Nothing to fear from the Soviets

Juho Kusti Paasikivi, the Finnish statesman who successfully guided his country towards peaceful relations with its much bigger and more powerful neighbour, the Soviet Union, died 60 years ago today. His diaries have been published in Finnish, but no translation exists in English. However, a few translated extracts can be found in history or biography volumes, such as Containing Coexistence: America, Russia, and the “Finnish Solution’, which, in fact, opens with a quotation from Paasikivi’s diary.

Johan Gustaf Hellsten was born in 1870 in the Häme region of central Finland, though he was brought up further south in Lahti. His mother died when he was four, and his father when he was 14, whereupon he was looked after by an aunt. He was educated at one of the first schools founded by the Fennomans (Finnish nationalist movement), and, in 1885, he Finnicised his name to Juho Kusti Paasikivi. He went on to study history at the Imperial Alexander University, focussing on Russian history and language, graduating in 1892, thereafter switching to law for postgraduate studies. Paasikivi achieved his masters in law in 1897 and, in the same year, married Anna Forsman. They had four children.

Paasikivi completed his doctoral thesis in 1902, and became an associate professor at the university. The following year, though, he was appointed director general at the state treasury of, what was still, the Grand Duchy of Finland, a position he kept until he resigned in 1914. From 1907 to 1913, with a short gap, he was also a Finnish Party member of parliament. Eschewing the direction of the Finnish Party politics, he took over as president of KOP bank, piloting the company, within the newly independent Finland over the next 20 years, to one of the country’s most successful. After the death of his wife, in 1931, he resigned his position at the bank, and returned to politics, as head of the right-wing National Coalition Party, successfully steering it away from radical right wing policies. In 1934, he married Allina Valve.

Having stepped down as chairman of the National Coalition Party, Paasikivi was persuaded to take the important diplomatic role of ambassador to Sweden. During the war years, he was brought into government as a kind of political adviser; and his negotiations with the Soviet Union (Finland and the Soviet Union were at war for much of the 1939-1944 period) brought him much respect both in Moscow and in Helsinki. Immediately after the war, in 1944, he was appointed prime minister. He brought a radically different kind of politics to the country, based on wanting a peaceful relationship with the Soviet Union. In 1946, he became Finland’s seventh president, holding that position until 1956. He died later that same year, on 14 December. Further biographical information is available at Wikipedia, National Biography of Finland or the University of Helsinki.

Paasikivi kept diaries for most of his life. These were edited by Yrjo Blomstedt and Matti Klinge and published in 1985 in two volumes as Paasikiven paivakirjat, 1944-1956 (Werner Söderström Osakeyhtiö, 1985). However, as far as I can tell, there is no English translation. A few snippets from the diaries appear in translation here and there, in biographies and/or history books, such as Containing Coexistence: America, Russia, and the “Finnish Solution” by Jussi M. Hanhimaki (Kent State University Press, 1997).

Containing Coexistence is the first full-scale study of Finland’s role in Soviet-American relations during the onset of the cold war, says the publisher. For the book, Hanhimaki drew on a wide range of multinational source material, including newly released archival materials, employing a comparative approach interrelating American, British, Finnish, Russian, and Swedish perspectives. Containing Coexistence will be of interest, the publisher claims, to historians and political scientists as well as to any scholar interested in American and Soviet foreign policies during the cold war, post-World War II international relations, or twentieth-century European history.

The following extracts from Paasikivi’s diary are quoted below in the context of the Hanhimaki’s narrative.

[Opening paragraph]
‘When Juho Kusti Paasikivi sat down to write in his diary on September 2, 1944, he was angry. “Our foreign policy has not been led with brains, but with buttocks,” the seventy-four-year-old conservative banker, politician, and former prime minister complained. “We should never have joined this war,” he added, accusing both the wartime leaders and the newly appointed president, Marshall C. G. E. Mannerheim, of shortsightedness and incompetence in handling Finnish foreign policy. The worst sin, Paasikivi would argue repeatedly in private conversations and public speeches until his retirement from Finnish political life in early 1956, had been to ignore the geopolitical realities of Finland’s position, that is, the country’s proximity to the Soviet Union. Such neglect had, according to Paasikivi, led to such recent disasters as the 1939-40 Winter War and Finland’s cobelligerency with Nazi Germany in 1941-44. This, he added, had led Finland to the brink of collapse by the fall of 1944 when Soviet occupation appeared imminent.’

[Page 91]
‘Paasikivi was also annoyed by Kekkonen’s decision to launch an active run for the presidency, complaining frequently about Kekkonen’s “American style” of campaigning in late 1949 and early 1950. “A president’s most important qualities are not talent in speech writing and propaganda, but wisdom and experience,” Paasikivi sarcastically remarked in his diary. For Kekkonen, however, the 1950 presidential campaign was a good opportunity to make his name more widely known to the general Finnish public, which payed dividends six years later.’

[Page 136]
‘By late 1955 Nikita Khrushchev emerged as the leader of the Soviet Union. But despite Khrushchev’s eventual success the days of undisputed one-man rule were over as a new era dawned in Soviet history in the spring of 1953. “We shall see how this affects our relationship with the Soviet Union and our general position in the world,” President Paasikivi wrote in his diary on March 4, 1953. It was to have a major impact in both respects.’

[Page 164]
‘Relieved [. . . ] had not meant a shift in Soviet attitudes toward Finland, Paasikivi wrote in his diary on July 29, 1954, “This proves that our relations with the Soviet Union are still good and we have nothing to fear from the Soviets.”  At the same time, however, Paasikivi was concerned about “the loss of good will in the U.S.” toward Finland.’

[Page 174]
‘That Finland was left to fight its internal battles without outside interference became clear during the Kemi strikes of August 1949. In this lumber town located at the head of the Gulf of Bothnia the Communist-dominated lumberjacks’ union began a strike on August 18. President Paasikivi had no sympathy for and few illusions about this labor action. He interpreted it as a communist effort to bounce back from the losses they had suffered in Finnish internal politics since the spring of 1948. As Paasikivi noted in his diary on August 18, 1949, “The Communists seem to want to regain their position of power and become dominant in Finland.” Paasikivi, however, trusted the Fagerholm government, which controlled a large part of the labor movement through the Social Democratic party, to have the ability to neutralize the strikes. Accordingly, Prime Minister Fagerholm declared that the strike was illegal and authorized the local police to break up the picket lines. On the same day, however, a riot ensued between the strikers and the local police; shots were fired, and one striker was killed. Paasikivi ordered a general alert of the armed forces; the government sent army troops to Kemi and arrested twenty-two leading activists. Meanwhile, the violence propelled a series of sympathy strikes around the country by other Communist-dominated labor unions such as the harbor workers and many metal union workers.’

A giant of Japanese literature

Natsume Soseki, one of the greatest and most important novelists of modern Japan, died a century ago today - events celebrating this anniversary in Japan are ongoing, not least the unveiling of a Soseki android! By contrast he is little known in the West, although he did, in fact, spend two years in the UK, and, on returning to Japan, became a leading scholar in English literature. Two diaries he kept while in London were put on display recently as part of an exhibition of his life and works. However, there are no published editions of his 12 diaries, and only occasional references to them in various biographies.

So seki was born in the Edo region of Japan (now Tokyo) in 1867, but his parents, with five older children already, gave him up for adoption to a childless couple. That couple looked after him until they divorced, when Soseki was 9, and he was returned to his parents. His mother died a few years later. In 1884, he entered Tokyo Imperial University with the intention of studying to become architecture, but, encouraged by his friend Masaoka Shiki, he became increasingly interested in literature, switching to the English literature department in 1890. On graduating, he continued to study but also teaching part time. In 1895, he left Tokyo to teach in Ehime and then in Kumamoto. In 1896, he married Kyoko, who gave birth to their first daughter in 1899; they would have five more but one would die very young.

From 1900 to 1902, Soseki lived in London - one of the first government-sponsored scholars to be sent abroad - attending lectures at University College (UCL) and doing research that would lead later to his Japanese monographs (Theory of Literature in 1907, and Literary Criticism in 1909). From 1903 to 1907, he was back in Tokyo, teaching at the university; however, he was also writing poetry and literary sketches for magazines, and producing his first novels, such as I am a Cat, Little Master (Botchan), and Grass Pillow. His literary reputation grew rapidly, and by 1907 he was able to give up teaching and become a professional novelist.

The Embassy of Japan in London has this assessment of why Soseki is important in Japan today: ‘Many of the novels of Soseki analyse the human psychology in depth, such as jealousy and love, or loneliness and friendship, so they are applicable even today. At the same time, the very clear style of his prose is now considered the standard for the modern Japanese language. In addition, he pointed out the need for the Japanese people to establish a sense of “individualism”, while at the same time being critical of the tendency toward the superficial “Westernisation” (meaning modernisation) of Japanese society. Such assertions and criticisms are still considered relevant for Japanese society and its people today.’

