Hammers inside my head

’Saw the name Morecambe & Wise on the front of the theatre - first time on Broadway. Mind you, it won’t be there for long. We do the show tomorrow, so it will be taken down tomorrow night.’ This is Eric Morecambe, one half of the famous Morecambe and Wise comedy double act, writing in a (rather banal) diary he kept for a couple of years at the end of the 1960s. Today marks the 90 anniversary of his birth.

John Eric Bartholomew was born on 14 May 1926 in Morecambe, Lancashire, to working class parents. His mother encouraged him to leave school aged 13 to work as a child performer. By winning talent contests, he earned a place in a touring show, Youth Takes a Bow, in which Ernest Wiseman was also a comic prodigy. The two became close friends, and began to develop a double act, which became a regular feature in the show. During the last years of the Second World War, Wiseman joined the merchant navy, while Bartholomew was conscripted, in mid-1944, to become a so-called Bevin Boy and work in a coal mine in Accrington, though he was discharged as unfit after a year or so.

Bartholomew got together again with Wiseman once he was released from the merchant navy,  and in 1947 they joined Lord George Sanger’s variety circus, soon billing themselves as Morecambe (after his birth place) and Wise. In 1952 Morecambe married Joan Bartlett, a dancer and daughter of a captain in the Royal Army Medical Corps. They had two children, and also adopted a third child. In 1954, Morecambe and Wise’s first television series, Running Wild, was not a great success, and for the next few years they continued stage performances, with much touring, including a half year in Australia. They were also regulars on television variety shows. In 1961, the television broadcaster ATV launched The Morecambe and Wise Show, written by Sid Green and Dick Hills, which ran until 1968, establishing the duo as comedy celebrities. During the same period, they appeared several times on the Ed Sullivan show in New York, attracting huge audiences.

In 1968, Morecambe had a heart attack, and took six months off work to recuperate, returning to the stage with Wise the following summer. The couple moved their television work to the BBC, with Eddie Braben as their writer, and stayed until 1978 - producing the now-legendary Christmas shows - before switching to Thames Television in 1978. Morecambe had a second heart attack in 1979, followed by a bypass operation. Though he continued with the double act, making a series of shows for Thames between 1980 and 1983, he started branching out, playing other roles and writing more. He died of a third heart attack in 1984. Further information is available from Wikipedia, Chortle, or the old Morecambe website.

For a couple of years, between 1967 and early 1969, Morecambe kept a diary. This was first published by HarperCollins in 2005 - the last chapters in William Cook’s Eric Morecambe Unseen, sub-titled The Lost Diaries Jokes and Photographs, but essentially a pictorial biography. Cook gives a very brief introduction to the diary. ‘A lot of Eric’s observations,’ he says, ‘are fairly matter of fact, but the more intimate entries cast fresh light on his work, while the descriptive passages read like a dry run for his future fiction. And although the private voice is a good deal graver and reflective than his public persona, the same impish sense of fun remains.’ Here are several examples from the diaries as published in Cook’s book.

6 January 1968
‘Waldorf Astoria, New York. Today is a hard day. Two or three run throughs at the theatre, now called the Ed Sullivan Theatre, on Broadway. Then a quick lunch and a music run in the afternoon. Saw the name Morecambe & Wise on the front of the theatre - first time on Broadway. Mind you, it won’t be there for long. We do the show tomorrow, so it will be taken down tomorrow night. Got back to the hotel and the phone is flashing. It’s Fred Harris, an Englishman who works in New York for the Grade Delfont office. We stayed in the Waldorf for drinks as it was too cold to go out. We got slowly pissed, then went and had a bowl of soup downstairs in the cafe. This would be 12.30am. I then said, ‘Goodnight.’ He didn’t speak, got a cab and went home. I went back to my furnace of a room and fell asleep. I didn’t even switch on the TV.’

7 January 1968
‘Waldorf Astoria, New York, It’s thick snow outside. It’s thick hammers inside my head. However it’s show time this morning - got to get down to the Sullivan Theatre for 9.15am. Now to try and be funny at that time in the morning - believe me, there’s no such time. But it’s got to be done. This trip the weather has been really cold - fifteen below. I hope the plane will take off tomorrow. It could have cleared by then. Ern and I do the Sullivan again tonight. We will do the Marvo & Dolores [spoof magic act] bit. All the crew think it’s very funny. I think it will die, but I have been wrong before. We rehearse and hang about the theatre all day. Fred comes round before the show. The show is over, they say it’s gone well. I’m not happy about it nor is the Boy Wonder [Ernie], but they are - so much so, Ed asks us out to dinner with him that night. We go to Danny’s Hideaway on Lexington and have a very informal and most enjoyable evening. Bed around 12am.’

8 January 1968
‘Waldorf Astoria, New York. Well, I’m going back home tonight - back to the 35,000 feet up again bit and this time I’m not sorry. It’s 29 degrees below freezing, and that to me is cold. I’m going tonight on the ten o’clock flight from New York, but this time it’s BOAC. I’ve checked out of the hotel and took all my cases to the Essex House. Taxi at 7.15, airport at eight VIP room 8.30, 9.15 not drunk but happy. Great. Thirty five thousand feet up again, on the way home. Did the Sullivan last night and did well - maybe the best we have done. In a few moments the pilot has asked me to go up front while we are landing. This should be a thrill.’

16 January 1968
‘Today I went to the Delfont Grade office in Regent Street to meet Ernie and Billy Marsh. We had a long chat about future deals. I mentioned a tax saving scheme to Ernie and was rather surprised that he seemed quite interested, as since we have been married we have kept everything separate, and now Ernie is so close with information I never know what he is doing. All he does is secret! The idea is that we should both take out a policy on each other for £4,000 pa for ten years and after the ten years are up, for the next five years we are paid back at so much a year. At the end of the five years we will get £72,000 each - that of course is with profits. The beauty of it is that the £4,000 pa comes out of our different companies. If it comes out of the profits you are not taxed on the £4,000 at all. The only time you are taxed is when you start earning on the five yearly payments and by then we will have retired and will not be in the same earning capacity as we are now, so the tax will be less than now. I left the thought with the Boy Wonder, and I’ll wait to hear from him regards it, although I don’t think he will want to come across. Also if one of us dies, the other gets it, and Ern doesn’t look too well. It’s all a matter of pushing the money I’m earning now into the future.

