Looking for a snowbow

Benjamin Banneker, a free black American who not only worked his own tobacco farm but was a self-taught astronomer and mathematician, died 210 years ago today. He is remembered today for a series of almanacs he wrote in the 1790s - an extraordinary achievement for a black man at the time - and for writing to Thomas Jefferson about racial equality and the abolition of slavery. He kept a diary as well as astronomical notebooks, but all of his personal papers - barring one journal - were destroyed in a fire soon after his death. The surviving journal shows that Banneker was not only mathematical, philosophical and self-analytical, but he was a keen observer of nature. Several entries record dreams, in another he writes about the periodic cycle of locusts, and in another he jokes about looking for a snowbow.

Banneker was born in 1731, in Baltimore County, Maryland. His parents were black, and his father was a freed slave. Some biographers believe that his grandmother, on his mother’s side, may have purchased his grandfather, then a slave, set him free, and then married him. Aged 6, Banneker was named on the deed of his family’s 100-acre tobacco farm in the Patapsco River valley, where he lived for most of his life. In his teens, a Quaker, Peter Heinrichs, lent him books, and provided rudimentary teaching. Somehow he learned to read, write, to play several musical instruments, and in his early 20s he crafted a wooden clock by observing the mechanics of a pocket watch. His father died in 1759.

A decade or so later, the Ellicott family - also Quakers - moved into the area, and began building mills along the Patapsco. Banneker supplied the workers with food, studied the workings of the mills, and became friendly with several of the Ellicotts. In 1788 - in his mid-40s - he began to study astronomy with books and instruments borrowed from George Ellicott, who was also interested in the subject. In 1791, at the invitation of George’s cousin Major Andrew Ellicott, Banneker joined, for a few months, a surveying team that was setting the boundaries for the new federal capital.

By 1792, Banneker had become so knowledgeable that he felt able to write and publish an astronomical almanac based on his own painstakingly-calculated ephemeris and which included solar and lunar eclipse predictions - Benjamin Banneker’s Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland and Virginia Almanac and Ephemeris, for the Year of Our Lord, 1792. It sold well, and quickly went into a second edition. Annual almanacs followed each year until 1797.

Banneker was well aware of his unusual position as a black man contributing to the sciences, and he used his almanacs to further his political views on the abolition of slavery and racial equality. He also engaged in a correspondence with Thomas Jefferson, who himself owned many slaves, and would soon become the third President of the US. Banneker never married. In his last years, he sold much of his farmland to the Ellicotts, but continued to live in his log cabin, where he died in 1806. Further information can be found at Wikipedia, PBS, or Bio.com, and from a Memoir of Benjamin Banneker by John Latrobe.

On the day of Banneker’s funeral, a fire, of unknown origin, burned the cabin, destroying many of his belongings and papers, including most of his journals and notebooks. However, one astronomical journal, a day book and a few papers survived. These were left to George Ellicott, and by the mid-19th century had been deposited with Maryland Historical Society (MdHS) where they were bound together. Subsequently, the bound copy was returned to the Ellicotts, and remained hidden until 1987, when it was again given to the MdHS. Some extracts from this can be found in Latrobe’s memoir about Banneker - as follows:

‘Besides his aptitude for mechanics,’ Latrobe writes, ‘and his ability as a mathematician, Banneker was an acute observer, whose active mind was constantly receiving impulses from what was taking place around him. Many instances of this are to be found in the record of his calculations, which he seems to have used occasionally as a common-place book. For instance, under date of the 27th August, 1797, he writes: “Standing at my door I heard the discharge of a gun, and in four or five seconds of time, after the discharge, the small shot came rattling about me, one or two of which struck the house; which plainly demonstrates that the velocity of sound is greater than that of a cannon bullet.” It must have been a philosophic mind, which observing the fact as here stated, drew from it the correct conclusion, and then recorded it in appropriate terms as a simple and beautiful illustration of the law of nature, with which, in all probability, he first became acquainted through its means.

Again on the 23d December, 1790, he writes: “About 3 o’clock, A.M. I heard the sound and felt the shock like unto heavy thunder. I went out but could not observe any cloud above the horizon. I therefore conclude it must be a great earthquake in some part of the globe.” A similar conclusion from the same facts was drawn by a greater man than Banneker near eighteen hundred years before, and recorded to be commented on in after ages.

Nor was Banneker’s observation confined to matters of a philosophical character. There is evidence in the memoranda of his record book that natural history was equally interesting to him. The following, independent of its connection with the subject of our memoir, possesses general interest as an authentic statement by an eye-witness of a curious fact in entomology. In April, 1800, he writes: “The first great locust year that T can remember was 1749. I was then about seventeen years of age, when thousands of them came and were creeping up the trees and bushes. I then imagined they came to eat and destroy the fruit of the earth, and would occasion a famine in the land. I therefore began to kill and destroy them, but soon saw that my labour was in vain, and therefore gave over my pretension. Again in the year 1766, which is seventeen years after their first appearance, they made a second, and appeared to me to be full as numerous as the first. I then, being about thirty-four years of age, had more sense than to endeavour to destroy them, knowing they were not so pernicious to the fruit of the earth as I imagined they would be. Again in the year 1783, which was seventeen years since their second appearance to me, they made their third; and they may be expected again in the year 1800, which is seventeen years since their third appearance to me. So that if I may venture to express it, their periodical return is seventeen years: but they, like the comets, make but a short stay with us. The female has a sting in her tail as sharp and hard as a thorn, with which she perforates the branches of the trees, and in the holes lays eggs. The branch soon dies and falls. Then the egg, by some occult cause immerges a great depth into the earth, and there continues for the space of seventeen years as aforesaid.” [. . .]

The last extract we shall make from the record book is one which indicates a relish for the beautiful in nature, as well by his undertaking to record a description of what he saw, as by the language which he uses. The extract is from the last pages of the book, when he was in his seventy-first year. His writing is still distinct, but the letters have lost their firmness, and shew that his hand trembled as it held the pen.

“1803, Feb. 2d. In the morning part of the day, there arose a very dark cloud, followed by snow and hail, a flash of lightning and loud thunder crack; and then the storm abated until afternoon, when another cloud arose at the same point, viz: the north-west, with a beautiful shower of snow. But what beautified the snow was the brightness of the sun, which was near setting at the time. I looked for the rainbow, or rather snowbow, but I think the snow was of too dense a nature to exhibit the representation of the bow in the cloud.” ’

The MdHS blog, Underbelly, gives a brief description of Banneker’s journal: ‘Some of the more remarkable pages in this ledger show graphic projections for solar and lunar eclipses. In addition to these formulas there are also practical descriptions of how Banneker obtained the geocentric latitudes of planets, the movements of stars, and the different quarters of the moon in every day language. This journal is much more than a mathematical ledger though - its contents give a much fuller glimpse of who Banneker was as a person. It is interspersed with accounts of his day-to-day life, including descriptions of his interactions with his neighbors and friends the Ellicotts, close encounters with armed intruders on his property, descriptions of the a brood of 17-year cicada from 1749, and the most notable section, a copy of the correspondence between Benjamin Banneker and Thomas Jefferson. But in this writer’s opinion, the most unique contents of the journal are Banneker’s detailed descriptions of the dreams and nightmares that woke him in the night. A transcription of his mysterious dream accounts appear below in chronological order.’

The blog then quotes a few extracts, as follows:

5 December 1791
‘On the night of the fifth of December 1791, Being a deep Sleep, I dreamed that I was in a public Company, one of them demanded of me the limits of Rassanah Crandolph’s Soul had to display itself in, after it departed from her Body and taken its flight. In answer I desired that he show me the place of Beginning “thinking it like making a Survey of the Land.” He replied I cannot inform you but there is a man about three days journey from Hence that is able to satisfy your demand, I forthwith went to the man and requested of him to inform me place of beginning of the limits that Rasannah Crandolph’s soul had to display itself in, after the Seperation from her Body; who gave me answer, the Vernal Equinox, When I returned I found the Company together and I was able to Solve their Doubts by giving them the following answer Quincunx.’

13 December 1797
‘I Dreamed I saw some thing passing by my door to and fro, and when I attempted to go to the door, it would vanish and reapted [?] it twice or thrice, at length I let in the infernal Spirit and he told me that he had been concerned with a woman by the name of Beckey Freeman (I never heard the name as I remember) by some means we fell into a Skirmish, and I threw him behind the fire and endeavored to burn him up but all in vain- I know not what became of him but he was an ill formed being- Some part of him in Shape of a man, but hairy as a beast, his feet was circular or rather globular and did not exceed an inch and a half in diameter, but while I held him in the fire he said something respecting he was able to stand it, but I forget his words. B. Banneker’

24 April 1802
‘I dreamed I had a fawn or young deer; whose hair was white and like unto lamb’s wool , and all parts about it beautiful to behold. Then I said to myself I will set this little captive at liberty, but I will first clip the tips of his ear that I may know him if I should see him again. Then taking a pair of shears and cutting off the tip of one ear, and he cried like unto a child hath the pain which grieved him very much altho then I did not attempt to cut the other but was very sorry for that I had done I got him at liberty and he ran a considerable distance then he stopped and he looked back at me I advanced toward him, and he came and met me and I took a lock of wool from my garment and wiped the blood of wound which I had made on him (which sorely affected me) I took him in my arms and brought him home and hold him on my knees, he asked the Woman if she had any trust and she answered him in the affirmative and gave him Some, which he began to eat and then asked for milk in a cup She said the dog had got the cup with milk in it under the house but there is milk in the cupboard.