In 1909, Soseki travelled to Manchuria and Korea. The following year he was hospitalised for the first time with stomach problems, but continued writing, completing one or two more works (such as Kokoro, Grass on the Wayside) each year until his death - on 9 December 1916. According to The Japan Times, events to celebrate this 100th anniversary have been ongoing in Japan throughout 1916 (a university has even unveiled a Soseki android!), and will continue in 2017 with celebrations for the 150th anniversary of his birth. Indeed, The Japan Times begins a long article on Soseki as follows: ‘Fascination twinned with veneration of Soseki is exceptionally high in Japan. The Asahi newspaper has been serializing installments of his novels on a daily basis for several years, while a new Soseki museum is scheduled to open next year in the Tokyo district of Shinjuku, where the writer once lived. On television, meanwhile, a drama series titled “Soseki’s Wife” has attempted to show the revered author from his spouse’s perspective. By a considerable margin, Soseki is the most analyzed Japanese author in modern literature. Hundreds upon hundreds of books have been written about him and thousands upon thousands of academic papers published.’

There is some further information about Soseki at Wikipedia, The New World Encyclopedia or Encyclopaedia Britannica. Some translations of his works can be found at Internet Archive (Botchan, for example), and a 1957 translation of Kokoro can be read at ibiblio.

There appear to be twelve extant volumes of diaries kept by Soseki (see this librarians 1978 workshop report), and held by the Natsume Soseki Collection at Tohoku University Library. As far as I can tell, these have not been published in Japanese, and certainly not in translation. Donald Keene, writing in Rethinking Japan Vol 1: Literature, Visual Arts & Linguistics (Routledge, 2014), says he finds the diaries of Natsume Soseki ‘especially disagreeable’, but without further explanation.

In late 2013, UCL Library Services and Tohoku University Library held a collaborative exhibition in London - Natsume Sōseki, the Greatest Novelist in Modern Japan - to celebrate the 150th Anniversary of UK-Japan Academic Interaction. Some artefacts from this were then put on display by the Embassy of Japan in early 2014. Both exhibitions included the two diaries written in London - named as Diary of Drifting across the Sea and Diary from England in 1901. According to the Embassy of Japan: ‘These diaries are extremely important academic source materials, not only because they describe his student life but also because they contain a number of his unique thoughts on the difference between the Japanese and British societies from his own viewpoint of  civilisation theory.’

A brochure to accompany the UCL exhibition is freely available online, and contains photographs of the diaries, as well as translated quotes from each, as follows.

12 September 1900
‘When waking from a dream, I am far away from my familiar mountains. The vast and limitless ocean surrounds me.’

28 October 1900
‘Left Paris for London. There was a hard and bitter wind on board. I arrived at London in the evening.’

23 January 1901 [Queen Victoria had died the previous day]
‘Flags are hoisted at half-mast. All the town is in mourning. I, a foreign subject, also wear a black-necktie to show my respectful sympathy. “The new century has opened rather inauspiciously,” said the shopman off whom I bought a pair of black gloves this morning.’

Otherwise, various biographies of Soseki make occasional reference to his diaries.

The following two extracts are taken from Reflections in a Glass Door: memory and melancholy in the personal writings of Natsume Sōseki by Marvin Marcus (University of Hawaii Press, 2009).

18 July 1909
‘Oppressive heat. Daughters running all over the house, totally naked. Not a normal thing to do, the heat notwithstanding. The master of the house goes about writing his fiction, surrounded by barbarians.’

8 December 1911
‘This morning, my wife accuses me of being totally antisocial. “People come over for Hinakos wake, and you tell them not to bother, that they should just go home. Well, when I die, be sure not to plan any wake for me.” “But in that case the mice will come out in the middle of the night and gnaw at the tip of your nose.” “Fine with me - the pain would bring me back to life!” ’

And the following extract is taken from Chaos and Order in the Works of Natsume Soseki by Angela Yiu (University of Hawaii Press, 1998)

1911
‘I carried my manuscript with me as notes. My stomach has been troubling me since yesterday, but since this is the last of the lectures, I took some medication and tried to hold out. My lecture was followed by Honda Setsudos “The Fundamental Problems in Finance and Economics” and Ishibashi Hakuyo’s “The Revision of the Anglo-Japanese Alliance.” The series ended at twenty past eleven. (There were four thousand seven hundred or eight hundred people in the audience, including fifty women. Since it was so packed, admission was restricted three times, and after seven o’clock no one else was allowed in the hall.) Staying in the Shiunro, despite not having eaten anything, I vomited blood.’ [Subsequently, Soseki was hospitalised again]

Of Thee I Sing

‘Evening we were too tired to go to the Kit-Cat Club where a “George Gershwin Night” was on, so stayed in hotel & played 21.’ This is from a diary kept by Ira Gershwin, the American lyricist born 120 years ago today, while in London on a three month tour with his brother, George. The two brothers, famously, produced some of the most memorable musical hits of the 1920s and 1930s, not least Porgy and Bess, and Ira was the first lyricist to win a Pulitzer Prize - for Of Thee I Sing. There is not much information about Ira’s (few) diaries, but they are held by a charitable trust in San Francisco, and, though accessible to biographers, have never been published.

Israel Gershowitz was born on 6 December 1896 in the Yiddish Theater District of New York City, and was the oldest of four children. His father changed the family name to Gershwine (which later became Gershwin). He attended City College but dropped out, and worked as a cashier in the local Turkish baths. His younger brother, George, was already composing and ‘plugging’ (piano playing in stores selling sheet music) in Tin Pan Alley, when Ira, prompted by George, first became involved in the music business. Initially, he wrote lyrics under a pseudonym so as not to be seen as trading off his brother’s growing reputation. Very soon, though, the brothers were collaborating on their first musical - A Dangerous Maid.

In 1924, Ira and George wrote their first musical for Broadway - Lady, Be Good - which starred Fred and Adele Astaire and ran for 330 performances, transferring later to the West End in London. In 1926, Ira married Leonore Strunsky, and around the same time the brothers decided to live together in a large Manhattan house; this became a kind of artistic and musical hub of creativity. However, after a while, Ira moved to a farm north of the city, and at times George would join him there to work and collaborate. Through the 1920s and 1930s, they wrote music for a dozen successful shows as well as four films, and produced many hits, not least Tip Toes, Oh, Kay, and Funny Face.

In 1932, Gershwin, along with George S. Kaufman and Morrie Ryskind, received the Pulitzer Prize for Drama for Of Thee I Sing. And, in 1935, Ira and George collaborated on Porgy and Bess, a box office failure, but considered by some to be Ira’s best work. Following George’s sudden death in 1937, Ira stepped back from writing for the best part of three years. Thereafter, though, and through the 1940s and into the 1950s, he teamed up with other composers - Jerome Kerm, Harold Arlen and Kurt Weill - writing the lyrics for many notable scores. In his latter years, he mentored several aspiring musicians, and collated and annotated much of his and his brother’s legacy before donating it to the Library of Congress. He died in 1986. More biographical information is available from Gershwin Fan, Wikipedia, George & Ira Gershwin or Bio.com.

Ira Gershwin must have kept a few diaries as they are quoted occasionally in biographies, in particular by Deena Rosenberg in Fascinating Rhythm: The Collaboration of George and Ira Gershwin (1991, University of Michigan Press). Rosenberg’s reference notes lists the Ira Gershwin Archive (IGA) - a collection of scrapbooks and clippings - as the source for diary quotations, and that ‘at present’ the IGA was still housed in Gershwin’s house in Beverly Hills, California. However, a few years earlier, in 1987, the Ira and Leonore Gershwin Trusts (ILGT) were established. When Lenore (Lee) died in 1991, her nephew, Michael Strunsky became much more involved in the Ira Gershwin estate - Trustee of the estate itself and of the two Trusts. In 2000, the organisations - and presumably all the archives - were moved from Beverly Hills to new quarters in downtown San Francisco. Some years later, in 2007, the ILGT began publishing Words Without Music - The Ira Gershwin Newsletter.

In the newsletter’s second edition, also in 2007, the managing editor, Michael Owen published two extracts from a diary Ira Gershwin kept during his three-month trip to Europe (with his wife, George and their young sister Frankie), ‘reviving a habit he had begun in 1916’. Here is the first extract:

22 March 1928
‘Up at 12. To the Embassy Club with Lee to meet Guy Bolton for lunch. My lunch very nice, too - smoked salmon (everybody eats smoked salmon here), filet of sole marguery, curried veal with chutney, coffee, wine, cake (cocktail & beer). The club was crowded with a lot of important looking men, mostly over 40 and a lot of young women. At the next table to us sat Arnold Bennett, Frederick Lonsdale & 3 other men. After lunch walked Guy down Piccadilly to the theatre where his “Blue Eyes” is rehearsing. Dropped in for a minute, saw John Harwood. Then to Anderson & Sheppard for fittings. Visited some other shops. Evening we were too tired to go to the Kit-Cat Club where a “George Gershwin Night” was on, so stayed in hotel & played 21 with Phil [Berman] & Leo [Robin], losing about £4. Frankie came in about 3 & told us both “This Year of Grace,” the Noël Coward revue opening to-night, & the Kit-Cat affair were great successes. The weather was lovely again to-day & it’s too bad we don’t get up earlier in the morning to do some sight-seeing. Changed $200 worth more of American Express checks to-day making 5 in all.’

