Hanazono, the 95th emperor of Japan, began his reign 700 years ago today (according to Wikipedia’s 28 December listing). However, after only 10 years he abdicated, and focused his attention on religious and literary matters. He also wrote a diary. Although there is very little information about him or his diary in English, there are a couple of extracts from the diary online, and these demonstrate a keen interest in music and poetry.
According to Wikipedia, Tomihito-shinnō was born on 14 August 1297, and died on 2 December 1348. He was the fourth son of the 92nd Emperor Fushimi, and belonged to the Jimyōin-tō branch of the Imperial Family. He became Emperor Hanazono on 28 December 1308 after the abdication of his second cousin, the Emperor Go-Nijō. (Of course, such dates from so long ago can only be tied down to the Gregorian calendar with much approximation.)
During Hanazono’s reign, both his brother and father, the retired-Emperor Fushimi, are said to have exerted influence as cloistered emperors. And the reign was marked by negotiations with another family line that claimed the throne and the Bakufu (military). An agreement to alternate the throne every 10 years between the two lines (the so-called Bumpō Agreement) was broken by Emperor Go-Daigo, Hanzono’s second cousin, who took over when Hanazono abdicated in 1318.
In 1335, Hanazono became a Buddhist monk of the Zen sect. He was considered very religious, never failing to miss prayers to the Amitabha Buddha. He was also literate, and is said to have excelled at tanka, a kind of poetry. He left behind a diary, Wikipedia says, called Hanazono Tennō Shinki (Imperial Chronicles of the Flower Garden Temple). There is very little information about this diary online and in English, but a couple of books, viewable on Googlebooks, use short extracts.
Sacred Gardens and Landscapes: Ritual and Agency by Michel Conan says this: ‘Emperor Hanazono describes in his diary an imperial progress in the fourth month of 1320; on this occasion, when the imperial party boarded two boats and played music in them under the moonlight, as the parties rowed around the lake, he observes that ‘the sounds of the wind and string instruments and the water’s voice from the waterfall filled our ears’. ’
Another quote from Hanazono Tennō Shinki can be found in Buddhas and Kami in Japan: Honji Suijaku as a Combinatory Paradigm, edited by Mark Teeuwen and Fabio Rambelli. However, it comes (slightly modified) from another book Kyogoku Tamekane: Poetry and Politics in Late Kamakura Japan by Robert N Huey.
‘Ordinary people do not understand these religious truths. Tameyo, who claims the main descent from Shunzei and Teika, has no idea of such things. They just made no impression on him. He jealously holds to the six modes of poetry and cannot see the true meaning of the art. Yet most of the world follows him, and the true Way of Poetry is gradually being abandoned . . . In recent years I have met with the holy man of Sōko and learned the tenets of religion. I have also met with Shinsō Hōnin and heard doctrines of Tendai. I have perused the Five Classics and have come to understand the doctrine of Confucianism. With this knowledge I have thought anew about the Way of Poetry. Truly the distinction between right and wrong in poetry is like that between heaven and earth.’
Sunday, December 28, 2008
Friday, December 19, 2008
Emily Brontë peels apples
Emily Brontë, author of Wuthering Heights one of the classics of British 19th century literature, died 160 years ago today aged only 30. There is no evidence that she kept a diary or journal, however she did write four diary-like pieces in collaboration with her sister Anne, and these, in fact are the only pieces of autobiographical writing that Emily left behind. All of them are freely available online - and very domestic they are too.
Emily was born on 30 July 1818 at Thornton near Bradford in Yorkshire, the fifth of six children. In 1820, the family moved to Haworth, also in Yorkshire, where Emily’s father was curate. The following year, Emily’s mother died, and her sister joined the household. The children were sent away to school at various times during their lives, but when at home they encouraged each other in imaginative games and writing. Emily worked for a while as a governess, and taught the piano. In 1842, she and two surviving sisters travelled to Brussels to improve their French, with the idea of starting a school on their return. But that plan never came to fruition. A year or two later, though, they published an edition of their poetry under pseudonyms (Ellis for Emily, Currer for Charlotte, and Acton for Anne).
In 1847, Emily published her only novel, Wuthering Heights. Although now considered a classic of English literature, Wikipedia says, it met with mixed reviews initially, ‘with many horrified by the stark depictions of mental and physical cruelty’. Oddly, Wikipedia’s entry on Wuthering Heights is much longer that the one on Emily. In September 1848, Emily caught a cold at the funeral of her brother, and this led to tuberculosis. She refused medical help and died 19 December 1848, 160 years ago today.
There are no records of Emily Brontë ever having kept a diary. However, there are four autobiographical pieces which seem to have been written as one-off diary entries. Two of them were written with her sister, Anne, in 1834 and 1837, and signed together - these are referred to as Diary Papers. And two were written by Emily on her birthdays in 1841 and 1845, and these are referred to both as Diary Papers and Birthday Papers. They can all be found online, for example at the website of the Brooklyn College English Department, and in several biographies, such as Emily Brontë by Lyn Pykett, published by Rowman & Littlefield, in 1989 (viewable at Googlebooks). The British Library has a photograph of the 1837 Diary Paper and some further information.
Pykett says, of the 1834 fragment, that it hardly suggests ‘the sixteen-year-old Emily is undergoing a stormy adolescence’ and instead offers ‘a sufficiently mundane impression of the daily life of the Haworth Parsonage’. Moreover, she adds, Emily’s ‘tenuous grasp of spelling and punctuation’ only adds to ‘the general impression of rather happy-go-lucky chaos’ in a ‘scene of female industry’.
Here is the 1834 Diary Paper, dated 24 November.
‘I fed Rainbow, Diamond Snowflake Jasper pheasant (alias) this morning Branwell went down to Mr. Driver’s and brought news that Sir Robert Peel was going to be invited to stand for Leeds Anne and I have been peeling apples for Charlotte to make us an apple pudding and for Aunt nuts and apples Charlotte said she made puddings perfectly and she was of a quick but limited intellect. Taby said just now Come Anne pilloputate (i.e. pill a potato) Aunt has come into the kitchen just now and said where are your feet Anne Anne answered On the floor Aunt papa opened the parlour door and gave Branwell a letter saying here Branwell read this and show it to your Aunt and Charlotte - The Gondals are discovering the interior of Gaaldine Sally Mosley is washing in the back kitchen
It is past Twelve o’clock Anne and I have not tidied ourselves, done our bedwork or done our lessons and we want to go out to play we are going to have for Dinner Boiled Beef, Turnips, potatoes and applepudding. The Kitchin is in a very untidy state Anne and I have not done our music exercise which consists of b major Taby said on my putting a pen in her face Ya pitter pottering there instead of pilling a potate I answered O Dear, O Dear, O dear I will directly with that I get up, take a knife and begin pilling (finished) pilling the potatoes papa going to walk Mr. Sunderland expected.
Anne and I say I wonder what we shall be like and what we shall be and where we shall be if all goes on well in the year 1874 - in which year I shall be in my 54th year Anne will be going in her 55th year Branwell will be going in his 58th year And Charlotte in her 59th year hoping we shall all be well at that time we close our paper’
Emily was born on 30 July 1818 at Thornton near Bradford in Yorkshire, the fifth of six children. In 1820, the family moved to Haworth, also in Yorkshire, where Emily’s father was curate. The following year, Emily’s mother died, and her sister joined the household. The children were sent away to school at various times during their lives, but when at home they encouraged each other in imaginative games and writing. Emily worked for a while as a governess, and taught the piano. In 1842, she and two surviving sisters travelled to Brussels to improve their French, with the idea of starting a school on their return. But that plan never came to fruition. A year or two later, though, they published an edition of their poetry under pseudonyms (Ellis for Emily, Currer for Charlotte, and Acton for Anne).
In 1847, Emily published her only novel, Wuthering Heights. Although now considered a classic of English literature, Wikipedia says, it met with mixed reviews initially, ‘with many horrified by the stark depictions of mental and physical cruelty’. Oddly, Wikipedia’s entry on Wuthering Heights is much longer that the one on Emily. In September 1848, Emily caught a cold at the funeral of her brother, and this led to tuberculosis. She refused medical help and died 19 December 1848, 160 years ago today.
There are no records of Emily Brontë ever having kept a diary. However, there are four autobiographical pieces which seem to have been written as one-off diary entries. Two of them were written with her sister, Anne, in 1834 and 1837, and signed together - these are referred to as Diary Papers. And two were written by Emily on her birthdays in 1841 and 1845, and these are referred to both as Diary Papers and Birthday Papers. They can all be found online, for example at the website of the Brooklyn College English Department, and in several biographies, such as Emily Brontë by Lyn Pykett, published by Rowman & Littlefield, in 1989 (viewable at Googlebooks). The British Library has a photograph of the 1837 Diary Paper and some further information.
Pykett says, of the 1834 fragment, that it hardly suggests ‘the sixteen-year-old Emily is undergoing a stormy adolescence’ and instead offers ‘a sufficiently mundane impression of the daily life of the Haworth Parsonage’. Moreover, she adds, Emily’s ‘tenuous grasp of spelling and punctuation’ only adds to ‘the general impression of rather happy-go-lucky chaos’ in a ‘scene of female industry’.
Here is the 1834 Diary Paper, dated 24 November.
‘I fed Rainbow, Diamond Snowflake Jasper pheasant (alias) this morning Branwell went down to Mr. Driver’s and brought news that Sir Robert Peel was going to be invited to stand for Leeds Anne and I have been peeling apples for Charlotte to make us an apple pudding and for Aunt nuts and apples Charlotte said she made puddings perfectly and she was of a quick but limited intellect. Taby said just now Come Anne pilloputate (i.e. pill a potato) Aunt has come into the kitchen just now and said where are your feet Anne Anne answered On the floor Aunt papa opened the parlour door and gave Branwell a letter saying here Branwell read this and show it to your Aunt and Charlotte - The Gondals are discovering the interior of Gaaldine Sally Mosley is washing in the back kitchen
It is past Twelve o’clock Anne and I have not tidied ourselves, done our bedwork or done our lessons and we want to go out to play we are going to have for Dinner Boiled Beef, Turnips, potatoes and applepudding. The Kitchin is in a very untidy state Anne and I have not done our music exercise which consists of b major Taby said on my putting a pen in her face Ya pitter pottering there instead of pilling a potate I answered O Dear, O Dear, O dear I will directly with that I get up, take a knife and begin pilling (finished) pilling the potatoes papa going to walk Mr. Sunderland expected.
Anne and I say I wonder what we shall be like and what we shall be and where we shall be if all goes on well in the year 1874 - in which year I shall be in my 54th year Anne will be going in her 55th year Branwell will be going in his 58th year And Charlotte in her 59th year hoping we shall all be well at that time we close our paper’
Wednesday, December 17, 2008
1798 - year of woe
Mary Leadbeater, an Irish poet and diarist, was born 250 years ago this month. Her diary, published as The Annals of Ballitore, provides a literary but graphic account of the Irish Rebellion of 1798, as well as an incredibly moving account of the death of her own daughter - ‘so beautiful, so engaging, so beloved’ - which is reproduced below.
Born in December 1758 (the exact date is not known), Mary Shackleton was the daughter of the schoolmaster in Ballitore, a village in County Kildare founded by the Quakers in the 1700s. She travelled to London with her father in 1784, where they paid several visits to Edmund Burke’s town house, and where she met Sir Joshua Reynolds and George Crabbe. In 1791, she married William Leadbeater, a former pupil and teacher at her father’s school, and they settled in Ballitore. More biographical information can be found at Wikipedia, The Diary Junction, and Library Ireland.
Mary Leadbeater’s first published work, Extracts and Original Anecdotes for the Improvement of Youth, appeared anonymously in 1794, but she went on to publish collections of poems and several books - Her Cottage Dialogues and The Landlord’s Friend for example - which are considered to provide insight into the domestic and communal life of rural Ireland at the time. She is best remembered, though, for her diary, which she began aged only 11, and which she continued writing until a few years before her death in 1826. Extracts from this, entitled The Annals of Ballitore, were published in the first volume of The Leadbeater Papers in 1862. The full text can be read online at Internet Archive or Googlebooks.
Her first hand account of the Irish Rebellion in 1798 is particularly harrowing. Ballitore was occupied first by yeoman and soldiers and them by insurgents. The Leadbeaters themselves narrowly escaped death, but they then suffered the death of their daughter. Here is a longish extract from the Annals, dated almost exactly 210 years ago, the last weeks of 1798, in which Mary Leadbeater writes about her daughter’s dying.
‘A general rebuilding of the ruined houses now took place, but even this work was in a great measure carried on by plunder. The stately trees of Ballitore were often missed in the morning, and we could hear at night the sound of their being felled and the creaking of the cars which took them away. Desolation threatened in various shapes - the darkness of the winter nights was illumined by the fires of the houses burnt by the insurgents, and fatal was their vengeance. One man whom they thought they had killed and had thrown into a ditch, pulling down part of the bank upon him, was not fatally injured, struggled out of his grave, ran naked to Baltinglass, and convicted his intended murderers. A large burial moved through Ballitore with a kind of indignant solemnity. It was that of a young man who had been hanged, and whose father, on his son’s being apprehended, put an end to his own life. Such were the tragedies with which we were surrounded, and with which we had grown shockingly familiar.
Thus were we circumstanced when a sore domestic calamity seemed to fill up the measure of our sufferings. We thought we had a little respite from our foes, and we were once more assembled in peace around Mary and Anne’s fireside, when our dear little Jane was trusted by me with a wax taper to go up stairs alone. The staircase was short, and her grandmother was in her own room with her attendant. I was not used to be so incautious, and the thought crossed my mind, ‘Is it safe?’ A distinct voice seemed to reply, ‘The child is so steady;’ and all recollection of her left me till I heard her shrieks. Then the truth flashed upon me, and I accused myself of having murdered my child! She had gone into another room than her grandmother’s, and had laid down the taper; it caught her clothes, and the flames were not easily extinguished. A kind of convulsion stiffened her for a moment; the burns though extensive were but skin-deep, and those around us assured us she was in no danger. Alas, we were not aware that the fright she got had stopped the circulation of the blood. 0! why were we not aware of it? Let this be remembered by others, and may no one else experience the distress caused by our error.
The dear child soon ceased to complain of pain, kissed all those about her, and was cheerful, yet all night was thirsty, wakeful, and cold, with but little pulse. In the morning her whole form and sweet countenance underwent a momentary revolution which I cannot describe. We had sent to Athy for a doctor, but he said nothing could be done. Meantime, unconscious that she was leaving us, the dear innocent got her book and her work into her bed, and repeated her little verses, spoke with her usual courtesy to all around her, and, happy in her short life, closed her eyes never more to open them, just twenty-four hours after the accident happened. We who had lost our darling child of four years old felt deeply the deprivation, and struggled hard to submit to the will of Him who gives and takes away.
My grief was aggravated by self-accusation. I beheld my little cherub lie as in a placid sleep, her bloom not quite gone. I listened to those who desired me to reflect on the many fathers of families who lay buried in ditches, slaughtered in the prime of manhood and of usefulness; and to the widow who with tears reminded me that I had still my husband! I reflected how, a brief time ago, his precious life had seemed near departing, and I strove to extract consolation from the genuine sympathy bestowed by our friends; yet I thought no sympathy reached my heart so fully as once when I raised my eyes from contemplating the lovely remains of my child, and met those of a poor neighbour woman fastened upon me in silence, large tears streaming down her cheeks, her countenance filled with the deepest concern. She was a coarse-featured, strong, rough woman, and had forborne any expression by words of what she felt.
Our Jane was borne from our sight; the grave closed upon her for ever; her little playfellows bedecked it with flowers, and wept for their lost companion, while their schoolmistress and her husband mourned as for a favourite grandchild. Even in this season of universal dismay the loss of this dear child was very generally deplored; she was so beautiful, so engaging, so beloved - not like a thing of earth. So ended the year 1798. Oh! year of woe!
That year, that eventful year, which to me began with the fulness of joy, I saw depart laden with deep and piercing sorrow. Thus trouble takes its rounds; but ‘shall we receive good at the hand of the Lord, and shall we not also receive evil?’
