Xu diary melodrama

Xu Zhimo, a much celebrated Chinese poet, might have been celebrating his 80th birthday today had he not died young in a plane crash. Collections of his romantic poems and essays continue to be published, as do biographies celebrating the romance of his life. By incorporating their lives into their literature, one writer says, he and his friends elevated personal details to the level of artistic and historical importance. Even the fate of Xu’s diaries has been likened to a melodrama.

Xu was born in Haining, Zhejiang, in the far east of China, some 125 km from Shanghai. In 1915, he married Zhang Youyi, and the following year took up law studies. For a few years, he also studied economics and politics in the United States, and in Cambridge, Britain, where, it is said, he fell in love with English romantic poetry. Also in England, he fell in love with the beautiful and talented Lin Huiyin who would soon return to China and become a well-known architect and writer.

By 1922, Xu was also back in China, and had divorced from his first wife (the divorce is considered the first to take place in China). He focused his literary efforts on writing poetry and translating Western romantic forms. He also set up poetry societies, and worked as an editor and professor at several schools. In 1926, he married the third love of his life, Lu Xiaoman. Among his friends was Ling Shuhua, a writer who would have an affair with Virginia Woolf’s nephew, Julian Bell, when he was in China, and enjoy a correspondence with Woolf herself.

On his way to a lecture by Lin Huiyin, Xu died in a plane crash on 19 November 1931, aged but 34. He left behind poems, essays, novels as well as translations, and diaries. Wikipedia has a short biography. Several collections of Xu Zhimo’s work have been published in Chinese, the most recent and most comprehensive came out in 2005 - see Amazon. It was announced that ‘the most precious inclusion in the collection are two of the poet’s diaries, which had been looted by a Japanese soldier during the Japanese invasion of China in the 30s but later returned’.

A story about Xu’s diaries is included in A Thousand Miles of Dreams - the journeys of two Chinese sisters by Sasha Su-Ling Welland published by Rowman and Littlefield. The two sisters of the title are Welland’s grandmother who emigrated to the US and changed her name to Amy, and Ling Shuhua. Here is the paragraph from Welland’s book - partly available at Googlebooks - which explains the story.

‘When Ling Shuhua returned to Beijing for Xu Zhimo’s memorial, she provoked a battle over his ‘Eight Treasures Box’, which contained the diaries, letters and manuscripts he had left with her before departing for Europe in 1925. Although it had changed hands in the intervening years, Shuhua had possession of it when Zhimo died. Hu Shi planned to coordinate the publication of the poet’s selected letters, so Shuhua gave the ‘Eight Treasures Box’ to him, not knowing that he would pass it on to Xu Xhimo’s former lover Lin Huiyin to itemize the contents. On learning this, Shuhua wrote a frantic letter to Hu Shi. She feared that Lin Huiyin might destroy the diaries of Xu Zhimo’s widow Lu Xiaoman, now also in the box and full of curses for Lin. Shuhua defended her qualifications to serve as editor of Xu Zhimo’s writing. Once Lin Huiyin began her job of catologing, she discovered that Shuhua had removed two of Xu Zihmo’s diaries from the time at Cambridge when he met and fell in love with Lin. Hu Shi wrote to Shuhua, guessing that she wanted to write a biography based on the diaries, and criticized her for splitting up the poet’s effects and creating bad feeling among friends. Eventually Shuhua returned the diaries, but several pages remained missing.

The melodrama of this scramble after a box of letters and diaries shows the extent to which this generation of authors saw themselves as actors in an era of momentous change. By incorporating their lives into their literature, they elevated personal details to the level of artistic and historical importance.’

Lomonosov’s legacy

Today marks the 300th anniversary of the birth of Mikhail Vasilyevich Lomonosov, a remarkable Russian remembered for advances in science and achievements in poetry. He must have kept a diary because one extract is quoted widely across the internet, but I can find no source for this extract, nor any further information about his diaries.

Lomonosov was born on 19 November 1711 in the village of Denisovka (now called Lomonosovo) in the far north of Russia. Aged around 10, his father, a fisherman and shipowner, started taking him on trading missions. However, he was far more interested in books than in the sea, and, in his late teens, eventually found his way to Moscow (Encyclopædia Britannica says he went by foot, Boris Menshutkin, author of Lomonosov, Chemist Courtier, Physicist Poet, says he joined a caravan).

Once in Moscow, Lomonosov inveigled his way into the Slavonic-Greek-Latin Academy where he excelled as a student. By 1936, he had been awarded a scholarship to Saint Petersburg state university, and then he won a grant for study at the University of Marburg, in Germany.

Having married in Marburg, but unable to make a good living, Lomonosov returned to Russia in 1741. He was appointed to the physics department at the Russian Academy of Science; however, after insulting colleagues, he was held under house arrest for many months. With apologies behind him, the Academy named him professor of chemistry in 1745, and thereafter he soon established its first chemistry laboratory. A decade later he was instrumental in founding the Moscow State University.

Famously, in 1756, he tried to replicate an experiment undertaken by the English scientist Robert Boyle which had helped support the popular phlogiston theory (which postulated the existence of a fire-like element released during combustion), but concluded that the theory was false. Thus he anticipated the discoveries, 20 years later, of Antoine Lavoisier, one of the discoverers of oxygen and hydrogen, and the first to give a true explanation of combustion.

In support of Lomonosov’s claim to have anticipated Lavoisier, an extract from his diary is widely quoted, on Wikipedia and many other websites: ‘Today I made an experiment in hermetic glass vessels in order to determine whether the mass of metals increases from the action of pure heat. The experiments - of which I append the record in 13 pages - demonstrated that the famous Robert Boyle was deluded, for without access of air from outside the mass of the burnt metal remains the same.’ But nowhere on the internet can I find the source of this extract, nor any other information about Lomonosov’s diaries.

Among Lomonosov’s other scientific achievements are counted an improved design for a reflecting telescope, the first hypothesis on the existence of an atmosphere on Venus, the first recorded freezing of mercury, an explanation on the formation of icebergs, and an early understanding of, what would later turn out to be, the theory of continental drift. On the artistic side, he set up a glass factory to produce the first Russian mosaics, created a grammar that reformed the Russian literary language, and wrote poetry. He died in 1765, still only in his mid-40s. Further biographical information can be found at Russian Poetry Net, Russipedia and Wikipedia.

Livingstone’s invisible writing

A remarkable diary left behind by the famous British explorer and missionary David Livingstone has just been revealed, literally, for the first time - and published on the internet - thanks to a trans-Antlantic team of scholars and scientists. The so-called 1871 Field Diary was written in the run-up to Livingstone’s meeting with the journalist Henry Morton Stanley, and covers a horrific massacre by Arab slave traders.

David Livingstone was born in Blantyre, Scotland, in 1813. He went to work at the local mill aged only 10, which also provided some schooling. In 1836, he began studying medicine and theology in Glasgow, and then decided to become a missionary doctor. In 1840-1841, he was posted to the edge of the Kalahari Desert in southern Africa. In 1844, he married Mary Moffat, daughter of another missionary; they had six children, one dying in infancy.

During this first 16 year unbroken period in Africa, Livingstone undertook several expeditions north and into the continent’s interior in search of converts. In so doing, he added hugely to Western knowledge of central and southern Africa. On one of his expeditions, starting in 1853 and lasting three years, he discovered some spectacular waterfalls, which he named Victoria Falls. On arriving at the mouth of the Zambezi in 1856, he became the first European to cross the southern width of Africa.

Livingstone returned to Britain that same year, something of a national hero; and subsequently went on speaking tours. He also published his best-selling Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa, before heading out to Africa again (arriving in 1858). This time he stayed for five years working on official explorations of eastern and central Africa for the British government. In 1864, though, he was ordered home by the government, dissatisfied with his work. His wife had died some two years earlier.

Back in Britain, Livingstone spoke out against the slave trade, and secured private support for another expedition to central Africa, this time searching for the Nile’s source. The expedition began in 1866 and went on for years; indeed, when nothing was heard of Livingstone for many months, the journalist and explorer, Stanley, set out to find him. And find him, he did, in November 1871, greeting him with the now-famous phrase: ‘Dr Livingstone I presume?’

Livingstone continued on his exploration but increasingly suffered ill health; and he died in May 1873. His body was shipped to England and buried in Westminster Abbey. There is plenty of information about Livingstone on the internet, at Wikipedia, Livingstone Online, Believer’s Web, and Wholesome Words which has a long list of biographies.

Livingstone was a meticulous diarist, recording his journeys in pocket books, and then writing up the journals in larger volumes. All of these survived (brought back with his body in fact) and were edited by Horace Waller and published in two volumes by John Murray in 1874 as The Last Journals of David Livingstone in Central Africa from 1865 to his Death. These books are freely available at Internet Archive.