As far as I can tell, though, the ILGT has not published any further information about Ira Gershwin’s diaries anywhere on its extensive website; and I haven’t been able to find anywhere online (or in biographies) a list or inventory of diary material Gershwin left behind. Nevertheless, here are several more extracts from the diaries as found in Rosenberg’s book Fascinating Rhythm (in the context of her text).

- ‘Ira read incessantly. The first book he remembered apart from school primers was a nickel novel. “That thin publication with its bright lithographed cover had a tremendous fascination,” he wrote in his diary in 1916. “Sitting by the warm stove, huddled in a chair, I read the marvelous adventures of Young Wild West, his sweetheart, his friends, and all about the claimjumpers on whom he finally and completely turned the tables. I read and reread it at least half a dozen times.” ’

- ‘Meanwhile, Ira enrolled as an English major at the City College of New York in 1914, and his omnivorous reading continued. “Everytime I had a dollar or two to spare,” he recalled, ‘‘I would walk from Second Avenue and Seventh Street to the old Dutton bookshop on 23rd Street to buy various volumes in the catalogue of Everyman’s Library. (Most of the classics - hard linen covers - were only 34 cents.)” He also read twentieth-century fiction and drama; his special favorites were Henry James, George Bernard Shaw, and Theodore Dreiser - in Dreiser’s case, at least in part because of his assaults on the constraints of a still-Victorian culture. “Altogether a great novel,” the twenty-year-old Ira noted in his diary after reading Dreiser’s The Genius, “not one for anaemic individuals, for prudes, for those who dislike anything but the conventional clap-trap of sweet young things by sweet old things.” ’

- ‘Ira was also drawn to the lively writers in the American popular press. During the early decades of this century, some American journalism was characterized by a high degree of literacy, intelligence, and humor. Essays, poems, short stories, and even novels flowed from the pens of a richly endowed generation into newspapers and magazines. “The Tribune Sunday Magazine is without a doubt the cleverest newspaper I have ever seen, with delightful drawings and smart literary sketches,” Ira noted in his diary in 1916. “It combines the wit of Life, chic drawings and sketches of Vanity Fair and Smart Set - and let us not forget the literary New Republic. The daily Tribune (bless its progressive soul!) I could hardly do without. F.P.A. very interesting, Heywood Broun, theatrical critic, delightful, Briggs, artist, human and humorous, S. H. Adams, “Advisor” column, fine editorials full of firm convictions, be they right or wrong, ever forceful, and on literary topics, ever instructive and entertaining.” ’

- ‘For Ira as well as George, Kern’s Princess Theater shows were a revelation. On January 15, 1917, he wrote in his diary: “Love O’ Mike: Kern music, with Harry B. Smith lyrics. Music and lyrics good. Book slow but many originalities. 1st - atmosphere of a house party was sustained throughout by having only young people in the cast (6 and 6) with college boy’s jealousies, etc.; no roues, biases, or mundanes. No chorus. Ira’s first first night.” ’

- ‘Ira kept close track of George’s career. He wrote in his diary on May 21, 1918: “George played Baltimore, Boston, and Washington with Louise Dresser. As yet his firm has printed nothing of his although 4 or 5 of his numbers have been filed away for use when opportunity presents. At present he is rehearsal pianist at the New Amsterdam Roof Garden where the 1918 Ziegfeld Lollies is in preparation.” ’

- ‘Ira still spent a lot of his free time “drawing, reading at the Ottendorfer branch of the Public Library, going to the movies,” supporting himself through a series of odd jobs such as cashier at B. Altman’s department store and business manager for his cousin’s touring carnival show. At twenty-one, he considered himself a “floating soul,” unsure where he would land. Meanwhile, he kept up his diary, taking note of a wide variety of matters that would become useful later on. For instance, Ira used entertainment events to observe human behavior: “The movies and their audience,” he wrote in 1918, “are a good means of studying. Yes. Psychology, ethics, fashions, manner. Manners. Would be’s. Have beens. Never weres. Can’t be’s. Impossibles. And here and there an occasional Is and Are.” ’

- ‘As always, the Gershwins met assorted luminaries. On May 30, 1928, Ira wrote in his diary: “After dinner we drove to Dushkin’s  [the eminent violinist], 160 Rue de l’Université, where was a musical party - a Concerto for two violins by Bach, then Vladimir Horowitz played, then George. Nice formal people there and a nice formal party. Later Horowitz played his study on Carmen, a marvelous technical accomplishment. Dushkin also played [George’s] Short Story and Blue Interlude accompanied by George.’’ ’

Rubicund, serene, puffing

A century ago today saw the resignation, amid high political drama, of Prime Minister Herbert Henry Asquith. He had been the UK’s leader for more than eight years (having taken over from Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman who resigned because of ill-health), first as head of a Liberal government with a very slim majority, and then as head of war coalition government. However, he was forced to step down, and his rival Liberal David Lloyd George took over as Prime Minister to lead a coalition with a cabinet dominated by Conservatives. Wikipedia’s biography of Asquith gives a day-by-day account of what happened prior to, and on the day of, his resignation.

But, for a more personal view of events that day, 100 years ago, it is worth revisiting the diaries of Lady Cynthia Asquith, wife of Asquith’s second son Herbert - see Heartbreaking day for more about Lady Cynthia and her diaries. On that ‘historic’ night, she was dining at 10 Downing Street, and sat next to the Prime Minister, who was ‘rubicund, serene, puffing a guinea cigar’ and talking of going to Honolulu, while his wife, Margot, looked ‘ghastly ill - distraught’. The diary extract below comes from a 1987 Century Hutchinson reprint of The Diaries of Lady Cynthia Asquith 1915-1918 (originally published by Hutchinson in 1968).

5 December 1916
‘Lunched Bluetooth - he was very sad about Bron and perturbed about political situation. He seemed still to hope that the P.M.’s resignation might be averted. He said, rather reproachfully, that Montagu had secured his position with both parties. He twitted me again with my (according to him) reputed incapacity for loose talk.

I was dining early with Oc for his last night, but he telephoned to say dinner was postponed until 8.45 as the P.M. was in after all and the theatre was abandoned. It was great luck for me to dine at Downing Street on so historic a night. The atmosphere was most electric. The P.M. had sent in his resignation at 7.30 - a fact I was unaware of when I arrived and only gradually twigged. Oc, the Crewes, Eddie, Cis, and Elizabeth and Margot were dining.

I sat next to the P.M. - he was too darling - rubicund, serene, puffing a guinea cigar (a gift from Maud Cunard), and talking of going to Honolulu. His conversation was as irrelevant to his life as ever. Our subjects were my mandrill riddle (which Beb had told to a startled party the other day), and this wonderful brand of cigars. I asked for one to give Beb for Christmas and he gave it to me. Cis afterwards offered me ten shillings for it. I had a great accès of tenderness for the P.M. He was so serene and dignified. Poor Margot on the other hand looked ghastly ill - distraught (no doubt she was, as she always claims, ‘rumbling’) - and was imprecating in hoarse whispers, blackguarding Lloyd George and Northcliffe.

When we first came out Elizabeth, Lady Crewe and I had an à trois - Margot joined us. When the men came out she, Mr Asquith and the Crewes played bridge. Violet came in, bringing with her Mr Norton and Sir Ian Hamilton - the latter to say goodbye to Oc. Of course, the whole evening was spent in conjecture and discussion - most interesting. I tried to absorb as much as I could, but I am not quick about politics. I gathered that, before dinner, Mr Asquith had said he thought there was quite a chance of Lloyd George failing to form a Government at all. The Tories - in urging him to resign - had predicted such a failure. In any case, most people seemed to think that any Government he could succeed in forming would only be very short-lived. Of course Lloyd George would greatly prefer Bonar to be Prime Minister, in order himself to avoid incurring the odium of responsibility. The King had sent for Bonar but, of course, it would be very difficult for him to accept the office on the terms which had made Asquith resign it. The King is alleged to be very terribly distressed and to have said, ‘I shall resign if Asquith does’. The prospective attitude of the Liberal ministers was discussed. Everyone was convinced that not one of them would take office under Lloyd George, with the possible exception of Montagu. Bluetooth had assured me that the latter would, but nearly all the Asquith family repudiated the idea. George had been a very wily, foxy cad, and the Government whips must have been very bad, as apparently the P.M. was very much taken by surprise.