We were almost prepared to congratulate our precious child on her escape, and to think that her timid nature might have been terrified into imbecility, when, shortly after her death, the robbers paid us another visit, breaking in the windows in the solemn midnight, and scaring us out of our quiet slumbers to behold armed men in our very chambers. They discovered what we strove to conceal, for their search was very strict, and they took whatever suited their purposes; but withal treated us with civility and respect.’
Born in December 1758 (the exact date is not known), Mary Shackleton was the daughter of the schoolmaster in Ballitore, a village in County Kildare founded by the Quakers in the 1700s. She travelled to London with her father in 1784, where they paid several visits to Edmund Burke’s town house, and where she met Sir Joshua Reynolds and George Crabbe. In 1791, she married William Leadbeater, a former pupil and teacher at her father’s school, and they settled in Ballitore. More biographical information can be found at Wikipedia, The Diary Junction, and Library Ireland.
Mary Leadbeater’s first published work, Extracts and Original Anecdotes for the Improvement of Youth, appeared anonymously in 1794, but she went on to publish collections of poems and several books - Her Cottage Dialogues and The Landlord’s Friend for example - which are considered to provide insight into the domestic and communal life of rural Ireland at the time. She is best remembered, though, for her diary, which she began aged only 11, and which she continued writing until a few years before her death in 1826. Extracts from this, entitled The Annals of Ballitore, were published in the first volume of The Leadbeater Papers in 1862. The full text can be read online at Internet Archive or Googlebooks.
Her first hand account of the Irish Rebellion in 1798 is particularly harrowing. Ballitore was occupied first by yeoman and soldiers and them by insurgents. The Leadbeaters themselves narrowly escaped death, but they then suffered the death of their daughter. Here is a longish extract from the Annals, dated almost exactly 210 years ago, the last weeks of 1798, in which Mary Leadbeater writes about her daughter’s dying.
‘A general rebuilding of the ruined houses now took place, but even this work was in a great measure carried on by plunder. The stately trees of Ballitore were often missed in the morning, and we could hear at night the sound of their being felled and the creaking of the cars which took them away. Desolation threatened in various shapes - the darkness of the winter nights was illumined by the fires of the houses burnt by the insurgents, and fatal was their vengeance. One man whom they thought they had killed and had thrown into a ditch, pulling down part of the bank upon him, was not fatally injured, struggled out of his grave, ran naked to Baltinglass, and convicted his intended murderers. A large burial moved through Ballitore with a kind of indignant solemnity. It was that of a young man who had been hanged, and whose father, on his son’s being apprehended, put an end to his own life. Such were the tragedies with which we were surrounded, and with which we had grown shockingly familiar.
Thus were we circumstanced when a sore domestic calamity seemed to fill up the measure of our sufferings. We thought we had a little respite from our foes, and we were once more assembled in peace around Mary and Anne’s fireside, when our dear little Jane was trusted by me with a wax taper to go up stairs alone. The staircase was short, and her grandmother was in her own room with her attendant. I was not used to be so incautious, and the thought crossed my mind, ‘Is it safe?’ A distinct voice seemed to reply, ‘The child is so steady;’ and all recollection of her left me till I heard her shrieks. Then the truth flashed upon me, and I accused myself of having murdered my child! She had gone into another room than her grandmother’s, and had laid down the taper; it caught her clothes, and the flames were not easily extinguished. A kind of convulsion stiffened her for a moment; the burns though extensive were but skin-deep, and those around us assured us she was in no danger. Alas, we were not aware that the fright she got had stopped the circulation of the blood. 0! why were we not aware of it? Let this be remembered by others, and may no one else experience the distress caused by our error.
The dear child soon ceased to complain of pain, kissed all those about her, and was cheerful, yet all night was thirsty, wakeful, and cold, with but little pulse. In the morning her whole form and sweet countenance underwent a momentary revolution which I cannot describe. We had sent to Athy for a doctor, but he said nothing could be done. Meantime, unconscious that she was leaving us, the dear innocent got her book and her work into her bed, and repeated her little verses, spoke with her usual courtesy to all around her, and, happy in her short life, closed her eyes never more to open them, just twenty-four hours after the accident happened. We who had lost our darling child of four years old felt deeply the deprivation, and struggled hard to submit to the will of Him who gives and takes away.
My grief was aggravated by self-accusation. I beheld my little cherub lie as in a placid sleep, her bloom not quite gone. I listened to those who desired me to reflect on the many fathers of families who lay buried in ditches, slaughtered in the prime of manhood and of usefulness; and to the widow who with tears reminded me that I had still my husband! I reflected how, a brief time ago, his precious life had seemed near departing, and I strove to extract consolation from the genuine sympathy bestowed by our friends; yet I thought no sympathy reached my heart so fully as once when I raised my eyes from contemplating the lovely remains of my child, and met those of a poor neighbour woman fastened upon me in silence, large tears streaming down her cheeks, her countenance filled with the deepest concern. She was a coarse-featured, strong, rough woman, and had forborne any expression by words of what she felt.
Our Jane was borne from our sight; the grave closed upon her for ever; her little playfellows bedecked it with flowers, and wept for their lost companion, while their schoolmistress and her husband mourned as for a favourite grandchild. Even in this season of universal dismay the loss of this dear child was very generally deplored; she was so beautiful, so engaging, so beloved - not like a thing of earth. So ended the year 1798. Oh! year of woe!
That year, that eventful year, which to me began with the fulness of joy, I saw depart laden with deep and piercing sorrow. Thus trouble takes its rounds; but ‘shall we receive good at the hand of the Lord, and shall we not also receive evil?’
We were almost prepared to congratulate our precious child on her escape, and to think that her timid nature might have been terrified into imbecility, when, shortly after her death, the robbers paid us another visit, breaking in the windows in the solemn midnight, and scaring us out of our quiet slumbers to behold armed men in our very chambers. They discovered what we strove to conceal, for their search was very strict, and they took whatever suited their purposes; but withal treated us with civility and respect.’
Friday, December 12, 2008
A pope’s view of Mussolini
The diaries of Papa Giovanni XXIII (Pope John XXIII) are being published in full next week, but only in Italian. According to press reports, these show his views about Benito Mussolini wavered much over time. An edited version of his spiritual diary in English has been available for over 40 years, since just after his death in 1963; and more recently some prophetic statements, said to come from the pope’s diaries, have been quoted widely on the internet.
There is no shortage of information about Angelo Giuseppe Roncalli on the internet. Try Wikipedia, The Vatican, or Time Magazine (which carried an archive article on him dating from his inauguration as pope in 1958). He was born at Sotto il Monte, Bergamo, the fourth child in a large religious family of sharecroppers, and entered the Bergamo seminary when only 11, which is where he began to make spiritual diary notes, a practice he continued throughout his life. He was ordained in 1904 as a priest and was soon appointed secretary to the bishop of Bergamo. From 1915, Roncalli served as a military chaplain, and in 1920 was made director of the Italian organisation for the support of foreign missions. In 1925 he was ordained bishop.
Pope Pius XI brought him in to the Vatican’s diplomatic service and, thereafter, he served in Bulgaria, where he remained until 1935, Greece and Turkey (1935-1944), and France (1944-1953). During the last months of the war and after peace was achieved he aided prisoners of war and helped to normalise the ecclesiastical organisation in France. In 1953, he was created a cardinal and sent to Venice as Patriarch. Five years later, he was elected pope, and took the name John XXIII. Although his pontificate lasted only five years, he is considered to have been one of the most popular popes of modern times (due, it is said, to his personal warmth, good humour and kindness), and to have begun a new era of openness in the Roman Catholic Church.
An edited version of his spiritual diary was published in 1965 - Journal of the Soul. The Diary Junction gives links to websites with some extracts. Here is one of ten resolutions he committed to his diary in 1897 while still a teenager: ‘At table, whether speaking or eating, I will never be greedy or immoderate; I will always find an opportunity for a little mortification; as regards the drinking of wine I will be more than moderate, because in wine lies the same danger as in women: ‘Wine and women lead intelligent men astray.’
More recently, several websites have carried a number of supposed extracts from the pope’s diaries. Here is what Morgana’s Observatory says: ‘The following article has been published by various sources on the Internet, including Insight Magazine. I have not found this ‘diary’ mentioned anywhere but on the WWW. It is republished here for general interest only. Its authenticity is strongly in doubt. The dusty, leather-bound diary containing handwritten predictions was found by a Vatican cleaning woman who was sorting through boxes stacked in a seldom used storage room. . . Father DeAngelo, now 73 years old has agreed to release some of the diary entries made between February of 1959 and April of 1963. The scrawled messages reveal a frightened and excited Pontiff who decided to keep his meetings with Christ and the Madonna a secret.’ And here is one of the prophecies:
6 March 1961
‘Just when I thought my heavenly visits were over, the Madonna comes to me once again. She seems tired of the heartache she must share with me. My heart aches to see him hurting so. The news, again foreboding. In the early 1990s there will be a period of deadly natural disasters. She says paradise will be struck by powerful winds and wails, while killer floods and violent earthquakes will shatter man’s dwellings. By the middle of the decade, regional skirmishes will develop into full-fledged conflicts. As the casualties mount, world-wide famine will strike. The devastation will be like none ever seen, especially throughout Africa where millions will perish.’
Now, though, Pope John XXIII’s diaries are being published in full (though I doubt they include the prophecies!). A grand launch is taking place next Tuesday at Oratorio del Gonfalone in Rome, presided over by some eminent doctors and professors, including Prof Valerio Onida, President of ‘Fondazione per le scienze religiose di Bologna’ which is publishing the diaries: I Diari di A.G. Roncalli - Giovanni XXIII. According to the foundation’s website, though, the ‘Edizione Nazionale’ of Roncalli’s diaries are being published in many volumes, the first of which seems to have appeared in 2004. Perhaps, therefore, the big event on Tuesday is to celebrate publication of the final volumes.
In any case, this week Times Online ran an article about the diaries being ‘published in full’. It says they confirm Roncalli regarded Mussolini, Italy’s Fascist dictator, as a man who had ‘committed errors’ but who had, nonetheless, brought Italy ‘great benefits’. The article carries several quotes, presumably translated by the article’s author, Richard Owen in Rome. (It is not clear, though, whether all these quotes come from the volumes actually being published next week.)
1924
‘In my conscience as a priest and a Christian, I do not feel I can vote for the Fascists. Of one thing I am certain: the salvation of Italy cannot come from Mussolini, even though he may be gifted. His goals may perhaps be good and correct, but the means he uses to realise them are wicked and contrary to the Gospel.’
1936
‘A hidden force is guiding [Mussolini] and protecting Italy.’
July 1943
‘The gravest news of the day is the withdrawal of Mussolini from power. . . The Duce’s gesture is I believe an act of wisdom which does him honour. No, I will not throw stones at him. For him too, sic transit gloria mundi. But the great good which he did for Italy remains. His withdrawal is an expiation for some of his sins. Dominus parcat illi (May the Lord have mercy on him).’
After the war, though, Owen writes, Roncalli described Mussolini’s dictatorship as an ‘immense calamity’ which had brought ‘great sorrow to the Italian people’.
There is no shortage of information about Angelo Giuseppe Roncalli on the internet. Try Wikipedia, The Vatican, or Time Magazine (which carried an archive article on him dating from his inauguration as pope in 1958). He was born at Sotto il Monte, Bergamo, the fourth child in a large religious family of sharecroppers, and entered the Bergamo seminary when only 11, which is where he began to make spiritual diary notes, a practice he continued throughout his life. He was ordained in 1904 as a priest and was soon appointed secretary to the bishop of Bergamo. From 1915, Roncalli served as a military chaplain, and in 1920 was made director of the Italian organisation for the support of foreign missions. In 1925 he was ordained bishop.
Pope Pius XI brought him in to the Vatican’s diplomatic service and, thereafter, he served in Bulgaria, where he remained until 1935, Greece and Turkey (1935-1944), and France (1944-1953). During the last months of the war and after peace was achieved he aided prisoners of war and helped to normalise the ecclesiastical organisation in France. In 1953, he was created a cardinal and sent to Venice as Patriarch. Five years later, he was elected pope, and took the name John XXIII. Although his pontificate lasted only five years, he is considered to have been one of the most popular popes of modern times (due, it is said, to his personal warmth, good humour and kindness), and to have begun a new era of openness in the Roman Catholic Church.
An edited version of his spiritual diary was published in 1965 - Journal of the Soul. The Diary Junction gives links to websites with some extracts. Here is one of ten resolutions he committed to his diary in 1897 while still a teenager: ‘At table, whether speaking or eating, I will never be greedy or immoderate; I will always find an opportunity for a little mortification; as regards the drinking of wine I will be more than moderate, because in wine lies the same danger as in women: ‘Wine and women lead intelligent men astray.’
More recently, several websites have carried a number of supposed extracts from the pope’s diaries. Here is what Morgana’s Observatory says: ‘The following article has been published by various sources on the Internet, including Insight Magazine. I have not found this ‘diary’ mentioned anywhere but on the WWW. It is republished here for general interest only. Its authenticity is strongly in doubt. The dusty, leather-bound diary containing handwritten predictions was found by a Vatican cleaning woman who was sorting through boxes stacked in a seldom used storage room. . . Father DeAngelo, now 73 years old has agreed to release some of the diary entries made between February of 1959 and April of 1963. The scrawled messages reveal a frightened and excited Pontiff who decided to keep his meetings with Christ and the Madonna a secret.’ And here is one of the prophecies:
6 March 1961
‘Just when I thought my heavenly visits were over, the Madonna comes to me once again. She seems tired of the heartache she must share with me. My heart aches to see him hurting so. The news, again foreboding. In the early 1990s there will be a period of deadly natural disasters. She says paradise will be struck by powerful winds and wails, while killer floods and violent earthquakes will shatter man’s dwellings. By the middle of the decade, regional skirmishes will develop into full-fledged conflicts. As the casualties mount, world-wide famine will strike. The devastation will be like none ever seen, especially throughout Africa where millions will perish.’
Now, though, Pope John XXIII’s diaries are being published in full (though I doubt they include the prophecies!). A grand launch is taking place next Tuesday at Oratorio del Gonfalone in Rome, presided over by some eminent doctors and professors, including Prof Valerio Onida, President of ‘Fondazione per le scienze religiose di Bologna’ which is publishing the diaries: I Diari di A.G. Roncalli - Giovanni XXIII. According to the foundation’s website, though, the ‘Edizione Nazionale’ of Roncalli’s diaries are being published in many volumes, the first of which seems to have appeared in 2004. Perhaps, therefore, the big event on Tuesday is to celebrate publication of the final volumes.
In any case, this week Times Online ran an article about the diaries being ‘published in full’. It says they confirm Roncalli regarded Mussolini, Italy’s Fascist dictator, as a man who had ‘committed errors’ but who had, nonetheless, brought Italy ‘great benefits’. The article carries several quotes, presumably translated by the article’s author, Richard Owen in Rome. (It is not clear, though, whether all these quotes come from the volumes actually being published next week.)
1924
‘In my conscience as a priest and a Christian, I do not feel I can vote for the Fascists. Of one thing I am certain: the salvation of Italy cannot come from Mussolini, even though he may be gifted. His goals may perhaps be good and correct, but the means he uses to realise them are wicked and contrary to the Gospel.’
1936
‘A hidden force is guiding [Mussolini] and protecting Italy.’
July 1943
‘The gravest news of the day is the withdrawal of Mussolini from power. . . The Duce’s gesture is I believe an act of wisdom which does him honour. No, I will not throw stones at him. For him too, sic transit gloria mundi. But the great good which he did for Italy remains. His withdrawal is an expiation for some of his sins. Dominus parcat illi (May the Lord have mercy on him).’
After the war, though, Owen writes, Roncalli described Mussolini’s dictatorship as an ‘immense calamity’ which had brought ‘great sorrow to the Italian people’.
