Ackerley and his women

‘Today Queenie bit my hand. I do believe she was horrified as soon as the accident occurred. She grovelled on the pavement before I had rebuked her; no doubt she both tasted and smelt the blood that was dripping from my hand. I was angry and upset and gave her a number of cuts from the lead. [. . .] Indeed, she loves me so much, it must have been dreadful for her to have hurt me.’ This is the celebrated mid-20th century English writer, J. R. Ackerley - born 120 years ago today - writing in his diary about his dog, who he counted as one of his three women (the others being his sister and an aunt) and his closest friend for 15 years!

Ackerley was born 4 November 1896, the second son of a fruit merchant and an actress he met in Paris. The couple, who also had a daughter, did not, apparently, set up home together until 1903, in London, and did not marry until 1919. Joe was educated at public school in Fleetwood, Lancashire, and his study at Cambridge was interrupted by service in WWI as an officer in the 8th battalion of the East Surrey regiment. He was wounded twice, and imprisoned by the Germans, but assigned to an internment camp in neutral Switzerland, which is where, biographers say, he first acknowledged his homosexuality. His older brother, Peter, was killed just before the end of the war.

After leaving Cambridge with a poor degree, Ackerley moved to London, wrote poetry, saw his play - The Prisoner of War - produced, and came into contact with other literary figures, not least E. M. Forster who became a close friend. Indeed, it was Forster who helped arrange for Ackerley to work for five months in India as secretary to the Maharaja of Chhatarpur. His experiences there, tinged by a dislike for several Anglo-Indians, fuelled his comic memoir, Hindoo Holiday. Back in London, in 1928, he joined the nascent British Broadcasting Corporation to work in the Talks department; and, in 1935, became editor of the Corporation’s publication The Listener, a position he held until 1959. During this time, he is credited with championing many young writers, including Philip Larkin, W. H. Auden, Stephen Spender and Christopher Isherwood.

In his early 30s, Ackerley discovered that his recently-deceased father had led a double life, supporting another household with several children. He subsequently took over financial responsibility for his sister, Nancy, and for an elderly aunt, Bunny. He, himself, lived an openly homosexual life, paying male prostitutes, and never finding a long-term relationship. Aged around 50, he acquired an Alsatian named Queenie, a pet that became his primary companion for the next 15 years; the day she died he called the saddest of his life. His later years at the BBC are when he wrote his most well-known books: My Dog Tulip (1956), We Think the World of You (1960), and My Father and Myself published posthumously (1968). He died in 1967. Further information is available at Wikipedia, Gay History and Literature, The New Yorker, and Encyclopaedia Britannica.

Ackerley clearly had a tendency to keep a diary. Hindoo Holiday presents as a journal, albeit a well-worked one - ‘as perfectly constructed as A Passage to India’ for Eliot Weinberger, and, posthumously, in 1982, Hutchinson published My Sister and Myself - The Diaries of J. R. Ackerley, as edited by Francis King. Hindoo Holiday has never been out of print for long, although it was not until 2000 that an edition edited by Weinberger, by the New York Review of Books (see a few pages at Amazon), revealed the full, unedited text for the first time in English (ironically, an Indian edition had done this earlier, restoring cuts made to the original about the Maharajah’s sexual preferences).

In his introduction to My Sister and Myself, King explains how, when his friend Ackerley died, he left him a large brown paper parcel with 17 small notebooks and five larger notebooks without any instructions as to what to do with them. After Ackerley’s sister, Nancy, had also died, King edited the diaries (all from the smaller notebooks) to be published as My Sister and Myself (the title echoing Ackerley’s own memoir, My Father and Myself). In preparing the book, King says that most of the entries he omitted were about Queenie, his walks on Putney Heath, and travels around London. ‘What I have concentrated on in this selection is the extraordinary relationship between Joe and what he would call, in the tones of a sultan speaking of his often refractory harem, “my women”: meaning by that not merely Nancy and his ancient, twice-married Aunt Bunny, but also the Alsatian bitch.’

‘At the time covered by these diaries,’ King summarises, ‘Joe’s and Nancy’s symbiosis was a ghastly caricature of the kind of marriage, devoid of sex, that is held together merely by feelings of obligation, pity and guilt. But, as in many marriages, the two participants, exhausted by their conflicts, eventually reached an understanding and even mutually helpful modus vivendi.’ Here are several extracts from My Sister and Myself.

