Recovering Titanic bodies

It is a century today since the great, and supposedly unsinkable, Titanic hit an iceberg and sank, drowning more than 1500 people. The tragedy has become an iconic event in the history of the 20th century, and, according to a new online exhibition, ‘sails on forever in our collective imagination’. Although there is no evidence of any diary written on the Titanic, there are two written by those on a cable ship dispatched to recover bodies, one of which provides extraordinary and detailed descriptions of the icebergs, floating wreckage and recovery task.

On its maiden voyage in 1912 the White Star Liner RMS (Royal Mail Ship) Titanic, the largest ship afloat in the world at the time, hit an iceberg at 23:40 ship’s time on 14 April 1912, and within three hours had sunk (at 2:20 or 5:20 GMT). RMS Carpathia arrived on the scene in response to earlier distress calls, at around 4:00, and carried 710 people to New York, Titanic’s original destination. 1,517 passengers and crew lost their lives. Two cable ships (MacKay-Bennett and Minia), based at Halifax, Canada, were dispatched quickly to the site, and recovered many of the bodies.

The loss of the Titanic has become one of the most iconic events of the 20th century. There have been numerous books and films about the ship, not least a German propaganda film in 1943, the 1953 movie with Clifton Webb, Barbara Stanwyck and Robert Wagner, and the hugely successful 1997 movie with Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet. The ship’s wreck was discovered in 1985, and has since been revisited by explorers, scientists, film-makers, tourists and salvagers. There is no shortage of information about all things Titanic online - try Wikipedia, Titanic.com, encyclopedia titanica, or National Museums Northern Ireland.

Despite the exploitative and no-stone-unturned nature of the Titanic remembrance industry, there is no evidence - at least that I can find on the internet - of any diary having survived the tragedy. There is the heart-rending story of the seven year old Douglas Spedden who survived the ship’s sinking only to die two years later after being hit by a car. Douglas’s mother, Daisy, was accustomed to keeping a diary on her travels, but the surviving ‘diary’, which is widely referred to on Titanic websites, was written by her later as a children’s story.

There are other fictional diary accounts - see Amazon for more on The Diary of Margaret Ann Brady, or CanLit for The Titanic Diary of Dorothy Wilton. More significantly, there are published memoirs - like "Titanic" Survivor: The Memoirs of Violet Jessop Stewardess, published by The History Press - and many testimonies, such as can be found on the Titanic Inquiry Project website. These latter are well synthesised in a new book from Bloomsbury by Nic Compton - Titanic on Trial: The Night the Titanic Sank, Told Through the Testimonies of Her Passengers and Crew - some of which can be read on the Amazon website.

Like Douglas Spedden, Father Thomas Byles is a well-known name from the Titanic passenger list. He was travelling to New York City to officiate at the wedding of his younger brother William. The Father Byles website includes the following diary extracts written by a friend of his, Father Patrick McKenna, safely on dry land in Southend-on-Sea.

10 April 1912
‘Titanic White Star S. S. largest & most luxurious ocean palace yet built, left Southampton with 1300 passengers & 900 crew.’

15 April 1912
‘News that she collided with Iceberg. Foundered 400 miles from Sable Island off Newfoundland. 860 persons mostly wom + childr. = saved in lifeboats, & about 1500 drowned (in two miles deep) including several millionaires: Awful news confirmed Apl. 16th. Disaster on night of April 14th.

Heroic behavior of Fr. Byles. He said Mass on Sunday 14th for 3' cl. passengers & preached “as in danger of being lost in shipwreck men require & grasp lifebelt to save themselves, so in danger of being lost in spiritual shipwreck in time of temptation we require & should use spiritual lifebelt in shape of prayer & sacraments to save soul.” Fr. Byles twiced warned of danger & offered place in boat by sailor. He refused saying his duty was to stay and to minister to others. He heard confessions & gave absolution & said Rosary & sank. Victim to duty & conscience!’

Perhaps the most interesting bona fide diaries linked to the tragedy are those written by Clifford Crease, mechanic, and Frederick A Hamilton, cable engineer, on board the cable ship MacKay-Bennett dispatched from Halifax to recover the bodies.

Crease’s diary has only recently been made available - in its original form and with transcripts - on the internet thanks to Nova Scotia Archives as part of an online exhibition to commemorate the 100 years anniversary. ‘The loss of the RMS Titanic is one of the landmark events of the early 20th century,’ the exhibition notes say, and ‘although the great liner lies at the bottom of the North Atlantic, she sails on forever in our collective imagination. We are proud to make this small contribution towards perpetuating the memory of those who died in Titanic’s catastrophic end.’

Hamilton’s diary is held by Royal Museums Greenwich (with the text available thanks to encyclopedia titanica).

Diary of Clifford Crease
17 April 1912
‘Left Halifax at twelve thirty eight PM for to recover bodies from wreck of White Star Line Steam ship Titanic, which was lost at sea by striking an Iceberg in 41.16n 50.14W and sank in four hours.’

18 April 1912
‘Steaming towards wreck.’

19 April 1912
‘Steaming towards wreck.’

20 April 1912
‘Steaming towards wreck passed by several Icebergs. Arrived at spot where ship went down at seven fifteen and lay too all night till day - light. A large Iceberg about four miles from ship suppose to be the one Titanic struck lots of wreckage floating about, four bodies passed by through the night, and picked up later on.’

21 April 1912
‘Fine weather started to pick up bodies at six AM and continued all day till five thirty PM. Recovered fifty one bodies, forty six men four women and one baby. Burried twenty four men at sea at eight fifteen PM. Rev Canon Hinds in attendance also Ships Company. Bodies in good state but badly bruised by being knocked about in the water.’

22 April 1912
‘Weather fine picked up twenty six bodies eighteeen men, seven women and one boy. Burried at sea; six women and nine men at eight fifteen PM.’

23 April 1912
‘Weather fine picked up one hundred and twenty eight bodies one hundred and twenty seven men and one woman. Stopped Allan Liner Sardinian for canvas etc to wrap up bodies. Did not bury any to day.’

24 April 1912
‘Weather foggy did not pick up any bodies but burried seventy seven bodies at twelve forty five PM three at a time.’

25 April 1912
‘Weather fine picked up eighty seven bodies eighty four men and three women did not burry any to day.’

26 April 1912
‘Weather fine picked up fourteen bodies up till noon when the Cable Ship Minia arrived at one AM to relieve us and we started for Halifax.’

27 April 1912
‘Steaming towards Halifax.’

28 April 1912
‘Weather rough going at half speed towards Halifax.’

29 April 1912
‘Weather still rough going at slow speed towards Halifax.’

30 April 1912
‘Arrived at Halifax at nine twenty and hauled up along side of the Dock Yard Wharf and landed one hundred and ninety bodies which were taken up to the Mayflower Curling Rink for identification.’

Diary of Frederick Hamilton
17 April 1912
‘Having taken in a supply of ice and a large number of coffins, cast off from the Wharf en route for the position of the “Titanic” disaster. The Reverend Canon Hind of “All Saints” Cathedral, Halifax is accompanying the expedition, we also have an expert Embalmer on board. Cold and clear weather.’

19 April 1912
‘The fine weather which has prevailed until now, has turned to rain and fog. We spoke to the “Royal Edward” by wireless to-day, she lay east of us, and reported icebergs, and growlers (lumps of ice, some of considerable size). At 6.p.m. the fog very dense, lowered cutter and picked up an Allan Line lifebelt.’

20 April 1912
‘Strong south-westily breeze, beam swell and lumpy sea. French liner “Rochambeau” near us last night, reported icebergs, and the “Royal Edward” reported one thirty miles east of the “Titanic”s” position. The “Rhine” passed us this afternoon, and reported having seen icebergs, wreckage and bodies, at 5.50.p.m. The “Bremen” passed near us, she reported having seen, one hour and a half before, bodies etc. This means about twenty five miles to the east. 7.p.m. A large iceberg, faintly discernible to our north, we are now very near the area were lie the ruins of so many human hopes and prayers. The Embalmer becomes more and more cheerful as we approach the scene of his future professional activities, to-morrow will be a good day for him. The temperature of the sea at noon today was 57N, by 4.p.m. it was 32N.’

21 April 1912
‘Two icebergs now clearly in sight, the nearest is over a hundred feet high at the tallest peak, and an impressive sight, a solid mass of ice, against which the sea dashes furiously, throwing up geyser like columns of foam, high over the topmost summit, smothering the great mass at times completely in a cascade of spume as it pours over the snow and breaks into feathery crests on the polished surface of the berg, causing the whole ice-mountain, which glints like a fairy building, to oscillate twenty to thirty feet from the vertical. The ocean is strewn with a litter of woodwork, chairs, and bodies, and there are several growlers about, all more or less dangerous, as they are often hidden in the swell. The cutter lowered, and work commenced and kept up continuously all day, picking up bodies. Hauling the soaked remains in saturated clothing over the side of the cutter is no light task. Fifty one we have taken on board today, two children, three women, and forty-six men, and still the sea seems strewn. With the exception of ourselves, the bosum bird is the only living creature here. 5.p.m. The two bergs are now in transit, the heavy swell has been rolling all day, must be a gale somewhere. 8.p.m. The tolling of the bell summoned all hands to the forecastle where thirty bodies are ready to be committed to the deep, each carefully weighed and carefully sewn up in canvas. It is a weird scene, this gathering. The crescent moon is shedding a faint light on us, as the ship lays wallowing in the great rollers. The funeral service is conducted by the Reverent Canon Hind, for nearly an hour the words For as must as it hath pleased - ‘we therefore commit his body to the deep’ are repeated and at each interval comes, splash! as the weighted body plunges into the sea, there to sink to a depth of about two miles. Splash, splash, splash.’