Had lunch with Leslie Grade at Dickins & Jones. Very interesting as Leslie, who is a very shrewd man, had one or two propositions to offer - but with Leslie you have to think everything over for two or three days. Then you end up with the answer, which is nearly always, ‘Well, where does Leslie’s share come in?’ But it’s in there somewhere!’

18 January 1968
‘Today I was asked to become President of Kimpton Players. It sounds like a football team, but it’s a group of amateur actors and actresses who do local shows for charity. It should be quite interesting. They are doing an old time music hall show in a few weeks time, so I’ll be getting a party together and going along. Ern and I had a meeting with our writers, Sid Green and Dick Hills, at Roger Hancock’s office. We went to talk over a film idea for this coming summer. After a few drinks, conversation loosened up and Sid and Dick came out with the idea of doing a film about gypsies, where Ern and I are something to do with the council, and we have the job of moving them on, off the land that they are on. Although they had a few good situations within the film I could see Ern was not too happy about it, and I must admit I wasn’t jumping for joy. It’s a good idea, but it’s an idea anyone could do. It’s not pure Morecambe & Wise. Over lunch I happened to mention an offbeat idea I had for a film, which all thought funny. At that point Sid said that if that was the type of film we were thinking in terms of, he was all for it. So it looks as if we may after all be doing a type of film that we are all keen to do. The boys went off to write it up. We meet again next week.’

Severed heads drinking Coke

Happy birthday Eleanor Coppola, 80 today. Although her film director husband, Francis Ford Coppola is better known, Eleanor has made a career for herself directing films about films. But it was a diary she kept while Francis was filming Apocalypse Now, and later published, which set her on the course of documenting the art of movie making.

Eleanor Jessie Neil was born on 4 May 1936 in Los Angeles. Her father, a political cartoonist, died when she was 10, and her mother brought her up in Sunset Beach, 30 miles south of LA. After graduating in applied design from the University of California, Eleanor met Francis Ford Coppola while working as an assistant art director during the filming of Dementia 13 in 1962. They married in Las Vegas the following year. Their three children, Sofia, Roman and Gian-Carlo have followed them into the film industry. Eleanor, herself, has directed and/or been the cinematographer on several documentaries about the making of films. Otherwise, among her other activities, she helps manage the family winery in California, and has designed for a dance company in San Francisco. She also developed an art project, Circle of Memory ‘to inspire visitors to recall and commemorate children who are missing or dead.’ Further biographical information can be found at Wikipedia or the Note on the road website.

While Eleanor Coppola’s husband was working on Apocalypse Now, in the 1970s, with a shooting schedule in the Philippines, she kept extensive diary-like notes. These were published in 1979 by Simon & Schuster and simply called Notes, although subsequent editions were called Notes on the Making of Apocalypse Now. This book, in turn, led to a film, co-directed by Eleanor Coppola, Hearts of Darkness: A Filmmaker’s Apocalypse. Irene and Alan Taylor, authors of the anthology, The Assassin’s Cloak, say the diary is ‘an extraordinary record not only of making a movie but of the emotional and physical prices extracted from all who participated in it.’ Later, she published Notes on a Life, in a similar style, but with a much broader focus on her world. Further information and and extracts from Notes on the Making of Apocalypse Now can be found at SF Gate, Los Angeles Times, and The Independent.

In her book, Coppola explains that she went with her husband and their three children to the Philippines in March 1976, where they rented a large house in Manila for the five-month scheduled shooting of Apocalypse Now. The film was conceived as an action/adventure structured on Joseph Conrad’s novel Heart of Darkness, but rather than Africa in the 1800s, the film was set on a river in Vietnam during the late sixties. The story concerns a Captain Willard who is given an assignment to go on a classified mission up a river in Vietnam, cross into Cambodia and assassinate Colonel Kurtz, a Green Beret colonel who has apparently gone insane and is conducting the war by his own rules. When Willard finally arrives at his destination, he has been changed by the experience of making the journey. Coppola concludes her introduction by saying: ‘Many of the people who worked on the film were also changed.’ Here are several extracts from Notes.

24 June 1976
‘Napa. Yesterday Mike and Arlene saw two hours of rushes, and when they called to ask us if we would like anything from the city, Arlene said she thought the acting was kind of tentative. Francis went into a tailspin. He felt totally defeated. He has spent $7 million, and months of grueling production, and they didn’t say, “Hey, you’ve got some fantastic stuff there.” He really got into a black depression. As I see it, Francis has ninety hours of film, and no chunk can give you an idea of what fifteen minutes’ worth of moments he is going to select from it. What you finally see on the screen does not give the slightest clue of what was left out. For someone to just look at an arbitrary piece is meaningless. Francis felt hopeless and scared. We slept outside on the lawn. It was a beautiful night, so clear with stars. Francis tossed and turned most of the night, having nightmares. We woke up at dawn; there was a crescent of new moon rising near the horizon in the pinkish light. Francis said he had had a dream about how to finish the script, but now that he was awake it wasn’t really any good. Francis talked to Brando on the phone yesterday.’

15 October 1976
‘Thirty-eight takes, and Francis said it was never the way he wanted it. The people who were playing the severed heads sat in their boxes, buried in the ground, from eight in the morning till six at night. All day they were there in the hot sun, with smoke blowing on them. Between takes they were covered with umbrellas. They got out for lunch, but the rest of the time they were there in place.

During one take, Dennis Hopper backed up and stepped right at a girl’s cheek and collapsed part of the container she was in, nearly stepping on her face. The mud on both sides of the dolly track was deep and people kept slipping. Dennis and Fred Forrest both fell during takes. The sound man had someone hold on to his belt in the back and stabilize him as he followed the actors, so that he wouldn’t fall with the boom.

