Nelson’s diary, and left hand

It’s Horatio Nelson’s birthday. One of Britain’s greatest heroes was born 250 years ago today on 29 September 1758. He is not famed for his diary-keeping, although there is a published diary, dating from the very last weeks of his life, the original of which is said to have had an odour ‘faintly suggestive of spicy exhalations from tar and hemp and timber’. A typed version is freely available online; but, more interesting is the diary of Elizabeth Fremantle who was at the Battle of Santa Cruz de Tenerife - where Nelson lost his right arm.

Horatio Nelson, born exactly a quarter of a millennium ago, was famous for his role in the Napoleonic Wars, most notably at the Battle of Trafalgar, a decisive British victory, during which he lost his life - on 21 October 1805. By 16, he had already travelled the world with the Royal Navy; and by 21, he was one of its youngest captains. He was famed for inspiring loyalty in his crew and for his innovative strategies in battle at sea - he fought in more than 120 engagements. For more biographical information about Nelson on the internet, try Wikipedia, or the BBC, or the Royal Navy.

Nelson did keep diaries, it seems, but - with one exception - they have never been published as such. The exception is the diary he kept in the very last weeks of his life. This was published in 1917 as Nelson’s Last Diary. It covers only a few weeks, from 13 September to 21 October in 1805, but also contains an introduction and notes by Gilbert Hudson. It’s freely available, in various versions, at the Internet Archive. While the diary itself is not that interesting (unless you’re a naval historian), Hudson’s description of it is very appealing.

‘It measures about seven inches by four-and-a-half, and contains twenty leaves now numbered as forty pages all of them except the first, and the last five, being written on both sides entirely by Nelson’s own left hand, interleaved with blotting-paper, and bound in limp leather covers of a deep red shade. Nothing but a slight crinkling of these covers remains to show that the book lay during many years rolled up with the Will and other papers, without distinction of place or treatment. The fact that they have been protected, like thousands of other interesting records, from the deleterious handling of idle curiosity, speaks well for those official regulations which the general public is always ready enough to condemn as arbitrary and unreasonable.

Had the Diary been lodged in scrupulous custody at an earlier date, it might have retained its original number of leaves, whereof two, unfortunately, have long been missing. But the mutilation is not visible except on careful scrutiny, and the book now appears only a little more soiled and worn than when it lay in Nelson’s escritoire, unhurt amid the perilous tumult of Trafalgar.

The time-mellowed pages have a peculiar odour of a much more agreeable pungency than the usual mustiness of ancient records, and more than faintly suggestive of spicy exhalations from tar and hemp and timber. Whether this arises indeed from some old permeation of nautical atmosphere and circumstance, or merely from certain fragrant qualities of the paper and binding, or by chance from any process of fumigation or embalmment, or from what other cause so ever, it deserves at least brief mention if only for the sake of sentiment.’

The diary itself contains only brief entries, here is one which I’ve chosen simply because it’s from the same date as today - 29 September (1805): ‘Fine weather. Gave out the necessary orders for the Fleet. Sent Euryalus to watch the Enemy with the Hydra off Cadiz.’ There’s a small photograph of the diary in a BBC News article dating from 2005 and the 200th anniversary of the Battle of Trafalgar.

Otherwise, one has to google hard on the web to find evidence of Nelson’s diaries. For example, the National Archives has a long listing for Nelson, but does not include reference to any diaries. However, Robert Southey, in his biography - The Life of Nelson (available to view at Googlebooks website) - does refer to Nelson’s diaries. Southey’s extracts, it seems, came from an 1809 biography by Clarke and McArthur. However, there are extracts, of what Nelson called his ‘private diary’, in the various volumes of The Dispatches and Letters of Vice Admiral Lord Viscount Nelson (downloadable from Internet Archive).

Here is Southey using Nelson’s diary. It is June 1805, just a few months before Trafalgar: ‘Nelson’s diary at this time denotes his great anxiety and his perpetual and all-observing vigilance. ‘June 21. Midnight, nearly calm, saw three planks, which I think came from the French fleet. Very miserable, which is very foolish.’ On the 17th of July he came in sight of Cape St. Vincent, and steered for Gibraltar. ‘June 18th,’ his diary says, ’Cape Spartel in sight, but no French fleet, nor any information about them. How sorrowful this makes me! but I cannot help myself.’ The next day he anchored at Gibraltar; and on the 20th, says, ‘I went on shore for the first time since June 16, 1803; and from having my foot out of the VICTORY two years, wanting ten days.’ ’

But others around Nelson were keeping diaries, and one of the most intriguing and interesting is that by Elizabeth Fremantle. She was one of five Wynne sisters, three of whom kept journals, These were edited by a descendant and published in several volumes in the 1930s - as The Wynne Diaries - by a Fremantle descendant. Subsequently, they were further edited into a single volume. The Diary Junction has some information and links.

Of interest, though, is that Elizabeth (or Betsey) Wynne married one of Nelson’s captains, Thomas Fremantle (later a vice-admiral), and was onboard with him during various sea battles, not least the Battle of Santa Cruz de Tenerife in 1797, where Nelson lost his arm. The National Maritime Museum in Greenwich has a painting by Richard Westall of the moment, accompanied by a good summary of events:

‘Nelson was ordered to take possession of the town and harbour of Santa Cruz in Tenerife, where Spanish treasure ships were reported to be lying. He immediately set sail with three ships of the line, three frigates, and a cutter and was joined by a fourth frigate and a bomb vessel en route. After several failed attempts Nelson decided upon a direct assault on Santa Cruz by night, aiming for the central castle of San Cristobal where the Spanish general staff were based. Nelson commanded the attack, leading one of six divisions of boats . . . However, the initial boat-landings went wrong when many of them were swept off course and the element of surprise was lost. During his attempt to land Nelson was about to disembark when he was hit just above the right elbow by a musket or similar ball fired as grapeshot, which shattered the bone and joint. The arm was amputated aboard the Theseus that night. The attack ground to a halt, the British force landed at the harbour negotiating a truce with the Spanish Governor under which they returned to their ships. The Spanish also offered hospital facilities for the wounded and to sell the squadron provisions.’

Although a bit short of punctuation at times, extracts from Elizabeth Fremantle’s diary (a 1982 edition of The Wyne Diaries) give a marvellous on-the-spot account of what it was like to be there - even if the author is understandably more concerned about her husband’s wounds than Nelson’s arm! They also suggest Betsey may have received one of the first notes Nelson wrote with his left hand.

Thursday 25 July
‘The troops landed at two oclock this morning. There was much firing in the Town, but from the ships it seemed as if the English had made themselves masters of it, Great was our mistake, this proved to be a shocking, unfortunate night Fremantle returned at 4 this morning wounded in the arm, he was shot through the right arm the moment he had landed, came off in the first boat, and stayed on board the Zealous till day light, where he wound was dressed. Thank God as the ball only went through the flesh he will not lose an arm he managed it so well that I was not frightened, but I was not a little distressed and miserably when I heard what it was, and indeed he was in great pain and suffered cruelly all day but it was fortunate that he did get wounded at first, God knows if ever I should have seen again had he stayed on short. It was dreadful, poor Captain Bowen killed on the spot, The Admiral was wounded as he was getting out of the Boat and most unfortunately lost his arm. The fox Cutter was lost and poor old Gibson drowned Captain Thompson is likewise wounded. All the rest remained on shore very few people returned to the ships in the morning. As they threatened to burn the Town they had their own terms and were sent off . . .

This is the most melancholy event, I can’t help thinking of poor Captain Bowens losing his life just at the end of the war in which he had been so fortunate. At the moment he was continually talking of the happy life he should lead when he returned home. . . .

Fremantle was in great pain all day but I hope he will soon get well.’

Wednesday 26 July
‘Fremantle had a very good night’s rest he has no fever at all, his wound was dressed at twelve oclock and Fleming says it looks very well. It is a wonder how nothing but the flesh was hurt as two musquet balls went through the arm, about 15 of our men are wounded and two dead we are lucky as the other Frigates lost about 20 men a piece and some of the line of battle ships a hundred. The Admiral is coming on very well, he wrote me a line with his left hand.’

I thought I was out of the woods

John Churton Collins, a writer and literary critic at the turn of the last century, died 100 years ago in mysterious circumstances. However, the last few pages of his diary - available online thanks to the New York Times archive - point to a near-suicidal depression. In a particularly poignant entry five days before his death, Churton Collins writes: ‘Last night I was so calm and contented when I went to bed I thought I was out of the woods.’

Publication of this article was planned for the 100th anniversary of Churton Collin’s death - which, according to Wikipedia, took place on 25 September 1908. But, while researching the story, it soon became clear that, in fact, he died 10 days earlier on 15 September 1908. So this article is ten days late. I mention it only because the 25 September death date can be found all over the internet, and is a prime example of how the nature of the internet, which is mostly marvellous, can lead to the extensive propagation of mis-information (but I don’t wish to suggest I’m any less guilty of this than the next web-man.)