30 September 1948
‘Today Queenie bit my hand. I do believe she was horrified as soon as the accident occurred. She grovelled on the pavement before I had rebuked her; no doubt she both tasted and smelt the blood that was dripping from my hand. I was angry and upset and gave her a number of cuts from the lead. Then I took her back to the flat so that I could bathe and bandage the wound. She went straight down the passage into my dark bedroom and stayed there, not coming out again for some time, which she would ordinarily have done, hearing me moving about (in search of bandages, scissors, etc.) outside. It was only when I had finished attending to my wound and, feeling slightly faint, sat down for a moment on the stool in the bathroom to rest, that she came in, looking very unhappy, and, gently putting her front paws on my lap, rose up, smelt my face and then licked it. I petted her and said it didn't matter. I felt awfully sorry I'd hit her. After that I took her down the towing path a short way, so that she could do her shits. There were dogs about so I put her on the lead, but they followed us back to my front door, Queenie barking at them and then looking up into my face as though to say, ‘That’s what you want, isn’t it?’ Indeed, she loves me so much, it must have been dreadful for her to have hurt me.’

14 February 1949
‘A dreadful, dreadful week of worry and self-torment. I have not been able to sleep at night without aspirins, and only patchily then. It has gradually emerged, from phone conversations with Brodie, that Nancy’s present condition is little better than that of a lunatic, that she can hardly walk or hold her water, has gone quite out of her mind. She is having this electrical convulsion treatment. Dr Brodie would not let me see her; he told me that he would send me word when I might go if I would keep in touch with him.

Alas, in my guilty mind, I see what happened as surely as though I had deliberately willed it to come to pass. She has been accusing me lately of never being the same, as always being different whenever she sees me; and of course it is true. I am deeply attached to her, my sister, in my way, and in emergencies, when I am deeply touched by her, or frightened for her, as when I took my letter down to Worthing after Haywards Heath, or burst into tears in Worthing Hospital, or saw her, so gentle and sweet in Chichester, I can love her and am ready to do or promise anything. But then I leave her, and remember the past, and become worried and anxious, and see, for instance, old Bunny, quietly and uncomplainingly packing up her gear to go and live elsewhere, and my consideration and affection or feeling turn elsewhere, or simply withdraws, and Nancy sees it going, and feels it gone.’

14 March 1949
‘Graylingwell again yesterday. And I was astounded by the improvement which Nancy showed since I last saw her. She walked in, not altogether steadily, but by herself and sat with me, and conversed in a comparatively sensible way. Though still vague in many respects, she was now in possession of much of her mind. She asked for some money, complained about the food, and seemed to expect to be able to come and join me quite soon. Some of her luggage, she said, was missing, and she was concerned about that. She asked after my health, and seemed to take an interest in my replies. Her head was still too heavy for her neck and hung forward rather, but she was altogether, excepting for a cold, a well woman compared with what she had been before. She had even written me a letter, which I had not then got, but have since received - uncertain in writing, and rather rambling in thought, but wonderfully encouraging. She said she was having insulin now every day except weekends. I asked her if she had had electrical treatment too; she said no, not to her knowledge.

Oh dear. What was it that sent her down and out at the Acre? What thought, what anxiety, what revulsion - if any? And when her mind is able soon to embrace once more all the problems of her life, will she come up against that thought, that anxiety again, and fade out once more? At the moment there seems no reason why she should not be with me in a week or two - as Dr Brodie prophesied.’

19 September 1949
‘I see there is a correspondence between tapeworms and my sister - perhaps women generally. Tapeworms are two or three yards long and composed of segments. A well-grown worm may consist of 800-900 segments. Each of these segments is hermaphrodite, and though it is not certain how fertilization occurs, it must sometimes be incestuous. A ripe segment, ready to fall off the end of the worm, contains 30,000-40,000 eggs, each already developed into a little six-hooked embryo and protected by a shell.

To the worm’s monstrous body is attached a blind and mouthless head no bigger than a pin’s, by a neck as thin as sewing cotton. But how aggressive it is, grappling itself to the wall of its host’s gut by four strong muscular suckers, and a circle of rose-thorn hooks to make doubly sure. What chance has one to get rid of a thing like that? As it lives a long time - probably its length of life is only limited by the death of the host. One man was known to keep the same tapeworm for thirty-five years. It is stubborn, resisting all attempts to get rid of it; even if you manage to get rid of the main body, the head remains and soon grows a new one, inch by inch. However, it takes no holidays, and Nancy is going off for one on Wednesday for three weeks. Bunny comes to take her place.’

4 March 1950
‘Never a dull moment, I think to myself when I look back over four years with Queenie. What a rare thing to be able to say of any relationship.

That is why one is never free from anxiety and fear. Life is so insecure. Happiness is so insecure. At any moment, some disaster. Now, travelling to Notts., I look at my watch and say, “She’s having a fine walk on Wimbledon Common with Nancy.” Then I think, Perhaps at this very moment she has been run over and is screaming in her death agony.

Georges [DuthuitJ said of dogs: “How sad and frustrating for them: never quite able to say, to convey, what they wish and try to convey.” Georges also said, about women: “Each one believes herself to be the centre of the cosmos.” ’

The Diary Junction

Such shoals of flying fish

Today marks the 410th anniversary of the baptism of Sir Thomas Herbert, an English traveller, historian and courtier who looked after Charles I in prison, remaining with him until his execution. As a young man, he was appointed to an English diplomatic mission to Persia but, after the mission leaders died, he and the rest of the party made their way home slowly through various Asian and African countries. Herbert published a diary of his travels with some success, and subsequently issued further and much expanded editions.