Wednesday, December 10, 2008
The people of Pemba
Four centuries ago today, an explorer and sailor named Robert Coverte was landing on the island of Pemba, part of the Zanzibar archipelago off the east coast of Africa. A few days later, some of his crew were to be murdered there. Nevertheless, he wrote in his diary that the people of Pemba ‘seeme to bee louing and kind’.
Not much is known about Coverte, other than what can be deduced from his diary first published in 1612 with a very lengthy title (as copied from the British Library catalogue): A True and almost Incredible Report of an Englishman, that, being cast away in the good ship called the Assention in Cambaya the farthest part of the East Indies, trauelled by land through many vnknowne kingdomes, and great cities. With a particular description of all those kingdomes, cities, and people. As also a relation of their commodities and manner of traffique, and at what seasons of the yeere they are most in vse. Faithfully related. With a discouery of a great emperour called the Great Mogoll, a prince not till now known to our English nation.
An American rare book dealer, William Reese Company, is offering a copy of the second edition, published in 1614, for sale at $25,000. Its website provides what little information there is about Coverte. He and his men, it says, left Plymouth in March 1607 and were among the first Englishmen to see the Cape of Good Hope, arriving there in July 1608. Coverte eventually reached Gujarat, where his ship ran aground while approaching Surat. Not granted permission to remain in Surat, the crew departed to various destinations, but Coverte and others set out for the Moghul Court at Agra, arriving there in December 1609. They left in January 1610 and made their way back to the Levant travelling by way of Kandahar, Esfahan, and Baghdad. They reached Aleppo a year later, and then sailed to England, arriving the following April.
The entire text of the 1612 Incredible Report can be read at Early English Books Online. Here, through, are some entries taken from a copy of Coverte’s journal privately printed in Philadelphia in 1931 - see Googlebooks. It has an introduction and notes by Boies Penrose (a lawyer and politician) who said the narrative was ‘vigorous’ and ‘one of the best examples of a travel journal that the period produced.’ The following extracts date from December 1608, starting with one from exactly 400 years ago today.
‘The tenth day of December about two or three of the Clock in the morning, and the Moone shiny, we espied on a sudden low land with high trees growing by the shore side, we being not a league form the shore, so that if we had not espied the trees, we should haue thought the land to haue been a shadow of the Moone, and so might haue run ourselues on shore, and cast our selues away with ship and goods but it was Gods good prouidence thus to defend us from so great and eminent danger, whose name be blessed and praised now euermore.
This was the island of Pemba, which we tooke to be Zinzabar, untill by one of the people of the Countrey we found it to be Pemba. At the sight of this low Iland - after we plainely perceiued it, wee presently tackt about and set from the shore till day and then we tackt about againe to the shore side, and neering along the shore side for a harbour to ancor in, wee sent Pinnis in the meane time, to the shore withe the Gang onlie and master Elmore to seeke for a conuenient watering place, wee keeping our course till our Pinnis came to the shore side. Then two or three people of the Iland demanded in the Portugall language what we were, and one of our men made answer, that we were Englishmen.
Then they demanded againe what we had to doe there, in regard the King of Portugall was King of that Iland: wee replied, that wee knew not so much, neither came we thither for any euill intent whatsoeuer, but only to water, and would giue them satisfaction, for any other thing we should haue of them. Then it drew towards night, and our man came aboard and acquainted the whole Company with this their parly on shore.’
‘The 19 day our Long-boat went a shore in the morning verie early, to fill our Caske with water . . . they gaue the watchword and sounded a horne, and presently set upon our men at the watering place and slew Iohn Harrington, the boat-swaines man, and wounded Robert Buckler. Master Ellmores man very sore, with 8 or 10 seurall wounds, and had killed him, but we discharged a Musket or two, which (as it seemed) hurt some of them; for then they retired and cried out: and so (though weake and faint) he did at length recouer our boat. Also two or three more of our men by creeping, and lying close in the ditch, untill they espied our, got also safe aboard, and then counting our men, we only missed Edward Churchman, and Iohn Harrington, that was slaine: and so comming aboard, we certified the company of all our proceedings on shoare; and our surgeon dressed Robert Buckler; and after, did his best for his cure and recouery of his health. . .’
‘The twentieth day in the morning we went on shoare . . . we found Iohn Harrington dead and starke naked, whome we buried at another Iland, hard by the main Iland. . . The naturall people of the Iland Pemba, seeme to bee louing and kind: for they made signes to me and others, at our first comming, to beware of our throats cutting: which we tooke no heede or notice of, untill this their treachery put in minde thereof againe.’
Not much is known about Coverte, other than what can be deduced from his diary first published in 1612 with a very lengthy title (as copied from the British Library catalogue): A True and almost Incredible Report of an Englishman, that, being cast away in the good ship called the Assention in Cambaya the farthest part of the East Indies, trauelled by land through many vnknowne kingdomes, and great cities. With a particular description of all those kingdomes, cities, and people. As also a relation of their commodities and manner of traffique, and at what seasons of the yeere they are most in vse. Faithfully related. With a discouery of a great emperour called the Great Mogoll, a prince not till now known to our English nation.
An American rare book dealer, William Reese Company, is offering a copy of the second edition, published in 1614, for sale at $25,000. Its website provides what little information there is about Coverte. He and his men, it says, left Plymouth in March 1607 and were among the first Englishmen to see the Cape of Good Hope, arriving there in July 1608. Coverte eventually reached Gujarat, where his ship ran aground while approaching Surat. Not granted permission to remain in Surat, the crew departed to various destinations, but Coverte and others set out for the Moghul Court at Agra, arriving there in December 1609. They left in January 1610 and made their way back to the Levant travelling by way of Kandahar, Esfahan, and Baghdad. They reached Aleppo a year later, and then sailed to England, arriving the following April.
The entire text of the 1612 Incredible Report can be read at Early English Books Online. Here, through, are some entries taken from a copy of Coverte’s journal privately printed in Philadelphia in 1931 - see Googlebooks. It has an introduction and notes by Boies Penrose (a lawyer and politician) who said the narrative was ‘vigorous’ and ‘one of the best examples of a travel journal that the period produced.’ The following extracts date from December 1608, starting with one from exactly 400 years ago today.
‘The tenth day of December about two or three of the Clock in the morning, and the Moone shiny, we espied on a sudden low land with high trees growing by the shore side, we being not a league form the shore, so that if we had not espied the trees, we should haue thought the land to haue been a shadow of the Moone, and so might haue run ourselues on shore, and cast our selues away with ship and goods but it was Gods good prouidence thus to defend us from so great and eminent danger, whose name be blessed and praised now euermore.
This was the island of Pemba, which we tooke to be Zinzabar, untill by one of the people of the Countrey we found it to be Pemba. At the sight of this low Iland - after we plainely perceiued it, wee presently tackt about and set from the shore till day and then we tackt about againe to the shore side, and neering along the shore side for a harbour to ancor in, wee sent Pinnis in the meane time, to the shore withe the Gang onlie and master Elmore to seeke for a conuenient watering place, wee keeping our course till our Pinnis came to the shore side. Then two or three people of the Iland demanded in the Portugall language what we were, and one of our men made answer, that we were Englishmen.
Then they demanded againe what we had to doe there, in regard the King of Portugall was King of that Iland: wee replied, that wee knew not so much, neither came we thither for any euill intent whatsoeuer, but only to water, and would giue them satisfaction, for any other thing we should haue of them. Then it drew towards night, and our man came aboard and acquainted the whole Company with this their parly on shore.’
‘The 19 day our Long-boat went a shore in the morning verie early, to fill our Caske with water . . . they gaue the watchword and sounded a horne, and presently set upon our men at the watering place and slew Iohn Harrington, the boat-swaines man, and wounded Robert Buckler. Master Ellmores man very sore, with 8 or 10 seurall wounds, and had killed him, but we discharged a Musket or two, which (as it seemed) hurt some of them; for then they retired and cried out: and so (though weake and faint) he did at length recouer our boat. Also two or three more of our men by creeping, and lying close in the ditch, untill they espied our, got also safe aboard, and then counting our men, we only missed Edward Churchman, and Iohn Harrington, that was slaine: and so comming aboard, we certified the company of all our proceedings on shoare; and our surgeon dressed Robert Buckler; and after, did his best for his cure and recouery of his health. . .’
‘The twentieth day in the morning we went on shoare . . . we found Iohn Harrington dead and starke naked, whome we buried at another Iland, hard by the main Iland. . . The naturall people of the Iland Pemba, seeme to bee louing and kind: for they made signes to me and others, at our first comming, to beware of our throats cutting: which we tooke no heede or notice of, untill this their treachery put in minde thereof againe.’
Saturday, December 6, 2008
1st Duke of Albemarle
George Monck, 1st Duke of Albemarle, was born 400 years ago today. He was an English soldier and a key player in the restoration of Charles II. He was not a diarist (as far as I know) but Samuel Pepys mentioned him often in his diary, and called him ‘a dull fellow’. He didn’t, however, lead a dull life.
Monck was born on 6 December 1608, near Torrington in Devon, into a respectable family but one suffering from money problems. He became a soldier, fighting with the Dutch against the Spaniards from 1629 to 1638, and earned himself a reputation as a leader. He distinguished himself further by suppressing a rebellion in Ireland, before returning to England to fight for King Charles I against the Parliamentarians. He was imprisoned for two years in the Tower of London. Then, from 1646, he sided with the Parliamentarians for whom he went to Ireland to fight against the rebels there.
Subsequently, Oliver Cromwell sent him to Scotland where he fought (with Cromwell) at the important Battle of Dunbar. Monck was then made commander-in-chief in Scotland, and completed the subjugation of the country. In 1652, he was appointed one of three generals at sea fighting in the First Anglo-Dutch War. On his return, he married Anne Clarges, and went back to Scotland, to beat down a Royalist insurrection. At Cromwell’s request, he remained there as governor.
During the confusion which followed Cromwell’s death in September 1658, Monck at first supported Cromwell’s son and successor Richard, but did not oppose the overthrow of the Protectorate and the recall of the ‘Rump’ of the Long Parliament. The Rump was forcefully dissolved by General John Lambert, but Monck refused to recognise the new military regime and led an army from Scotland in early 1660 against Lambert.
When the new Convention Parliament was elected, it quickly invited Charles II to return to England as king. For his services in contributing to a peaceful restoration of the monarchy, Monck was made Duke of Albemarle and a Knight of the Garter, and was awarded a large annual pension. He returned to sea and battle once more, in 1666 commanding the English fleet in the Second Anglo-Dutch War, but died in 1670.
Samuel Pepys, who worked for the Navy Board, was a regular visitor at the Duke’s house during 1665, for business and society. Here are a few of Pepys’s diary entries from November that year (taken from The Diary of Samuel Pepys website).
12 November 1665
‘. . . After dinner I by water to the Duke of Albemarle, and there had a little discourse and business with him, chiefly to receive his commands about pilotts to be got for our Hambro’ ships, going now at this time of the year convoy to the merchant ships, that have lain at great pain and charge, some three, some four months at Harwich for a convoy. They hope here the plague will be less this weeke. . .’
14 November 1665
‘. . . and down I went to Greenwich to my office, and there sat busy till noon, and so home to dinner, and thence to the office again, and by and by to the Duke of Albemarle’s by water late, where I find he had remembered that I had appointed to come to him this day about money, which I excused not doing sooner; but I see, a dull fellow, as he is, do sometimes remember what another thinks he mindeth not. My business was about getting money of the East India Company; but, Lord! to see how the Duke himself magnifies himself in what he had done with the Company; and my Lord Craven what the King could have done without my Lord Duke, and a deale of stir, but most mightily what a brave fellow I am. Back by water, it raining hard, and so to the office, and stopped my going, as I intended, to the buoy of the Nore, and great reason I had to rejoice at it, for it proved the night of as great a storme as was almost ever remembered. . .’
22 November 1665
‘Up, and by water to the Duke of Albemarle, and there did some little business, but most to shew myself, and mightily I am yet in his and Lord Craven’s books, and thence to the Swan and there drank and so down to the bridge, and so to the Change, where spoke with many people, and about a great deale of business, which kept me late. I heard this day that Mr. Harrington is not dead of the plague, as we believed, at which I was very glad, but most of all, to hear that the plague is come very low; that is, the whole under 1,000, and the plague 600 and odd: and great hopes of a further decrease, because of this day’s being a very exceeding hard frost, and continues freezing. . .’
27 November 1665
‘Up, and being to go to wait on the Duke of Albemarle, who is to go out of towne to Oxford to-morrow, and I being unwilling to go by water, it being bitter cold, walked it with my landlady’s little boy Christopher to Lambeth, it being a very fine walke and calling at half the way and drank, and so to the Duke of Albemarle, who is visited by every body against his going; and mighty kind to me: and upon my desiring his grace to give me his kind word to the Duke of Yorke, if any occasion there were of speaking of me, he told me he had reason to do so; for there had been nothing done in the Navy without me. His going, I hear, is upon putting the sea business into order, and, as some say, and people of his owne family, that he is agog to go to sea himself the next year. Here I met with a letter from Sir G. Carteret, who is come to Cranborne, that he will be here this afternoon and desires me to be with him. So the Duke would have me dine with him. So it being not dinner time, I to the Swan, and there found Sarah all alone in the house. So away to the Duke of Albemarle again, and there to dinner, he most exceeding kind to me to the observation of all that are there. . .’
Monck was born on 6 December 1608, near Torrington in Devon, into a respectable family but one suffering from money problems. He became a soldier, fighting with the Dutch against the Spaniards from 1629 to 1638, and earned himself a reputation as a leader. He distinguished himself further by suppressing a rebellion in Ireland, before returning to England to fight for King Charles I against the Parliamentarians. He was imprisoned for two years in the Tower of London. Then, from 1646, he sided with the Parliamentarians for whom he went to Ireland to fight against the rebels there.
Subsequently, Oliver Cromwell sent him to Scotland where he fought (with Cromwell) at the important Battle of Dunbar. Monck was then made commander-in-chief in Scotland, and completed the subjugation of the country. In 1652, he was appointed one of three generals at sea fighting in the First Anglo-Dutch War. On his return, he married Anne Clarges, and went back to Scotland, to beat down a Royalist insurrection. At Cromwell’s request, he remained there as governor.
During the confusion which followed Cromwell’s death in September 1658, Monck at first supported Cromwell’s son and successor Richard, but did not oppose the overthrow of the Protectorate and the recall of the ‘Rump’ of the Long Parliament. The Rump was forcefully dissolved by General John Lambert, but Monck refused to recognise the new military regime and led an army from Scotland in early 1660 against Lambert.
When the new Convention Parliament was elected, it quickly invited Charles II to return to England as king. For his services in contributing to a peaceful restoration of the monarchy, Monck was made Duke of Albemarle and a Knight of the Garter, and was awarded a large annual pension. He returned to sea and battle once more, in 1666 commanding the English fleet in the Second Anglo-Dutch War, but died in 1670.
Samuel Pepys, who worked for the Navy Board, was a regular visitor at the Duke’s house during 1665, for business and society. Here are a few of Pepys’s diary entries from November that year (taken from The Diary of Samuel Pepys website).
12 November 1665
‘. . . After dinner I by water to the Duke of Albemarle, and there had a little discourse and business with him, chiefly to receive his commands about pilotts to be got for our Hambro’ ships, going now at this time of the year convoy to the merchant ships, that have lain at great pain and charge, some three, some four months at Harwich for a convoy. They hope here the plague will be less this weeke. . .’
14 November 1665
‘. . . and down I went to Greenwich to my office, and there sat busy till noon, and so home to dinner, and thence to the office again, and by and by to the Duke of Albemarle’s by water late, where I find he had remembered that I had appointed to come to him this day about money, which I excused not doing sooner; but I see, a dull fellow, as he is, do sometimes remember what another thinks he mindeth not. My business was about getting money of the East India Company; but, Lord! to see how the Duke himself magnifies himself in what he had done with the Company; and my Lord Craven what the King could have done without my Lord Duke, and a deale of stir, but most mightily what a brave fellow I am. Back by water, it raining hard, and so to the office, and stopped my going, as I intended, to the buoy of the Nore, and great reason I had to rejoice at it, for it proved the night of as great a storme as was almost ever remembered. . .’