The 1911 edition of Encyclopaedia Britannica gives a short biographical summary for Churton Collins. Born in 1848 in Gloucestershire, he graduated from Oxford in 1872, and embarked on a writing career. Books on Joshua Reynolds, Bolingbroke, Voltaire and Swift followed, as well as many literary reviews. In 1904, he became professor of English literature at Birmingham University. And on 15 September 1908, it says, ‘he was found dead in a ditch near Lowestoft, at which place he had been staying with a doctor for the benefit of his health’. (Wikipedia uses almost the exact same text, but with 25 September instead of 15 September!) The circumstances necessitated the holding of an inquest, and the verdict was ‘accidental death’.

In an article on the death of Churton Collins, dated 22 September 1908, the New York Times (which, very usefully, has scanned and put online so many of its archived articles) said he was ‘esteemed as one of the sanest recent critics of literature’; it described him as ‘an old-fashioned, hard-hitting critic’ and as having sound, if somewhat prejudiced, views but a mind that was ‘well balanced’.

Two days earlier, on 20 September 1908, the New York Times had run a news story about the death, calling it ‘a remarkable pathological case’. It said Churton Collins had suffered for several years from fits of depression, probably caused by overwork, and it quoted extracts from the last pages in his diary (which had been cabled to New York by the paper’s London correspondent). It also noted that he had written a Voltaire quotation (ironic in the circumstances) on the inside cover of the diary: ‘Apres tout c’est un monde passable’.

Here are most of the diary entries published by the New York Times on 20 September 1908.

26 August: I am at Dr Daniel’s, at Oulton Road [Lowestoft], having had for nearly a month one of the worst attacks of depression I ever experienced. It began in London, got worse at Cardiff, and reached its climax at Oxford. The doctor insisted I must leave at once, and it was arranged I should come here, where I have been better, but am still suffering terribly at times. I can trace the cause of the attack to great stress of work and its sudden cessation. This undoubtedly set it up. My agony at times has been intolerable. . .
27 August: Much better; then came a reaction for the worse. I am now in the extreme of misery and depression.
28 August: Complete collapse again - intense depression
29-30 August: Wretched time, with occasional alternations, but nothing lasting. I can sleep well, God be thanked, and then wake up depressed.
31 August: Fearful depression, sensation that I was worn out mentally, fearfully sleepy. What will become of my children if I get worse?
2 September: I am now in a dead, dull suicidal misery.
3 September: Very good news - rest from awful depression. Then came on a terribly acute attack.
4 September: Woke up as usual without depression, but it soon began.
5 September: Miserable depression till about 7, when the cloud lifted and I got peace and began to think contentedly about future work.
6 September: Terrible in the morning; better as day advanced.
7 September: Very mixed day.
10 September: Last night I was so calm and contented when I went to bed I thought I was out of the woods. I felt perfectly well; but, alas, morning came and I had a terrible relapse into utter depression. Better after breakfast. Now, sitting on the porch at 12 o’clock, I feel calm.
No date: I have been through an awful time. My nerves are completely shattered. I have taken a drug this morning to get a good sleep and appease my agony.

A bit of Balkan history

Today is the 100th anniversary of the independent state of Bulgaria (according to the old style Julian calendar) which is as good an excuse as any to mention the controversial Bulgarian - or possibly Macedonian - intellectual, Krste Misirkov, who was much involved in defining an identity of Macedonians. He died in 1926, but an important diary of his was found just two years ago in a Bulgarian antique shop, and has been much in the Balkan news.

The Republic of Bulgaria forms part of the Balkans in south-eastern Europe, bordering five other countries: Romania, Serbia, Greece, Turkey and the Republic of Macedonia. But the idea of Bulgaria goes back a long way. There was a Bulgarian empire that started in the 7th century and survived over three hundred years; and a second empire that lasted from the 12th century to the 14th. The next five hundred years Bulgarians lived under the rule of the Ottoman empire. In the 1870s, though, Russia went to war against Turkey, and this led to Bulgaria becoming a principality in 1878. Thirty years later, on 22 September 1908 (old style calendar - see Wikipedia for an explanation), it declared itself an independent nation.

But the Balkan area was then (and became so again much later in the 20th century after the collapse of Yugoslavia) a cauldron of peoples vying for identity and nationality, and Bulgaria’s independence was just one element in the region’s complex picture. Another element was the neighbouring region of Macedonia, which can trace its history much further back than Bulgaria, and which was also grumbling about Ottoman rule and wanting some autonomy. It didn’t achieve any. After the First World War, it became part of Serbia, and then, after the Second World War, part of Yugoslavia.

Nearly 100 years later, there is once again a country called Macedonia, but so strong are the feelings about the Macedonian identity that a dispute with Greece over the use of the name ‘Macedonia’ has meant that, pending a solution to the dispute, this new republic is still referred to in international negotiations as FYROM, or the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia.

Very much alive at the time of Bulgaria’s independence and Macedonia’s grumblings was Krste Misirkov, an intellectual, writer and philologist. He was born in 1874 in Pella, now in the Greek region of Macedonia, and died in Sofia in 1926. His 1903 book On The Macedonian Matters - which, among things, set down principals for a Macedonian literary language - was considered a kind of rallying cry by Macedonian intellectuals struggling for independence. A full text in English is available at Wikisource.

Largely because of this book, some Macedonian historians have dubbed Misirkov as the father of the contemporary Macedonian nation. Also on the basis of this book, they’ve claimed he was Macedonian, rather than Bulgarian, an assertion that has been difficult to reject definitively since he himself made conflicting claims about his nationality. Macedonian News still calls him ‘the founder of the Macedonian national history, literary language and orthography’.

Astonishingly, a 380 page diary written by Misirkov in Russian and dating from 1913 was found recently - 80 years after his death - in a Bulgarian antique shop. The diary, which has been authenticated by both Bulgarian and Macedonian experts, sheds new light on Misirkov and his beliefs. In particular, it shows that he thought of himself as a ‘Macedonian Bulgarian’.

An article on Macedoniablogs (in English, but with delightful spelling!) gives an interesting analysis of Macedonian history at the time, with reference to Misirkov. It also quotes a review of the newly-found diary by Prof Dr Vlado Popovski, cited in Vreme newspaper: ‘[Misirkov] presents Bulgaria as martyr, who has undertaken the biggest burden from the war with the Turkish empire, it is a country that sacrificially heads to the realisation of its national ideal for the unification of the Bulgarian lands, in which apart from Thrace, Misirkov includes also Macedonia. In the context, he presents a range of statements with which he justifies the Bulgarian interests in Macedonia and calls the Macedonians Macedonian Bulgarians. Accusing Russia of unfaithfulness and coarse nationalism . . . Misirkov recommends to it [i.e. Russia] at least to call for autonomy of Macedonia as a transition solution to unification with Bulgaria.’

In other words, the simple truth seems to be that Misirkov supported the idea of a Macedonian identity in order to work towards an autonomous region, but only so that it would then be easier for it to unify with Bulgaria.

According to Sofia News Agency Novinite earlier this year, the State Archive of the Republic of Macedonia and Bulgaria’s State Archives Agency will soon be publishing the diary in both languages (translated from the original Russian).

Waltari’s Dark Angel

Mika Waltari, one of Finland’s most widely known and translated writers, was born a hundred years ago today. He became best known for his historical novels, but he was a prolific and adaptable writer, turning his pen to many different forms. He is not, however, known as a diarist. Nevertheless, it seems that he did once keep a travel diary, and that it provides an interesting insight into how he did research for his historical fiction. Of particular interest is the way he tracked down the 15th century diary of Nicolo Barbaro, which tells of the fall of Constantinople, and how he then used it as a source for one of his best known novels, The Dark Angel, written in diary form.

Waltari was born on 19 September 1908 into a religious family, but lost his father at the age of 5. He studied philosophy and literature at university, and became a prominent figure in the Finnish literary movement known as Tulenkantajat (the Flame-bearers), which sought to open up Finnish literature to the rest of Europe. His first novel, Suuri Illusioni (Grand Illusion), published in 1928, depicted, according to WSOY (Finland’s leading publisher), the lost generation following the first world war - ‘à la Fitzgerald’. It proved an early success.

Both Wikipedia and Books from Finland provide biographical summaries. Throughout the 1930s and 1940s, Waltari worked hectically as a journalist and reviewer, and travelled widely in Europe. He also continued writing books, in many different genres, poetry, horror, crime and even scripting popular cartoons, and authoring a guidebook for aspiring writers. During the war years, he wrote propaganda for the government, and soon after published his first historical novel, The Egyptian, which became an international bestseller. He wrote seven more historical novels, placed in different ancient cultures, among which The Dark Angel, set during the fall of Constantinople in 1453, is considered one of his best.

By happy coincidental chance (for this blog), Waltari - not a diary-keeper by habit - did once keep a diary, a travel diary, published in 1948, when he was researching The Dark Angel. The Finnish author Panu Rajala, who is currently working on a biography of Waltari, says this travel diary is the ‘best introduction to Waltari’s working methods’ - something the National Library of Finland asked him to write about for their 2008 bulletin.