Herbert was born into an old Yorkshire family, and was baptised on 4 November 1606. He studied at both Oxford and Cambridge, and was chosen to join Charles I’s trading mission to Persia under Sir Dodmore Cotton. The embassy (1627-1630) was considered something of a failure, since both its leaders fell sick and died. The rest of the party return home by way of other countries in Asia and on the coast of Africa. Subsequently, Herbert visited France before returning to court in the summer of 1631. He became friends with Sir Walter Alexander, a gentleman usher to the king, and married his daughter, Lucy. He published a first edition of the diary of his travels in 1634, entitled A Relation of some yeares travaile, begunne Anno 1626; but he then expanded this in 1638 under the title Some Yeares Travels into Divers Parts of Asia and Afrique.

The new earl of Pembroke, Philip Herbert, introduced Thomas Herbert to Charles I, who promised him a significant position, but when the Civil War broke out in 1742, Thomas Herbert followed Pembroke into the parliamentarian camp. In 1644 parliament appointed him a commissioner to the earl of Essex’s army and later to the New Model Army. But in early 1647, he was made attendant to the imprisoned Charles I, being one of the few parliamentarians the king was content to have serve him. He stayed with Charles until his execution in 1649, and then served in Ireland, in various positions, and was rewarded with a knighthood by Cromwell in 1658.

With the restoration of Charles II as king, in 1660, Herbert accepted a general pardon and returned to London, where he was created a baronet for his service to Charles I (his Cromwellian knighthood having dissipated). Herbert’s wife died in 1671 - they had four surviving children - and he married Elizabeth Cutler the following year. In his latter years, he continued expanding and reissuing editions of Some Yeares Travels, and writing other books. He died in 1682. Further information is available from Wikipedia or Encyclopaedia Iranica, the Dictionary of National Biography or the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (log-in required).

By the time Herbert published the second edition of his travel diary - Some Yeares Travels into Divers Parts of Asia and Afrique - it had been considerably expanded as demonstrated by its subtitle: Describing especially the two famous Empires, the Persian and Great Mogull: weaved with the History of these later Times; Also, many rich and spacious Kingdomes in the Orientall India, and other parts of Asia; Together with the Adjacent Iles; Severally relating the Religion, Language, Qualities, Customes, Habit, Descent, Fashions, and other Observations touching them; With a revivall of the first Discoverer of America. Further editions, and expansions, followed throughout Herbert’s life. The book, which is generously illustrated with many line drawings, is freely available at Internet Archive, although the language - with f (long s) rather than s - is awkward to read. Here are a couple of sample images from the 1638 work.

No escape for Houdini‘s diaries

The great Harry Houdini, Handcuff King, illusionist and magician extraordinaire, died 90 years ago today, on Halloween - not from a failed trick, despite a lifetime of apparently death-defying acts, but from acute appendicitis probably brought on by an unexpected blow to his stomach. Houdini kept interesting and detailed notebooks/diaries for much of his life but, to this day, they remain secret, passed down and closely guarded within the family of Houdini’s friend and lawyer Bernard M. L. Ernst. Most of the diaries have never been published, nor, in recent times, have they been available to any of the myriad of biographers fascinated by Houdini’s life - with the exception of Kenneth Silverman. Indeed, it is Silverman’s notes on the diaries, stored at the Houdini Historical Centre, that are the closest any other biographers have been able to get to the diaries. Surely it’s time for Harry’s own words and thoughts to escape from their prison cell, to be heard at last!

Erik Weisz was born in Budapest in 1874 to a Jewish family, and was one of seven children. In the late 1870s, the family emigrated to the US, where they changed their name to Weiss (Erik becoming Ehrich) and settled in Appleton, Wisconsin. Aged 9, Ehrich performed as a trapeze artist, but he was also a champion cross-country runner. Still a teenager, he embarked on a career as a magician, taking the name Harry Houdini, and specialising in cards tricks but also working in circuses. He soon found more success with escape acts. While performing with his brother Dash, as The Brothers Houdini on Coney Island, he met a fellow performer, Wilhelmina Beatrice (Bess) Rahner. They married in 1894, and, Bess replaced Dash in the show - often performing their signature act, The Metamorphosis. Though they had no children, Bess remained Houdini’s stage assistant throughout his life.

In 1899, Houdini was taken on by manager Martin Beck who advised him to concentrate on escape acts. He booked him on the Orpheum Circuit, a chain of theatres which included some of the top vaudeville houses in the country. The following year, buoyed by his huge success, Houdini arranged his own tour of Europe, where he spent most of the next five years. He crisscrossed the continent and the UK, winning over large audiences and the media with his escapes, illusions and public challenges - often involving police handcuffs - hence the name Handcuff King - and escaping form prison cells.