22 November 1665
‘Up, and by water to the Duke of Albemarle, and there did some little business, but most to shew myself, and mightily I am yet in his and Lord Craven’s books, and thence to the Swan and there drank and so down to the bridge, and so to the Change, where spoke with many people, and about a great deale of business, which kept me late. I heard this day that Mr. Harrington is not dead of the plague, as we believed, at which I was very glad, but most of all, to hear that the plague is come very low; that is, the whole under 1,000, and the plague 600 and odd: and great hopes of a further decrease, because of this day’s being a very exceeding hard frost, and continues freezing. . .’
27 November 1665
‘Up, and being to go to wait on the Duke of Albemarle, who is to go out of towne to Oxford to-morrow, and I being unwilling to go by water, it being bitter cold, walked it with my landlady’s little boy Christopher to Lambeth, it being a very fine walke and calling at half the way and drank, and so to the Duke of Albemarle, who is visited by every body against his going; and mighty kind to me: and upon my desiring his grace to give me his kind word to the Duke of Yorke, if any occasion there were of speaking of me, he told me he had reason to do so; for there had been nothing done in the Navy without me. His going, I hear, is upon putting the sea business into order, and, as some say, and people of his owne family, that he is agog to go to sea himself the next year. Here I met with a letter from Sir G. Carteret, who is come to Cranborne, that he will be here this afternoon and desires me to be with him. So the Duke would have me dine with him. So it being not dinner time, I to the Swan, and there found Sarah all alone in the house. So away to the Duke of Albemarle again, and there to dinner, he most exceeding kind to me to the observation of all that are there. . .’
Sunday, November 30, 2008
The first aerial explorer
Sir George Hubert Wilkins, one of the most successful and versatile of 20th century explorers, died exactly 50 years ago today. He was not only a pioneer in aviation and aerial photography, but he was also the first person to show submarines could operate under the polar ice cap. Although there are no published editions of his diaries, two recent biographical books rely on them extensively.
Wilkins was born in 1888 in South Australia, the thirteenth (!) child of a farmer. He studied engineering at South Australian School of Mines and Industries, then followed an interest in photography and cinematography before sailing to England in 1908 to work for Gaumont Film Company. Subsequently, as a newspaper reporter and cameraman, he learned to fly and began experimenting with aerial photography. In 1912, he worked as a war correspondent in the Balkans, but in 1913 he joined an expedition to the Arctic - led by the Canadian Vilhjaalmur Stefansson - which lasted until 1916.
In the latter years of the First World War, Wilkins was appointed as an official war photographer, a job that placed him in combat areas, and which led him into taking heroic action on at least two occasions - for which he was awarded a military cross and bar. After the war, he took part in two Antarctic expeditions (one as a naturalist with Shackleton); and then took on a project for the British Museum to study the fauna and tribal life of North Australia.
By 1926, Wilkins was testing the feasibility of air exploration in unknown Arctic regions of Alaska. In 1928, he and copilot Carl Ben Eielson pioneered cross-Arctic aviation by making the first ever flight across the Arctic - from Alaska to Spitsbergen, north of Norway. The New York Times called it ‘the greatest flight in history’; and, because of it, Wilkins was knighted in the UK. Moreover, as is well noted in biographies, he met his future wife while celebrating in New York.
South-Pole.com explains that later the same year Wilkins was back in the Antarctic, with Eielson, making the first ever exploratory flight in the area on 20 December (1928). Wilkins wrote in his diary, ‘For the first time in history, new land was being discovered from the air’; and ‘We had left at 8:30 in the morning, had covered 1300 miles - nearly a thousand of it over unknown territory - and had returned in time to cover the plane with a storm hood, go to the HEKTORIA, bathe and dress and sit down at eight o’clock to dinner as usual in the comfort of the ship’s wardroom.’
Three years on, Wilkins led a failed attempt to take a submarine - one he supposedly bought for a dollar and named Nautilus - beneath the ice to the North Pole. But the old ship broke down, endangering its crew and earning Wilkins some adverse publicity. Despite the failure, however, he did show that submarines were capable of operating beneath the polar ice cap. South-Pole.com says this was Wilkins’s last individual and private expedition, and that, thereafter, he accepted a post as manager to his friend and supporter, US millionaire Lincoln Ellsworth. During the Second World War, Wilkins worked for the US government, though he never relinquished his Australian citizenship. He died exactly 50 years ago today, on 3o November 1958.
The World Adventurer website concludes an article on Wilkins by saying this: ‘Despite his impressive list of firsts and pioneering adventures, the proudly patriotic Sir Hubert Wilkins remains sadly overlooked by a country that so reveres its heroes. In the end, it was the US who took his ashes to the North Pole aboard the submarine USS Skate on 17 March 1959.’ That said, however, there is lots of information about Wilkins on the internet: Wikipedia’s article includes links to other resources; Hipwell International Production Services hosts a site with lots of photographs; and the Government of South Australia has a history/culture website also with photographs.
None of these latter three websites, though, has any information about the diaries Wilkins kept. In fact, a collection of his diaries are housed in the Stefansson Collection, Dartmouth College, New Hampshire, some handwritten (in difficult script) and some typed. Wilkins, himself, did consider a book based on them, but never completed it. They remained unused for half a century until Stuart Jenness interpreted them for his book - The Making of an Explorer: George Hubert Wilkins and the Canadian Arctic Expedition 1913-1916 - published by McGill-Queen’s University Press in 2005.
Another book - Simon Nasht’s The Last Explorer: Hubert Wilkins, Hero of the Great Age of Polar Exploration published by Arcade Publishing in 2006 - also quotes extensively from Wilkins’s diaries. Much of it can be viewed at Googlebooks, including this quote from Wilkins’s diary about the Nautilus expedition: ‘Without exception, the others in the vessel wanted to immediately turn back; to make no further attempt to go into the ice this year. To do so would be to admit complete failure. As commander of the expedition I ordered the trials to continue . . . I am determined the vessel will go under the ice and that as many experiments as possible will be made.’
On 25 August 1931, Nasht explains in the book, Wilkins sent a dispatch, printed in the New York American and other Hearst papers (Hearst being his main sponsor), telling the world they were ‘about 350 miles from the North Pole’. It was an exaggeration by 200 miles, and, although he later corrected the claim, the mistake ‘was used against him by those who claimed the expedition was little more than a publicity stunt’.
Nevertheless, this was one extraordinary man, as South-Pole.com says, and an official biography should list his career as ‘war correspondent, polar explorer, naturalist, geographer, climatologist, aviator, author, balloonist, war hero, reporter, secret agent, submariner and navigator’.
Wilkins was born in 1888 in South Australia, the thirteenth (!) child of a farmer. He studied engineering at South Australian School of Mines and Industries, then followed an interest in photography and cinematography before sailing to England in 1908 to work for Gaumont Film Company. Subsequently, as a newspaper reporter and cameraman, he learned to fly and began experimenting with aerial photography. In 1912, he worked as a war correspondent in the Balkans, but in 1913 he joined an expedition to the Arctic - led by the Canadian Vilhjaalmur Stefansson - which lasted until 1916.
In the latter years of the First World War, Wilkins was appointed as an official war photographer, a job that placed him in combat areas, and which led him into taking heroic action on at least two occasions - for which he was awarded a military cross and bar. After the war, he took part in two Antarctic expeditions (one as a naturalist with Shackleton); and then took on a project for the British Museum to study the fauna and tribal life of North Australia.
By 1926, Wilkins was testing the feasibility of air exploration in unknown Arctic regions of Alaska. In 1928, he and copilot Carl Ben Eielson pioneered cross-Arctic aviation by making the first ever flight across the Arctic - from Alaska to Spitsbergen, north of Norway. The New York Times called it ‘the greatest flight in history’; and, because of it, Wilkins was knighted in the UK. Moreover, as is well noted in biographies, he met his future wife while celebrating in New York.
South-Pole.com explains that later the same year Wilkins was back in the Antarctic, with Eielson, making the first ever exploratory flight in the area on 20 December (1928). Wilkins wrote in his diary, ‘For the first time in history, new land was being discovered from the air’; and ‘We had left at 8:30 in the morning, had covered 1300 miles - nearly a thousand of it over unknown territory - and had returned in time to cover the plane with a storm hood, go to the HEKTORIA, bathe and dress and sit down at eight o’clock to dinner as usual in the comfort of the ship’s wardroom.’
Three years on, Wilkins led a failed attempt to take a submarine - one he supposedly bought for a dollar and named Nautilus - beneath the ice to the North Pole. But the old ship broke down, endangering its crew and earning Wilkins some adverse publicity. Despite the failure, however, he did show that submarines were capable of operating beneath the polar ice cap. South-Pole.com says this was Wilkins’s last individual and private expedition, and that, thereafter, he accepted a post as manager to his friend and supporter, US millionaire Lincoln Ellsworth. During the Second World War, Wilkins worked for the US government, though he never relinquished his Australian citizenship. He died exactly 50 years ago today, on 3o November 1958.
The World Adventurer website concludes an article on Wilkins by saying this: ‘Despite his impressive list of firsts and pioneering adventures, the proudly patriotic Sir Hubert Wilkins remains sadly overlooked by a country that so reveres its heroes. In the end, it was the US who took his ashes to the North Pole aboard the submarine USS Skate on 17 March 1959.’ That said, however, there is lots of information about Wilkins on the internet: Wikipedia’s article includes links to other resources; Hipwell International Production Services hosts a site with lots of photographs; and the Government of South Australia has a history/culture website also with photographs.
None of these latter three websites, though, has any information about the diaries Wilkins kept. In fact, a collection of his diaries are housed in the Stefansson Collection, Dartmouth College, New Hampshire, some handwritten (in difficult script) and some typed. Wilkins, himself, did consider a book based on them, but never completed it. They remained unused for half a century until Stuart Jenness interpreted them for his book - The Making of an Explorer: George Hubert Wilkins and the Canadian Arctic Expedition 1913-1916 - published by McGill-Queen’s University Press in 2005.
Another book - Simon Nasht’s The Last Explorer: Hubert Wilkins, Hero of the Great Age of Polar Exploration published by Arcade Publishing in 2006 - also quotes extensively from Wilkins’s diaries. Much of it can be viewed at Googlebooks, including this quote from Wilkins’s diary about the Nautilus expedition: ‘Without exception, the others in the vessel wanted to immediately turn back; to make no further attempt to go into the ice this year. To do so would be to admit complete failure. As commander of the expedition I ordered the trials to continue . . . I am determined the vessel will go under the ice and that as many experiments as possible will be made.’
On 25 August 1931, Nasht explains in the book, Wilkins sent a dispatch, printed in the New York American and other Hearst papers (Hearst being his main sponsor), telling the world they were ‘about 350 miles from the North Pole’. It was an exaggeration by 200 miles, and, although he later corrected the claim, the mistake ‘was used against him by those who claimed the expedition was little more than a publicity stunt’.
Nevertheless, this was one extraordinary man, as South-Pole.com says, and an official biography should list his career as ‘war correspondent, polar explorer, naturalist, geographer, climatologist, aviator, author, balloonist, war hero, reporter, secret agent, submariner and navigator’.
Thursday, November 27, 2008
Isherwood giving thanks
It’s Thanksgiving Day in the United States. Exactly 50 years ago, the British-born writer, Christopher Isherwood, who had taken American citizenship by then, wrote in his diary about being thankful - thankful for being alive, having just crashed a car while drunk; and thankful for the sweetness of Don, his partner of five years, a young man all of 30 years his junior.
Isherwood was born in Cheshire, UK, the son of an army officer killed in the First World War. He studied at Cambridge, but did not take a degree. Thereafter, he earned a living as a private tutor. His first novel, All the Conspirators, was published in 1928. He spent several years teaching in Germany, a period which provided the material for his best-known novels, such as Mr Norris Changes Trains and Goodbye to Berlin. During the 1930s, Isherwood collaborated with an old school friend, W H Auden, in three verse dramas. In 1938, the two of them went to China and jointly published Journey to a War.
From 1939, Isherwood settled in California, still working as a teacher but also as a script writer for Hollywood films. The Second World War inspired him to become a pacifist, and during the conflict, he worked at a Quaker hostel with refugees from Europe. He also began to follow the religious philosophy of Vedãnta, and write tracts. Several other novels followed, although Isherwood was never prolific. In 1953, he met and fell in love with a teenager, Don Bachardy, 30 years his junior, who would become an artist, and with whom he would have a relationship for the rest of his life. From 1959 to 1966, Isherwood taught at various US universities. By the 1970s, partly because of his autobiographical novels, he had become a leading spokesman for gay rights. He died in 1986.
Isherwood’s first diary dates back to 1949, and was published by Random House: The Condor and the Cows: A South American Travel-Diary. It tells of a journey Isherwood undertook with his lover Bill Caskey, at the behest of RandoM House, during 1947 through Columbia, Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia, and Argentina. University of Minnesota Press brought out a new edition in 2003 which includes additional photographs by Caskey and a new foreword by Jeffrey Meyers. The diary is said to be ‘unsentimental, rich, and wonderfully rendered’ - see Amazon.co.uk. However, The Review of Arts, Literature, Philosophy and the Humanities (RALPH), finds nothing commendable about the book: Isherwood was ‘too lazy to make the most of what could have been a true adventure into the depths of South America’, and his writing was ‘by rote - I did this, I saw that’.
A first and very substantial edition (over 1,000 pages) of Isherwood’s main diaries were not published until 10 years after his death, in 1996 - Diaries: Volume One 1939-1960 - by HarperCollins and Methuen. The promotional material on Amazon.com says that Isherwood ‘put at least as much of his genius in his diaries as he did in his writings intended for immediate publication’, and that the diaries ‘are beautifully written, gossipy, and indispensable for anyone who cares about writing, the creative process, and gay history’. There appears to be no sign yet of a second volume.
Wikipedia and the Christopher Isherwood Foundation website provide biographies of Isherwood, and The Diary Junction gives a few links to online information about, and quotes from, his diaries. But here, to coincide with Thanksgiving Day in the US, is an extract (taken from Diaries: Volume One 1939-1960) dated exactly 50 years ago today.
27 November 1958
‘What I chiefly have to give thanks for, this Thanksgiving, is that I’m still alive. The night before yesterday, bored after a long, long evening . . , and somewhat though not really drunk, I fell asleep at the wheel driving home and ran smash into a parked car. I guess I was knocked out. I remember nothing - until there was this very furious man, the owner of the parked car, yelling at me that he’d like to bash me to pulp - ‘And I’d do it too,’ he said, ‘if you hadn’t got blood on your face already.’ I had, as a matter of fact, hit the steering wheel, which was twisted up, cut myself between the eyes, bruised both eyes, maybe broken my nose, cut one knee and maybe hurt some ribs. The furious man . . . was eagerly expecting my arrest on a drunk, driving charge. But the police were very nice and sent me home in a taxi after I’d been fixed up at an emergency dressing station.
The other think to be thankful for is that Don and I have finished the rough draft of our play The Monsters, also the day before yesterday. We are cautiously starting the rewrite.
Don has hit a new high of sweetness. He is very happy about the play.’
Isherwood was born in Cheshire, UK, the son of an army officer killed in the First World War. He studied at Cambridge, but did not take a degree. Thereafter, he earned a living as a private tutor. His first novel, All the Conspirators, was published in 1928. He spent several years teaching in Germany, a period which provided the material for his best-known novels, such as Mr Norris Changes Trains and Goodbye to Berlin. During the 1930s, Isherwood collaborated with an old school friend, W H Auden, in three verse dramas. In 1938, the two of them went to China and jointly published Journey to a War.