The last two paragraphs are worth reproducing verbatim for Rajala, in using the author’s own diary, explains how the famous diary written by Niccolo Barbaro inspires Waltari to use the diary form for his next novel.

‘On this trip to Venice or the next, Waltari ascends the steps to the National Library of St. Mark along the Piazzetta opposite the old Doge’s Palace. He has read a printed version of the diary written by Niccolo Barbaro, a participant in the battle, describing the Siege of Constantinople, but now he wants to see the original manuscript in its original decorative leather binding. He reads the 67-page diary, hand-written in the calligraphic script of its time, in which a young Venetian patriot describes the tragic phases of the siege. An unknown commentator’s marginal annotations in red ink provide Waltari with his most cogent insights. This is just what Waltari has maintained - of greater importance to the author are often the footnotes and minor details, not always the broad strokes. When Niccolo Barbaro accuses the Genovians of embezzlement, written on the page is ‘Angelo Zacaria, Greek embezzler for the Turks’.

Johannes Angelos is born and begins to grow as the novel’s main character. Simultaneously the form of the future novel - a diary - is found. Waltari is already in a rush to his destination, Istanbul.’

There is not much biographical information about Barbaro himself on the internet, but The Diary Junction gives a little, and also provides links to online texts of his diary. A near full version can be found here.

At the end of his description of the last day of the siege, Barbaro writes: ‘The fighting lasted from dawn until noon, and while the massacre went on in the city, everyone was killed; but after that time they were all taken prisoner. Our Bailo, Jeruolemo Minoto, had his head cut off by order of the Sultan; and this was the end of the capture of Constantinople, which took place in the year one thousand four hundred and fifty-three, on the twenty-ninth of May, which was a Tuesday.’

Donoughue’s Downing Street play

A second volume of Bernard Donoughue’s Downing Street diaries is published today. As an adviser to Harold Wilson and then James Callaghan, Donoughue was well placed to record the decline and final collapse of ‘old’ Labour and the emergence of Margaret Thatcher and her campaign to dismantle trade union power and public sector dominance. Peter Hennessy, a professor of contemporary history, says the book is best seen as a play - ‘a drama tingeing into tragedy and often laced with farce’.

Jonathan Cape, part of Random House, has just published Downing Street Diary Volume Two: With James Callaghan in No 10, by Bernard (and Baron) Donoughue. The first volume, published in 2005, starts in 1974, when he was invited by Harold Wilson first to help fight the General Election, and then to found and run the policy unit (the ‘kitchen cabinet’) at No 10. This second volume covers the three years, 1976-1979, when Donoughue was Senior Policy Advisor to James Callaghan.

Donoughue was educated at grammar school, and then at Lincoln and Nuffield Colleges, Oxford. He worked for The Economist and the Political and Economic Planning Institute before joining the staff of the London School for Economics in 1963. From 1974 to 1979, he worked at Number 10, and then went back to journalism for a few years. From the early 1980s, though, he was involved in the private sector, employed in the banking and investment sector, apart from a short spell in the late 1990s when he served as Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State at the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food. His professional activities have also included positions with an orchestra and a racecourse.

Random House says, of the first volume, that Donoughue’s diary, kept every day, provides ‘an extraordinarily intimate portrait of Harold Wilson, struggling to hold the Labour Party together, drinking heavily, increasingly paranoid about ‘plots’ and the press, and apparently in thrall to Marcia Williams’. In this new second volume, Donoughue records the prime minister and government becoming paralysed as the ‘Winter of Discontent’ begins to bite and politics takes to the streets. ‘As Labour drifted to inevitable defeat in the 1979 election,’ Random House says, ‘we see Callaghan fighting honourably’ and ‘from the smoke of battle there emerges a striking new leader: Margaret Thatcher.’ The diaries describe vividly, it adds, ‘both the decline and final collapse of ‘old’ Labour and how Mrs Thatcher took the opportunity to launch her crusade to dismantle trade union power and much of the British public sector’.

The Guardian provides some good extracts. Here are several.

Tuesday 14 June 1977: ‘I worked in the office in the morning. Lunch with Robin Butler at his club. Great pleasure to see him again. He told me one little story. While at No 10 there arrived on his desk a large brown envelope addressed personally to H Wilson, and forwarded from Lord North Street. He opened it and it was a current account sheet from the offshore Swiss bank which went broke with an illegal deposit in it for Wilson. Robin just resealed it and passed it on.’

Friday 24 February 1978: ‘My view is that we must establish an image of [Margaret] Thatcher [then the leader of the opposition] as a dangerous woman who will divide our society and create trouble. We are doing this now over immigration. Instead of ducking this issue, as many have advised, I have pressed the PM to take it head-on and attack her for inciting racial hatred - and so causing violence on the streets. We will not win any votes on the immigration issue this way: Thatcher will gain a lot on that in the short run. But I hope that in the long run we can broaden it out to her disadvantage. So we shall show that she is abrasive and divisive on industrial relations, confronting the trade unions. And on Scottish devolution. And on social security casualties - ‘scroungers etc’. And on the unemployed - attacking redundancy payments. . . ’

Friday 4 May 1979: ‘I awoke shortly after eight o'clock, having had less than three hours' sleep. The children buzzed in and out of my bedroom, on their way to school. I could hear excited discussions about what would happen ‘now Daddy has got the sack’. Stephen, aged nine, was clearly delighted, saying that now that I would be at home in the day I could cook his lunch and he ‘would not have to stay to school dinner’, which is one of the main burdens of his always fastidious life.’

Peter Hennessy, now a Professor of Contemporary British History, but who was a contemporary of Donoughue’s and a political journalist in the 1970s, has reviewed the new volume for The Times Literary Supplement. His long article starts as follows: ‘In the bigger picture of UK politics since 1945, Bernard Donoughue’s Downing Street Diary is best seen as a play - a drama tingeing into tragedy and often laced with farce - with the Labour Left and the Conservative Right lurking in the wings, itching to prevail when old Labourism issues its last gasp and collapses into the arms of waiting historians, ready to pronounce the obsequies of the post-war consensus. . . Donoughue’s is a very good play - gripping, filled with personalities and acute observations, punctuated by moments of frustration verging on fury - for the author is quite a hater, especially when crossed.'

Hennessy also uses some extracts from the diaries, including one about himself! He says: ‘First, I must declare an interest. Donoughue outs our clandestine relationship during that era of tightly drawn official secrecy . . . : ‘15th–17 November 1976: Ridiculous that we [special advisers] are always suspected of leaking to the press. In fact I do occasionally talk with three old friends in newspapers without giving anything secret away – one on the Sunday Times (Harold Evans), one on The Times (Peter Hennessy) and one on the Financial Times (Joe Rogaly). Each tells me that most of their frequent leaks of secret information comes from regular civil servants.’ ’

Base ball and cricket records

A very early - possibly the earliest - reference to baseball has been found in an English diary, written by William Bray, thus supporting the idea that, in fact, the quintessentially American game began in England and not on the other side of the Atlantic. Another English William who wrote a diary, but lived a century later, William Allingham, was, for a number years, the field manager for the Pre-Raphaelite Baseball Club - bizarre, but true in the imaginary world of the Cosmic Baseball Association. And going back a century before Bray, other diaries provide evidence on the history of that quintessentially English game, cricket.

Last week, the Surrey Advertiser Group broke the news that a diary written by William Bray in the 1750s contained possibly the earliest ever reference to the game of baseball. The diary was found last year by local historian, Tricia St John Barry, and authenticated by Julian Pooley, manager of the Surrey History Centre in Woking (where Bray’s later diaries are held). Various media picked up the story, including the BBC which ran an article including the text of the relevant entry which is from Easter Monday 31 March 1755. It reads: ‘Went to Stoke Ch. This morning. After Dinner Went to Miss Jeale’s to play at Base Ball with her, the 3 Miss Whiteheads, Miss Billinghurst, Miss Molly Flutter, Mr. Chandler, Mr. Ford & H. Parsons & Jelly. Drank Tea and stayed till 8.’

The sequence of events that led to the Surrey Advertiser story is worth acknowledging. The body that runs baseball in the US, Major League Baseball (MLB) was researching and filming in England for a documentary called Base Ball Discovered. The BBC ran an item about MLP’s project which St John Barry saw; she then contacted MLB to tell them about her discovery in Bray’s diary. Subsequently, MLB contacted Pooley, an expert on Bray, to verify that the 1754-1755 diary was genuine.

According to Associated Press’s story, the Bray reference is about 50 years earlier than the, hitherto, first known reference to baseball, and it had long been thought that baseball was ‘an American invention, with roots in the British games of rounders and cricket’. Apparently, there are earlier references to baseball, but only in fictional books; and the game is mentioned in Jane Austen’s Northanger Abbey, written in 1798 but not published until late 1817. The first recorded competitive baseball game took place in Hoboken, New Jersey, in 1846 between the Knickerbocker Base Ball Club of New York and the New York Nine, and the first professional team was playing by the end of the 1860s.

