Tim Clement-Jones’s website.

Long before her first novel, Gaskell was dabbling in writing of various forms, and had had some poetry published. In March 1835, six months after her daughter Marianne was born, she took up writing a diary to record the baby’s growth and development. Even though the last entry is dated more than five years later, there are only 11 dated entries totalling no more than 20 published pages. The diary - a small notebook bound in marbled boards with spine and corner in calf - is held in the Brotherton Library of the University of Leeds. It was first published with the title My Diary in a limited edition of 50 by Clement Shorter in 1923.

Much more recently, in 1996, Keele University Press issued Private Voices - The Diaries of Elizabeth Gaskell and Sophia Holland, edited by J A V Chapple and Anita Wilson. Gaskell’s diary is of interest, Anita Wilson says in her 30 page introduction, ‘as a document of Victorian social history and as a foreshadowing of her development as a novelist.’

Here are some short extracts from most of the 11 dates on which Gaskell sat down to write about her daughter, including the first, which is undated.

‘To my dear little Marianne I shall ‘dedicate’ this book, which, if I should not live to give it her myself, will I trust be reserved for her as a token of her mother’s love, and extreme anxiety in the formation of her little daughter’s character. If that little daughter should in time become a mother herself, she may take an interest in the experience of another; and at any rate she will perhaps like to become acquainted with her character in [its] earliest form. I wish that (if ever she sees this) I could give her the slightest idea of the love and the hope that is bound up in her.’

10 March 1835
‘The day after tomorrow Marianne will be six months old. I wish I had begun my little journal sooner, for (though I should have laughed at the idea twelve months ago) there have been many little indications of disposition &c already; which I can not now remember clearly. I will try and describe her mentally. I should call her remarkably good tempered; though at times she gives way to little bursts of passion or perhaps impatience would be the right name. She is also very firm in her own little way occasionally; what I suppose is obstinacy really, [though] that is so hard a word to apply to one so dear. But in general she is so good that I feel as if could hardly be sufficiently thankful, that the materials put into my hands are so excellent, and beautiful. [. . .]

Then as to her ‘bodily’ qualifications, she has two teeth cut with very little trouble; but I believe the worst are to come. She is very strong in her limbs, though because she is so fat, we do not let her use her ancles at all, and I hope she will be rather late in walking that her little legs may be very firm. I shall find it difficult to damp the energies of the servants in this respect, but I intend that she shall teach herself to walk, & receive no assistance from hands &c She lies down on the floor a good deal, and kicks about; a practice I began very early, and which has done her a great deal of good.

4 August 1835
‘It seems a very long time since I have written anything about my little darling, and I feel as if I had been negligent about it, only it so difficult to know when to begin or when to stop when talking thinking or writing about her. [. . .]

How all of a woman’s life, at least so it seems to me now, ought to have a reference to the period when she will be fulfilling one of her greatest & highest duties, those of a mother. I feel myself so unknowing, so doubtful about many things in her intellectual & moral treatment already, and what shall I be when she grows older, & asks those puzzling questions that children do? I hope I shall always preserve my present good intentions & sense of my holy trust, and then I must pray, to be forgiven for my errors, & led into a better course.’

4 October 1835
‘I see it is exactly two months since I last wrote in this book, and I hope my little girl is improved both in ‘body & mind’ since then. She suffered a good deal from the changes of weather we have had, and I have found it necessary to leave off milk as an article of diet at present. She lives on broth thickened with arrowroot, & I think this food strengthens her, but she is still a delicate child, and backward in walking.’

5 November 1836
‘There have been times when I have felt, oh! so cast down by her wrongdoing, and as I think I am very easily impressible, I have fancied there must have been some great mismanagement to produce such little obstinate fits, and whole hours of wilfulness. I do not however think that this has been often the case, and when it has, my cooler judgement has been aware of some little circumstance connected with her physical state that has in some measure accounted for it. For instance, she, (like her mother) requires a great deal of sleep.’

9 December 1837
‘I feel quite ashamed to see that more than a year has passed since I last wrote. There have been some sad excuses to be sure. I had very bad health period till my dear little Meta was born, February 5th 1837, and I had hardly recovered my strength when (March 10th) I received a summons to Knutsford. My dearest Aunt Lumb, my more than mother had had a paralytic stroke . . .’

25 March 1838
‘There is a new era in the little life of my dear little girl. Tomorrow she goes to an Infant School. I think I am naturally undecided, or rather perhaps apt to repent my decision when it is too late, but now I am beginning to wonder if I have done right about this darling. There is much to be said on each side . . .’

8 April 1838
‘Just a fortnight ago since I last wrote, and since that time I have had a sad fright about Marianne, on last Friday but one she had an attack of croup about 8 o’clock in the evening. We heard a cough like a dog’s bark. (She had had a cold in her head, and had seemed pale, and languid all day.) We gave her 24 drops of Ipec: wine, and Sam & Mr Partington both came. They said we had done quite rightly, and ordered some calomel powders.’

14 October 1838
‘I wish very much to make Marianne industrious; I am afraid I do not set her a good example. I try to employ her in making candlelighters, pricking pictures, counting out articles &c, but she is soon tired of any one employment. This must be struggled against for I can tell from experience how increasing an error this is.’

28 October 1838
‘She is a most sympathetic little thing. She tries to comfort me if she sees me looking sad, or thinks that anything has happened to discompose me. Her great faults are unaccountable fits of obstinacy; which are I hope diminishing and a want of perseverance and [dependence] upon others as to her occupations and amusements.’