It was one of those days where the dry ice mist, or the orange smoke, or the performance, or the light, or something just never came together for a take that Francis was satisfied with.

At one point I was sitting there looking around. The severed heads were drinking Cokes. The Ifugao children were putting chunks of dry ice in film cans and making the lids pop off. Some Ifugao girls were picking lice out of each other’s hair. One girl had a wrapped skirt, bare breasts and pink plastic hair rollers. A man sitting down in his loincloth held up the fringed ends neatly so they wouldn’t get in the mud. The man with the boa constrictor was giving it a drink of water. Alex was talking about the fake blood . . . “It’s thirty-five dollars a gallon and they’re really using a lot today.” Special effects ran out of orange smoke and had to use red. My favorite old Ifugao priest wasn’t in costume today; he had on a loincloth and beige print, nylon jersey sport shirt. He came up close to the steps to take a look at the fake severed heads. They say his tribe were headhunters as recently as five years ago. Angelo had a tuna sandwich he was passing around, and people were saying, “You know how long its been since I had a tuna sandwich?” ’

17 October 1976
‘Pagsanjan. I shot an interview with Dennis Hopper. One of the things he said that interested me the most was that he thought filmmaking was in the same phase of development that art was during the cathedral-building period. When they built those great cathedrals in Europe, they employed stonemasons, engineers, fresco painters, etc., and created the work through the combined talents of many. By the nineteenth century, art evolved to the point where the major work of the day was being done by individual artists working alone at an easel. Dennis was making the point that now film-making involves the talents of many departments and perhaps eventually major films will be made by one person with a video port-a-pack.’

4 November 1978
‘Napa. Yesterday I went with Francis to a screening of the last half of the film to see some changes he was working on with the editors. I hadn’t seen any footage since June. There is no question in my mind, beyond all my personal feelings and connections, it is an extraordinary work. It feels like Francis’s level of desperation and fear is shrinking. The lawyers and United Artists are starting to talk more optimistically about the financial situation. There is still more work to do in the final sequence at Kurtz Compound, but each cut seems to improve, get closer.’

The Diary Junction

Breaking superstitious pictures

‘We brake down 28 superstitious Pictures; and took up 11 popish Inscriptions in Brass; and gave order for digging up the Steps, and taking of 2 Crosses of the Steeple of the Church, and one of the Chancel, in all 4.’ This is from the unique diary of William Dowsing, baptised 420 years ago today. He was a farmer by occupation, but for a short period when middle aged, during the Civil War, he took on the job of destroying ‘all monuments of superstition and idolatry’ in parts of East Anglia, as dictated by an August 1643 Parliamentary Ordnance.

Although there is some uncertainty about the place of his birth, it seems Dowsing was baptised in Laxfield, Suffolk, on 2 May 1596, the son of a yeoman farmer. It is likely he studied at grammar school because he knew Latin and Greek. He was married twice, having ten children by his first wife, Thamar. He was a working farmer, and was very religious, a puritan, establishing a large library of religious books. According to John Morril’s entry for Dowsing in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (log-in required), he was ‘a grave, earnest, godly man who appears to have held no public office or sought any public notice over his seventy-two years of life, except for an explosive period of fifteen months at the height of the civil wars’.

Dowsing was middle-aged when appointed, by Edward Montagu, the Earl of Manchester, to be provost marshal of the armies of the eastern association. This appointment, Morril explains, was more the result of Dowsing’s puritan zeal than any experience for the job. He helped with supplies for the army and the care of prisoners of war. But, in December 1643, he surrendered that role in order to carry out the Parliamentary Ordinance which stated that ‘all monuments of superstition and idolatry should be removed and abolished’. He, personally, supervised the ‘cleansing’ of many churches in Cambridgeshire, and, in conjunction with deputies, many in Suffolk too. He visited over 250 churches in the two counties, ensuring the destruction of stained glass windows, alter rails, angels, crucifixes on roofs, etc. However, with the fall of Montagu from power, in late 1644, Dowsing, too, laid down his commission. He returned to farming, being troubled in later life by disputes between the children from his two marriages. He died in 1668.

Dowsing is remembered today solely because he documented, in a unique way, his work destroying the ornamentation in hundreds of churches. His original manuscripts have long since been lost, and there are complicated histories for various copies - hand copied and published - made of those manuscripts. These histories, along with all the surviving parts of Dowsing’s journals and much context and many notes, have been gathered together in a modern edition, edited by Trevor Cooper, and published by Boydell & Brewer Ltd in 2001 as The Journal of William Dowsing - Iconoclasm in East Anglia During the English Civil War. Parts of this are available to view at Googlebooks. A substantial review of the book can be found at Michigan State University’s H-Net.

Although material from Dowsing’s manuscripts had found its way into other publications, the first book dedicated to his journal was published in Woodbridge in 1786 as The Journal of William Dowsing, of Stratford, Parliamentary Visitor, appointed under a warrant from the Earl of Manchester, for demolishing the superstitious pictures and ornaments of Churches, &c. within the County of Suffolk, in the years 1643-1644. A later edition, edited by Evelyn White, published by Pawsey & Hayes in 1885, is available at Internet Archive (and is the source of the following extracts)

23 January 1643
’14. DUNSTALL, JAN. the 23rd. We brake down 60 superstitious Pictures; and broke in pieces the Rails; and gave order to pull down the Steps.’

24 January 1643
’15. ALDBOROUGH, JAN. the 24th. We gave order for taking down 20 Cherubims, and 38 Pictures; which their Lecturer Mr. Swayn (a godly man) undertook, and their Captain Mr. Johnson.’

25 January 1643
’16. ORFORD, JAN. the 25th. We brake down 28 superstitious Pictures; and took up 11 popish Inscriptions in Brass; and gave order for digging up the Steps, and taking of 2 Crosses of the Steeple of the Church, and one of the Chancel, in all 4.