William Bray was born in Surrey in 1736, but educated at Rugby before being articled to a lawyer in Guildford. Over time, he became solicitor to many county families, but also was steward of Surrey manors, treasurer of charities and an indefatigable antiquary. He worked with Owen Manning in compiling notes for a history of Surrey, but, after Manning’s death, took over the responsibility for writing and publishing The History and Antiquities of the County of Surrey, a definitive work in three volumes. He transcribed and published the diaries of Sir John Evelyn, one of Britain’s most famous diarists. Moreover, Bray kept a diary himself, some texts of which are readily available on the internet - see The Diary Junction for links.

Also, see The Diary Junction for information about another diarist called William - William Allingham. Born in Ireland, he lived about one hundred years later than Bray, through much of the 19th century and was a celebrated poet connected with the Pre-Raphaelite movement of painters, such as Rossetti and Millais. Unlike Bray, very little of Allingham’s diaries can be found on the internet. What can be found is thanks to baseball! When the Pre-Raphaelite Baseball Club joined the Cosmic Baseball Association in 1997 they ‘tapped Allingham to be their field manager’. He then compiled ‘a very decent 180-144 won-loss record’ in the two seasons the team played in the Cosmic Underleague. The Cosmic Baseball Association describes itself as ‘a baseball league of the imagination’, but it is also an online source for Allingham’s diary entries!

What baseball is to Americans, cricket is to the English, but cricket was already considered a major sport - according to Wikipedia - by the end of the 17th century, i.e. at least 50 years before Bray’s first and solitary mention of baseball. Some of the evidence for the origins of cricket also comes from diaries. Henry Teonge, for example, a priest who decided to join the navy as a chaplain, wrote a lively diary, which is available online at Googlebooks.

Here is his diary entry from 6 May 1676 when he was staying in Aleppo (now part of Syria): ‘This morning early (as is the custom all summer long) at least forty of the English, with his worship the consul, rode out of the city about four miles to the Green Plat, a fine valley by a riverside, to recreate themselves where a princely tent was pitched; and we had several pastimes and sports as duck-hunting, fishing, shooting, handball, cricket, scrofilo, etc; and then a noble dinner brought thither, with great plenty of all sorts of wines, punch, and lemonades; and at 6 we return all home in good order, but soundly tired and weary.’

One hundred years later, in the 1770s, John Baker, another Surrey diarist, is writing about cricket in much more detail. Thanks to David Underdown and the Cricinfo website for a colourful article about Baker and his diaries. Here one paragraph from the artice: ‘Besides these virtually professional matches, Baker also watched a good deal of local cricket in Sussex. His disgust at Hambledon’s poor performance at Sevenoaks was typical of him. He was just as unforgiving of shoddy play in local games. ‘Poor doings on both sides’, he grumbled when Horsham played Warnham in 1776. But Horsham had a strong team: in 1773 he watched them return from a victory over East Grinstead, ‘in procession a cheval’. There was a good crowd too for Horsham versus Reigate, including one of the local noblemen, Lord Irwin, who ‘got out of his coach and stood with the crowd’. No doubt Reigate’s ‘Shock’ White was a big draw. A couple of years earlier he had gone in against Hambledon with a bat wider than the wicket, thus leading to a rapid change in the Laws.’

Beautiful men were dead

The Great Northern War, fought between Sweden and Russia for control of the Baltic Sea, reached a turning point 300 years ago today, when the King of Sweden, Charles XII, stopped marching his troops towards Moscow. A Swedish history blogger - whose name I can only divine as TB - has published an interesting article about the war, one which includes several excruciating extracts from diaries written by those involved.

The Great Northern War was fought largely between Russia and Sweden for supremacy in the Baltic Sea, although various other powers were involved at different times. Denmark-Norway and Saxony-Poland, for example, were both involved with Russia in launching the initial attacks on Sweden in 1700. The conflict ended two decades later, in 1721, with Sweden ceding territories (including Estonia) to Russia.

Wikipedia’s list of events for 11 September includes this: 1708 - ‘Charles XII of Sweden stops his march to conquer Moscow outside Smolensk, marking the turning point in the Great Northern War. The army is defeated nine months later in the Battle of Poltava, and the Swedish empire is no longer a major power.’ Charles XII was a skilled military leader, winning several battles early on in the conflict, but his political abilities were lacking, especially when it came to making peace. Upon the outbreak of the Great Northern War, Voltaire is said to have quoted Charles XII as saying: ‘I have resolved never to start an unjust war but never to end a legitimate one except by defeating my enemies.’

A Swedish blogger - who goes by the initials TB - seems fascinated by the Karolinska Army, so named because it was made up of men, Karoliners, who served under Karl XI and Karl XII (Charles XI and Charles XII). An excellent article of his on the army’s involvement in the Great Northern War includes many verbatim extracts from letters and diaries. But, he warns, he’s copied the letters and diaries ‘down to the exact word and wording . . . so, if it sounds strange, it’s because they talked and wrote differently than we do now.’

In 1706, according to TB, the Swedish army finally got want they wanted, a decisive battle against Saxony-Poland at Fraustadt. He quotes from the diary of dragoon corporal, Joachim Lyth, to explain what happened after the battle was won: ‘His excellence General Rehnskiöld gave order to form a square with dragoons, cavalry, and infantry, in which all the Russians that had been taken prisoner had to stand in. Roughly 500 souls, who soon with no mercy were shot or stabbed to death, they fell over each other like sheeps in slaughter.’ Having defeated Saxony-Poland, TB says, only Russia was left, and so in the autumn of 1707, the Swedish Karoliner main army, 44,500 strong, started marching toward Moscow to end the war.

However, the army never made it to Moscow, TB explains, because of lack of food. When still 400 km away, it turned round, and started to march south towards Ukraine looking for supplies. That winter was exceptionally cold. On 23 December, the army reached the village of Petrovka, and while some found shelter, others were obliged to sleep outside. TB’s article then gives an extract from Erik Larsson’s diary: ‘It was so cold that the oxen at our supply-wagon fell dead to the ground. The birds who tried to fly fell dead from the skies. Yes many will remember this day if he survives.’

And then there’s this about the next day (24 December) from the diary of Cavalry Major, Nils GyllenStierna: ‘The road was filled in the morning with men who had frozen to death, with them lay horses, oxen, and other animals. Supply and sick-wagons stood still because their drivers had died by the cold they were still sitting like they were waiting for orders. Now many beautiful men were dead.’

I won’t write any more

Cesare Pavese was born a hundred years ago today, on 9 September 1908. He is considered one of Italy’s most important writers, but he was also one of the saddest. The protagonists in his novels were often loners, managing only superficial relationships, and, in his own life, love always disappointed him. He died while still young, in his 40s, by committing suicide, something he had discussed in his diary for years.

Although Pavese was an important and successful writer, it seems he never found happiness in his private life. There is not a great deal about him on the internet in English, even the Wikipedia article is awkwardly written and brief (relative to his importance - the Italian Wikipedia article is much longer). The Diary Junction provides a short biographical summary.

Pavese was born in the village of Santo Stefano between Turin and the Alps. He studied literature at university, and graduated in 1930 with a thesis on Walt Whitman. Subsequently, he wrote essays on American literature and translated literary texts into Italian. His mother died in 1931, and he went to live with his sister Maria and her family, also in Turin. While the fascists were becoming stronger by the day, Pavese fell in love with Tina Pizzardo, a Communist teacher and activist. In 1935, the police found some incriminating letters (which Tina had received, at Pavese's house, from a collaborator). He was arrested, jailed briefly, and then exiled to Calabria for three years. Tina, meanwhile, left him and married someone else.

On returning to Turin after the war, and finding some of his friends dead, Pavese joined the Communist Party and became more politically active. But it was literature that remained his first love. His novels won several prestigious prizes, and he is well regarded for his poetry. In 1950, Pavese fell in love again, with a young American actress, Constance Dawling, to whom he dedicated his last novel ‘The Moon and the Bonfires’, but she left him too. In August the same year, he killed himself in a hotel room.

A biography in English on an Italian website - www.saporidilanga.com - concludes as follows: ‘Worn, tired, but perfectly lucid, he suicides in a room of the hotel Roma in Turin by swallowing a strong dose of [barbiturates]. It is on 27th August 1950. Only an annotation is left on the first page of his book ‘Dialoghi con Leucò’ [Dialogues with Leucò], which was on the bedside of the room: ‘I forgive all and to you all I ask for me is forgiveness . . .’. He was only 42 years old.’

Pavese’s diaries have been published in English - The Burning Brand: Diaries 1935-1950, for example, and This Business of Living. Time has a good review of the former: ‘It is a haunting book, at once a cry of anguish, a case history, and a series of thoughtful notes on the art of fiction.’ And RL on Babelguides says this about the latter: ‘A diary of such a great writer, a writer with such a fierce connection with life, is an unfathomably rich work that one can enter again and again always finding more. It also shows that a diary can be a very complex work of art, one that uses a very basic narrative logic, the march of time itself. Within that straightforward structure anything can happen as the connections between entries are made only by the mental structure of the diary’s author, and with the passage of time.’