My dream left me. B. Banneker.’

24 April 1802
‘Being weary holing for corn, I laid down on my bed and fell into a deep sleep and dreamed I had a child in my arms and was viewing the back part of its head where it had been sore, and I found it was healed with a hole through the skin and Skull bone and came out at forehead, that I could see very distinctly through the child’s head the hole being large enough to receive an ordinary finger – I called some woman to see the strange sight, and she put her spectacles on and Saw it, and she asked me if I had previously lanced that place in the Child’s head, I answered in the affirmative.

N.B. the Child is well as any other.’

Václav Havel as diarist

Václav Havel, the Czech political dissident and human rights activist who became his country’s first president in the post-Communist era, would have been 80 today. He was also a playwright of some distinction, and, as a young man, used his plays to criticise the Soviet-backed regime. A few years before his death, he published a memoir which included a diary he kept during 2005; and more recently the Václav Havel Library in Prague has announced the discovery of a diary Havel kept while in prison during 1977.

Havel was born in Prague on 5 October 1936 into an intellectual and wealthy family, though that wealth was stripped away after WW2 by the Communist regime. Disallowed from studying humanities because of his bourgeois background, he worked as a lab technician before enrolling in the economics faculty as the Czech Technical University, though he dropped out after two years. Following military service in the late 1950s, he found work as a stagehand for the Prague theatrical company, and soon began writing plays, such as The Garden Party (Zahradní slavnost) and The Memo (Vyrozumění). At the same time, he became an active member of the writers’ union, though his political aims were not so much to remove the prevailing Communist regime but to change it. In 1964, he married Olga Šplíchalová.

By 1968, Havel had risen to the position of resident playwright at the Theatre on the Balustrade. He made a brief trip to US, for a production of The Memo in New York, which established his international reputation. Back home, he was a prominent supporter of the liberal reforms taking place that year (known as the Prague Spring). But with Operation Danube and the Soviet clampdown in August, Havel’s plays were banned and his passport confiscated. He moved to live in the countryside where he maintained his political activities, largely on behalf of human rights in the country, being a co-founder of Charter 77, and continued writing plays. In 1978, he wrote one of his most well-known essays - The Power of the Powerless - which foresaw that opposition could eventually prevail against the totalitarian state. It was secretly but widely circulated at the time in Czechoslovakia and other Warsaw Pact countries. He was repeatedly arrested in the 1970s and 1980s, serving four years in prison, but resisted pressure to emigrate.

In late 1989, Havel, by then leader of Civic Forum, emerged as one of the leaders of the Velvet Revolution. By unanimous vote of the Federal Assembly in December, he was elected President; and the following year, in the first free national elections for over 40 years, he won a sweeping victory for Civic Forum and its Slovak counterpart Public Against Violence. He stepped down in 1992 because of tensions between the Czechs and the Slovaks, not wishing to preside over the country’s break-up, but was reelected as president of the Czech Republic in early 1993. His wife died in 1996, and the same year he was diagnosed with cancer, and underwent lung-removal surgery. He was re-elected president in 1998, though by this time, with most power vested in the prime minister’s office not the presidency, and many domestic controversies, he was more popular abroad than at home. He stepped down in 2003, by which time he had married Dagmar Veškrnová, a flamboyant actress who had once been filmed in the role of a topless vampire.

Havel turned to writing, producing a new play in 2008, which was enthusiastically received, and writing a memoir of his time as president. Paul Wilson translated the latter, which was published in English, also in 2008, by Portobello Books under the title, To the Castle and Back. He died in 2011, having received, from the early 1990s onwards, many state honours and many international awards. Further information is available online at the official Havel website, Wikipedia, Václav Havel Library, or Radio Prague, and from many obituaries, for example the BBC, The Guardian, The New York Times and The Telegraph.

Although Havel was not a committed diarist, or so it seems, he did keep a diary at different times in his life. Earlier this year, Radio Prague broadcast an interview with Michael Žantovský, the head of the Václav Havel Library, about some previously ‘unknown diaries’ kept by Havel when jailed in 1977. Žantovský explained that the library had decided to publish the diaries in their entirety as a facsimile (i.e. not retyped) because they ‘make a very interesting graphic’ alongside explanatory essays by experts. He also gave some information about the diaries:

‘The entries were written between January and July 1977 when the Charter 77 human rights initiative was launched and spearheaded by Václav Havel as spokesman and 14 days later he ended up in detention and then pre-trial custody where he spent the next four months. And he started making notes into a very ordinary scheduling diary which existed at the time and this disappeared after he was released in subsequent years and was only discovered in the garage of a close friend of his by the grandson of the friend, when his grandfather died and he was clearing up his papers.’

Otherwise, Havel also kept a diary during 2005 while working on his memoir, To the Castle and Back. The book is made up of three elements: substantial extracts from dated memos to his staff during his time in office as president, answers to a series of interview questions, and sometimes lengthy extracts from his 2005 diary - see below for two such extracts. (The book can also be previewed freely online at Amazon and Googlebooks.)

29 April 2005
‘I have been to two more “political dinners” at Madeleine’s; many important people were there, such as the former secretary of defense William Cohen; the director of PBS, Mrs. Pat Mitchell; Senator Barbara Mikulski; the Democratic leader in the House of Representatives, Mrs. Nancy Pelosi; the deputy secretary of state, Mr. Nicholas Bums; and many others. Many of them I had met on earlier occasions, others I had once been introduced to, but I had forgotten those earlier encounters. Madeleine, once again, moderated the discussion wonderfully; it was lively and spontaneous and exhausting, naturally. I had the constant feeling that I was speaking of things about which these people knew more than I did, and moreover I was doing so in a language I don’t know very well. Now that it’s over I’m glad I did it, and I’m grateful to Madeleine.

It’s paradoxical: every evening I meet with the most important people here, and then, during the day, I run afoul of banal American red tape. Yesterday, for example, we had to return our rental car and then turn right around and rent it again, even though we’d already paid for another month. I understand the thing itself - it’s an accounting matter. What I don’t understand is why the transaction consumed almost an entire, valuable American day. Standing at the window where all this took place, and where more and more complications kept surfacing, I found it hard not to lose my temper. My Czech pistoleer often uses a trick I don’t much like: he reveals who I am - if I’m not recognized, that is. But in this democratic country, favoritism is out of favor, and so the results are always the same: great delight that they’ve met me, great astonishment that I, of all people, have turned up here, of all places - and then an immediate return to the original situation. It doesn’t speed things up by even a minute. That was yesterday. I barely had time to change for dinner at Madeleine’s.

But that wasn’t the end of it; two unpleasant things happened this morning. The first was something I knew was bound to happen, that is, our Barnabas, Mr. Edler, was nowhere to be found, and so they wouldn’t let us into our parking spot. (Later the director of the Kluge Center had to sort things out himself at the entrance.) And the second thing was something I could not have known would happen, and which says something about the state of my memory. At the entrance to the library, where they put my bag through a scanner, they discovered a metal kitchen knife in it, which is not allowed. I expressed surprise and denied it, of course, because I’d completely forgotten that I’d put the knife in my bag that morning so I could spread jam on my roll. They searched the bag and I was caught red-handed. There was nothing to do but hope I wouldn’t be arrested, then go outside and toss the knife in the garbage. (Fortunately it was not made of silver.) I felt very silly.

I often can’t understand Americans when they speak, especially black Americans, and this is the source of many other embarrassing moments. Yesterday, for example, a young black man who was with me in the elevator told me how much he admired me and asked me for my autograph. Then he mumbled something I didn’t catch, though it was evidently a question. For the sake of simplicity, I replied, “Yes.” As soon as I’d spoken, I realized that he was asking me if I had written The Unbearable Lightness of Being. I couldn’t very well change my answer, and there was no escaping, so I had to remain in a state of embarrassment until the moment of liberation when our elevator arrived at the right floor. A truly Kunderian situation.’

28 November 2005
‘For the whole of September and October I never stopped. Yet what did I actually do? I visited several European countries, had a lot of meetings and visits and discussions, and made countless speeches - and all at a time of year when I’m usually under the weather. I’m quite surprised that I survived it all without any damage to my health. I’m at Hradecek once more, but there’s a lot of snow here now and the trees are beautifully cloaked in white. I’m really like a hermit here. (Hradecek is off by itself and my only neighbor is my friend Andrej Krob, who has a cottage nearby, but he’s not there now.) Yesterday I watched a thriller on television and then I realized that for the first time in my life I felt afraid here. The very thought that I might suddenly glimpse the movement of a human shadow gave me goose bumps and heart palpitations. I stopped getting the newspapers a while ago, and my news comes from television. I read the papers only when I happen across one. The last time that happened was several days ago on the plane from Budapest, when I discovered I was the subject of a scandal. The Czech media are up in arms because I have apparently supported our new prime minister. The whole thing obviously started a while ago, when he invited me for coffee, and as we were leaving we were waylaid by a journalist who asked me how I’d have gotten along with the current prime minister if I were still president. I said I thought we’d hit it off. By that I meant that I would not have been having constant public squabbles with the prime minister over how to interpret the constitution, as our current president does. I should have expressed myself more precisely or concretely, but still, why there should have been a controversy or even a scandal over this, I have no idea. But obviously I can’t understand everything.’