22 April 1912
‘We steamed close past the iceberg today, and endeavoured to photograph it, but rain is falling and we do not think the results will be satisfactory. We are now standing eastwards amongst great quantities of wreckage. Cutter lowered to examine a lifeboat, but it is too smashed to tell anything, even the name is not visible. All round is splintered woodwork, cabin fittings, mahogany fronts of drawers, carvings, all wrenched away from their fastenings, deck chairs, and then more bodies. Some of these are fifteen miles distant from those picked up yesterday. 8.p.m. Another burial service. April 23rd Icebergs and growlers still in sight. Both cutters busy all day recovering bodies, rain and fog all the afternoon, fog at times very dense. 7.p.m. The “Allen Line” boat “Sardinia” stopped near us and took despatches from our cutter. The fog had lifted slightly, but shut down denser than ever, soon after she had signalled ‘good-night’ on her flash light.’

24 April 1912
‘Still dense fog prevailing, rendering further operations with the boats almost impossible. We hear that the “Sardinia” is waiting some thirty miles away. Noon. Another burial service held, and seventy seven bodies follow the other. The hoarse tone of the steam whistle reverberating through the mist, the dripping rigging, and the ghostly sea, the heaps of dead, and the hard weather-beaten faces of the crew, whose harsh voices join sympathetically in the hymn tunefully rendered by Canon Hind, all combine to make a strange task stranger. Cold, wet, miserable and comfortless, all hands balance themselves against the heavy rolling of the ship as she lurches to the Atlantic swell, and even the most hardened must reflect on the hopes and fears, the dismay and despair, of those whose nearest and dearest, support and pride, have been wrenched from them by this tragedy.’

26 April 1912
‘The “Minea” joined us today in the work of recovery, and lays two miles westwards of us. Her first find, was we hear, the body of Mr. Hayes, the President of the Grand Trunk. At noon we steamed up to her, and sent the cutter over for material, and soon after set our course for Halifax. The total number of bodies picked up by us is three hundred and five, one hundred and sixteen have been buried at sea. A large amount of money and jewels has been recovered, the identification of most of the bodies has been established, and details set out for publication. It has been an ardous task for those who have had to overhaul and attend to the remains, the searching, numbering, and identifying of each body, depositing the property found on each in a bag marked with a number corresponding to that attached to the corpse, the sewing up in canvas and securing of weights, entailed prolonged and patient labour. The Embalmer is the only man to whom the work is pleasant, I might add without undue exaggeration, enjoyable, for to him it is a labour of love, and the pride of doing a job well.’

30 April 1912
‘Took Pilot on board off Devils Island, and are now proceeding up Halifax Harbour. Crowds of people throng the wharves, tops of houses, and the streets. Flags on ships and buildings all half mast. Quarantine and other officials came on board near Georges Island, after which ship stood in to the Navy Yard, and hauled in alongside. Elaborate arrangement have been made for the reception of the bodies now ready for landing. 10.a.m. Transferring of remains to shore has begun. A continuous procession of hearses conveys the bodies to the Mayflower Rink. It is a curious reflection, that when on February 12th, we picked up the waterlogged schooner “Caledonia” and returned to Halifax to land her crew of six, these men walked ashore unnoticed, and two lines in the Daily Paper was sufficient to note the fact that they had been saved. While today with not one life to show, thousands come to see the landing, and the papers burst out into blazing headlines.’

The spiceless diaries

Michael Spicer, an archetypal Tory Toff and leader of the influential 1922 Committee for nearly a decade, has just published diaries covering his 35-year political career. Reviewers says the new book gives a well-placed insider’s view of the Thatcher years, and of how the Maastricht rebels, of which Spicer was one, seriously challenged John Major’s government. The Spectator, though, says the diaries lack ‘colourful phrase or telling detail’ and are ‘comically unilluminating’.

Spicer was born in Bath, into an army family, and was educated at private school before studying economics at Cambridge. He worked as a financial journalist on Fleet Street, and then, from the mid-1960s to 1980, in economics research. In 1967, he married Patricia Ann Hunter (they have three children). A year earlier, he had first stood for election to Parliament. He failed then and in 1970 as well, before being elected at the 1974 general election. He represented South Worcestershire until 1997 when the constituency was abolished, and then West Worcestershire until his retirement in 2010.

After the Conservative Party came into power in 1979, Spicer was appointed a Parliamentary Private Secretary at the Department of Trade; from 1984, he was a junior minister in the Department of Transport and the Department of Energy, before being promoted in 1990 to Minister of State at the Department of Environment. However, that same year, he lost his ministerial position with the ousting of Thatcher.

Spicer also served in various other roles: deputy chairman of the Conservative Party; chairman of the Parliamentary and Scientific Committee in the House of Commons; and, between 2001 and 2010, chairman of the 1922 committee (which, among other things, presides over the election of party leaders). He was knighted in 1996, and given a peerage in 2010 (Baron Spicer of Cropthorne). Further biographical information can be found at Wikipedia or the BBC; and some information on his voting records and expenses claims is available on the They Work For You website.

Biteback Publishing has just published The Spicer Diaries. It says of Spicer that he is ‘one of the most talented and influential Conservative politicians of his generation’. It advertises the new book with quotes from Michael Dobbs, Julian Fellowes and Ann Widdecombe. ‘Michael Spicer is the sort of politician who helps bring a fresh shine to the concept of public service,’ says Dobbs, ‘these diaries are filled with wit, insight and honesty.’ Widdecombe adds that Spicer is a writer and diarist of ‘consummate skill’ and that the book is ‘a rare gem of a political diary’. Fellowes says: ‘Only an informed citizen can explain a strange country, and Michael Spicer treats us to an expert’s view not just of the intrigues and rivalries and hilarities of the Thatcher years, but of that more than strange and endlessly fascinating country called Parliament.’

Andrew Gimson in The Spectator, however, explains that Spicer ‘is too honourable to be a brilliant diarist and that the diaries read like the history of a regiment written by one of its most loyal officers.’ Elsewhere in the review, he notes that Spicer ‘seldom records the colourful phrase or telling detail which would bring a scene alive’ and that he is ‘comically unilluminating’.

The most spicy bit of news The Daily Telegraph - which published substantial extracts from The Spicer Diaries in March - could find in the book was about Baroness Thatcher and how she had confided in Spicer that she would not have gone into politics if she had ‘had her time over again’ because of what it had done to her family. The newspaper says ‘the book gives a well-placed insider’s view of the Thatcher years, including the Falklands War, the Brighton Bomb and her departure in 1990 when she was hounded out of office by her own party.’

Peter Stanford, after interviewing Spicer - the ‘Tory Toff’ - for the Telegraph says of the diary: ‘It is perfectly turned, often witty, and revealing of three significant chapters in the recent history of the Conservative Party - his “short, intense time” around the 1983 election as Margaret Thatcher’s parliamentary private secretary; his central role among the Maastricht rebels who did so much to destabilise John Major’s government in the 1990s; and his chairmanship of the 1922 Committee when, in nine years in the 2000s, he oversaw an unprecedented three leadership elections that finally produced an election winner in David Cameron.’

Here are a few extracts from The Spicer Diaries.

20 December 1982
‘Stood in for CP [Cecil Parkinson] at Conservative Central Office party. Main job was to introduce PM to everyone. She was tired and therefore relaxed and at her most personable. For once got on rather well with her. She actually touched my arm at one point! CP, however, still furious with her performance at Cabinet. She had complained he was taking a week’s holiday over Christmas – skiing – whereas she claimed to be working herself the whole time. Drive down to Chequers with CP for election planning meeting. PM in abrasive form. Clearly does not want a general election until 1984. Sit next to PM at lunch at her request. Why me? Answer: earlier in the day it had been decided that I should replace Ian Gow [Thatcher’s PPS] on her tours round the country when he is in his constituency. Norman Tebbit [Employment Secretary] very much around; he is a favourite. He kept on warning me that unemployment would be the clinching issue. He sat on her other side.’

24 April 1989
‘Lunch at Downing Street with PM. Rather a relaxed atmosphere. At one point she exclaims, “Much to my horror I learnt from my hairdresser that all her sprays were foreign. I said I didn’t want anything but an English spray on my hair.” She is in one of her most protectionist moods.’

20 June 1995
‘Richard Ryder (government chief whip) comes up to me in the lobby. Despite his entreaties, PM will not see me. What this means is that trust has broken down between PM and a large section of his party. The end must be nigh for him; things can’t go on much longer like this - and it may be for the best now if he goes quickly. He may have decided to go already.’

22 June 1995
‘Major’s letter of resignation read out at the 1922 Committee; stand by for a week in which everyone lies through his teeth.’

Falklands War diaries

Today is the 30th anniversary of Argentina’s invasion of the British territory of the Falkland Islands (Islas Malvinas in Spanish). The UK responded by sending a military force which recaptured the islands in under three months. Several diaries written by those involved in the conflict have been published or are available on the internet. Most recently, Viking has brought out Down South: A Falklands War Diary by Chris Parry.