The French Macdonald

Died all of one hundred and seventy years ago today, did the French Macdonald, or to give him his full title, Étienne Jacques Joseph Macdonald, the first Duc de Tarente. A favourite of Napoleon, Macdonald spent most of his life soldiering around Europe. However, as he approached 60, he decided to visit the homeland of his forefathers - the Western Isles - and while there he kept a diary. This was found recently, and then published in English by The Islands Book Trust. Although Macdonald was born in the Ardennes, France, in 1765, his father was a native of South Uist one of the Outer Hebrides, and from a Jacobite family loyal to Bonnie Prince Charlie, and dedicated to restoring the exiled Stuart family to the British throne.

In 1785, Macdonald joined the French army. After the outbreak of the French Revolution, he was appointed aide-de-camp to General Charles François Dumouriez, and distinguished himself at the Battle of Jemappes, but when Dumouriez deserted to the Austrians, Macdonald refused to do the same. He rose quickly through the French Revolutionary army ranks, serving in the army of the Rhine and in Italy, where he occupied Rome, and was made governor. Thereafter, in conjunction with another general, Jean Étienne Championnet, he took the Kingdom of Naples, which became known as the Parthenopaean Republic.

In 1800, Macdonald received command of the army in the Helvetic Republic, maintaining communications between the armies of Germany and of Italy, and won Napoleon’s praise for a winter crossing of his army into Italy. On returning to Paris, MacDonald married the widow of General Joubert, and was appointed French ambassador to Denmark, a position he did not hold for long. Caught up in ante-Napoleon intrigues, he was ostracised for some years, and not recalled to active duty until 1809 when Napoleon judged his military talents indispensable.

Soon after being recalled he helped defeat the Austrians at Wagram and was made a Marshal of France, and given the title Duc de Tarente in the Kingdom of Naples. Macdonald continued to serve in Austria, then in Catalonia, and spent some time defending Riga during the Russian campaign. In 1813, during the German campaign, he was ordered to invade Silesia, where he suffered a heavy defeat; another defeat followed at Leipzig which he barely escaped with his life.

When Napoleon abdicated, in April 1814, Macdonald, loyal to the last, was directed by Napoleon to give his adherence to the new regime, and subsequently served under Louis XVIII, though accepted no posting during Napoleon’s return and the so-called Hundred Days. He was appointed major general of the Royal Guard, and was named to the Legion of Honour. He died on 25 September 1840 - 170 years ago today. See Wikipedia for more information or the International Napoleonic Society website.

In 1825, Macdonald travelled to Scotland, the home of his forefathers, and kept a diary on the journey. This was found in the French National Archives not so long ago, and translated from the original French by Jean-Didier Hache. The French Macdonald was published by The Islands Book Trust in 2007, and then reprinted earlier this year. The publisher says: ‘This fascinating document, ignored for generations and containing some very frank observations on people he met from Sir Walter Scott to his MacDonald forebears in the Hebrides, . . gives an intimate account of a vanished society and a unique insight into the fabric of nineteenth century Scotland.’

Ron Ferguson reviewing the original publication for The Press and Journal includes some (undated) extracts. The first is about Walter Scott; and the second is about visiting the caves of Corrodale, where his father had been in hiding with Bonnie Prince Charlie.

‘At 7 o’clock, dinner at MacDonald Buchanan’s, where I meet Sir Walter Scott. He is 55 years old, but looks 60. His face is handsome and fresh, but cold. Head as that of Titus, sparse hair, white, same as the eyebrows; small and witty eyes, height 5 feet and 6 to 7 inches. He limps, from an accident sustained during his youth. We swap a few compliments. He speaks French well. I was told he does not admit to the authorship of any of the books published under his name, and I am advised to speak only vaguely about it.’

‘It is in this cave that I was told an anecdote which I often heard from my father in my youth. The Prince needed a knife, but it had been forgotten. He asked my father to find one. My father pointed out to him the risks of such an errand, but he insisted and made it an order. Thus, in this unfortunate situation, he still acted as if he were the King.’

Marc Horne, writing for The Sunday Times about the reprinted edition last April, also included some extracts.

‘The countryside between Berwick and Dunbar is all even drearier and monotonous than that which we saw at the last stage posts: meagre cultivations, barren slopes and isolated trees which the northern wind has crippled before they could develop.’

‘The apartments [at the palace at Hollyrood] look shabby and the furniture even more so. The view is grim. The guide does not know anything.’

‘Women and girls walk with their bare feet, holding their shoes in their hands even within towns. I have discussed this custom with various people who were equally critical of it.’

Father of Mormon history

The diaries of the late Leonard J Arrington, known as the ‘Father of Mormon History’, are to be formally opened today when two of his children deliver an annual lecture on Mormon history in Logan, Cache County, Utah. The diary reveals in gritty detail, they say, not just his own ‘adventures’ as a historian for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, but the history of many Cache Valley characters. It does not, though, by newspaper accounts dwell on his disappointment when the church decided to close down his era of open and academic research into its history.

The third of eleven children, Arrington was born in Twin Falls, Idaho, in 1917 to parents who were Latter-day Saints and farmers. He studied agricultural science and then agricultural economics at Idaho University, before moving to postgraduate work at the University of North Carolina. In 1942, he married Grace Fort; and during the Second World War, between 1943 and 1946, he served for the US army in North Africa and Italy. He completed a doctorate in economics from the University of North Carolina in 1952, which subsequently led to the publication of his Great Basin Kingdom: An Economic History of the Latter-day Saints, 1830-1900. For nearly 30 years, until 1972, he was professor at Utah State University in Logan, and then he was appointed Lemuel H Redd Jr Professor of Western American History at Brigham Young University until 1987, when he retired.