It had been a well-managed plot. According to Margot and others, Northcliffe has been to Lloyd George’s house every day since the beginning of the war, the imputation being that George feeds him with Cabinet information, telling him the next item of the Government programme, so that he is able to start a Press agitation, and thus gain the reputation of pushing the Government into their independently determined course of action. It was said that the F.O. was really Lloyd George’s ambition, and during the last weeks he has been going to the Berlitz School and reading histories of the Balkans. I believe the French like him, but he is loathed in Russia and Italy. He has had to cart Winston - whose exclusion was, I believe, one of Bonar’s conditions. Certainly one cannot imagine a crazier executive titan George, Carson, and Bonar, Of course, it would virtually be only George.

Was it my last dinner at Downing Street? I can’t help feeling very sanguine and thinking the P.M. will be back with a firmer seat in the saddle in a fortnight. I only hope to God he is - disinterestedly because I really think him the only eligible man. Incidentally, what could happen to all our finances I daren’t think! Certainly it is a most painfully interesting situation - deeply to be deplored at this juncture I think - and it’s rather disgusting that such seething intrigue should survive war atmosphere.

Oc saw me off in the tube. Very sad to say goodbye and he had a tear in his eye. Lost my head and passed through Charing Cross three times owing to political excitement. Got home very late. Talked to Papa. The P.M. said The Volunteer was incomparably the best war poem.’

Photos to surprise and amaze

‘I want to make photos such as I’ve never made before, ones that are life itself and the most genuine life, photos that are simple and complex at the same time, that will surprise and amaze . . .’ This is the Russian artist and Constructivist pioneer, Aleksander Mikhailovich Rodchenko who died 60 years ago today. Having turned from art to photography in his 20s, he was only a few years away from switching back to painting, though he would never enjoy the success of his early years again. According to the Museum of Modern Art, which put on the first major retrospective of his work in 1998, Rodchenko remained steadfastly committed to the ideals of the Revolution. However, his diaries - English translations of which MoMA has published - suggest he never understood the forces that eventually drove him from prominence.

Rodchenko was born in St Petersburg in 1891. On the death of his father, in 1907, his working class family moved to Kazan. His interest in art seems to have come about through magazines rather than any contact with the art world. He enrolled at the Kazan School of Fine Arts in 1910, where he met Varvara Stepanova, whom he later married. They had one child together, also Varvara, born in 1925. Rodchenko moved to Moscow to continue his art studies at the Stroganov Institute. He was much influenced by Kazimir Malevich, the pioneer of geometric abstract art and the originator of the avant-garde Suprematist movement. In 1915, Rodchenko participated in The Store exhibition organised by Vladimir Tatlin, a painter and architect, who was also an important influence on the young Rodchenko - especially towards Constructivism and the use of art for social purposes.

Rodchenko clearly thrived in the conditions following the Bolshevik Revolution. He worked at the People’s Commissariat for Education (or Narkompros), being appointed director of the Museum Bureau and Purchasing Fund in 1920, responsible for the reorganisation of art schools and museums. He was one of the organisers of RABIS (the trade union of art workers). He taught at the Higher Technical-Artistic Studios from 1920 to 1930, and he also helped found the Institute for Artistic Culture.

Culture Trip’s biography says this: ‘Featuring bright primary colors, aggressive geometric shapes and repeated bold lettering, Rodchenko successfully underpinned the stark dynamism of the Soviet regime. In rejecting passivity, the aim was to transform the submissive viewer into an active observer. With this in mind, he often worked with his wife Varvara Stepanova, providing graphic design for advertisements ranging from children’s dummies and cooking oil to beer and pharmaceuticals. In the 1920s, the regime had fully adopted Rodchenko as one of its tools for shaping the face of Soviet advertising.’ Indeed, together with the poet and playwright, Vladimir Mayakovsy, Rodchenko viewed himself as a crucial figure in the artistic representation of the regime. One of his best known images is the film poster for Sergei Eisenstein’s film Battleship Potemkin.

Increasingly, Rodchenko turned to photography, and impressed by the kind of photomontage being produced by the German Dadaists, he turned his own artistic endeavours to photomontage often incorporating text. In the 1930s, with the changing guidelines governing artistic practice, he concentrated on sports photography and images of parades and other choreographed movements. He had joined the October Group of artists in 1928 but was expelled after three years, charged with “formalism”. By the 1940s, he had returned to painting, producing abstract expressionist works, though he continued to organise photography exhibitions for the government. He died on 3 December 1956.

Culture Trip’s biography concludes with this assessment: ‘Rodchenko was both an upholder and a transgressor of the Communist regime. Throughout his life, he was a passionate believer in the new future of the Soviet Union, yet ultimately, his work failed to comply with the political and social values of Russia at the time. Nonetheless, his legacy continues to define modernist art, especially in the mediums of painting, graphic design and photography. The latter has, in many ways, contributed to the entire notion of modern European camerawork.’ Further information is available from Wikipedia, The Creators Project, The Culture Trip or an article in The Telegraph.

Rodchenko was an interesting diarist, intermittently documenting his professional and private thoughts alongside more philosophical musings. When MoMA put on a major retrospective of Rodchenko’s work in 1998, it also produced a major book on Rodchenko, which drew, to some extent, on his diaries. Aleksandr Rodchenko by Magdalena Dabrowski, Leah Dickerman and Peter Galassi, with essays by Aleksandr Lavrentiev and Varvara Rodchenko, is freely available as a pdf on the MoMA website.

Here is one paragraph from the introduction: ‘Rodchenko was an original theorist of art, but he was not a political thinker. He remained steadfastly committed to the ideals of the Revolution, and his diaries suggest that he never understood the forces that drove him from the prominence he had enjoyed in the decade after 1917, and eventually rendered him, as he put it, “an invisible man.” In the mid-1930s the artist who had boldly renounced painting in 1921 again began to paint - not abstract works but imaginary circus scenes. These paintings signal his alienation from the thrilling collective enterprise to which he had dedicated his life and from which he had drawn much of his unflagging inventiveness. In the 1940s he also painted abstract works of somewhat greater interest, but these too are omitted from the present exhibition. For as his diaries express, they are not products of a sustained creativity but of a painful and bewildering isolation, suffered by an artist whose work had been deeply rooted in collective goals. By the late 1930s Rodchenko and Stepanova were largely excluded from official culture, despite the design commissions they continued to receive from time to time. Like most Russians they suffered miserably during World War II, from which Rodchenko never fully recovered.’

And elsewhere in the book, there is a little more, including a diary extract, about this latter period in Rodchenko’s life: ‘Rodchenko’s diaries from the mid-1930s until his death in 1956 are saturated with suffering, especially during World War II, when like millions of other Russians he and Stepanova spent much of their time and energy simply on finding enough to eat. The entry for August 11, 1943, reads in part:

‘Can it be that someday a middle-aged Mulia [Rodchenko’s nickname for his only child, i.e. Varvara] and her children will sit here, and that she’ll look at my things and think: what a pity my father didn’t live to see this, he’s been recognized at last and there’s a demand for his things. . . . People are buying them. . . . They’re hanging in the museum. … [. . .] My future Mulia, your late father can honestly tell you: and what he can tell you is that he wasn’t certain, and even that he was totally uncertain, and that the uncertainty was like a disease. He didn’t know why he kept working. And that there were times like now when he thought all his work would be destroyed, thrown out and not a single piece would be left anywhere. [ ... ] Dear Mulia! Maybe you will be poisoned by all of this. . . . But I wish you no harm. Better to throw all of this away and live simply “like everybody else.” But I did have fame and a European reputation, I was known in France, Germany, America. And now I have nothing.’ ’

Several contributors to this book reference an English translation by James West, commissioned by MoMA, of a 1996 compilation of Rodchenko’s writings published in Russia. However, for whatever reason, West’s translation itself was never published, and it was not until 2005 that MoMA published an English version of the Russian book, as translated by Jamey Gambrell, with the title: Experiments for the Future: Diaries, Essays, Letters, and Other Writings. This book contains four sets of diary extracts - from 1911-1915; from 1934, 1936-1940; from 1941-1944; and from 1944-1954 - amounting to around 100 pages, a quarter of the total. Here are several of those extracts.

18 August 1912
‘In the evening Mam and I like to sit and talk over tea. I love it when she tells stories. The lamp. . . A little samovar . . . Her father was a sailor, served twenty-five years. He was a small, nimble man with a pointed beard and gray eyes. He married a girl from a rich peasant home. And left for the Turkish campaign . . . Their ship was destroyed, and he floated on the wreckage with other sailors, there were fifteen of them. They floated for a long time, three days, hungry and cold. They were taken on board a ship and brought home. Her papa was sick for a long time . . . He was given a job at a gunpowder factory, where he worked stuffing the cartridges with gunpowder. But he soon died . . . They had to go to Petersburg, where my Mama’s mama took up a position. Mama was given away for one chervonets, she was seven years old. . . She babysat the kids. And that’s how her life began . . .’