The war began on 2 April 1982, when Argentina invaded and occupied the Falkland Islands, a territory it had been claiming sovereignty over since the 19th century. The acting president General Leopoldo Galtieri calculated the invasion would bring him popularity at a time when the country was suffering from an economic crisis and widespread civil unrest.

Very quickly, the British sent an expeditionary force to retake the islands. After short but fierce sea and air battles, they landed at San Carlos Water (also known as Bomb Alley), on the west coast of East Falkland. A land campaign then followed with the British eventually surrounding the capital Port Stanley on 11 June. The Argentine forces surrendered on 14 June.

The war’s death toll included 255 British and 649 Argentine military personnel, and three civilian Falklanders. Within days, Galtieri was removed from power. He subsequently spent some time in prison for mismanagement of the Falklands War, but was pardoned in 1989. In the UK, the Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and the ruling Conservative Party gained in popularity as a result of the success of the Falklands campaign.

The 30th anniversary of the start of the war was commemorated in Britain with a service of remembrance at the National Memorial Arboretum in Staffordshire (see BBC). Prime Minister David Cameron issued a statement saying: ‘Today is a day for commemoration and reflection: a day to remember all those who lost their lives in the conflict - the members of our armed forces, as well as the Argentinian personnel who died.’ But he also reiterated Britain’s commitment to uphold the right of the Falkland Islanders to determine their own future. Argentina’s President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner also reiterated her country’s claim to the islands.

A raft of new books about the conflict is being published in the first half of 2012 to coincide with the anniversary - see Amazon for a listing. At least one of these, published by Viking, purports to be a diary: Down South: A Falklands War Diary by Chris Parry, an officer on a Wessex III helicopter on HMS Antrim.

‘Within days,’ the book’s blurb says, ‘Parry and his crew were trying to land SAS members on the formidable Fortuna Glacier in a near white-out. Buffeted by storm-force winds and driving snowstorms, they managed to disembark the men - only to be forced to return the following day when it was clear they couldn’t survive the extremely hostile conditions. A few days later a sombre Parry was releasing the depth charges which disabled an Argentinian sub lurking in the freezing waters of South Georgia. He went on to take part in the landings at San Carlos and experience the intensity of Bomb Alley.’

***

Five years ago in 2007, coinciding with the 25th anniversary, Maritime Books published The Red and Green Life Machine by Rick Jolly. This was billed as ‘the amazing story of a very British band of Brothers who met M.A.S.H in the Falkland Islands war of 1982’. Although called a diary and although based around dated texts, it is clear that this text was written in retrospect (the dated entries often include information that could only have been known about later).

***Also in 2007, the BBC’s website published a Falklands war diary. This was by Tony Groom, a diver in the Royal Navy’s bomb and mine disposal team, who had just turned 23 when he was sent to the Falklands. Here is one extract.

30 May 1982
‘Went to sea in the middle of the night, woke up expecting to be in Bomb Alley. Gone to do an RAS (replenishment at sea) with RFAs [Royal Fleet Auxiliaries] and join up with the Invincible and Exeter.

Nice to be away from Bomb Alley, we thought, we’ll get a restful night’s sleep. Well, that’s what we thought anyway.

About 0100, I was half way up the vehicle ramp, on my way to the helo pad. Three rockets flew overhead. They make a deafening noise. I and everyone else hit the deck, waiting for the bang, it didn’t come. [. . .] The rockets were ours fired from the bridge; they exploded in a pattern around us and dropped millions of pieces of silver paper. [. . .]

About 2145, some of the ship’s company was watching Dirty Harry Crazy Larry on film. Those bloody rockets went off again. It worked again, everyone dived under the tables. This time Exocet had been fired toward the three ships, when two miles away, this thing picks out its own targets. Action stations, anti-flash, close all red openings etc. One of us was to be hit.

After the Standard had fired its Exocet, the Exeter shot her down with sea dart. Then the arrow opened up with her four to five guns on the missile and two or more sea darts were fired from Exeter. One of them hit the Exocet, both claim it of course. All this was done by Radar of course. Of course, of course!

The two Skyhawkers that exoceted the Standard were chased off by Harriers. It’s weird, sat waiting to hear either a bang or something over the tannoy. You can see fright in people.

We’ve decided we prefer Bomb Alley. At least we know what to expect and you can swim to the shore if need be. Exocet frightens me more, I think. Out here, we have sweep stakes on, that it’ll be Exocet or torpedo tonight.

Bomb Alley in the morning. What a thing to look forward to.

On a big downer all day, tooth has stopped me from talking, to everyone else’s delight, I’m sure. Hacked off with it all and can see no quick end. Home please!

***

There are various other Falkland War diaries freely available on the internet. The Royal Air Force website offers two. The first is the No 1 (Fighter) Squadron Operation Corporate Diary. This operation, the RAF says, ‘was the Harrier’s first war, and the fact that the squadron and its aircraft flew from a Royal Navy aircraft carrier alongside Sea Harriers of the Fleet Air Arm was testament to the versatility of the Harrier and the flexibility of it’s pilots’.The second is by Squadron Leader Mel James, Commander of the Vulcan Engineering Detachment on Ascension Island. This diary, the RAF says, is reproduced exactly as written by James in order to best communicate the situation of the personnel found themselves in on arrival on Ascension Island. The ground crew engineering team maintained the Vulcans used in the Black Buck operations, and this, ‘as will be seen from these pages, was no easy task, with spares and equipment in short supply and the detachment being at the end of a long and protracted supply line’.

***

A much zippier read (though with poor spelling) is provided by Neil Randall of 29 Commando Regiment who also put his diary online to mark the 25th anniversary five years ago. This does read, mostly, as if it were written at the time, i.e as a daily diary, but there are sections that could only have been added at a later (as in, ‘I still don’t know what it was but I can still smell it from time to time’).

30 May 1982
‘We moved down to goose Green through the battlefields of the day before, there was little or no cover for the advancing forces. As we approach some areas it seemed like there were discarded water proofs & ponchos laying around, it soon became clear that they were in fact the bodies of the dead Argie defenders. We could see first hand the effect our fire had on the guys in uncovered trenches “poor buggers stood no chance, why the f..... didn’t they get some over head cover on the trenches?” “I for one am glad they didn’t we might still be here trying to move the buggers, think of the blood split on both sides then!”

On the approach to the settlement Rick called the gun to a halt to grab himself a souvenir, he’d spotted a helmet laying beside a trench so he leap over and gleefully picked it up waving his prize in the air. He didn’t at first notice something sliding from it until bits hit him on the shoulder, it appeared that part of the previous owner were still inside. Needless to say Rick’s prize was quickly discarded.

It was a bloody cold night & we woke to a blanket of snow everywhere and a strange smell hanging over us, I still don’t know what it was but I can still smell it from time to time. We got to look around the devastation at the settlement, it looked like the Argies had no regard for sanitary conditions they seemed to have squatted anywhere. “We could’ve left them to it, if we hadn’t invaded the dirty sods would’ve died of dysentery all we’d had to do would’ve been send in the Pioneer corps to clean the place up.” I said.

The airfield was covered in small arms & ammunition lined up in rows where the soldiers had stood when they grounded them & walked into captivity. The locals were pleased to see us, they had been locked in the village hall for the past 30 days without any knowledge of what was happening.’

***

Finally, here is Peter Green who was with the Royal Navy on HMS Yarmouth. He says: ‘What follows are extracts taken from the diary I started whilst onboard HMS Yarmouth in Gibraltar when we first heard the Falkland Islands had been invaded. It contains records made at the time, my own notes, notes given to me by various members of the ship’s company, newpaper reports, memorabilia and personal photographs of those one hundred and nineteen days.’

1 May 1982
‘0700-0900 Vulcans bomb Stanley airport.
1040 Action stations
1043 2 Mirage 230° - 95 miles
1044 launched 2 SHAR
1057 CAP
1106 Air Yellow
1135 Exocet released 260° - 100 miles
1142 The Exocet reaches its maximum range without doing any damage to us
1216 Air yellow
1300 270° closing fast enemy
1304 Mix up - friendly helicopters
1308 Air yellow
1325 Super Entendards 245° - 180 miles outward bound
1410 Air red; during this time YARMOUTH and BRILLIANT are to the North of East Falkland doing an ASW whilst ARROW, ALACRITY and GLAMORGAN are to the South of the Islands doing an NGS.
1412 235° - 130 miles
1425 Air yellow
1500 Air red 200° - 200 miles
1543 Splashed one aircraft, two dropped their bombs and scattered
1557 245° - 100 miles
1612 240° - 26 miles
1613 Airborne engagement
1739 275° - 100 miles
1811 Action mortar
1820 Bearing 188° torpedo HE
1832 Mortar fired
1845 Mortar fired
1847 Mortar fired
1915 Periscope sighted
1940 One Mirage ditches
1953 150° - 9 miles patrol boats
1956 Surface red
2008 3 Canberras in the area
2011 Depth charges dropped
2100 Action mortar
2123 Mortar fired
2123 Air yellow
2153 Fall out - our first day at war.’

Samuel Sewall in Salem

It is 360 years since the birth of Samuel Sewall, a Massachusetts judge who took part in the Salem witch trials but who later, famously, publicly apologised for doing so. He also published one of the first tracts calling for the abolition of slavery. He kept a diary for most of his life, which is considered a valuable social and historical record of life in Massachusetts before the American Revolution, though, frustratingly, it says little about the witch trials.

