Monday, December 6, 2021

What darkens prison life

Six weeks into his detention by the Gestapo, Odd Nansen, a young Norwegian architect, was writing in his secret diary that ‘the tobacco shortage is glaring, and beyond all comparison the thing that darkens prison life most’. Some 18 months later he would be writing, ‘every day prisoners are being brought here from Berlin, and they are shot at once.’ Nansen - born 120 years ago today - survived the concentration camps and the war, and is today remembered mostly for this diary.

Odd was born on 6 December 1901 near Oslo in Norway, the second youngest of five children born to explorer and diarist Fridtjof Nansen (see Siberian driftwood cannot lie). His mother died when he was six, and he went to live with a neighbour. He studied architecture at the Norwegian Institute of Technology in Trondheim. In 1927, he married Karen Hirsch, and they would have two children. That same year he went to work in New York City, returning to Oslo in 1930 where he was apprenticed with Arnstein Arneberg, one of the country’s leading architects. However, by the following year, he had started his own architectural practice.

In 1936, Nansen formed the humanitarian organisation Nansenhjelpen to provide relief for Jews fleeing Nazi persecution in central Europe; and in 1939, it set up the Jewish Children’s Home in Oslo. Together with his wife and a journalist they set up an office in Prague, and Nansen himself travelled extensively through Europe trying to enlist help for the growing number of refugees. Back in Oslo, he joined the fledgling Norwegian resistance. However, he was soon arrested by the Gestapo and detained at Veidal prison camp, outside Oslo (where daily life was tolerable, and he was even allowed some freedom to visit the city), and then at Sachsenhausen concentration camp in Germany.

Nansen survived the war, and returned to Norway where he resumed his architectural career. However, he also continued his humanitarian work, as president of One World from 1947 to 1956 and as a co-founder of UNICEF. He received many honours in time, from his own nation, but also from Germany and Austria. He died in 1973. Further information is available from Wikipedia, Norwegian American or Tim Boyce’s website.

Odd Nansen is mostly remembered today for the diary he kept throughout his incarceration by the Gestapo. It was first published in its original Norwegian in three volumes in 1947. An English one-volume version (as translated by Katherine Jones) was published by G. P. Putnam in 1949 titled From Day to Day (which can freely borrowed online at Internet Archive). However, much more recently, in 2016, it was edited by Timothy J. Boyce and re-published as From Day to Day: One Man’s Diary of Survival in Nazi Concentration Camps. This new edition - which can be sampled at Googlebooks - is fully annotated and indexed. It contains a wealth of information and commentary as well as all the sketches by Nansen that were also in the original edition. 

In his introduction, Boyce explains that Nansen was already an inveterate diarist at the time of his arrest in 1942, and that he started his secret note taking on the very first night in jail, continuing, more or less daily, throughout his captivity. ‘With an unsparing eye Nansen recorded the casual brutality and random terror that was the fate of a camp prisoner. His entries reveal the quiet strength, and sometimes ugly prejudices, of his fellow Norwegians; his palpable longing for his wife and family; his constantly frustrated hopes for an early end to the war; his horror at the especially barbaric treatment reserved for the Jews.’

Both editions of the book include a foreword by Nansen himself. Here is the first part of it: ‘This book is a diary and makes no claim to be anything else. I was in the habit of keeping a diary, so it was natural to continue after my arrest on January 13, 1942. Paper and writing materials were the last things I put in my knapsack before going off with the district sheriff and his henchman, up in the mountains at Gausdal. I began to write the very next day in my cell in the Lillehammer county jail and kept it up for nearly three and a half years. For reasons easily understood I wrote the diary in a very small hand on the thinnest of paper. The writing was so small that the typists had to use a magnifying glass.

I never wrote with the idea that what I was writing would be published. I was writing for my wife, to let her know what was happening and how I was getting on—and also to arrange my ideas. Therefore the diary may often seem rather too personal, even though most of the private matter has been cut out. I couldn’t cut it all out, I felt, without taking from the diary too much of its character. For it is the case that a prisoner thinks a very great deal about his wife, his children, and home.

Friends, both outside and inside, thought that a diary like this might be of interest beyond my immediate circle. I feel that they may be right, and so here it is. I should explain that it has been cut down to about a third of the original manuscript. I found much that ought to be cut, and could be cut, and it has turned out long enough.

Here are a few extracts from Nansen’s diaries. A few further extracts can be read online at History Net

13 January 1942
‘At half-past seven the district sheriff of East Gausdal came up to the cottage with two Germans. It was dark. We saw the sheriff’s flashlight a long way off. We thought he was hunting radios, as he came just at the suspicious hour.

It was for me. They said I must come away to Lillehammer, and then to Oslo, where I should be told the reason. I was given time to pack my knapsack. Kari was calm, Marit, Eigil, and Siri cried, poor things, but were smiling bravely through their tears before I left.

So off we went. The car was waiting at the sanatorium garage. The sheriff talked a lot in the car. No doubt he was anxious to gloss over his pitiful role. He wished me a speedy return when he went off at Segalstad Bridge.

I was put into the Lillehammer county jail. A single cell. When the jailer had gone, a voice in the cell next door asked who I was. It was Odd Wangs voice. He did not know why he had been arrested either, but thought it must be due to a misunderstanding. That I should have been arrested, he said, was natural enough, but that he. . . No, it was certainly a misunderstanding, which would be cleared up as soon as he got to Oslo and had a chance to explain himself. It had grown late, and we soon lay down. The light was left us until twelve o’clock, and we could read. The plank bed was hard, as plank beds are, but I was not cold, for we were given blankets.

One of the “Germans” turned out to be a purebred Norwegian. At the cottage he pretended to be German. Admiral Tank-Nielsen had spent the night before in my cell.

I heard about the new actions against special officers and against the friends of the royal family, who were all arrested at this time. I supposed I must come under the latter heading, and if so I should probably be “inside” until the war was over?’

23 February 1942
‘Today the whole Bergen gang was sent off. We couldn’t even say good-bye to them. We stood here at the office window and watched them as they moved off with their trunks and knapsacks, in civilian clothes and under a strong guard of roaring Germans. Bryn waved gallantly as he marched away downhill with the rest.

Otherwise life goes on as before; soon we shall be right back in the old familiar grooves. Yesterday there was even a distribution of tobacco - half a box of pipe tobacco each - as before.

On the very morning the escape took place, the Storm Prince had complained to the Terrace that he had too few men for guard duties. That’s what one may call a lucky hit, and it has most likely saved him from unpleasantness. New sentries have been posted, and things have been tightened up a little all round. In the future, it’s reported, no one may go into Oslo (except Rinnan, who enjoys the personal favor of the Storm Prince). But no doubt that too will gradually pass off, so that others can have their chance as well. In the meantime we must have patience and enjoy the many and various advantages of prison life as well as we can. For there are in fact certain advantages in this life. If we can’t exactly call it peace, still it offers much of what is called peace - no telephones, no bother, no nervous hurry to get this and that done in time, no meetings, no importunates coming to see one and to chatter about this and that, no oppressive responsibility for one thing and another.’

24 February 1942
‘It is six weeks ago today that I was arrested up in Gausdal. That seems to lie so infinitely far back in time. It’s strange how the days fly past. Working hours are positively too short if there is anything one wants to get done. And there is, here in the architects office. There are songs to write, caricatures to draw, matters to arrange. Recently there have been more and more prisoners wanting free designs for houses and cottages. Some must have them quickly, for they are expecting to get out soon; others have more time, but then as a rule they have also time to enforce their views on architecture, so that the problems gradually become comprehensive and downright wearing.

Our stout, comfortable Bauleiter is in the know. He quite realizes that we are working on things we ought not, but he has secured us the personal permission of the Storm Prince to have lights in our rooms until eleven every night, since we have “urgent matters” on hand. In addition he has now procured us a quantity of excellent drawing material.

We have even got hold of a copying machine, so that now we can get our caricatures and private jobs copied on the spot. Also he has arranged the purchase of an edging machine, so all our drawings are elegantly bordered. He is in on a certain amount of smuggling, thinks for instance that our bread ration is terribly small. His opinion was that he would starve to death if he had to live on it.

Of architecture he has not the faintest idea. He is a carpenter from Hannover, where in civil life he ran a little business. He is homesick for it and has had enough of soldiering, he says. It is badly paid and unattractive altogether. He was on the North Finnish front and was wounded there. He saw and experienced war at close quarters, and it was frightful. Once he saw a Finn cut the throats of four Russians, cut out their Adam’s apples and put them away as souvenirs. The Finn explained that he had to have sixteen Adam’s apples to get a holiday. Our fat friend Bauleiter Gebecke shook his head, which is like an egg the wrong way up, threw out his hand and smiled his broad smile, so that the little mouse teeth stood out between his mighty lips. “That’s war,” he said. It was something he had once been in, now it was past and gone. His reflections went no further. He was now in Grini, where he had been sent to look after some building work, far, far from the fronts. And here he thought he would have to stay at least two years.