Here are a few extracts from Pavese’s diaries (some showing his preoccupation with the idea of suicide).

5 May 1936
‘Living is like working out a long addition sum, and if you make a mistake in the first two totals you will never find the right answer. It means involving oneself in a complicated chain of circumstances.’

19 January 1938
‘Life is pain and the enjoyment of love is an anesthetic.’

29 September 1938
‘I shall have to stop priding myself on being unable to find pleasure in the things ordinary men enjoy - high days and holidays; the fun of being one in a crowd; family affection and so on. What I am really incapable of is enjoying out-of-the-ordinary pleasures - solitude and a sense of mastery, and if I am not very good at sharing the sentiments of the average man it is because my artless assumption that I was capable of something better has rusted my natural reactions, which used to be perfectly normal. In general we feel rather pleased with ourselves when we do not enjoy common pleasures, believing this means that we are ‘capable of better things’. But incapacity in the one case does not presuppose capacity in the other. A man who is incapable of writing nonsense may be equally incapable of writing something pleasing.

We hate the thing we fear, the thing we know may be true and may have a certain affinity with ourselves, for each man hates himself. The most interesting, the most fertile qualities in every man are those he most hates in himself and in others, for hatred includes every other feeling - love, envy, ignorance, mystery, the urge to know and to possess. It is hate that causes suffering. To overcome hatred is to take a step towards self-knowledge, self-mastery, self-justification, and consequently towards an end of suffering. When we suffer, it is always our own fault.’

30 Oct 1940
‘Suffering is by no means a privilege, a sign of nobility, a reminder of God. Suffering is a fierce, bestial thing, commonplace, uncalled for, natural as air. It is intangible; no one can grasp it or fight against it; it dwells in time - is the same thing as time; if it comes in fits and starts, that is only so as to leave the sufferer more defenseless during the moments that follow, those long moments when one relives the last bout of torture and waits for the next.’

1 Jan 1950
‘At great periods you have always felt, deep within you, the temptation to commit suicide. You gave yourself to it; breached your own defenses. You were a child. The idea of suicide was a protest against life; by dying, you would escape this longing for death.’

25 March 1950
‘One does not kill oneself for love of a woman, but because love - any love- reveals us in our nakedness, our misery, our vulnerability, our nothingness.’

Pavese’s very last diary entry reads: ‘All this is sick. Not words. An act. I won’t write any more.’

Home and Hume

He died 200 years ago, did John Home. He is a largely forgotten poet and playwright from the 18th century, but one who, having initially struggled to get his plays performed as much as aspiring writers do today, eventually succeeded in winning over the great theatre impresario, David Garrick. Home was not a committed diarist, as far as we know, but he did keep a journal for a few days, while accompanying, another famous 18th century David - David Hume - during the last journey of his life, and the text can be found online.

Wikipedia provides a good short biography of John Home. Born at Leith, near Edinburgh, in 1722, he studied divinity at the University of Edinburgh, and became licensed by the presbytery of Edinburgh in 1745. The same year, he joined as a volunteer against Bonnie Prince Charlie, and was taken prisoner, later escaping from Doune castle in Perthshire. Subsequently, in 1747, he became a minister in the parish of Athelstaneford.

That same year, Home completed his first play play - Agis: a tragedy - and took it to London, to show David Garrick, the most famous actor/writer/manager of his age. He rejected the work. Five years later, Home went back to London taking another play - Douglas - and this too was rejected by Garrick. Nevertheless, with support from friends, Home managed to get Douglas produced in Edinburgh, in 1756 - to great acclaim. (See the James Boswell website for more about this performance.)

A few months later, and following the Edinburgh success, Home returned to London with Douglas where it was shown at Covent Garden. David Hume, a leading Scottish philosopher and historian of the time, said that Home possessed ‘the true theatric genius of Shakespeare and Otway, refined from the unhappy barbarism of the one and licentiousness of the other’.

Unfortunately, the church did not approve of Douglas, and Home decided to leave the ministry. Instead, he wrote other plays, such as The Siege of Aquileia (Garrick playing a leading role), The Fatal Discovery, Alonzo, and Alfred. He also worked as private secretary to John Stuart (3rd Earl of Bute), then secretary of state, and was later tutor to the Prince of Wales. He also took up soldiering in his 50s (1778), joining a regiment formed by the Duke of Buccleugh, but had to retire after an injury. He died two hundred years ago, on 5 September 1808.

A three volume collection of his writing - The Works of John Home Esq - with substantial biographical information, was put together by Henry Mackenzie in 1822, and published by Archibald Constable. The full text is available online at Googlebooks. Included in the book, is the text of a short diary written by Home during a journey he took with his friend David Hume, in 1776. The same text is also available in Early Responses to Hume’s Life and Reputation, edited by James Fieser and published by Continuum International Publishing Group in 1999.

Hume was already suffering from a terminal illness when he left Edinburgh in April 1776 for London with his servant Colin, hoping that the journey would improve his health. At Morpeth, in the north of England, he ran into Adam Smith and Home, who had been travelling to Edinburgh to visit him. Smith carried on to Edinburgh, but Home turned round, and accompanied Hume on his trip to London and then to Bath.

Unlike Home, Hume is well-remembered today. He is considered an important figure in Western philosophy, and in the history of the Scottish Enlightenment, for being the first great philosopher of the modern era to carve out a thoroughly naturalistic philosophy, i.e. one focusing more on human reason, and rejecting the idea that human minds are but miniature versions of the divine mind. He also spent 15 years writing a definitive (at the time) history of Great Britain in six volumes, which was a best seller in its day. He died in August 1776, just a couple of months after the journey recorded by Home. Here are a couple of extracts from Home’s diary of that journey.

24 April 1776
‘[Hume] still maintains, that the national debt must be the ruin of Britain; and laments that the two most civilised nations, the English and French, should be on the decline; and the barbarians, the Goths and Vandals of Germany and Russia, should be rising in power and renown . . .’

28 April 1776
‘Mr Hume told me, that he had bought a piece of ground; and when I seemed surprised that I had never heard of it, he said it was in the New Church-yard, on the Calton Hill, for a burying-place; that he meant to have a small monument erected, not to exceed in expence one hundred pounds; that the inscription should be ‘DAVID HUME’. I desired him to change the discourse. He did so; but seemed surprised at my uneasiness which he said was very nonsensical. I think he is gaining ground; but he laughs at me, and says it is impossible; that the year (76), sooner or later, he takes his departure. He is willing to go Bath, to travel during the summer through England, and return to Scotland to die at home; but that Sir John Pringle, and the whole faculty, would find it very difficult to boat him, (formerly an unusual phrase in Scotland for going abroad, that is, out of the island, for health) This day we travelled by his desire three stages, and arrived with great east at Grantham.’

Pepys, fire and Parmesan cheese

I’ve been writing three or four articles a week since starting The Diary Junction Blog in May, but I haven’t once mentioned the greatest diarist of all, Samuel Pepys. The text of his diaries are freely available online (see The Diary Junction page on Pepys for links). Here is part of the entry for 4 September, 342 years ago, the day of the great fire of London, in 1666.

‘. . . to Tower [Street], and there met the fire burning three or four doors beyond Mr. Howell’s, whose goods, poor man, his trayes, and dishes, shovells . . . were flung all along Tower [Street] in the kennels, and people working therewith from one end to the other; the fire coming on in that narrow streete, on both sides, with infinite fury. Sir W. Batten not knowing how to remove his wine, did dig a pit in the garden, and laid it in there; and I took the opportunity of laying all the papers of my office that I could not otherwise dispose of. And in the evening Sir W. Pen and I did dig another, and put our wine in it; and I my Parmazan cheese, as well as my wine and some other things. . .

This night Mrs. Turner (who, poor woman, was removing her goods all this day, good goods into the garden, and knows not how to dispose of them), and her husband supped with my wife and I at night, in the office; upon a shoulder of mutton from the cook’s, without any napkin or any thing, in a sad manner, but were merry. Only now and then walking into the garden, and saw how horridly the sky looks, all on a fire in the night, was enough to put us out of our wits; and, indeed, it was extremely dreadful, for it looks just as if it was at us; and the whole heaven on fire. I after supper walked . . . down to Tower [Street], and there saw it all on fire, at the Trinity House on that side, and the Dolphin Taverne on this side, which was very near us; and the fire with extraordinary vehemence.

Now begins the practice of blowing up of houses in Tower [Street], those next the Tower, which at first did frighten people more than anything, but it stopped the fire where it was done, it bringing down the houses to the ground in the same places they stood, and then it was easy to quench what little fire was in it, though it kindled nothing almost.’

A Victorian government insider

Edward Walter Hamilton, or Eddy as he was always known, died one hundred years ago today. He was considered a pillar of the establishment, serving as a private secretary to William Gladstone during his second term as Prime Minister, and subsequently, as one of the country’s top civil servants, in the Treasury. He also wrote a diary which is said to give an excellent insight into the workings of government and its administration in the late Victorian period. Recently, Hamilton’s diaries provided a revelation as to why the government of the day took so long to bestow a knighthood on the great actor Henry Irving.