Sewall was born at Bishop Stoke, Hampshire, on 28 March 1652 but emigrated with his family to Newbury, Massachusetts, when only still young. He studied at Harvard, and then married Hannah Hull, from a wealthy family. Together they had many children. He began working as a merchant, but, in 1681, took a position running a printing press.

In 1692, he was appointed to the Court of Oyer and Terminer and was involved with the Salem witch trials. Later, he recanted his role during the trials, and publicly apologised. In 1700, he published The Selling of Joseph which argued against slavery, and earmarked him as one of the earliest of abolitionists. In 1717, he was appointed chief justice of Massachusetts. That same year, Hannah died and Sewall married twice more before his own death in 1730. For more biographical information see the The History Junkie website, Encyclopaedia Britannica, or Wikipedia.

From the age of 21 until the year before he death, Sewall kept a journal. It was first published in three volumes in the Collections of the Massachusetts Historical Society between 1879 and 1882, all of which are freely available at Internet Archive. Sewall’s diary is considered a unique insight into the life of a pious Puritan, and an important historical record documenting the early days of the Massachusetts community. A modern edition was edited by Mel Yazawa and published in 1998 by Farrar, Straus & Giroux as The Diary and Life of Samuel Sewall.

Here are some extracts from around the time of the Salem witch trials (with a few of the original editor’s notes).

11 April 1692
‘Went to Salem, where, in the Meeting-house, the persons accused of Witchcraft were examined; was a very great Assembly; ’twas awfull to see how the afflicted persons were agitated. Mr Noye pray’d at the beginning, and Mr Higginson conclude. [In the margin], Va, Va, Va, Witchcraft.’

[‘The references to the terrible paroxysm of delusion and cruelty connected with the subject of witchcraft in Salem village are not so frequent in Mr Sewall’s Journal as we should have expected to find them, but the {missing word} which he has made indicate his profound belief in the reality of the alleged enormity while the proceedings were going on, and subsequently, when the spell of the delusion was broken, his penitence and deep contrition for the share he had had in them.’]

19 September 1692
‘About noon, at Salem, Giles Corey was press’d to death for standing Mute; much pains was used with him two days, one after another, by the Court and Capt. Gardner of Nantucket who had been of his acquaintance: but all in vain.’

20 September 1692
‘Now I hear from Salem that about 18 years agoe, he was suspected to have stampd and press’d a man to death, but was cleared. Twas not remembred till Ane Putnam was told of it by said Corey’s Spectre the Sabbath- day night before the Execution.’

‘The Swan brings in a rich French Prize of about 300 Tuns, laden with Claret, White Wine, Brandy, Salt, Linen Paper, &c’

21 September 1692
‘A petition is sent to Town in behalf of Dorcas Hoar, who now confesses: Accordingly an order is sent to the Sheriff to forbear her Execution, notwithstanding her being in the Warrant to die to morrow. This is the first condemned person who has confess’d.’

[‘One of the most deplorable concurrences of the delusion, which so enthralled the minds and spirits of the community at this time, was the seemingly irrefutable confirmation of the reality of the alleged complicity with the Evil One, found in the confessions of so many accused persons. There were at least fifty-five, whose names are known to us, who gave this assurance of the guilt charged upon them, which was effectively used to stiffen the credulity of those who were most earnest in the work of prosecution, and to refute the doubts of those who were of a “Sadducean spirit.” Confession insured immunity from trial or imprisonment or execution.’]

26 October 1692
‘A Bill is sent in about calling a Fast, and Convocation of Ministers, that may be led in the right way as to the Witchcrafts. The season and manner of doing it, is such, that the Court of Oyer and Terminer count themselves thereby dismissed. 29 Nos. and 33 Yeas to the Bill. Capt. Bradstreet and Lieut. True, Wm. Huchins and several other interested persons there, in the affirmative.’

29 January 1693
‘A very sunshiny, hot, thawing day. Note. Just as we came out of the Meetinghouse at Noon, Savil Simson’s Chimny fell on fire, and blaz’d out much, which made many people stand gazing at it a pretty while, being so near the Meetinghouse.’

Goethe in shirtsleeves

One of Germany’s greatest literary figures, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, died 180 years ago today. His diaries, written throughout his life and later published in 13 volumes, have never appeared in English translations - with one exception. In 1999, Oxford University Press published The Flight to Italy, an eight-week diary written when Goethe was 37. Although no great claims are made for the book, the translator - T. J. Reed - says it shows Goethe ‘in shirtsleeves, moving not posing’.

Goethe was born in 1749 in Frankfurt to a lawyer and the mayor’s daughter, and was educated in Leipzig and Strasbourg. By 1771, he had returned to Frankfurt and was working as a lawyer. His first novel, The Sorrows of Young Werther, was published in 1774. The following year, he made a trip to Switzerland, and then went to work in Weimar for Duke Charles Augustus. Over the years, he was given various administrative duties, ranging from finance to roads and from military matters to mining issues. Occasionally he gave readings to the Duke and guests.

Goethe was an inveterate inquirer, studying widely, not least human biology (he discovered the human inter-maxillary bone) and philosophy. The duke ennobled Goethe, and eventually released him from day-to-day governmental duties (although he remained at the centre of Weimar’s cultural life) allowing him to focus on writing. In September 1786, he embarked on a long tour of Italy, not returning until 1788.

In 1789, Goethe began a relationship with Christiane Vulpius although, scandalously, they did not marry until 1806, after she had borne him a son. From the 1790s, Goethe wrote widely on arts and literature, especially in his own journal Propyläen, and he developed a firm friendship with Friedrich Schiller. His most famous poem, Faust, an epic drama, was published in two parts, the first in 1808, and the second after his death on 22 March 1832. His other major works, include the novel Elective Affinities and The Apprenticeship of Wilhelm Meister. Further biographical information is readily available at Wikipedia, Your Dictionary or the Encyclopaedia Britannica.

Goethe kept a diary for most of his life. This was published by Böhlau in 13 volumes between 1887 and 1919, but almost none of it has been translated for publication into English. In the 1920s, Hugo K. Schilling, an American scholar of German who wrote a thesis on the diaries (discussed in Proceedings and List of Members of the Modern Language Association of America), explained the genesis of Goethe’s diary writing: ‘His diaries were private documents, they saw the light but late and are practically unknown to the public; even students of Goethe generally use them for reference only, and few ever read the thirteen volumes of them in the Weimar edition continuously in their entirety. Yet they alone [of all Goethe’s writings] give first impressions, fresh and vivid, recorded spontaneously and naturally with no interfering thought of ultimate publication in their original form. Goethe’s earliest attempt at something like a diary resulted in the Ephemerides of his Strassburg student days, a jumble of undated miscellaneous memoranda of no particular interest except as they throw light upon his extensive reading. Five years later he kept a fragmentary daily record of his first trip to Switzerland.’

The only diary of Goethe’s that seems to have appeared in English is The Flight to Italy: Diary and Selected Letters, translated by T. J. Reed, and published by Oxford University Press (OUP) in 1999. ‘This,’ OUP says, ‘is the authentic day-to-day record of the first eight weeks of freedom as Germany’s greatest poet heads for the Italy he has been yearning to see since childhood and finds himself in a new world of warmth and light. Leaving behind the difficulties of a decade in Weimar, the burden of administration, a difficult love-affair, and the frustration of not having time to work on his literary projects, he discovers himself again as a sensuous being and an artist. Goethe’s fresh and spontaneous notes, sometimes dashed down at crowded tables in primitive Italian inns, bring together art and nature, Antiquity and the Renaissance, aesthetics and science, observations of climate, rocks, plants and the Italian people, in an unpremeditated mixture through which the poet’s mature vision of the natural and human world can be seen taking shape. Never before translated into English, this diary brings us close to a great European writer at a turning-point of his life.’

Reading between the lines of the OUP promotional blurb, no great claims are made for this diary. Although there are occasional glimpses of Goethe the writer, most of the text is nothing more than a fairly ordinary travel diary, describing places visited. Also, while most of the entries in the text are dated like a diary, they read more like letters to someone rather than musings to oneself. In his introduction, Reed says Goethe ‘had no high opinion of this little document’, and that it is a wonder ‘he never destroyed it as he did so many of his other papers once they had helped him construct his mature retrospect’. (Goethe had used the diary to write a book about the whole trip - Italian Journey - which was translated into English by W. H. Auden and Elizabeth Mayer, and published by Penguin in 1970.)

Nevertheless, Reed continues, ‘the diary is a book in its own right, all the more so for being informal, colloquial, impressionistic, under-punctuated, unpolished, with loose ends showing and changes of mind not tidied away. It is Goethe in shirtsleeves, moving not posing.’

8 September 1786
‘Reached the Brenner, virtually forced to stop at what is an ideal place for a rest. My first act is to tell you all the good things of the day just past. It was the kind of day you can savour in the memory for years. Left Mittelwald at 6, clear sky, a keen wind blowing, and the kind of cold only allowed in February. The near slopes dark and covered in spruce, the grey limestone cliffs, the highest white peaks against the beautiful blue of the sky made exquisite, constantly changing pictures.

Near Scharnitz you get into the Tyrol and the border is closed with a rampart that seals off the valley and joins up with the mountains. It looks very fine. One one side the cliff is fortified, on the other it just goes steeply up.