He quite understands that the building work will be so-so. He fully shares our amusement at the way the plans are constantly being changed and that the bigwigs never can agree on how a first-class concentration camp ought to be designed. Today he was grinning all over when he arrived from Oslo with a big copying machine under his arm and announced that the last plan also had been rejected and therefore we were for the moment without a plan. That being so, he said, we had no use for this big machine, and it cost two hundred kroner, but “money is no object,” he declared with an even broader grin, which went almost to his ears.

I suggested that we might draw an office hut and build that first, and I turned up a sketch of such a hut. He got interested immediately and by the afternoon had already secured the Storm Prince’s consent, so now we can just get on with it and not bother about anyone else. “We won’t even show them the drawings,” said he. “We’ll just build the whole thing, order the materials, and get ahead.” Then he sat down and wanted to know how we actually set about building such a hut. I gave him a brisk little lecture on elementary domestic building, accompanied by sketches, and he was very attentive, very docile, and very grateful. After all he has really nothing to do, and if he had, he would be in rather a fix without us to lean on.’

24 August 1942
‘Today I’ve taken in my “big wash.” I boiled and washed my clothes yesterday, and this evening they were dry and fine and clean, and I still haven’t begun to use one extra change of underclothes. I’m doing first-rate. Tomorrow I must try and get my socks darned. They’re having a hard time.

I forgot to say that yesterday we bathed in the brook under guard. Bathed is a strong expression; the brook isn’t more than half a meter [20 inches] wide and hasn’t much water in it, but still it flows, and one can get wet all over if one turns about. Per Krohg painted a sketch of that scene. He showed me another preliminary sketch: Divine Service. That may be grand. Otherwise he’s busy painting for the Tot-Baurat [construction superintendent], who nosed him out in the list of prisoners, embezzled him and set him to painting pictures. Now he behaves as if he owned Per Krohg, hide and hair. Everything Per does is the Baurat’s property, but he has his time to himself, goes about without a guard, and I think really he’s thriving on it. He has become enthusiastic over a couple of subjects, and manages to hide away enough sketches for them. Yesterday he became a grandfather, or was it today? He’s coping splendidly with this life.

The tobacco shortage is glaring, and beyond all comparison the thing that darkens prison life most. And there are small prospects of getting any for a long time. Several are bartering their watches and valuables for a little tobacco. Some of the civilian workers are turning the situation to good account. The Poles and Czechs are not backward either. One or two decent German guards give me a pinch of tobacco or a cigarette now and then. I’m almost over the worst now. But it is a severe privation. Good night!’

5 December 1943
‘The day before yesterday, when we were just leaving work, there came an order that everyone was to fall in instantly for counting. A man had been missed. It turned out to be a prisoner in the next squad who had hanged himself somewhere in the woods. As soon as that fact was ascertained, all was forgotten and in order. They had the correct total - including a corpse, which was fetched and driven up on a cart to be counted in!

On the same day the man in charge of the shoe factory, a Hauptsturmführer, was arrested for swindling on a large scale. He had had ten thousand pairs of shoes burned to wipe out the traces of his fraud. For the shoes were property stolen from murdered Jews, and he had had them cut up on his own behalf, to secure the ornaments and currency they contained. How much he found is not known, but from previous experience one may safely reckon that immense sums are involved. The man was arrested not for embezzling the valuables but for burning the footwear! Many prisoners, who were employed in the shoe factory and carried out his orders, have been up for questioning, and the case is apparently brewing up to great dimensions. If only it gets big enough, no doubt it will be shelved and stifled. For if that splits open, everything will split. All are implicated in some swindle or other, and that binds them all together in a kind of freemasonry.

Yesterday a prisoner was shot in an attempt to escape. A poor wretch of a Pole, who had first attempted to hang himself. I suppose he could stand no more. Well, so he found peace, and that was doubtless what he longed for.

Every day prisoners are being brought here from Berlin, and they are shot at once. There were eleven yesterday, seven the day before, etc. What they had been guilty of we don’t know, but most probably they had been stealing, looting, and exploiting the situation in burning Berlin. Last night we had another raid.’

Sunday, December 5, 2021

Saw television!

‘Met John Logie Baird; a charming man - a shy, quietly-spoken Scot. He could serve as a model for the schoolboy’s picture of a shock-haired, modest, dreamy, absent-minded inventor. Nevertheless shrewd.’ This is from the diary of Sydney Moseley, a journalist and writer, who died seventy years ago today; but, he is not well-remembered other than for his association with Baird, and writing a biography of the inventor.

There is very little information about Moseley readily available on the internet. He was born in 1888, and became a journalist, working initially for the Daily Express. For some years he lived in Cairo, editing English-language newspapers and acting as a foreign correspondent for The New York Times and others. Back in Britain, he founded the Southend Times and also stood for election to Parliament as a member for Southend-on-Sea.

Moseley worked to promote the invention - a television broadcast system - of his friend John Logie Baird, and was instrumental in persuading the BBC to try it out. There is a little more about this on the BBC website.

Moseley authored many books during his life. Truth about the Dardanelles and With Kitchener in Cairo were published during the First World War. Books on London, about the criminal system, and making investments followed. Most well known, though, are his books on television, including Who’s Who in Broadcasting; Simple Guide to Television; and Television for the Intelligent Amateur. His best remembered work is probably the 1952 biography of his friend, John Baird, The Romance and Tragedy of the Pioneer of Television.

A little while before Moseley’s death - on 5 December 1961 - Max Parrish published The Private Diaries of Sydney Moseley in association with Moseley’s own publisher in Bournemouth, The Outspoken Press. Used copies are available at Abebooks. The diaries are said to be a ‘startlingly frank record of a poor, ambitious boy’s struggle to make good’. Here are a few extracts.

31 March 1911
‘(Fleet Street) And now, after a week of continuous work, I can rest awhile and write my thoughts. Ten minutes ago I hadn’t a penny in my pocket; now I have over £4! Watney offered me the ‘night news-editor’ job and I accepted - again on space! This means that anything I write through the night which is printed will be paid for. I can ‘order’ any stories from our correspondents in the provinces, too. I think he has a good opinion of me, and this has been strengthened by the report of Sir William Bull, who was ‘very pleased’ with what I did. As regards the work I am about to do, he added: ‘there are great possibilities’ in it, and I am of course going to make use of most of them. According to Watney’s description, it is a post I should love; but I must take care of my health. It is now 6:30pm and I have had nothing to eat since 8 this morning!’

12 April 1911
‘(The Old Victoria Park) I should really be in bed but here I am! Been too busy to write these notes; it seems as if I have made a really good start on the Evening Times. Given a chance at last I am seizing it with both hands. Despite my column stories I am none too confident. I’ve already has some experience of the vagaries of journalism, thank you! It is very easy to slip. Have ordered suit, overcoat and writing desk. The Census job fairly unnerved me. Had to go into terribly poor quarters of the East End slums. St Peter’s Road in Mile End, where I lived, was a paradise in comparison - with trees and a church at one end, and the Charrington brewery at the other! What terrible lives some people endure! I thought I had seen enough! Dead people . . . dying people . . . starving people. There was a beautiful slut sitting beside a coffin. Beneath her rags and dirt was a queen. . . Wrote an article on my experiences which will be published - I hope!

Today I put 10s down as ‘extra’ expenses, and it’s going to Watney for his OK. Careful my lad, careful!’

1 August 1928
‘Met John Logie Baird; a charming man - a shy, quietly-spoken Scot. He could serve as a model for the schoolboy’s picture of a shock-haired, modest, dreamy, absent-minded inventor. Nevertheless shrewd. We sat and chatted. He told me he is having a bad time with the scoffers and sceptics - including the BBC and part of the technical press - who are trying to ridicule and kill his invention of television at its inception. I told him that if he would let me see what he has actually achieved - well, he would have to risk me damning it - or praising it! If I were convinced - I would battle for him. We got on well together and I have arranged to test his remarkable claim.

(Later) Saw television! Baird’s partner, a tall good-looking but highly temperamental Irishman, Captain Oliver George Hutchinson, was nice but very nervous of chancing it with me. He was terribly anxious I should be impressed. Liked the pair of them, especially Baird, and decided to give my support. . . I think we really have what is called television. And so, once more into the fray!’

9 March 1956
‘(Bournemouth) Today is my 68th birthday - and it is time I finally closed my diaries! Would that it were possible to close my mind with equal emphasis. Thoughts, ideas, views continue to chase each other. . . How will it really end?

What comparisons can one make with the past? Were my times the ‘good old days’? Or were they, as our modern progressives call them, the ‘bad old days’? Well - where are we today? We have: penicillin; hydrogen bombs; radio; plastics; Teddy-boys; modern plumbing; Bikini suits; pheno-barbitone; television; cafetarias; automobiles for all; telephones for all; a broken sound-barrier; long-playing records; inflation; diesel engines; higher wages; guided missiles, and aspirin tablets which dissolve much more quickly than ever before. Are we any happier? - more secure? - really better off? One could write much on the subject, and the ensuing discussion would go on ‘far, far into the night’.’

This article is a slightly revised version of one first published on 5 December 2011.