A monster to devour me

Mary Astor, a Hollywood star of many films but best known for her role in The Maltese Falcon, was also a writer of some talent. However, her habit of keeping of a diary, with details of many affairs, led to a huge scandal in the 1930s, and nearly ruined her life. Liveright has just published a cute paperback about the scandal - Mary Astor’s Purple Diary - humorously written and lavishly illustrated by the well-known American cartoonist Edward Sorel. The book’s title might lead one to believe it contains Astor’s diary, but, in fact, there are very few verbatim extracts: after causing such a scandal, the diary was locked up, and later destroyed. Astor, herself, wrote of the diary that it had become ‘a monster that threatened to devour me.’

Lucile Vasconcellos Langhanke was born in Quincy, Illinois, in 1906. Her German-born father was a teacher of German, and her mother, with a Portuguese background, was a drama teacher. As a teenager, Lucile sent photographs of herself to magazine beauty contests; and, aged 15, her father moved the family to New York City in the hope of finding work for Lucile in the moving pictures. She was taken on by Harry Durant of Famous Players-Lasky, her named changed to Mary Astor by Lasky himself, and a contract with Paramount Pictures secured. She played several small roles, and then with her parents, moved to Hollywood.

Astor was spotted by John Barrymore, and was loaned to Warner Bros, to star with him in Beau Brummell. The two became involved, though they found it difficult to further their relationship given how strictly Astor’s parents controlled her movements and her income. Indeed, Astor’s father was so physically and psychologically abusive that she tried running away from home when 19, a move which resulted in her winning some freedoms and her own bank account. When her Paramount contract ended, she moved to Warner, and then to Fox, where she earned nearly $4,000 a week. In 1928, she married the director Kenneth Hawks and the couple moved into a house above Beverley Hills.

With voice training and singing lessons, Astor managed the transition from silent movies to talkies, but when Hawks was killed in a plane crash in 1930, she suffered a serious depression. She was treated by Dr. Franklyn Thorpe, whom she married in June 1931. In August the following year, Astor gave birth to a daughter, Marylyn (in Honolulu). She starred with Clarke and Jean Harlow in MGM’s Red Dust, before signing again with Warner. In 1933, she took a break from the film world and travelled to New York, where she met, and fell in love with, the playwright George S. Kaufman.

In 1935, Astor was drawn into a nasty dispute with her husband. Thorpe had found her diary - with details of many affairs - and threatened to ruin her career with it unless she agreed to a divorce under his terms, including handing over their house and most of her money, and giving him legal custody over their daughter (although mother and daughter remained living together). However, once divorced, Astor decided to sue for custody. Astor’s lawyer managed to get the diary excluded from court, but, nevertheless, Thorpe leaked parts (exaggerating some) to the media which created a public frenzy embroiling anyone referred to in the quoted extracts. The case was settled out of court, with custody of Marilyn being awarded to her mother in school months, and to her father for weekends and vacations. The diary was sealed away - declared pornography by the court - under the terms of the settlement, and, many years, later destroyed.

The scandal caused little harm to Astor’s career. She went on making many films, though, as time wore on, she was given less substantial roles. She married twice more, to Manuel de Campo (with whom she had a son) and Thomas Wheelock, divorcing after five years each time. She had always drunk a lot, but, by the late 1940s, was sometimes admitting herself to sanitariums for alcoholics, and, at other times, seeking religious salvation. She debuted for television in the early 1950s, and took on more theatre work. In 1959, she published My Story: An Autobiography which became a bestseller. A decade later, she wrote another successful autobiographical work, and then turned her hand to a few novels. After travelling around the world in 1964, she filmed a last scene with her friend Bette Davis - making a total of 109 movies during a 45 year career. She died in 1987. See Wikipedia, IMDB, The New York Times obituary or Encyclopaedia Britannica for further biographical information.

Much of Astor’s story is detailed in a new paperback from Liveright called Mary Astor’s Purple Diary by Edward Sorel. Sorel is well known in the US as a cartoonist and illustrator. Now in his late 80s, he confesses, he has had a near-lifelong affair with Astor, or at least Astor’s story. He had just married for the second time, and moved into an apartment in Manhattan, when he found, under the old linoleum, newspapers dating from 1936 with sensational headlines about the Astor diary scandal. For half a century, he promised himself that he would write a book about Astor, but ‘deadlines always got in the way’.

Through the book, Sorel interweaves, often humorously, some elements of his own story believing they resonate with Astor’s life, or because, at least, they go some way to explaining his mild obsession with the film star. Nevertheless, the book’s focus is very much on the trial and the way Astor’s diary was used, and misused. The work is richly illustrated throughout with Sorel’s own full-colour cartoons (‘ribald and rapturous art’ according to the publisher’s blurb). Despite the title, there are very few verbatim extracts from the diary. Although some of the few extracts are taken from My Story: An Autobiography (Doubleday, 1959 - see here for a copy online), it is far from clear where the rest of Sorel’s information comes from (no references, no bibliography).

For example, here, in the following paragraph (found on page 84), it seems Sorel has good access to the diary’s contents: ‘Mary’s diary entries describing her days and nights with George during the first year of their affair read like the breathless gushing of a teenager who has run away from home. At some point even Mary seemed to tumble to the silliness of her romantic certainties. In a later moment of rueful self-analysis she wrote, “How I’ve ever been able to write all those things I don’t know. . .  ‘Love of My Life’ - ‘Enduring,’ ‘Sense of Something Important’ - Piffle! Could write in detail about this last trip and seeing George - about the ecstasy contained in a few beautiful hours, but if I did I’d laugh myself sick - I’ve said it all before - I’ve felt it all before. . . Does this happen over and over and over again? If it does it’s all a lousy trick. Am I going to keep on forever thinking this is it? What the hell is it and what do I want?”

Presumably, Sorel culled much of his information about the diary, including extracts, from contemporaneous newspaper reports (such as those he’d once found under the lino), and possibly from Kenneth Anger’s infamous Hollywood Babylon. This latter was first published in French in 1959. Its first US edition in 1965 was banned, and not republished for ten years. It contained details of many sordid scandals, as well as a chapter on Mary Astor (Diary in Blue) with extracts from her diary (a few pages can be viewed online at Amazon, and see also this blog).

Here, though, are most of the rest of the very few extracts from Astor’s diary that Sorel quotes verbatim.

5 May 1926
‘We seem like a tinder to flame up any moment.’

June 1931
‘It’s a beautiful June night, with the moon riding high - and the bridegroom never said a word.’

1 October 1933
‘I am still in a haze - nice rosy glow. It is beautiful, glorious - and I hope it’s my last love - can’t top it with anything in my experience - nor do I want to.’

January 1934
‘I did meet a man, professional,, somewhat older and rather well-to-do, only his first initial is G. and I fell like a ton of bricks - as only I can fall - it was just one of those things. . .  that was six months ago and it’s still good - we write to each other often, about every two weeks - flowers and telegrams for Christmas and New Years; once when Franklyn was away he called me long distance and we talked for half an hour - his last letter finished with “Think of me my darling, because I certainly think of you.” ’

And, finally, here are two paragraphs from Astor’s autobiography in which she writes about her diary keeping habit: ‘I had kept a diary for years and I had realized for some time that it might be used in a divorce action. The diary revealed not only all the details of my own life from the period of Russell Bradbury to the present, but it also revealed much that I knew about other people. The lives of many people would be affected. I finally decided that the best thing to do was to submit to divorce on Franklyn’s terms. Marylyn and I moved to Tower Road - Franklyn wanted only her legal custody and he got an uncontested divorce in 1935.

When people asked me, “Why on earth did you keep a diary? How could you be so foolish?” it was much too complicated and too simple to explain. I’m not sure I could have explained it even to myself then. But now I think I can better understand my motives. I kept a diary because my mother had kept one in identical ledger volumes. I wanted to talk about my own activities and my opinions of other people and the things they did. I wanted the assurance of individuality and reality and substance that the diary gave me. The diary was a consolation and a reassurance. But when it was no longer in my possession it was suddenly transformed into a monster that threatened to devour me and my friends, and, worst of all, Marylyn.’

Puppeteer extraordinary

‘I love it!. I’ve always enjoyed cars - and I enjoy being in love with my car.’ This is the famous US puppeteer, Jim Henson, creator of the Muppets, not least Kermit the Frog, writing in his rather sparse journal about a brand-new Kermit-green Lotus given him by a UK TV impresario. Henson would have been 80 today had he not been struck down in his early 50s by a sudden illness - but his company, involving most of his children, continues to flourish, as do Kermit and other Muppets.

Henson was born in the US state of Mississippi, about 100km north of Jackson, on September 24, 1936, and raised as a Christian Scientist. His family moved to University Park, Maryland, near Washington, D.C., in the late 1940s. While still attending school, he began working for a television company making puppets for a children’s programme. At the University of Maryland, he began studying art but switched to home economics which allowed him to study craft and textiles. For WRC-TV, he created a five-minute puppet show, Sam and Friends, in which he introduced Muppet characters, including Kermit the Frog. Henson travelled in Europe for a while, where he was inspired by the way puppetry could be seen as an art form; and, on returning to the US, he married Jane Nebel. They would go on to have five children.