However, for some months in 1871, Livingstone ran so short of writing supplies that he resorted to using improvised composition materials to keep up his diary habit. This so-named 1871 Field Diary was thus composed on a series of odd scraps of paper, some of which already contained pre-printed text, such as an old copy of The Standard newspaper, and was penned using an ink made from the seed of a local berry. This manuscript, though carefully preserved by the National Trust for Scotland at its David Livingstone Centre in Blantyre, was unreadable: the paper had deteriorated badly and the ink had faded.

In 2009, a research team led by Dr Adrian S Wisnicki, assistant professor at Indiana University of Pennsylvania and honorary research fellow at Birkbeck, University of London, began a spectral imaging project to recover the lost text. And, on 1 November 2011, announced it had succeeded. The team says the story they found, in the hitherto illegible diary, ‘offers a unique insight into Livingstone’s mind during the greatest crisis of his last expedition.’ Of particular importance, it adds, in relation to what was already known of Livingstone’s diary in 1871, is the original description of a massacre in which slave traders slaughtered hundreds of local people. Stanley’s report of this massacre to the world press, sourced at the time on what Livingstone told him, prompted the British government to close the East African slave trade.

The David Livingstone Spectral Imaging Project has now made the complete original text freely available on the internet, complete with everything you would want to know about the project, the manuscript, and more! The website is hosted by the University of California, and the project was funded by the British Academy and the US National Endowment for the Humanities.

The 1 November press release from the project team highlights one of the key aspects of its findings: ‘The massacre is one of the most important events in The Last Journals of David Livingstone (1874), edited after Livingstone’s death in 1873 by his friend Horace Waller. Until now this book was the main source for historians and biographers. However, critical and forensic analysis of the original 1871 text reveals a very different story from Waller’s heavily edited version. In particular it sheds light on a heart-stopping moment when Livingstone gazes with ‘wonder’ as three Arab slavers with guns enter the market in Nyangwe, where 1,500 people are gathered, most of them women: ‘50 yards off two guns were fired and a general flight took place - shot after shot followed on the terrified fugitives - great numbers died - It is awful - terrible, a dreadful world this,’ writes Livingstone in despair as he witnesses the massacre. ‘As I write, shot after shot falls on the fugitives on the other side [of the river] who are wailing loudly over those they know are already slain - Oh let thy kingdom come.’ ’

Columbus in the Bahamas

Some five hundred and sixty years ago today, or thereabouts, was born Christopher Columbus, probably the most famous explorer of all time. His voyages across the Atlantic brought much knowledge to Europe of the American continents, and also set in motion Spanish colonisation - a process which would have the most profound impact on the future of the world. Fortunately, Columbus kept detailed logs or diaries, and these are among the earliest of any surviving European diaries.

The eldest of five children, Columbus was born on (or around) 31 October 1451 in Genoa (there is some dispute about the place as well as the date) into a wool weaving family, possibly of Spanish Jewish descent. How he became a sailor is unclear, although it seems he may have worked first as a commercial agent in his home city, a busy port. He may also have been in the service of a pirate for a while. He made his first trading voyage to Khios in the Aegean Sea. On one early voyage, his vessel sank during a battle off the Portuguese coast, and it is thought he swam ashore. He then settled in Portugal, and married, in 1479, the daughter of the governor of the island of Porto Santo, who bore him one son.

In the belief that the world was smaller than thought, and round, and that Asia could be reached quickly by sailing west, Columbus petitioned the Portuguese court for funds, only to be rejected. He moved to Spain where his plans were more favourably received. Here, Beatriz Enriquez became his mistress and bore him a second son, Ferdinand Columbus. In 1492, Columbus set off on the first of four famous voyages. On the first one, he explored the Caribbean islands. On the second, he founded the first European town in the New World - on Hispaniola (the island now shared by the Dominican Republic and Haiti).

During his third voyage, Columbus discovered the mainland of South America before returning to Hispaniola, where considerable discontent had arisen among the settlers; lobbying against him then led to his arrest. On returning to Spain, he regained his freedom, but at the cost of much prestige and the governorship of the Indies, a title and role he’d acquired after his first voyage. On his fourth and somewhat ill-fated journey, Columbus explored the coast of Central America, but was later stranded on Jamaica for a year. He returned to Spain in 1504, and, in 1506, died a wealthy man, though still in dispute with the Spanish crown over his share of the income from the new lands.

There is much information about Columbus available online, at Wikipedia, Royal Museums Greenwich, The Smithsonian, and in his famous journals which are all freely available at Internet Archive. Here is an extract describing the first sighting of land in the West Indies. It is taken from The Journal of Christopher Columbus (during his First Voyage, 1492-93), and Documents relating to the voyages of John Cabot and Gaspar Real, published by The Hakluyt Society in 1892 (on the 400th anniversary of the voyage).

11 October 1492 ‘The course was WSW, and there was more sea than there had been during the whole of the voyage. They saw sandpipers, and a green reed near the ship. Those of the caravel Pinta saw a cane and a pole, and they took up another small pole which appeared to have been worked with iron; also another bit of cane, a land-plant, and a small board. The crew of the caravel Niña also saw signs of land, and a small branch covered with berries. Everyone breathed afresh and rejoiced at these signs. The run until sunset was 26 leagues.

After sunset the Admiral returned to his original west course, and they went along at the rate of 12 miles an hour. Up to two hours after midnight they had gone 90 miles, equal to 22 1/2 leagues. As the caravel Pinta was a better sailer, and went ahead of the Admiral, she found the land, and made the signals ordered by the Admiral. The land was first seen by a sailor named Rodrigo de Triana. But the Admiral, at ten in the previous night, being on the castle of the poop, saw a light, though it was so uncertain that he could not affirm it was land. He called Pero Gutierrez, a gentleman of the Kings bed-chamber, and said that there seemed to be a light, and that he should look at it. He did so, and saw it. The Admiral said the same to Rodrigo Sanchez of Segovia, whom the King and Queen had sent with the fleet as inspector, but he could see nothing, because he was not in a place whence anything could be seen. After the Admiral had spoken he saw the light once or twice, and it was like a wax candle rising and falling. It seemed to few to be an indication of land; but the Admiral made certain that land was close.

When they said the Salve, which all the sailors were accustomed to sing in their way, the Admiral asked and admonished the men to keep a good look-out on the forecastle, and to watch well for land; and to him who should first cry out that he saw land, he would give a silk doublet, besides the other rewards promised by the Sovereigns, which were 10,000 maravedis to him who should first see it.

At two hours after midnight the land was sighted at a distance of two leagues. They shortened sail, and lay by under the mainsail without the bonnets. The vessels were hove to, waiting for daylight; and on Friday they arrived at a small island of the Lucayos, called, in the language of the Indians, Guanahani [Watling Island, named San Salvador by Columbus]. Presently they saw naked people. The Admiral went on shore in the armed boat, and Martin Alonso Pinzon, and Vicente Yañez, his brother, who was captain of the Niña. The Admiral took the royal standard, and the captains went with two banners of the green cross, which the Admiral took in all the ships as a sign, with an F and a Y and a crown over each letter, one on one side of the cross and the other on the other.

Having landed, they saw trees very green, and much water, and fruits of diverse kinds. The Admiral called to the two captains, and to the others who leaped on shore, and to Rodrigo Escovedo, secretary of the whole fleet, and to Rodrigo Sanchez of Segovia, and said that they should bear faithful testimony that he, in presence of all, had taken, as he now took, possession of the said island for the King and for the Queen, his Lords making the declarations that are required, as is more largely set forth in the testimonies which were then made in writing.

Presently many inhabitants of the island assembled. What follows is in the actual words of the Admiral in his book of the first navigation and discovery of the Indies. “I,” he says, “that we might form great friendship, for I knew that they were a people who could be more easily freed and converted to our holy faith by love than by force, gave to some of them red caps, and glass beads to put round their necks, and many other things of little value, which gave them great pleasure, and made them so much our friends that it was a marvel to see. They afterwards came to the ship’s boats where we were, swimming and bringing us parrots, cotton threads in skeins, darts, and many other things; and we exchanged them for other things that we gave them, such as glass beads and small bells. In fine, they took all, and gave what they had with good will. It appeared to me to be a race of people very poor in everything. They go as naked as when their mothers bore them, and so do the women, although I did not see more than one young girl. All I saw were youths, none more than thirty years of age. They are very well made, with very handsome bodies, and very good countenances. Their hair is short and coarse, almost like the hairs of a horse’s tail. They wear the hairs brought down to the eyebrows, except a few locks behind, which they wear long and never cut. They paint themselves black, and they are the colour of the Canarians, neither black nor white. Some paint themselves white, others red, and others of what colour they find. Some paint their faces, others the whole body, some only round the eyes, others only on the nose. They neither carry nor know anything of arms, for I showed them swords, and they took them by the blade and cut themselves through ignorance. They have no iron, their darts being wands without iron, some of them having a fish’s tooth at the end, and others being pointed in various ways. They are all of fair stature and size, with good faces, and well made. I saw some with marks of wounds on their bodies, and I made signs to ask what it was, and they gave me to understand that people from other adjacent islands came with the intention of seizing them, and that they defended themselves. I believed, and still believe, that they come here from the mainland to take them prisoners. They should be good servants and intelligent, for I observed that they quickly took in what was said to them, and I believe that they would easily be made Christians, as it appeared to me that they had no religion. I, our Lord being pleased, will take hence, at the time of my departure, six natives for your Highnesses, that they may learn to speak. I saw no beast of any kind except parrots, on this island.” The above is in the words of the Admiral.’