Hamilton was born in 1847, the eldest son of the bishop of Salisbury, Walter Kerr Hamilton, and Isabel Elizabeth, daughter of the dean of Salisbury. He studied at Eton and Oxford, and graduated with a music degree. Thanks to a friendship between his father and William Gladstone, Hamilton became a junior clerk at the Treasury in 1870, a department to which he would be attached for the rest of his life - apart from several years as private secretary to Gladstone himself. In spite of his close links with Gladstone and with Lord Rosebery, a close friend since their Eton days, Hamilton was a trusted adviser to a succession of Unionist as well as Liberal chancellors. Hamilton was made a knight in 1994, and reached the most senior position in the Treasury - financial secretary - in 1902.

Starting in the spring of 1880, when Hamilton joined the Downing Street staff, he kept a diary, detailing much of the political activity around him. He only stopped in 1906, because of ill-health. There are fifty-four volumes, all held by the British Library. According to an article by James Munson in Contemporary Review, the diaries give ‘an excellent insight into the actual working of late Victorian government and administration’. Indeed, Hamilton’s knowledge of these matters was so considerable. Munson adds, that he was asked to provide instruction on the British Constitution to the future King, George V. It is worth noting that Hamilton himself used to contribute to Contemporary Review - a magazine founded in 1866 ‘to promote intelligent and independent opinion about the great issues’ of the day - under the pseudonym Nemo.

Throughout the diary, according to Munson, Hamilton records intriguing political gossip gained during his frequent visits to Rosebery’s houses, and he reveals how he hoped Rosebery would carry on the progressive splendours of Victorian Liberalism. However, the diary also documents how Hamilton slowly became more and more disenchanted with the direction of government, his feelings ‘made all the more bitter by his personal devotion to Rosebery’. Moreover, the diary provides some ‘fascinating glimpses of Queen Victoria and King Edward’s relations with the Treasury’.

The diaries were published for the first time in 1972, by Clarendon Press (Oxford University Press), in two volumes: Diary of Sir Edward Walter Hamilton (covering the period 1880-1885). In 1992, Hull University Press published The Diary of Sir Edward Walter Hamilton 1885-1906. Both editions were edited by Dudley W R Bahlman, and are available secondhand from sellers such as Abebooks.

There are not, however, any substantial extracts of Hamilton’s diaries to be found online (none that I can find any way). There are a couple of brief ones in a short biography of Hamilton, by Bahlman, for Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (ODNB) (which requires a log in, but is accessible via public library membership). Hamilton, it says, was aware of the qualities that suited him well to be a private secretary and Treasury official - such as diligence, accuracy, tact, and an ability to write clear summaries of complex questions - but that he did not have unusual powers of intellect. He wrote in his diary, on 28 April 1891, ‘the reason why I am clear is that I must explain things clearly in order to make them intelligible to myself’.

Recently, Hamilton’s diary has been the source of a revelation about the great Victorian actor Henry Irving. John H B Irving, the actor’s great grandson, and one of the patrons of the Henry Irving Society (formed in 1996), has published several articles on the Society’s website about his search for some missing letters. Incidental to that search, John writes about Henry’s knighthood. In 1883, there was a ‘fiasco’, he says, when Gladstone ‘had inadvertently offered Henry Irving a knighthood only later to find that this offer had been vetoed by his aristocratic cabinet on the grounds that Irving had left his wife and had a questionable relationship with his leading lady’. Subsequently, it seems, Irving agreed to pretend the offer was unacceptable to him, and all relevant government documents were altered to support the ‘refusal’ scenario. ‘All, that is’, says John Irving, ‘except one’ - i.e. Hamilton. He wrote in his diary on 27 June 1883, ‘. . The idea of knighthood for Irving abandoned. Lord Granville and others threw cold water on it.’ (John Irving credits Professor John Pick who spotted the information and wrote a paper on the affair.) It was to be another 12 years before Irving became the first ever actor to be knighted.

According to the ODNB biography, Hamilton began to experience increasingly severe symptoms of vascular disease in 1889. In 1890, he consulted the famous French physician Jean-Martin Charcot, who, according to his diary (7 Dec 1890), diagnosed him as having ‘clodification of the arteries of the leg’. Hamilton died at the Hotel Metropole, Brighton, on 2 September 1908.

Leach: Is art any use?

Is art any use? Is anything any use? So asked one of Britain’s most famous potters, Bernard Leach, in his diary exactly one hundred years ago today. And, he gave himself an answer - of sorts! Historically, there are not many craftspeople who kept diaries, but Leach did, and, according to Archives Hub, they make for ‘illuminating reading’.

The Archives Hub - which provides access to descriptions of unique and unpublished primary source material held in universities, colleges and research institutes - gives a good short biography for Leach. He was born in 1887 in Hong Kong and lived in the Far East until the age of ten, when he came to school at a Jesuit college in England. At 16, in 1903, he was admitted to Slade, as their youngest student, and subsequently studied etching, and in 1909 went to work in Japan as an etcher. Soon, though, he discovered ceramics and trained with Japanese masters. After befriending a young potter named Shoji Hamada, the two of them came to England, to St Ives, Cornwall, and set up the Leach Pottery, which over time was to become hugely influential.

During the 1930s, Leach started teaching at Dartington Hall, and he set up a pottery in Shinner’s Bridge. He also worked as a draughtsman and, according to the Archives Hub biography, was hugely influential as a writer and thinker. During an extremely active life, he was continually at the centre of developments in the studio crafts, leading and participating in demonstrations, conferences, and exhibiting and touring around the world. It is estimated that Leach made about 100,000 pots during his lifetime and sold well over that number of his most famous written work, A Potter’s Book. Moreover, Archives Hub says, his letters and diaries, which are housed at the Crafts Study Centre in Farnham, make ‘illuminating reading’.

Historically, many priests, writers and politicians have kept diaries, but very few craftspeople have. Of over 500 diarists listed by The Diary Junction only five are categorised as craftspeople, and none as potters (there is no data on Leach himself yet). So Leach is quite a rarity. VADS, the online resource for visual arts in the UK, has nearly 1,000 images for Leach, including, of course, his ceramics, but also photographs, letters, and many pages from his diary.

One of those pages is for 30 August 1908, one hundred years go today. Leach, then aged 21, was in a philosophical mood. He wrote this in the diary: ‘Question: What is the greater - the artist (Raphael) who appeals to all the multitude and the senses or the artist (Blake) who appeals only to the highest minds. What the devil has the ‘mot’ to do with art? What is the ratio between art and humanity? Is art any use? Is anything any use? To live happily one must take it for granted it is!’

Normandy to Victory

A major World War II diary is about to be published for the first time. It chronicles the activities of General Courtney Hodges and the First US Army from D-Day to the German surrender, and, according to the publisher, offers ‘an intriguing glimpse into the personalities and operations of Allied military leaders’. Although the diary has not been published hitherto, it was used extensively in a biography of Hodges. For an insight into the enemy, albeit at a political rather than a military level, see the diary of Galeazzo Ciano.

Normandy to Victory has just been published by University Press of Kentucky in the US (Amazon) and is due out in the UK (Amazon) on 1 September. It’s subtitled, The War Diary of General Courtney H. Hodges and the First US Army, but the writing is credited to two of his aides - Major William C. Sylvan and Captain Francis G. Smith Jr. - who recorded daily entries, which Hodges reviewed and approved. According to the publisher, the book chronicles Hodges’ ascent to Commanding General in August 1944, as well as his viewpoints on strategy and the enemy; and it follows Hodges and the First Army ‘through savage European combat until the German surrender in May 1945’.

During World War II, officers were encouraged to record their everyday activities and those of their units, and this diary, about Hodges and the First Army, the publisher says, is one of ‘the most important’. Only available to researchers until now, retired US Army officer and historian, John T Greenwood, has edited the entries for a more general readership. However, the publisher stresses that Hodges’ aides were not privy to the top-level discussions with Dwight Eisenhower, George Patton and others, and so the diary mostly recounts ‘on-the-ground’ details.

A release from University Press of Kentucky on 22 August gives more details. It says the diary opens on 2 June 1944, as Hodges and the First Army prepare for the Allied invasion of France, and closes on 7 May 1944 with a representative of the High German Command signaling surrender of all German land. It highlights the crucial role that Hodges’ Army played in the execution of Northern European battles, ‘being the first army to cross the German border, the first to cross the Rhine, and the first to close to the Elbe’ which enabled it to spearhead successful operations for the troops who followed.

Although the promotional material for the book does not include any extracts from the diary itself, Stephen T Wishnevsky used the diary extensively for his biography - Courtney Hicks Hodges - published in 2006 by McFarland. Many pages from this are available to view on Googlebooks. Here is an extract which includes a bit of the Hodges diary.