On returning to the US in 1905, Houdini bought a seven acre farm in Stamford, Connecticut, as well as a brownstone in then fashionable Harlem where he installed his mother and several brothers. In 1908, he published The Unmasking of Robert-Houdin, claiming it was the first authentic history of magic ever published. In fact, it was an unflattering account of his legendary predecessor Robert-Houdin (after whom he’d taken his own name) in which he aimed to show that most of the tricks that Robert-Houdin had claimed as his own invention were nothing of the sort.

By now, Houdini was creating more and more spectacular acts - the Milk Can Escape and the Suspended Straightjacket Escape, for example - and was soon to become one of the highest paid performers in vaudeville. He was able to perform these escapes, biographers says, thanks to his uncanny strength and his encyclopaedic understanding of locks. The Chinese Water Torture Cell, first performed in 1912, is said to have been the hallmark of his career. Houdini was suspended by his feet and lowered upside-down in a locked glass cabinet filled with water, requiring him to hold his breath for more than three minutes to escape. The act was so daring and such a crowd-pleaser that he continued performing it for the rest of his life.

Houdini’s accrued wealth allowed him to indulge other passions, such as flying - he set out to become the first person to man a controlled power flight over Australia in 1910 - and movie-making (he starred in several films, and produced others). In 1923, he became president of Martinka & Co., the US’s oldest magic company. He wrote several more books, such as Their Methods (1920) and A Magician Among the Spirits (1924); he was president of the Society of American Magicians; and he campaigned vigorously against fraudulent psychic mediums.

Houdini died of peritonitis, secondary to a ruptured appendix, on 31 October 1926 in Detroit. Nine days earlier, two students had visited his dressing room, determined on testing Houdini’s claim that he could withstand any blow to the abdomen if given time to brace himself. The student then hit Houdini several times, under the impression, it is said, that he had braced himself. Houdini went on to perform that night, though was in pain for days. A doctor diagnosed appendicitis, and advised immediate hospitalisation, but Houdini performed again that night. He collapsed before the end of the show, and was taken to hospital; but, by then, his appendix had ruptured. Houdini’s funeral was held five days later in New York with 2,000 mourners. For more biographical information see Wikipedia, The Great Harry Houdini, PBS, or The New York Times obituary. For explanations of ten of Houdini’s greatest illusions see Gizmodo.

Houdini was an avid journal keeper, though no diaries - nor even any substantial extracts - have ever been published. This photo of Houdini’s travel diary, 1897–99, in the collection of Dr. Bruce J. Averbook, Cleveland, can be found at New York Social Diary in Jill Krementz’s article on a Houdini exhibition at The Jewish Museum in 2011.

Biographers quote from Houdini’s diaries, sometimes quite extensively, but do so citing several different sources, and never really offering an overall description of their history and current whereabouts. One of the most respected recent biographies, perhaps, is The Secret Life of Houdini by William Kalush and Larry Sloman (Simon & Schuster, 2006 - some pages can read freely at Googlebooks.) The authors make grand claims as to how much data they pored over, how many millions of pages of text were searched, how many libraries and archives they visited, how many Houdini experts they consulted, and so on. Their book is fully annotated, though not in the original printed version - one has to visit The Conjuring Arts Research Center website (a not-for-profit organisation dedicated to the preservation and interpretation of magic and its allied arts) to see them. However, there is no bibliography in print or online.

Many chapters, in Kalush and Sloman’s biography contain information drawn from Houdini’s diaries. Trawling through the online list of notes for each chapter one can find two main sources for these: diaries from around 1897-1899 ‘from the collection of Dr. Bruce Averbook’; and diaries from various years as ‘cited by Kenneth Silverman in his notes deposited in the Houdini Historical Centre at the Outagamie Museum, Appleton, Wisconsin’. (There is also a somewhat curious reference to a diary entry by Bess, Houdini’s wife, on a page of Houdini’s last diary kept by the Harry Ransom Centre at the University of Texas.)

Here are two extracts which include quotes from Houdini’s diary from The Secret Life of Houdini, both with Silverman’s notes cited as the source.