Arthur Schnitzler whistling

Arthur Schnitzler, the Austrian author who wrote sexy plays and stream-of-consciousness short stories long before they were fashionable, died 80 years ago today. He was also a committed diarist, documenting some parts of his life - not least his sexual activity - in meticulous detail. The diaries have only been published in German, in ten volumes; and even English-language biographies, which rely on the diary material, provide few verbatim quotes.

Schnitzler was born in Vienna in 1862, the son of a prominent Hungarian-Jewish doctor. He studied medicine at the city’s university until 1885, thereafter working at the city’s general hospital. He had a strong interest in psychiatry and was a friend of Sigmund Freud; but it was writing that attracted him most.

Schnitzler’s early literary reputation was largely gained through his plays, starting with Anatol in 1893, and then, in 1900, the now-popular Der Reigen (Hands Around, also known as La Ronde). This play - in which ten pairs of characters are shown before and after sex - was not actually performed until 1920, but led to the author being branded as a pornographer.

Encyclopedia Britannica summarises Schnitzler’s literary style: ‘Most at home in creating a single, precisely shaded mood for a one-act play or short story, [he] often evoked the atmosphere of the corrupt self-deception he saw in the last years of the Habsburg empire. He explored human psychology, portraying egotism in love, fear of death, the complexities of the erotic life, and the morbidity of spirit induced by a weary introspection.’ He also criticised the military code of conduct in various works, not least in his most well-known novel, Lieutenant Gustl, published at the turn of the century. This latter is considered one of the first German-language works of fiction to rely on stream-of-consciousness writing.

In 1903, Schnitzler married the actress Olga Gussman, with whom he had two children. His later years were largely spent in a villa overlooking Vienna where he devoted most of his time to writing fiction. His 1926 novella Traumnovelle (Dream Story) was turned into a major film by Stanley Kubrick in 1999 (Eyes Wide Shut). Schnitzler’s married daughter committed suicide in 1930, and he himself died on 21 October 1931. His works were banned by the Nazi party in Germany, and then also in Austria - indeed, they were among those thrown into the flames when Joseph Goebbels organized book burnings. Further biographical information is available from Wikipedia or Encyclopaedia Britannica.

In addition to his other writing, Schnitzler meticulously kept a diary from the age of 17 until two days before his death. The manuscript, which runs to almost 8,000 pages, is considered among the most significant of German and European diary literature. Long before his death, Schnitzler stipulated that the volumes of the diaries to the year 1899 should not be published for twenty years after his death, and the remainder not for forty years. In fact, it was not until around 1980 that the Austrian Academy of Sciences began a long-term project to publish the diary, in ten volumes (the last appeared in 2000), with the title, Arthur Schnitzler - Tagebuch.

I can find no extracts or verbatim examples from Schnitzler’s diaries in English on the internet. However, an academic article about them, written by Andrew C Wisely (a Schnitzler specialist and associate professor of German at Baylor University) is freely available online at Googlebooks. The article - The Task of Memory: The Diary Project - takes up one chapter in Wisely’s Arthur Schnitzler and Twentieth-Century Criticism, published by Camden House in 2004. Wisely says the diaries are ‘most notable for Schnitzler’s casual descriptions of sexual conquests - he was often in relationships with several women at once, and for a period of some years he kept a record of every orgasm.’

Schnitzler’s Century, by Peter Gay and published by W W Norton & Co in 2001, relies extensively on extracts from Schnitzler’s diaries, however it only quotes verbatim extracts rarely. Here is one, dated 4 July 1887: ‘In the early morning, I passed her room, whistling. The second time she appeared, I, quickly into the room, lock the door and take her.’ Some pages can be viewed on the Amazon website. See also The Guardian for a review by Nicholas Lezard.

Lezard draws attention to an early moment in Schnitzler’s life: ‘The incident with which [Gay] kicks off his history, and which he makes a kind of focal epiphany, is the moment when Schnitzler’s doctor father finds his 16-year-old son’s diary. Arthur, his father discovered, had been indulging in some precocious sexual exploits. Schnitzler senior marches the young man off to his study and forces him to read ‘Moritz Kaposi’s three-volume standard treatise on syphilis and skin diseases complete with explicit and repellent illustrations’. ’

Thomas Edison’s diary

Thomas Edison, one of the most famous and prolific inventors of all time, died 80 years ago today. The distribution of electricity and the incandescent light bulb, the phonograph, and the motion picture camera are all counted among his contributions to, what is often called, ‘modern life’. Although not known as a diarist, he did - for a few days in the summer of 1885 - keep a journal; and this document is considered to be the only document he left behind with thoughts and feelings of a personal nature.

Edison was born in Milan, Ohio, in 1847, but the family moved to Port Huron, Michigan, when he was seven, where he spent the rest of his childhood. At some point, he suffered from a disease which left him hard of hearing for the rest of his life. While still a young teenager, he sold sweets and newspapers on trains, and then became a roving telegraph operator. In 1868, he was employed as a night operator for Western Union; and, by the following year, he had moved to New York City, where, in his spare time, he worked on inventions. After repairing the telegraphic gold price indicator for Western Union, it then commissioned him to improve the stock ticker, which led to the Edison Universal Stock Printer.

In 1871, Edison married Mary Stilwell, only 16 at the time, and they had three children, before she died in 1884. With the proceeds from the sale of his patents to Western Union, he set up his own company, manufacturing stock tickers and printing telegraphs. By 1876, though, he had sold the company so as to have funds to build an industrial research laboratory, the first of its kind, at Menlo Park, New Jersey.

The following year Edison invented the phonograph, the first machine that could record the sound of someone’s voice and play it back. And the year after that, he began work on the idea of a light bulb, and he launched the Edison Electric Light Company. He demonstrated his carbon filament lamp in 1879. By the mid-1880s, Menlo Park had expanded to occupy two city blocks, and Edison and his team had invented, among other things, a system for electricity distribution and a carbon microphone. After the death of Mary, Edison met and married Mina Miller (with whom he would have three more children) and moved to Llewellyn Park in West Orange. Here he built a new laboratory, far larger than the facility at Menlo Park.

Edison was always much engaged with commercialising his products. Chief among these was electricity and its delivery - by 1887, there were well over 100 Edison power stations delivering direct current (DC) electricity. But he also became increasingly engaged in a very public battle with George Westinghouse who was promoting the distribution of alternating current (AC), which was more efficient to distribute. Edison continued working until his death on 18 October 1931. Among many other achievements, his organisation made major developments with the phonograph, x-rays, storage batteries, and motion pictures. Further information is available from The Library of Congress, ThomasEdison.com, and The Thomas Edison Papers.

Edison is not known to have kept a diary through his life, but for one short period, in July 1885, he did write one - indeed, this manuscript is the only known volume kept by him specifically to record thoughts and feelings of a personal nature. It includes observations on art, literature, and religion, along with comments about his dreams, his health, and his feelings toward his future wife, Mina Miller. It was first edited by Dagobert Runes and published by the Philosophical Library, New York, in 1948, as The Diary and Sundry observations of T A Edison. In 1971, The Chatham Press published The Diary of Thomas A Edison with an introduction By Kathleen L McGuirk.

Photographs of the diary’s pages (46 images) can be viewed online at The Thomas Edison Papers website (which currently has 175,000 of Edison’s papers digitalised), hosted by Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey; and the transcribed text can be read at the Ayn Rand Institute website. Here is one full day’s entry.

19 July 1885
‘Slept as sound as a bug in a barrel of morphine. Donned a boiled and starched emblem of respectability. Eat food for breakfast. Weather delightful. Canary seed orchestra started up with same old tune, ancestor of this bird sang the self same tune 6,000 years ago to Adam down on the Euphrates, way back when Abel got a situation as the first angel. Read Sunday Herald, learned of John Roach’s failure - am sorry - he has been pursued with great malignity by newspapers and others, from ignorance I think. Americans ought to be proud of Roach, who started in life as a day laborer and became giant of industry and the greatest shipbuilder in the United States, employing thousands of men and feeding innumerable families. What has he now for this 40 years of incessant work and worry. People who hound such men as these I would invent a special Hades, I would stricken them with the chronic sciatic neuralgia and cause them to wander forever stark naked within the arctic circle.