Henson stayed with WRC until 1961. The popularity of Sam and Friends meant Henson was in demand as a guest on talk shows and his puppets were in demand for commercials. In 1963, he moved with Jane to New York City where they set up Muppets Inc. Henson started experimenting with making his own films; around the same time one of his Muppets, Rowlf, began making regular appearances on a networked programme, The Jimmy Dean Show. In 1969, Henson and his team were invited to work full-time on Sesame Street, a public television programme that would soon revolutionise children’s television. Apart from creating and performing the puppets, Henson was also involved in producing the programmes. 

During the 1970s, Henson’s team expanded to provide more adult entertainment, providing sketches for the groundbreaking comedy series Saturday Night Live. But, in 1976, rebuffed by American television companies for his idea of an adult variety show in solving Muppets, he moved his team to London, where Lew Grade, at ATV, was far more enthusiastic. The resulting programme - The Muppet Show - was a huge success, ran for five series and spawned several films: The Muppet Movie was the first film to feature puppets interacting with humans in real-world locations.

In 1982, Henson founded the Jim Henson Foundation to promote and develop the art of puppetry in the United States. That same year, his non-Muppet film, The Dark Crystal, co-directed with his colleague Frank Oz, who he had first recruited as a puppet performer in 1963, was a financial and critical success. However, a few years later, the Henson-directed Labyrinth was considered a commercial failure (later, though, it became a cult classic). Henson and Jane separated but remained close, as did their children who also worked with the Muppets. Other films followed, and a TV series, The Jim Henson Hour, and Henson was on the cusp of selling his firm to The Walt Disney Company for $150m when he died suddenly in 1990 from toxic shock syndrome. Further biographical details are available from The Jim Henson Company, Wikipedia, Biography.com, or ADC.

Henson was no diarist, but he did keep brief handwritten notes for much of his life in a journal book. This was published for the first time in 2012 by Chronicle Books as Imagination Illustrated: The Jim Henson Journal (and some pages can previewed at Googlebooks or Amazon). In the book, the short, brief entries have been supplemented hugely with illustrations put together by Karen Falk. In a foreword, Lisa Henson, Jim Henson’s oldest child, says: ‘The great profusion of images, titles, and characters that [Falk] has used to illustrate my father’s journal is a wonderful way to capture Jim’s very busyness - his wildly creative mind.’

Henson’s diary has also been used by Brian Jay Jones in his recent biography - Jim Henson: The Biography (Virgin Books, 2013). The New York Times called it ‘an exhaustive work that is never exhausting, a credit both to Jones’s brisk style and to Henson’s exceptional life’; but it also cautioned: ‘As strong as Jones is on Henson’s career, the man himself often remains out of sight, crouched just below the frame.’ Henson’s diary is referenced many dozens of time through the book, but most quotes from it are just two or three words long - reflecting the brevity of Henson’s diary entries. Most of verbatim quotes are embedded in Jones’s text, as in “Mom passed on,” he confided in his journal’ or ‘ “Received EMMY,” Jim wrote in his journal’. There are, though, a handful of slightly longer quotes (none dated), as follows:

‘My work schedule here is extremely full, [. . .] Work days usually start when I get up and go late into the evenings - shooting days end at 8 p.m. and often I’m meeting someone for dinner - business mostly. I go to ATV virtually every day . . . weekends I drop by the editing and sound dubbing.’

‘I don’t resent the long work time - I shouldn’t - I’m the one who set my life up this way - but I love to work. It’s the thing that I get the most satisfaction out of - and probably what I do best. Not that I don’t enjoy days off - I love vacations and loafing around. But I think much of the world has the wrong idea of working - it’s one of the good things in life - the feeling of accomplishment is more real and satisfying than finishing a good meal or looking at one’s accumulated wealth.’

‘Last night, I met the Queen of England - to dah!’ [At a Royal Variety Performance.]

‘I love it!. I’ve always enjoyed cars - and I enjoy being in love with my car.’ [On a brand-new Kermit-green Lotus with a license plate reading kermit given to him by Lord Grade.]

‘I really had a delightful time working on the concept - and talking it over with Cheryl - and it all gelled during that time, so that I’m quite happy with the way it has begun taking shape.’ [About The Dark Crystal.]

‘I’m trying to create this film in a different way, hoping to get all the creative elements going on it for a while before tying things down with a script.’ [About The Dark Crystal.]

‘It’s such a wonderful challenge to try to design an entire world ... like no one has ever seen before.’ [About The Dark Crystal.]

V happy with E

‘Oh E, how can I live separated from you? What have I done to us? If I stopped caring, I should never care for anything. If I stopped fearing this, I should fear nothing again.’ This is Charles Ritchie, a Canadian diplomat born 110 years ago today, writing in his diary - which he often did - of his love for the British writer Elizabeth Bowen. They lived very separate lives, often in different countries, and were both married, yet their passionate love for each other - documented in his diary and her letters - survived more than 30 years, indeed until Bowen’s death.

Ritchie was born in Halifax, Nova Scotia, on 23 September 1906. His father, a lawyer and 25 years older than his mother, died when he was 10. He was educated at a series of schools, at least one in England, before moving on to spend a considerable amount of time at universities in Halifax, Oxford and Harvard. While still a teenager, he had received an unexpected letter from Sir Robert Borden, then Canada’s Prime Minister and his father’s former friend. In the letter, Borden explained that he was hoping to set up a Canadian foreign service, and he suggested that Ritchie might like to consider working there. Thus, in mid-1934, Ritchie joined the Department of External Affairs. His first posting abroad came in 1936, to Washington, and then in early 1939 he was transferred to London.

According to Ritchie (in The Siren Years - see below), wartime London was a forcing ground for love and friendship, and so it proved for himself. In 1941, he met and fell in love with the writer Elizabeth Bowen. She had been married for 18 years, and was seven years older than Ritchie who had never been married. Their relationship would last more than 30 years, for the rest of Bowen’s life, surviving past the death of Bowen’s husband and through Ritchie’s own marriage (to Sylvia Smellie), though they would never spend more than a week or so together at any one time. After the war, in the mid-1950s, Ritchie was promoted to ambassador in Germany.

Subsequently, Ritchie served as Canada’s Permanent Representative to the United Nations (1958-1962), as ambassador in Washington (1962-1966), and as High Commissioner in London (1967-1971). On retiring he returned to Ottawa though he continued as a special adviser to the Privy Council. He also began editing his diaries for publication. He died in 1995. There is a very little detailed information about Ritchie readily available online, despite his prominence as a Canadian diplomat and diarist, but see Wikipedia, The Canadian Encyclopedia, The Independent’s obituary, or this Robert Fulford article.

The first collection of diary extracts Ritchie put together was published by Macmillan (as were all his diaries) in 1974 under the title The Siren Years: Undiplomatic Diaries, 1937-1945. See Googlebooks for a  preview and The Captive Reader for a review and extracts. An Appetite for Life: The Education of a Young Diarist, 1924-1927 followed in 1977 (see Googlebooks for a preview), as did Diplomatic Passport: More Undiplomatic Diaries, 1946-1962 in 1981, and Storm Signals: More Undiplomatic Diaries 1962-1971 in 1983. A compendium of the undiplomatic diaries was brought out in 2008 by McClellan & Steward - see Amazon. Also in 2008, Simon & Schuster published Love’s Civil War: Elizabeth Bowen and Charles Ritchie, Letters and Diaries, 1941-1973, as edited by Victoria Glendinning with Judith Robertson. See The Guardian for an article by Glendinning on her book.

In his foreword to The Siren Years, Ritchie explains how he came to be a diarist: ‘It was with adolescence that the diary addiction fixed its yoke on me - a yoke which in the succeeding fifty years I have never been able entirely to shake off, although there have been merciful intervals of abstinence. The habit had begun even earlier - had sprouted furtively when I was a schoolboy. Its seed was perhaps already sown when I would write on the front of school books, Charles Stewart Almon Ritchie, King’s Collegiate School, Windsor, Nova Scotia, Canada, North America, The World, The Universe, September 23rd, 1918, 3:17 p.m. - an early compulsion to fix myself in space and in time. Once given over to this mania there was no cure for it. With obstinate obsessiveness I continued to scribble away. Now the toppling piles of my old diaries are mountains of evidence against me, but I still postpone the moment to destroy them. Their writing and subsequent concealment were intentionally secretive - to have them discovered and read would have meant to be caught in the practice of “solitary vice.” ’

The following extracts from Ritchie’s diaries are all taken from Love’s Civil War except the first, which comes from The Siren Years.

28 September 1938.
‘We are now on the very edge of war. Already my feelings have changed since I last wrote. Perhaps I am already beginning to suffer from war blindness. I feel more and more part of my generation and my country and less an individual.

The war offers us no ideal worth dying for - we make no sacrifice for a noble cause. We fight with no faith in the future. It is too late to pretend (though we shall pretend) that we are defending the sanctity of international obligations or the freedom of individuals. We are fighting because we cannot go on any longer paying blackmail to a gangster. Whoever wins, we who belong to what we call “twentieth century civilization” are beaten before we start. We have had our chance since 1918 to make a more reasonable and safer world. Now we have to go and take our punishment for having missed that chance. We have willed the ends but we have not willed the means to attain those ends. That must be our epitaph.