At Seefield by half-past 8. From there the route gets steadily more interesting. Up to this point it went over the hills that you climb out of Benedict Bayern, now you get nearer to the valley of the Inn and look down into Intzingen. The sun was high and hot. The clothes I brought with me - a jerkin with sleeves and an overcoat - that were meant for all seasons, had to be changed, and they often are 10 times in a day.

Near Cirl the route drops into the Inn valley. The situation is indescribably lovely and with the heat-haze high up it was magnificent. I only managed to dash down a sketch, the driver hadn’t been to Mass yet and was in a hurry to get to Innsbruck, it was the Nativity of the Virgin.

Now it’s down the Inn valley all the way, past the immense steep limestone face of the Martin Wall. At the point where Emperor Max is said to have got himself cragfast, I reckon I could probably get up and down without an angel’s help, though it would still be a criminally risky undertaking.

Innsbruck lies in a splendid position, in a broad rich valley between high rock walls and mountains. I felt like stopping there for today, but something inside wouldn’t let me rest.

The innkeeper’s son was Soller to a T. So I’m gradually coming across the characters I’ve invented.

It’s the Virgin’s Nativity. The people are all dressed up, looking healthy and prosperous, and making a pilgrimage to Wilten a quarter of an hour outside the town. I left Innsbruck at 2 and at half-past seven was here.’

Yeats very charming

Isabella Augusta Persse Gregory, an Irish playwright and key figure in the Irish Literary Revival, sometimes nicknamed the Celtic Twilight, was born 160 years ago today. For about ten years, from the death of her much older husband to the flowering of her own literary talent, she kept a diary which is written in a staccato style and thus often dull; but, it is revealing about herself, and her political/literary circle which included W. B. Yeats and Horace Plunkett.

Isabella was born on 15 March 1852 at Roxborough House, near Loughrea in County Galway. Aged 28 she married Sir William Henry Gregory, a 63 year old widower, who was an MP, a former Governor of Ceylon, and a trustee of the National Gallery. They lived in London, where she met famous writers and painters of the day, and they spent their summers at Gregory’s estate, Coole Park, in Galway. They had one child, Robert, born in 1881 who died while serving as a pilot in the First World War.

Sir Gregory died in 1892, after which time Isabella became more interested in Irish affairs, learning Irish and the Hiberno-English dialect of Kiltartan. In 1896, she met Yeats and, with him, collected Kiltartan folklore. With Yeats and Edward Martyn, she helped established the Irish Literary Theatre (later, this became the Abbey Theatre Company, and Lady Gregory its manager). She published books of poetry, translations of short plays, and then began to write her own plays, the first of which was Twenty Five. Many others - such as Spreading the News and The Workhouse Ward - followed.

Although in the 1920s she was probably the most performed playwright in Irish theatres, it was also a difficult time for her. During the Irish Civil War, she was physically threatened and Roxborough House was burned. In 1926, she discovered that she had cancer. She remained at Coole Park, though it was sold to the government, until her death in 1932. Further biographical information is available from Wikipedia, A Celebration of Women Writers, or FemBio.

Starting in 1892, Lady Gregory kept a diary. This was only published fairly recently, in 1996, by Colin Smythe, Gerards Cross, in an edition edited and introduced by James Pethica: Lady Gregory’s Diaries - 1892-1902.

Written in staccato style, the diary lists people met, places visited, etc. and most of it is not much of a read. That said, though, it is revealing about Lady Gregory’s own transformation from a relatively young widow to a central figure in the Irish Literary Revival, and provides interesting glimpses of those in her social circle - literary types like Yeats, Robert Browning, Lord Tennyson and Henry James; painters such as John Everett Millais; and politicians such as the Irish unionist Horace Plunkett.

The diary peters out after 1901. Pethica says: ‘The process of keeping the diary may have itself contributed significantly to the process of artistic self-discovery for her, in her early years of widowhood providing her with an unrecognised creative forum at a time when aspirations to write were generally unfocussed, and in later years serving more self-consciously as record of her own remaking as a literary figure. Her success in finding a new creative focus indeed probably largely accounts for her abandonment of the diary, as she was becoming too busy, and was now sufficiently secure of her part in the Irish literary world, to feel the need to keep a record of the important events she was participating in.’

14 February 1897
‘Westminster Abbey - Eyton - Dinner here - W. B. Yeats - Sir H. H. & Lady Johnston - Sophie Lyall - Alfred Cole - Barry O’Brien - Sir A. Clay - Very pleasant, at least I enjoyed it myself very much, liking them all - & they got on well - An argument at dinner as to who Conan Doyle had meant in a speech the night before by “the greatest man this century has produced.” B. O’Brien was for Napoleon, Sir H. Darwin - Yeats for Goethe - A. Cole stirring them all up - but as none wd agree on the premisses, I had to intervene at last -’

17 February 1897
‘Dined Leckys - Sat next to Lord Loch - who had been to hear Cecil Rhodes examined by the [South African] Committee [investigating the Jameson Raid] - & thinks he came badly out of it - his answers not straight & he had not even read the Blue books - & Lord L. is very down upon Miss Flora Shaw who seems to have precipitated the revolution - Have had 2 bicycling lessons at the Queen’s Club - The first simple torture, like sitting on a skate balanced on a cartwheel - I felt as if the machine was an “infernal” one - trying to compass my destruction - The 2nd, sat more comfortably - but can’t yet get the balance -’

28 February 1897
‘[. . .] Yeats very charming, I feel quite proud of my young countryman [. . .]’

21 March 1897
‘Got to church, & had a quiet afternoon typing from Froude - only the Birchs - Dinner, Rt. Hon. Horace Plunkett [an Anglo-Irish unionist, MP, and an agricultural reformer], Mr Barry O’Brien, W. B. Yeats - some very interesting talk - Mr O’Brien arrived first - & said he wd be so glad to meet Mr Plunkett - as all sections of Nationalists of late have been agreeing that he is the only possible leader to unite all parties - Yeats, just back from Dublin, corroborates this - He has been trying to reconcile conflicting committees re the ’98 Centenary [events to mark the centenary of the 1798 uprising] - but there is a great deal of squabbling - He says “every man who has time on his hands & a little industry has a secret society of his own” - Then Mr Plunkett came & we went up to dinner - a little tentative conversation at first - Then Mr Plunkett [said] his grudge against Parnellism is that Parnell so mastered & dominated his followers as to crush national life instead of developing it, as has happened when there has been a national awakening in other countries [. . . Mr O’Brien] says “I would make Mr Horace Plunkett our leader & follow him” - Yeats agrees enthusiastically & says “we all want it” - Mr Plunkett reddens & is evidently touched, tho’ his quiet restrained manner is unchanged - Yeats asks him how far he would go - he says, to a large measure of local Government - but not seperation - & not yet Home Rule they are not ready for it. [. . .]

The party did not break up till 12 - Mr Plunkett going first - Mr O’Brien looked at Yeats when he left & said “We could go fast with that man as leader” - but is a little sad that he doesn’t go in more for Home Rule - yet confesses he is wiser to stick to agricultural co-operation for the present -’

8 April 1899
‘The Jack Yeatses arrived yesterday - He is too good an artist to leave to Devonshire, I want to keep him to Irish things - [Yeats and his wife were living near Dartmouth.]’

Geyser of emotions

Alice James, brother to the famous writer Henry, died 120 years ago today. Towards the end of her short and unhappy life, she began keeping a diary. Ahough not published until 40 years after her death, it is revered today by some for its portrayal of a woman struggling against social and mental difficulties, and yet, nevertheless, finding her own individual voice.

Alice was born in New York in 1848 into a wealthy and well-educated family. Like her brother Henry, who would go on to become a famous novelist, she spent some of her youth travelling with the family back and forth from New England to Europe. But, while her brothers attended the best schools wherever they went, Alice was only given an education fit for a lady. As a young girl, during the civil war, she sewed bandages; and, as a young woman, she worked as a history teacher. She was very close to another brother, William, a pioneering American psychologist.

James was often ill, diagnosed with hysteria, and was largely cared for by her parents until they both died in 1882. Thereafter, she tried rest cures, electrical massage, as well as travelling to Europe with her close friend Katherine Peabody Loring. Through many of the last troubled years of her life, she was supported by Henry. She died from breast cancer on 6 March 1892. Further biographical information is available from Wikipedia and History of American Women.

In 1889, when in London, James began writing a diary, a habit she kept up until her death. Soon after, Katherine Loring produced five copies of the diary and sent them to family members. It was not, though, made more widely available until 1934, when Macmillan published Alice James, her brothers, her journal. In 1964, Dodd, Mead published The Diary of Alice James with an introduction by the Henry James expert Leon Edel. This latter book is widely accepted as the most faithful reproduction of the original diary.

Some consider that the diary made Alice James into a feminist icon, a woman who struggled through illnesses to find her own voice, though this view is not universally held. Her diary, though, is very revealing of her inner self and thoughts, and full of self-analysis. Extracts can be read online at the Serendip website, at the Civil War Women Blog, and at Googlebooks in Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s The yellow wall-paper.

31 May 1889
‘I think that if I get into the habit of writing a bit about what happens, or rather doesn’t happen, I may lose a little of the sense of loneliness and desolation which abides with me. My circumstances allowing nothing but the ejaculation of one-syllabled reflections, a written monologue by that most interesting being, myself, may have its yet to be discovered consolations. I shall, at least, have it all my own way, and it may bring relief as an outlet to that geyser of emotions, sensations, speculations and reflections which ferments perpetually within my poor old carcass for its sins; so here goes - my first journal!’