From 1939, Isherwood settled in California, still working as a teacher but also as a script writer for Hollywood films. The Second World War inspired him to become a pacifist, and during the conflict, he worked at a Quaker hostel with refugees from Europe. He also began to follow the religious philosophy of Vedãnta, and write tracts. Several other novels followed, although Isherwood was never prolific. In 1953, he met and fell in love with a teenager, Don Bachardy, 30 years his junior, who would become an artist, and with whom he would have a relationship for the rest of his life. From 1959 to 1966, Isherwood taught at various US universities. By the 1970s, partly because of his autobiographical novels, he had become a leading spokesman for gay rights. He died in 1986.
Isherwood’s first diary dates back to 1949, and was published by Random House: The Condor and the Cows: A South American Travel-Diary. It tells of a journey Isherwood undertook with his lover Bill Caskey, at the behest of RandoM House, during 1947 through Columbia, Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia, and Argentina. University of Minnesota Press brought out a new edition in 2003 which includes additional photographs by Caskey and a new foreword by Jeffrey Meyers. The diary is said to be ‘unsentimental, rich, and wonderfully rendered’ - see Amazon.co.uk. However, The Review of Arts, Literature, Philosophy and the Humanities (RALPH), finds nothing commendable about the book: Isherwood was ‘too lazy to make the most of what could have been a true adventure into the depths of South America’, and his writing was ‘by rote - I did this, I saw that’.
A first and very substantial edition (over 1,000 pages) of Isherwood’s main diaries were not published until 10 years after his death, in 1996 - Diaries: Volume One 1939-1960 - by HarperCollins and Methuen. The promotional material on Amazon.com says that Isherwood ‘put at least as much of his genius in his diaries as he did in his writings intended for immediate publication’, and that the diaries ‘are beautifully written, gossipy, and indispensable for anyone who cares about writing, the creative process, and gay history’. There appears to be no sign yet of a second volume.
Wikipedia and the Christopher Isherwood Foundation website provide biographies of Isherwood, and The Diary Junction gives a few links to online information about, and quotes from, his diaries. But here, to coincide with Thanksgiving Day in the US, is an extract (taken from Diaries: Volume One 1939-1960) dated exactly 50 years ago today.
27 November 1958
‘What I chiefly have to give thanks for, this Thanksgiving, is that I’m still alive. The night before yesterday, bored after a long, long evening . . , and somewhat though not really drunk, I fell asleep at the wheel driving home and ran smash into a parked car. I guess I was knocked out. I remember nothing - until there was this very furious man, the owner of the parked car, yelling at me that he’d like to bash me to pulp - ‘And I’d do it too,’ he said, ‘if you hadn’t got blood on your face already.’ I had, as a matter of fact, hit the steering wheel, which was twisted up, cut myself between the eyes, bruised both eyes, maybe broken my nose, cut one knee and maybe hurt some ribs. The furious man . . . was eagerly expecting my arrest on a drunk, driving charge. But the police were very nice and sent me home in a taxi after I’d been fixed up at an emergency dressing station.
The other think to be thankful for is that Don and I have finished the rough draft of our play The Monsters, also the day before yesterday. We are cautiously starting the rewrite.
Don has hit a new high of sweetness. He is very happy about the play.’
By jingo, another barber
By strange coincidence, after yesterday’s post about Edmund Harrold, here’s another post about a diarist barber or barber diarist. This one is not a Mancunian but an American, and he lived not in the 18th century but in the 20th century. Charles Everett Ellis is in the news because a Kansas City production company, Outpost Worldwide, which is making a film based on his diaries, has recently launched a website called The Barber’s Diaries.
Ellis was born in 1887 and raised in Altamont. He took on barbering, like his father, and eventually owned his own shop. Ellis and his wife raised seven children, all of whom were also born in Altamont; but, during the Great Depression, he sent his family away to live on a farm near Alton. Ellis himself stayed in Altamont until 1933, but then moved to Chicago and Detroit for brief periods, before working again as a barber in Arizona. Eventually he was reunited with his family. He died in 1971. Today, only three of his children are still alive - Marguerite, Adrienne and Wilma.
On 22 January 1927, his 40th birthday, Elllis began writing a diary, and this is how it started: ‘Forty years old today by Jingo. Looking back over those years have brought many revelations. Youthful dreams have failed of materialization and stern realities have replaced them. Many mistakes have been made which are daily exacting their certain toll and are holding back my onward progress but with experiences gained in those years transformed into wisdom in the future I yet declare that my next forty years shall not be ineffective in service to my Maker, mankind and my own family. Many things I have to be thankful for. A happy home and family, a good business and perfect health - much to be thankful for. I am very grateful to my Maker that my faith in Him has sustained and soothed me in my trials and each day I will try to deepen that faith that in my affairs there shall be no doubts nor fears but shall labor onward and upward that my life shall be a successful one. Forty years in number are many but in one’s life filled with varied experiences they are not many but in that span one either has his plan well laid or is drifting. Mine is planned in detail and my future efforts shall be its maturity.’
Ellis left the diary to his daughter Adrienne (Ellis Reeves) but only now, 35 years later, is it attracting public attention. This is largely due to David Henderson, a former CBS News correspondent, who, having met Adrienne in 2006 and read the diary, was keen to find funding for a documentary film about Ellis. Kansas City production company, Outpost Worldwide, has taken the project on, and has even set up a special website - The Barber’s Diaries - to promote the venture. (The quote above comes from that website.)
The website explains that Ellis lived at a time when African Americans faced threats of racial cleansing across the South and Midwest: thousands were murdered, tortured and publicly executed; property was stolen; and communities eliminated overnight. For most black men, the way to survive was to remain invisible and never speak out. Ellis, nevertheless, had hopes and dreams for himself and all black Americans, and he wrote about them in his secret diary. ‘His writing,’ the website says, ‘is a celebration of life that rises above the violence and challenges of the time. His words inspire and endure to this day.’
Here are several more quotes from the diary, thanks to The Barber’s Diaries website.
‘Man is what he thinks, not what he says, reads, or hears. By persistent thinking, however, in the right away, the way of truth, you can undo any condition which exists. You can free yourself from any claims, whether of poverty, sin, in health or unhappiness.’
‘. . . I hereby set forth some resolutions which I hope to build into permanent habits within my own being.
1) Daily reading of the Bible; prayer and meditation
2) Constant seeking for wisdom and understanding
3) Development of will-power and constructive thinking
4) Effective reading with development of memory
5) Concentration upon all matters at hand
6) Infinite pains unto the smallest detail
7) To look upward and onward – never downward nor backward
8) To properly value time and perseverance
9) Promptness and decision where needed
10) To speak clearly and express accurately’
‘When things get bad, so very bad that worse they could not be, hold fast to hope, cling hard to faith, that someway out you’ll see.’
Some further information, though not much, about Ellis and his diary can be found on the Effingham Daily News website. Adrienne told the paper that her father’s diary was ‘a marvellous compendium, especially for a black man who had gone no further than high school,’ and that ‘his customers were all white, and they spoke about many things as if he wasn’t there.’ She also noted that ‘by jingo’ was one of her father’s favourite expressions and that she’d never heard anyone else say it.
Ellis was born in 1887 and raised in Altamont. He took on barbering, like his father, and eventually owned his own shop. Ellis and his wife raised seven children, all of whom were also born in Altamont; but, during the Great Depression, he sent his family away to live on a farm near Alton. Ellis himself stayed in Altamont until 1933, but then moved to Chicago and Detroit for brief periods, before working again as a barber in Arizona. Eventually he was reunited with his family. He died in 1971. Today, only three of his children are still alive - Marguerite, Adrienne and Wilma.
On 22 January 1927, his 40th birthday, Elllis began writing a diary, and this is how it started: ‘Forty years old today by Jingo. Looking back over those years have brought many revelations. Youthful dreams have failed of materialization and stern realities have replaced them. Many mistakes have been made which are daily exacting their certain toll and are holding back my onward progress but with experiences gained in those years transformed into wisdom in the future I yet declare that my next forty years shall not be ineffective in service to my Maker, mankind and my own family. Many things I have to be thankful for. A happy home and family, a good business and perfect health - much to be thankful for. I am very grateful to my Maker that my faith in Him has sustained and soothed me in my trials and each day I will try to deepen that faith that in my affairs there shall be no doubts nor fears but shall labor onward and upward that my life shall be a successful one. Forty years in number are many but in one’s life filled with varied experiences they are not many but in that span one either has his plan well laid or is drifting. Mine is planned in detail and my future efforts shall be its maturity.’
Ellis left the diary to his daughter Adrienne (Ellis Reeves) but only now, 35 years later, is it attracting public attention. This is largely due to David Henderson, a former CBS News correspondent, who, having met Adrienne in 2006 and read the diary, was keen to find funding for a documentary film about Ellis. Kansas City production company, Outpost Worldwide, has taken the project on, and has even set up a special website - The Barber’s Diaries - to promote the venture. (The quote above comes from that website.)
The website explains that Ellis lived at a time when African Americans faced threats of racial cleansing across the South and Midwest: thousands were murdered, tortured and publicly executed; property was stolen; and communities eliminated overnight. For most black men, the way to survive was to remain invisible and never speak out. Ellis, nevertheless, had hopes and dreams for himself and all black Americans, and he wrote about them in his secret diary. ‘His writing,’ the website says, ‘is a celebration of life that rises above the violence and challenges of the time. His words inspire and endure to this day.’
Here are several more quotes from the diary, thanks to The Barber’s Diaries website.
‘Man is what he thinks, not what he says, reads, or hears. By persistent thinking, however, in the right away, the way of truth, you can undo any condition which exists. You can free yourself from any claims, whether of poverty, sin, in health or unhappiness.’
‘. . . I hereby set forth some resolutions which I hope to build into permanent habits within my own being.
1) Daily reading of the Bible; prayer and meditation
2) Constant seeking for wisdom and understanding
3) Development of will-power and constructive thinking
4) Effective reading with development of memory
5) Concentration upon all matters at hand
6) Infinite pains unto the smallest detail
7) To look upward and onward – never downward nor backward
8) To properly value time and perseverance
9) Promptness and decision where needed
10) To speak clearly and express accurately’
‘When things get bad, so very bad that worse they could not be, hold fast to hope, cling hard to faith, that someway out you’ll see.’
Some further information, though not much, about Ellis and his diary can be found on the Effingham Daily News website. Adrienne told the paper that her father’s diary was ‘a marvellous compendium, especially for a black man who had gone no further than high school,’ and that ‘his customers were all white, and they spoke about many things as if he wasn’t there.’ She also noted that ‘by jingo’ was one of her father’s favourite expressions and that she’d never heard anyone else say it.
Wednesday, November 26, 2008
Did wife 2 tymes
The extraordinary diary of a barber and wigmaker, Edmund Harrold, from the early part of the 18th century, is being published for the first time in 100 years, and in more detail than ever before. While the new book has an academic rather than a popular price, the publishers have generously made the informative introduction, by the book’s editor, freely available online.
Edmund Harrold was born in 1678 in Manchester, the son of a tobacconist and the eldest of his four children. He probably lived in Manchester all his life, working as a barber, a wigmaker and a book dealer. He married four times; but his first three wives as well as six (of nine) children died before he did. Between 1712 and 1715 he wrote a diary, a poorly edited version of which was first published for the Chetham Society in 1867. Around 20 years later, John Eglington Bailey, who edited the important 16th century diaries of John Dee, was planning to produce a new version of Harrold’s diary, but this project never came to fruition.
Now, 330 years after Harrold was born, Ashgate (which publishes 700 titles a years and says it is dedicated to publishing ‘the finest academic research’) is releasing (on 28 November) The Diary of Edmund Harrold, Wigmaker of Manchester 1712-15, in a comprehensive version edited by Dr Craig Horner, of the Department of History at Manchester Metropolitan University. Apart from the diary itself (fully annotated), the book includes sample pages, the text of a lecture on the diary delivered by John Eglington Bailey in 1884, a list of comparable diaries, and an extensive introduction by Horner.
According to Ashgate, the survival of Harrold’s diary is ‘a remarkable piece of luck for historians’. Not only, it says, are such diaries for the ‘middling sort’ rare in this early 18th century period, but few provide such a candid insight into everyday concerns and troubles. It offers ‘a fascinating snapshot into the social, professional and private life of an impoverished inhabitant of Manchester during a period of profound social and economic change’.
The book costs £52 on Amazon.co.uk and $100 on Amazon.com, but at least the publisher, Ashgate, has made Horner’s introduction freely available on its website. In that introduction, Horner says Harrold wrote the diary as ‘a means of reconciling his mortal failings’, and in doing so, intentionally or not, detailed his family life, his business interests, a passion for books, and a colourful social life, including trips to the alehouse. It provides much else besides: a picture of his courtships following the death of his second wife; an idea of the conflict he felt about whether to attend church; an eye-witness account of Manchester’s part in the Jacobite rebellion of 1715; a record of two marriages and marital sex; and an idea of his preoccupation with death and illness.
One of the most interesting aspects of the diary is certainly the information regarding Harrold’s sex life. Horner says that, for Harrold, sex within marriage was a means of containing lust, and this is illustrated by the diary entry from 2 October 1712: ‘I obs[erve] that there is a many ways to spend ones time, but ye best and most comfortable way is in reading, praying and working, for ye devills always busie wth ye idle person leading him to lust, drunkenness etc.’
Extraordinarily, Harrold noted down when he had sex (he was with his second and third wives, Sarah and Ann, during the diary period), usually employing the expression I ‘did’ or ‘enjoy’, and ‘wife’ rather than his wife’s name. Here’s an example: ‘did w[i]f[e] now tho, tis [not] hard doing tw[ice] per [day] as Ive seldom mist thro variety’. He also talked about doing it ‘old fashion’ and ‘new fashion’!
There are very few references to Harrold’s diary on the internet (presumably there will be more following the Ashgate publication), but there is one in Emily Cochayne’s book Hubbub: Filth, Noise & Stench in England, 1600-1770. Christopher Hart, writing about it for Literary Review, says the book also delves into ‘an impressive array of diaries, letters and obscure pamphlets’. Cochayne ‘turns up’, he adds, one Edmund Harrold, a Mancunian wig-maker who recorded his own sex life assiduously in his private journal, boasting one day, for instance, that he ‘did wife 2 tymes couch & bed in an hour an[d] ½ time’.
Horner’s introduction to The Diary of Edmund Harrold, Wigmaker of Manchester 1712-15 refers to further extracts from the diary. Here are three of them, respectively about his second wife dying; giving thoughts about finding a new wife; and, about the day of this third marriage (which had taken place at 8am).
December 1712
‘My wife lay adying from 11 this day, till 9 a clock on ye 18[th] in ye morn. Then she dy’d in my arms, on pillows. [Her] relations most[ly] by. She went suddenly, and was sencible till 1/4 of an hour before she dyed. I have given her workday cloth[e]s to mother Bordman, and Betty Cook our servant. Now relations thinks best to bury her at [the] meetin[g] place in Plungeon Field, so I will.’
8 March 1713
‘It is every [Chris]tians duty to mortifie their unruly passions and lusts to which ye are most prone. I’m now beginning to be unesie with my self, and begin to think of women again. I pray God, direct me to do wisely and send me a good one, or none, if it be his will I must have one.’
22 August 1713
‘I worked al[l] day till 9 at night, yn I fetched my wife from her m[aste]r, and father[-inlaw] [Joseph] Bancrofts. Came home about ½ hour past 11. Dr Redford got her to bed and me alone gave a brides possit amongst ye company in ye house.’
Edmund Harrold was born in 1678 in Manchester, the son of a tobacconist and the eldest of his four children. He probably lived in Manchester all his life, working as a barber, a wigmaker and a book dealer. He married four times; but his first three wives as well as six (of nine) children died before he did. Between 1712 and 1715 he wrote a diary, a poorly edited version of which was first published for the Chetham Society in 1867. Around 20 years later, John Eglington Bailey, who edited the important 16th century diaries of John Dee, was planning to produce a new version of Harrold’s diary, but this project never came to fruition.
Now, 330 years after Harrold was born, Ashgate (which publishes 700 titles a years and says it is dedicated to publishing ‘the finest academic research’) is releasing (on 28 November) The Diary of Edmund Harrold, Wigmaker of Manchester 1712-15, in a comprehensive version edited by Dr Craig Horner, of the Department of History at Manchester Metropolitan University. Apart from the diary itself (fully annotated), the book includes sample pages, the text of a lecture on the diary delivered by John Eglington Bailey in 1884, a list of comparable diaries, and an extensive introduction by Horner.