‘One visit to the 30th led ‘the General’ as Sylvan referred to him, to remark that there were two kinds of offices, ‘the quick and the dead, and he preferred to be among the former.’ On that visit, shells screamed overhead, and Hodges and his aide were close enough to hear the short range ‘Screaming Meanies’ and the crackle of small arms fire. On this day there was a briefing at Montgomery’s HQ, with Patton in attendance. He scowled in his diary, ‘Monty went to great lengths explaining why the British have done nothing.’ ’ And here’s another snippet from later on in Wishnevsky’s book: ‘There is no evidence he [Hodges] ever took a whole day off and the War Diary records only two evenings he didn’t work until midnight.’

For a first-hand view from the other side in the conflict, one can turn to Galeazzo Ciano, Mussolini’s son-in-law, who left a good set of diaries. Having married Mussolini’s daughter Edda, Ciano rose to become a member of the Fascist Supreme Council, then secretary of state for press and propaganda, and eventually minister of foreign affairs. In 1939, he signed the Pact of Steel with Germany’s Joachim von Ribbentrop. The Diary Junction provides more information on Ciano and links to his texts. Here, though, is an example from the diaries, from 8 December 1941, the day after Pearl Harbour:

‘A night telephone call from Ribbentrop. He is overjoyed about the Japanese attack on America. He is so happy about it that I am happy with him, though I am not too sure about the final advantages of what has happened. One thing is now certain, that America will enter the conflict and that the conflict will be so long that she will be able to realize all her potential forces. This morning I told this to the King who had been pleased about the event. He ended by admitting that, in the long run, I may be right. Mussolini was happy, too. For a long time he has favored a definite clarification of relations between America and the Axis.’

More authoritative information about World War II diaries (and other sources), however, is available from World War II Plus 55, a website run by American journalist, David H Lippman. In a discussion on methodology for his history articles, for example, he refers to a number of original diary (and other) sources. This is Lippman on Ciano’s diary. ‘[His] cynicism is brutal and raw, revealing the tawdry nature of the Fascist state and its drive for empire at the expense of others. The diaries were intended as Ciano’s blackmail weapon when he was arrested for helping to overthrow Mussolini, but they did not save his life. Instead they stand as a testament to the aggressive and incompetent leadership of the Fascist regime.’

Hymn writer in sex scandal

Charles Wesley, one of Britain’s greatest hymn writers and a founder of Methodism, was plagued by a sex scandal while staying in the new American colony of Georgia. This information has, apparently, just come to light because a professor at Liverpool Hope University has deciphered coded passages in Wesley’s diaries. (However, the story may not be as new as the professor or some British newspapers are suggesting.) Both Charles and his equally famous reverend brother, John, were committed diarists, and their diaries (not including coded passages!) are all freely available online.

Charles and his older brother John were born at Epworth, Lincolnshire, and educated at Westminster School and Christ Church, Oxford. According to the website of the Methodist Church of the UK, Charles was ‘a bit of a lad’ in his early Oxford days, but then formed the Holy Club for prayer and bible study. Subsequently, John joined and became its leading light. Other students nicknamed the members of the group as ‘Methodists’. Charles was ordained in the Church of England in 1735, and that same year went to the British colony of Georgia, with John. There, he held the post of secretary to the colonial governor, James Edward Oglethorpe, but - apparently because of ill health - returned to the UK more than a year earlier than his brother.

According to a news story just published in The Daily Mail, however, it now seems Charles ‘fled home amid allegations that he had sex with a colonist after trapping her husband under a tree’. This scandal - from 270 years ago - was uncovered, says The Daily Mail, by Reverend Professor Kenneth Newport, of Liverpool Hope University, who finally managed to decipher passages of Wesley’s diaries written in code. He did this by realising that Wesley had used the same code to transcribe parts of the King James Bible.

The coded paragraphs, explains The Daily Mail, show that Wesley was accused of sexual misconduct by a woman named Mrs Anne Welch, wife to the colonists’ doctor. And they also reveal that he was concerned because, while walking with a maid, a pair of colonists had shouted at him: ‘There goes the parson with his whore. I saw her and him were under the bushes.’ According to The Daily Mail and The Times (which shuns any mention of the sex scandal), the newly decoded passages also reveal significant tensions between the two brothers, particularly about each other’s marriages.

But Jeff Campbell, from Wharton, New Jersey, says these ‘new’ facts are not so new. In a comment submitted to The Daily Mail’s website, he says he found out about Charles Wesley’s difficulties in Georgia ‘over four years ago’ at a seminary class with someone called Dr. Charles Yirgoyen! Campbell thus claims Wesley fell in love with the daughter of the head of the colony, and when she did not return his affections and asked to be married to another man, he refused to marry them and was locked up. Campbell adds ‘it is said that someone broke him out of jail and he ran back to England’. He also says that the strained relations between John and Charles over the years has been well documented.

The Diary Junction provides a brief biography for both John and Charles Wesley, both of whom went on to develop Britain’s first widely successful evangelical movement, and gives links to websites where the text of their diaries can be found. John kept a diary for most of his life until his death in 1791, but Charles, who died three years earlier, stopped in the 1750s (perhaps because he was too busy writing hymns, such as Hark, the Herald Angels Sing).

Here are two extracts from Charles’ diary from 1736. The first is taken from a published edition of his diary online (thanks to A Vision of Britain Through Time), and the second, a day later, is one of the decoded passages provided by today’s story in The Times online (there is no entry for 22 March 1736 in the published edition).

21 March
‘Mr Oglethorpe had ordered, more often than once, that no man should shoot on a Sunday. Germain had been committed to the guard-room for it in the morning, but was, upon his submission, released. In the midst of the sermon a gun was fired. Davison, the constable, ran out, and found it was the Doctor; told him it was contrary to orders, and he was obliged to desire him to come to the officer. Upon this the Doctor flew into a great passion, and said, ‘What, do you not know that I am not to be looked upon as a common fellow?’ Not knowing what to do, the constable went, and returned, after consulting with Hermsdorf, with two centinels, and brought him to the guard-room. Hereupon M. H. charged and fired a gun; and then ran thither, like a mad woman, crying she had shot, and would be confined too. The constable and Hermsdorf persuaded her to go away. She cursed and swore in the utmost transport of passion, threatening to kill the first man that should come near her. Alas, my brother! what has become of thy hopeful convert?

In the afternoon, while I was talking in the street with poor Catherine, her mistress came up to us, and fell upon me with the utmost bitterness and scurrility; saying she would blow me up, and my brother, whom she once thought honest, but was now undeceived: that I was the cause of her husband's confinement; but she would be revenged, and expose my hypocrisy, my prayers four times a day, by beat of drum, and abundance more, which I cannot write, and thought no woman, though taken from Drurylane, could have spoken. I only said, I pitied her, but defied all she or the devil could do; for she could not hurt me. I was strangely preserved from passion, and at parting told her that, I hoped she would soon come to a better mind. . . .

. . . At night I was forced to exchange my usual bed, the ground, for a chest, being almost speechless through a violent cold.’

22 March
‘While I was persuading Mr Welch not to concern himself in this disturbance, I heard Mrs Hawkins cry out: ‘Murder!’ and walked away. Returning out of the woods, I was informed by Mr Welch that poor blockhead Mrs Welch had joined with Mrs Hawkins and the Devil in their slanders of me. I would not believe it till half the town told me the same, and exclaimed against her ingratitude.’

The origin of pirate legends

Captain Henry Morgan is one of the most famous pirates in history, largely thanks to Alexander Exquemelin, one of his buccaneers, who wrote a diary. Originally published in the 1670s, this diary (or more strictly speaking a memoir) has rarely been out of print, but HarperCollins has just brought out a new, fancy edition - The Illustrated Pirate Diaries - complete with maps, paintings and even photographs! However, Exquemelin’s full text, with beautiful illustrations, can be downloaded freely from the web.

HarperCollins in the US has just published The Illustrated Pirate Diaries: A Remarkable Eyewitness Account of Captain Morgan and the Buccaneers; and, according to Amazon, it is being released in the UK shortly, in September. Of all the pirates to terrorise the Caribbean waters, says HarperCollins, none are as notorious as Sir Henry Morgan. But his fame comes largely from the diary of buccaneer Alexander Exquemelin, who sailed under Morgan and recorded his infamous and bloody adventures.

Exquemelin (also spelled Esquemeling and other variants) was probably born around 1645 in France, but aged 21 or so he went to work for the French West India Company in the Caribbean. There he enlisted with the buccaneers, and Henry Morgan’s band, possibly serving Morgan directly as a barber-surgeon. On returning to Europe, he settled in Holland, and his diary was first published in 1678, in Dutch, as De Americaensche Zee-Roovers. Since then, the book has had an interesting history.

The Lots of Essays website, which has a useful extract about the diary, explains that it was soon published in a Spanish translation in 1681, and then in English in 1684. However, while the author was originally listed as Alexander Olivier Exquemelin in the Dutch original, his name was transformed to John Esquemeling for the English translation. His book is considered to have been very influential in forming a stereotype image of a pirate, one that persists to this day; and it has been published in many editions. Indeed, Wikipedia’s article on Exquemelin says this: ‘It has rightly been said that perhaps no book of the seventeenth century in any language was ever the parent of so many imitations and the source of so much fiction.’