12 July 1889
‘It’s amusing to see how, even upon my microscopic field, minute events are perpetually taking place illustrative of the broadest facts of human nature. Yesterday Nurse and I had a good laugh, but I must allow that decidedly she ‘had’ me. I was thinking of something that interested me very much, and my mind was suddenly flooded by one of those luminous waves that swept out of consciousness all but the living sense and overpower one with joy in the rich, throbbing complexity of life, when suddenly I looked up at Nurse, who was dressing me, and saw her primitive, rudimentary expression (so common here), as of no inherited quarrel with her destiny of putting petticoats over my head; the poverty and deadness of it contrasted to the tide of speculation that was coursing thro’ my brain made me exclaim, ‘Oh! Nurse, don’t you wish you were inside of me?’ Her look of dismay, and vehement disclaimer - ‘Inside of you, Miss, when you have just had a sick head-ache for five days!’ - gave a greater blow to my vanity than that much-battered article has ever received. The headache had gone off in the night and I had clean forgotten it when the little wretch confronted me with it, at this sublime moment, when I was feeling within me the potency of Bismarck, and left me powerless before the immutable law that, however great we may seem to our own consciousness, no human being would exchange his for ours, and before the fact that my glorious role was to stand for sick-headache to mankind! What a grotesque being I am, to be sure, lying in this room, with the resistance of a thistle-down, having illusory moments of throbbing with the pulse of the race, the mystery to be solved at the next breath, and the fountain of all happiness within me - the sense of vitality, in short, simply proportionate to the excess of weakness. To sit by and watch these absurdities is amusing in its way, and reminds me of how I used to listen to my ‘company manners’ in the days when I had ‘em, and how ridiculous they sounded.

Ah! Those strange people that have the courage to be unhappy! Are they unhappy, by the way?’

12 December 1889
‘I wonder, whether, if I had had any education I should have been more, or less, of a fool than I am. It would have deprived me surely of those exquisite moments of mental flatulence which every now and then inflate the cerebral vacuum with a delicious sense of latent possibilities - of stretching oneself to cosmic limits, and who would ever give up the reality of dreams for relative knowledge?’

26 October 1890
‘William uses an excellent expression when he says in his paper on the ‘Hidden Self’ that the nervous victim ‘abandons’ certain portions of his consciousness. It may be the word commonly used by his kind. It is just the right one at any rate, altho’ I have never unfortunately been able to abandon my consciousness and get five minutes’ rest. I have passed thro’ an infinite succession of conscious abandonments and in looking back now I see how it began in my childhood, altho’ I wasn’t conscious of the necessity until ’67 or ’68 when I broke down first, acutely, and had violent turns of hysteria. As I lay prostrate after the storm with my mind luminous and active and susceptible of the clearest, strongest impressions, I saw so distinctly that it was a fight simply between my body and my will, a battle in which the former was to be triumphant to the end. Owing to some physical weakness, excess nervous susceptibility, the moral power pauses, as it were for a moment, and refuses to maintain muscular sanity, worn out with the straining of its constabulary functions. As I used to sit immovable reading in the library with waves of violent emotion suddenly invading my muscles taking some one of their myriad forms such as throwing myself out of the window, or knocking off the head of the benignant pater as he sat with his silver locks, writing at his table, it used to seem to me that the only difference between me and the insane was that I had not only all the horrors and suffering of insanity but the duties of doctor, nurse, and strait-jacket imposed upon me, too. Conceive of never being without the sense that if you let yourself go for a moment your mechanism will fall into pie and that at some given moment you must abandon it all, let the dykes break and the flood sweep in, acknowledging yourself abjectly impotent before the immutable laws. When all one’s moral and natural stock in trade is a temperament forbidding the abandonment of an inch or the relaxation of a muscle, ’tis a never-ending fight. When the fancy took me of a morning at school to study my lessons by way of variety instead of shirking or wriggling thro’ the most impossible sensations of upheaval, violent revolt in my head overtook me so that I had to ‘abandon’ my brain, as it were. So it has always been, anything that sticks of itself is free to do so, but conscious and continuous cerebration is an impossible exercise and from just behind the eyes my heads feels like a dense jungle into which no ray of light has ever penetrated. So, with the rest, you abandon the pit of your stomach, the palms of your hands, the soles of your feet, and refuse to keep them sane when you find in turn one moral impression after another producing despair in the one, terror in the other, anxiety in the third and so on until life becomes one long flight from remote suggestion and complicated eluding of the multi-fold traps set for your undoing.’

A book out of these scraps

Lawrence Durrell, the author of The Alexandria Quartet and several highly-respected travel books on Greece, was born a century ago today. His fictional style has gone out of fashion but was revered by many - not least myself - in the 1960s and 1970s. Durrell does not seem to have been a diarist, and there is no evidence of diaries in waiting, so to speak, for publication. However, one of his classic travel books, about Corfu, is based on, and quotes from, a diary or notebook he kept when first living there.

Durrell was born in Darjeeling, India, on 27 February 1912, the son of a British civil engineer, and Louisa, an Irish protestant, both of whom had been brought up in India. In 1923, he was sent to be educated in England, and attended various schools without much success. In 1935, he married Nancy, the first of his four wives, and moved with her and other members of his family (one brother, Gerald, also became a writer) to live on Corfu.

In 1937, Durrell travelled to Paris where he met Henry Miller and Anäis Nin (a lifelong diarist - see The Diary Junction), and in 1940, he had a daughter with Nancy. On the outbreak of war, Durrell’s mother and brothers returned to England, but Durrell and Nancy stayed (having a daughter in 1940) until the fall of Greece when they escaped to Alexandria. They separated soon after.

During the war, Durrell served as press attache to the British embassies in Cairo and Alexandria, and, after, he held various diplomatic and teaching posts mostly in Greece, but also in Belgrade and Buenos Aires. In 1947, he married Eve Cohen and they too had a daughter, Sappho. She committed suicide in 1985, leaving behind a diary - published in the literary magazine Granta - with unsubstantiated accusations of incest with her father.

From 1953, Durrell lived in Cyprus, initially teaching English literature but working again, for a while, for the British Government during the Cypriot revolution. During this period he began writing Justine, the first of four novels in The Alexandria Quartet, which would bring him literary fame. During the latter part of his life, Durrell lived in the South of France (he bought a large house in Sommières, a small village in Languedoc in 1966) and this was the setting for his most ambitious work, The Avignon Quintet. Apart from novels, he also wrote several celebrated books about the Greek Islands and poetry.

Durrell married twice more, his third wife dying of cancer, and the fourth marriage ending in separation. He died at Sommières in 1990. More biographical information is available at Wikipedia, the International Lawrence Durrell Society, and a French website celebrating Durrell in Languedoc.

There is no evidence that Lawrence Durrell was a diarist, except for the few dated diary-type notes that take up part of his book about Corfu - Prospero’s Cell: A guide to the landscape and manners of the island of Corcyra. This was first published by Faber & Faber in 1945, and is part travel guide and part travel literature. The dated diary entries included are more like notes (similar to those found in some of his novels) and largely impersonal. Here are several extracts from the first few pages of Prospero’s Cell.

29 April 1937
‘It is April and we have taken an old fisherman’s house in the extreme north of the island - Kalamai. Ten sea-miles from the town, and some thirty kilometres by road, it offers all the charms of seclusion. A white house set like a dice on a rock already venerable with the scars of wind and water. The hill runs clear up to the sky behind it, so that the cypresses and olives overhang this room in which I sit and write. We are upon a bare promontory with its beautiful clean surface of metamorphic stone covered in olive and ilex: in the shape of a mons pubis. This is become our unregretted home. A world. Corcyra.’

5 May 1937
‘The books have arrived by water. Confusion, adjectives, smoke, and the deafening pumping of wheezy Diesel engine. Then the caique staggered off in the direction of St Stephano and the Forty Saints, where the crew will gorge themselves on melons and fall asleep in their coarse woollen vests, one of top of the other, like a litter of cats, under the ikon of St Spiradion of Holy Memory. We are depending on this daily caique for our provisions.’

6 May 1937
‘Climb to Vigla in the time of cherries and look down. You will see that the island lies against the mainland roughly in the form of a sickle. On the landward side you have a great bay, noble and serene, and almost completely landlocked. Northward the tip of the sickle almost touches Albania and here the troubled blue of the Ionian is sucked harshly between the ribs of the limestone and spits of sand. Kalamai fronts the Albanian foothils, and into it the water races as into a swimming-pool: a milky ferocious green when the north wind curdles it.’

7 May 1937
‘The cape opposite is bald; a wilderness of rock-thistle and melancholy asphodel - the drear sea-quill. It was on a ringing spring day that we discovered the house. The sky lay in a heroic blue arc as we came down the stone ladder. I remember N[ancy] saying distinctly to Theodore: ‘But the quietness alone makes it another country.’ We looked through the hanging screens of olive-branches on to the white sea wall with fishing-tackle drying on it. A neglected balcony. The floors were cold. Fowls clucked softly in the gloom where the great olive-press lay, waiting its season. A cypress stood motionless - as if at the gates of the underworld. We shivered and sat on the white rock to eat, looking down at our own faces in the motionless sea. You will think it strange to have come all the way from England to this fine Grecian promontory where our only company can be rock, air, sky - and all the elementals. In letters home N says we have been cultivating the tragic sense. There is no explanation. It is enough to record that everything is exactly as the fortune-teller said it would be. White house, white rock, friends, and a narrow style of loving: and perhaps a book which will grow out of these scraps, as from the rubbish of these old Venetian tombs the cypress cracks the slabs at last and rises up fresh and green.’