Friday, December 3, 2021

Brighton in diaries

A decade ago this month History Press published Brighton in Diaries, a collection of diary extracts about the city, one of Britain’s most vibrant seaside resorts. This was my first published book about diaries, and is still available new or secondhand. Essentially, it consists of cameos of people, famous and ordinary, young and old, serious and cynical, but with Brighton always setting the scene: like a play, perhaps, in which, despite a medley of brilliant actors and a plot full of intriguing story-lines, it is the set, the backdrop that really steals the show. The idea for the book came out of writing these articles for The Diary Review.

Many legendary writers - including Walter Scott, Arnold Bennett and Virginia Woolf - inhabit the book’s pages, often appearing in their most unguarded guises. Here also are less well-known characters, such as William Tayler (a footman), Gideon Mantell (a surgeon and dinosaur bone collector), and Xue Fucheng (an early Chinese diplomat). There are also several diarists whose writing has never appeared in print before: Olive Stammer, for example, who kept a diary during the Second World War; and Ross Reeves, a young gay musician whose diary extracts are very recent.

Brighton in Diaries includes a chapter (one of 26) with some diary entries of my own relating to Brighton, starting in 1977 when I first went there and slept in a cemetery. The photo above is of my parents on the Palace Pier in 1951. Having just met, they’d gone there for, what is now referred to as, a dirty weekend! For a little more on the book see the feature published in The Argus.

Brighton in Diaries can be purchased directly from The History Press, from book stores in and around Brighton (such as City Books), and from online retailers such as Amazon. Here are a few extracts:

3 September 1778, Peregrine Phillips
‘A monstrous fish, called a Tunie, but not much unlike a shark, lays on the shore, wearing two double rows of large masticators: it has broke the net, and, towards mending same, the fishermen collect money of the curious.’

13 September 1778, Peregrine Phillips
‘Took the liberty of surveying all the bathing-machines. Fine ladies going - fine ladies coming away. Observe them at the instant of bathing. How humiliating! They appear more deplorable than so many corpses in shrouds.’

14 December 1818, John Croker
‘After breakfast Blomfield called to scold us for not going to the Pavilion at once, and to command us on the part of his Royal Highness to come there. We went there and walked through the rooms again and visited the offices. The kitchen and larders are admirable - such contrivances for roasting, boiling, baking, stewing, frying, steaming, and heating; hot plates, hot closets, hot air, and hot hearths, with all manner of cocks for hot water and cold water, and warm water and steam, and twenty saucepans all ticketed and labelled, placed up to their necks in a vapour bath.’

19 July 1837, William Tayler ‘There are numbers of old wimen have little wooden houses on wheels, and into these houses people goe that want to bathe.’

11 January 1910, Arnold Bennett
‘Grand rolling weather. Foamy sea, boisterous wind, sun, pageant of clouds, and Brighton full of wealthy imperative persons dashing about in furs and cars. I walked with joy to and fro on this unequalled promenade. And yet, at this election time, when all wealth and all snobbery is leagued together against the poor, I could spit in the face of arrogant and unmerciful Brighton, sporting its damned Tory colours.’

30 August 1940, Olive Stammer
‘Fights between planes over Bton, Hove & Patcham. Spitfire down in Portland Road. House tops damaged. Pilot killed. They could only find his hand.’

26 February 1941, Virginia Woolf
‘The fat woman had a louche large white muffin face. T’other was slightly grilled. [. . .] Brighton a love-corner for slugs. The powdered the pampered the mildly improper.’

21 April 1995, Des Marshall
‘I believe Brighton has more disturbed people in relation to the size of the population, than any other town in the country. There’s a sort of unreality about the town. It’s too frivolous. People don’t really listen to each other. They seem very excited and distracted. [. . .] People wear such odd clothes that don’t really match. Could be, sort of punk, with a bit of hippy thrown in, or mohair with greatcoat, or a collar and tie man, with shorts of different colours, possibly even with a bowler hat.’

This article is a slightly revised version of one first published in December 2011.

Friday, November 26, 2021

One died of the plague

‘One died of the plague (most probably) in Eman. Lane, where old Mother Pate lived.’ This is one of the many brief entries in the diary of clergyman and academic John Worthington who died 350 years ago today. His diaries (and letters), covering more than 30 years, were first published in the 19th century, and are freely available to read online.

Worthington was born in Manchester in 1618, and educated at Manchester Grammar School and Emmanuel College, Cambridge. As a student, he excelled in classic languages. He was made a fellow at Emmanuel in 1642, ordained in 1646, and appointed university preacher in 1647. In 1650, he became master of Jesus College, and was also briefly rector at Horton, and, from late 1654, rector at Fen Ditton, Cambridgeshire. In 1657, he married his ex-tutor’s daughter, the 17 year old Mary Whichcote, and they would have four children that survived infancy.

In 1660, at the Restoration, Worthington was replaced as Master of Jesus College (by Richard Sterne, a previous incumbent), and he retired to Fen Ditton. Subsequently, he moved around taking up different church positions, in Suffolk and Norfolk for example, before accepting a living at St Benet Fink in London. He remained there, attending parishioners, even after an outbreak of plague; but, when in September 1666, the great fire destroyed much of his parish, he accepted an invitation by William Brereton (see Drawing up the sluices) to be preacher at Holmes Chapel in Cheshire. This proved unsatisfactory, so he then accepted the living of Ingoldsby, Lincolnshire, which Henry More had procured for him. 

However, Worthington continued to yearn for the access to books and scholars only available in London. In 1667, his wife died, and three years later he finally moved back to the city as an assistant preacher in Hackney. He died on 26 November 1671. Further information is available at Jesus College, Wikipedia, Early Modern Letters Online, and the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (log-in required).

Worthington left behind a considerable volume of papers, including diary entries written through his life. Each one of these was pithy, rarely more than a phrase or line, but they were published in two volumes (along with a great number of letters) in 1847-1886 by the Chetham Society as part of The Diary and Correspondence of Dr. John Worthington (edited by James Crossley). The volumes are freely available at Internet Archive. Here are several extracts from Worthington’s diaries as found in the published volumes.

1637
‘April 3, 1637. I had a dangerous blow on the eye in the Tennis-Court, but I thank God, it was well again.
April 6. the Master of the College (Dr. Sandcroft) returned from Bury.
April 15. the Mr of the Coll, went to Bury again, where he died not long after & Sr Sterry chosen Fellow.
April 25. On this day was the election of a new Master, viz. Mr. Holdsworth.
April 26. he was admitted.
May 13. This day I heard that Mr. Crosley who was of this College died, at London some day this week, on that very day that he should have been married.
June 25. in the afternoon a Sermon for Confession to the Priest was preached at St. Maries by Mr. Sparrow of Queen’s Coll. & Mr. Adams succeeded him the next in ye same subject. About the end of this month of June very good rye & wheat began to be reaped &c.
July 5. Our Master preached ad Clerum.
Aug. 8. I declaimed in the Hall, being Moderator at the end of Freshman’s Term.
Oct. 1. On this day were the Commencer’s Sermons. Dr. Holdsworth preached in the forenoon. Mr. Duport in the afternoon.
Oct. 2. Dr. Holdsworth kept the Act.
Oct. 3. Mr. Pullen of Magd. Coll, answered.
Oct. 4. From Easter to this day, there have died three in Trinity College, viz. Dr. Whaley, Dr. Stubbins, & Mr. Higson a senior Fellow.
Nov. 4. Dr. Brownrig Mr. of Katherine Hall was chosen Vice Chancellor.’

1647
‘Aug. 1. I preached at Lavenham in Suffolk.
Aug. 15. I preached at Cotenham.
Aug. 16. I payd Mr. Mace 10sh 3d month.
Aug. 20. I commonplaced once.
Aug. 24. I commonplaced once.
Sept. 2. The college gates were shut up.
Sept. 6. One died of the plague (most probably) in Eman. Lane, where old Mother Pate lived.
Sept. 12. One died of the plague at the Bird Bolt.
Sept. 19. I preached in the chappell.
Sept. 20. 1 payd Mr. Mace, &c.
Sept. 26. One died at the Birdbolt.
Sept. 27. Another died there.
Sept. 29. I preached in the chappell.
Oct. 8. I preached at St. Maries in the afternoon, my own course.
Oct. 81. I preached at St. Maries in the afternoon, for Mr. Silleaby.
Nov. 14. I preached at Trinity Lecture.
Nov. 23. I payd Mr. Mace 10sh for the 5th month.
Dec. 2. I preached at St. Andrews, at Mr. Potto’s wife’s funerall.’

1660
‘Nov. 8. I came with my family from Jesus College to Ditton.’

1670
‘Aug. 6. We came to Hackney.’

Friday, November 19, 2021

Feeling greatly dissatisfied

‘I am feeling greatly dissatisfied with my lack of opportunity for study. My day is frittered away by the personal seeking of people, when it ought to be given to the great problems which concern the whole country. Four years of this kind of intellectual dissipation may cripple me for the remainder of my life. What might not a vigorous thinker do, if he could be allowed to use the opportunities of a Presidential term in vital, useful activity?’ This is US president James A. Garfield, born 190 years ago today, writing in his diary just three months after becoming president. Sadly, a few weeks later he was shot by an assassin and died shortly after. His lifelong diaries were first published in four volumes but have since been made freely available online by the Library of Congress.