4 February 1934
‘How many interesting things have been missed that you can’t depict with either a Leica or a drawing. So I begin to write. . .
A certain loneliness from my private life being not quite in order forces me to write . . .
You don’t know what’s interesting: private life together with work, or just work alone.
Probably one should write what one lives and breathes by. And as to who will find it interesting, it doesn’t matter. Moreover, one has to write every day. It disciplines.
Twenty years ago I wrote a diary, and it seems to me that what I wrote had no meaning, either then or now . . .
A page is begun . . . My private life is over, my work isn’t moving.
Philosophy of diary writing: I read Varvara’s diary and I see that there are few concrete facts, it’s a lot of philosophy in general, probably one should write quite simply, like a log one keeps on a ship.
I’m drawing a caricature of Freberg and the publishing section of Politizdat. I want to do caricatures [. . .], and put together an evening exhibition in the studio - but why? I don’t know. A diary is a strange thing; everything looks dumb, somehow. It’s possible that when a person is completely opened up, the emptiness and silliness is terribly embarrassing.
I’m beginning to understand that one needs to record and not philosophize . . .
For example, in the Mostorg store, the price of electric plugs - one ruble - is twice what is in the VEO [Electrical Society] store on Miasnitskaia - fifty kopecks. True, this isn’t particularly interesting, but it’s a fact.
I’m writing like you take an exam, and this is my own exam, it’s stricter that way. Have to write to that, it will be interesting for me to read. Don’t feel like writing about love, you can’t exactly write the same way as writing letters to her . . .’

18 February 1934
‘Today I began to paint the circus tor myself, and thought: What if I painted the first painting, the circus, in black and pink, huge and complicated, 200 x 120cm, and then the Dinamo stadium: gray and green.
Zhenia called, wants me to come shoot something tomorrow. I feel like going off somewhere tomorrow. Alone. Neither with her nor without her. . .
I want to print all the “Leftorvo,” “Dinamo,” “Park of Culture and Leisure” [photos}. I’m forty-two, and it’s terrible . . .
I’m reading about Courbet, he worked like an ox.’

20 February 1934
‘Yesterday I was at the Press House with Zhenia . . .
The question is coming up bluntly, either live with her once and for all or say good-bye, PART. She’ll want to go visiting, to go to parties for the evening, and I need to work seriously; 26-43, it’s mathematics. Its reality.’

21 February 1934
‘I wrote a farewell letter to Zh. Drew a little. The feeling is like I just got home alter the hospital, and I’m not myself. I keep rifling around the shelves looking for something . . . And I’m looking for my certainty and calm . . . I look at magazines, read about painting  . . . I want to start everything from the beginning. . .’

14 March 1934
‘There’s a proposal to go to Kramatorka, to photograph the finished workshops of the factory and make ten albums for a report and for showing the government.
I’ve begun packing, I’m even taking the enlarger with me, and I decided to try to keep a diary of the trip. I’m leaving on March 17th. Tomorrow I go to the Trust to arrange the tickets. . . I don’t know what the weather will be like, recently it has been cold, snowing. I also have to fix the Leica tomorrow, to try out the film . . . I want to photograph not just the workshop and factory but make new photographs of everyday life and types, too. . .
I want to make photos such as I’ve never made before, ones that are life itself and the most genuine life, photos that are simple and complex at the same time, that will surprise and amaze . . .
Otherwise there’s nothing to do in photography, then it’s worth working and fighting for photography as art.’

25 August 1936
‘The most interesting books are those written not by writers but by people who have experienced and seen a great deal and who feel acutely. Moreover, they love, hate, and want a lot. . . Everyone who feels he thinks differently should definitely write. Write everything down and you will be better than the aristocrats of the spirit, who invent things in studies.
History will ask what you, “the non-honored” did and thought.
We don’t agree with the depicters, those like Gladkov, et al. Maybe it was all invented, spiced up with other people’s accomplishments from books, newspapers, and magazines.’

27 December 1944
‘I’m not working. We’re living bunched into one room, three or even four, also Mulia’s Kolya. It’s plus five degrees in the studio.
It’s cold. The gas isn’t on. Kerosene is 30 rub. a liter.
Electricity from six in the evening until six in the morning, that’s until January 1st. From January they’ll turn off the allocation on household necessities. I’m working as head artist in the House of Technology, I get 3,000 rub. a month. My student, Volodya Meshcherin, set it up, he’s a head engineer now, and a professor.
We wash ourselves now in parts in a cold kitchen.
I do my own laundry.
The war still isn’t over. . . There’s still another year left of it.
We are gallivanting across Europe with cannons. We’re taking Budapest. But there’s still no end.
And we ourselves don’t have firewood or fuel in Moscow.
We’re wearing rags, the bathhouses aren’t working. . .’

I know my own death

‘I feel that I know my own death, and have known it tor a long time. I feel that I died long ago, the same death I shall die later on. When I think of my own death, I do not think of something that has yet to happen, but of something that happened long ago but was forgotten. When I am of this mind, it seems to me that my death is what is most me. I think it is much more me than all the rest of my life.’ This is from the diaries of Seán Ó Ríordáin, born a 100 years ago today, who is one of most important of  Irish-language poets. Although he kept diaries for much of his life, few extracts have ever appeared in English.

Ó Ríordáin was born in Ballyvourney, County Cork, on 3 December 1916. When he was only 10, his father died of tuberculosis, a disease that he would also contract as a young man, and leave him with chronic poor health. His family moved to Cork city, where he and his brothers were sent to a Christian Brothers school. From 1936, he worked in the motor taxation office, remaining there until he took early retirement in 1965. During the latter years of his life, he wrote a column in The Irish Times, commenting strongly on national affairs, and lectured at University College Dublin. He died in 1977. Further biographical information can be found at Wikipedia, Transcript Review or Cork Institute of Technology.

But, it is for his poetry in the Irish language that Ó Ríordáin is remembered. He only published four collections in his lifetime, roughly one every decade. According to Transcript Review: ‘His writing is the product of patient distillation, and as a result is resonant and potent. [He] forged a personal idiom unlike that of any other Gaelic writer. It is an idiom made of key-words representing key-ideas, innovative compounds, and bombastic adjectives coined by the poet. His telling vocabulary is coupled with clarity of syntax.’

Ó Ríordáin was also a diarist for much of his life. A few excerpts from his journals have appeared in Irish-language publications - in the Irish-Language literary journal Comhar, and in Seán Ó Coileáin’s 2011 biography. More recently, the Irish-language publisher Cló Iar-Chonnacht has brought out Anamlón Bliana: Ó Dhialanna an Ríordánaigh, an anthology of 365 entries from Ó Ríordáin diaries, as collated by Tadhg Ó Dúshláine, one for each day of the year. ‘Together,’ the publisher says, ‘they provide a unique insight into the tortured mind of the poet, from 1940 when he first began to write in his diary.’

According to Róisín Ní Ghairbhí writing in The Irish Times, ‘The Ó Ríordáin of the diaries is precocious, erudite and articulate, and these excerpts are a fascinating insight into the troubled mind of a poet.’ She goes on: ‘The diary excerpts reveal a man with a mystic’s mind, a scholar’s passion and a generous cosmopolitan outlook. The raw intimacy of some of the writing is unsettling; elsewhere the reader will laugh out loud at Ó Ríordáin’s self-deprecation. His dim view of Irish bishops (he deems them Pharisees), his irreverent humour (he compares his suffering to that of Jesus, who at least, he says, had the consolation of wine and Mary Magdalene) and his repeated crises of faith remind us that he had a rebellious streak, which, although often overlooked since, was a great inspiration to the next generation of writers in Irish.’

The only extracts from Ó Ríordáin’s diaries that I have been able to find in English were published nearly 20 years go in The Diaries of Ireland: An Anthology 1590-1987 (The Lilliput Press, 1998) edited by Melosina Lenox-Conyngham. Here are several extracts.