Here in America it is “business as usual.” Tonight I have been listening to the radio for hours. It reflects the stream of normal American existence, the advertising, the baseball games, the swing music, but every few moments this stream is interrupted by a press bulletin from Europe. More mobilizations. Hitler may march before morning. These warnings from another world give Americans shivers down their spine, make them draw the curtains closer and huddle around their own fireside thanking God that they are safe from the storm outside.’

18 October 1941
‘My bed smells of her over-sweet violet scent. It is queer that she uses such an obvious scent - the perfume that goes with blondes and floating veils and sentiment . . .

I am reading The Death of the Heart in her special edition. It is an exact description of her house and of her husband. The position of the sofa in the drawing-room, the electric fire in his ‘study’ are all described exactly as they are. What is alarming is the husband is an unsparing portrait of A. I read this novel with most curious feelings as ‘a work of the imagination’; it has been destroyed for me by my knowledge of the particular circumstances. . . . She took that from here, she copied that turn of speech, that must be so-and-so, these thoughts go through my mind as I am reading. It is like eating an elaborate dish after seeing the materials of which it is made up lying about in the kitchen, or being so near the ballet that you can see the make-up.’

20 February 1947
‘V happy with E. We have spent the weekend huddled over the weak radiator and the whiskey bottle or on the enormous ‘made for love’ bed. It’s like life on board ship, we sally out on the windswept deck-like boulevards for a ‘blow’ and are glad to be back in this cabin-like flat - which more than anything else is like a suite on a luxury liner.’

16 October 1949 [Hotel de la Paix, Geneva]
‘To understand one’s own destiny, to have some framework in which to see this floating shifting mass of experience, to chart these currents, these shocks and depths and dangerous rocks, not to die without knowledge. Oh E, how can I live separated from you? What have I done to us? If I stopped caring, I should never care for anything. If I stopped fearing this, I should fear nothing again. . . In a dim way I like this feeling of being alone and taking up this monologue. I miss my wife. I want her. I am waiting for her. Yet this time of recuperation is quietly, sadly pleasant.’

9 February 1952
‘I think that part of my reaction of boredom and distaste for Spender’s book comes from being reminded by it of countless pages of similar self-absorption in my own diaries. When I first knew E, I was surprised and rather disconcerted by her lack of concern with her own ‘interesting personality’. I found it difficult to accept when she, the leading psychological novelist of the day, told me that she was not interested in people and their motives and characters. I now understand what she meant. The exercise no longer amuses me. In fact it is only from obstinacy that I write this private diary at all.’

18 August 1952
‘With me love for a woman is always linked with a need to betray that love; a compulsion which I dread and desire. But there are times when that interminable dialogue of marriage seems interminable. It gives one a feeling of pure pain to think that it must go on and on and on. I am pretty sure that I should feel that whoever I had married.’

17 June 1956
‘Sad, lonely, undemanding letter from E. The truth is that I am anaesthetized to this existence, even quite enjoy it. Someone said I look ten years younger. I am all right if I keep going - much more cheerful than this diary shows.’

11 March 1957
‘I cannot describe the state I was in yesterday (can it have been only yesterday?) when I flew back from Ireland - the hallucinatory depression, the complete undermining of all confidence, the corroding guilt and sorrow. I never expected to feel all this again. E says that it is a ‘natural’ consequence of our parting, but it went much deeper than that. . . She says she can’t bear to think of me sealed away from life. I can’t bear to think of that myself, and it is true; but if that last day is life, can I bear it? She says she feels it is some deficiency in her love which drove me to it, but isn’t it some deficiency in me? No, this strain was too great. I cannot forgive myself for my impatience, my unlovingness, my dry irritability, my inability to accept. Yet I can entirely forgive myself. I understand and must never forget that all my cut and dried plans are the amusement of a bored man and bear no relation to reality. No, it was heart-breaking. How can I bear the memory of that last morning at the Shelbourne. How can I ever forget it. Surely I can’t go on as I did before, yet I feel that is just what I will do; that the scales will form over my eyes, that merciful banality will set me off from life in my Cologne Nursing Home. Oh Elizabeth!’

The Diary Junction

The king of Madagascar

Maurice, Count de Benyovszky, was born 270 years ago today. A gloriously romantic figure, a nobleman who fought for different countries across Europe and during the American revolution, he was also the self-declared king of Madagascar, having claimed it, at various times, for France, Austria, and American business associates. He died, killed in a skirmish with the French, when only 39; nevertheless, he left behind a journal/memoir of his colourful life.

Benyovszky (spelled in various ways) was born into a noble family on 20 September 1746 in Verbó (then within Hungary, part of the Hapsburg Emprire, now near Trnava in Slovakia). His parents died when he was 14, and two years later he began his career as an officer of the Habsburg army during the Seven Years’ War. He became involved in a legal dispute over family inheritances, which led to him fleeing the country.

In 1768 Benyovszky joined the Confederation of Bar, a Polish national movement against Russian intervention. He was captured by the Russians, interned in Kazan, and later exiled to Kamchatka, in the east of Siberia. Before long, though, he had organised a rebellion of Polish prisoners, seized weapons as well as a Russian vessel. He sailed through the northern Pacific Ocean, landing at Taiwan, Macau (where he and the rebels exchanged their vessel) and Madagascar, reaching France in mid-1772, where he learned of his promotion to general in the Polish Confederation.

Benyovszky returned to Madagascar in 1774, with French royal approval and a large number of volunteers, to establish a colony. He set about unifying local tribes, building a fortified garrison with a hospital, and even introduced a Latin script for the language. Having been appointed governor by the French king, the island’s inhabitants named him emperor. On returning to France, he was made a French general and awarded the Order of Saint Louis. He became friends with Benjamin Franklin, in Paris at the time, and the Polish nobleman and military commander, Cazimir Pulaski. However, his further proposals for Madagascar were rejected by the French, and he returned to Central Europe. There, he obtained a pardon from the Austrian Empress and Queen of Hungary, Maria Teresa, who also promoted him to the status of Count in 1778. He was empowered to take control of Madagascar in the the name of Austria, though nothing seems to have come of this.

After serving in the Austrian army during the War of the Bavarian Succession, Benyovszky followed his friend Pulaski to the American colonies and fought on the side of the revolution. Pulaski is said to have died in his arms at the siege of Savannah, after which Benyovszky returned to Austria. In 1781, he was again in North America, and, with a plan to raise a body of German troops for America, was introduced to George and Mary Washington. Although initially well received, the plan failed to materialise. Back in Europe, he approached the British government to give support for an expedition to Madagascar, which was not forthcoming. With the help of Franklin and Hyacinth de Magellan, he founded an American-British company for trading with Madagascar. In 1785, he arrived once again on the island, where he developed a trade settlement (Mauritania, named after himself). The French, though, were outraged by his alliance with the Americans; and during one attack, in May 1786, Benyovszky was killed. Further information is available from Wikipedia, Slovakopedia, Polish History, or a website managed by the Benyovszky family.

In the early 1780s, Benyovszky gave his friend Magellan four volumes of memoirs written in French. Magellan had them translated into English and they were published for the first time in 1789. A century later, at the end of the 19th century, they were published again by T. Fisher Unwin as Memoirs and Travels of Mauritius Augustus Count de Benyowsky Magnate of the Kingdoms of Hungary and Poland, one of the Chiefs of the Confederation of Poland etc. etc. with an introduction, notes and bibliography by Captain S. Pasfield Oliver. This, and earlier editions, are freely available at Internet Archive. The memoir starts with a biographical account of Benyovszky’s early life, written in the third person but nonetheless inspired by Benyovszky himself. Benyovszky’s journal/memoir commences in January 1770 and finishes in late 1776. Some of the narrative does read like a journal, with dated entries, but more often it reads like a memoir written in retrospect (e.g. ‘On the 6th, in the Straits, we joined a Spanish armed frigate, named the Pallas; and on the 16th of March, we arrived safely in France.’) The following extracts come from the Oliver edition.

15 October 1771
‘On the 15th, the associates met by my order. I informed them, that I was assured that a number among them were discontented with me; for which reason 1 thought proper to declare to them, that all those who were desirous of seeking their fortune elsewhere, were at liberty to quit me; and that as they had all received a retribution at my hands at the island of Formosa, I thought myself acquitted from them. I had scarcely made an end, before Mr. Stephanow loaded me with invectives, and charged me with an intention of depriving the company of their share of the advantages I was about to receive, from the knowledge I had acquired during the voyage; and that the moderation I had shewn at Formosa, in delivering my share of the presents of Prince Huapo, was merely a scheme to deprive them of greater advantages. He then excited the companions to throw off my authority, by assuring them that he would secure them a large fortune the instant they should determine to put my papers in his hands, and follow his party. The infamous plot of this wretch was nothing extraordinary; hut when I understood that he was supported by Sir. Wynbladth, my ancient Major, the companion of my exile, and my friend, I was incapable of setting bounds to my indignation, and could not avoid declaring, that their proceedings were highly disgraceful; and to confound them, I displayed their secret projects to the company, and justified my words by shewing Mr. Jackson’s letter, which convinced them that Messrs. Stephanow and Wynbladth, under pretence of serving the company, were desirous of securing the five thousand pounds to their own use. They were highly irritated, and threatened them; but Stephanow preserved a party of eleven, with whom he went to my lodgings; and while I remained in conversation with my friends, he seized my box, in which he supposed my papers were deposited. As soon as I heard of this outrage, I went to his chamber, followed by twenty associates; and as he refused to open the door, I broke it down. On my entrance he fired a pistol at me, which missed. In consequence of this attempt, I gave orders for seizing and keeping him in strict confinement; and as it was necessary likewise to secure Mr. Wynbladth, I went to his chamber; but he had retired into the garden, armed with a pair of pistols and a sabre. I determined to shut him in, being convinced that he could not get over the walls on account of their great height. This whole affair passed without the least alarm without, as the doors of the house were shut.’