17. SNAPE, JAN. the 25th. We brake down 4 popish Pictures; and took up 4 Inscriptions of Brass, of ora pro nobis, &c.

18. STANSTED, JAN. the 25th. We brake down 6 superstitious Pictures; and took up a popish Inscription in Brass.’

26 January 1643
’19. SAXMUNDHAM, JAN. the 26th. We took up 2 superstitious Inscriptions in Brass.

20. KELSHALL, JAN. the 26th. We brake down 6 superstitious Pictures; and took up 12 popish Inscriptions in Brass; and gave order to levell the Chancel, and taking down a Cross.

21. CARLETON, JAN. the 26th. We brake down 10 superstitious Pictures; and took up 6 popish Inscriptions in Brass; and gave order to levell the Chancel.

22. FARNHAM, JAN, the 26th. We took up a popish Inscription in Brass.

23. STRATFORD. We brake down 6 superstitious Pictures.

24. WICKHAM, JAN the 26th. We brake down 15 popish Pictures of Angels and Sts; and gave order for taking 2 Crosses; one on the Steeple, & the 2nd on the Church.

25. SUDBURNE, JAN. the 26th. We brake down 6 Pictures, and gave order for the taking down of a Cross on the Steeple; and the Steps to be levelled.’

A fuller set of Dowsing’s diary entries can be read freely online at a website created in parallel with, and to promote, Trevor Cooper’s The Journal of William Dowsing. The online version offers all the journal entries but very few of the many extras offered by the book itself (see its contents here).

The Diary Junction

Of Napoleon, and a turtle

Sir Neil Campbell, a British army officer who rose to become a colonial governor, was born 240 years ago today. He is largely remembered for a detailed and informative diary he kept while in charge of Napoleon Bonaparte during his exile on the island of Elba. That diary, first published in 1869, is the only extant diary left by Campbell, however a biographical memoir by his nephew, mentions another journal, and provides a single extract from it, about the capturing of a turtle at sea.

Campbell was born on 1 May 1776. His father was described as a ‘Highland gentleman of ancient lineage, and fair landed estate’. After being nurtured in his ‘wild ancestral home’, he began his army career by joining the 6th West India Regiment in 1797. After three years service in West Indies, he returned to England and was promoted to lieutenant, and then to major. He returned to the West Indies, to Jamaica, in 1807, and then, after a sojourn in England for health reasons, journeyed again to the West Indies in 1808, this time being appointed Deputy-Adjutant-General to the Forces in the Windward and Leeward Islands. He was present at the captures, from the French, of Martinique and Guadeloupe.

During the Peninsular War, Campbell was appointed colonel of the 16th Portuguese infantry, but in 1814, he was severely wounded at Fère-Champenoise in France. Later, the same year he was chosen to accompany Napoleon from Fontainebleau to Elba (where he had been exiled under the terms of the Treaty of Fontainebleau) with express orders from the British Foreign Secretary, Lord Castlereigh, that he was in no way to act as his jailer, but rather to allow the ex French emperor to take control of the island as a sovereign prince. Although, Campbell’s instructions also implied that he should not remain in Elba longer than necessary, he did promise to stay, at Napoleon’s request, until the termination of the congress of Vienna (which aimed to provide a long-term peace plan for Europe). It is thought that his presence on the island put the English naval captains off their guard, and thus enabled Napoleon to escape rather easily.

Campbell went on to serve at the battle of Waterloo, and during the occupation of France, from 1815 to 1818, he commanded the Hanseatic Legion, consisting of 3,000 volunteers. In 1825, he was appointed major-general, applied for a staff appointment, and was given the governorship of Sierra Leone, reaching the colony in May 1826. The following year, however, he died of a fever. Further information is available online from Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900 or The Napoleon Series.

Campbell is largely remembered today because of a diary he kept while in charge of the force escorting Napoleon to exile on Elba, and while remaining with him there - until his escape. The diary - published in 1869 by John Murray and freely available at Internet Archive - is titled: Napoleon at Fontainebleau and Elba being A Journal of Occurrences in 1814-1815 with Notes of Conversations by the late Major-General Sir Neil Campbell C. B. With a Memoir of the Life and Services of that Officer, By his Nephew Archibald Neil Campbell Maclachlan M. A.. The book, as the title implies, contains a biographical memoir about Campbell, rather formally written, as well as the journal kept by Campbell himself for a year from April 1814 to March 1815. The latter, in particular, is a valuable first hand account of Napoleon during his exile on Elba.

According to Ravenhall Books, which brought out a modern edition of Campbell’s diary in 2004: ‘It records events as Napoleon builds an empire in miniature on Elba and it keeps an eye on the coming and going of agents and would-be assassins. Frank and enlightening it also reveals much about the personality of Napoleon and of the tensions and subterfuge within the exiled community as Napoleon devises and implements his plans for an escape.’ Here are several extracts from the original 1869 publication.

5 May 1814
‘From daylight to breakfast at 10 P.M. Napoleon was on foot, inspecting the castles, storehouses, and magazines.

At 2 P.M.. he went into the interior on horseback, a distance of two leagues, and examined various country-houses.’

6 May 1814
‘At 7 A.M. he crossed the harbour in Captain Usher’s boat, proceeded on horseback across the island to Rio, and examined the mines, then ascended a number of hills and mountain-tops upon which there are ruins. After a ‘Te Deum’ in a chapel, we had breakfast. On our return we re-embarked in Captain Usher’s boat, but, instead of returning direct. Napoleon visited the watering place, the height opposite the citadel on which he proposes to establish a sea-battery, and a rock at the mouth of the harbour on which he also thinks of placing a tower.

In talking at dinner of his intention to take possession of a small island without inhabitants, which is about ten miles off the coast of Elba, Napoleon said, ‘Toute l’Europe dira que j’ai fait une conquête déjà.” He laughed at this.