In addition to his university academic career, Arrington was keen on historical associations. He helped establish the Mormon History Association in 1965, serving as its first president. In 1972, he was appointed official Church Historian of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. During his time in this position he opened up the archives, and sponsored the writing of histories in an academic style. Some considered this an idealistic approach, and in 1982 his open era was brought to an end when the church transferred the history division he had created to Brigham Young University. Arrington also launched the Western Historical Quarterly; and he served for short terms as presidents of the Western History Association, the Agricultural History Society, and the Pacific Coast Branch of the American Historical Association. He was made a Fellow of the Society of American Historians in 1986.

After Grace died, he remarried to Harriet Horne in 1983. He published a number of books in his life - including The Mormon Experience: a history of the Latter-Day Saints; Brigham Young: American Moses; Adventures of a Church Historian; and History of Idaho - as well as several collections of lectures. He died in early 1999, and in 2002 was posthumously awarded the first annual Lifetime Achievement Award by the John Whitmer Historical Association. Further biographical information is available from FairMormon or Wikipedia.

Today, at the Logan Tabernacle, two of Arrington’s children are delivering the annual Arrington Mormon History Lecture. This will mark the formal opening of an archive at Utah State University - closed for 10 years after his death - with Arrington’s voluminous diaries. Publicity for the lecture says: ‘The diary reveals in gritty detail not just his adventures as a church historian, but the history of many Cache Valley characters. It also provides a treasure-trove of information on his personal trials, triumphs, and disappointments, along with his joys as a friend, father, and scholar. This presentation provides a sampler of stories, hidden deeds, private opinions about public controversies, and insights into a man who was hailed variously as a genius, a dangerous menace, a valiant friend, and a wise father.’

According to The Salt Lake Tribune, Arrington was ‘Mormonism’s most influential historian of the late 20th century’, and his diary ‘reveals a life imbued with the sense that he was chosen by heaven to help the LDS Church and its people truthfully tell the Mormon story’. However, the diary ‘is not a juicy trove of gossip’ the paper adds, nor does it dwell on the writer’s disappointment with his treatment by the church. Rather, historian Ronald W Walker says, the diary is ‘an annal of the intellectual life. . . [and] an extremely important historical document in terms of life, letters and thought in the 20th century.’

Here is one extract from Arrington’s diary, thanks to the The Salt Lake Tribune article: ‘Our great experiment in church-sponsored history has proven to be, if not a failure, at least not an unqualified success. . . One aspect that will be personally galling to me will be the gibes of my non-Mormon and anti-Mormon friends: ‘I told you so!’ ’

Matinée Poétique writer

The diaries of the late writer Takehiko Fukunaga have just been released to the media for the first time, according to Japanese newspapers. The diaries, which date from the 1940s, are said to give an insight into his delicate way of depicting human pain and suffering. 

Not translated into English, and not well known in Europe, there is very little information about Fukunaga on English-language websites. A listing in Japan Encyclopedia, partly available on Googlebooks, says ‘she’ - even though he was a man! - was born in Fukuoka in 1918. He translated some of Jean-Paul Sartre’s works, and wrote a critique of Paul Gauguin for which he won an award.

A little more information is available from a website called DeadMansBrain which says Fukunaga was fond of French poets such as Mallarmé, Rimbaud, and Lautréamont, but was especially influenced by Baudelaire. With Shin’ichiro Nakamura, Shuichi Kato and others, he formed a literary coterie called Matinée Poétique. And while striving to introduce European literary trends, he wrote experimental novels such as Fudo (Climate) and Meifu (The Nether World). He also wrote detective novels under the pen name Reitaro Kada. In 1972 he won the Japan Literature Grand Prize, for Shi no shima (Death Island). He died in 1979.

The Mainichi Daily News has now reported that three of Fukunaga diaries - written between 1945 and 1947 - have been released to the media for the first time. It claims that they shed light on the roots of his style of writing, one that ‘delicately depicts the pain and the suffering of humans’. The diaries were found by a researcher 10 years ago, but their release was opposed by Yamashita Sumi, Fukunaga’s ex-wife (also known as the poet Akiko Harajo). It is several years, however, since Sumi’s death, and their son, Natsuki Ikezawa, also a poet, has decided to make the documents public; and extracts are being published in Shincho literary magazine.

In his journals, The Mainichi Daily News says, Fukunaga writes about his love for his wife and newborn son, expresses enthusiasm for launching a new literary journal in collaboration with Kato, and describes the chaos of postwar Japan. In other parts of the diaries, though, he writes about the difficulties with his wife and his suffering from tuberculosis. According to literary critic Akimasa Kanno, it is these difficulties that must have allowed him to dig deep into the concepts of love, loneliness and death - the central theme of his literature. ‘The diaries are very important materials,’ he added.

The Mainichi Daily News quotes only a couple of very short extracts: ‘It’s already been 50 days since Natsuki was born. His innocent smiles hold me back’; and ‘I fear my disease. I’m worried about Sumiko, and think about the past and the future.’

Porfirio Díaz rebels

Today is the 180th anniversary of the birth of Porfirio Díaz, a giant, if somewhat controversial, figure in Mexico’s history. He ruled the country for the best part of 30 years, but most of it as a tyrant, and was only brought down by the Mexican Revolution (which started 100 years ago). Although there are no published diaries (at least in English) written by Díaz, one biography, freely available online, quotes extensively from such diaries. It also worth noting another anniversary - tomorrow - the bicentenary of the start of the Mexican War of Independence.

Descended from both Mixtec Indians and Spaniards, José de la Cruz Porfirio Díaz Mori was born on 15 September 1830 in Oaxaca to parents who kept a small inn. However, his father died three years later, and the young Díaz learned carpentry and shoemaking outside of school to help with the family income. At 13, his mother sent him to study for the priesthood, but at 16 he joined a local militia.