16 October 1771
‘On the 16th, Mr. Wynbladth, fatigued by a continual rain, and perhaps urged by hunger, requested forgiveness, and surrendered himself to two companions I had appointed to watch him. Having thus made sure of these two turbulent men, I thought it proper they should be separated from the company; and they were therefore conducted to the castle by permission of the Governor: the officers of our company, being desirous of avenging themselves on the English emissaries, played them a trick, the whole effect of which fell upon a Jewish agent, who was severely flogged. Upon this wretch there were found minutes of proposals which he made to the companions, as follow:
1. That the English would pay to each associate one thousand piastres, in case they would serve the company, and put my papers in his hands.
2. That in case the associates refused to take the English party, the company would arrest them by force, in the name of the Empress of Russia, to deliver them up.
3. That the company would answer for obtaining the Empress’s pardon for them, if they would determine to make a voyage to Japan, and the Aleuthes Islands.

Such proceedings cannot attributed to men of sense. It was in my opinion a forgery, concerted between Mr. Stephanow and the Jew, to excite the associates against me.’

2 January 1772
‘On the 2d, I sold my vessel to a Portugueze merchant, for the sum of four thousand five hundred piastres, ready money, and as much on credit: the Governor reserved to himself the whole of the stores.’

14 January 1772
‘On the 14th, we quitted Macao, where the Governor saluted me with twenty-one guns, from the principal fortress; and, after a tedious passage, we arrived at last at the mouth of the Tigu; where we were very civilly received by a Mandarin, though he at first refused to permit us to go on shore: the sight of a purse of piastres, however, abated his severity; which was so much altered by this circumstance, that he offered permission for us to take lodgings in the fort.’

12 April 1772
‘On the 12th, we anchored at the Island of Madagascar, where I went on shore at Fort Dauphin. Some particulars of information I had received from the Governor of the isle of France, induced me to wish for more ample information, respecting this fine and extensive island; but unfortunately for this purpose, I could not prolong my stay.’

A fool’s paradise of poetry

‘Heavens! what fortitude one needs, to become a decent writer. One runs madly through green thickets, enamoured of the bird-notes which last but a few moments; one stumbles, picks oneself up, and emerges into a barren waste; one ruminates miserably for a while, dragging desolate feet through the dust of dead dreams. And then, if one is lucky, one plunges into another fool’s paradise of “poetry”.’ This is Siegfried Sassoon, a British poet born 130 years ago today, writing so lyrically about the difficulties of writing poetry. Although a brave and decorated WWI soldier, he is best remembered for diaries and poems describing the true horrors of war.

Sassoon was born at Weirleigh, Kent, on 8 September 1886, and educated at Marlborough College, and Clare College, Cambridge. He was the eldest of three sons born to a wealthy Jewish father and Catholic mother. After leaving Cambridge without a degree, he spent nearly a decade doing very little, other than hunting, socialising and writing occasional verse. With the onset of war, he enlisted as a cavalry trooper in the Sussex Yeomanry, but then, in 1915, injured his arm in a riding accident. After convalescing, he was commissioned as a second lieutenant in the 3rd Battalion (Special Reserve), Royal Welch Fusiliers, and was posted to the Western Front. He was considered a reckless soldier, but was awarded the Military Cross for rescuing a wounded man under heavy fire.

Significantly, while in France, Sassoon met Robert Graves: they encouraged each other’s love of poetry, and Graves’s more gritty style is known to have influenced Sassoon. In 1917, he was wounded and returned to England, but, by then, he had grown hostile to the realities of war and the British Army. His poetry began to reflect this change of ideas, and, with the war still raging, he published several controversial poems realistically describing life in the trenches, such as The Old Huntsman and Counter-Attack. Nevertheless, once recovered, he served further in Palestine and France, often being found inspirational by the soldiers under his command. Towards the end of the war, after a further period of convalescing, he sent his commanding officer a letter - Finished with the War: A Soldier’s Declaration. This was relayed to the press, and read out in Parliament. Some called for Sassoon to be court-martialled, but it was decided at the highest level that he was unfit for service, and he was sent to Craiglockhart War Hospital near Edinburgh to be treated for shell shock. At Craiglockhart, he met Wilfred Owen.

After the war, Sassoon lived briefly in Oxford, but then settled in Tufton Street, Westminster, from 1919. He became literary editor of the Daily Herald, a role that brought him into contact with many literary names of the day; and he, himself, became something of a literary celebrity. He spent the best part of two decades writing autobiographical or semi-autobiographical books, such as Memoirs of an Infantry Officer and Siegfried’s Journey. He married Hester Gatty in 1933, and they had one son before the marriage was dissolved in the 1940s. He lived the last years of his life in relative seclusion at Heytesbury in Wiltshire, converting to Catholicism in 1957. He died in 1967. Further information is available from Wikipedia, Poetry Foundation, the Sassoon Project Blog, or the Sassoon Fellowship.

Cambridge University Library claims to hold ‘the world’s richest assemblage of Sassoon’s manuscripts and archival papers’, including a run of diaries ‘stretching from 1905-1959’. The Cambridge Digital Library has made available images of 23 of Sassoon’s journals, focusing on the war years, but spanning 1915-1932. It says of Sassoon that he was a ‘gifted diarist’ and that the journals provide ‘a fascinating resource’ of WWI literature. However, the library does not provide any transcriptions of the diary pages.

‘Unlike edited printed transcriptions,’ it says ‘the digitisations allow the viewer to form a thorough sense of the nature of the physical documents. Sassoon wrote in a small but neat and legible hand, frequently using the notebooks from both ends. His war journals were used for a wide variety of purposes: in addition to making diary entries Sassoon drafted poetry, made pencil or ink sketches, listed members of his battalion and their fates, made notes on military briefings and diagrams of trenches, listed locations and dates of times spent at or near the Front, noted quotations, and transcribed letters. The wartime notebooks were small enough to have been carried by Sassoon in the pocket of his Army tunic, and many had enclosures such as letters tucked into the outer cover or inner pouches; some bear tangible evidence of use in the trenches, from the mud on notebook MS Add.9852/1/7 to the candlewax spilled on MS Add.9852/1/9, presumably as Sassoon sat writing in his dug-out by candlelight.’

Printed transcriptions, however, are available in three volumes, edited by Rupert Hart-Davis and published by Faber and Faber between 1981 and 1985: Diaries 1915-1918, Diaries 1920-1922, and Diaries 1923-1925. Here are several extracts from the latter. (Hart-Davis notes, however, that most of the text of the third volume was taken from ‘fair copies’ Sassoon himself made of the original diaries in 1931 and 1932. It is assumed, he says, that the originals were discarded.)

28 July 1923
‘A grey, soaking morning of wind-slanted rain. I stare out at the narrow lawn and the beeches, and the occasional gigs and motors that pass the gate. E.B. [Edmund Blunden] is busy in his room, concocting a review of R. Graves’s new poem for The Times Literary Supplement. The wind blusters among dark green boughs from a featureless white sky. A straggling pile of flapping rooks crosses the opaque pallor, travelling into the wind.

I ought to feel satisfied. E.B. is here, backed by our four years of flawless friendship, to discuss poetry and cricket, and the last war, and the next one. Half-a-mile away T.H. [Thomas Hardy] is busy in his study, finishing the one-act play about Tristram and Iseult which he has written for the Dorchester Players (‘but I have stipulated that they mustn’t perform it in London’). He has offered to read it to us. (Florence H. says ‘Reading is not one of T.H’s strong points’.) Rain-drops fall in white streaks from the thatch of Barnes’s old Rectory. The postman has brought the mid-day post, but the letter I was waiting for has not arrived.

Tea at Max Gate. Lady Stacie there, a descendant of R. B. Sheridan - and a fashionable lady, formerly a great beauty. She gushed to T.H. about his novels at the tea-table. He shut her up by saying ‘I am not interested in my novels. I haven’t written one for more than thirty years.’ 6-7.30 in golden weather E.B. and I bicycled to Upper Bockhampton, as E.B. hadn’t yet seen T.H’s birthplace. After dinner T. E. Lawrence turned up (from the Tank Corps camp near Wool). He rang the bell, left a message with the maid that he would come to lunch tomorrow, and departed. I dashed out and caught him as he went through the gate. He looked well - a queer little figure in dark motor-overalls, his brown and grimy face framed in a fur-lined cap. He had a passenger waiting in his side-car, and only stayed a minute.’