Garfield, the youngest of five children, was born in Cuyahoga County, Ohio, on 19 November 1831 to an impoverished farmer and his wife. His father died when he was two, but his mother struggled on with the farm. His mother remarried, but soon left her second husband. Poor and fatherless, young Garfield took refuge in books, and left home at 16. However he caught malaria working on the canals, returned home to recuperate, and then was found a place at the local school. Subsequently, he attended Western Reserve Eclectic Institute (later Hiram College) and graduated from Williams College. He returned to the Eclectic Institute as a professor of ancient languages, and in 1857, aged 25, he became the school’s president. A year later he married Lucretia Rudolph and the couple would have five children that survived infancy. Garfield also studied law. He was ordained as a minister in the Disciples of Christ church, but by then he was turning to politics.

Garfield became a supporter of the newly organised Republican Party and in 1859 was elected to the Ohio legislature. During the Civil War he helped recruit an Ohio Volunteer Infantry becoming its colonel; and he commanded a brigade at the Battle of Shiloh. He was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives, and, while waiting for Congress to begin its session, he served as chief of staff in the Army of the Cumberland, winning promotion to major general. For nine terms, until 1880, Garfield represented Ohio’s 19th congressional district, becoming an expert on fiscal matters and advocating a high protective tariffs. In 1880, the Ohio legislature elected him to the U.S. Senate, and later the same year, he emerged as a ‘dark horse’ Republican nominee for president. He won the election against the Democratic nominee, Gen. Winfield Scott Hancock, by a very small margin, thus becoming the 20th president of the US.

Four months into his Presidency, Garfield was shot - on 2 July 1881 - by an assassin, Charles Julius Guiteau, an emotionally disturbed man who had failed to gain an appointment in Garfield’s administration. Garfield was immediately hospitalised, but died from infections on 19 September. Historians speculate, the Miller Centre says, that had Garfield served his term, ‘he would have been determined to move toward civil service reform and carry on in the clean government tradition of President Hayes’. He also supported the Centre adds, education for black southerners and called for African American suffrage. Unfortunately, it concludes, he is best remembered for being assassinated. Further information is also available at Wikipedia, The White House, Encyclopaedia Britannica and History.com.

Garfield kept a personal diaries throughout his life, all 21 of which are held by the Library of Congress (LOC). (More about how the diaries came to be gifted to the LOC can be read here.) They were edited and published in four volumes - The Diary of James A. Garfield - by Michigan State University Press between 1967 and 1981. These volumes can be digitally borrowed at Internet Archive (volume 4 for example). However, recently the LOC has not only made images of every page of the original manuscripts freely available online, but it has overseen a crowd-sourced project to transcribe those pages which are now also all available online.

The following extracts - from the very earliest diaries to the very last entry in the last diary - have been taken from volumes 1 and 4 of the published diaries.

1 January 1848
‘Hunting with O. H. Judd in a.m. went to Davis school in the p.m. quite rainy.

11 February 1848
‘at school good sleighing now.’

26 April 1848
‘sawed for Barns work by the day. 50 cents per day.

31 May 1848
‘went to Cleveland came back on a canal boat it was about eleven o’clock at night stopped and helped Wm. Weed bail his boat till about one o’clock then went to bed in the cabin alone. Mr. Weed bailed a short time then came into the cabin and got the lamp. I was asleep and I suppose he took my pocket book from my pocket at any rate it was gone next day’

2 September 1879
‘Slept until nine A.M. a troubled dreamful sleep, and was awakened by Clarence Hale, feeling still miserably bad in the head and throat. Spent the day in reading, writing, visiting and moping - thinking much of Crete and the boys who are on their way to New Hampshire.

Read with the surprise which ought not to be felt at anything said by the unveracious press that “Gen. Garfield made a very able and eloquent speech at Biddeford last evening.” I know better. Made some careful preparations to redeem my reputation here tonight. Received no letters nor dispatches, and felt not a little isolation and homesickness.

I think the Maine Election is to be very close. It seems to me more likely to go against us than for us. At eight P.M. met a very large audience in the city hall, and spoke an hour and a half. Did much better than I expected considering the state of my head and throat. After the meeting went to Clarence Hale’s room, and played whist with him, and Mr. Clark and Mr. Cushing. Worked off the heat and weariness of the meeting and retired at midnight, with some hopes of a better day tomorrow.’

4 March 1881
‘At 8.30 A.M. Allison broke down on my hands and absolutely declined the Treasury, partly for family reasons, but mainly from unwillingness to face the opposition of certain forces. Though this disconcerts me, the break had better come now than later. The day opened with snow and sleet, but towards noon the sky began to clear. At 10.30 President Hayes called at my room, and [at] the Riggs, and we drove to the Executive Mansion, and then with the Committee, Senators Bayard and Anthony, along the Avenue to the Capitol. The crowd of people was very great. Reached President’s chamber in the Senate wing at 11.30; at 11.55 went to the Senate, and witnessed the inauguration of the Vice President. Thence to the east portico of the rotunda, and read my inaugural - slowly and fairly well - though I grew somewhat hoarse towards the close. Returning to the Executive Mansion, lunched with the family and then two and a half hours on the reviewing stand.

Inauguration reception at Museum building in the evening. Home at eleven. Met Windom by appointment, and after a full hour’s talk, offered him the Treasury. Retired at 12.30. Very weary. On the day of his inauguration Polk was 49 y[r]s. and 4 mos., Garfield, 49 yrs., 4 mos. and 15 days. Pierce was 48, 2 mos. and 15 days. Grant was 47,10 mos. and 23 days. The latter 1 year and 22 d. old[er] than Pierce and 1 yr., 4 mos., 22 days older than [?] Grant.’ 

13 June 1881
‘I am feeling greatly dissatisfied with my lack of opportunity for study. My day is frittered away by the personal seeking of people, when it ought to be given to the great problems which concern the whole country. Four years of this kind of intellectual dissipation may cripple me for the remainder of my life. What might not a vigorous thinker do, if he could be allowed to use the opportunities of a Presidential term in vital, useful activity? Some civil service reform will come by necessity, after the wearisome years of wasted Presidents have paved the way for it. In the evening took Crete out on the south porch to see the sun set. Blaine came and read draft of instructions to our Minister to Chili. Retired at 12.’

1 July 1881
‘This opening of the Fiscal Year, and day before my trip to New England, has been very full of work. Appointed very nearly 25 ministers and consuls. Dismissed French, the R. R. Commissioner, in consequence of his sending an official letter to the President of the Pacific R.R. instead of his superior officer. Also called for the resignation of the Register of Wills. Appointed Walker Blaine 3rd Ass’t Sec’y of State. He is a bright and able young man and I wanted to compliment both him and his father. Brown returned today, greatly refreshed by his European trip. Cousin Cordelia died today, of the R.R. injuries rec’d when Uncle Thomas was killed. Retired at 12.’

Thursday, November 18, 2021

A day of adventure

‘A day of adventure – At 10 we set forth in the best auto the city could muster to go to the King’s summer palace 75 miles away in the mountains – The auto was minus most of its innards. It hadnt had a spring in the last 10 years & carried no spare tire – the driver saying that if it was Gods will we would make the journey without needing one.’ This is from the unpublished travel diaries of the famous American journalist Dorothy Dix, born 160 years ago today. Dix’s columns of advice for women were syndicated widely across the US and the world, and, by the 1940s, she was considered to have been the most highly paid and most widely read of female journalists.

Elizabeth Meriwether Gilmer was born on a large plantation straddling the Kentucky/Tennessee border on 18 November 1861. She received little formal education, and aged 17 married her stepmother’s brother George Gilmer. However, he soon fell victim to mental illness and was incapacitated - a situation that lasted the rest of his life. Elizabeth suffered a nervous collapse, but during her convalescence began writing stories and sketches of Tennessee life. She moved to Louisiana where she found work on the New Orleans newspaper Daily Picayune, writing obituaries, recipes and theatre reviews. As was customary for female journalists, she took on a pseudonym, Dorothy Dix. She was given a column - Sunday Salad - in which she started offering advice for women. This was renamed Dorothy Dix Talks, and would go on to become, Wikipedia reports, the world’s longest-running newspaper feature.

Dix was appointed editor of the women’s section and assistant to the editor of the Picayune, but in 1901 she accepted a lucrative offer from William Randolph Hearst to continue the column, thrice a week, at the New York Journal. She was also known for her sensational coverage of murder cases. She was an active campaigner for women’s suffrage, penning essays and pamphlets, and editing a suffrage periodical. In 1923, she signed with the Philadelphia-based Public Ledger Syndicate, and at its peak her columns were published in nearly 300 newspapers. Dix was receiving, from within the US and across the world, 100,000 letters a year. In addition to her newspaper work, she also authored books such as How to Win and Hold a Husband and Every-Day Help for Every-Day People. She died in 1951, at which time she was credited with being the highest paid and most widely read female journalist. Further information is available online at Wikipedia, Encyclopaedia Britannica, Encyclopedia.com and Austin Peay State University.