In 2006, Constable & Robinson published The Mammoth Book of Pirates which included Exquemelin’s ‘fly-on-the-wall account’ of the ‘wicked order of pirates, or robbers of the sea’. But this new book from HarperCollins is ‘a special illustrated edition filled with maps, paintings, photographs, and fascinating background on pirate culture’, and promises that the ‘unforgettable diary comes to new life, bringing the authentic world of the buccaneers to a modern audience far better than any movie could’. HarperCollins provides a quote: ‘Morgan hurled himself at the fuse, and saved all his comrades’ lives. His bravery was already the stuff of legend, and this exploit made his men even more determined to follow him anywhere.’

However, a lovely 1914 edition of the book - complete with swashbuckling pictures by George Alfred Williams - can be downloaded for free from the Internet Archive. The full title is The Pirates of Panama or Buccaneers of America a true account of the famous adventures and daring deeds of Sir Henry Morgan and other notorious freebooters of the Spanish Main; and the author is given as ‘John Esquemeling, one of the buccaneers who was present at those tragedies’.

Here is an extract from Exquemelin’s book. It concerns Captain Morgan’s expedition in 1670 to take the city of Panama (which I’ve chosen simply because it’s about the same day as today - 26 August).

‘Captain Morgan sent two hundred men before the body of his army, to discover the way to Panama, and any ambuscades therein: the path being so narrow, that only ten or twelve persons could march abreast, and often not so many. After ten hours’ march they came to a place called Quebrada Obscura: here, all on a sudden, three or four thousand arrows were shot at them, they not perceiving whence they came, or who shot them: though they presumed it was from a high rocky mountain, from one side to the other, whereon was a grot, capable of but one horse or other beast laded. This multitude of arrows much alarmed the pirates, especially because they could not discover whence they were discharged.

At last, seeing no more arrows, they marched a little farther, and entered a wood: here they perceived some Indians to fly as fast as they could, to take the advantage of another post, thence to observe their march; yet there remained one troop of Indians on the place, resolved to fight and defend themselves, which they did with great courage till their captain fell down wounded; who, though he despaired of life, yet his valour being greater than his strength, would ask no quarter, but, endeavouring to raise himself, with undaunted mind laid hold of his azagayo, or javelin, and struck at one of the pirates; but before he could second the blow, he was shot to death. This was also the fate of many of his companions, who, like good soldiers, lost their lives with their captain, for the defence of their country. The pirates endeavoured to take some of the Indians prisoners, but they being swifter than the pirates, every one escaped, leaving eight pirates dead, and ten wounded: yea, had the Indians been more dextrous in military affairs, they might have defended that passage, and not let one man pass. . .’

A lady of old Japan

‘I was brought up in a distant province which lies farther than the farthest end of the Eastern Road. I am ashamed to think that inhabitants of the Royal City will think me an uncultured girl.’ So begins what is called The Sarashina Diary and which is considered one of the very earliest and most beautiful of travel diaries. The author, whose real name is not known, was a Japanese lady-in-waiting born 1,000 years ago.

It is not clear how the famous diary, and its author, came to get their name, but it probably arose because the geographical district, Sarashina, is alluded to in one of the book’s poems. However, it is known that Lady Sarashina was related to another (and slightly earlier) famous diarist, also without an exact name, but who’s referred to as the mother of Michitsuna. Lady Sarashina was probably born in 1008, in other words one thousand years ago (at a time when Ethelred the Unready was still trying to protect England from Danish invaders, and nearly a century before the first university would be founded in the western world, at Bologna).

What we know today about Lady Sarashina comes mostly from the diary, and Wikipedia has a good summary. In her childhood, she traveled to the provinces with her father, an assistant governor, and back to the capital some years later. She married late, in her 30s, and became a lady-in-waiting. Apparently, though, she was indifferent to her husband and children, and too shy and old for a successful career in court.

The diary was translated in the early part of the 19th century by Annie Shepley Omori and Kochi Doi and published along with others in Diaries of Court Ladies of Old Japan. The full text of the diary, as translated for that book and now out of copyright, is available online thanks to The Celebration of Women Writers website. Many pages and some illustrations from the book can also be viewed at Googlebooks

Here is another extract from The Sarashina Diary.

‘Mount Fuji is in this Province. In the Province where I was brought up I saw that mountain far towards the West. It towers up painted with deep blue, and covered with eternal snow. It seems that it wears a dress of deep violet and a white veil over its shoulders. From the little level place of the top smoke was going up. In the evening we even saw burning fires there. The Fuji River comes tumbling down from that mountain. A man of the Province came up to us and told us a story.

‘Once I went on an errand. It was a very hot day, and I was resting on the bank of the stream when I saw something yellow come floating down. It came to the bank of the river and stuck there. I picked it up and found it to be a scrap of yellow paper with words elegantly written on it in cinnabar. Wondering much I read it. On the paper was a prophecy of the Governors to be appointed next year. As to this Province there were written the names of two Governors. I wondered more and more, and drying the paper, kept it. When the day of the announcement came, this paper held no mistake, and the man who became the Governor of this Province died after three months, and the other succeeded him.’

There are such things. I think that the gods assemble there on that mountain to settle the affairs of each new year.’

Conrad, Hottot and the Congo

One hundred years ago today (19 August), the Belgian government finally approved the annexation of Congo Free State - the entire area of the present Democratic Republic of the Congo - from Leopold II, the king of Belgium. During the previous 20 years or so, some 10 million Congolese had died because of ruthless exploitation for rubber production. The international outrage, which had led to the annexation, was partly stoked by Joseph Conrad’s famous novel, Heart of Darkness, based on a journey he took in 1890. Conrad kept a diary of that trip. There are also diaries by a French explorer, Robert Hottot, travelling in the Congo Free State in 1908. Much more recently, of course, Che Guevara kept a diary of his exploits in the country.

In 1876, a few years after his famous search for Dr Livingstone (see online diary text at Project Gutenberg), Henry Morton Stanley undertook some exploration for Belgium’s king Leopold II who was keen to colonise an area of Africa which would become the Congo. Professing humanitarian objectives, Leopold then managed to play off various European rivals against each other and formally acquire the territory for himself at the Conference of Berlin in 1885. Thereafter, it was a corporate state - he called it Congo Free State - privately controlled by him through a dummy non-governmental organisation, Association Internationale Africaine. For the next two decades, the state was mercilessly exploited for rubber production to meet a growing demand for car tyres. Wikipedia’s history, of what is now the Democratic Republic of the Congo, explains that an army called the Force Publique (FP) would cut off the limbs of the Congolese to help enforce rubber quotas.

The appalling situation in Congo Free State began to attract international criticism, not least from writers such as Mark Twain and Joseph Conrad, and eventually led to an important report in 1904 by the Irish/British diplomat Roger Casement. He estimated that the population had been decimated by three million because of indiscriminate war, starvation, reduction of births and tropical diseases, (while other estimates suggest that around 10 million Congolese died in this period). Casement’s report also led to the arrest and punishment of white officials, and ultimately - on 19 August 1908, one hundred years ago - to the Belgian government agreeing to annex the territory. A treaty to that effect was signed the following November. The territory was renamed Belgian Congo and administered by the Belgian parliament until independence in 1960.

Conrad went to Congo Free State in 1890, and used his experiences there for a novella, Heart of Darkness, first published in Blackwood’s Magazine in 1899 as a three part serial. However, earlier he had published The Congo Diary, which in modern editions is often coupled with Heart of Darkness. Although the novella is freely available online at several sites (such as Ria Press), The Congo Diary is not. Some pages are available at Googlebooks, but thanks to Rod McLaren and his Rodcorp blog for providing a few extracts and relating them to Heart of Darkness. He says that stylistically, the staccato sentences of The Congo Diary are ‘the opposite of the elliptic, questing prose’ of Conrad’s later Heart of Darkness , but that it’s ‘an important precursor in content and emotion’.

A French explorer, A. Robert Hottot, also a diarist, travelled to Congo Free State three times in 1906, 1907 and 1908, the year Belgium finally acted to annex the territory from its king. Hottot died young in 1939, but had moved to Oxford in 1932 and had become a Fellow of the Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland. His papers, including diaries, and many fabulous photographs are held by Pitt Rivers Museum in Oxford, which has an online exhibition about the man. One of the online photographs shows two pages from his 1908 diary, in which Hottot describes the measurement of the local Kango people (pygmies) at Lake Tumba and lists objects he’s collected: three women’s belts, nine units of the local copper currency, and forty poisoned arrows.

Sixty years later, a diarist of a very different ilk would head for Belgian Congo - Che Guevara. His Bolivian diary was in the news a few weeks ago (see Che’s Last Days), and The Motorcycle Diaries were made famous by a recent film. But he also wrote a diary about his time in Africa - The African Dream: The Diaries of the Revolutionary War in the Congo. There’s quite a lot about Che’s time in the Congo on Wikipedia; The Guardian provided some extracts prior to the book’s belated publication in 2001; a few pages are viewable on Amazon; and etext.org has a longish review. Also, BBC world affairs correspondent Mark Doyle followed in Che’s footsteps and made a programme about his trip.