30 January 1924
‘The last ten days have been mostly night for me. January 20 was the last day on which I ‘lunched’ before 4 p.m. Mrs Binks encourages me to carry on my routine as if the Turners weren't here, and brings me up kippers etc. at 5 p.m. (rather to the annoyance, I suspect, of Turner). But I’ve been making full use of my D.N.B. exploration impulse.

It was in October 1920 that I began to file my way out of prison by a systematic effort to form an individual vocabulary. In the last few days (particularly when I read the New Statesman proof of ‘Primitive Ritual’) I have felt as if the door is beginning to swing slowly back.

Yesterday morning, after lying awake from 4.15 to 7.15, I got up to get a drink of water in the bathroom. Watching the milkman looming at our gate in foggy twilight, Chatterton came into my thoughts, with a sense of exquisite emotion. I skipped him in the D.N.B. when I was searching for clowns, criminals, eccentrics, and forgotten poets, and knew little of his work or the details of his life. But the picture in the Tate Gallery has always appealed to me, with its glimpse of summer daybreak through the garret window, and the ‘home from the ball’ beauty of the dead boy on the bed. So I have since read about him in the D.N.B. (‘It is wonderful how the whelp has written such things’ said Dr Johnson) and cursed Horace Walpole for not sparing him twenty guineas which might have saved a second Spenser to the world; and ended by reading ‘Sweet his tongue as a throstle’s note’ in the Oxford Book of English Verse. As I went to the club ‘I thought of Chatterton, the marvellous boy’, and when I got there I searched the library for books about him.

All this excitement has ended in a sonnet and I am feeling pleased. How rarely one gets that sort of excitement about literature. (And how little authentic information there is about Chatterton.)’

11 February 1924
‘Have been reading a book about ‘Perdita’ Robinson - light historical journalese - which has made me feel the futility of the ‘epigrammatic elegies’ I’ve sweated at since January 21. Of those fifty-one pieces scarcely half-a-dozen now seem tolerable. I suppose the Chatterton sonnet is all right (I sent it to Gosse, who thought it ‘very beautiful’). But most of the fifty-one short pieces are mere trivial scribbles - a parlour game. But I suppose I have picked up some smatterings of history from the D.N.B.

Heavens! what fortitude one needs, to become a decent writer. One runs madly through green thickets, enamoured of the bird-notes which last but a few moments; one stumbles, picks oneself up, and emerges into a barren waste; one ruminates miserably for a while, dragging desolate feet through the dust of dead dreams. And then, if one is lucky, one plunges into another fool’s paradise of ‘poetry’. And at the end, perhaps, one will meet death with half-a-dozen ‘immortal’ lines scribbled on half-a-sheet of note-paper. Lucky is he who does that!’

12 February 1924
‘Went to Hammersmith with the Turners, and saw Congreve’s The Way of the World - very refreshing.’

19 February 1925
‘Ten minutes late, I was convoyed into the luncheon-room at the Marlborough Club. There I found Sir Edmund Gosse entertaining Admiral Sir William Pakenham, Walter Sickert, Philip Guedalla, and Philip Gosse. These ingredients mixed none too well, and Sir Edmund was all anxiety to set conviviality in motion. When making me known to the Admiral (rubicund, hard-bitten, genial, and unostentatious) he revived the faded glories of my fox-hunting - ‘Mr Sassoon is the only living poet of any eminence who hunts’ - whereupon (somewhat confused by the Bohemian proximity of Sickert and the Whistler tradition) I clumsily blurted out ‘I only do it to save my face!’ (an obscure utterance which implied that I have done my little best to compromise with the Philistines, but was allowed to pass without comment).

Guedalla, elegantly Semitic, with a fat pearl in his tie, was sedulous in politeness to the Admiral, but out of range of Sickert, with whom he’d fain have discussed Max Beerbohm. Philip Gosse sat silent, as though waiting to be utilised when required. Sickert talked to me in undertones. He began by congratulating me on my poem in the New Statesman a few weeks ago (‘On Reading the War Diary of a Defunct Ambassador’ - it was on the same page as an article about him). This caused me to feel that the said poem wouldn’t be well received by members of the Marlborough Club. With E.G. there, Sickert made no attempt to shine as a raconteur. He is either first or nowhere. But he told me (I forget how it cropped up) a story about a woman in Paris who was crazily wrought up about the visit of the Czar and Czarina. ‘She flung herself into the Seine. When her body was recovered, it was found that her drawers were made of the Russian flag.’ This reference to drawers seemed to make the Admiral more at his ease, and the topic was pursued in a series of anecdotes. The Admiral’s was about a critical moment in the Battle of Jutland, when his fellow-Admiral broke the tension by remarking, ‘I am told that Princess Mary wears pink flannel drawers.’ ’

The Diary Junction

The death of Lorca

The great Spanish poet and playwright Federico García Lorca was assassinated 80 years ago today by right wing military forces at the start of the Spanish Civil War. The circumstances of his death have always been controversial, indeed Lorca’s biographer, Ian Gibson, has written an entire book on the subject. Although Lorca himself was not a diarist, in 2012 the diary of a young male lover surfaced, shedding new light on Lorca’s last days. On a personal note, my own diary reveals not only that I met Gibson several times, but how I realised that his book on the death of Lorca had played a part in inspiring me to be a writer.

Lorca was born in 1898 near Granada, Spain, into a wealthy landowning family. He was educated at Granada and Madrid universities. While studying in Madrid, he lived within the Residencia de Estudiantes, one of Spain’s first cultural centres, where he became friends with Luis Buñuel and Salvador Dalí among many other creative types. In 1919-1920, he wrote his first play, The Butterfly’s Evil Spell, which was not well received, and, in 1921, published his first book of poems. Collaborations with the composer Manuel de Falla and more poems followed before Lorca’s second play, Mariana Pineda, with sets designed by Dalí, opened in Barcelona in 1927, to great acclaim.

In 1929-1930, Lorca travelled to New York, where he studied English and continued writing poetry; he also visited Vermont and Cuba. Back in Madrid, the newly established Second Spanish Republic appointed him director of a student theatre company, Teatro Universitario La Barraca, charged with bringing theatre to rural areas of Spain. During the next few years he wrote his most famous plays, Blood Wedding, Yerma and The House of Bernarda Alba. But, when the Spanish Civil War broke out, he was assassinated, on 19 August, by fascist supporters of General Franco - the leader who, in 1939, would win the war and rule Spain for more than 30 years. The circumstances of Lorca’s death have long been controversial, and his body was never found. Biographers continue to argue about whether it was Lorca’s left-wing political beliefs (though he had friends in both factions of the emerging civil war) or personal animosities to his homosexuality that was most to blame for his death warrant.

In the 1960s, the Irish-born Ian Gibson, a Spanish literature academic working in Britain, moved to Granada for a year to write a doctoral thesis on Lorca, but ended up publishing (in Paris) a Spanish-language book about the playwright’s death - La represión nacionalista de Granada en 1936 y la muerte de Federico García Lorca (1971). It was banned in Spain; and subsequently it was also published in English as The Death of Lorca (1973). Gibson concluded that Lorca was, indeed, shot by nationalist militia, along with others, as part of a wider campaign to eliminate left-wing radicals. Gibson, by this time domiciled near Granada, went on to publish his major, and very highly respected, two-volume Spanish biography of Lorca in 1985-1987, and then two years later, a one volume edition in English.

In 2015, the Guardian claimed that documents it had obtained (written in 1965 at the Granada police headquarters) contained ‘the first ever admission by Franco-era officials’ of their involvement in Lorca’s death. The article goes on: ‘The resulting documents suggest García Lorca was persecuted for his beliefs, describing him as a “socialist and a freemason,” about whom rumours swirled of “homosexual and abnormal practices”. After police carried out two searches on his home in Granada, he fled to a friend’s house out of fear. In August 1936, just one month after the civil war broke out, officers surrounded the house where García Lorca was hiding, while his friends tried to intervene on his behalf. García Lorca was arrested and taken by car to an area close to the place known as Fuente Grande, along with one other detainee, said the documents. He was then “executed immediately after having confessed, and was buried in that location, in a very shallow grave, in a ravine”. No details were given as to the content of his confession.’ Further biographical information is available from Wikipedia, Andalusia.com or Poets.org.

There is no evidence that Lorca was a diarist (see A Companion to Federico García Lorca by Federico Bonaddio, 2007, Tamesis). However, in 2012, the 91 year old Juan Ramirez de Lucas, who had been Lorca’s last lover, died leaving behind a box of mementoes including letters and a diary - instructing his family to make them public. As was widely reported at the time (see El País for example), the letters (from Lorca) and de Lucas’s diary prove that Lorca, 38 years old, and de Lucas, only 19, had been planning in the summer of 1936 to flee to Mexico. Lorca, though, insisted that de Lucas seek permission from his family - permission that was not forthcoming, his father refusing to issue the necessary papers. Had the lovers left Spain at that moment in time, Lorca would not have died so young, and who knows what literary works he might have produced.