Between 1917 and 1933, Dix travelled widely in different parts of the world, often keeping a diary. These travel journals are held in the Felix G. Woodward Library of Austin Peay State University which claims it has ‘the most comprehensive collection available on Dorothy Dix and her writings’. Dix used the diaries for her book, My Joy-Ride Round the World (Mills & Boon, 1922) but otherwise they have never been published in print. However, the eight travel journals have been transcribed - by Elinor Howell Thurman - and are freely available online at the Austin Peay State University website. Here are some extracts.

Travel Journal - Europe, 1922
30 June 1922
‘Left Paris for battlefields, going out by the gate by which the French troops (35000 in number) were rushed to the front when the Germans got within 13 miles of the city. They went in taxicabs 3 abreast - The first place we stopped was Senlis, a quaint little town with narrow streets & creamy white old stone houses. It was an unarmed town & no resistance was made yet nevertheless the Germans blew up almost half of the houses, with dynamite & took the Mayor & 21 of the most prominent citizens & lined them up against a wall & shot them. It happened that the Mayors father was mayor of Senlis during the German occupancy of the town in the Franco Prussian wall [sic: war] & he also was shot in the same way[.] So one woman had the tragic fate of having both husband & son murdered by the Germans. We then went on to Soissons where some of the fiercest fighting of the whole war took place. It changed hands three times. Its beautiful cathedral & public buildings are ruins, & more than half its houses heaps of stones.

All afternoon we drove thro’ the devasted [sic] region that stretches from Soissons to Rheims, stopping at Chemin des Dames where from the rise of a little hill we could see the whole battle field, & at Berry-au-Bac on the Aisne canal where 500 Scotch troops who were standing with fixed bayonets waiting the order to charge were blown up by a mine the Germans had laid. It was 8 miles away & the explosion left a crater 400 feet across – We were on the scene of the greatest struggle in history[,] for here for 4 years the war swayed back & forth – every inch of ground was fought over a hundred times, every clod was dyed in blood. The terrain is still filled with shell holes & trenches until it looks like a rabbit warren. You can not walk across it for the barbed wire. We picked up hands full of shells & cartridge belts, so rotten they fell apart in your hands at a touch. Miss R. to the horror of the guide came calmly marching in with an unexploded hand grenade. There is no sign of the life that once went on here in times of peace for every village every human habitation was swept away by the bloody tide that rolled over it, yet it is not as desolate as you may suppose for over it all is the rank luxurious growth you see in cemeteries, & the whole plain was a mass of bloom – red of poppies, blue of wild larkspur, white of daisies as if nature spread the tricolor of France over her sons who were sleeping beneath the sod they gave their lives to save.

We staid the night at Rheims & saw the sunset gild the ruins of the splendid cathedral that it took the genius & piety of two centuries to create & that devils destroyed in two minutes. You grow impotent with rage when you behold the infamy that swept away from the world a thing of beauty that can never be replaced. Half of the houses in Rheims were destroyed, & in the whole city only 200 buildings escaped some injury. As we walked slowly back to the hotel we passed what had once been a fashionable restaurant but is now a crumbling heap of stones. In the court there was the gleam of [word crossed out: what] a broken & ruined marble fountain, & back of it fluttered a few rags of family wash belonging to some people who had taken refuge in the empty wine cellar, & were making their poor home there.’

Travel Journal - Eastern Europe, 1926
7 August 1926
‘Left in the morning via the Orient Express – which is an express only three times a week, and ambled along so leisurely it took us from Sat morning at 8.30 until [words crossed out: Tuesday Monday] Sunday at 3 to get to Sophia – We passed thro’ the loveliest, fat farming country, and saw many of the country women wearing their quaint native costume[.] But the trip was very tiresome & made the more disagreeable to me from having partaken not wisely but too well of half ripe melons. On the way up we were awakened in the middle of the night by 3 Bulgarian officials who suddenly flashed their lights in our faces – 4 dishevelled women more or less in the costume of Sept Morn blinked back[.] They jabbered – we shrugged our shoulders & said we didn’t comprehend – more jabber – more shrug – then one man threw up his hands & cried out in despair “These Americans! These Americans! These Americans!” & slammed the door – Afterwards we found out our passports werent vised [sic] right & that it was only as a great courtesy extended to our nation that we werent sent back to Constantinople.

We are staying at a very delightful hotel with heavenly cooking right opposite the palace – a big handsome yellow brick mansion set in fine grounds with the loveliest acacia trees, now in full bloom – Sofia is at the foot of the mountains & I never smelt anything so cool & bracing as the air. –’

9 August 1926
‘A day of adventure – At 10 we set forth in the best auto the city could muster to go to the King’s summer palace 75 miles away in the mountains – The auto was minus most of its innards. It hadnt had a spring in the last 10 years & carried no spare tire – the driver saying that if it was Gods will we would make the journey without needing one – No Turkish or Bulgarian cars carry extras on the the [sic] same principle. The roads are the worst in the world but our optimistic driver started out a clip that would have won a race on a fast track – Rocks, ruts, stones meant nothing in his young life & we went lickety split over them, while every bone in our bodies were [sic] jarred from our sockets & we held on to our false teeth with a death grip[.]

Apparently our chauffers [sic] confidence in Providence was misplaced for soon there was the sharp report of a blow out. Fortunately it occurred by a wayside inn – a regular peasant place – by a babbling brook & we descended and had coffee while he patched the ragged old tire – Again we hit the trail & went skedaddle around hair pin turns & again was [the] ominous sound of a blow out – There was nothing to do but walk back to the road house some 5 miles – Mr Gestat said it was 8 – which we did. But we were partially repaid for the days disaster by the delicious lunch of native foods they served us - A mutton stew made with tomatoes, beans, egg plant, peppers & potatoes, & red with paprika, & [word crossed out: a] sweet peppers stuffed with rice, chopped meat etc & cooked in a cream sauce.

In this region at a place called Kazanlik the finest attar of roses is made[.] They have 80000 acres under cultivation in roses. We intended going there – it is 300 kilometers – but after our experience with the demon chauffer[sic] we decided not to risk it.’

Travel Journal - South America, 1933
29 July 1933
‘At 9.30 Mr Noa – the boy friend provided by the American Express arrived with a fine open car with the top down, and we drove along the series of beautiful bays, seven in number that make the water front of Rio. Nothing could be lovelier than the blue bay dotted with little islands, with always the frowning heigths [sic] of Corcovado looking down upon them – We went thro miles of quaint streets with houses whose architecture took on every fantastic shape that it is possible to give bricks & mortor [sic] – Moorish looking houses with tile borders – houses that were job lots of towers & cupolas, houses with all sorts of statues on the roof – Evidently the Brazilian taste is very ornate for every public building is lavishly & sy[m]bolically adorned – But they are grand for all that –

We went out to see the old palace of Dom Pedro, now a museum[.] It is a big brownish yellow structure in the midst of a lovely park. In it is a small aquarium with a curious cannibal fish that eats people. It is a small blue fish with a snub nose, & a dumb face, but let any flesh appear near it, & millions of it fall upon its victim & devour it in a few minutes. They say a man attacked by it will bleed to death before he can reach the bank, even if it is only 10 ft away – It is a fresh water fish & abounds in rivers, & stockmen test every stream before trying to ford it with animals[.] The guide said that not long ago a murderer who was being hunted down tried to escape by jumping into a river, but he was attacked before any one could reach him by these fish & literally devoured alive & his screams of agony were frightful[.]

In the afternoon went with the B’s to the top of Sugar Loaf Mt, which is accomplished by means of an ascent to a low lying hill, then being shunted in a cage – like the cash in a department store – to the top of Sugar Loaf – across a valley a mile wide & goodness knows how high – We staid up on the mountain – or rather the second one – and had dinner on a terrace[,] a most scrumptious meal with a view that has no equal scarcely in the world – the whole city spread out like a scintilating [sic] jewel on the breast of nature, the water front outlined by strings of electric lights, and the wide expanses of blue water growing bluer and bluer as night fell until all was black except where the moon lay a silver band across it – no words can describe the beauty of Rio because it is the favorite child of nature, which has covered up all its man made defects with bougainvillea. No other city has such monstrosities in the way of architecture yet even these become quaint & interesting in their exotic setting, so that you dont wonder that the new rich taste of a generation ago ran to cupolas & towers & statuary[.]

The street scenes are very interesting[.] I am particularly intrigued by the fruit & vegetable vendors who carry hughe [sic] flat baskets on their heads & on their arms a little folding stand – like [word crossed out: the] suit case racks – which they set up & on which they deposit their wares when making a sale. Quaint too are the men who carry their poultry slung in hampers on either side of a mangy pony.

It seems that when the street car system was inaugurated here that the money was obtained by the sale of bonds. The Brazilians had no knowledge of what either a street car or a bond was so they got their terms mixed & called the cars bonds, which nomenclature goes to this day. They say “take the bondie to so- & so” –’

31 August 1933
‘Went by train to Valpariso [Valparaiso,] sea port of Santiago – City built into the side of the mountain, & streets so steep it makes you dizzy as you skid down them in a car – Drove down to Vina del Mar, one of the handsomest sea side places I ever saw - Gorgeous home[s] & a grand casino – Many of the wealthy Santiagans have their summer homes here –’

Friday, November 12, 2021

Astounding indifference

‘All Germany is talking about the attempt on Hitler’s life at the Bürgerbräu. The press is quite unable to cover up the fact that there is absolutely no ‘fanatical indignation’ described by official propaganda. Rather, an astounding indifference and many people express regret quite openly that the explosion was delayed.’ This is the German diplomat Ulrich von Hassell - born 140 years ago today - writing in a secret diary. During the Second World War, he was an important figure in the resistance, and his diary gives ‘a vivid contemporary account of the various plots against Hitler’s wartime Reich’.