By way of a personal postcript, here also are a few extracts from my own diary about Durrell. As a young man, I adored his books, and, I suppose, very much wanted to be like him - though, clearly, time has proved my ambition was a little o’er-reaching. 

26 December 1978
‘Durrell completely entrances me with his writings - but completely.’

27 September 1979
‘Durrell lives and moulds our lives. I’m not given to hero worship but it’s fun to try.’

9 November 1990
‘Lawrence Durrell has died. One of my few heroes. He was 78 years old. The newspapers find a news story in his death as well as giving him a reasonable obituary. I am delighted to discover that he had written yet one more book, about Provence, which is due to come out any day now. His style of writing is so completely out of fashion but I still love it and may now be tempted to reread a novel or two.’

18 April 1990
‘[A Spanish friend who had been living in London with us in the late 1970s] said recently she had finally consumed Durrell’s Alexandria Quartet after several failed attempts. It had struck her suddenly that Harold [a close friend at the time] and I were trying to create Durrell’s world and that Mu [another friend then living in Greece but often with us in London] was a Justine figure.’

25 July 1991
‘Information today on the Reuters wire that one of Lawrence Durrell’s wives is trying to get an injunction against a woman who intends to publish the diaries and letters of Durrell’s daughter Sappho. Sappho committed suicide some five years ago when she was 33; the diaries and letters appear to show that she had an incestuous relationship as a teenager with her father.’

Doomed to sing

Today is the 160th anniversary of the death of Thomas Moore, the great Irish poet and singer. Much entranced by society, he became a fixture in the London literary scene for periods of his life, and when visiting was often in demand as an entertainer. His extensive diaries - all of which are freely available on the internet - cover thirty years and fill more than six volumes.

Moore was born in Dublin in 1779, and he studied there, at Trinity College, and at Middle Temple in London. Eschewing the law, he found an entrée into English society through his talent as a poet. His Irish Melodies - poems set to music - sold widely and were much performed. He also wrote satirical works such as The Fudge Family in Paris. In 1803, he was appointed registrar to the Admiralty in Bermuda, but relinquished the post to a deputy while he travelled in North America.

Back in London, Moore set to work and published more poems, but was so affronted by a reviewer, Francis Jeffrey, that Moore challenged him to a duel. The ODNB biography of Moore (log in required) takes up the story: ‘This was about to take place in woodland near Chalk Farm when the contest was interrupted by police officers, who took both men into custody. Newspapers turned the whole affair into ridicule by alleging that the ammunition to be used consisted of paper pellets, and although the allegation was evidently untrue, it remained to mortify Moore for some years. When Byron repeated the story in English Bards and Scotch Reviewers (1809), Moore proceeded to challenge him as well, but fortunately Byron was touring the eastern Mediterranean, and was unaware of Moore’s anger. Both challenges, as it happens, led to warm and lasting friendships, remarkable evidence of the charm and good nature of the Irish poet.’

Moore married an actess, Bessy Dyke, in 1811. But then having lived beyond his means for some years, and having been encumbered with debts incurred by his deputy in Bermuda, he fled Britain in 1819 to avoid imprisonment. He remained in France and Italy until 1822, when his debts were finally paid.

Moore’s friendship with Lord Byron led the latter to entrust his memoirs to Moore. He, however, along with the publisher John Murray, burned these memoirs - thus creating one of the most infamous episodes in literary history. Nevertheless, Moore went on to edit and publish Byron’s letters and journals. He died on 26 February 1852 (though, curiously, both Wikipedia and Oxford Dictionary of National Biography say he died a day earlier, on 25 February - see Postscript below). Further biographical information is available from the Catholic Encyclopedia, The Poetry Foundation or Wikipedia.

Moore’s diary was first published between 1853 and 1856 by Longman, Brown, Green and Longmans in eight volumes as Memoirs, Journal and Correspondence of Thomas Moore. This was edited by John Russell, who also wrote prefaces for the first and sixth volumes. Memoirs and letters, in fact, take up the first volume, some of the second and much of the last, but Moore’s diary, starting in August 1818 and concluding in October 1847, take up all the rest of the volumes. All eight tomes are freely available at Internet Archive. In 1925, Cambridge University Press brought out a one volume edition - Tom Moore's Diary: a selection - edited by J B Priestley.

Here is an extract about Moore from Walter Scott’s great diary (see Death of a bandit).

22 November 1825
‘Moore. I saw Moore (for the first time, I may say, this season). We had, indeed, met in public twenty years ago. There is a manly frankness with perfect ease and good breeding about him, which is delightful. Not the least touch of the poet or the pedant. [. . .] His countenance is plain, but the expression is very animated, especially in speaking or singing, so that it is far more interesting than the finest features could have rendered it. I was aware that Byron had often spoken, both in private society and in his journal, of Moore and myself in the same breath, and with the same sort of regard; so I was curious to see what there could be in common betwixt us, Moore having lived so much in the gay world, I in the country, and with people of business, and sometimes with politicians; Moore a scholar, I none; he a musician and artist, I without knowledge of a note; he a democrat, I an aristocrat; with many other points of difierence; besides his being an Irishman, I a Scotchman, and both tolerably national. Yet there is a point of resemblance, and a strong one. We are both good-humoured fellows, who rather seek to enjoy what is going forward than to maintain our dignity as Lions; and we have both seen the world too widely and too well not to condemn in our souls the imaginary consequence of literary people, who walk with their noses in the air, [. . .] He always enjoys the mot pour rire and so do I. It was a pity that nothing save the total destruction of Byron’s memoirs would satisfy his executors; but there was a reason.[. . .] We went to the theatre together, and the house being luckily a good one, received Thomas Moore with rapture. I could have hugged them, for it paid back the debt of the kind reception I met with in Ireland.’

And here is a selection of extracts from Moore’s own diary (one of which is about Scott, who was nearing the end of his life - he died in September 1832).

26 July 1823
‘Sailed in the Ivanhoe; took to my berth and peppermint lozenges, but felt deadly sick all the way. Came in a chaise (Casey and I), from Howth, and broke down when near Dublin; got into a jaunting-car, and arrived at Casey’s, where I dined. Never shall forget the welcomeness of his good mutton broth, to which was added some very old port, and an excellent bottle of claret. Went afterwards in a hackney-coach to Abbey Street. Found my dearest father and mother watching for me at the window; my mother not looking so well as when I last saw her, but my father (though, of course, enfeebled by his great age) in excellent health and spirits. Sweet little Nell, too, quite well.’

23 December 1829
‘Asked to various places to dine, but reserved myself for the chance of seeing Fanny Kemble in Belvidera. Fanny K.’s acting clever, but not touching, at least, to me. Was unmoved enough, during the pathetic parts, to look around the house, and saw but few (indeed, no) symptoms of weeping. One lady was using a handkerchief most plentifully; but I found it was for a cold in the head. Sir Thomas Lawrence in the orchestra, full of anxiety and delight; and I made it a point whenever he looked our way, that he should see me clapping enthusiastically. Came over to speak to us afterwards. Got home between ten and eleven, with all the horrors of correcting the cancel and of packing before me. Dispatched all, and set off in a hackney coach for the Gloucester Coffeehouse, where I slept.’

14 October 1831
‘Spottiswoode and Harness to breakfast at Murray’s, for the purpose of consulting about the new edition of Byron. I have not myself come to any decisive explanation with him as to what my part or share in the business is to be. In one of my letters to him, from Sloperton, I had (in answer to his request that I would suggest what I thought useful towards the imdertaking) said, that, as far as the works were concerned, I thought a running commentary throughout, like that of Warton on Pope, would be the most attractive means of giving them freshness and novelty with the public; but adding, at the same time, that the task would be a very responsible one, particularly if it was a rhymer like me, who undertook to criticise such a poet. Harness very anxious that I should give him an epilogue for the tragedy he is bringing out. A good deal of talk about the projected edition of Byron, in which I saw that Harness took a great lead. Being obliged to leave them soon after breakfast, took Murray out of the room, and impressed upon him, that if I were to have anything to do with this concern it must be left all to myself without any other interference; he said ‘Certainly.’ [. . .]

To dinner at Sir Walter Scott’s (or rather Lockhart’s). On my way to dinner, with Murray, who took me, told him that I had made up my mind to be editor at all events, and that he might announce me as such; which seemed very much to please him. Was rather shocked at seeing and hearing Scott; both his looks and utterance, but particularly the latter, showing strongly the effects of paralysis. [. . .] On looking over at Scott once or twice, was painfully struck by the utter vacancy of his look. How dreadful if he should live to survive that mighty mind of his! It seems hardly right to assemble company round him in this state. Saw that I was doomed to sing. Mrs Lockhart began, and sung her wild song Achin Foane (as the words sound) to the harp with such effect on her Scotch hearers as made me a little despair of being listened to after her. I however succeeded very well, and was made to sing song after song till poor Scott’s time of going to bed; soon after which I came away. Mrs. Macleod also sang some Scotch duets with her sister. It is charming to see how Scott’s good temper and good nature continue unchanged through the sad wreck of almost every thing else that belonged to him. The great object in sending him abroad is to disengage his mind from the strong wish to write by which he is harmed; eternally making efforts to produce something without being able to bring his mind collectively to bear upon it. [. . .]