1) ‘Houdini was back in the English provinces, breaking all attendance records, but it was trying, grueling work. On December 14 [1903], he was at the Palace in Blackburn, the scene of the dreaded Hodgson contest. “Back to this wretched town,” he wrote in his diary. “Of all the hoodlum towns I ever worked, the gallery is certainly the worst. Had a tough job with a heel named Wilson.” Houdini had been challenged onstage that night by this young man who seemed more intent on making speeches from the stage than testing the Handcuff King. “He would not let me examine his cuff, so after a lot of speech making he wanted to walk off the stage. [Then] I sneaked behind him and tore the cuffs from his grasp and snapped them on myself. Well, you ought to have heard the booing that was my share to obtain . . .” Houdini wrote. “I went into my cabinet and found out that he had deliberately cut away the whole inside of the lock and it was ten minutes ere I had both hands free. Instead of applause once again I was booed. Then I snapped them on to the rods near the footlights and it took Wilson twenty minutes to take them off himself and he had to use three kinds of instruments to do so. He was applauded and I was booed.” ’

2) ‘The [coffin] escape had taken another toll on Houdini, at least that was what he told the reporters. “I was very tired after it was all over and the worry was as bad as the work,” he said. “All the time I was in there I was thinking of death.” In private, he relished the fact that his promoter Paul Keith had managed to spirit him away from the more inquisitive committee members who wanted to examine him after the escape - to a steam room where a search would be superfluous. “Coffin affair a great big success,” Houdini wrote in his diary. “Created more talk than anything I have ever done in Boston. Paul Keith sneaked me into the Turkish bath after show. That is, a committee desired to search me but we fooled them all and Paul grinned for two days.”

And here is a third diary quote, this one only found in the footnotes of The Secret Life of Houdini. ‘Houdini diary entry, November 1909: “Go to Dr. Kolm. Have a bad spot on my derriere cut open, the effects of the strap on straight jacket that runs through crotch. Ought to have it attended to long ago. Glad it’s over. Charges me twelve marks. Very painful to work.” ’

Kenneth Silverman, professor emeritus of English at New York University and a Pulitzer Prize-winning biographer, has himself produced a book on Houdini, HOODINI!!! The Career of Ehrich Weiss (HarperCollins, 1996) with a long subtitle: American Self-Liberator, Europe’s Eclipsing Sensation, World’s Handcuff King & Prison Breaker - Nothing on Earth Can Hold HOUDINI a Prisoner!!! Silverman does include a ‘source guide’, and this explains how he was able to access Houdini’s diaries: ‘Stanley Palm of Brooklyn., New York, gave me unlimited consultation of a scrapbook gathered by Houdini in the 1890s and of Houdini’s first diary (ca. 1878-79) - key items in my account of Houdini’s early career. Most of Houdini’s other diaries - indispensable to writing his biography - are owned by a collector who generously allowed me to read them but wishes to remain anonymous.’ (My own emphasis.)

Here are two extracts from Silverman’s book with direct quotes from the diaries.

1) ‘It became national news when, in Sheffield, Houdini escaped the murderer’s cell that had held Charles Peace - “the greatest criminal that London ever had,” he noted in his diary. “Never saw such crowds.” Hanged in 1879, Peace had worked respectably enough as a picture framer, sent his children to Sunday school, and collected birds. But because of his violent nocturnal burglaries, which had terrified London, he never managed to stay out of jail long. (He tried: once while in custody he jumped, manacled, from the window of a train going fifty miles an hour.) With Houdini inside Peace’s cell, on the second tier, Sheffield police triple-locked the door; they placed Houdini’s clothes in another cell, also triple-locked. To bar his escape further they fastened the iron gate leading to the cell block with a seven-lever lock. Yet five minutes later Houdini stood before the very surprised chief constable, clothed. “This feat has been discribed (sic) in almost every newspaper,” he reported to his diary, pleased with himself. “Makes me one of the most noted foreign performers in England. Every illustrated paper has my portrait.” ’

2) ‘Houdini found not much else in Russia to like. He thought the country’s magical life dead - “only poor magicians, and nothing worth mentioning.” The situation of Russia’s five million Jews shocked and offended him. The same Grand Duke Sergei Aleksandrovich he entertained by swallowing needles had marked his appointment as governor general of Moscow in 1891-1892 by ousting twenty thousand Jews from the city. Houdini had assimilated to Christian America, not only in marrying a Gentile: the meaningful holidays to him were the Fourth of July and Christmas. He had his own brand of Jewish anti-Semitism, too, which could be hard to tell from other varieties. An entry in his 1904 diary reads: “Some Jew tried to get out of the handcuffs to gain the £100. He failed.” Still, even with his stage name he made no secret of his roots: “I never was ashamed to acknowledge that I was a Jew. and never will be.” ’

So, where are the bulk of Houdini’s diaries, the ones Silverman had access to briefly, and which also gave rise to the notes used by Kalush and Sloman? This very question was posted by someone called Roger M on a Genii Forum thread in 2011. Richard Kaufmann provided a reply: ‘The name of the person who owns most of them (a few - very few - are in the hands of magic collectors) has never been made public. He is a descendant of someone who was close to Houdini and is extremely wealthy. He does not need the money, nor does he seem to care that their contents are of interest to many people. One of the few allowed access to them was Ken Silverman while researching his biography on Houdini. As I recall, he was given something like 2 hours to look through them and take notes. So he flipped through them very quickly (there are MANY volumes), talking into a cassette recorder as rapidly as he could. In this way, amazingly, Ken managed to extract most of the best information.’