Already he has all his plans in agitation; such as to convey water from the mountains to the city, to prepare a country-house, a house in Porto Ferrajo for himself, and another for the Princess Pauline, a stable for 150 horses, a lazaretto for vessels to perform quarantine, a depot for the salt, and another for the nets belonging to the fishery of the tunny.’

7 May 1814
‘From 5 to 10 A.M. Napoleon visited other parts of the town and fortifications on foot, then embarked in boats, and visited the different storehouses round the harbour.

In making the excursions into the country, yesterday and the day before, he was accompanied by a dozen officers. A captain of gendarmes and one of his Fourriers de Palais always rode in front; and, on two occasions, a sergeant’s party of gendarmes-à-pied went on about an English mile before.

On taking our places in the boat, some of us, following Bertrand’s example, kept off our hats; on which he told us to put them on, adding, ‘Nous sommes ici ensemble en soldat!’

The fishery of the tunny is carried on by the richest inhabitant of the island. This person, by his own industry, has, out of a state of extreme poverty, amassed a fortune. He employs a great proportion of the poor, and has much influence. The removal of the stores by Napoleon to a very inferior building, merely for the convenience of his horses, is likely to cause disgust; but this shows how little Napoleon permits reflection to check his desires.’

8 May 1814
‘Before landing from the frigate, Napoleon requested that a party of fifty marines might accompany him to remain on shore. This intention was afterwards changed; and one officer of marines and two sergeants, to act as orderlies, together with a lieutenant of the navy, were sent.

One of the sergeants, selected by himself, sleeps outside the door of his bedchamber, upon a mattrass, with his clothes on, and a sword at his side. A valet de chambre occupies another mattrass at the same place. If he lies down during the day, the sergeant is called to remain in the antechamber.’

22 May 1814
‘Napoleon told me that he had taken Malta by a coup de main; that the inhabitants were so intimidated ‘par le nom de ces républicains, mangeurs d’hommes,’ that they all took refuge within the fortifications, with cattle and every living animal in the island. This created so much confusion and dismay, that they were incapable of opposition.

He requested me to write to the consul at Algiers, to secure the respect due to his flag, agreeably to the treaty.’

23 May 1814
‘I have received a letter from the Admiral, dated Genoa, May 19, in which he states that he had sent transports to Savona for the Guards of Napoleon. He expects to be off this place in a few days, on his voyage to Sicily, with Lord William Bentinck on board. I shall take that opportunity of waiting upon them, to give every information in my power, and to obtain the advantage of their counsel.’

26 May 1814
‘This morning, at 6 A.M., Napoleon went quite unexpectedly on board of the French frigate ‘Dryade,’ and the crew hailed him with cries of ‘Vive l’Empereur!’ This, I am told, placed the captain in a very awkward situation. It was not a visit to the captain personally, for he had anchored on the preceding afternoon, and then Napoleon declined seeing him, when he waited upon him, until the following morning at 10 a.m. So that it was certainly done to try the disposition of the Navy, and to keep up a recollection of him in France.

Napoleon also visited the British frigate ‘Undaunted,’ and made a speech to the crew. He thanked them for the good-will with which they had performed their duties during the voyage, said that he felt himself under obligations to them for the period he had been on board, which he had passed so happily, and that he wished them every success and happiness. He sent them, in the course of the day, 1,000 bottles of wine and 1,000 dollars, and presented Captain Usher with a box containing his portrait set in diamonds. Napoleon speaks most gratefully to everyone of the facilities which have been granted to him by the British Government; and to myself personally he constantly expresses the sense he entertains of the superior qualities which the British nation possesses over every other.

Five British transports arrived here this morning from Savona, with about 750 volunteers of Napoleon’s Guards, his horses, and baggage.

To-day I informed General Bertrand that, in case either Napoleon himself or others might ascribe any underhand motive to my remaining here, I was ready to quit the island at once, should such be his wish; that I had only remained after the other Commissioners in order to procure for him those facilities which he had requested, through me, from the British Admiral.

After repeating my conversation to Napoleon, General Bertrand was directed to assure me that my remaining with him after the departure of the other Commissioners was indispensable for his protection and security, in obedience to Lord Castlereagh’s instructions; that even after the arrival of his troops and baggage, there was another article of the treaty not fulfilled, although guaranteed by the Allied Sovereigns, and the execution of which depended entirely upon His Britannic Majesty’s ships in the Mediterranean, viz. the security of his flag against insult from the powers of Barbary; that it would be necessary for me to communicate with the Consul at Algiers and the Admiral, as soon as possible, for that object. I requested that he would address the application to me in writing, and stated that I would prolong my stay in the hope of receiving further instructions from Lord Castlereagh, not having heard from his lordship since I left Fontainebleau.’

13 March 1815
‘About one in the morning a person with a lanthorn entered my room very silently, and told me that the prefect requested to see me immediately. In order to avoid all noise and observation, he led me by a back way, and through a stable, into the house. I found the Count in a state of extreme dismay, and occupied with his secretary. I sincerely participated in his feelings on hearing from him the intelligence he had just received from Aix and Valence, viz., that Napoleon had entered Grenoble upon the 7th at 8 p.m., and that General Marchand, with the staff and most of the officers, had retired. It may be inferred from this that the rest and the private soldiers have betrayed their duty.

This state of affairs is so serious, that I determined to go off immediately to Nice, in order to convey the earliest intimation of these melancholy circumstances to Lord William Bentinck at Genoa. I shall also report to him my observation as to the bad disposition of the troops at Antibes, and the little reliance that can be placed upon the regular army, so that he may prepare for the worst.

No actual disposition has been made by the Piedmontese for the passage of the long bridge over the Var, which separates them from Antibes.

Set off from Draguignan at 3 A.M., and arrived at Nice at 5 P.M. At 10 P.M. went on board of H.M.S. ‘Partridge’ at Villa Franca, but it blew so hard that she could not with safety attempt to beat out.