He fought with the Mexican army against the US in the mid-1840s, and then, with the encouragement of the Liberal Benito Juárez (who went on to become President in 1858), he studied law for a while. In 1854, he became something of a rebel helping an imprisoned friend, and voting against the President (see below). He went into hiding, but benefited from much support in the Oaxaca region. By 1856, he had been promoted to captain in the state national guard. Subsequently, he had a distinguished military career, fighting in the War of Reform and then against the French in the 1860s.

After returning to Oaxaca, he again became dissatisfied with the governing regime and led protests and then an unsuccessful revolt in 1876. He fled to the US but returned six months later to roundly defeat the government at the Battle of Tecoac. In May 1877, he was elected President. Díaz’s first term in office was noted for his efforts at building a power base and his suppressing of revolts. Having supported a no re-election policy earlier, though, Díaz decided not to stand for a second term himself, but instead hand-picked his successor. It was a period of administrative confusion, and Mexicans re-elected Díaz to the Presidency again in 1884. Thereafter, he didn’t relinquish power for a quarter of a century. Encyclopaedia Britannica says during this time he ‘produced an orderly and systematic government with a military spirit. He successfully consolidated the nation by what many referred to as a centralised tyranny.’

During the years Díaz ruled Mexico, known as the Porfiriato, foreign investment was strongly encouraged, and led to much new infrastructure and enterprise. However, the wealth created in these decades was not fairly distributed with most of it going abroad or into the hands of very few rich Mexicans. By 16 September 1910, the date usually given for the start of the Mexican Revolution, the economy had declined, and national revenues were sinking. Moreover, rural poverty, strikes and discontent were endemic. Díaz finally resigned in May 1911, and went into exile in France, where he died in 1915. He married twice, and had three children. For more biographical information see Latin America Studies or Wikipedia.

Although there’s no trace of any published diaries in English, there is one biography of Díaz, by Ethel Tweedie (often referred to as Mrs Alec Tweedie), published in 1906 which, apparently, makes extensive use of Díaz’s diaries. Ethel Tweedie was rather an extraordinary woman who travelled widely and found a ready market for her jolly travel books such as Girl’s Ride in Iceland (1889), A Winter Jaunt to Norway (1894) and Through Finland in Carts (1897). Journeying further away, she went to China, Russia, the US and spent considerable time in Mexico, where she became friendly with Díaz’s wife who helped win her husband’s endorsement for a biography.

This was published in 1906 by John Lane Company in New York as The Maker of Modern Mexico, Porfirio Díaz, and by Hurst and Blackett in London as Porfirio Díaz, Seven Times President of Mexico. Both (identical) versions are freely available at Internet Archive.

Tweedie says in her introduction that ‘General Díaz honoured me by handing over long extracts from his diaries’, and ‘no part of this diary has hitherto been published’. Somewhat obsequiously, she also says this: ‘That President Díaz was the greatest man of the nineteenth century is a strong assertion, but those who read these pages will, I hope, think so too.’

Unfortunately, in her biography, Tweedie never gives any dates for the many ‘diary’ extracts she quotes. Also, many of the extracts read as though they were written in retrospect. Nevertheless, here are some of those ‘diary’ extracts.

In 1854, Don Marcos Pérez, a former teacher of Díaz, was arrested and imprisoned in a turret of the Convent of Santo Domingo in Oaxaca. Díaz explains how, aided by his brother Félix, he managed to enter his friend’s cell:

‘The window was closed, and in the upper part of the solid shutters were two small openings, each with an iron cross in the centre. In the door of the turret was a small wicket, rather lower than the full height of a man, through which the sentinel, stooping down, could from time to time watch his captive. There was a second outer door, and in the passage between the two were the sentinel and a corporal. This second door was, like the first, closed and locked. The guard consisted of fifty men, under a captain and a superior officer. All were perfectly sure that the prisoner could not effect an escape, for his cell had only the one door and the windows. When I had been lowered by a rope to the window and the sentinel showed himself at the little wicket, I had to stoop down, sliding below the sill as far as possible so as not to be seen. Thus I hung, suspended by the rope which my brother Félix held from the top of the roof. In spite of many difficulties and dangers, we succeeded on three separate nights in speaking with Don Marcos Pérez.’

Having been able to communicate with Pérez, Tweedie says, Díaz was then able to help obtain his freedom.

In that same year, in 1854, Antonio López de Santa Anna (General Santa Anna) was in the last of his eleven terms of office. He had become an army cadet in 1810, just a few months before the War of Independence - generally considered to have started on 16 September. He first became President in 1833. Here is Díaz explaining how he came to oppose the President that year.

‘The dictatorial, retrograde politics of General Santa Anna, and his persecution of the Liberals, occasioned a reaction in the country . . . The Revolution was headed by General Don Juan Alvarez, a full-blooded Indian, who was one of the few leaders of the War of Independence still surviving. Soon after its inception Santa Anna, imitating the example of Louis Napoleon - whom he flattered himself he resembled in more ways than one - sought to obtain a demonstration in his favour, and ordered a popular vote to be taken which should decide who should exercise the supreme Dictatorship.

I was filling the post of Professor of Law, when the Director of the Institute . . . called all the professors together on the 1st of December, 1854, to vote in a body for Santa Anna. I refused, thinking that during the voting there would be some scandalous incident which would justify recourse to arms, and hoping that I might perhaps find an opportunity to be of use. This, however, was impossible, since the Government had posted, a strong guard of troops in the plaza, and had even brought up cannon. I went to the porch of the Palace where the votes were being taken.