According to Ashgate, the survival of Harrold’s diary is ‘a remarkable piece of luck for historians’. Not only, it says, are such diaries for the ‘middling sort’ rare in this early 18th century period, but few provide such a candid insight into everyday concerns and troubles. It offers ‘a fascinating snapshot into the social, professional and private life of an impoverished inhabitant of Manchester during a period of profound social and economic change’.
The book costs £52 on Amazon.co.uk and $100 on Amazon.com, but at least the publisher, Ashgate, has made Horner’s introduction freely available on its website. In that introduction, Horner says Harrold wrote the diary as ‘a means of reconciling his mortal failings’, and in doing so, intentionally or not, detailed his family life, his business interests, a passion for books, and a colourful social life, including trips to the alehouse. It provides much else besides: a picture of his courtships following the death of his second wife; an idea of the conflict he felt about whether to attend church; an eye-witness account of Manchester’s part in the Jacobite rebellion of 1715; a record of two marriages and marital sex; and an idea of his preoccupation with death and illness.
One of the most interesting aspects of the diary is certainly the information regarding Harrold’s sex life. Horner says that, for Harrold, sex within marriage was a means of containing lust, and this is illustrated by the diary entry from 2 October 1712: ‘I obs[erve] that there is a many ways to spend ones time, but ye best and most comfortable way is in reading, praying and working, for ye devills always busie wth ye idle person leading him to lust, drunkenness etc.’
Extraordinarily, Harrold noted down when he had sex (he was with his second and third wives, Sarah and Ann, during the diary period), usually employing the expression I ‘did’ or ‘enjoy’, and ‘wife’ rather than his wife’s name. Here’s an example: ‘did w[i]f[e] now tho, tis [not] hard doing tw[ice] per [day] as Ive seldom mist thro variety’. He also talked about doing it ‘old fashion’ and ‘new fashion’!
There are very few references to Harrold’s diary on the internet (presumably there will be more following the Ashgate publication), but there is one in Emily Cochayne’s book Hubbub: Filth, Noise & Stench in England, 1600-1770. Christopher Hart, writing about it for Literary Review, says the book also delves into ‘an impressive array of diaries, letters and obscure pamphlets’. Cochayne ‘turns up’, he adds, one Edmund Harrold, a Mancunian wig-maker who recorded his own sex life assiduously in his private journal, boasting one day, for instance, that he ‘did wife 2 tymes couch & bed in an hour an[d] ½ time’.
Horner’s introduction to The Diary of Edmund Harrold, Wigmaker of Manchester 1712-15 refers to further extracts from the diary. Here are three of them, respectively about his second wife dying; giving thoughts about finding a new wife; and, about the day of this third marriage (which had taken place at 8am).
December 1712
‘My wife lay adying from 11 this day, till 9 a clock on ye 18[th] in ye morn. Then she dy’d in my arms, on pillows. [Her] relations most[ly] by. She went suddenly, and was sencible till 1/4 of an hour before she dyed. I have given her workday cloth[e]s to mother Bordman, and Betty Cook our servant. Now relations thinks best to bury her at [the] meetin[g] place in Plungeon Field, so I will.’
8 March 1713
‘It is every [Chris]tians duty to mortifie their unruly passions and lusts to which ye are most prone. I’m now beginning to be unesie with my self, and begin to think of women again. I pray God, direct me to do wisely and send me a good one, or none, if it be his will I must have one.’
22 August 1713
‘I worked al[l] day till 9 at night, yn I fetched my wife from her m[aste]r, and father[-inlaw] [Joseph] Bancrofts. Came home about ½ hour past 11. Dr Redford got her to bed and me alone gave a brides possit amongst ye company in ye house.’
Friday, November 21, 2008
Lagerlöf and Speare
Coincidentally, two writers with anniversaries this week wrote semi-fictional diaries of childhood, but neither were actually diarists. In her final published work, Sweden’s Selma Lagerlöf, the first female writer to win the Nobel Prize for literature, fictionalised her own childhood; while Elizabeth George Speare, born almost exactly 50 years after Lagerlof, was inspired by the real diary of a woman captured by American indians for her first historical children’s novel.
Selma Lagerlöf was born 150 years ago, on 20 November 1958, in Värmland, Sweden, and brought up at Mårbacka, the family estate. In 1881, she moved to Stockholm and studied at a teachers’ college, before, in 1885, taking a position at a school in Landskrona. In 1890, a Swedish weekly magazine awarded her first prize in a literary competition, and the following year, her first book was published. By 1895, she was receiving sufficient financial support from the royal family and the Swedish Academy to forgo teaching and concentrate on writing. In 1909, she was awarded the Nobel Prize for literature, the first Swedish person to be so honoured, and the first woman. With the prize money, she bought back Mårbacka which had been sold on the death of her father.
More information about Lagerlöf can be found at Wikipedia, Nobel Prize website or The Diary Junction. Although she was not a diarist as such, one of the last books she wrote (if not the last) was called The Diary of Selma Lagerlöf. Originally published in 1932, it was translated into English in 1936. But it was not, in truth, a diary she wrote as a child, rather a fictionalised recreation of such a diary. Helena Forsås-Scott, writing in Swedish Women’s Writing, 1850-1995 (viewable on Googlebooks) claimed Lagerlöf’s ‘depiction of some months in the life of a 14-year old girl suffering from a hip complaint is so convincing that many readers assumed it to be based on an existing diary’. And other references to the book say she ‘recalled her childhood with subtle artistry’.
However, Lagerlöf also wrote two other books about her childhood, sometimes referred to as the Mårbacka trilogy, Memories of My Childhood and Memories of Mårbacka. A few pages of this latter can viewed on Amazon, where there are also several glowing reviews of the book. It does also include extracts from a real diary Lagerlöf wrote as a child for a few weeks while in Stockholm (and presumably the source material for the third book in the trilogy, The Diary of Selma Lagerlöf).
By coincidence, another writer, this one American and born 100 years ago today, on 21 November 1908 - Elizabeth George - wrote a fictional childhood diary. She was brought up in Melrose, Massachusetts, but moved to Connecticut after marrying Alden Speare. They had two children, and it was only once they were at school that Elizabeth began writing books seriously. Thereafter, she won numerous awards for her fiction, and has been cited as one of America’s 100 most popular children’s authors, much of her work being mandatory reading in schools. She died in 1994.
Her very first novel, though, published in 1958 was Calico Captive. Wikipedia has a separate entry for this book which says it was inspired by the true story of Susanna Willard Johnson (1730-1810) who, along with her family and younger sister, were kidnapped in an Abenakis Indian raid on Charlestown, New Hampshire in 1754. The main events in the story, which occurred on the brink of the French and Indian War, and which are told through the eyes of Miriam, Johnson’s younger sister, were taken from Johnson’s narrative diary A Narrative of the Captivity of Mrs Johnson, first published in 1796. The original of this book can be viewed at Early Canadiana Online.
Selma Lagerlöf was born 150 years ago, on 20 November 1958, in Värmland, Sweden, and brought up at Mårbacka, the family estate. In 1881, she moved to Stockholm and studied at a teachers’ college, before, in 1885, taking a position at a school in Landskrona. In 1890, a Swedish weekly magazine awarded her first prize in a literary competition, and the following year, her first book was published. By 1895, she was receiving sufficient financial support from the royal family and the Swedish Academy to forgo teaching and concentrate on writing. In 1909, she was awarded the Nobel Prize for literature, the first Swedish person to be so honoured, and the first woman. With the prize money, she bought back Mårbacka which had been sold on the death of her father.
More information about Lagerlöf can be found at Wikipedia, Nobel Prize website or The Diary Junction. Although she was not a diarist as such, one of the last books she wrote (if not the last) was called The Diary of Selma Lagerlöf. Originally published in 1932, it was translated into English in 1936. But it was not, in truth, a diary she wrote as a child, rather a fictionalised recreation of such a diary. Helena Forsås-Scott, writing in Swedish Women’s Writing, 1850-1995 (viewable on Googlebooks) claimed Lagerlöf’s ‘depiction of some months in the life of a 14-year old girl suffering from a hip complaint is so convincing that many readers assumed it to be based on an existing diary’. And other references to the book say she ‘recalled her childhood with subtle artistry’.
However, Lagerlöf also wrote two other books about her childhood, sometimes referred to as the Mårbacka trilogy, Memories of My Childhood and Memories of Mårbacka. A few pages of this latter can viewed on Amazon, where there are also several glowing reviews of the book. It does also include extracts from a real diary Lagerlöf wrote as a child for a few weeks while in Stockholm (and presumably the source material for the third book in the trilogy, The Diary of Selma Lagerlöf).
By coincidence, another writer, this one American and born 100 years ago today, on 21 November 1908 - Elizabeth George - wrote a fictional childhood diary. She was brought up in Melrose, Massachusetts, but moved to Connecticut after marrying Alden Speare. They had two children, and it was only once they were at school that Elizabeth began writing books seriously. Thereafter, she won numerous awards for her fiction, and has been cited as one of America’s 100 most popular children’s authors, much of her work being mandatory reading in schools. She died in 1994.
Her very first novel, though, published in 1958 was Calico Captive. Wikipedia has a separate entry for this book which says it was inspired by the true story of Susanna Willard Johnson (1730-1810) who, along with her family and younger sister, were kidnapped in an Abenakis Indian raid on Charlestown, New Hampshire in 1754. The main events in the story, which occurred on the brink of the French and Indian War, and which are told through the eyes of Miriam, Johnson’s younger sister, were taken from Johnson’s narrative diary A Narrative of the Captivity of Mrs Johnson, first published in 1796. The original of this book can be viewed at Early Canadiana Online.
Monday, November 17, 2008
Elizabeth becomes queen
Four and a half centuries ago, on 17 November 1558, Mary Tudor died, and her half-sister Queen Elizabeth I ascended the throne of England. A century before Pepys, Henry Machyn, a supplier of funeral trappings, was keeping a diary; and the text of this diary includes a fascinating entry for that particular day, 450 years ago.
Not much is known about Machyn other than that he was a supplier of furnishings to undertakers in London. His diary, held by the British Library, is primarily concerned with public events, including state visits and executions, which makes it invaluable to historians. It covers the period of the Reformation under Henry VIII and Edward VI, and the return to Catholicism under Mary. It was badly burned in a fire, and, according to modern linguists, the extant published versions are full of inaccuracies because of the idiosyncrasies of Machyn’s language. The Diary Junction provides links to various online texts.
The following entry, about the death of Mary and the succession of Elizabeth, is taken from The Diary of Henry Machyn - Citizen and Merchant-Taylor of London (1550-1563) edited by John Gough Nichols. It was published by the Camden Society in 1848, and is fully accessible on British History Online. (Two notes for reading the text below: pelere - pillory; mad mere - made merry.)
‘The xij day of November was Saterday ther was a woman sett on the pelere for sayhyng that the quen was ded, and her grace was not ded then.
The xvij day of November be-twyn v and vj in the mornyng ded quen Mare, the vj yere of here grace(’s) rayne, the wyche Jhesu have mercy on her solle! Amen.
[The same] day, be-twyne a xj and xij a’ for[noon, the lady Eliza]beth was proclamyd quen Elsabeth, quen of England, France and Yrland, and deffender of the feyth, by dyvers haroldes of armes and trumpeters, and dukes, lordcs [and knights,] the wyche was ther present, the duke of Norfoke, [the] lord tresorer, the yerle of Shrousbere, and the yerele of Bedford, and the lord mayre and the althermen, and dyver odur lordes and knyghtes.
The sam day, at after-non, all the chyrches in London dyd ryng, and at nyght dyd make bonefyres and set tabulls in the strett, and ded ett and drynke and mad mere for the newe quen Elsabeth, quen Mare(’s) syster.’
Not much is known about Machyn other than that he was a supplier of furnishings to undertakers in London. His diary, held by the British Library, is primarily concerned with public events, including state visits and executions, which makes it invaluable to historians. It covers the period of the Reformation under Henry VIII and Edward VI, and the return to Catholicism under Mary. It was badly burned in a fire, and, according to modern linguists, the extant published versions are full of inaccuracies because of the idiosyncrasies of Machyn’s language. The Diary Junction provides links to various online texts.
The following entry, about the death of Mary and the succession of Elizabeth, is taken from The Diary of Henry Machyn - Citizen and Merchant-Taylor of London (1550-1563) edited by John Gough Nichols. It was published by the Camden Society in 1848, and is fully accessible on British History Online. (Two notes for reading the text below: pelere - pillory; mad mere - made merry.)
‘The xij day of November was Saterday ther was a woman sett on the pelere for sayhyng that the quen was ded, and her grace was not ded then.
The xvij day of November be-twyn v and vj in the mornyng ded quen Mare, the vj yere of here grace(’s) rayne, the wyche Jhesu have mercy on her solle! Amen.
[The same] day, be-twyne a xj and xij a’ for[noon, the lady Eliza]beth was proclamyd quen Elsabeth, quen of England, France and Yrland, and deffender of the feyth, by dyvers haroldes of armes and trumpeters, and dukes, lordcs [and knights,] the wyche was ther present, the duke of Norfoke, [the] lord tresorer, the yerle of Shrousbere, and the yerele of Bedford, and the lord mayre and the althermen, and dyver odur lordes and knyghtes.
The sam day, at after-non, all the chyrches in London dyd ryng, and at nyght dyd make bonefyres and set tabulls in the strett, and ded ett and drynke and mad mere for the newe quen Elsabeth, quen Mare(’s) syster.’
Memories of Montreal
An article in The Gazette (often called The Montreal Gazette) this weekend paid tribute to Jedediah Hubbell Dorwin, who died 125 years ago last Tuesday, ‘for the remarkable diary he kept’. Although the newspaper provides one or two extracts, unfortunately they are not dated; nor does the newspaper tell its readers where to find out more about the diary - which is a shame.
Dorwin was born in Vermont in 1792, one of five children, and settled in Montreal in 1816. The following year, he married Isabella Williamson, and they had one son (and also adopted a daughter). He worked as a trader, importing and sometimes smuggling foodstuffs. By the early 1820s, he also trading fish, and even bought his own whaler. After many years shipping commodities such as wheat, sugar and meat, he also went into the lumber business for a while. He had many other business interests, including investing and promoting rail and river transport links in the Rawdon area, around 60km north of Montreal. In his 70s, he was still very active, inventing and manufacturing barometers.
More details of Dorwin’s life are given in a useful chronology provided by Glenn F Cartwright, a professor at McGill University. According to Cartwright, Dorwin began writing a journal in 1811, and kept it up until his death in 1883, on 11 November (125 years ago last week). [NB: See Dictionary of Canadian Biography - added 2018.]
In 1881, two years before his death, according to The Gazette columnist John Kalbfleisch, The Montreal Star published a long article based on Dorwin’s recollection of the Montreal he had first seen some 65 years earlier. He wrote about how part of the city ‘was quite imposing’ and how ‘the large number of buildings, their roofs covered with tin, glittering in the sun’ was something very new to him. (Unfortunately, none of the extracts from Dorwin’s diary provided by The Gazette are dated.)
After being ferried in a dugout canoe and landing in mud, though, Dorwin realised the city was dingier than the glittering rooftops had suggested. He described how most houses had heavy iron doors and shutters, and that ‘there was little or no attempt at ornamental architecture’. He wrote: ‘The signs over the doors, where there were any, were symbolical for few of the habitants could read, and the silvered flagon or the burnished boot would be much better understood and remembered than the most flaring and most carefully gilded print.’
Dorwin noted how only a few streets were paved and ‘there were no rows of trees as now . . . for over the whole continent, from the time of the earliest settlers almost to the present, trees were a species of vegetation to be exterminated, not reared.’ And he wrote: ‘The rural system of government in so large a town was not productive of much order or regularity . . . and the roughs of the place did pretty much as they liked. But on the other hand the taxes were light.’