Saw in same paper account of base ball match. This struck me as something unusual. Read more about that immeasurable immensity of tact and beauty Madame Recamier. I would like to see such a woman. Nature seems to be running her factory on another style of goods nowdays and won’t switch back until long after I’m baldheaded. Damon went out to assist the tide in. Daisy told me something about a man who kept livery stable in Venice. In afternoon went out in yacht. On first trip all our folks, and lot of smaller people, sailed around for an hour. Returned and landed the abbreviated people. Started for Cottage Park where we took on board the charming Mrs Roberts brevet Recamier, and a large lady friend whose name has twice got up and jumped out of my mind. Then sailed away for Rock buoy, and for some occult reason Damon didn’t stop and change his mind but headed for Liverpool. Went out two miles in ocean, undulations threatened to disturb the stability of the dinner of divers persons, returned at 7 p.m. Then Damon took out a boat load of slaves of the kitchen.

Damon and I after his return study plans for our Floridian bower in the lowlands of the peninsular Eden, within that charmed zone of beauty, where wafted from the table lands of the Oronoco and the dark Carib sea, perfumed zephyrs forever kiss the gorgeous flora. Rats! Damon took the plans to Boston to place them into the hands of an archetectualist to be reduced to a paper reality. Damon promised to ascertain probable cost chartering schooner to plough the Spanish main loaded with our hen coops. Dot came in and gave us a lot of girlish philosophy which amused us greatly. Oh dear, this celestial mud ball has made another revolution and no photograph yet received from the Chataquain Paragon of Perfection. How much longer will Hope dance on my intellect? Miss Igoe told me of a picture she had taken on a rock at Panama NY. There were several others in the group, interpolated so as to dilute the effect of Mina’s beauty. As she stated the picture was taken on a rock I immediately brought my scientific imagination to work to ascertain how the artist could have flowed collodion over a rock and put so many people inside his camera. Miss Igoe kindly corrected her explanation by stating that a picture was taken by a camera of a group on a rock. Thus my mind was brought back from a suspicion of her verbal integrity to a belief in the honesty of her narrative.

After supper Mrs G, Daisy and Louise with myself as an incidental appendage walked over to the town of Ocean Spray, went into a drug store and bought some alleged candy, asked the gilded youth with the usual vacuous expression, if he had any nitric peroxide, he gave a wild stare of incomhensability. Then I simplified the name to nitric acid, which I hoped was within the scope of his understanding. A faint gleam of intelligence crept over his face whereupon he went into another room from which he returned with the remark that he didn’t keep nitric acid. Fancy a drug store without nitric acid. A drug store nowdays seems to consist of a frontage of red, blue and green demijohns, a soda fountain, case with candy and toothbrushes, a lot of almost empty bottles with death and stomachatic destruction written in Latin on them, all in charge of a young man with a hatchet shaped head, hair laid out by a civil engineer, and a blank stare of mediocrity on his face that by comparison would cause a gum indian in the Eden Musée [to] look intellectual. On our return I carried the terrealbian gum drops.

Moon was shining brightly. Girls called my attention several times to beauty of the light from said moon shining upon the waters, couldn’t appreciate it, was so busy taking a mental triangleation of the moon, the two sides of said triangle meeting the base line of the earth at Woodside and Akron Ohio. Miss Igoe told us about her love of ancient literature, how she loved to read Latin, but couldn’t. I told her I was so fond of Greek that I always rushed for the comedies of Aristophanes to read whenever I had the jumping toothache. Bed - Mina, morning.’

Farington on Dance

Nathaniel Dance Holland, a painter of some distinction and a founder member of the Royal Academy, died 200 years ago today. Although he didn’t keep a diary himself, he is mentioned many times in Joseph Farington’s diary, one of the most important sources of historical information about the London art world in the period.

The third son of architect George Dance the Elder, Nathaniel was born in 1735. He studied art under Francis Hayman, a painter and illustrator, and then, in 1754, went to live in Italy, where he developed a considerable reputation as a portrait painter. In 1760, he was commissioned to paint four versions of a now famous conversation piece (an informal group portrait) in front of the Colosseum. Soon after, he was also commissioned for a full-length portrait of Edward, Duke of York.

On his return to England in 1766, Dance continued working as a successful portrait painter. With Hayman and his architect brother George Dance the Younger, he was one of the founder members of the Royal Academy in 1768. Among his notable portraits were those of King George III, Captain James Cook and actor David Garrick.

In 1773, both Dance and Thomas Gainsborough refused to exhibit at the Royal Academy after a disagreement with the president, Sir Joshua Reynolds, but Dance returned to the Academy exhibition in 1774, showing Orpheus Lamenting the Loss of Eurydice, and, in 1776, The Death of Mark Anthony. In 1782 he moved to Cranbury Park, Hampshire, the home of a widow, Mrs Harriet Dummer, who he married the following year.

Dance resigned from the Royal Academy in 1790, the year of his election to Parliament, but he did continue to exhibit as an amateur. He was made a baronet in 1800, and the same year took the name Holland by royal decree. He died on 15 October 1811. A little further information is available at Wikipedia, though the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (which requires login) has a much better article.

There is no evidence that Dance kept a diary. However, Joseph Farington mentions Dance in his diary quite often. Farington was born in 1747 in Leigh, Lancashire, the second of seven sons of the local vicar. After studying in Manchester, he went to train with Richard Wilson in London and won several prizes, awarded by the Society of Artists, for landscape drawings. He joined the Royal Academy when it was founded, and remained an active member for most of his life. Although he produced some important artistic books - Views of the Lakes of Cumberland and Westmorland and History of the River Thames - he is much better remembered for his diary, with its vivid portrayals of the London art scene in the late 18th century and early 19th century. Farington’s diary was first published by Hutchinson in the 1920s, in four volumes, and these are all freely available at Internet Archive.

Here are a few entries about Nathaniel Dance from Farington’s diary.

11 October 1793 ‘The Prince of Wales has desired N[athaniel] Dance to paint his portrait, which has much embarrassed the latter, who is very unwilling to do it.’

28 January 1794
‘Went this morning with G. Dance to N. Dances in Mortimer Street. The landscape the latter has painted is very ably executed, and very clear. He remarked on the custom of painters observing the foreground objects in masses of brown. His parts in shade are as much made out as those in light.’

18 March 1794
‘Dance recommended the painting clear skies with Ultramarine and White alone and then to use Ivory Black, with White for the cloud tints; adding in some cases a little vermilion or Naples yellow. He said Sir Joshua Reynolds recommended the using Black for his cloud tint, which he said would always be in harmony with the Blue and White.’

30 April 1794
‘News to-day of a victory over the French, near Cambray. The general opinion is that Lawrence this year is inferior to Hoppner. Jones and Hearne think the handling in Dances landscape poor and thorny: that the colouring has too much sameness: and that the greens are not of a true colour. Jones particularly objected to it. They both said how much the subject would gain by being differently coloured.’

26 May 1796
‘N, Dance I met & Sir George Beaumont joined us. Dance told us He had this day paid the Duke of Dorset £4,000 for his seat in the new parliament, and a treat there [East Grinstead] cost him £50 more. I asked him [how] He wd. be circumstanced if a new parliament shd. be called in a year or two. He said He had no agreement, it was all upon honor; but He should think himself very ill used, if required to pay again at the end of so short a time.’

21 April 1807
‘At Eleven o’Clock I called on Sir Nathaniel Holland [Dance had changed his name by this time to Dance-Holland]. We talked of the sale of Barry’s pictures. He said Barry’s Birth of Pandora was a very incompetent attempt to do something great. It was deficient both in design, in form, & in colouring. Jupiter was a Huge figure in the upper parts but the lower limbs were so small in proportion that such a figure could not stand. It was the case with several other figures in that picture; and many of the limbs appeared to have been executed in imitation of parts which He had looked at in the antique, but these limbs were not of the same character with the other parts of the figure to which He had attached them. What attempt there was at colouring was as bad as possible, He seemed to have no sense of it. On the whole He sd. Barry Had talked & bullied people into a belief of His being a great artist. He said His Venus rising from the Sea was His best performance. In that He had the Venus of Medicis in his eye, & made something of it, but He had spoilt the picture by rubbing a brick dust colour over the upper part of the figure.

He spoke of the Bacchus & Ariadne by Titian belonging to Lord Kinnaird. He said it was impossible that Titian could have left the Sky in the state it is, almost pure Ultramarine, like a Lapis Lazuli stone, while another part of the sky is quite Hot. He did not like the figure of Bacchus leaping from His Car, nor that of Ariadne. In some parts there is fine colour, but on the whole it is a picture more fit for an Artist to examine for the purpose of studying what is good in it, than desireable to hang up in a room for general admiration. He thought the picture had been in the hands of bungling picture menders.