General Don Ignacio Martinez Pinillos, who was Governor and Military Commander of the State of Oaxaca - or Department, as it was then called - was presiding at the poll within the Palace.

The head of the division in which I lived, Don Serapio Maldonado, presented himself, saying that he voted on behalf of various individuals who were residents in his division for the continuance in power as Supreme Dictator of General Santa Anna. Then it was I appealed to the President myself to discount my vote from the number, because I did not wish to exercise the right of voting.

At that moment the academical body of the Institute arrived, and all the professors voted in favour of Santa Anna, and gave their respective signatures to the roll.

When this was done the Licentiate Don Francisco S. de Enciso, who was Professor of Civil Law, asked me if I was fully determined not to vote. I answered in the same terms in which I had excused myself to General Martfnez Pinillos, saying that voting was a right which I was free to exercise or not.

‘Yes,’ answered Enciso, ‘and one does not vote when one is afraid!’

‘This reproach burnt into me like fire, and made me seize the pen which was again proffered me. Pushing my way between the electors I passed up the room and recorded my vote, not for Santa Anna, but in favour of General Don Juan Alvarez, who figured as chief of the Revolutionary movement of Ayutla.’

This unexpected incident, Tweedie says, aroused general consternation and uproar. In the excitement of the moment young Diaz passed out of the voting hall unobserved, and disappeared in the crowd in the plaza of Oaxaca. Orders were immediately issued for his pursuit and arrest. In the meantime he had grasped a rifle, mounted his horse, and, accompanied by another resolute companion, got away, riding down those who would have barred his passage.

The might of genius

William Holman Hunt, one of the most prominent members of the 19th century Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood of painters, died a century ago today. His artistic development was much influenced by religion and travelling in the Holy Land. On his first trip there, he kept a journal which, although not published, is sometimes discussed in biographical texts. However, the diary of another painter, Ford Madox Brown, closely associated with the Brotherhood, has been published, and it refers to Hunt, as well as his talent, in glowing terms.

Hunt was born in 1827, in the City of London, his father being warehouseman for a cotton spinning and threadmaking company. As a teenager, he had various clerical jobs around the City, but he was also painting when he could. In 1844, he was given a permit to paint in the National Gallery, which is where he met John Everett Millais, who encouraged him to apply for the Royal Academy Schools, and who became a life-long friend. While at the Royal Academy, Hunt was strongly influenced by the writing of John Ruskin, the art critic.

In 1848, Hunt became friends with Dante Gabriel Rossetti, and at the end of August moved out of a studio he shared with his teacher, Ford Madox Brown, to share one with Hunt. By the end of the same year, Rossetti and Hunt with Millais had formed the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood. Initially, Hunt’s works did not find favour with the public, but his popularity increased when, in 1854, Ruskin championed a work called The Light of the World. Also in 1854, Hunt left for a long journey to Syria and Palestine in search of accurate topographical and ethnographical material for further religious works. There he painted The Scapegoat, a solitary animal on the shores of the Dead Sea.

In 1865 Hunt married Fanny Waugh, and the following year they left England to go East, but a cholera outbreak led them to settle for a while in Florence, where Fanny gave birth to a son, Cyril Benoni, before dying of a fever. Thereafter, Hunt returned to London, but often travelled to Florence, and took several other extended trips to Jerusasalem, latterly with his second wife, Edith (Fanny’s sister). The Triumph of the Innocents, May Morning on Magdalen Tower, and The Miracle of the Sacred Tower are among the more important of his later works. His eyesight began to fail in the late 1890s, after which he worked more enthusiastically on an autobiography, which was published in 1905. He died on 7 September 1910.

Although Hunt was not a committed diarist, he did write two journals during his journey to the Middle East in the mid-1850s - one about 250 pages long covering much of the year 1855, and the other only about 16 pages while painting The Scapegoat. These are held by The John Rylands University Library in Manchester, and are occasionally quoted in biographical texts about Hunt. Deanna Victoria Mason discusses Hunt’s journals in her PHd thesis for Queen’s University, Ontario, (which is available online) - The Perennial Dramas of the East - Representations of the Middle East in the Writing and Art of Dante Gabriel Rossetti and William Holman Hunt.

And Liverpool Museum’s website says this about The Scapegoat (held by the Lady Lever Art Gallery): ‘In the Book of Leviticus (which is quoted on the frame) the goat is said to bear the iniquities into a land that was not inhabited. Hunt chose to set his goat in a landscape of quite hideous desolation - it is the shore of the Dead Sea at Osdoom with the mountains of Edom in the distance. In his diary Hunt described this setting as ‘a scene of beautifully arranged horrible wilderness’ and he saw the Dead Sea as a ‘horrible figure of sin’, believing as did many at this time that it was the original site of the city of Sodom.’

The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (subscription or library card required) quotes a short extract from Hunt’s diary dated November 1854: ‘I regard my occupation as somewhat akin to that of the priests.’ The Persian Carpet guide has this: ‘On his first visit to Jerusalem, 1854-6, Hunt had rented a house inside the city gates. In his diary writing of 7th April 1855 he wrote about his visit to the Dome of the Rock, and professed himself ‘fairly overwhelmed with the solemn beauty’ of the interior. ‘All is sombre, so that at first one can scarcely make out the design - a circle of graceful pillars supporting the dome and an octagonal space without. The inner circle is shut in with a screen and is entered by ascending two or three steps: here one is shown the extensive surface of the natural rock where Abraham offered Isaac on which the Temple was erected.’