Called at the Speaker’s; saw both her and him, and he with much kindness asked me to his country place. When I expressed my wonder at his being able to hold out through all these long nights, he said it was all by not eating; if he had lived in his usual way he could not have borne it, but the want of exercise luckily took away his appetite, and this temperance saved him.’

13 August 1836
‘Drove about a little in Mrs Meara’s car, accompanied by Hume, and put in practice what I had long been contemplating - a visit to No 12 Aungier Street - the house in which I was born. On accosting the man who stood at the door, and asking whether he was the owner of the house, he looked rather gruffly and suspiciously at me, and answered ‘Yes’ - but the moment I mentioned who I was - adding that it was the house I was bom in, and that I wished to be permitted to look through the rooms, his countenance brightened up with the most cordial feeling, and seizing me by the hand he pulled me along to the small room behind the shop (where we used to breakfast in old times), exclaiming to his wife (who was sitting there), with a voice tremulous with feeling, ‘Here’s Sir Thomas Moore, who was bom in this house, come to ask us to let him see the rooms; and it’s proud I am to have him under the old roof.’ He then without delay, and entering at once into my feelings, led me through every part of the house, beginning with the small old yard and its appurtenances, then the little dark kitchen where I used to have my bread and milk in the morning before I went to school; from thence to the front and back drawing rooms, the former looking more large and respectable than I could have expected, and the latter, with its little closet where I remember such gay supper-parties, both room and closet fuller than they could well hold, and Joe Kelly and Wesley Doyle singing away together so sweetly. The bedrooms and garrets were next visited, and the only material alteration I observed in them was the removal of the wooden partition by which a little comer was separated off from the back bedroom (in which the two apprentices slept) to form a bedroom for me. The many thoughts that came rushing upon me in thus visiting, for the first time since our family left it, the house in which I passed the first nineteen or twenty years of my life may be more easily conceived than told; and I must say, that if a man had been got up specially to conduct me through such a scene it could not have been done with more tact, sympathy, and intelligent feeling than it was by this plain, honest grocer; for, as I remarked to Hume, as we entered the shop, ‘only think, a grocer’s still.’ When we returned to the drawing room, there was the wife with a decanter of port, and glasses on the table, begging us to take some refreshment, and I with great pleasure drank her and her good husband’s health. When I say that the shop is still a grocer’s, I must add, for the honour of old times, that it has a good deal gone down in the world since then, and is of a much inferior grade of grocery to that of my poor father, who, by the way, was himself one of nature’s gentlemen, having all the repose and good breeding of manner by which the true gentleman in all classes is distinguished.’

15 June 1839
‘Went to the British Museum, and, having been told that it was a holiday, asked for Panizzi, who was full of kindness, and told me the library should be at all times accessible to me, and that I should also have a room entirely to myself, if I preferred it at any time to the public room. He then told me of a poor Irish labourer now at work about the Museum, who, on hearing the other day that I was also sometimes at work there, said he would give a pot of ale to any one who would show me to him the next time I came. Accordingly, when I was last there, he was brought where he could have a sight of me as I sat reading; and the poor fellow was so pleased that he doubled the pot of ale to the man who performed the part of showman. Panizzi himself seemed to enjoy the story quite as much as I did.’

POSTSCRIPT: Thomas Moore DID die on 25 February 1852, exactly as stated in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography - my apologies for doubting it! The biographical information in Memoirs, Journal and Correspondence of Thomas Moore (the source for my information above) says Moore died on the 26th, however, the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography has now double-checked its information by consulting Moore’s death certificate, and this confirms he died on the 25th.

Webbs on the Web

The remarkable diaries of Beatrice Webb, the great social reformer and co-founder of The London School of Economics, have been made fully and freely available on the internet to mark the launch of the LSE’s new digital library. The diaries, LSE says, record ‘not just her personal struggles but her place in the front-line of public life from the late 19th century to her death in 1943’.

Beatrice, the eighth daughter of industrialist Richard Potter and Laurencina Heyworth, was born in Gloucestershire in 1858. Although she enjoyed little formal schooling she read widely and talked to her father’s visitors, one of whom was Herbert Spencer. A liaison with the statesman Joseph Chamberlain, who was much older than she, failed to develop, and when it broke down, she joined a charity to help those living in poverty.

For a while Beatrice worked as a researcher for her cousin Charles Booth, a social reformer. In 1891, she published a small book, The Co-operative Movement in Great Britain, which later became a classic. While working on the book she met Sidney Webb, who wooed her for several years before they married in 1892. Beatrice’s inheritance of a £1,000 a year enabled Sidney to give up his civil service job. They set up house in London together, and subsequently wrote a number of important books such as The History of Trade Unionism and Industrial Democracy.

In 1894, the Fabian Society, in which the Webbs were important figures, was left £10,000, which they used to help found The London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE) in 1895. In 1898, the Webbs travelled to North America, Australia and New Zealand; thereafter, they spent many years researching and publishing 11 volumes of English Local Government.

In 1900, the Fabian Society joined with other parties to form the Labour Representation Committee, which won two seats in the House of Commons. The Webbs were responsible for drafting the 1902 Education Act; and Beatrice served as a member of the Royal Commission on the Poor Laws, producing an important minority report. In 1913, they launched the New Statesman magazine, and, a year later, they joined the Labour Party. Sydney, in particular, rose to high office. When he was made Baron Passfield, Beatrice refused the title Lady Passfield. In the 1930s, after their retirement to Hampshire, they visited the USSR, and then spent three years writing Soviet Communism: a new Civilisation?.

When Beatrice Webb died in 1943, she left behind an astonishing 70 years of diaries, all of which are held in the Passfield Archive at LSE. They are among the founding works of the LSE library, and are widely consulted by researchers studying late 19th and 20th century politics, industrial relations, and the role of women in society and family relationships. A selection of extracts was first edited by Norman and Jeanne MacKenzie and published in four volumes between 1982 and 1985 by Virago in association with LSE; a one volume edition, abridged by Lynn Knight, came out in 2000.

LSE, with funding from the Webb Memorial Trust, has made all of Beatrice Webb’s diaries available online. Two versions of the diary have been digitised - 9,000 pages of the actual manuscript as well as 8,000 pages of a transcribed version that is cross-referenced with the date fields indexed from the manuscript version. The website - called Webbs on the Web - also contains a number of images of the Webbs. See The Diary Junction for several biography and diary extract links. Here, though, are a few extracts from the 2000 volume edited by Knight.

6 May 1887
‘This morning I walked along Billingsgate from Fresh Wharf to the London docks. Crowded with loungers smoking bad tobacco, and coarse, careless talk with the clash of a halfpenny on the pavement every now and again. Bestial content or hopeless discontent on their faces. The lowest form of leisure - senseless curiosity about street rows, idle gazing at the street sellers, low jokes - and this is the chance the docks offer.’

1 February 1890
‘London is in a ferment: strikes are the order of the day, the new trade unionism with its magnificent conquest of the docks is striding along with an arrogance rousing employers to a keen sense of danger, and to a determination to strike against strikes. The socialists, led by a small set of able young men (Fabian Society) are manipulating London Radicals, ready at the first check-mate of trade unionism to voice a growing desire for state action.’

14 July 1896
‘Made arrangements to start the London School in its new abode at Adelphi Terrace in October. Engaged a bright girl as housekeeper and accountant. Advertised for political science lecturer - and yesterday interviewed candidates, nondescript set of university men. All hopeless from our point of view. All imagined that political science consisted of a knowledge of Aristotle and ‘modern’ writers such as de Tocqueville - wanted to put the students through a course of Utopias from More downwards. When Sidney suggested a course of lectures be prepared on the different systems of municipal taxation, when Graham suggested a study of the rival methods of election, from ad hoc to proportional representation, the wretched candidates looked aghast and thought evidently that we were amusing ourselves at their expense . . . Finally we determined to do without our lecturer - to my mind a blessed consummation. It struck me always as a trifle difficult to teach a science which does not yet exist.’

19 May 1910
‘The King’s death has turned politics topsy-turvy . . . London and the country generally is enjoying itself hugely at the Royal Wake, slobbering over the lying-in-state and the formal procession. Any collective thought and feeling is to the good; but the ludicrous false sentiment which is being lavished over the somewhat commonplace virtues of our late King would turn the stomachs of the most loyal of Fabians.’

5 August 1914
‘It was a strange London on Sunday: crowded with excursionists to London and balked would-be travellers to the Continent, all in a state of suppressed uneasiness and excitement. We sauntered through the crowd to Trafalgar Square, where Labour, socialist and pacifist demonstrators, with a few trade union flags, were gesticulating from the steps of the monument to a mixed crowd of admirers, hooligan warmongers and merely curious holiday-makers. It was an undignified and futile exhibition, this singing of the ‘Red Flag’ and passing of well-worn radical resolutions in favour of universal peace. We turned into the National Liberal Club: the lobby was crowded with men, all silent and perturbed.’

15 January 1941
‘We have had a shock. In the devastating German raid on London on 29 December all our books, bound and unbound - seven thousand volumes - were destroyed. At first I was downcast, but Sidney was more philosophical [. . .]. When in the six o’clock BBC news we are told that five million books had been swept away, I was consoled by the feeling ‘we are all in it’, and had no reason to feel specially injured.’