Ulrich von Hassell was born into an aristocratic family in Anklam, Pomerania (then a province of Prussia, now Germany) on 12 November 1881. His father was a colonel in the Royal Hanoverian Army. Hassell attended the Prinz-Heinrich-Gymnasium in Berlin, and then, between 1899 and 1903, he studied law and economics at the University of Lausanne, the University of Tübingen and in Berlin. He entered the foreign office in 1908, and three years later he married Ilse, daughter of Grand Admiral Alfred von Tirpitz. The couple would have four children. That same year, Hassell was named vice-consul in Genoa.

During the First World War, Hassell was wounded early on at the First Battle of the Marne, and, later in the war, he worked as von Tirpitz’s advisor and private secretary. After the war, he joined the nationalist German National People's Party. After returning to the foreign office he was posted to Rome, Barcelona, Copenhagen and Belgrade. In 1932, he was made Germany’s ambassador to the Kingdom of Italy. Initially, a supporter of Hitler, he became increasingly critical of his aggressive foreign policies and, in 1938, was sacked by Joachim von Ribbentrop. During the Second World War, he tried to persuade others to support a negotiated peace with the Allies; and, subsequently, he campaigned for a military coupe to overthrow Hitler.

In 1942, Hassell was warned that he was under investigation by the Gestapo, but, nevertheless, continued to conspire against Hitler. Eventually, in 1944, following the failed assassination attempt on Hitler (the so-called July Plot), Hassel was arrested. He was soon convicted of high treason, and executed on the same day, 8 September 1944. Further information is available from Wikipedia, Spartacus Educational or the German Resistance Memorial Center website. 

After the war, Hassel’s diaries were found buried in the garden of house. They were published by Doubleday (1947) as The Von Hassell Diaries 1938-1944: The Story of the Forces Against Hitler Inside Germany. The work has been reissued various times since then, not least by Frontline in 2010 with a foreword by Hassell’s grandson, Agostino von Hassel. The book is marketed as providing ‘a vivid contemporary account of the various plots against Hitler’. Some pages can be read at Amazon and Googlebooks

In his foreword, Agostino explains how the diary was written and found: ‘My grandfather wrote his diaries on tiny pieces of paper that he could quickly shove under carpets in case of a Gestapo search. As common with police forces in totalitarian societies, the all-powerful Gestapo was curiously inept and naïve in certain respects. They never found much concrete evidence to accuse him with. Hassell used to stuff his notes into Ridgeway tea cans which, wrapped in oil-cloth, were then buried in the garden of his house in Ebenhausen, a village outside of Munich. After the war these cans were eventually taken to Switzerland to be transcribed.’

Here’s two sample extracts.

1 October 1938
‘One of the few certainties today is the overwhelming and tremendous relief of the whole nation, or rather of all nations, that war has been averted, although Germans, or I suppose the great majority of them, have no idea how close they came to war. In Berlin, London, Paris and Rome the four returning matadors were all received by their peoples as ‘peacemakers’ with the same stormy enthusiasm. Hitler’s brutal policies have brought him a great material success while the French have reason to feel ashamed before the Czechs.

The day before yesterday we went from Wittenmoor with Udo Alvensleben to the residence of the old Princess Bismarck. She and Schoenhausen great but almost tragic impression. She thought her father-in-law no longer counted, that in fact his stature was systematically played down. This latter is true, and in view of the spirit of our rulers and the successful Anschluss policy, very logical. I told the Princess from conviction that Bismarck would withstand this storm victoriously. In the beginning she had been impressed by Hitler, but today thinks of him and his methods just about as Popitz does. R. Kassner the philosopher was also present - a gifted man, filled with the deepest bitterness by the cultural devastation wrought by the Third Reich. Even today I do not feel like an ally of the intelligentsia but see it as a false front that all people who can think for themselves are being pressured into this alliance. I share Princess Bismarck’s belief that a system employing such treacherous and brutal methods cannot achieve good ends, but I cannot follow her when she draws the conclusion (as do General Beck and a thousand others) that therefore the regime will soon collapse. There is not yet sufficient reason to think so.

Yesterday afternoon on my way home I stopped with Alvensleben in wonderful Neugattersleben. Werner Alvensleben came too. He is the famous ‘Herr von A’, of 30 June, who has meanwhile been released from prison and banished to a hunting lodge in Pomerania. He is a somewhat mysterious man, more conspirator and adventurer than politician. It is interesting that he was with Hammerstein (the general), who told him that Minister of Finance Schwerin-Krosigk had looked him up (or happened to meet him?) fresh from an audience with Hitler on Wednesday afternoon, 28 September, and reported as follows: Krosigk, with Neurath and Goring, had gone to Hitler to persuade him of the utter impossibility of fighting the war on which he seemed bent. Krosigk emphasized that financially the game was up, and that in any case we could not hold out during a war. Hitler apparently resisted these arguments until Mussolini’s historic telephone call forced him to give in.’

16 November 1939
‘All Germany is talking about the attempt on Hitler’s life at the Bürgerbräu [8 November]. The press is quite unable to cover up the fact that there is absolutely no ‘fanatical indignation’ described by official propaganda. Rather, an astounding indifference and many people express regret quite openly that the explosion was delayed.

With cold-blooded insolence, immediately after the bomb exploded, the report was put out that suspicion was focussing on Britain. If that was known it is a scandal that it was not prevented. Naturally, it is being whispered that this was another ‘Reichstag fire’ instigated by the Party in order to rouse hatred against Britain. I do not believe this, although the stories circulated by the Gestapo would naturally give rise to this suspicion. Most probably it was a Communist conspiracy or the act of dissatisfied elements within the Party, Otto Strasser supporters. What will be the effect of this attempt on Hitler’s life? I sense that confusion and helplessness are increasing.

I am beginning to believe that the invasion of Belgium and Holland has been given up. For weeks the foreign press has been full of reports on the fears of the Belgians and Dutch and their extensive preparations. The step taken by King Leopold and Queen Wilhelmina was apparently the result of this anxiety and has made matters more difficult for Hitler. If he wanted to do it, he hesitated too long - thank God - and thanks to the opposition of the military. (Misleading rumours amongst the people regarding Italy’s becoming involved in the war, amongst other things.) 

A notable event in foreign affairs was the proclamation by the Comintern on the anniversary of the October Revolution. With remarkable sangfroid they throw us into the same pot with Britain and France as capitalistic slave-traders. The incident demonstrates what they dare say about us, apparently for the purpose of quieting their own party members. Since this proclamation also berates the Italians as future hyenas of the battlefield, who will enter the fray when the victory of one party is assured, the Italian press, on official instructions, has taken the field against Moscow and notes that apparently the accordo between Germany and the Soviets was not quite perfect. The French seized on that as a sign that the Axis is tottering, to which the Italians made a rather tortuous response. New story: ‘The Führer has had his driving licence revoked because he wanders too far into the oncoming lane. His axle [same word in German as Axis] is broken.’

Pietzsch came to see us. Very depressed. Basically he now understands exactly the adventurous and bolshevizing policies with which Hitler is leading us into the abyss. Then in the midst of it all he falls back almost automatically into a state of admiration. He tells awful things about the economic disorganization which makes any rational management impossible.

Without any knowledge of the matter in hand, Hitler interfered for political or military reasons, made altogether impossible demands - for instance on behalf of Italy - and thereby turned the whole apparatus upside down. It appears to me that we ourselves are contributing to the British ‘destruction of the German economy’.

Characteristic of the deceptive methods of the press barons I was told by an editor that the newspapers were permitted recently to mention the anniversary of the death of Johanna von Bismarck [wife of Chancellor Bismarck, died 27 November 1894] but were strictly forbidden to mention her Christian piety. Moreover, all magazines and periodicals must publish something adverse about Britain in each issue. The Comintern proclamation was of course suppressed and so are railway accidents. The French and British replies to King Leopold and Queen Wilhelmina were reviled, but not published.

I met Guttenberg in Munich. His brother-in-law Revertera has been released suddenly without explanation. At heart Guttenberg remains of course a Bavarian monarchist and would like to build bridges for the House of Wittelsbach now it is clear that the era of independent German monarchical states is over. He is right to worry about Habsburg ideas of dividing things up in the case of defeat, and says this must be resisted. It appears that Gessler has the confidence of the Wittelsbachs. Interesting conversation with General Geyr von Schweppenburg who had commanded a panzer division in Poland. He must have seen some terrible things and become so strongly affected by them that he is now to be found in a sanatorium with a heart condition.

Among other things he recounted was the order at the Bug river not to permit thousands of fleeing Poles, who were streaming back to us in terrible fear of the Bolsheviks, to cross the river. Of course wherever possible he allowed it anyhow.