He mentioned Wilkie with great approbation, saying that His merit was of the right sort, so true in all respects.

He complained of not having a good painting room at His House in the Country. He had no light good to paint by but what faced the South & He had been much embarassed by it.’

6 June 1807
‘[George] Dance I dined with. We dined a little before 5 and had Port, Madeira, & Red Champaigne. Drinking was spoken of. Dance told me I knew a person who never in his life was intoxicated; it was Sir Nathl. Holland, His Brother. He added that Sir Nathl. always objected to wine; and, when alone, He believed did not drink any; but in company passes the bottle so as to keep up an appearance of drinking some wine. Sir Nathl. has a strong prejudice against wine & thinks it a kind of poison. To Tea He has no objection.’

2 November 1807
‘Sir Nathl. is said to posess £24,000 a year, but does not expend more than £5,000 a year. He lives very handsomely however, both in His House & equipage; Has a man Cook, & when He gives dinners they are sumptuous. He is extremely fond of a young girl, the daughter of His Butler, and just emerging from Childhood. She sits at His table while Her father waits at it . . . and is taken by them [Sir Nathaniel & Lady Holland] when they pay visits, which causes some difficulty in others to know how to receive her. He makes sketches & occasionally paints, but complained of His eyes when speaking to Owen. Though He is considered a singular man in His manner, He is on the whole very well liked by the neighbouring gentry.’

The Broncho Buster

Frederic Remington, a leading figure in American art of the Wild West, was born a century and a half ago today. His paintings and sculptures - such as The Broncho Buster - remain much sought after today. Thanks to a bequest by his wife, Eva, the Frederic Remington Art Museum, located in Ogdensburg, New York, has a large collection of Remington art and artefacts, including his (somewhat scanty) diaries.

Remington was an only child, born on 4 October 1861 in Canton, New York. His father was a colonel in the Civil War, and a newspaper editor. The family moved to Ogdensburg when Ferederic was eleven. Even at an early age, he was noted for drawing soldiers and cowboys. He attended art school at Yale, but left to look after his ailing father who died when only 46.

Thereafter, Remington tried various jobs but devoted himself primarily to illustration. He married Eva Caten in 1884. By this time, demand for his Western illustrations from Harper’s Weekly and other New York magazines had begun to take off. He held his first one-man show in 1890 at the American Art Galleries, and, in the same year, moved to live in New Rochelle. Travelling widely, he spent a lot of time west of the Mississippi River, drawing aspects of the frontier, and loving the life.

Remington’s pictures, Wikipedia says, ‘brought visual information to the eastern public accompanying both factual accounts and fiction of the Old West’. He was praised and trusted for the accuracy of detail in his work. In 1888, two of his paintings were used for US stamps; his first book, Pony Tracks, was published in 1895, and others followed, not least an illustrated novel The Way of an Indian. Around this time, he also branched out into sculpture, producing some now-famous works, such as The Broncho Buster and Big Cowboy.

Remington briefly interrupted his work on Western subjects when, in 1898, he went to Cuba to act as a war correspondent and illustrator during the Spanish Civil War. He came back disillusioned by the realities of war. Near the end of his life, he moved to Ridgefield, Connecticut, but he was very obese by this time, and ill-health dogged him until his death in 1909. Further biographical information can be found at the Frederic Remington Art Museum website, and PBS American Masters.

The Frederic Remington Art Museum, located in Ogdensburg, says ‘the depth and breadth’ of its Remington holdings is ‘unmatched’. The museum is located in a property lived in by Eva Remington (though not Frederic) towards the end of her life; and its holding - including Frederic Remington’s diaries - originated through a bequest by Eva on her death in 1918. It does not appear that the diaries have been published, though authors have used them as source material for research, and a few extracts can be found on the Museum’s website.

2 April 1907
‘Left New York on Central with Henry Smith on Limited 3:30 - for south western trip.’

5 April 1907
‘Got out a Tucumcari N, Mexico. 6:00 AM country green as a leek drove out but country uninteresting slept at hotel all afternoon. Local train late. Went to bed woked up at midnight, no train, back to bed . . .’

6 April 1907
‘Out of here at 5o’c. Got to El Paso at 6. couldn’t get room at Sheldon and barely got room at St Regis. . . First bath in a week . . .’

7 April 1907
‘Tired and loafed - short walk wondering when we will go or what we will do.’

9 April 1907 ‘Came up 900 ft. to Cloudcroft all pines and not very paintable. Horrible dinner. Something must be done . . .’

10 April 1907
‘Sketched all day - Mountain and horses beautiful weather fine sunsets on pine tress. Picture ‘The dead cow boy and outlaw horse’ . . . Henry wants to go Grand Canyon.’

11 April 1907
‘We can no longer stand the altitudes. My heart nearly stopped when I took a bath this morning. We are overcome by altitude. Went down to Alamagordo - engineer pulled the air on us and nearly killed half dozen people in caboose by shock. I sketched bluffs at sunset and had terrible ride home across irrigating ditches.’

23 April 1907
‘Sketched Rio Grand river - wonderful red color. Lunched with Terry. . . Left El Paso at night met army officer Powell at station.’

15 April 1907
‘Got to Canyon. El Dover Hotel. Sketched at evening. Canyon bigger than I was led to expect by descriptions or pictures. Met Artist A Keer.’

In 1996, the museum also acquired Eva’s diaries. It says: ‘[These] raise quite a few questions about the composition of our holdings. For instance, on Friday, June 27th, 1913, she writes, “In the P.M. I washed Frederic’s paintings and varnished them and made a great improvement.” Museums and private collectors are now working to remove such old yellow varnish from Remington’s paintings. On Thursday, March 18th, 1915, she records, “Went over things in Frederic’s desk & burned a lot of photos, etc.” We may never know what she deleted from the historic record, or, just as compelling - why she did it. Clearly our holdings were not preserved in a time capsule before they came to us, and sometimes not after they were here.’

Violent, absurd and mad

Lady Mary Coke, a friend of the politician and historian, Horace Walpole, died two centuries ago today. She seems to have been a society woman of some character, but little achievement. She is remembered today partly because of her (rather dull) diary, and partly because of her stormy friendship with Walpole, who called her violent and mad.

Mary was born in 1727, the fifth and youngest daughter of John Campbell, Duke of Argyll, and his second wife, Jane who was a maid of honour to Queen Anne and Caroline. She married Edward, Viscount Coke, in 1747. However, the marriage was strained from the start, and before long was the matter of court proceedings. She moved to live with her mother at Sudbrook, Surrey; but, in any case, her husband died shortly after, when she was only 26.

With a legacy from her father, Lady Mary was able to play a full, if increasingly odd, part in society, travelling frequently in Europe. In the early 1770s, she became involved with the court of Empress Maria Theresa in Vienna; but, on a third visit, she fell out of favour with the Empress, and thereafter felt persecuted by her. Lady Mary had a long friendship with Horace Walpole, who dedicated The Castle of Otranto to her; but he called her ‘violent, absurd and mad’ (according to Ponsonby - see below). She died on 30 September 1811. Wikipedia has further biographical information.

Much of what we know of Lady Mary today comes from her voluminous diary, largely written in the form of letters to her sister Lady Strafford. This was first published privately (only 100 copies were printed) between 1889 and 1896 in four volumes by David Douglas in Edinburgh. These were reprinted in 1970 by Kingsmead Bookshops (see Amazon).

Arthur Ponsonby, the author of English Diaries (available at Internet Archive), says the journal is often silly and very dull. Jill Rubenstein, author of Lady Mary’s biography in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (login needed), says: ‘The journal ranges from banal descriptions of card games and weather to perceptive social observation and expressions of sincere affection, often closely and unselfconsciously juxtaposed. The personality which emerges from the whole combines elements of the mundane and the preposterous with the deeply sympathetic.’

The only extracts of Lady Mary’s diary that I can find online are thanks to Yale University Library (and concern Horace Walpole).

7 September 1767 ‘Mr Walpole called on me at five o’clock in very low spirits; he had received an account of his brother being dangerously ill, and Mr Conway had wrote him word of the dreadful accident the poor Duke of Grafton had had, of one of the horses of his chaise, as he was driving, treading upon a man, of which hurt he was since dead. He left me at six o’clock to go to some engagement.’