Lord Sunderland has arrived from Marseilles. There it is universally believed that  the English had favoured Napoleon’s return, and the people are furious against us.  the same idea also prevails everywhere in the South of France and in Piedmont. A newspaper of Turin, just arrived at Nice, states positively this to be the case!’

14 March 1815
‘Sailed out of Villa Franca at 6 A.M., and arrived at Genoa at 8 P.M.’

15 March 1815
‘Wrote Lord Burgbersh with news from Draguignan of the 13th inst., and mentioned a report of Napoleon having entered Lyons.

Madame Mère, as I am informed, states that Napoleon had three deputations from France before he consented to quit Elba.’

18 March 1815
‘H.M.S. ‘Aboukir’ sailed for Leghorn.’

19 March 1815
‘H.M.S. ‘Partridge’ left Genoa for Leghorn and Sicily.’

20 March 1815
‘Left Genoa. During the night robbed of my watch and between fifty and sixty guineas by brigands near Novi.’

21 March 1815
‘4 P.M. at Milan.’

22 March 1815
‘7 A.M. Domo d’Ossola. 7 P.M. Left the Simplon.’

23 March 1815
‘11 A.M. Sion. Carriage-wheel broke. 8 P.M. Vevay.’

24 March 1815
‘Midday, Morat. Overtook Mr. Perry, the courier, who had left Genoa the morning before me.’

25 March 1815
‘11 A.M. Basle. 7 P.M. Fribourg.’

26 March 1815
‘2 P.M. Rastadt. 5 P.M. Carlsruhe.’

27 March 1815
‘3 A.M. Manheim. Passed the Rhine.’

28 March 1815
‘10 A.M. Lisère; passed the Moselle in a flat.

4 P.M. Treves. At midnight, Luxembourg. Stopped four hours to pass through the fortress.’

29 March 1815
‘4 A.M. Left Luxembourg.’

30 March 1815
‘6 P.M. Brussels. Remained three hours.’

31 March 1815
‘6 P.M. Ostend. Sailed at 8 P.M. in H. M. brig ‘Rosario,’ Captain Peak.’

1 April 1815 [Last entry in published diary.]
‘9 A.M. Landed at Deal, and at 9 P.M. arrived in London. Next day had interviews with Lord Castlereagh, and with H. R. H. the Prince Regent at Carlton House.’

It is worth noting that in the biographical memoir section of the book, there is mention of another journal kept by Campbell during his journey to the Windward and Leeward Islands in 1808. Here is what the memoir says about that journal, including an extract from it (although I can find no further information about this journal anywhere else).

‘A Journal kept by him during the voyage, and illustrated by plans and drawings, relates the usual incidents on board a troopship of that period, sailing from Woolwich to Barbadoes, and passing by Porto Santo, Madeira, and Teneriffe. The ‘Creole’ mounted twelve six-pounders and two nine-pounders; had a crew of twenty-four men, including master and mate; and carried, besides Lieutenant-Colonel Campbell and his servant, a detachment of Artillery, consisting of five officers and forty-six men. At the Downs she joined company with 150 sail, many of them transports destined for Spain; but soon after, weighing anchor from thence, the convoy was caught by a tremendous gale, which effectually dispersed it, and blew over several of the vessels - the ‘Creole’ among them - to the French coast near Boulogne, though with no ultimate loss. On November 2nd, off Lymington, a detachment of Foreign Artillery, consisting of one sergeant and twenty-sis men, was taken in.

On the 4th the ‘Creole’ passed through a fleet of light transports beating up Channel. ‘These are probably,’ Colonel Campbell notes, ‘the ships returning from France, after landing the French troops agreeably to the Convention of Cintra.’ ‘On the 18th, the day being a dead calm, the boat was lowered to pursue a turtle, which was spied 800 yards from the ship. Two hands rowed, I took the helm, and the master sat in the bow of the boat ready to seize him. As he seemed to be asleep upon the surface of the water, we approached him with as little noise as possible. When the boat almost touched him, the mate suddenly grasped him by one of his fore-fins, and tossed him into the boat. The exploit being witnessed from the ship, we were welcomed by a loud cheer in exultation of our success. The appearance of the ship with all its sails set, indolently bending from one side to another, her deck and sides crowded with men, the sea clear and smooth as glass, and the delightful warmth of the day, were truly beautiful and cheering to our spirits. There was no small anxiety to view the prize - sailors and soldiers, women and children, all crowding about us to satisfy their curiosity. The turtle was laid on his back upon the deck, to the joy of every one. In course of the evening we made three attempts after other turtle, but none of them succeeded. They were not asleep, and, when we approached within a few yards, lifted up their heads, surveyed us, and disappeared.’

The Diary Junction

From real to fantastical

Today marks the bicentenary of the birth of Charlotte Brontë. Although she was the most prolific of three sisters, all writers, she is remembered mostly for one novel, a classic of English literature, Jane Eyre. The Brontë Parsonage Museum, which holds the most important Brontë archives, owns a journal Charlotte kept intermittently, and for a short time, while living at Roe Head School. It is interesting, commentators says, since it can be seen to have served ‘as a gateway from the real world into the fantastical’.

Charlotte Brontë was born on 21 April 1816 near Bradford in the West Riding of Yorkshire. She was the third of six children. In 1820, the family moved to Haworth, also in Yorkshire, where her father was curate. The following year, her mother died, and Charlotte’s aunt joined the household to look after the children. In 1824, the four eldest daughters were sent to a clergy daughters’ school in Lancashire, but soon after both of Charlotte’s older sisters died of tuberculosis. She and her sister Emily returned to live at the Haworth Parsonage with their younger siblings Bramwell and Anne. Brontë biographers note how the children at home encouraged each others imaginative games and creative writing.

Between 1831 and 1832, Charlotte was educated at Roe Head in Mirfield, less than 20 miles southeast of Haworth, where she made friends with Ellen Nussey and Mary Taylor who became lifelong correspondents. From 1835 to 1838, she returned to Roe Head as a teacher, and thereafter took positions as governess in various families. In 1842, she moved to Brussels to attend a school, where she taught music in exchange for her tuition. It was not a happy experience and she was back at Haworth in 1844. By this time, she had written a number of stories (posthumously published as her juvenilia), but in 1846 the three sisters paid for the printing of a collection of poems, published under assumed names - though, biographies say, only two copies were ever sold.