One important source of information about the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood is The Diary of Ford Madox Brown, edited by Virginia Surtees and first published in 1981 by Yale University Press. Brown is best known for historical/biblical paintings and frescoes, including a series of 12 murals for Manchester Town Hall - see The Diary Junction for a little more information. Here are a few extracts from his diary about Hunt.

31 August 1848
‘Set to work about 12 till 2 & from 3 till 4 at the architecture. Rosetti called with Hunt, a clever young man.’

16 January 1855
‘Yesterday [Thomas] Seddon came back after 20 months of absence, looking thinner & genteeler than ever & in high spirits. I went with him to Kentishtown leaving my work just begun. His pictures are cruelly P.R.B.’d. I was very sorry to see he had made less than no progress. . . Hunt, he tells me, gave him no advice at all, he has been prepossessed against him I fear, it is a great pity. There is no better hearted fellow living nor a truer gentleman.’

15 March 1856
‘Up late, to work about 1 till half past 3 then to see [Alfred] Stevens & Hunt & [Henry] Holliday. Stevens picture a progress evidently. Hunts are without doubt the finest he has done yet. The Christ & Mary in the temple is one of the grandest works of modern times & the lantern maker also is a lovely little work, but ill drawn. Hunt as at last decided against private exhibiting again so that is all knocked at head after so much jaw on his part about it.’

19 May 1856
‘. . . to the R.A. Went over it all, catalogue in hand from No. 1 to the End. Very little good, only 3 historical works & they not good. . . Hunt & Millais unrivalled, except by [James Clarke] Hook how for colour, indescribable charm, is pre-eminent even to hugging him in ones arms. A perfect poem is each of his little pictures. Millais’ look ten times better than in his room owing to contrast with the surrounding badness. Hunts Scape goat requires to be seen to be believed in & only then can it be understood how by the might of genius out of an old goat & some saline incrustations can be made one of the most tragic & impressive works in the annals of art.’

Diary briefs

Lawrence of Arabia’s secret ‘X-flights’ revealed in diary - The Daily Telegraph

Bath historian to research Elizabeth Wynne diaries - BBC

Nurse’s diary reveals Churchill’s ill-humour - Daily Mail

Mother Teresa’s doubts

Mother Teresa, the famous nun who tended the poor and sick in Kolkata, was born 100 years ago today. She was not known as a diarist but, in 2002, five years after her death, an Italian author published a book with previously unknown diary and letter texts. This material caused media stories round the world because it revealed that Mother Teresa - a symbol of religious belief and the good that can come of it - had had crises of faith!

Agnes Gonxha Bojaxhiu was born, of Albanian descent, in Macedonia on 26 August 1910. She is said to have heard the call of God strongly from the age of 12; and, at 18, she joined the Sisters of Loreto, an Irish community of nuns. After training for a few months in Dublin, she was sent to India where, in 1931, she took her initial vows as a nun. From then until 1948 she taught at St Mary’s High School in (what was then known as) Calcutta.

Thereafter, having been given permission to leave the convent school, she devoted herself to working in the slums of Calcutta where she began an open-air school. She soon attracted voluntary helpers and financial support, and in late 1950 received Holy See authority to start her own order, The Missionaries of Charity. Over the coming years, the order launched hospices, orphanages and leper houses all over India, and then in many countries around the world.

By the early 1970s, Mother Teresa had become something of an international celebrity, and the Catholic church began to honour her. Pope Paul VI awarded her the first Pope John XXIII Peace Prize, commending her work with the poor, as well as her displays of Christian charity and efforts for peace. Other, international and secular awards followed (including many honorary degrees), not least the Nobel Peace Prize in 1979.

By 1996, the humble order started by Mother Teresa less than 50 years earlier was operating over 500 missions in more than 100 countries. But her own health had been poor for some years, having had two heart attacks, pneumonia and malaria. She stepped down as head of Missionaries of Charity in March 1997, and died later the same year. The Catholic Church moved quickly to begin a process of beatification and, in 2003, bestowed on her the title ‘Blessed’. Further steps are being taken towards making her a saint.  

Mother Teresa, however, was not universally praised in her later years, with some researchers and commentators finding significant fault in the way her order operated, financially and with regard to neglect and even abuse in some of her orphanages. There is no shortage of biographical information on the internet about Mother Teresa - Wikipedia has a very well referenced biography; a briefer one can be found at the Nobel Prize website; and there’s lots of information at the Mother Teresa of Calcutta Center.

There appear to be no diaries published in English written by Mother Teresa, but there is some evidence that she did keep a diary sometimes. Kathryn Spink, in her Mother Teresa: A Complete Authorized Biography, published by HarperCollins in 1997, quotes some diary texts. Wikipedia reproduces one of these:

‘Our Lord wants me to be a free nun covered with the poverty of the cross. Today I learned a good lesson. The poverty of the poor must be so hard for them. While looking for a home I walked and walked till my arms and legs ached. I thought how much they must ache in body and soul, looking for a home, food and health. Then the comfort of Loreto came to tempt me. ‘You have only to say the word and all that will be yours again,’ the Tempter kept on saying . . . Of free choice, my God, and out of love for you, I desire to remain and do whatever be your Holy will in my regard. I did not let a single tear come.’

Then, in 2001, according to the Catholic News, several of Mother Teresa’s letters and diary entries which had been collected by Roman Catholic authorities in Calcutta were published in the Journal of Theological Reflection of the Jesuit-run Vidyajyoti School of Theology in New Delhi. These revealed that she had written in a 1959-1960 spiritual diary, ‘In my soul, I feel just the terrible pain of loss, of God not wanting me, of God not being God, of God not really existing.’