The Telegraph, for its take on the de Lucas story, contacted Gibson, who said: ‘It’s terribly exciting to learn new material exists that may shed light on his final days’, and ‘Lorca was very promiscuous and prone to infatuation but we never definitively knew who his last lover was or why he delayed leaving.’ Gibson revealed de Lucas’s name had come up during his own research on Lorca (which had begun while Franco was still in power), but that he had refused to be interviewed. ‘One can only guess that he wanted to keep his association a secret especially during the Franco years. It wasn’t easy being gay and especially if it was a relationship with someone as famous as Lorca.’ The Telegraph article concluded with another quote from Gibson: ‘We can only hope that the papers will be made available soon.’

Unfortunately, since 2012 there has been no sign that the letters/diary might be published, as was suggested at the time. In 2014, the British theatre critic Nicholas de Jongh, when writing a play on the death of Lorca, inspired by the de Lucas find, tried to find out what had happened to his papers, but was stonewalled at every turn. The play - The Unquiet Grave of Garcia Lorca - premiered in London in October 2014 - see The Evening Standard.

On a personal note, I met Ian Gibson several times at his home in Restabal, near Granada. My friend Rosy, and her husband Andy, had bought a holiday villa in the area, but it was only after being there for a while that Rosy discovered a cousin, whom she had not previously met, living nearby - Ian Gibson - and they soon became firm friends. One winter, I visited Rosy, with my seven-year old son, Adam, and she took us to Ian’s place. It was not until I was in his house, and browsing his bookshelves that I realised Ian had played a part, some 20 years earlier, in inspiring me to become a writer. Here is my diary entry:

15 January 1995
‘Ian proved a hearty fellow and quite charming. He loved Adam and the way he’d fallen asleep in his house without disturbing anyone, and he seemed on good form the thrice I saw him - on this evening, later in the week at a party, and then on New Year’s Eve at his party. But I must recount why my meeting with him was so significant.

In the mid-1970s, after my travels and when I was living in London with Harold, I think, I saw a modern ballet at Sadlers Wells, created by Lindsay Kemp and performed by Ballet Rambert. I can remember parts of the ballet to this day. It was called Cruel Garden and it so inspired me in some way that I wrote my first ever piece of fiction (apart from the shorts in my travel diaries) and I called it Cruel Garden, although it had nothing to do with the ballet or its subject (at least I don’t think it did). The point is that the ballet Cruel Garden was based on the life of Lorca and, in part, on Ian’s book The Death of Lorca. I did not even realise I had read the book until I started delving into my memories surrounding The Cruel Garden.’

The first Astronomer Royal

John Flamsteed, the first ever Astronomer Royal who catalogued hundreds of stars and laid the foundation stone of the Royal Greenwich Observatory, was born 370 years ago today. Later in life, he was in conflict with Isaac Newton, and with fellow astronomer Edmund Halley. He left behind an autobiography, many letters and a short diary, all of which were compiled, in the 19th century, into a large volume which included his catalogue of the stars.

Flamsteed was born on 19 August 1646 in Derbyshire, England, and educated in Derby, though from the age of 14 he suffered from chronic bouts of rheumatic illness, and, leaving school at 15, was unable to go to university. During his late teens and into his 20s he seems to have helped in his father’s brewing and malting business, and to have taught himself much about astronomy, through books and observations. In 1665, he presented, to William Litchford an expert on planets, his first essay, concerning the design, use and construction of an astronomer’s quadrant, including tables for the latitude of Derby. Around this time, he accurately predicted the solar eclipses of 1666 and 1668. He is also credited with the earliest recorded sightings of Uranus.

By this time, Flamsteed was corresponding with astronomers, such as Vincent Wing, and other learned figures, not least Henry Oldenburg, the secretary of the Royal Society, who had published a set of his astronomical projections in Philosophical Transactions. In 1670, Flamsteed visited Cambridge, and arranged to enter Jesus College, succeeding to an MA in 1674, the same year he first heard Isaac Newton’s Lucasian Lectures. Subsequently, he was ordained deacon, and was about to take up a living in his home county, when his patron Jonas Moore, Surveyor-General of the Ordnance, invited him to London. Moore had recently offered the Royal Society to pay for the establishment of an observatory. However, when Charles II set up a commission (including such notables as Christopher Wren and Robert Hooke) designed to investigate a specific proposal to calculate longitude by the position of the moon, Flamsteed was appointed as an official assistant to the commission, and supplied observations to test the idea.

Although the Commission found the specific idea was not worth pursuing, it recommended that the King should consider establishing an observatory in order to better map the stars and the motions of the moon in order to further investigate the lunar-distance method. Flamsteed was appointed by royal warrant ‘The King’s Astronomical Observator’ - the first English Astronomer Royal, with an allowance of £100 a year. A few months later, another royal warrant provided for the establishment of the Royal Greenwich Observatory, and it was Flamsteed who laid the foundation stone. The following year he was made a Fellow of the Royal Society, and he moved to live at the Observatory where he stayed until 1684, when he was also appointed priest to the parish of Burstow, Surrey, not far from Greenwich. In 1692, he married Margaret Cooke, the granddaughter of his predecessor at Burstow.

Flamsteed contributed much data, requested by Newton for his work Principia, but, when the latter was published it was Edmund Halley, then secretary of the Royal Society, who received much credit as sponsor of the work. Flamsteed, who had long disliked Halley, felt slighted by the lack of recognition for his contribution. This had a negative effect on Flamsteed’s relations with Newton, and the two thereafter were often in conflict. Indeed, when Flamsteed refused to publish his star data until properly verified, Newton and Halley conspired to obtain and publish them. Flamsteed managed to gather several hundred - but not all - of the published copies and burn them. Flamsteed died in 1719. Further information is available form Wikipedia, Encyclopaedia.com, MacTutor, The Messier Catalog, or Jesus College.

More than a century after Flamsteed’s death, in 1835, the Lords Commissioners of the Admiralty printed An Account of the Revd John Flamsteed: The First Astronomer Royal; compiled from his own manuscripts, and other authentic documents, never before published. Edited by Francis Bailey, this included Flamsteed’s History of his own Life, many letters, a few reports and memoranda, and a short ‘diary of events’ with entries between 1704 and 1713 - the latter having been found scattered through several pages of a letter-book containing a variety of other documents. Half the book, around 350 pages is taken up with the autobiographical material, the diary absorbing only a dozen or so page, and the other half of the book is taken up with Flamsteed’s Catalogue of Stars, consisting of table lists of stars and many associated notes. The work can be read freely online at Internet Archive or Googlebooks.

Here are three extracts from the Flamsteed’s ‘Diary of events’.

18 April 1706
‘Mr. Hudson here told me, if I would go up, Sir I. Newton would go to the Prince’s treasurer with me; urged me much: I went on the 19th mane: Sir Isaac was very grave: told me that, the Prince having subscribed a great sum to the Emperor’s loan, the whole money could not be received: that he had taken up monies for Mr. Churchill: would say nothing, when I asked if he had taken up also to pay me for my calculators; but that he must give bond to Mr. Churchill: I told him he had my catalogue and papers in his hands: he answered slightingly, that the catalogue was imperfect, which he knew when he received it sealed up, and was contented with it: I desired my MSS back, to correct the faults of the press: he told me we must go on slowly at first, quicker after, that in a few weeks he would return my MSS: Dr. Grey is at Oxford; suppose will not return till after term time: he must be paid for the needless collations, and they cannot be finished till his return: all this insincere practice I must bear, so long as God thinks fit: may his goodness deliver me speedily.’

19 July 1706
‘At London: waited on Sir I. Newton about printing 100 or 150 more copies: represented that I thought it needless, contrary to our agreement, &c.: he seemed to assent, and that we should go on, on the old foot: I suggested that it was probable Mr. Churchill had caused more to be printed than he ought, by 200: that if any besides myself had copies to sell, I should not make anything of mine: he agreed that nobody but I ought to have any copy to sell; and that, as I desired, the plates should be put into my hands, that I might cause them to be engraved and drawn off: promised to pay me £100, and I to send J. Hudson to him, to inform him about the Prince’s treasurer: promised to wait on him next week.’

1 August 1713
‘Sir Isaac Newton having, as I was told, presented his book of Principia, new printed, to the Queen, came to Greenwich, attended by Dr. Thorp, Dr. Halley, and his sons, Mr. Machin and Mr. Rowley. Mr. Hudson was with them, who had given me an intimation of it, the night before. But I had a letter of advice of it, directly from Mr. Machin. Sir I. Newton came first, about 3 o’clock; the others, half an hour after. Sir I. Newton said little till they entered; then he rose up and told me that by a Royal Order, by word of mouth, they were come down to visit the Observatory; to see what repairs were wanting, and what instruments. I gave them leave to go where they pleased, and sent my servant to wait on them, and show them all the places where repairs were wanting: and Mr. Clark and Mr. Ryley (whom I had sent for, on purpose to be witnesses of all that passed) accompanied them. I kept in my chamber: for I could not walk about with them. But, before they went out, I told them that the cogs in the greater semicircle were much worn; and that the instrument, for several reasons, was not very serviceable. And because Sir I. Newton had asked how we could observe a comet without it, I told him I could easily observe any comet that was visible in any part of the heavens, by a particular method that I knew of; but it was not now a time to talk of it; and that that instrument was my own. My friends and servants remember all that passed: I trouble not myself to report it. At parting, Sir I. Newton told me he had a Ptolemy of mine, and the minutes or night-notes of my observations, which he would return. I was glad to hear it; and told him I would retain his receipt for them. I pray God he be as good as his word.’