11 August 1964
‘I have just returned from a funeral. A Protestant who died yesterday was being taken to the church at seven this evening. I went into this church for the first time and felt a strong sense of eeriness. I stood at the door and looked in. A small chapel was visible. The congregation was standing, its back to me, facing the altar. It was divided in two, a path in the middle. The altar and the minister could be seen at the end of the path. ‘Holy - Holy - Holy’ was written on the altar cloth. The place had the appearance of poverty, although the building seems ostentatious from the outside. The coffin was at the foot of the altar. I must confess that I was deeply moved, that is to say that every part of my mind was moved and renewed, and every moment of my life back to the days of my youth, and I might even say that I felt the hundreds of years between me and the Reformation slipping away when I looked into that holy place this evening. It was as though I had opened a door in my own soul that I had not had the courage to open until now. That was the strangest thing of all: that it seemed to me that I was looking at something which concerned me closely but that I had neglected, and I felt guilty. It was though I had visited relatives with whom my own family had long been at odds, people whom we had denied and avoided, and suddenly a hidden part of my own heritage was revealed to me. I found it difficult to satisfy my eyes. If allowed, I would have remained till midnight, peering about. There before me was Protestantism within which I hitherto had seen only from without. These are the people whose faith and way of life and destiny I had thought was to remain outside. This evening I saw them inside - inside though still outside. I felt that here was spiritual shelter. Although they had separated from the larger flock at the time of the Reformation, observe the heed they paid to the altar, to the altar cloth, to the priest’s vestments, to the rail, to the chapel itself, and observe how they had preserved these and other things. Who would claim that they did not preserve something of faith and sanctity and efficacy? Who would claim that their prayers are not heard?

I have long known a man of this congregation, but I never saw him pray to God until today. I looked on his back and on his grey hair and felt guilty. Why guilty? Because, I suppose, this thing has been happening among us for ages and we closed our eyes firmly to it. I felt also that I had been here before, although I had not. There is a part of Ireland and a part of the Church and a part of me here that exists nowhere else. Simple and not so simple people have been worshipping God, in this way, in this kind of church, for hundreds of years. Behind this worship is one great historical deed: the rejection of the Pope’s authority. It took great courage to risk damnation, but it required even greater faith to believe in the teaching of this severed Church. What a thing a great deed is, be it right or wrong! To do is to live! Think of the suffering, the love, the hate, the bloodshed, the philosophy, the history that followed this deed. All this activity must have contributed greatly to the light of truth.’

1 August 1963
‘I feel that I know my own death, and have known it tor a long time. I feel that I died long ago, the same death I shall die later on. When I think of my own death, I do not think of something that has yet to happen, but of something that happened long ago but was forgotten. When I am of this mind, it seems to me that my death is what is most me. I think it is much more me than all the rest of my life.

Like everyone else, I am a rich man for I have death in the bank. I cannot be drawn upon, however; death cannot he spent until it has matured. Death is land that cannot he sold or tied up in money, and we must live our life without it. We are often impoverished, without as much as a penny to spend, despite all this wealth we have stored up.’

2 June 1964
‘I saw a fat, ugly, middle-aged woman the other night. She is long married. Where is the snow that was so bright last year? I remember when she was a vision, when I thought I was in love with her. There was no beauty or contentment in the world then but what could he found in her. Now I wouldn’t care if she didn’t exist. She is a fat, ugly, old woman. Other, younger women, now hold the sway that she once held. This is an old story - the departure of youth and beauty. But it is even worse when they don’t depart but still remain, and we continue to crave them. People matter not a whit. They come and they go. But youth and beauty are eternal, and however old we may be they remain our constant goal. It was always people between twenty and twenty-five that Marcus Aurelius saw on the Appian Way. That is enough to break one’s heart.’

21 March 1974
‘I have been grasping for breath today and yesterday. Perhaps death is near. It doesn’t bother me in the least. I remember a fine, sunny day long ago in Clondrohid. I lived in Ballyvourney at the time, and cannot have been yet fifteen. I think my aunt Kathleen (now dead) was there. I don’t remember who else, but there were many. I got a spin in a large motor car that had no roof. The world was very airy. It is only a memory. Everyone is dead.’

The Diary Junction

McClellan’s war in Mexico

George Brinton McClellan, a soldier who played a key role in the American Civil War rising to the rank of major general before falling out with President Abraham Lincoln over military policy, was born 190 years ago today. During his first posting, to Mexico, he kept a journal of his experiences. This was not published until some 30 years after his death, and, according to its editor, the journal shows ‘striking contrasts in character between the youthful soldier, not yet twenty years of age, and the general or politician of fifteen or twenty years later.’ However, he says, one may also ‘discern many of the traits that stand out so prominently in his mature life’.

McClellan was born on 3 December 1826 in Philadelphia, the son of a prominent surgeon and founder of a medical college. Although schooled locally, he received private tuition in Greek and Latin, and was admitted to the University of Pennsylvania to study law in 1840. Two years later, though, he decided to switch to a military career, and with the help of his father was able to attend the US Military Academy at West Point. He remained there until graduating in 1846. He was commissioned a brevet second lieutenant in the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, and ordered to sail for Mexico, where he took an active part in the Mexican-American War, being given brevet promotions to first lieutenant and captain.

McClellan returned to West Point as an instructor, training cadets in engineering activities. Among other activities, he served with a 1952 expedition to find the source of the Red River, translated a French manual on bayonet tactics, and was involved in surveying possible routes for a transcontinental railroad. In 1855, he was promoted to captain and assigned to the 1st U.S. Cavalry regiment. He served as an official observer of the European armies in the Crimean War, and subsequently wrote a manual on cavalry techniques. He also developed a new type of saddle. In 1857, however, he resigned from the military to take a position as a chief engineer with the newly constructed Illinois Central Railroad. By 1860, he had become president of the Ohio and Mississippi River Railroad, headquartered in Cincinnati. That same year, after a long courtship, he married Mary Ellen Marcy, and they would have two children.

At the outbreak of the Civil War in 1861, McClellan, despite being a Democrat, offered his services to Abraham Lincoln. He was given command of the volunteer army of the state of Ohio, but was soon promoted to the rank of major general in the regular army. A series of small battles won him the nickname of ‘The Young Napoleon’. He was put in charge of a large number of volunteer forces that he organised into the famous Army of the Potomac. By the end of 1861, he had succeeded Winfield Scott as general-in-chief of the Union Army. Despite his brilliant organising abilities and considerable military successes, he continually showed a reluctance to be more aggressive against the enemy, and failed to follow the demands of the strategy put in place by Lincoln and Edwin M. Stanton (Secretary of War), and was removed from high command of the army. He continued, though, to lead the Army of the Potomac, for a while, but was eventually ordered down from that command as well.

In 1864, McClellan was nominated by the Democratic Party to stand for election as president against Lincoln, but he couldn’t agree with the Party’s position that the war was a failure and should be brought to an end. He won only three states; and he resigned from the army on election day. Subsequently, he sailed for Europe with his family, where they remained until 1868. On his return to the US, he was appointed chief engineer of the New York City Department of Docks in 1870; two years later he became president of the Atlantic and Great Western Railroad. After another three year sojourn in Europe, he returned to be elected as Democratic governor of New Jersey (1978-1981). He spent the last years of his life travelling and writing, and died in 1885. Wikipedia has a long and detailed biography, but there are plenty of others sources of information about McClellan: The Civil War Trust, Home of the American Civil War, History Net, and History.Com.

McClellan wrote and published several books during his lifetime, including autobiographical works. However, a diary he kept as a young man during his Mexican posting was not published until 1917. William Starr Myers, a Princeton University professor and historian, was working on a biography of McClellan when he came across the diary among McClellan’s papers in the Library of Congress. He edited the short journal for publication by Princeton University Press as The Mexican War Diary of George B. McClellan. In his preface, Starr states: ‘It has seemed to me that this diary should prove to be of special value at the present time, for it throws additional light upon the failure of our time honoured “volunteer system” and forecasts its utter futility as an adequate defense in a time of national crisis or danger.’ The book, less than a 100 pages long, is freely available to read at Internet Archive.

Starr provides a brief introduction to the diary, which includes the following: ‘To the student of McClellan’s life this diary presents certain striking contrasts in character between the youthful soldier, not yet twenty years of age, and the general or politician of fifteen or twenty years later. At this time McClellan was by nature happy-go-lucky, joyous, carefree, and almost irresponsible. In after years he became extremely serious, deeply and sincerely religious, sometimes oppressed by a sense of duty. And yet at this early age we can plainly discern many of the traits that stand out so prominently in his mature life. He was in a way one of the worst subordinates and best superiors that ever lived. As a subordinate he was restless, critical, often ill at ease. He seemed to have the proverbial “chip” always on his shoulder and knew that his commanding officers would go out of their way to knock it off; or else he imagined it, which amounted to the same thing. As a commanding officer he always was thoughtful, considerate and deeply sympathetic with his men, and they knew this and loved him for it.

These same traits perhaps will explain much of the friction during the early years of the Civil War between McClellan and Lincoln and also the devotion that reached almost to adoration which the soldiers of the Army of the Potomac showed for their beloved commander. And McClellan had many intimate friends, friends of high character, who stood by him through thick and thin until the very day of his death. This relationship could not have continued strong to the last had he not in some measure deserved it. His integrity, his inherent truthfulness and sense of honor, stood out predominant.’

And here are several extracts from the diary itself.