During his time as military attaché in London the Party had attacked him violently for maintaining that Britain was not bluffing, but that once a certain point was reached they would fight. As late as June Reichenau had asked him with a sneer whether he still believed Britain would go to war. Reichenau, of course, thinks differently now. The only ones who believed Geyr were Beck and Fritsch. I remember in Rome, after the reoccupation of the Rhineland, how Goring assailed the service attachés in London for ‘losing their nerve’. Geyr (at the time military attaché in London) said that the three of them jointly had sent a very straight telegram to the effect that the probability of ‘war’ stood fifty-fifty. He said that ever since the re-occupation of the Rhineland [7 March 1936] the British had been distrusting and had begun to prepare for war. The top military officers friendly to Germany had been replaced by Francophiles throughout.’

Tuesday, October 26, 2021

Disconsolate on the pavement

On the day that a future Prime Minister was writing in his diary about Churchill’s General Election victory (see below - We are in easily), Evelyn Shuckburgh, a career diplomat and future ambassador, was doing the same. ‘Just as I was shaking hands with [Herbert Morrison, outgoing Foreign Secretary], he was recognized by the crowd, who booed him the whole way down Downing Street; they had come, of course, to see the new men, not the old. I felt very sorry about this but assumed politicians are used to this kind of thing. I, on the contrary, was disconsolate on the pavement.’ Earlier that year, Shuckburgh had been appointed Principal Private Secretary to Morrison, a position he then retained with the new Foreign Secretary, Anthony Eden. Some 30 years later, Shuckburgh would publish his diaries under the title Descent to Suez.

Charles Arthur Evelyn Shuckburgh, born in London in 1909 to an aristocratic family, was educated at Winchester and King’s College, Cambridge. He joined the diplomatic service in 1933 with postings in Egypt and Canada. He married Nancy Brett in 1937 and they had three children. For most of the Second World War he was Charge d’Affaires in Argentina, but after the war he was posted to Prague as First Secretary before returning to London and the Foreign Office as Head of the South American and, later, the Western Department.

In 1951, Shuckburgh was appointed Private Secretary to the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, then Herbert Morrison. Later that year, Churchill won a General Election and appointed Anthony Eden as Foreign Secretary. During the three years that followed, Eden and Shuckburgh were involved in the post-war reorganisation of Western Europe which led up to the creation of the Common Market, as well as in making an agreement with Egypt over the withdrawal of British forces from the Suez Canal Zone. 

Subsequently, after a period at the Imperial Defence College, Shuckburgh served at the headquarters of NATO in Paris, in 1958, as Assistant Secretary-General. He was British Permanent Representative to the North Atlantic Council from 1962 to 1966, and, finally, Ambassador to Italy from 1966 to 1969. After retiring, he became involved with both the National Trust and the Red Cross. He died in 1994. Further information is available from Wikipedia, as well as obituaries in The New York Times and The Independent.

Shuckburgh kept detailed diaries from 1951 until his retirement in 1969. According to Archives Hub, ‘The diaries give a vivid impression of the inner workings of the Foreign Office, and later, of NATO, including descriptions of international conferences, working with politicians, and of the life of a diplomat abroad, as a junior member of staff, and as Ambassador. [. . The] diaries offer valuable comment on Eden’s character and achievements, offering an eyewitness account of events leading up to the Suez crisis in 1956 and of British Middle Eastern policy in the decades after the Second World War.’ Extracts from the diaries - focused on the events that led up to the Suez crisis - were published in 1986 as Descent to Suez: Diaries, 1951-1956 (Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1986). The full US edition can be freely borrowed online at Internet Archive.

In his introduction Shuckburgh says: ‘The diaries which form the substance of this book cover the period from the autumn of 1951, when I was appointed Principal Private Secretary to the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, to December 1956, the morrow of the Suez debacle. For the first three years - to May 1954 - I was Anthony Eden’s closest diplomatic assistant and for two years after that Under-Secretary in charge of Middle East Affairs at the Foreign Office. I was released from the Foreign Office on 20 June 1956, to become Senior Civilian Instructor at the Imperial Defence College. By that time, as the reader will not fail to notice, I was badly in need of a rest. The diaries fall naturally into these two parts, though certain themes run through them both: the relationship with Eden, for example, and his relations with Churchill, the defence of Britain’s interests in the Middle East and the search for a Palestine settlement. Taken together, they offer a sidelight on the events which led to the Suez tragedy of 1956 and this justifies the title which I have given them here - Descent to Suez. They were not intended to be a continuous account of events. I had no clear idea why I was keeping a diary at all, unless it was to interest my wife (for many of the entries took the form of letters home) or just to let off steam. I do know that, in the later stages especially, the thought of being able to write about it all in private before I went to bed was a consolation for the daily stresses of the job.’

Here are the first two entries in the American edition.

26 October 1951
‘By 3 o’clock in the afternoon it was clear that the Conservatives would probably have a majority, though it would be a very small one, and we all assumed that the weekend might be spent in discussion as to whether Mr Churchill would form a Government at once or whether there might be some delay. The Secretary of State (Morrison) came back from his constituency to No. 11 at about 5 but showed no inclination to come to the Foreign Office. I went over to get a decision from him about expelling some Italian Communists from Libya but he (rightly) would not take responsibility for this in view of his knowledge that the Government were almost certainly defeated. He said that if there were any delay in the appointment of a new Foreign Secretary, he would take the decision on Monday.

Half an hour later we were informed by No. 10 that Mr Attlee had resigned and Mr Churchill had been invited to form a Government; also that the King would hold a Council the following morning at 10.30 to swear in new Ministers. It was therefore clear to me that there was a risk that a new Foreign Secretary might walk into the Foreign Office during the course of the next morning. Meanwhile Mr Morrison had gone to Miss Donald’s flat announcing that he would go straight home to bed and did not wish to be woken before lunchtime on Saturday.

Obviously, therefore, I had to get him back and had a painful half-hour at No. 11 in which I stripped him of his Foreign Office key, box, and pass and obtained authority to send over the seals to Buckingham Palace. He was plainly feeling very deflated and very tired. He asked whether it was constitutionally right of me to take away his keys, etc., before the new Foreign Secretary had been announced. I said, ‘no’; he remained Foreign Secretary until his seals had been handed over the following morning. But, as he wished to sleep the following morning, I had to perform the operation tonight. He accepted this and was very friendly about me. He is clearly disappointed at leaving the Foreign Office just when the job is beginning to intrigue him. I accompanied him downstairs and through the communicating door into No. 10 and out through the front door into his car. Just as I was shaking hands with him, he was recognized by the crowd, who booed him the whole way down Downing Street; they had come, of course, to see the new men, not the old. I felt very sorry about this but assumed politicians are used to this kind of thing. I, on the contrary, was disconsolate on the pavement.’

27 October 1951
‘We learned from No. 10 this morning that Mr Eden was the Prime Minister’s appointment for Foreign Secretary and, although the King’s approval had not yet been obtained, I got in touch with his secretary, Mrs Maltby, at 4 Chesterfield Street and offered my services. He at once invited me to join Sir William Strang and Jim Bowker at lunch with him. He also said that he would like to come into the Foreign Office after the Council (postponed till 3 p.m.) and hoped Mr Morrison would agree to this. We did not wake the latter up until 12.15 but he of course agreed, and it was arranged that he would come and see the new Secretary of State on Monday.

When Strang, Bowker and I arrived at 4 Chesterfield Street, we found Eden having a heated telephone conversation about whether or not he was to be described as Deputy Prime Minister in the forthcoming announcement of the new Government. We thought he was talking to Winston. He was protesting strongly that he had been promised this title, that Attlee had had it during the war and Morrison in the recent Government and he did not see why he should not have it, and that it would give him the authority he needed over his colleagues. He did not seem to be getting very far and eventually said he was thoroughly unsatisfied with the situation. There was a pause and Winston came to the ’phone. At once he agreed and there was a great deal of ‘thank you, dear’. Eden then told us that it had been Norman Brook (Secretary to the Cabinet) and the King’s Private 

Secretary (Lascelles) who had been arguing against the appointment. They had alleged that it was an infringement of the King’s prerogative that a man should be named Deputy Prime Minister; the King was free to choose whoever he liked to succeed a PM. William Strang told Eden he thought he was perfectly justified in insisting.’

We are in, easily

‘Went to Bromley with D for the count. We are in, easily. Majority about 2000 higher. Our Liberals were 5000 last time. 1000 have abstained; 2000 to me and 10000 to my opponent. This gives gives me over 12000 majority. Spent the afternoon listening to results on radio. . .’ This is the Conservative politician Harold Macmillan writing in his diary on the evening of the 1951 General Election, exactly 70 years ago today. The Tories had been out of power for several years, and with this success led by Churchill, Macmillan was about to begin a series of ministerial career moves that would lead eventually to him becoming Prime Minster. His diary, published posthumously, is said to be ‘one of the fullest and most entertaining’ of 20th century political journals.

