Golden Boy in New Guinea

The Australian war correspondent and novelist, George H Johnston, was born a century ago today. He came to public notice for the first time as a young man with his reporting from Asia during the Second World War. During this period he also published books about the war, including a diary written in New Guinea. Later, having lived in Greece for many years, he returned to Australia and made a name for himself again with a series of autobiographical novels, one of which is now considered an Australian classic.

George Henry Johnston was born on 20 July 1912 in Melbourne, Australia, and then educated in local schools before becoming apprenticed as a lithographer. As a child he liked drawing and reading about ships, and aged only 16 an article of his on local shipwrecks was published by the Melbourne Argus. In 1933, the same newspaper took him on as a cadet reporter. He married Elsie Esme Taylor in 1938 and they had one daughter.

During the Second World War, Johnston was an accredited war correspondent, reporting from New Guinea in 1942, the UK and US in 1943, and from central Asia and Italy in 1944. He witnessed the Japanese surrender on board USS Missouri in Tokyo Bay in 1945. Also during this period, he used his experience to write several books, such as Battle of the Seaways and Australia at War. On returning to Australia in 1945, he found himself relatively famous, nicknamed ‘Golden Boy’ by his managing director, and appointed editor of the Australasian Post. Soon after, he met Charmian Clift, also on the paper, and their relationship caused a scandal which led to them both to moving to Sydney. They married in 1947, and had three children.

In Sydney, they embarked on a new career of fiction writing, and jointly won the Sydney Morning Herald prize for High Valley (1949). By then, however, Johnston was also working as a feature writer for The Sun. In 1951, Associated Newspapers Services appointed Johnston to head its London office, though he continued to write novels with his wife. In 1954, he abandoned journalism, and the couple moved to Greece, first to Kálimnos, and a year later to Hydra. They spent nearly a decade there, during which time Johnston wrote more novels (including five detective books) and many short stories.

Most significantly, with his life falling apart (money and relationship problems, and illness) Johnston embarked, in 1962, on an autobiographical novel. This was published in London in 1964 as My Brother Jack, and has proved enduringly popular. Johnston returned to Australia in 1964, once again popular, and his family followed a year later. My Brother Jack was produced for television; and a further autobiographical novel was published in 1969 - Clean Straw for Nothing. Clift, however, committed suicide just weeks before publication of the second book, apparently fearful of how she would be portrayed. Johnston worked on, but did not complete, a third autobiographical novel - A Cartload of Clay - before dying in 1970. Further information is available at the Australian Dictionary of Biography website.

During his time in New Guinea in the Second World War, Johnston kept a diary. This was published in Australia (Angus & Robertson) and the UK (Victor Gollancz) in 1943 as New Guinea Diary. Copies of this can be bought for under £10 at Abebooks, but there are no substantial extracts to be found on the internet. There are two, though, quoted in Eyewitness: Australians Write from the Front-Line by Garrie Hutchinson, some of which can read freely at Googlebooks.

According to Hutchinson, Johnston was one of the first two correspondents appointed in New Guinea in 1942 - the other was Osmar White. White, however, had little time for Johnston the journalist. He said in a 1990 interview for the Australian War Memorial that, ‘Johnston of course rewrote MacArthur communiques. I didn’t respect him as a war correspondent. He’s a very nice bloke personally, but I didn’t hold him as a war correspondent. He never tried to beat the propaganda gate.’ (Douglas MacArthur was commander of the US Army forces in the Far East.)

‘Perhaps this is a bit unfair,’ suggests Hutchinson in his book, since an entry in Johnston’s diary shows he was well aware of the problem; and a subsequent entry even provides a possible reason for White’s feelings.

16 October 1942
‘Up here everybody is incensed at new censorship bans including MacArthur’s personal censorship of Stone’s [articles] on his visit here which have been slashed to ribbons to convey the impression (a) that he went right up to the front line (which he certainly did NOT), and (b) that this was NOT his first visit to New Guinea. Everybody is furious and Harold Gaund [U.P] has cabled a demand that he be recalled or that his resignation be accepted. Censorship now is just plain Gestapo stuff.’

17 October 1942
‘Barney Darnton is going to Wanigela for the Buna show and I have been asked to go as the Australian representative. At first I decided to go and then I decided against it. Too many other things are in the air and it’s the wrong time to be cut off from all other news sources.’