26 December 1846
‘Marched 20 miles to San Fernando where we arrived a little after sunset. Road level until we arrived within about 5 miles of San Fernando, when it became rocky and hilly but always practicable. About 4 miles from San Fernando we reached the summit of a hill from which we beheld a basin of hills extending for miles and miles - not unlike the hills between the Hudson and Connecticut opposite West Point. About two miles from San Fernando are some wells of pretty good water - the men were very thirsty - Gerber offered a volunteer half a dollar for a canteen full of water. My little mare drank until I thought she would kill herself. The Alcalde and his escort met General Patterson at this place. He was all bows, smiles and politeness. Murphy of whom more anon had the honor of taking San Fernando by storm. He was the first to enter it, mounted on his gallant steed. We first saw San Fernando as we arrived at the summit of a high hill, the last rays of the sun shining on its white houses, and the dome of the “Cathedral” gave it a beautiful appearance. It was a jewel in the midst of these uninhabited and desert hills. We encamped in a hollow below the town had a small eggnog and dreamed of a hard piece of work we had to commence on the morrow. Mañana [tomorrow morning] por la mañana.’

27 December 1846
‘We had our horses saddled at reveille and before sunrise were upon the banks of El Rio de San Fernando - a clear, cold and rapid mountain stream, about 40 yards wide and two and a half feet deep - bottom of hard gravel. We crossed the stream and found ourselves the first American soldiers who had been on the further bank. The approaches to the stream from the town required some repairs, nothing very bad - it was horrible on the other side. As we again crossed the stream we halted to enjoy the beautiful view - the first rays of the sun gave an air of beauty and freshness to the scene that neither pen nor pencil can describe.

With a detail of 200 men and our own company we finished our work before dinner. Walked up into the town in the afternoon. On this day General Pillow overtook us. He had a difficulty with a volunteer officer who mutinied, drew a revolver on the General, etc., etc. The General put him in charge of the guard - his regiment remonstrated, mutinied, etc., and the matter was finally settled by the officer making an apology.’

28 December 1846
‘Crossed the stream before sunrise under orders to move on with the Tennessee horse one day in advance of the column in order to repair a very bad ford at the next watering place - Las Chomeras. Very tiresome and fatiguing march of about 22 miles. Road pretty good, requiring a few repairs here and there. Water rather brackish. Very pretty encampment. Stream about 20 yards wide and 18 inches deep. No bread and hardly any meat for supper.’

29 December 1846
‘Finished the necessary repairs about 12 noon. We partook of some kid and claret with Colonel Thomas. While there General Patterson arrived and crossed the stream, encamping on the other side. Waded over the stream to see the Generals - were ordered to move on in advance next morning with two companies of horse and 100 infantry.’

30 December 1846
‘Started soon after daybreak minus the infantry who were not ready. Joined advanced guard, where Selby raised a grand scare about some Indians who were lying in ambush at a ravine called “los tres palos” in order to attack us. When we reached the ravine the guard halted and I rode on to examine it and look for the Indians - I found a bad ravine but no Indians.

On this same day the Major commanding the rear guard (Waterhouse, of the Tennessee Cavalry) was told by a wagonmaster that the advanced guard was in action with the Mexicans. The men, in the rear guard, immediately imagined that they could distinguish the sound of cannon and musketry. The cavalry threw off their saddle bags and set off at a gallop - the infantry jerked off their knapsacks and put out - Major and all deserted their posts on the bare report of a wagonmaster that the advance was engaged. A beautiful commentary this on the “citizen soldiery.” Had we really been attacked by 500 resolute men we must inevitably have been defeated, although our column consisted of 1700 - for the road was narrow - some men would have rushed one way, some another - all would have been confusion and all, from the General down to the dirtiest rascal of the filthy crew, would have been scared out of their wits (if they ever had any).

Our 100 infantry dodged off before we had done much work, and our own men did everything. We reached Encinal about 4 P. M. after a march of about 17 miles, and almost incessant labor at repairs. It was on this day that General Patterson sent back Brigadier General Pillow to tell Second Lieutenant Smith to cut down a tree around which it was impossible to go!!’

23 March 1847
‘Firing continued from our mortars steadily - fire of enemy by no means so warm as when we opened on the day before. Our mortar platforms were much injured by the firing already. The 24 pounder battery had to be re-revetted entirely - terreplein levelled. During this day and night the magazine was excavated, and the frame put up. Two traverses made the positions of platforms and embrasures determined. Two platforms laid and the guns run in the embrasures for them being partly cut. One other gun was run to the rear of the battery.’

24 March 1847
‘On duty with Captain Saunders again - could get no directions so I had the two partly cut embrasures marked with sand bags and dirt, and set a party at work to cover the magazine with earth as soon as it was finished. During this day the traverses were finished, the platforms laid, the magazine entirely finished, and a large number of sand bags filled for the revetments of the embrasures. The “Naval Battery” opened today, their fire was fine music for us, but they did not keep it up very long. The crash of the eight inch shells as they broke their way through the houses and burst in them was very pretty. The “Greasers” had had it all in their own way - but we were gradually opening on them now. Remained out all night to take charge of two embrasures. The Alabama Volunteers, who formed the working party, did not come until it was rather late - we set them at work to cut down and level the top of parapet - thickening it opposite the third and fourth guns. Then laid out the embrasures and put seven men in each. Foster had charge of two, Coppée of two, and I of two. Mine were the only ones finished at daylight - the Volunteers gave out and could hardly be induced to work at all.’

From playboy to ascetic

Charles de Foucauld, a wealthy playboy who turned to god and then became a monk living like a hermit among the Tuareg people of the Sahara desert, died a century ago today. According to his biographer, René Bazin, he was killed by Arab raiders, the very people for whom ‘he had toiled so hard with body and mind.’ Bazin’s biography relies heavily on diaries kept by Foucauld, right up the weeks before his death, and includes many verbatim extracts.

Charles de Foucauld was born into an aristocratic family in 1858 in Strasbourg, France. He was orphaned as a child and raised by his maternal grandfather, and was destined to inherit the family wealth. He studied at Saint-Cyr Military Academy and Cavalry School of Saumur before joining, in 1880, the 4th Hussars as Sous-Lieutenant and being posted to Algeria. However, his wealth and position had led him to become an amoral young man, living a riotous life. He was also an indisciplined soldier which led him to being censured by his military superiors.

Foucauld was much affected by his experiences of the Sahara Desert, and, after leaving the army in 1882, he set about exploring Morocco disguised as a rabbi. On returning to Paris, he wrote up his travels, with drawings, and the resulting book, Reconnaissance au Maroc, inspired Societé Française de Géographie to award him a gold medal. Subsequently, he became increasingly interested in religion. He undertook a pilgrimage to the Holy Land, and, in 1886, converted to Catholicism. A few years later, he joined the Cistercian Trappist order as a monk, first in France and then at Akbès on the Syrian-Turkish border.

But still Foucauld had not found fulfilment. In 1897, he left the monastery to work as gardener and sacristan for the Poor Clare nuns in Nazareth and later in Jerusalem. In 1901, he returned to France, was ordained a priest, and travelled to Béni Abbès, Algeria, near the border with Morocco, intending to found a monastic religious community that offered hospitality to all faiths as well as those with no faith. But he did not manage to attract any adherents, and he came to live a quiet, hermetic life with monastic routines. By the middle of the 1890s, he had moved further away from the French presence, into the mountains in southern Algeria to be with the Tuareg people, in Tamanrasset, where he built a small hermitage. For the next ten years or so he shared the life and hardships of the Tuareg, studying their culture and traditions, and writing a lengthy dictionary of their language (posthumously published in four volumes). He returned to France a couple of times, hoping, but failing, to recruit companions for his hermitage.

With the outbreak of WWI, Germany’s ally Turkey promoted attacks on French outposts in Africa, causing tension in Algeria and Morocco. Foucauld with Tuareg help built a fort to protect the surrounding population; it also served the French military as a stockpile for the arms and ammunition of their local allies. But, in one raid, Foucauld was taken hostage by stranger Arabs, apparently intent on holding him for ransom, but he was shot and died on 1 December 1916. The Hermitary concludes: ‘Charles de Foucauld is a complex historical figure within Catholicism, history, and eremitism. That is to say, he is uniquely modern, and his life was an unconscious striving to attain an ecumenical eremitism, a universal eremitism.’ While, Franciscan Media concludes: ‘The life of Charles de Foucauld was eventually centered on God and was animated by prayer and humble service, which he hoped would draw Muslims to Christ. Those who are inspired by his example, no matter where they live, seek to live their faith humbly yet with deep religious conviction.’ Further information is also available from Wikipedia, Jesus Caritas (biography, video), and Ignatius Insight.