In 1816, when Dorwin arrived, there was a ‘citadel of sorts’ on a small hill (the only remaining part of the old city wall) ‘where cannon were fired at sunrise and at noon, and a sentry paced constantly’. Three years later, Dorwin was one of the contractors engaged to level the hill and use the earth to fill in a pond at its foot. He wrote in his diary: ‘On the side of the hill next the pond were found several coffins, some of them well preserved . . . The coroner was notified, but instead of holding a long judicial and scientific investigation, he ordered them to be tumbled into the pond with the rest of the earth. . .’
Kalbfleisch concludes his article on Dorwin by noting that The Montreal Star article was more than 11,000 words long, ‘15 times as long as this column, and the diary entries on which it’s based are longer still’. It’s an invaluable record of what Montreal looked like, he says, of who its leading citizens were, of how the people were educated and much more. Unfortunately, he doesn’t tell us how to read more.
Dorwin was born in Vermont in 1792, one of five children, and settled in Montreal in 1816. The following year, he married Isabella Williamson, and they had one son (and also adopted a daughter). He worked as a trader, importing and sometimes smuggling foodstuffs. By the early 1820s, he also trading fish, and even bought his own whaler. After many years shipping commodities such as wheat, sugar and meat, he also went into the lumber business for a while. He had many other business interests, including investing and promoting rail and river transport links in the Rawdon area, around 60km north of Montreal. In his 70s, he was still very active, inventing and manufacturing barometers.
More details of Dorwin’s life are given in a useful chronology provided by Glenn F Cartwright, a professor at McGill University. According to Cartwright, Dorwin began writing a journal in 1811, and kept it up until his death in 1883, on 11 November (125 years ago last week). [NB: See Dictionary of Canadian Biography - added 2018.]
In 1881, two years before his death, according to The Gazette columnist John Kalbfleisch, The Montreal Star published a long article based on Dorwin’s recollection of the Montreal he had first seen some 65 years earlier. He wrote about how part of the city ‘was quite imposing’ and how ‘the large number of buildings, their roofs covered with tin, glittering in the sun’ was something very new to him. (Unfortunately, none of the extracts from Dorwin’s diary provided by The Gazette are dated.)
After being ferried in a dugout canoe and landing in mud, though, Dorwin realised the city was dingier than the glittering rooftops had suggested. He described how most houses had heavy iron doors and shutters, and that ‘there was little or no attempt at ornamental architecture’. He wrote: ‘The signs over the doors, where there were any, were symbolical for few of the habitants could read, and the silvered flagon or the burnished boot would be much better understood and remembered than the most flaring and most carefully gilded print.’
Dorwin noted how only a few streets were paved and ‘there were no rows of trees as now . . . for over the whole continent, from the time of the earliest settlers almost to the present, trees were a species of vegetation to be exterminated, not reared.’ And he wrote: ‘The rural system of government in so large a town was not productive of much order or regularity . . . and the roughs of the place did pretty much as they liked. But on the other hand the taxes were light.’
In 1816, when Dorwin arrived, there was a ‘citadel of sorts’ on a small hill (the only remaining part of the old city wall) ‘where cannon were fired at sunrise and at noon, and a sentry paced constantly’. Three years later, Dorwin was one of the contractors engaged to level the hill and use the earth to fill in a pond at its foot. He wrote in his diary: ‘On the side of the hill next the pond were found several coffins, some of them well preserved . . . The coroner was notified, but instead of holding a long judicial and scientific investigation, he ordered them to be tumbled into the pond with the rest of the earth. . .’
Kalbfleisch concludes his article on Dorwin by noting that The Montreal Star article was more than 11,000 words long, ‘15 times as long as this column, and the diary entries on which it’s based are longer still’. It’s an invaluable record of what Montreal looked like, he says, of who its leading citizens were, of how the people were educated and much more. Unfortunately, he doesn’t tell us how to read more.
Thursday, November 13, 2008
High drama in Cambodia
General Hok Lundy, Cambodia’s notorious police chief and an ally of the country’s prime minister Hun Sen, has just died in a helicopter crash. The circumstances of the crash may be suspicious, but then much about Hok Lundy was suspicious. Of many outstanding accusations against him, one is that he ordered the killing of Piseth Pilika, a famous dancer and actress, who had recently finished an adulterous affair with Hun Sen. Pilika kept a diary, and this shows, astonishingly, that at the time of her murder, she considered Hok Lundy a friend. Other evidence suggests that, in fact, she had had an affair with him earlier and that he had introduced her to Hun Sen!
Hok Lundy died on 9 November when his helicopter crashed on the way to Svay Rieng, his home province. The deputy commander of the Cambodian infantry, Sok Saem, and two pilots also died. Because Hok Lundy had many enemies there has been widespread speculation that the crash might not have been an accident, and the government has promised a full investigation.
Hok Lundy’s death has not been widely reported in the British or American press. However, The Guardian website does have an obituary. This states that Hok Lundy first rose to prominence as governor of Phnom Penh in 1990 (although Wikipedia says he was governor of Svay Rieng province). In 1994, Hun Sen appointed him national police chief, reporting directly to him (not to his nominal boss, the interior minister). Then, in 1997, after a bloody power struggle between partners in the coalition government, Hok Lundy played a significant role in capturing and executing royalist generals.
The Guardian obituary goes on to explain that Hok Lundy was also responsible in 2003 for allowing anti-Thai protestors to run riot in the capital, attacking Thai-owned properties, and for then persuading Hun Sen to sack the capital’s popular governor as a scapegoat. ‘That Hun Sen sided with his police chief was no surprise,’ it says, ‘as Hok Lundy had already married his daughter off to one of Hun Sen’s sons’.
One of the most heinous crimes to which Hok Lundy was linked was the murder of the Cambodian dancer and actress, Piseth Pilika. Born in 1965, both her parents died during the Khmer Rouge regime, and she was brought up by an uncle. Her aunt was a teacher at the University of Fine Arts and encouraged her to study traditional Cambodian dance there. As she became an increasingly popular performer, so she moved into acting, and starred in a successful movie Sromorl Anthakal (Shadow of Darkness). But in July 1999, she was gunned down in the street, and died a week later. Some 10,000 people filed past her body at the University, one of the largest such ceremonies in modern Cambodian history.
Reports of her shooting, death and funeral in Cambodia Daily, an English-language newspaper, can be found on the pisethpilika.free website. At the time, there were rumours that the killing might have been ordered by ‘the jealous wife’ of a ‘high-level government official’. The rumours soon hardened to name the official as no less a person than the prime minister Hun Sen, and that it was his wife, Bun Rany, who may have hired the hitmen to kill Pilika. Further twists to this story were subsequently uncovered by revelations in Pilika’s own diary, and through information given to the French news magazine L’Express by Heng Pov, a former Phnom Penh police commissioner.
Pilika’s diary is available online, also at pisethpilika.free - in Khmer. However, her very last entry has been translated into English. It identifies Hun Sen as her lover, Bun Rany as her enemy, and Hok Lundy as a friend.
10 May 1999
‘Mr Hok Lundy, Director-General of the National Police, had asked me to go to meet with him because he had something to tell me. He sent two bodyguards to fetch me. I asked my younger sister to accompany and we went together. I was at the same time afraid and happy because I thought there might be a message for me from Sen. I met with Hok Lundy at Kien Svay, at a restaurant situated in a quiet place. He told me to go and hide somewhere for a while because Mrs Bun Rany Hun Sen was very angry against me and was plotting to kill me. I was very afraid but tried not to show my feeling. I gritted my teeth but could not repress tears. I had not imagined somebody would fool me so terribly. I am so disappointed because I have never sold my body to Samdech Hun Sen. We loved each other like husband and wife, so I thought. I realise how naive I have been in believing his words. I have never been fooled like that. This is my first lesson, I have learnt to know about deceitful people. I don’t know whether they would spare my life or sentence me to death because they rule over the country. Only God can help me. My only response to and shield against them are goodness and righteousness.’
In October 1999, L’Express published other extracts from Pilika’s diary (available on the KI Media website) chronicling her secret relationship with the prime minister (although initially she did not even write his name in the diary). Here are three entries:
‘Late at night, . . . called me over the phone. I was very happy, at the same time apprehended and overjoyed, I could barely talk. Then nothing. Next, he called me again. This time, I only felt the joy because he thought about me; his words were worthy of respect and love . . . Our first rendez-vous took place on August 18, 1998, at 8:00 o’clock, in the house behind the Botum pagoda. I decided to ask for divorce, because I thought that I could not remain married, even if the new one would abandon me. . . My relation with . . . became very close.’
‘My relations with Samdech Hun Sen are excellent. . . On January 31, 1999, slightly before 10:00 PM, he came to the new house I just bought in Takhmao. Then he visited me again at night. . . His words were so tender, I did not dare believe it . . .’
‘When his wife learnt about relation, and after we stopped talking to each other over the phone, my heart broke. . . On Sunday, April 11, 1999, Samdech Hun Sen called me one last time. He asked me not to see him again, and to deny that anything ever happened between us . . . I could not forget him, I remained prostrated for hours. . . wrote poems which came from the bottom of my soul, I cried every day, and my heart was filled with bitterness.’
Years later, in 2006, L’Express published a startling interview (reproduced in English on Asia Finest Discussion Forum) with Heng Pov, a former police commissioner and an advisor to Hun Sen, who had taken refuge in France. He claimed that the government was responsible for many killings over the previous ten years, including that of Pilika. As a result of the revelations, the Asian Human Rights Commission put out a statement which provides a useful summary of the claims. This is what it said with regard to ‘the shooting of screen idol Piseth Pilika on 6 July 1999, which led to her death’:
‘Piseth Pilika is widely known to have had an affair with Hun Sen. Heng Pov claims that Hok Lundy had had an affair with her first and then introduced her to Hun Sen, whose wife blamed Hok Lundy for matchmaking her husband with the actress. He says that Hok Lundy made amends by promising to ‘separate’ Piseth Pilika from Hun Sen, and that the killer was one of Hok Lundy’s bodyguards.’
Hok Lundy died on 9 November when his helicopter crashed on the way to Svay Rieng, his home province. The deputy commander of the Cambodian infantry, Sok Saem, and two pilots also died. Because Hok Lundy had many enemies there has been widespread speculation that the crash might not have been an accident, and the government has promised a full investigation.
Hok Lundy’s death has not been widely reported in the British or American press. However, The Guardian website does have an obituary. This states that Hok Lundy first rose to prominence as governor of Phnom Penh in 1990 (although Wikipedia says he was governor of Svay Rieng province). In 1994, Hun Sen appointed him national police chief, reporting directly to him (not to his nominal boss, the interior minister). Then, in 1997, after a bloody power struggle between partners in the coalition government, Hok Lundy played a significant role in capturing and executing royalist generals.
The Guardian obituary goes on to explain that Hok Lundy was also responsible in 2003 for allowing anti-Thai protestors to run riot in the capital, attacking Thai-owned properties, and for then persuading Hun Sen to sack the capital’s popular governor as a scapegoat. ‘That Hun Sen sided with his police chief was no surprise,’ it says, ‘as Hok Lundy had already married his daughter off to one of Hun Sen’s sons’.
One of the most heinous crimes to which Hok Lundy was linked was the murder of the Cambodian dancer and actress, Piseth Pilika. Born in 1965, both her parents died during the Khmer Rouge regime, and she was brought up by an uncle. Her aunt was a teacher at the University of Fine Arts and encouraged her to study traditional Cambodian dance there. As she became an increasingly popular performer, so she moved into acting, and starred in a successful movie Sromorl Anthakal (Shadow of Darkness). But in July 1999, she was gunned down in the street, and died a week later. Some 10,000 people filed past her body at the University, one of the largest such ceremonies in modern Cambodian history.
Reports of her shooting, death and funeral in Cambodia Daily, an English-language newspaper, can be found on the pisethpilika.free website. At the time, there were rumours that the killing might have been ordered by ‘the jealous wife’ of a ‘high-level government official’. The rumours soon hardened to name the official as no less a person than the prime minister Hun Sen, and that it was his wife, Bun Rany, who may have hired the hitmen to kill Pilika. Further twists to this story were subsequently uncovered by revelations in Pilika’s own diary, and through information given to the French news magazine L’Express by Heng Pov, a former Phnom Penh police commissioner.
Pilika’s diary is available online, also at pisethpilika.free - in Khmer. However, her very last entry has been translated into English. It identifies Hun Sen as her lover, Bun Rany as her enemy, and Hok Lundy as a friend.
10 May 1999
‘Mr Hok Lundy, Director-General of the National Police, had asked me to go to meet with him because he had something to tell me. He sent two bodyguards to fetch me. I asked my younger sister to accompany and we went together. I was at the same time afraid and happy because I thought there might be a message for me from Sen. I met with Hok Lundy at Kien Svay, at a restaurant situated in a quiet place. He told me to go and hide somewhere for a while because Mrs Bun Rany Hun Sen was very angry against me and was plotting to kill me. I was very afraid but tried not to show my feeling. I gritted my teeth but could not repress tears. I had not imagined somebody would fool me so terribly. I am so disappointed because I have never sold my body to Samdech Hun Sen. We loved each other like husband and wife, so I thought. I realise how naive I have been in believing his words. I have never been fooled like that. This is my first lesson, I have learnt to know about deceitful people. I don’t know whether they would spare my life or sentence me to death because they rule over the country. Only God can help me. My only response to and shield against them are goodness and righteousness.’
In October 1999, L’Express published other extracts from Pilika’s diary (available on the KI Media website) chronicling her secret relationship with the prime minister (although initially she did not even write his name in the diary). Here are three entries:
‘Late at night, . . . called me over the phone. I was very happy, at the same time apprehended and overjoyed, I could barely talk. Then nothing. Next, he called me again. This time, I only felt the joy because he thought about me; his words were worthy of respect and love . . . Our first rendez-vous took place on August 18, 1998, at 8:00 o’clock, in the house behind the Botum pagoda. I decided to ask for divorce, because I thought that I could not remain married, even if the new one would abandon me. . . My relation with . . . became very close.’
‘My relations with Samdech Hun Sen are excellent. . . On January 31, 1999, slightly before 10:00 PM, he came to the new house I just bought in Takhmao. Then he visited me again at night. . . His words were so tender, I did not dare believe it . . .’
‘When his wife learnt about relation, and after we stopped talking to each other over the phone, my heart broke. . . On Sunday, April 11, 1999, Samdech Hun Sen called me one last time. He asked me not to see him again, and to deny that anything ever happened between us . . . I could not forget him, I remained prostrated for hours. . . wrote poems which came from the bottom of my soul, I cried every day, and my heart was filled with bitterness.’
Years later, in 2006, L’Express published a startling interview (reproduced in English on Asia Finest Discussion Forum) with Heng Pov, a former police commissioner and an advisor to Hun Sen, who had taken refuge in France. He claimed that the government was responsible for many killings over the previous ten years, including that of Pilika. As a result of the revelations, the Asian Human Rights Commission put out a statement which provides a useful summary of the claims. This is what it said with regard to ‘the shooting of screen idol Piseth Pilika on 6 July 1999, which led to her death’:
‘Piseth Pilika is widely known to have had an affair with Hun Sen. Heng Pov claims that Hok Lundy had had an affair with her first and then introduced her to Hun Sen, whose wife blamed Hok Lundy for matchmaking her husband with the actress. He says that Hok Lundy made amends by promising to ‘separate’ Piseth Pilika from Hun Sen, and that the killer was one of Hok Lundy’s bodyguards.’
Tuesday, November 11, 2008
On Armistice Day 1918
It’s the 90th anniversary of the end of the First World War, Armistice Day. Many soldiers kept diaries during the war, and many of them are available online. Here, to celebrate the day, are a few randomly-chosen verbatim diary entries found online, all dated 11 November 1918 (except the last, which is dated 12 November).
General Douglas Haig, British Commander in Chief, at Cambrai, France
‘Fine day but cold and dull.’ His entry also mentions the poor state of the German army and his meeting with the Prince of Wales and various allied commanders and foreign dignitaries.