‘While Johnston did go to the north-coast battles at Buna and Gona later in the year,’ Hutchinson explains, ‘it indicates a different kind of reporting to White’s - White walked in and was there with the soldiers, observing and telling their stories. Johnston, for the most part, was back at headquarters getting stories by talking to blokes who had been there.’

For a Japanese soldier’s experience of the war in New Guinea written in diary form see the diary of Tamura Yoshikazu, as discussed in an essay on the Australia-Japan Research Project website.

Powell’s diaries auctioned

Bids over half a million dollars have been invited for the diaries of Dawn Powell, an American writer, who never quite achieved mainstream success, but who Gore Vidal once called the US’s ‘best comic novelist’. The successful bidder will take possession of Powell’s 43 diary books, though not the copyright for the material therein. Tim Page, who currently owns the diaries and edited them for publication in 1995, is also making a condition of the sale that copies be made fully accessible to the public.

[Addendum - 20 July 2102: The deadline for sale of the diaries passed without any sale. Subsequently, Page was quoted in The New York Times as saying ‘I consider this a pretty complete failure’. The Powell diary website link mentioned below may thus thus become redundant shortly.]

Powell was born in Mount Gilead, Ohio, in 1896. Her mother died when she was just seven, and, after her father remarried, she ran away from an abusive stepmother to live with an aunt. She studied at Lake Erie College, and then moved to New York City where she took up freelance writing opportunities. In 1920, she marred Joseph Gousha, an aspiring poet, and the couple had one child, and settled in Greenwich Village.

By the mid-1920s, Powell was publishing the first of her many novels, such as She Walks in Beauty, writing plays, and contributing book reviews to the Evening Post. During the 1930s, she worked occasionally as a screenwriter in Hollywood, but always returned to New York, and her novel writing. It was not until 1942, with A Time to be Born, that she achieved any critical success. She was said to be ‘a playful satirist, and an unsentimental observer of failed hopes and misguided longings’ and the chronicler of ‘two very different worlds: the small-town Ohio of her childhood and the sophisticated Manhattan to which she gravitated’.

However, Powell could never make a living from writing fiction. She was constantly dogged by her son’s mental problems, by her own and her husband’s drinking, and by financial shortages. She was also overcome at times with illness and depression. She died in 1965. A biography of Powell, and a selection of essays about her by other writers can be found at the Library of America website.

According to Powell’s Wikipedia entry, virtually all of her novels were out of print at the time of her death, but her ‘posthumous champions’ included Matthew Josephson, Gore Vidal (with whom she had been friends since the mid-1950s) and Tim Page. And it was Page who joined forces with Powell’s family to extricate her manuscripts, diaries, and copyrights from her original executrix; and this, eventually, led, in the 1990s, to a revival of interest in her writing. Most significantly, Powell’s diaries were edited by Page and published in 1995 (The Diaries of Dawn Powell, 1931-1965, Steerforth Press). These were praised by The New York Times as ‘one of the outstanding literary finds of the last quarter century.’ For links to some extracts see The Diary Junction.

Now, Tim Page has decided to sell the original diary manuscripts, ‘with the blessing of Powell’s family and her Estate’. He says that many readers consider the diaries as Powell’s masterpiece, that most of their content is unknown, and that ‘unquestionably’ this is ‘the largest trove of Powell material that will ever be made available for sale’. Extraordinarily, Page has chosen to try and auction the Powell archive, not through an auction company, but directly through a specially-devised Dawn Powell diaries website.

The website provides a large amount of information about the diaries - 43 in total and currently held by the Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Columbia University - and detailed instructions on how to bid. Not only has Page set $500,000 as a minimum bid price, but he is also requiring any prospective owners of the diaries to irrevocably donate a full set of copies for public use, and to accept that full copyright for all the material will remain with the Dawn Powell Estate. A deadline for bids has been set as 15 July.

Here are few extracts from Powell’s diary found on the Washington Post website.

26 February 1930
‘Joe tight so much and mentally blurred so it’s impossible to talk with him. Makes me sick at heart and so tired emotionally to see him blah-blah drunk all the time with nights of horror that make me sorry for him yet worry so.’

4 March 1930
‘Offered $500 a week to go to Hollywood at once for three months. We need money but that stuff is not in my direction and life is too short to go on unpleasant byroads.’

8 MArch 1930
‘Worked. Dinner with Dwight at Jungle Club and then to his apartment. This luxury constantly before me would send me either to Hollywood at once or to the ghetto. Met Helen Carlisle (Mother’s Cry) who writes very good novels in six weeks.’