Earlier this year, Roger M. returned to the thread and posted a link - to the website of Elf Lake Lodge - with further information about the diaries:

‘Owners of the lodge and surrounding 12,000 acres surname is Ernst.
1) Houdini's attorney at his death was Bernard M. L. Ernst, he’s the executor of Houdini's estate.
2) B.M.L. Ernst son was Richard C. Ernst.
3) Richard C. Ernst married Susan Bloomingdale, granddaughter of the stores founder.
4) R.C. and Susan Ernst had a son, John L. Ernst, and also two daughters, Eleanor and Cornelia.
5) John L. Ernst owns Elk Lake Lodge, and (with his sisters) the Houdini diaries.’

The sieges of Limerick

‘This day also the French forces departed for Galway to the great satisfaction not only of the inhabitants, but of all the garrison that remained in town. They remained some time at Galway till ships came to carry them into France, thinking it impossible Limerick should hold out a siege, offering to lay wagers it would be taken in three days.’ This is John Stevens, who died 290 years ago today, writing in a diary about his time as a soldier in Ireland fighting for the Jacobite cause. Although he went on to settle in London and work for many years as a translator (from Spanish and Portuguese) of some distinction, it is his diary, an important primary source about the Jacobite war in Ireland and the sieges of Limerick, for which he is most remembered.

Stevens was born in London, in 1662 or thereabouts, the son of a page to Queen Catherine of Braganza. It is assumed his mother was Spanish. He entered into a military career, and accompanied the Second Earl of Clarendon, when he was made lord lieutenant of Ireland in 1685, to Dublin as one of his gentlemen-at-large. Two years later Stevens was appointed collector of taxes at Welshpool, for an area covering mid-Wales and the borders. As a Catholic and supporter of James II, he was forced to flee after the so-called Glorious Revolution, to France, and then with the Jacobites to Ireland. In Dublin, though penniless, he eventually obtained a commission in Fitzjames’s regiment (James Fitzjames being the illegitimate son of James II) and served in the ensuing Jacobite war in Ireland.

Before long, though, Stevens had taken refuge in Lisbon, Portugal. By 1695, he was back in London, where he settled down to write and make a living translating Portuguese and Spanish texts. Over the next 30 years or so he published over 20 translations, including a revision of Shelton’s version of Don Quixote. He also produced a revised edition of Monasticon Anglicanum, a history of defunct church properties designed to appeal to gentlemen amateurs. From 1712 to 1715, he was editor of the British Mercury. He died on 27 October 1726. Further biographical information can be found at Wikipedia, the out-of-copyright Dictionary of National Biography, or the modern Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (which requires log-in).

Stevens is largely remembered today not so much for the works he published in his own lifetime but for a journal he kept during his military service in Ireland. This was not published until 1912 when Clarendon Press brought out The Journal of John Stevens, containing a brief account of the war in Ireland 1689-1691. The book’s editor, Rev. Robert H. Murray, explains in his long introduction about the diary’s history and its previous use by historians. He also notes that the version he consulted (held by the British Library) was not itself the original journal, kept day by day, but one written up from notes that had been. And although the diary is ‘barren of some personal details’, Murray adds, ‘it is a very human document indeed.’  It is plain, he says, that a scholar like the author did not relish his life as a soldier: ‘He is conscious of the mistakes of his generals, of the loss of promotion, of the lack of pay, of the blisters on his feet, and of the hunger in his stomach.’

Stevens’ journal is considered a major primary source of information about the Jacobite war in Ireland, and, in particular, about the sieges of Limerick. See, for example, And So Began the Irish Nation by Brendan Bradshaw; Jacobite Ireland by J. G. Simms; The Williamite Wars in Ireland by John Childs; or Conquest and Resistance: War in Seventeenth-Century Ireland by Pádraig Lenihan. The journal itself is freely available online at Internet Archive or the CELT website hosted by University College Cork. Here are several extracts.