The following year, Charlotte Brontë sent her second draft novel to Smith, Elder & Co. (a first novel, called The Professor, not having found a publisher) which published it almost immediately as Jane Eyre: An Autobiography under Charlotte’s pen name Currer Bell. The book was a commercial success, leading to speculation as to the identity of its author, speculation that only increased when Emily published Wuthering Heights under the pen name of Ellis Bell, and Anne published Agnes Grey under the pen name of Acton Bell. Tragically, over the next year or so, all three of Charlotte’s remaining siblings died - from tuberculosis also - Bramwell and Emily in 1948, and Anne in 1949. Although Anne had published her novel The Tenant of Wildfell Hall in 1948, Charlotte, as her heir, refused to allow it to be reprinted (and it was not until 1854 that a new edition, much edited, was published).

Shirley, the second of Charlotte’s novels to emerge, came out in late 1849, and a third, Villette, in 1853. Given the success of Jane Eyre, she was persuaded to visit London now and then, for a few weeks at a time, and, with her true identity now known, was received in literary circles. She became acquainted with Harriet Martineau, William Makepeace Thackeray, for example, and Elizabeth Gaskell. In June 1854, she married Arthur Bell Nicholls, her father’s curate, becoming pregnant soon after. But she, too, was to die tragically young, the following March, with her unborn child. Further information can be found at Wikipedia, The Brontë Society, Victorian Web, The Poetry Foundation, or Online Literature. Elizabeth Gaskell’s 1857 biography The Life of Charlotte Brontë is freely available at Internet Archive or here.

The Brontës were not diarists by nature, but there are fragments of diary material left by Emily and Anne - see Emily Brontë peels apples - and Charlotte. Charlotte’s diary-like texts, six of them amounting to around 2,000 words, were written during her years at Roe Head school. Most of the entries are quite long, and undated - and some of them can be previewed at Googlebooks in The Brontës: Tales of Glass Town, Angria, and Gondal - Selected Writings edited by Christine Alexander (Oxford University Press 2010). The British Library website mentions ‘Charlotte Brontë’s journal’, and gives one extract. However, more information as well as images of the journal itself with transcriptions can be found as part of the online exhibitions The Diary: Three Centuries of Private Lives at The Morgan Library & Museum. The exhibition notes say: ‘Having begun writing a straightforward diary entry - a real-time description of her life at Roe Head - Brontë had stepped seamlessly into fiction. She allowed her high-flown storytelling to provide an antidote to the dreary everyday, her diary serving as a gateway from the real world into the fantastical.’

The following extracts are taken from The Morgan Library Museum exhibition website, which says the text has been ‘lightly punctuated for readability’.

4 February 1836
‘Well, here I am at Roe-Head. It is seven o’clock at night, the young ladies are all at their lessons, the school-room is quiet, the fire is low, a stormy day is at this moment passing off in a murmuring and bleak night. I now assume my own thoughts; my mind relaxes from the stretch on which it has been for the last twelve hours & falls back onto the rest which no-body in this house knows of but myself. I now, after a day’s weary wandering, return to the ark which for me floats alone on the face of this world’s desolate & boundless deluge. It is strange. I cannot get used to the ongoings that surround me. I fulfil my duties strictly & well, yet, so to speak, if the illustration be not profane, as God was not in the wind, nor the fire, nor the earth-quake, so neither is my heart in the task, the theme or the exercise. It is the still small voice alone that comes to me at eventide, that which like a breeze with a voice in it [comes] over the deeply blue hills & out of the now leafless forests & from the cities on distant river banks of a far & bright continent. It is that which wakes my spirit & engrosses all my living feelings, all my energies which are not merely mechanical, & like Haworth & home, wakes sensations which lie dormant elsewhere.

Last night I did indeed lean upon the thunder-wakening wings of such a stormy blast as I have seldom heard blow, & it whirled me away like heath in the wilderness for five seconds of ecstasy, and as I sat by myself in the dining-room while all the rest were at tea the trance seemed to descend on a sudden, & verily this foot trod the war-shaken shores of the Calabar & these eyes saw the defiled & violated Adrianopolis shedding its lights on the river from lattices whence the invader looked out & was not darkened. I went through a trodden garden whose groves were crushed down. I ascended a great terrace, the marble surface of which shone wet with rain where it was not darkened by the mounds of dead leaves which were now showered on & now swept off by the vast & broken boughs which swung in the wind above them. Up I went to the wall of the palace to the line of latticed arches which shimmered in light, passing along quick as thought, I glanced at what the internal glare revealed through the crystal. 

There was a room lined with mirrors & with lamps on tripods, & very darkened, & splendid couches & carpets & large half lucid vases white as snow, thickly embossed with whiter mouldings, & one large picture in a frame of massive beauty representing a young man whose gorgeous & shining locks seemed as if they would wave on the breath & whose eyes were half hid by the hand carved in ivory that shaded them & supported the awful looking coron[al?] head—a solitary picture, too great to admit of a companion—a likeness to be remembered full of luxuriant beauty, not displayed, for it seemed as if the form had been copied so often in all imposing attitudes, that at length the painter, satiated with its luxuriant perfection, had resolved to conceal half & make the imperial Giant bend & hide under his cloudlike tresses, the radiance he was grown tired of gazing on. 