10 March 1930
‘Hate novel as if it were a personal foe - it’s so damned hard and moves so slow. I want to write plays that go fast. Can’t conceive of having energy ever to attack a novel again. They’re so damned huge and unwieldy.’

And here are some on the Library of America website.

1 March 1939
‘Wits are never happy people. The anguish that has scraped their nerves and left them raw to every flicker of life is the base of wit - for the raw nerve reacts at once without any agent, the reaction is direct, with no integumentary obstacles. Wit is the cry of pain, the true word that pierces the heart. If it does not pierce, then it is not true wit. True wit should break a good man’s heart.’

14 March 1939
‘A woman should attempt to be as sympathetic, amused, and understanding of a man’s vices as his favorite bar is.’

2 January 1941
‘In the last century, Thackery, Dickens, Edith Wharton, James, all wrote of their own times and we have reliable records. Now we have only the escapists, who write of happenings a hundred or three hundred years ago, false to history, false to human nature. Among contemporary writers, only John O’Hara writes of one very small section of 52nd Street or Broadway. We have Hemingway, who writes of a fictional movie hero in Spain with the language neither Spanish nor English. When someone wishes to write of this age - as I do and have done - critics shy off, the public shies off. “Where’s our Story Book?” they cry. “Where are our Story Book People?” This is obviously an age that Can’t Take It.’

23 March 1944
‘For a writer or artist there is nothing to equal the elation of escaping into solitude. The excited feeling of stolen rapture I feel on closing the door of this little room up here, knowing no one can find me, no one will speak to me. I look over rooftops into sky and far-off towers. This is exactly like my sensation of sheer exhilaration as a child when I got up into the attic or in the treetop or under a tree way off by the road where I was alone with a sharp pencil and notebook.’

8 March 1963
‘Was told yesterday I had not won the National Book Award. I felt some relief as I have no equipment for prize-winning - no small talk, no time for idle graciousness and required public show, no clothes either or desire for front. I realize I have no yen for any experience (even a triumph) that blocks observation, when I am the observed instead of the observer. Time is too short to miss so many sights. Also chloroforms, removes the weapons - de-fanging, claws cut, scorpion tail removed, leaves helpless fat cat with no defenses and maybe exposing not a sweet, harmless pet but a bad case of mange.’

On the look out for Boers

Arthur Hamilton Baynes, a Church of England priest who served as Bishop of Natal in South Africa during the second Anglo-Boer War, died 70 years ago today. He is barely remembered, though he did leave behind two books, one of which was a diary documenting his war days in Natal.

There is very little readily-available biographical information about Baynes. He was born in Lewisham, Kent, in 1854, and was ordained in 1882. He served as vicar of St James Church, Nottingham, between 1884 and 1888, and than was appointed domestic chaplain to the Archbishop of Canterbury (Edward Benson) for four years, before becoming of vicar of Christ Church, Greenwich, for two years.

Most significantly, from 1893 to 1901, i.e. partly during the second Anglo-Boer War, Baynes was Bishop of Natal, a diocese which covered the western part of the South African province of KwaZulu-Natal, west and south of the Tugela and Buffalo rivers. During his time there, he helped reconcile opposing Anglican groups, and left behind a diocese of eighteen parishes, six Zulu missions, two Indian missions, three schools and one mission hospital.

On his return to England in 1910, Baynes went back to Nottingham and was vicar of St Mary’s Church until 1913. He was canon of Southwell Minster, and then of Birmingham Cathedral where subsequently he was made provost (1931-1937). He died on 30 June 1942. There is very little additional information online about Baynes, though two of his books have survived: South Africa, published in 1908 by A. R. Mowbray & Co. which Baynes himself called ‘a slight sketch of South African Church expansion’; and his South African diary.

This latter was published in 1900 by George Bell and Sons as My diocese during the war, extracts from the diary of the Right Rev. Arthur Hamilton Baynes, D.D. Bishop of Natal. This is freely available at Internet Archive and at Project Canterbury (documenting Anglican history online). The book was prepared for publication by Baynes’ sister, Helen, who notes at the beginning: ‘The Diary does not pretend to any literary merit; it is simply a hastily written record, for home reading, of days of intense interest and of stirring events.’