2 July 1690
‘At break of day those few drums there were beat as formally as if we had been a considerable body, but it was only mere form and we scarce the shadows of regiments, the bodies being dispersed and gone. What was left in dismal manner marched as far as Dublin, where when each commanding officer came to view his strength, shame of marching in such case through the city we not long before had filled with expectation of our actions and hopes of gathering part of the scattered herd caused us to halt in the fields without the town. The colours of each regiment being fixed on eminences that all stragglers might know whither to repair, in the space of near three hours each regiment had gathered a small number, the Grand Prior’s as one of the most considerable being then 100 strong. Thus we marched through the skirts of the city, passing over the river at the Bloody Bridge, which is the farthest off in the suburbs, being now only the remains of four regiments, the others being either quite dispersed or gone other ways, we halted again in a field at Kilmainham, a hamlet adjoining to the city. The general opinion was that we were to encamp in the park till such time as our men came up, and what forces had not been in the rout as also the militia should join us, and then either maintain the city, or, if it were judged expedient, give the enemy battle, which gave occasion to some of our small number to steal away into town thinking they might soon be back with us. But about noon we were all undeceived, the other three regiments having orders to march, and ours only left there without any or knowing whence to expect them. Being thus left by all our lieutenant-colonel marched us away, which we did not hold above a quarter of an hour when we were reduced to only twenty men with the colours. On the road we overtook the Lord Kilmallock’s Regiment, which was untouched, being quartered in Dublin when the defeat at the Boyne. The whole day was a continual series of false alarms, the greatest reached us within two miles of the Naas, where Kilmallock’s officers attempting to draw up their men to line the hedges, the confusion and terror of the soldiers who had never seen the enemy was such they were forced in all haste to march away, It was ridiculous to see the brother of the traitor O’Donnell who had the name of lieutenant-colonel reformed in our regiment, pretend to take authority upon him here, and order us to line the hedges, when at that time our whole strength was but six musketeers, eight pikes, four ensigns, and one lieutenant besides myself, to this was that but the day before hopeful regiment reduced, and yet not one of the number killed, unless they perished who were left drunk when we fled which were four or five. For our comfort no enemy was within twenty miles of us, but fear never thinks itself out of danger. We followed Kilmallock’s men with such speed it had been hard for an enemy to overtake us, and that regiment though till then untouched was in such a consternation that when they came to the Naas they were not 100 strong. Here being quite spent with marching two days without rest or food I used my utmost endeavours to persuade O’Donnell, who as I said pretended to act as lieutenant-colonel, to take up quarters for the few men that were left, to refresh them that night, and be the better able to march next morning, but all in vain. The general infection had seized him and he fancied each minute he stayed was to him time lost and an opportunity given to the enemy to gain ground upon us. Therefore following the dictates of his fear he hasted away commanding all to follow him, but necessity pressing more than his usurped authority, I stayed a while in the town with an ensign who had a lame horse, and having refreshed ourselves with bread and drink which was all the town afforded, we followed both on the same lame creature five miles to Kilcullen Bridge, where we could hear no news of our men, though they lay there that night. So inconsiderable was a regiment grown that it could not be heard of in a town where there are not above twenty or thirty houses and but three good ones. Here we took up for the remaining part of the night in a waste house, and rested the best we could till break of day.’

28 July 1690
‘We continued here. Brigadier Sarsfield marched away with the horse under his command who had quartered in the neighbourhood. At our setting out of Limerick there marched also four pieces of cannon and a body of horse and dragoons, all which took the way of Loughrea for the conveniency of the road which is hard and fit for draught, whereas the way the foot took (as I said before) was unfit for heavy carriages, but being the shorter was judged best for the foot, both for their ease and that they might the sooner relieve Athlone, which was thought to be pressed and in danger and by their coming might be strengthened the better to expect farther relief. But upon the news of the enemies quitting the siege, the foot marched back the easiest though the longest way, and where they could have quarters to refresh them.’

2 August 1690
‘Most of our horse and dragoons, some on the one side of the river some on the other, marched towards Athlone. This day also the French forces departed for Galway to the great satisfaction not only of the inhabitants, but of all the garrison that remained in town. They remained some time at Galway till ships came to carry them into France, thinking it impossible Limerick should hold out a siege, offering to lay wagers it would be taken in three days. Immediately upon their departure His Grace the Duke of Tyrconnel ordered it to be proclaimed that no person should presume to ask above thirty shillings for a pistole, thirty-eight shillings for a guinea and seven and sixpence for a crown in silver, pistoles before being sold for five pounds in brass and silver crowns for thirty or forty shillings. Nay this day the French marched out some of them gave a crown for each silver three-halfpenny piece.’

29 August 1690
‘The enemy’s cannon played as before and enlarged the breach to above forty paces. At the bridge one shot cut both the chains of the drawbridge and did some other damage but not of much moment, because the enemy’s battery had not a full view of it, and their shot came slanting towards one end, yet the passage was very dangerous. The Grand Prior’s detachments were all relieved this afternoon except that where I commanded, which continued in the same place till night, when being relieved we only marched into the street, and having joined the rest of the regiment to the trenches on the south-west side of the town, where we continued all night expecting an attack. The night was extreme cold, dark and rainy and we almost spent for want of rest. For my own particular as appears by this relation I had had none at all for three nights before this and but very little during the whole siege, nor indeed was it possible to have much being upon duty every other day and continually alarmed when we expected to rest. Our cannon and small shot fired the whole night round the walls, and much railing was betwixt our men and the enemies, for we were so closed up on all sides that though the night was stormy we could easily hear one another.’

The Diary Junction

Virtuous William Lambarde

Some 480 years ago today was born William Lambarde, a learned, virtuous, pious justice of the peace. He wrote several books, including one on Anglo-Saxon law, the first history of any county (Kent), and a diary record of his legal decisions on the Kent county circuit as a justice of the peace.