Foucauld’s Reconnaissance au Maroc is largely based on diaries he kept while travelling around the country. This was used much later by Foucault’s friend, René Bazin, along with other diaries, for a biography Foucauld. The biography was subsequently translated into English by Peter Keelan and published as Charles de Foucauld: Hermit and Explorer (Benziger Brothers, 1923). This is freely available at Internet Archive. All the following extracts from Foucauld’s diary are taken from Bazin’s biography; and, after the last extract (16 November 1916) below, I have also included Bazin’s account of Foucauld’s death.

16-17 June 1883
‘In vain do we try to find a way of entering into the Rif: many of the Jews whom we consulted declare that one can only enter by Nemours with the protection of a certain Moroccan sheikh who will perhaps come here in a fortnight or a month, perhaps later; and even this means would be uncertain; they add that it is as difficult in starting from here to cross the Rif as it is easy in setting out from Tetuan, where men of influence can give efficacious recommendations. I do not wish to wait a fortnight or month at Nemours; much better reach Tetuan by sea and begin my journey from there.’

18 June 1883
‘A steamer appears in the roadstead. It is going to Tangier via Gibraltar. I embark on it with Mardochee. Being Jews, we take the lowest class and cross on deck in the company of Israelites and Musulmans. Start at 9 a.m.: pretty bad weather.’

19 June 1883
‘Wake up in the roadstead of Gibraltar. The packet-boat will lie at anchor all day. I land and visit the town; Mardochée remains on board. A young Jew of eighteen who knows Spanish accompanies me; as for me, I know nothing but Arabic. My excursion has a practical aim. On board, the water we are given is filthy; took a large iron pot and brought it back full of water. I walk about for five hours in Gibraltar, pot in hand; I push on to a Spanish village under a mile from the town. Cross the frontier and note the English and Spanish sentinels mount guard only 60 yards apart, the former as well as the latter badly dressed.’

20 June 1883
‘Left Gibraltar at midday; arrived at Tangier at 2.45.’

8 May 1914
‘Began to make a fair copy of the whole Tuareg-French dictionary.’

31 July 1914
‘This evening reached page 385 of the dictionary.’

31 August 1914
‘Reached page 550.’

3 September 1914
‘Express to hand from Fort Motylinski, telling me that Germany has declared war on France, invaded Belgium, attacked Liege. M. de La Roche (commander of the station) starts on the 4th or 5th for Adrar, with all his band. He orders Afegzag to muster a gum, and Musa to come with at least twenty men, into Ahaggar.’

Saw Afegzag; he orders 10 Dag-Rali, 10 Iklam, 10 Aguh-n-Tabli, 10 Ait-Lohen, 10 Kel-Tazulet, to muster immediately; personally, he sets out this evening for Motylinski, where he will be to-morrow morning.’

9 September 1914
‘Received 1,500 cartridges of 1874 for Musa.’

11 September 1914
‘Noon post to hand. Captain de Saint-Léger orders M. de La Roche to remain at Ahaggar with his whole force. I forward the order by express. Bad news; we are retreating all along the frontier, before superior forces. We cannot help Belgium. The Germans occupy Brussels.’

24 September 1914
‘Received news on September 11 from In-Salah and on 3rd from Paris. Always falling back; Government sits at Bordeaux.’

30 September 1914
‘This evening page 700 of the dictionary.’

21 October 1914
‘This is the war for Europe’s independence of Germany. And the way in which the war is carried on shows how necessary it was, how great was Germany’s power, and how it was time to break the yoke before she became still more formidable; it shows by what barbarians Europe was half enslaved, and near becoming completely so, and how necessary it is once for all to deprive of force a nation which uses it so badly and in such an immoral and dangerous way for others. It is Germany and Austria that wanted war, and it is they who deserved to have it made against them, and who, I hope, will receive a blow that will make them unable to do any harm for centuries.’

7 December 1914
‘The Tripoli disturbance has not crossed the frontier. We cannot thank God enough for the numberless favours that He has bestowed on the eldest daughter of His Church; not the least is the fidelity of our colonies. . . .

The confidence of the Tuaregs in me keeps on increasing. The work of the slow preparation for the Gospel is pursued. May the Almighty soon make the hour strike for you to send workers into this part of your field. . . .’

20 February 1915
‘The south of Tripoli is disturbed; Saint-Léger and 200 or 300 soldiers are on the frontier, to prevent bands in revolt against the Italians from breaking into our territory. Only one French adjutant and six or seven native soldiers remain at Fort Motylinski. This adjutant is a capital fellow. We often write to each other, but we rarely see one another; being alone, he cannot leave his post, and I, having a great deal to do, cannot move from here without serious reason. I have not been to Fort Motylinski for two years.’

12 March 1915
‘Like you, I hope that from the great evil of this war will go forth a great blessing to souls - a blessing in France, where the sight of death will inspire serious thoughts, and where the accomplishment of duty in the greatest sacrifices will uplift souls and purify them, bringing them nearer to Him who is the uncreated good, and make them more fit to see the truth and stronger to live in conformity with it; - a blessing to our Allies, who in coming nearer to us come nearer to Catholicism, and whose souls, like ours, are purified by sacrifice - a blessing to our infidel subjects, who, fighting in crowds on our soil, learn to know us and get nearer to us, and whose loyal devotion will stir up the French to work for them more than in the past, and govern them better than in the past.’

15 April 1915
‘Saint-Léger leaves In-Salah, and takes command of another Saharan company, that of Twat. . . . He is replaced by another friend, also very much liked, Captain Duclos, whom I knew there as lieutenant, an officer of great worth and fine character. . . . I constantly see Uksem. Marie asks me if he knits: he knits wonderfully, and all the young people in his encampment and village have begun to knit and crochet under his directions; knitted socks, and crocheted vests and caps. That took a long time, but since his return, thanks to one of his sisters-in-law who set about it with a great deal of good-will, it started, and everybody is beginning it.’

2 August 1915
‘A young negro who knows Ghardaia, the Fathers and Sisters, told me a few days ago: “When the Sisters come here I shall put my wife with them, so that she may learn to weave, and I shall ask to be their gardener.” . . . The time is near when the Sisters will be received by the natives with great gratitude, above all by the settled cultivators. . . . Will God arrange things in such a way as to bring the White Fathers and the White Sisters here?’

7 September 1915
‘To-morrow will be the feast of the nativity of the Blessed Virgin, ten years since my Tamanrasset hermitage was built and I have said Mass in it. I owe much thanksgiving to God for al the graces He has bestowed on me here.’

16 November 1916
‘How good God is to hide the future from us! What a torture life would be were it less unknown to us! and how good He is to make so clearly known to us the heaven thereafter which will follow our earthly time of trial!’

Bazin comments: ‘The writer of these lines had only two weeks to live. He did not know it, but he was ready to receive death any day form the hands of those for whom he had so much prayed, walking so far over the sand and pebbles, suffering o severely from thirst and hear, working so many days and nights, in so much solitude, and for whom, in short, he had toiled so hard with body and mind.’

Further, Bazin sets down the facts about Foucauld’s death from the combined evidence of Paul, a negro servant, and that of another harratin, as they were recorded in two official reports:

‘On December 1, after having served the marabout’s dinner, I went to my zariba, about five hundred yards from there. It was about 7 o’clock, and dark. A short time afterwards, when I had myself finished my meal, two armed Tuaregs sprang into the zariba and said to me: ‘Are you Paul, the marabout’s servant? Why do you hide? Come and see with your own eyes what is happening: follow us! ‘I replied that I was not hiding, and that what was happening was God’s will.

On arriving near the marabout’s house, I perceived the latter seated, his back to the wall, on the right of the door, his hands bound behind his back, looking straight in front of him. We did not exchange a single word. I crouched down as ordered, on the left of the door. Numerous Tuaregs surrounded the marabout; they were speaking and gesticulating, congratulating and blessing the hartani El Madani, who had drawn the marabout into the trap, foretelling a life of delights for him in the other world as a reward for his work. Some other Tuaregs were in the house, going in and coming out, carrying various things found in the interior - rifles, munitions, stores, chegga (cloth), etc. Those who surrounded the marabout pressed him with the following questions: ‘When does the convoy come? Where is it? What is it bringing? Are there any soldiers in the bled? Where are they? Have they set out? Where are the Motylinski soldiers?’ The marabout remained impassible, he did not utter a word. The same questions were then put to me, as well as to another hartani, who was passing in the wady and caught in the meantime.

The whole did not last half an hour. The house was surrounded by sentinels. At this moment one of the sentinels gave the alarm, shouting: ‘Here are the Arabs! Here are the Arabs (the soldiers of Motylinski).’ At these cries, the Tuaregs, with the exception of three, two of whom remained in front of me and the other standing on guard near the marabout, went towards the place whence the cries came. A lively fusillade broke out. The Tuareg who was near the marabout brought the muzzle of his rifle close to the head of the latter and fired. The marabout neither moved nor cried. I did not think he was wounded: it was only a few minutes afterwards that I saw the blood flow, and that the marabout’s body slipped slowly down upon its side. He was dead.’