29 July 1770
‘We had two beaux besides Mr Walpole at Strawberry Hill, Lord Bristol and Mr Hervey. Lady Greenwich and Lady Sackville came from Sudbrook, Lady Jane Scott from town, and Lady Browne from Twickenham. ’Twas a terrible hot day. We had a great dinner very ill-dressed, yet Mr Walpole had sent for a cook on purpose, who certainly knew but little of his trade: he himself is, as you know, always agreeable and always makes his house so to his company. All went well till the evening, when Lady Blandford arrived, and very soon after the servants told Mr Walpole the Princess Amelia was coming: this put all in confusion. Lady Blandford desired to be shut up, but none of the company agreeing to be shut up with her, she was obliged to remain in the Gallery. I went down to meet the Princess: Lady Powis and Lady Harriot Varnon were with her. H.R.H. went over all the house: the Gallery last, as she did not care to disturb the company, and therefore did not stop to look at any of the pictures, desiring they would set down and not mind her. Those she passed by she spoke to, which were Lady Charlotte Edwine, Lady Greenwich, and Lord Bristol, but unluckily, not seeing Lady Jane Scott, she was not taken notice of, which displeased her very much, and though the Princess sent a message to her by me when she went away, all did not do: she would be offended. Lady Blandford was out of humour at being deprived of Mr Walpole’s company, so the party did not end so well as it promised. Things being in this situation Lady Greenwich called for her chaise, and as I was to lie at Sudbrook I followed her example.’

20 December 1768
‘The new opera, I am told, is extremely disliked. Mr Walpole says he will go to it no more. He made the Princess Amelia a present of his snuff-box with the picture of Harry the Fourth of France, who she was expressing her admiration of. As he had wore it in his pocket for above a year, I don’t think it was proper, at least I should have thrown out the snuff; however, it was very politely received and accepted.’

6 January 1769
‘Before he [Mr Walpole] came in, the Princess showed me the lines he had sent her engraved in the lid of the box; to which she had ordered to be added, that it was given her by the Honourable Horatio Walpole, son of that great Minister, Sir Robert Walpole, Earl of Orford. Nothing, I think, could be more polite to Mr Walpole, and he seemed to be of that opinion when she showed it him, only saying that he was quite ashamed of her goodness.’

25 April 1769
‘Mr Walpole called at my house, and approves of all I have done since he was here. He has given me a design for some frames to be placed over the doors in my book-room, and repeated to me the epilogue he made for Mrs Clive which she spoke last night on quitting the stage. ‘Tis like everything he has ever wrote, extremely pretty. Nobody has his genius. He gave me a play [The Mysterious Mother] of his own writing. I once heard him repeat some scenes that I thought very fine.’

27 April 1769
‘Lady Spencer has lost her little child. Mr Walpole laughed at me for saying I was concerned.’

14 May 1769 ‘I must not forget to mention that on Saturday evening Mr Walpole, who was one of the party, was both uncivil and ill-natured to me, and with no other provocation than saying what almost every other person agrees in that the French Ambassadress was very illbred. Mr Conway with his usual goodness took my part very warmly and seemed hurt at what Mr Walpole had said. As it was with an ill-natured intention, I own it surprised me, and I’m afraid I shall not soon forget it.’

10 January 1784
‘Sir Edward Walpole is dying; he has been declining some months but is now past all hopes of recovery. Mr Walpole will lose a place which Sir Edward held for him and though he has another which is very considerable, ’tis unpleasant to lose anything that one has had for any time. I called on him this morning but he could not see me.’

30 January 1785
‘I passed an hour with Mr Walpole this evening and was surprised to find him so much recovered though still weak; he told me he had a bad fall the day before by imprudently rising from his chair without his stick and hurt himself so much that he imagined it would bring the gout again but contrary to his expectations he had slept the whole night and was quite well in the morning.’

Kaempfer’s Japan

Today marks 360 years since the birth of the German doctor and naturalist, Engelbert Kaempfer. His fame rests on two books, both largely about Japan, where he stayed for two years during a period when the country was very much closed to foreigners. The British Library holds some of Kaempfer’s diaries, and one of his published books - History of Japan - contains several narratives for journeys which Kaempfer must have based on his diaries.

Kaempfer was born on 16 September 1651 at Lemgo, Germany, a small town in Westphalia, belonging to the Count of Lippe. His father was vicar of the Nicolai Cathedral at Lemgo. After studying medicine and natural sciences, he received his PhD in Poland, then travelled from there to Prussia, and to Sweden. In 1683, he became secretary to the Royal Swedish Ambassador Extraordinary on a special mission to Persia, where he stayed until 1685. He then spent three further years alone in the country, before sailing to Batavia (Jakarta, Indonesia).

In 1690 Kaempfer joined the Dutch East India Company as a physician, and he then journeyed to Japan, where the company had a trading post on the island of Deshima, near Nagasaki in southwest Japan. This was unique at the time, since the country was all but closed to foreigners (and had been for nearly a century) with only the Dutch allowed limited access: confined to the island, they were granted just one trading mission a year to Edo (present day Tokyo). Despite the restrictions, Kaempfer stayed for two years, learning much about Japan and the Japanese from a young man appointed as his assistant.

Kaempfer returned to Amsterdam in October 1693, and soon after was awarded a medical degree at the University of Leiden. Back in Lemgo, Count de Lippe appointed him his personal physician. In 1700, Kaempfer married and he had three children, all of whom died in their infancy. Kaempfer himself died in 1716. Further biographical information can be found at Wikipedia, the Soy Info Center, The Japan Times, and Encyclopædia Iranica.

Kaempfer is largely remembered today for two books he authored: Amoenitatum Exoticarum (Exotic Novelties) published in 1712, with descriptions of flora such as the soy bean, camelia and Ginkgo; and History of Japan, which was first published in an English translation (from the original manuscripts) in 1727. The latter work (which can be downloaded from Internet Archive) also contains biographical information about Kaempfer, and narrative accounts of his travels. The British Library acquired many of Kaempfer’s papers - including diaries - as part of the bequest of Sir Hans Sloane, a founder of the British Museum, who had purchased Kaempfer’s literary estate from his nephew in the 1720s.

As far as I know the diaries have not been published, but the travel narratives in History of Japan must have been based originally on diary material. David van Ooijen, a lute player, has some information about Klaempfer, another lute player, on his website, including a few diary-based extracts. These come from a new (1999) translation of History of Japan by Beatrice M Bodart-Bailey called Kaempfer’s Japan: Tokugawa Culture Observed.

‘An incredible number of people daily use the highways of Japan’s provinces, indeed, at certain times of the year they are as crowded as the streets of a populous European city. I have personally witnessed this on the Tōkaidō, described earlier, apparently the most important of the seven highways, having travelled this road four times. The reason for these crowds is partly the large population of the various provinces and partly that the Japanese travel more than other people. Here I will introduce the most memorable groups of travellers one meets daily on these roads.’

‘When on pilgrimage to Ise - which takes place throughout the year but especially in spring - people have to use a stretch of this great road, regardless of what province they come. So it is crowded with such travellers during the said seasons as people of both sexes, old and young, rich and poor, embark on this meritorious journey and act of devotion, attempting to the best of their ability to make their way on foot. […] There are also a number of slippery customers who pretend that they are on this pilgrimage, and as long as they are doing well spend most of the year on the road begging.’

‘Here and there one finds so-called junrei, that is, those who visit the thirty-three most important Kannon temples throughout the country. They drift around in twos or threes and at each house sing a pitiful Kannon tine; occasionally they also play a fiddle or zither not unlike the vagrants in Germany, but they do not approach travellers for alms.’

Henry Melchior Muhlenberg

Henry Melchior Muhlenberg, the patriarch of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, was born in Germany three centuries ago today. A fervently religious man, he kept meticulous diaries - documenting his pastoral acts, social interactions, and administrative duties - which are considered a ‘treasure trove for the genealogists’.

Muhlenberg was born on 6 September 1711 in Einbeck, Lower Saxony, Germany, and studied theology in Göttingen and Halle. He worked at various times with charity schools and orphanages. In 1739, he was ordained at Leipzig. In 1741, an application from congregations in Pennsylvania reached Halle requesting a pastor to take charge, and Hermann Francke, a Lutheran leader, chose Muhlenberg to go.

After a sojourn in London, Muhlenberg arrived in America in 1742, reaching Charleston on 23 September. In 1745 he married Anna Maria Weiser, the daughter of a colonial leader, Conrad Weiser, and the couple had eleven children, seven of whom reached adulthood.

Muhlenberg took charge of the congregation at Providence, in what is now Trappe, Pennsylvania, but also served congregations from Maryland to New York, working to manage less qualified pastors and launching new congregations among the settlers of the region. In 1748, he called together the first permanent Lutheran synod in America, and helped prepare a uniform liturgy. He was also instrumental in writing an ecclesiastical constitution, which most of the churches adopted in 1761.

Poor health forced him into limited activity and retirement, and he died at his home in Trappe, in 1787. More biographical information is available at Wikipedia, Christianity.com, Evangelical Lutheran Conference and Ministerium, and the American Philosophical Society.