In 2002, it was announced that some her letters and diaries would be published in an Italian book Il Segreto di Madre Teresa (Mother Teresa’s Secret) by Gaeta Saverio. This led to media articles round the world. The BBC, for example, noted that the secret letters and diaries showed Mother Teresa ‘was haunted by religious doubt’. It quoted several extracts, but these were all from letters.

Five years later, Mother Teresa’s letters to her confessors and superiors appeared in an English volume - Mother Teresa: Come Be My Light - compiled and edited by the Rev Brian Kolodiejchuk and published by Doubleday. According to the book’s blurb: ‘The letters, many of them preserved against her wishes (she had requested that they be destroyed but was overruled by her church), reveal that for the last nearly half-century of her life she felt no presence of God whatsoever.’ For more on this see Time Magazine.

A dose of illness

Today marks twenty years since the death of one Britain’s strangest murderers, Graham Young, a man so obsessed with poisons that he killed and harmed people simply for the sake of experiment. And, while poisoning them, he kept a detailed diary of doses administered and their effects. More recently, a Japanese teenager, inspired by Young, nearly killed her mother, and blogged about the process.

Young was born in North London, in 1947, but his mother died a few months later. After a couple of years with his aunt, the toddler was reunited with his father and new wife Molly. He grew up a peculiar child, according to biographies, anti-social, and reading a lot of sensationalist fiction. As a teenager, he became very focused on chemistry and toxicology, and repeatedly managed to acquire small amounts of poisons from local chemists, ostensibly for school experiments. A fellow school pupil, said to be Young’s first victim, was lucky not to die from a cocktail of poisons he’d administered.

Thereafter, it seems, Young focused on his own family so as to be able better to observe the effects of his poisoning. His elder sister, Winifred, was found to have suffered from belladonna poisoning in 1961, but no action against Graham was taken. The following year Molly, his stepmother, died. Though poisoning was not given as cause of death at the time, it was established later that Graham had been administering antimony over time, and then killed her with thallium. Indeed, he had been poisoning all the family, including himself.

After the death of Molly, Young was sent to a psychiatrist, and then was finally arrested in May 1962. He confessed to attempted murders of his father, sister and friend, though the murder of his stepmother could not be proved because the body had been cremated. He was sentenced to 15 years in Broadmoor Hospital, an institution for mentally unstable criminals, and released after nine.

On his release, in February 1971, Young found work as a store man with a photographic supply firm which used thallium (his references having excluded the cause of his incarceration at Broadmoor). Soon, the foreman grew ill and died, and also a sickness swept through his workplace which was mistakenly blamed on a virus. A second work colleague died before an investigation led to Young’s arrest in November 1971.

Police found thallium in Young’s possession, and a diary in his flat under the bed. Entitled ‘A Student’s and Officer’s Casebook’, it was hand-written in loose-leaf pages, with the names of victims denoted by their initials. It contained a careful record of the doses he had administered, their effects on his victims, and whether he was going to allow them to live or die. At Young’s trial, he pleaded not guilty and claimed the diary was fiction; nevertheless, he was sentenced to life imprisonment. He died in his cell at Parkhurst prison on 22 August 1990 aged only 42. 

Several books have been written about Young: Obsessive Poisoner, by his sister Winifred; and St. Albans Poisoner: Life and Crimes of Graham Young by Anthony Holden. A 1995 film - The Young Poisoner’s Handbook - was based on Young’s story. And there is no shortage of information on the internet, see Wikipedia or Murderpedia. 

Here are several (undated) extracts from Young’s diary: 

‘I have administered a fatal dose of the special compound. . . it seems a shame to condemn such a likeable man to such a horrible end. . . he is doomed to premature decease.’

‘F is now seriously ill. He has developed paralysis and blindness. Even if the blindness is reverse, organic brain disease would render him a husk. From my point of view his death would be a relief. It would remove one more casualty from an already crowded field of battle.’

‘It looks like I might be detected. . . I shall have to destroy myself.’ 

‘Di irritated me yesterday, so I packed her off home with a dose of illness.’ 

Five years ago this month, and across the other side of the world, a Japanese teenage girl began poisoning her mother, not for any grudge against her, but because she wanted to experiment with thallium. The mother was hospitalised, and in October 2005, the girl was arrested. The family said they did not want her charged, but a family court sent her to reform school. According to a BBC report, based on Japanese newspaper accounts, the girl had been inspired by a book about Young, and had herself kept a blog diary about her mother’s condition.

Seventy wax matches

Wilfrid Scawen Blunt was born 170 years ago today. A famous breeder of Arab horses, a notorious womaniser, and a fierce anti-imperialist, he was also an interesting diarist, though the public had to wait more than 50 years following his death for revelations about his many affairs. A century ago today - the diaries reveal simply - Blunt was celebrating his 70th birthday with family, and being given a cake holding seventy wax matches.

Blunt was born in 1840 into an old Sussex family at Petworth House, but his father died when he was only two, and his mother when he was 15. Thereafter, he was educated at Stonyhurst and Oscott, before entering the diplomatic service aged 18. For more than a decade, he served in several European capitals and South America, adopting a self-styled Byronic image, and taking full advantage of his single status in privileged society. He had love affairs wherever he went, and sometimes published poetry about them.

In 1869, Blunt left government office, and married Lady Anne Noel, Byron’s granddaughter in fact. Within a couple of years, he had inherited family estates, not least the one at Crabbet Park. In 1873, Anne gave birth to Judith, their only child who survived past infancy. The Blunts travelled frequently, and lived much in the Middle East, often moving around on horseback together. With pure bred Arab stallions imported from the Middle East, they set up a stud farm at Crabbet Park which would become internationally famous, and survive nearly a century. Wikipedia says ‘at least 90% of all Arabian horses alive today trace their pedigrees in one or more lines to Crabbet horses’. 