Macmillan was born in London in 1894 to a publisher and his American artist wife (his paternal grandfather, Daniel MacMillan, had founded founded Macmillan Publishers). He was educated at home, then at Summer Fields School (Oxford), at Eton College, and, thanks to a scholarship, at Balliol College, Oxford. Volunteering as soon as war was declared, Macmillan was commissioned in the King’s Royal Rifle Corps but soon transferred to the Grenadier Guards. He served with distinction as a captain but was wounded on several occasions. He did, in fact, spend the final two years of war in hospital undergoing a series of operations, followed by a long convalescence which left him with a slight shuffle in his walk and a limp grip in his right hand. 

After the war, Macmillan joined the family publishing business. In 1920, he married Lady Dorothy Cavendish, the daughter of the 9th Duke of Devonshire, and the couple had four children together. However, from 1929, Lady Dorothy began an affair, and thereafter the couple lived separate lives. As a Conservative party candidate he was elected to the House of Commons for Stockton-on-Tees in 1924, though he then lost the seat in 1929. However, before long, he was re-selected to stand for the same seat, and in 1931 and was returned to the House.

Macmillan spent the 1930s on the backbenches but he was very active politically, publishing The State and Industry, The Next Step, The Next Five Years, and The Middle Way. During this time, he also became increasingly concerned at the appeasement of Nazi Germany. When Winston Churchill formed his World War II coalition government in May 1940, Macmillan was appointed parliamentary secretary to the Ministry of Supply; and in 1942 he was sent to northwest Africa as British minister resident at Allied Forces Headquarters, Mediterranean Command. At the end of the war in Europe, he was briefly - for a few months in 1945 - secretary of state for air in Churchill’s ‘caretaker’ government. When the Conservatives regained power in 1951, he was appointed, successively, minister of housing and local government and minister of defence by Churchill; he then served as foreign secretary and chancellor of the exchequer under Anthony Eden.

When Eden resigned as Prime Minister in early 1957 after the debacle of the Suez crisis, Macmillan took his place. He restored the Conservative party fortunes winning an increased majority in the 1959 General Election. However, Macmillan’s second term of office was beset with crises: a failed application to join the European Economic Community, economic troubles, the so-called ‘night of the long knives’, and the Profumo affair. Macmillan resigned as leader in October 1963. He refused a peerage and then retired from the House of Commons in September 1964. His later years were devoted to writing several volumes of memoirs. He did, later, accept a peerage and was created an earl in 1984. He died in 1986. Further information is available online at Wikipedia, UK government website, Encyclopaedia Britannica, The Guardian obituary, Spartacus Educational, and the BBC.

As well as being a memoirist, Macmillan was also a diarist. A first volume of his edited diaries was published by St. Martin’s Press in 1984: War Diaries: Politics and War in the Mediterranean, January 1943 - May 1945. His later diaries were only published posthumously, by the family firm, in two volumes (2003 and 2011): The Macmillan Diaries: The Cabinet Years 1950-57 and The Macmillan Diaries: Prime Minister and After 1957-1966. According to the publisher, Macmillan ‘kept one of the fullest and most entertaining political diaries of the twentieth century’. The publisher further adds: ‘He was an acute observer of events and people not just in his own country or party, but on the wider international and political scene. His Diary provides wry portraits of many of the leading political figures of the period and records his personal take on the great issues and events of the day. In the process Macmillan’s wider activities and inner concerns are also revealed, casting light beyond the famously ‘unflappable’ exterior onto the character of one of the most enigmatic figures in modern British political history.’ See the History of Government blog for an interesting article which compares the diaries of Macmillan and William Gladstone.

The following extracts, taken from the first volume of post war diaries, begin with one written on the day of the 1951 General Election. (Trailing dots without brackets are part of the quoted passage; trailing dots inside square brackets, however, indicate where I have edited some text out.)

26 October 1951
‘Went to Bromley with D for the count. We are in, easily. Majority about 2000 higher. Our Liberals were 5000 last time. 1000 have abstained; 2000 to me and 10000 to my opponent. This gives gives me over 12000 majority. Spent the afternoon listening to results on radio. . . 

Altogether, 23 seats gained by Conservatives. No losses, except 1 in Belfast. Megan Lloyd George is out, which is a very good thing. Davies will not be so frightened if she is not there to bully him!’

27 October 1951
‘. . . Attlee went to the King as soon as we topped 313 members of the new House! This seems rather strange. How relieved he must be. So Churchill must have kissed hands at about 6pm last night to form his third administration . . .

The process of Cabinet making, always difficult, seems to have begun. According to the 6 o’clock news the following ministers have been appointed. P.M. First Lord and Minister of Defence - Churchill; Foreign Secretary and Leader of Commons - Eden; Ld President - (with control of Food and Agriculture) - Woolton; Ld Privy Seal and Leader of Lords - Salisbury; Home Secretary - Maxwell Fyfe; Minister of Labour - Sir W Monckton; Dominions Secretary - Ld Ismay; Chancellor of the Exchequer - O Lyttelton. These ministers were sworn in tonight.

This seems an extraordinarily maladroit move - I should say the combined effort of Bracken and Beaverbrook. It is just folly for Churchill to become Minister of Defence. It almost justifies the Daily Mirror! He should have been Prime Minister only, thus showing that he is as interested in economic and social affairs, as in military matters. This is a major blunder and may have most serious results. It might even endanger the ministry, because I think a difficult by-election after this gaffe cd easily be lost. It is also surprising that Eden shd demand to lead the House as well as take the Foreign Office. It is obvious that this cannot be an effective management. There was a hint by the ‘Parliamentary commentator’ that a deputy leader may be appointed. Lyttelton’s appointment is odd, and will (I fear) be a disappointment to him. He had worked hard to fit himself for economic and trade affairs. Fyfe’s appointment is a good one. He will be a better Home Secretary than Minister of Labour. His speeches and writings thoroughly frightened the unions, and in spite of Churchill’s denials during the campaign, made them alarmed and caused them to rally their forces. He will be a good Home Secretary. It seems he is also to be Minister for Wales. This means, I suppose, that Clem Davies has refused to come in. I have heard nothing, as I have stayed in Sussex all day resting. Monckton’s appointment is unexpected, but good. He has a more subtle and a more flexible mind than Fyfe. He shd do very well. Ld Ismay’s appointment as Minister of Defence was generally expected and was explicable. His appointment as Dominions Secretary is unexpected and inexplicable. [. . .]’

28 October 1951
‘. . . It is now possible to form a view of what has happened at this election. The nation is evenly divided - almost exactly even. For if allowance is made for unopposed returns, the votes cast on either side are just about the same. The Liberal party has practically disappeared in the House of Commons. But whereas last time they polled over 2 million votes in the country, this time (since they had only 100 odd candidates) the Liberals have had only the choice of abstention, voting Conservative, or voting Socialist in 500 odd constituencies. As far as one can see, north of the River Trent they have gone 2 to 1 - 2 Conservatives, to 1 Socialist. This is very marked in Scotland, and in places like Durham and North Yorkshire which have suffered under the Socialist tyranny. By this means both Middlesborough and Darlington were won by us. In the midlands, the Liberal vote has either abstained, or gone fifty-fifty or even worse. This explains Lincoln, Birmingham, Nottingham etc. The Liberals of this area have too much of the Civil War radical and roundhead tradition to join a cavalier vote. In suburban constituencies, like Bromley, the Liberals have split on a class basis. The bourgeois Liberal, pillars of chapel and League of Nations Union and all that, voted for me. (2 to 1 was about the figure, but 3/4 only voted - the rest abstained.)

So the result is, once again, a moral stalemate. This follows a long innings by a Govt wh has made a tremendous number of mistakes; has egregious failures in administration; and has been thrown about, like a rudderless hip in a storm, from crisis to crisis. At first sight, therefore, one can only form the most gloomy forebodings about the future. [. . .]

Message from Churchill to come out to Chartwell. I expected this. On arrival, at 3pm, found him in a most pleasant and rather tearful mood. He asked me to ‘build the houses for the people’. What an assignment! I know nothing whatever about these matters, having spent 6 years now either on defence or foreign affairs. I had, of course, hoped to be Minister of Defence and said this frankly to Churchill. But he is determined to keep it in his own hands. I gather the reason is the frightful muddle in which defence has been allowed to fall. In this ‘setup’ the service ministers become in effect under-secretaries (in spite of their grand titles) and will not be members of the Cabinet. I asked Churchill what was the present housing ‘set-up’. He said he hadn’t an idea. But the boys would know. So the boys (Sir Edward Bridges, Head of the Civil Service and Sir Norman Brook, Secretary to the Cabinet) were sent for - also some whisky. It seems that there is much confusion in all this business. Broadly speaking, the old ministry of Town and Country Planning retains these functions, but is now called Ministry of Local Government and Planning. All teh functions of supervising local govt in general remain with it. [. . .]

When I get home, I begin to realise what a terrible burden I have undertaken. Churchill is grateful and will back me; but 1 really haven't a clue how to set about the job. (Among other minor problems, James Stuart, who is motoring south, has disappeared! But he is wanted, to be Secretary of State for Scotland. Nobody can say the Tories stand about waiting for office. It is a job to get hold of them!)

Went in to talk all this over with Maurice. Carol came to dinner. (I have now a lot to arrange - first of all, with my brother and affairs at St Martin’s St). So to bed. What a day!’