An English version of Muhlenberg’s journals, translated by T G Tappert and J W Doberstein, was first published in three volumes by the Evangelical Lutheran Ministerium in the 1940s. However, more recently, in 1993, they were reprinted by Picton Press (and cost over $200). Picton says: ‘[The] journals are an incredible treasure trove for the genealogist, as [Muhlenberg] carefully recorded his pastoral acts, financial transactions, correspondence, etc, for his personal record (thus he includes subjective opinions, not recorded elsewhere, on people). Marriages, baptisms, funerals, and interactions with neighbors, friends and foes, Lutherans and non-Lutherans alike, are all described in great detail. There is a tremendous amount of data here. The diary is so fascinating you may find yourself reading it cover-to-cover before beginning your serious research!’

There has also been a one-volume version - The Notebook of a Colonial Clergyman: Condensed From the Journals of Henry Melchoir Muhlenberg - published initially by The Muhlenberg Press in 1959, and reprinted as recently as 2009.

There appear to be no substantial extracts of Muhlenberg’s journals freely available online, but a few quotes can be found in different books. Diary extracts are quoted, for example, in The Pennsylvania Weather Book, which can be read at Googlebooks. Slightly more interesting extracts can be found in Memoir of The Life and Times of Henry Melchior Muhlenberg Patriarch of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, written by M L Stoever and published in 1856 by Lindsay & Blakiston, Philadelphia, which is available at Internet Archive.

According to Stoever: ‘[Muhlenberg] commenced his journey in the spring of 1742, passing through Holland on his way to England. In London, he met with a cordial reception from Rev. Dr Ziegenhagen, Chaplain to King George II, who greatly encouraged him to his mission and materially aided him in his object. With this excellent and faithful man he remained nine weeks, diligently improving his time in seeking additional instruction and counsel with regard to his future duties. How much he enjoyed the season may be inferred from the following memorandum in his journal: ‘The time was entirely too short for me, and the questions too numerous, upon which I would gladly have conversed with him; so numerous were they indeed, that I was often in doubt which should be taken first. The consideration of these subjects caused me greater joy, and was far more pleasing to me than the possession of jewels or many pieces of gold.’ ’

On the ship from England to Georgia, Muhlenberg tried to convert his fellow passengers, and ‘the humblest of the sea-men he did not neglect’. The memoir says: ‘he labored to reclaim all, to instruct them in the plan of salvation, and to bring them to a saving acquaintance with Him who is ‘the way and the truth and the life.’ In one place in his journal, he remarks: ‘I conversed to-day with some of the crew, and tried to explain to them how sad their condition was, so long as they were estranged from God by wicked works;’ and in another place he says: ‘I urged upon the English passengers the necessity of a radical change in their life by the exercise of faith in the crucified Redeemer. They all listened,’ he tells us, ‘with attention, admitted the truth of my statements, and thanked me for my instructions. But how difficult it is to produce upon the minds of men a permanent impression of the doctrine of regeneration. The many prejudices which darken the understanding - the strong influence of sinful habits, together with riches, worldly prospects, and the cares of life, are powerful hinderances in the way.’ ’

During the American War of Independence, Muhlenberg’s home in Trappe was full of fugitives; he wrote in his journal: ‘The name of Muhlenberg is greatly disliked and abused by the British and Hessian officers in Philadelphia, and they threaten prison, tortures, and death, so soon as they can lay hands upon me.’

In 1989, the Historical Society of Trappe purchased the Henry Muhlenberg House, and restored it to the period of 1776 - using detail from the journals.

Sports of the people

It is thirty years to the day that Sir Alan, or Tommy, Lascelles died. He served as a royal courtier for most of his professional life, rising to become Private Secretary to King George VI and Queen Elizabeth II. His name is remembered today for it was given to a set of conditions he envisaged - The Lascelles Principles - which should allow a Sovereign to refuse a Prime Minister’s request to dissolve Parliament. But he also left behind some diaries, all the more interesting for their glimpses into privileged drawing rooms.

Lascelles was born at Sutton Waldron House, Dorset, in 1887 the son of Commander Frederick Canning Lascelles and Frederica Maria Liddell. He studied at Marlborough College and Oxford, before serving as a cavalry officer in the Bedford Yeomanry during the First World War, and subsequently becoming Aide-de-Camp to Lord Lloyd, the Governor of Bombay. On returning to England in 1920, he married Joan Frances Vere Thesiger with whom he had three children, and he was appointed Assistant Private Secretary to the Prince of Wales.

In the first half of the 1930s, Lascelles was secretary to the Governor General of Canada. Between 1935 and 1942, he served King George V and King George VI as Assistant Private Secretary; and from 1943 to 1953 he served King George VI and Queen Elizabeth II as Private Secretary. He was also Keeper of the Royal Archives. Towards the end of his professional life, in 1950, he wrote a now-famous letter to The Times setting out the conditions under which the Sovereign could wisely refuse a request of the Prime Minister to dissolve Parliament - later these became known as The Lascelles Principles.

After retiring in 1953, Lascelles became chairman of the Historic Buildings Council for England, chairman of the Pilgrim Trust, and a director of the Midland Bank. He also held the office of Extra Equerry to Elizabeth II until his death, on 10 August 1981. For further information see Wikipedia or thePeerage.com.

Lascelles kept a diary all his life, and extracts from these were published, along with a selection of letters, in several volumes between 1986 and 2006. The first two - End of an Era: Letters and Journals of Sir Alan Lascelles 1887-1920 and In Royal Service: the Letters and Journals of Sir Alan Lascelles 1920-1936 - were published by Hamilton in the 1980s. Another volume - King’s Counsellor - Abdication and War: the Diaries of ‘Tommy’ Lascelles - was published by Weidenfeld & Nicolson in 2006. All three volumes were edited by Duff Hart-Davis.

John Adamson in the Sunday Telegraph said, of the most recent volume, Lascelles’ diary ‘offers fascinating and hitherto unseen glimpses of some of the most significant figures of our age . . . however, none emerges more engagingly than the diarist himself’. And Dominic Sandbrook in the Evening Standard called the book ‘an elegant and precise diary’ which provides ‘a revealing glimpse into the drawing rooms of the great during the years of crisis and victory’.

Here are a few extracts from End of an Era, in which a youthful Lascelles shows a lively sense of interest in women, other diarist, and poking fun at authority!

16 May 1908
‘Lunched in Cadogan Square, and Cynthia Charteris and Mary Vesey came on to the theatre with us. Really, I believe those two are the most perfectly beautiful pair of creatures on this earth. Cynthia is at present the lovelier of the two, but won’t be in five years’ time. Now her beauty simply strikes one like a blow the moment she enters the room - and the more one looks, the more perfect it grows. But Mary V. is far the nicer of the two; she is a person of decided opinions, and with the most delightfully impulsive manner.’

For more on the diarist Cynthia Charteris see Heartbreaking day and The Diary Junction.

27 June 1911
‘The Coronation; up at cock-crow and escorted Maud to our seats in Montagu House. I marvelled that people should have given themselves so much trouble for so singularly unimpressive a ceremony. Dined v. happily at Brooks’s with Edward; and then on through crowded streets to Downing Street, where we picked up the Prime Minister, his entire family, D. [Lister], Kath, Venetia Stanely etc. Escorted by a policeman and a detective who spoke seven languages and never opened his mouth in one of them, we plunged into Pall Mall and wondered for hours looking at the illuminations and trying to extract humour from an annoyingly sober and ordered crowd. At Trafalgar Square the PM when home to bed, and we could join more freely in the sports of the people. I had hoped someone would have recognised him and started a demonstration but except for one man who exclaimed, ‘There’s Asquith - I should like to go and break his head,’ he excited no feeling. It was fun singing Gourdouli all down the Strand, and I nearly got run in for putting a paper cap on a policeman’s helmet, and was only saved by the intervention of our escort. Poor man, he was heartily ashamed of us.’

For another diary view of that Coronation Day see - A terrible ordeal

23 October 1911
‘Up to London . . . to Callow’s shop, where I told them to send rather a jolly hunting-whip to Diana [Lister], and, as Samuel Pepys observed piously on similar occasions, I pray God do make me able to pay for it.’

21 November 1919
‘ ‘W N P Barbellion’ is dead. This must be a shock to many reviewers, who, when The Journal of a Disappointed Man appeared, with a preface by H G Wells, said, ‘You can’t deceive us. Wells wrote this book himself’. But it seems you can, for a man called Bruce Cummings wrote it, and, as I say, he’s dead, at the age of 30.’

For more on the diarist Barbellion see The lure of birds’ eggs and The Diary Junction.

Love the sinner

Lord Longford, the politician and would-be social reformer, died a decade ago today. For much of his later life, he seemed out of sync with public opinion, whether because of his stance against the gay rights movement or his early campaign for the release of Myra Hyndley, who, with Ian Brady, murdered five young persons in the mid-1960s. A collection of diary entries from the last years of his life, in the 1990s, show how committed Longford remained to Hyndley’s release, and to the idea of hating the sin but loving the sinner.