Aged around 40, Blunt started to become increasingly outspoken on international issues, taking a firm anti-imperialist stance, opposing British rule in Egypt, and British policy in the Sudan and sympathising with Muslim aspirations. He propagated his ideas in books such as The Future of Islam and Ideas about India. In 1888, he even served a term in prison for championing Irish home rule and defying the then Irish chief secretary, Arthur Balfour. (Later on, it is said, Blunt was to get his revenge on Balfour by seducing and making pregnant his own cousin, Mary Elcho, who happened to be a very close friend and confidant of Balfour.) 

Blunt’s high-handed ways and constant infidelities (several of them long-term and with society women), however, eventually led, in 1906, to an acrimonious separation from his wife. Blunt claimed they had been reconciled by the time of her death in 1917, but afterwards there was a bitter lawsuit over the ownership of the stud which Blunt eventually lost to Judith, his daughter. His own death came in 1922. There is more biographical information at Wikipedia, The Fitzwilliam Museum website, and Aisha Bewley’s website on Islamic topics. 

Among his various talents, Blunt was also a diarist of some repute. My Diaries: Being a Personal Narrative of Events 1888-1914 was published in two volumes just before his death in 1921 by Martin Secker. But earlier, he had used extracts from his diaries in political books such as The Secret Occupation of Egypt (1907), India under Lord Ripon (1909), and Gordon at Khartoum (1911). However, some of his diary material also contained highly personal revelations - particularly about his affairs - and this was not opened to the public (by The Fitzwilliam Museum which holds the manuscripts) until 50 years after his death, in 1972. Thereafter, in 1979, Weidenfeld & Nicolson published Elizabeth Longford’s biography - A Pilgrimage of Passion - based on the full range of his diaries. 

Here is the very first diary entry in India under Ripon - A Private Diary published by T Fisher Unwin, London, in 1909, the full text of which is available at Internet Archive. George Robinson, 1st Marquess of Ripon (born at 10 Downing Street, the second son of Prime Minister Frederick John Robinson) held many government posts, but was Viceroy of India from 1880 to 1884.

12 September 1883

‘Left home by the 10 o’clock train, and spent the day in London. A letter had come from Eddy Hamilton by the morning’s post asking to see me before I went abroad, and I went to Downing Street at one o’clock, Mr Gladstone is away yachting, and Eddy is acting Prime Minister, and a very great man. I had not been to Downing Street since last year - just upon a year ago - when I went to ask for Arabi’s life. Eddy was extremely amiable this time, and asked me what I was going to do in the East. I told him my plans exactly - that I was going first to Egypt, and should call on Baring and, if I found him favourably disposed, should propose to him a restoration of the National Party, but if he would not listen I should go on to Ceylon and India; that I could not do anything in Egypt without Baring’s countenance, for the people would not dare to come to speak to me; but, if Baring would help, I thought I could get the Nationalist leaders elected at the elections - all depended on the action of our officials. 

Also as to India - that I had no intention of exciting to rebellion; that I should go first to Lord Ripon, then to Lyall, and afterwards to the provinces; that the subjects I wished principally to study were the financial condition of the country, that is to say, to find out whether our administration was really ruining India, and to ascertain the views of the natives with regard to Home Rule. Of both these plans Eddy seemed to approve, said that Baring would be sure to wish to see me, and listen to all I had to say, and, though he did not commit himself to anything very definite about the rest, did not disapprove. With regard to India, he said he would write to Primrose, Lord Ripon’s private secretary, to show me all attention; so on the whole I am highly satisfied with my visit. 

I had some talk with Eddy about Randolph Churchill. He said that my connection with him in Egyptian affairs did me harm, but I don’t believe that, and I look upon Churchill as quite as serious a politician as the rest with whom I have had to deal. On Egypt I think he is sincere, because he has an American wife, and the Americans have always sympathized with freedom there. I believe, too, that he is at a turning point in his character, and means to have done with mere random fighting, and we both agreed that he has a career before him. For my own part I like Churchill. He does not affect any high principles, but he acts squarely.’ 

And here is a diary extract from exactly a century ago today (taken from My Diaries: Being a Personal Narrative of Events 1888-1914)

17 August 1910

‘My birthday of seventy, which I am spending at Clouds [a country house designed by Philip Webb and built 25 or so years earlier for the Wyndhams, in Wiltshire, to whom Blunt was related], a long and delightful day; also and on this I pride myself, I was able with my cup and ball to catch it on the point nine times out of twelve, which shows that my eyesight is not failing. In the evening we had the traditional birthday cake with the children, lighting it up with seventy wax matches. Guy’s boys amuse me. George, a boy of sixteen, still at Wellington School, but has grown a slight moustache and affects the way of a young man. He is very good-looking, and spends most of his time with the servants in the pantry and the housekeeper’s room, where he talks nonsense to the maids and helps footmen to clean the knives, smoking a briar pipe with twist tobacco, the most horrible stuff. Upstairs he has a fine assurance with pronounced opinions, as a man of the world. He is to go into the Foreign Office, and seems to have an amusing career before him. Dick, the younger, is of a strict scaramouch type, cleverer but less good-looking. [Dick Wyndham was the father of Joan Wyndham, a noted 20th century diarist who died recently in 2007]. Olivia is an audaciously pretty girl of thirteen, also with a career of pleasure before her, ready for all possible wickedness in a wicked world. They spent the day making a grand pic-nic with the servants and governesses to Pertwood on the Downs, where they had sack and three-legged races and all sorts of boisterous fun, of which Dick, who dined at table, gave us a naive account.’