Lambarde was born in London on 18 October 1536. His father was a draper, as well as an alderman and a sheriff of London, but he died while William was still a minor. When he came of age, though, William was in comfortable circumstances, since he inherited the manor of Westcombe near Greenwich, as well as property in Shoreditch. He studied law and old English, and was called to the bar in 1567.

Lambarde spent the next two decades largely on county administration (starting with his appointment as a commissioner of sewers for Kent), his estates, and scholarship. In 1568, he published a collection of Anglo-Saxon laws, Archaionomia. Two years later he completed his Perambulation of Kent, the first history of a British county; and in 1576, he founded Queen Elizabeth’s College almshouses at Greenwich.

Lambarde served as an MP for Lincoln’s Inn, and a Justice of the Peace for Kent. This latter position led him to write a manual for Justices of Peace which became a standard work on the subject. He also wrote A Discourse Upon the High Courts of Justice in England. Lambarde married twice, and had four children by his second wife. Queen Elizabeth made him Keeper of the Records in the Tower in 1601, but he died shortly thereafter. The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (log-in required) says he had ‘an unparalleled reputation for learning, piety, civic virtue, and trustworthiness’. Further information is available at Wikipedia, Archives Hub, The History of Parliament.

For the first eight years working as a justice of the peace, Lambarde kept a diary, he called An Ephemeris of the Certifiable Causes of the Peace, in which he recorded out-of sessions activities. These were mainly exercises of the magistrate’s office which needed to be reported to the quarter sessions or to assizes - see Prosecuting Crime in the Renaissance: England, Germany, France by John H. Langbein (The Lawbook Exchange, 2005) at Googlebooks. Lambarde’s diary, Langbein says, preserves mention of numerous examinations and bailments in cases of felony, together with a run of lesser matters, such as summary orders about alehouse keeping and bastardy and bindings over to keep the peace.

The diary itself has been published (by Cornell University Press for The Folger Shakespeare Library in 1962) in William Lambarde and Local Government: His “Ephemeris” and Twenty-nine Charges to Juries and Commissions, as edited by Conyers Read. According to Giles E. Dawson, who provides a preface to the book, ‘The importance of these manuscripts lies in the nature of William Lambarde’s activities and abilities. He was one of the foremost expositors of the Elizabethan judicial system, and for this task he was admirably fitted by training, by the scholarly bent of his mind, perhaps also by his social status among the new gentry sprung from London trade.’ Here are several examples from the diary.

1 April 1582
‘My father-in-law and I bound John Swan of Wrotham to the good behavior, to be kept till Easter 1584, in 20 li., for whom William Lever and Henry Lever of Wrotham, yeomen, did understake, in 10 li. every of them.’

21 May 1583
‘There was holden at Maidstone a special session of the peace for the rogues, where divers were bound and whipped. I have signed a license for Thomas Godfrey to beg till Allhallontide (for his house burnt) within the limits of the Lord Cobham only.’

23 June 1583
‘I bound Francis Whitepaine of Yalding, yeoman, to the peace against Richard Acton of Yalding, clothier, with four manucaptors, by force of a supplicavit out of the Chancery.’

13 July 1583
‘At Cobham Hall my Lord and I licensed Edward Doret of Cobham to keep an alehouse. He was bound, in 20 li., and Thomas Harris and William Waite of Cobham, in 10 li. either of them, as his sureties, with the common condition. The same day we wrote to such of other parishes as occupied lands in Allhallows to contribute after the rate of 2 d. in the pound of their said lands towards the relief of the poor of Allhallows.’

29 August 1586
‘I sent to the gaol Thomas Cockes, late of Strood, tinker, for robbing the house of Alice Fuller, widow, and bound her, in 5 li., to give evidence, etc.’

25 April 1587
‘At the quarter sessions at Maidstone we certified all the said recognizances for peace, alehouses, etc., and delivered in the record of the said riot, etc.’

23 June 1587
‘We of this division sent out towards the Low Countries thirteen men for our part of fifty men allotted to this lathe of Aylesford; given to every one 2 s. press money and to the captain 10 d. for each one towards coat and furniture; the whole shire made out three hundred.’

2 August 1587
‘I bound Nevil Reeve of Aylesford, gentleman, 200 li., with Henry Warcop of the same, gentleman, 100 li., and Richard Reeve of Maidstone, innholder, 100 li., that Nevil shall appear at the next general gaol delivery, etc., and in the meantime be of good port and behavior. It was for the hurting of Thomas Reynes of Burham, yeoman, with a stone, to the peril of death, as it is said, etc. Released by Reynes.’

14 September 1587
‘Mungra Russel, a Scot, charged to beget a woman child upon Rebecca Gore of East Mailing, was by me sent to the gaol for not finding sureties for his good behavior and appearance, etc. Send for old Gore, her father, etc. He is escaped. Send for James Dowle, the borsholder.’

The Diary Junction