Francis, or Frank, Pakenham was born at Pakenham Castle, Northern Ireland, educated at Eton and at New College, Oxford, where he shared digs with Hugh Gaitskell. Aged 25, he went to research education policy for the Conservative Party, but this experience only served to lead him towards socialism. For a while, he also worked as a teacher, a don at Oxford, and wrote leaders for the Daily Mail.

In 1931, Pakenham married Elizabeth Harman with whom he had eight children - several of whom today are well-known writers (Antonia Fraser, for example, and Rachel Billington). In 1936, he was beaten while protesting at a Mosleyite meeting. In 1939, he joined the Territorial Army but was invalided out. Also in the 1930s, he joined the Labour Party and converted, with his wife, to Roman Catholicism.

After the war, Pakenham failed to win the Oxford parliamentary seat for Labour, but was made Baron Pakenham of Cowley and appointed a junior minister in the Labour government of 1946-1951. Subsequently, in the 1960s, Pakenham was Lord Privy Seal and Leader of the House of Lords, and Secretary of State for the Colonies. In 1961, he inherited from his brother the Irish titles of Earl of Longford and Baron Longford and the UK title of Baron Silchester. He was created a Knight of the Garter in 1971.

Pakenham was a prolific author, writing on religious and biographical topics, and he was a noted prison visitor. This latter activity led him, in particular, to a long-term and highly controversial campaign to have the Moors murderer Myra Hindley released from prison. He also courted further public controversy with his negative positions on homosexuality. He died on 3 August 2001. Further biographical information can be gathered from The Guardian or BBC obituaries or from Wikipedia.

At the behest of his publisher, Weidenfeld and Nicolson, Lord Longford kept a diary for the calendar year 1981, and this was published the following year as Diary of a Year. In 2000, Lion Publishing brought out a volume called Lord Longford’s Prison Diary based on diaries he wrote between 1995 and 1999. The book is, the publisher says, not only ‘a witness to his extraordinary commitment to and compassion for prisoners, but also a disturbing insight into what goes on in British jails in the name of justice’. Visits to well-known prisoners - Hindley and Brady, mass murderer Denis Nilsen, and spy Michael Bettany - are recorded, as are visits to sex offenders, rapists and conmen, whose names are only known to their victims.

More from the publisher’s burb: ‘Longford, more than any other outsider understands the criminal psyche. He remains one of the few public figures with a belief in the power of prison reform, but also believes that too many people are sent to prison who could be more effectively helped outside. This diary constitutes powerful evidence for his view.’ Here are two extracts.

3 December 1995
‘Yesterday one newspaper carried a prominent piece which was headed, ‘Hindley Will Make West Feel Life is Worth Living, Says Longford’. I am being asked continually if I am going to visit Rosemary West and give the same answer: I have never yet refused to visit a prisoner who requested a visit and I never will. If Rose West wishes to see me I will certainly go.

At the moment of writing, Rose West is in the hospital wing of Durham Prison, as is Myra. Myra broke her leg some time ago, and according to the paper she is being treated for a brittle-bone disorder. I met her new solicitor recently who told me she was in good form. I hope to receive a birthday card from her this week.

Rose West is being treated, not surprisingly, as a suicide risk and is widely reported as being very depressed. Her solicitor, however, insists that she is not depressed at all and hopes to move shortly to a normal wing.

The coming week I shall be making five speeches to mark my ninetieth birthday . . . There is an obvious danger of my turning these occasions into a series of ego trips. I am determined, however, to put some kind of message across. The best opportunity will occur at the press launch [of the paperback, Avowed Intent, a volume of Longford’s autobiography]. I have not had such an opportunity for years and I am not likely to have one again. Curiously enough the Rose West drama has given me an unrivalled opportunity to assert my ideal of ‘hating the sin and loving the sinner’, which has previously been lacking outside the House of Lords. For whatever reason Rose West does not seem to arouse the intense hatred which the tabloid press has taught the public to feel for Myra.’

17 December 1995
‘Another hectic week. One major television appearance, four radio programmes and a speech on penal matters in the House of Lords. One radio interviewer introduced me thus: ‘My next guest is Lord Longford, to talk about Myra Hindley, pornography and Rose West.’

I have not yet found anybody on these programmes to say to my face that Myra ought to stay in prison. I was accused by one friend afterwards of being arrogant and dismissing so-called public opinion. Maybe so. But when you have known somebody for twenty-seven years it is difficult to be patient with a ‘man in the street’ who only knows what the tabloid press tells him about.

Once again I am profoundly conscious of the gap between informed opinion and uninformed public emotions. I keep coming back to the taxi driver who told me that he felt cheated out of revenge when he heard that Fred West had committed suicide. But he knew that it was wrong to feel that way. I have to accept the fact that feelings similar to those of the taxi driver will always be widely held by the so-called general public.

Those who deal with prisoners at first-hand, the Prison Service and the Probation Service, for example, cannot fail to recognise them as fellow human beings. But to the so-called general public they will always be an alien and even menacing force. It is the business of those who care for humanity and justice to make far more effort than they have made previously to guide the public in the direction of the enlightened taxi driver. It is easy for someone like myself to say we must hate the sin and love the sinner, but it is hard enough to achieve that balance after a lifetime’s experience, still more after a moment’s reflection.’

Son eaten by sow

Today marks the 330th anniversary of the death of young Sir Thomas Isham, the third to hold the Isham Baronetcy title. As a teenager, his father, the second Isham Baronet, ordered Thomas to keep a diary in Latin, as an educational exercise. And it is thanks to this lively and colourful diary - said to be the only diary by a 15 year old boy in 17th century England - that the Third Baronet is remembered today.

Thomas was born at Lamport, Northamptonshire, in 1656, the eldest son of Sir Justinian Isham, himself the son of John Isham, High Sheriff of Northamptonshire, for whom the Isham Baronetcy was created in 1627. Thomas studied at Christ Church, Oxford, and soon after succeeded to the title on the death of his father, but he died, still a young man, on 27 July 1681 (see Wikipedia). Today the title is held by Sir Norman Isham, the 14th Baronet, who was born in 1930.

Sir Thomas is largely remembered today thanks to a diary he kept in Latin at his father’s behest from 1671 to 1673. It is made up of brief entries, sometimes only one sentence, and when the entries are longer this is usually because Isham is recording an anecdote - a local murder or other crime, for example - told by a visitor. Nevertheless, the diary does give a lively picture of the everyday country life of a gentry class boy in his teens.

The diary was first published in 1875 by Miller and Leavins of Norwich, but a more recent edition dates from 1971 when Gregg International published The Diary of Thomas Isham of Lamport (1658-81) kept by him in Latin from 1671 to 1673 at his Father’s command. This was based on a translation by Norman Marlow, and was annotated by Sir Gyles Isham. Here are a few extracts.

10 November 1671
‘. . . The carpenter made new shelves to put our public books on. A white cock of brother Justinian’s, named Taffy, which was at Thomas Pole’s, had one of his spurs violently wrenched off and died, from which it is clear that the people of Houghton are indeed rustic and altogether ignorant of learning, not to remember the trite saying, ‘Never lay hands on a white cock’.’

2 December 1671
‘A stranger died here while on a journey, and was buried in the churchyard.’

16 December 1671
‘Tom a’ Bedlam [local lunatic] paid us a visit, and said that his only son had been eaten by a sow, that his wife was home consumed with grief and that he had become melancholy.’

20 December 1671
‘Today we challenged the Maidwell men to a cock fight. Two oxen were killed for Christmas . . .’

8 January 1672
‘Mr Wikes came and promised to bring four cocks to help us . . .’

11 January 1672
Maidwell was beaten in the cock fight. . .’

27 January 1672
‘John Chapman told us that a woman convicted of clipping coin of the realm has been condemned and burned alive in the cattle market at Smithfield, London.’

29 January 1672
‘John Chapman came to dinner and said that a new telescope, far more perfect than previous ones, had been invented [probably Isaac Newton’s reflecting telescope].’

8 April 1672
‘Father forbade us to keep cocks . . .’

30 April 1672
‘Michael Wright . . . while pulling and handling the largest church bell unskilfully, threw it over, which pulled him up to the ceiling and nearly knocked his brains out; I know for certain that his leg is broken . . .’

24 May 1672
‘Today my sister Vere’s bees swarmed.’

25 May 1672
‘They say we have taken a Dutch vessel which was full of riches, and that her captain died of grief. A French galley took a Dutch ship laden with salt, and other merchandise.’

4 June 1672
‘The bull was castrated today and grew so savage that he broke his rope that bound him and after the operation charged at everyone he met.’