Often had I seen this room before and felt, as I looked at it, the simple and exceeding magnificence of its single picture, its five colossal cups of sculptured marble, its soft carpets of most deep and brilliant hues, & its mirrors, broad, lofty, & liquidly clear. I had seen it in the stillness of evening when the lamps so quietly & steadily burnt in the tranquil air, & when their rays fell upon but one living figure, a young lady who generally at that time appeared sitting on a low sofa, a book in her hand, her head bent over it as she read, her light brown hair dropping in loose & unwaving curls, her dress falling to the floor as she sat in sweeping folds of silk. All stirless about her except her heart, softly beating under her satin bodice & all silent except her regular and very gentle respiration. The haughty sadness of grandeur beamed out of her intent fixed hazel eye, & though so young, I always felt as if I dared not have spoken to her for my life, how lovely were the lines of her small & rosy mouth, but how very proud her white brow, spacious & wreathed with ringlets, & her neck, which, though so slender, had the superb curve of a queen’s about the snowy throat. I knew why she chose to be alone at that hour, & why she kept that shadow in the golden frame to gaze on her, & why she turned sometimes to her mirrors & looked to see if her loveliness & her adornments were quite perfect. 

However this night she was not visible—no—but neither was her bower void. The red ray of the fire flashed upon a table covered with wine flasks, some drained and some brimming with the crimson juice. The cushions of a voluptuous ottoman which had often supported her slight, fine form were crushed by a dark bulk flung upon them in drunken prostration. Aye, where she had lain imperially robed and decked with pearls, every waft of her garments as she moved diffusing perfume, her beauty slumbering & still glowing as dreams of him for whom she kept herself in such hallowed & shrine-like separation wandered over her soul, on her own silken couch, a swarth & sinewy moor intoxicated to ferocious insensibility had stretched his athletic limbs, weary with wassail and stupefied with drunken sleep. I knew it to be Quashia himself, and well could I guess why he had chosen the queen of Angria’s sanctuary for the scene of his solitary revelling. While he was full before my eyes, lying in his black dress on the disordered couch, his sable hair dishevelled on his forehead, his tusk-like teeth glancing vindictively through his parted lips, his brown complexion flushed with wine, & his broad chest heaving wildly as the breath issued in spurts from his distended nostrils, while I watched the fluttering of his white shirt ruffles starting through the more than half-unbuttoned waistcoat, & beheld the expression of his Arabian countenance savagely exulting even in sleep, Quashia triumphant Lord in the halls of Zamorna! in the bower of Zamorna’s lady! while this apparition was before me, the dining-room door opened and Miss W[ooler] came in with a plate of butter in her hand. “A very stormy night my dear!” said she. 

“It is ma’am,” said I.’

5 February 1836
‘Friday afternoon. Now as I have a little bit of time, there being no French lessons this afternoon, I should like to write something. I can’t enter into any continued narrative—my mind is not settled enough for that—but if I could call up some slight and pleasant sketch, I would amuse myself by jotting it down. 

Let me consider the other day. I appeared to realize a delicious, hot day in the most burning height of summer, a gorgeous afternoon of idleness and enervation descending upon the hills of our Africa, an evening enfolding a sky of profoundly deep blue & fiery gold about the earth. 

Dear me! I keep heaping epithets together and I cannot describe what I mean. I mean a day whose rise, progress & decline seem made of sunshine. As you are travelling you see the wide road before you, the field on each side & the hills far, far off, all smiling, glowing in the same amber light, and you feel such an intense heat, quite incapable of chilling damp or even refreshing breeze. A day when fruits visibly ripen, when orchards appear suddenly change from green to gold.

Such a day I saw flaming over the distant Sydenham Hills in Hawkscliffe Forest. I saw its sublime sunset pouring beams of crimson through magnificent glades. It seemed to me that the war was over, that the trumpet had ceased but a short time since, and that its last tones had been pitched on a triumphant key. It seemed as if exciting events—tidings of battles, of victories, of treaties, of meetings of mighty powers—had diffused an enthusiasm over the land that made its pulses beat with feverish quickness. After months of bloody toil, a time of festal rest was now bestowed on Angria. The noblemen, the generals and the gentlemen were at their country seats, & the Duke, young but war-worn, was Hawkscliffe. 

A still influence stole out of the stupendous forest, whose calm was now more awful than the sea-like rushing that swept through its glades in time of storm. Groups of deer appeared & disappeared silently amongst the prodigious stems, & now and then a single roe glided down the savannah park, drank of the Arno & fleeted back again.

Two gentlemen in earnest conversation were walking along in St Mary’s Grove, & their deep commingling tones, very much subdued, softly broke the silence of the evening. Secret topics seemed to be implied in what they said, for the import of their words was concealed from every chance listener by the accents of a foreign tongue. All the soft vowels of Italian articulation flowed from their lips, as fluently as if they had been natives of the European Eden. “Henrico” was the appellative by which the talker & the younger of the two addressed his companion, & the other replied by the less familiar title of “Monsignore.” That young signore, or lord, often looked up at the Norman towers of Hawkscliffe, which rose even above the lofty elms of St Mary’s Grove. The sun was shining on their battlements, kissing them with its last beam that rivalled in hue the fire-dyed banner hanging motionless above them.

“Henrico,” said he, speaking still in musical Tuscan, “this is the 29th of June.” Neither you nor I ever saw a fairer day. What does it remind you of? All such sunsets have associations.” 

Henrico knitted his stern brow in thought & at the same time fixed his very penetrating black eye on the features of his noble comrade, which, invested by habit and nature with the aspect of command & pride, were at this sweet hour relaxing to the impassioned & fervid expression of romance. “What does it remind you of, my lord,” said he briefly. 

“Ah! Many things, Henrico! Ever since I can remember, the rays of the setting sun have acted on my heart, as they did on Memnon’s wondrous statue. The strings always vibrate, sometimes the tones swell in harmony, sometimes in discord. They play a wild air just now, but, sweet & ominously plaintive Henrico, can you imagine what I feel when I look into the dim & gloomy vistas of this my forest, & at yonder turrets which the might of my own hands has raised, not the halls of my ancestors like hoary morning [illeg.]. Calm diffuses over this wide wood a power to stir & thrill the mind such as words can never express. Look at the red west—the sun is gone & it is fading. Gaze into those mighty groves supernaturally still & full of gathering darkness. Listen how the Arno moans!’