Robert Lindsay Mackay, 11th Battalion of the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders, in Calais
‘Mobs rushing singing through the streets of [Calais] at night. News of Armistice confirmed - Thank God! I set off again for the battalion, but stopped en route to give me a chance of finding the grave of my friend, John McIntosh, a gunner, killed at Neuve Chappelle. Found gun pits. No graves nearby.’
Thomas Fredrick Littler, Royal Engineers, in hospital at Wimereux, France
‘We had news in hospital that the enemy had pleaded for an armistice and that terms had been handed to him, which he accepted as armistice terms, and he is thoroughly beaten, it is a day of rejoicing and everybody seems happy and glad, bands are playing outside and guns firing salutes, but I feel too ill to take much interest in it.’
William Dalton Lycett, with Anzac troops in Plymouth
‘Up at 7 a.m. shaved and had breakfast then got pass and went to Devonport Military Hospital to see dentist. On the way in buzzers, whistles on our ships all started blowing, terrific noise at 9.10 a.m. It was the news come through of signing of Armistice terms by Fritz, great excitement. Saw dentist and had tooth filled and away by 11 a.m. Stayed in Devonport for little while then went on to Plymouth, called in restaurant for dinner and was given glass of port wine and had dinner free. The place a seething mass of people all gone mad. Caught 10.30 p.m. tram and in bed 11 p.m.’
John Bruce Cairnie of the King’s African Rifles in Tanganyika
‘Armistice signed at 11a.m. this morning: the news reached us at 5p.m. C.O. announced it on parade. I can’t realize it, that the war is finished, probably because we are so far from everything. Had dinner outside, with C.O. etc. Sounds of revelry all over the camp, altho’ I don’t think the askaris know what has happened, except in a vague way.’
General Lionel Dunsterville, a British general, in India
‘Susanna and Miss Key arrived from Murree by the early morning train and brought with them the wonderful news of: P E A C E AT LAST! and this GREATEST WAR is over. We are so accustomed to war in this fifth year that we can hardly believe the news. Meantime I have been more or less forgiven and am to have command of a new Brigade at Agra - but I do not believe now that the war is over that they will ever want any new Brigades. Susanna and Miss Key are staying with the Bomfords and we go over there also in a few days. We celebrated Peace at the Club with a Champagne dinner party with the Rennies.’
General Douglas Haig, British Commander in Chief, at Cambrai, France
‘Fine day but cold and dull.’ His entry also mentions the poor state of the German army and his meeting with the Prince of Wales and various allied commanders and foreign dignitaries.
Robert Lindsay Mackay, 11th Battalion of the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders, in Calais
‘Mobs rushing singing through the streets of [Calais] at night. News of Armistice confirmed - Thank God! I set off again for the battalion, but stopped en route to give me a chance of finding the grave of my friend, John McIntosh, a gunner, killed at Neuve Chappelle. Found gun pits. No graves nearby.’
Thomas Fredrick Littler, Royal Engineers, in hospital at Wimereux, France
‘We had news in hospital that the enemy had pleaded for an armistice and that terms had been handed to him, which he accepted as armistice terms, and he is thoroughly beaten, it is a day of rejoicing and everybody seems happy and glad, bands are playing outside and guns firing salutes, but I feel too ill to take much interest in it.’
William Dalton Lycett, with Anzac troops in Plymouth
‘Up at 7 a.m. shaved and had breakfast then got pass and went to Devonport Military Hospital to see dentist. On the way in buzzers, whistles on our ships all started blowing, terrific noise at 9.10 a.m. It was the news come through of signing of Armistice terms by Fritz, great excitement. Saw dentist and had tooth filled and away by 11 a.m. Stayed in Devonport for little while then went on to Plymouth, called in restaurant for dinner and was given glass of port wine and had dinner free. The place a seething mass of people all gone mad. Caught 10.30 p.m. tram and in bed 11 p.m.’
John Bruce Cairnie of the King’s African Rifles in Tanganyika
‘Armistice signed at 11a.m. this morning: the news reached us at 5p.m. C.O. announced it on parade. I can’t realize it, that the war is finished, probably because we are so far from everything. Had dinner outside, with C.O. etc. Sounds of revelry all over the camp, altho’ I don’t think the askaris know what has happened, except in a vague way.’
General Lionel Dunsterville, a British general, in India
‘Susanna and Miss Key arrived from Murree by the early morning train and brought with them the wonderful news of: P E A C E AT LAST! and this GREATEST WAR is over. We are so accustomed to war in this fifth year that we can hardly believe the news. Meantime I have been more or less forgiven and am to have command of a new Brigade at Agra - but I do not believe now that the war is over that they will ever want any new Brigades. Susanna and Miss Key are staying with the Bomfords and we go over there also in a few days. We celebrated Peace at the Club with a Champagne dinner party with the Rennies.’
Bashkirtseff’s inward fire
Marie Bashkirtseff, a precocious writer and artist, died 150 years ago today (probably) in Paris. Her most important legacy is a collection of remarkable diaries, out of which her personality - vivacious, self-obsessed, ambitious - shines so brightly they are still re-translated and reprinted regularly. They also show her to have been an early advocate for women’s rights.
Bashkirtseff was born in Ukraine in 1858. As a young girl she travelled widely in Europe with her mother, before settling in Nice, and then Paris, where she studied painting at the Académie Julian, one of the few establishments that took on female students. In just a few years she produced a large number of paintings, among the most famous of which are The Meeting (a portrait of slum children) and In the Studio (a portrait of fellow artists at work). But, in October 1884, aged only 25, she died of tuberculosis.
Bashkirtseff is also considered to have been an early feminist. This is partly because of the way she pushed herself into the art world, then dominated by men; and partly because of several articles she wrote under the name Pauline Oriel for a feminist newspaper, La Citoyenne. However it is her diary that provides most evidence for the way she struggled against the gender stereotypes of the age. This was published in France only three years after her death, and in England and the US in 1890. It caused a sensation. An article in the New York Times in 1900 (available online) begins as follows.
‘Most of our readers are probably familiar with the Journal of Marie Bashkirtseff - that published diary of a young Russian woman which a dozen years ago was the talk of all Europe and America. Sensitive people were shocked at the freedom with which the girl’s soul was apparently laid bare. Cynics scoffed at her vanity, her egotism, and her conceit. Psychologists found in her a unique specimen for examination. Sentimentalists went raving over her strange cravings for the realisation of a sublime passion, which sometimes took the form of an ideal love and sometimes that of great fame. Men like Gladstone and Charles Eliot Norton, the statesman and the art critic, were among the first to recognise that Miss Bashkirtseff had been a most remarkable young woman. They saw revealed in the journal, as part of herself, a never-ending, never-satiated struggle against the commonplace, the inartistic, and the dwarfing provincialism that is too often mistaken for repose and dignity.’
This particular article goes on to explain how Marie’s mother censored the original diaries for publication, and to give some examples of ‘suppressed extracts’. A few days later, the New York Times published a further article about Marie, from a literary correspondent in London, William L Alden. He, it seems, did some research among those with whom Marie had studied at Académie Julian. She had great talent, and unlimited ambition, he says, but was ‘decidedly unpleasant’ in her attitude towards fellow students, and was even called an ‘hysterical minx’. Twenty years later, a further article in the New York Times records the death of Marie’s mother, and the finding of another diary in an old casket, and provides yet more extracts.
Bashkirtseff began writing her diary as a young teenager, and continued until 11 days before her death. There are over 106 notebooks. José H. Mito, in Argentina, who maintains a website lovingly devoted to her, gives a good history of the diaries and their publication (as well as much else besides). He says the complete manuscript was only discovered in 1964, in the French National Library, and that much had been left out of the earlier editions. Between 1991 and 2001, a complete version of the diaries were published in French in nine volumes and more than 3,000 pages. New editions of the diaries keep appearing in English also. One of the most successful in recent years was I Am the Most Interesting Book of All: The Diary of Marie Bashkirtseff. This was published by Chronicle Books in 1997 as a first volume, but there’s been no sign of a second volume (as far as I know).
The earliest editions of Bashkirtseff’s diary fell out of copyright many years ago, and some are available online - see The Diary Junction for links to these. Here, though, are some short samples from the diary, starting with a preface written by Bashkirtseff herself (they may, however, read very differently from modern translations).
Preface
‘Of what use were pretense or affectation? Yes, it is evident that I have the desire, if not the hope, of living upon this earth by any means in my power. If I do not die young I hope to live as a great artist; but if I die young, I intend to have my journal, which cannot fail to be interesting, published. Perhaps this idea of publication has already detracted from, if not destroyed, the chief merit that such a work may be said to possess? But, no! for in the first place I had written for a long time without any thought of being read, and then it is precisely because I hope to be read that I am altogether sincere. If this book is not the exact, the absolute, the strict truth, it has no raison d’etre. Not only do I always write what I think, but I have not even dreamed, for a single instant, of disguising anything that was to my disadvantage, or that might make me appear ridiculous. Besides, I think myself too admirable for censure.’
20 November 1878
‘I looked all of a sudden so beautiful, after I had taken my bath this evening, that I spent fully twenty minutes admiring myself in the glass. I am sure no one could have seen me without admiration; my complexion was absolutely dazzling, but soft and delicate, with a faint rose tint in the cheeks; to indicate force of character there was nothing but the lips and the eyes and eyebrows. Do not, I beg of you, think me blinded by vanity: when I do not look pretty I can see it very well; and this is the first time that I have looked pretty in a long while. Painting absorbs everything. What is odious to think of is that all this must one day fade, shrivel up, and perish!’
25 June 1884
‘I have just been reading my journal for the years 1875, 1876, and 1877. I find it full of vague aspirations toward some unknown goal. My evenings were spent in wild and despairing attempts to find some outlet for my powers. Should I go to Italy? Remain in Paris? Marry? Paint? What should I strive to become? If I went to Italy, I should no longer be in Paris, and my desire was to be everywhere at once. What a waste of energy was there?
If I had been born a man, I would have conquered Europe. As I was born a woman, I exhausted my energy in tirades against fate, and in eccentricities. There are moments when one believes one’s-self capable of all things. ‘If I only had the time,’ I wrote, ‘I would be a sculptor, a writer, a musician!’
I am consumed by an inward fire, but death is the inevitable end of all things, whether I indulge in these vain longings or not. But if I am nothing, why these dreams of fame, since the time I was first able to think? Why these wild longings after a greatness that presented itself then to my imagination under the form of riches and honors? Why, since I was first able to think, since the time when I was four years old, have I had longings, vague but intense, for glory, for grandeur, for splendor?’
Bashkirtseff was born in Ukraine in 1858. As a young girl she travelled widely in Europe with her mother, before settling in Nice, and then Paris, where she studied painting at the Académie Julian, one of the few establishments that took on female students. In just a few years she produced a large number of paintings, among the most famous of which are The Meeting (a portrait of slum children) and In the Studio (a portrait of fellow artists at work). But, in October 1884, aged only 25, she died of tuberculosis.
Bashkirtseff is also considered to have been an early feminist. This is partly because of the way she pushed herself into the art world, then dominated by men; and partly because of several articles she wrote under the name Pauline Oriel for a feminist newspaper, La Citoyenne. However it is her diary that provides most evidence for the way she struggled against the gender stereotypes of the age. This was published in France only three years after her death, and in England and the US in 1890. It caused a sensation. An article in the New York Times in 1900 (available online) begins as follows.
‘Most of our readers are probably familiar with the Journal of Marie Bashkirtseff - that published diary of a young Russian woman which a dozen years ago was the talk of all Europe and America. Sensitive people were shocked at the freedom with which the girl’s soul was apparently laid bare. Cynics scoffed at her vanity, her egotism, and her conceit. Psychologists found in her a unique specimen for examination. Sentimentalists went raving over her strange cravings for the realisation of a sublime passion, which sometimes took the form of an ideal love and sometimes that of great fame. Men like Gladstone and Charles Eliot Norton, the statesman and the art critic, were among the first to recognise that Miss Bashkirtseff had been a most remarkable young woman. They saw revealed in the journal, as part of herself, a never-ending, never-satiated struggle against the commonplace, the inartistic, and the dwarfing provincialism that is too often mistaken for repose and dignity.’
This particular article goes on to explain how Marie’s mother censored the original diaries for publication, and to give some examples of ‘suppressed extracts’. A few days later, the New York Times published a further article about Marie, from a literary correspondent in London, William L Alden. He, it seems, did some research among those with whom Marie had studied at Académie Julian. She had great talent, and unlimited ambition, he says, but was ‘decidedly unpleasant’ in her attitude towards fellow students, and was even called an ‘hysterical minx’. Twenty years later, a further article in the New York Times records the death of Marie’s mother, and the finding of another diary in an old casket, and provides yet more extracts.
Bashkirtseff began writing her diary as a young teenager, and continued until 11 days before her death. There are over 106 notebooks. José H. Mito, in Argentina, who maintains a website lovingly devoted to her, gives a good history of the diaries and their publication (as well as much else besides). He says the complete manuscript was only discovered in 1964, in the French National Library, and that much had been left out of the earlier editions. Between 1991 and 2001, a complete version of the diaries were published in French in nine volumes and more than 3,000 pages. New editions of the diaries keep appearing in English also. One of the most successful in recent years was I Am the Most Interesting Book of All: The Diary of Marie Bashkirtseff. This was published by Chronicle Books in 1997 as a first volume, but there’s been no sign of a second volume (as far as I know).
The earliest editions of Bashkirtseff’s diary fell out of copyright many years ago, and some are available online - see The Diary Junction for links to these. Here, though, are some short samples from the diary, starting with a preface written by Bashkirtseff herself (they may, however, read very differently from modern translations).
Preface
‘Of what use were pretense or affectation? Yes, it is evident that I have the desire, if not the hope, of living upon this earth by any means in my power. If I do not die young I hope to live as a great artist; but if I die young, I intend to have my journal, which cannot fail to be interesting, published. Perhaps this idea of publication has already detracted from, if not destroyed, the chief merit that such a work may be said to possess? But, no! for in the first place I had written for a long time without any thought of being read, and then it is precisely because I hope to be read that I am altogether sincere. If this book is not the exact, the absolute, the strict truth, it has no raison d’etre. Not only do I always write what I think, but I have not even dreamed, for a single instant, of disguising anything that was to my disadvantage, or that might make me appear ridiculous. Besides, I think myself too admirable for censure.’
20 November 1878
‘I looked all of a sudden so beautiful, after I had taken my bath this evening, that I spent fully twenty minutes admiring myself in the glass. I am sure no one could have seen me without admiration; my complexion was absolutely dazzling, but soft and delicate, with a faint rose tint in the cheeks; to indicate force of character there was nothing but the lips and the eyes and eyebrows. Do not, I beg of you, think me blinded by vanity: when I do not look pretty I can see it very well; and this is the first time that I have looked pretty in a long while. Painting absorbs everything. What is odious to think of is that all this must one day fade, shrivel up, and perish!’
25 June 1884
‘I have just been reading my journal for the years 1875, 1876, and 1877. I find it full of vague aspirations toward some unknown goal. My evenings were spent in wild and despairing attempts to find some outlet for my powers. Should I go to Italy? Remain in Paris? Marry? Paint? What should I strive to become? If I went to Italy, I should no longer be in Paris, and my desire was to be everywhere at once. What a waste of energy was there?
If I had been born a man, I would have conquered Europe. As I was born a woman, I exhausted my energy in tirades against fate, and in eccentricities. There are moments when one believes one’s-self capable of all things. ‘If I only had the time,’ I wrote, ‘I would be a sculptor, a writer, a musician!’
I am consumed by an inward fire, but death is the inevitable end of all things, whether I indulge in these vain longings or not. But if I am nothing, why these dreams of fame, since the time I was first able to think? Why these wild longings after a greatness that presented itself then to my imagination under the form of riches and honors? Why, since I was first able to think, since the time when I was four years old, have I had longings, vague but intense, for glory, for grandeur, for splendor?’
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