In his own preface to the diary, Baynes says this: ‘This diary is written in odd moments, in the early morning or late at night after a tiring day; and I take no special pains as to its form, but write down a bare record of facts. Comments, reflections, emotions of a higher or deeper kind, if committed to writing at all, are reserved for the more personal medium of letters. Rough in form, however, as my diary is, and bare and unedifying in matter, the Publishers have thought that it may contain enough of general interest during these last interesting months to be worth printing, and in response to their request my sister has undertaken the selection of extracts.

The roughest sketch which gives the local colouring sometimes conveys a truer impression than the most accurate photograph, and possibly this diary, written on the spot, may have this small merit. My own experience has been that there are some things one only gets a proper view of on the spot. For instance, before I came to South Africa I had a settled impression that Cape Town was at the extreme southern point of the Continent, and that Table Mountain looked out over it straight towards the South Pole. It was only when I got there that I found Table Mountain facing almost due north, staring at me as I approached from England. It is just possible that my diary may serve to correct a few such a priori and erroneous impressions.

But there is one respect in which even we who lived on the spot were quite at fault. Some of us, indeed, were at fault on two points. We never believed, till just before the event, that there would be war, and we never dreamed that if there were it would be anything very big.’

And here are three extracts from the diary during the first few months of the war.

15 October 1899
‘As no one had asked me to preach to-day, I thought I might have a day off, especially as I know there are plenty of clergy about from the Transvaal and Newcastle. However, when I went to the early service at the Garrison Church, Twemlow asked me if I would preach to the men at 11, as he was asked to preach to the Imperial Light Horse at a special parade at St Saviour’s at 9.30. I felt rather guilty in doing nothing, so I said “Yes,” though it was rather short notice. The Rifles were there - the 2nd Battalion, which has just come out. I preached to them from the words in the second lesson, “With singleness of heart, fearing the Lord.” Things are very quiet to-day. I suppose the Boers would not choose Sunday for operations unless they were obliged. After luncheon I went in for a little chat with the Governor.

We live in a state of feverish excitement, waiting for each scrap of news and surrounded by startling rumours which turn out as a rule to be pure inventions. We rush for the morning paper and hail everyone we meet for news. There are rumours to-day of various kinds, but all untrue as it turns out. We cannot tell, and probably shall not know for some days, what is happening on the western border, about Mafeking and Kimberley. There are rumours of fighting, and we know that they are more or less isolated.’

14 January 1900
‘Holy Communion at 5.45, in our little mess-tent. Only a few officers. Then after a cup of tea, church parade at 7. As we are two chaplains, we agreed to take two battalions each, so that all could hear. I had the 60th Rifles and the Scottish Rifles, and the Navals, and a few odds and ends; and Hill had the Rifle Brigade and the Durham Light Infantry. General Buller and some of his staff and General Lyttelton came to my service, and it was a charming spot with a little crescent of rocky hill, so that the men were in tiers above me, and during the sermon they could sit on the rocks. I preached from the second lesson, “Follow me, and let the dead bury their dead,” and showed them that a chaplain was not simply to console the dying and to bury the dead. After service I took my books and went up the hill. The two big naval guns have been brought up here from Chieveley (the Boers don’t know it yet, but they soon will). It is odd that the most useful guns were only improvised on the spur of the moment. Captain Scott, of the “Terrible,” designed and made the huge carriages to move these ship-guns on, and now they can take them with spans of oxen quite long journeys and up steep hills. They are enormous things, with great long muzzles.

I asked the naval sentry to let me look through their big telescope. I could see the Boers at 8,000 yards, quite plainly - could see which had blue shirt sleeves and which had white - as they worked in the trenches. But only a few were working to-day; a fair number were sitting on the top of Spion Kop, looking at us. But the two guns are just enough below the ridge to be out of sight. Then I went over the ridge and down into the bush, on the other side, where there was more shade. I got a very comfortable seat under a tree. If the Boers had taken a shot at our naval guns I should have been too near to be pleasant; but this was not likely, especially on a Sunday. While I sat and read a partridge came out of the long grass to within three yards of my foot. Back to write and read, and then lunch and some English papers. But nothing for me. I have not had a letter or a paper since I left Maritzburg, last Friday week. It is awful to think what I may be neglecting. At 6 we had a voluntary service as last week. Hill read, and I preached from the first lesson, “I dwell with him that is of a humble and contrite heart” (“Lest we forget”).’

15 January 1900
‘English letters for next Saturday’s mail had to be despatched this morning! You would think we were in the remote parts of the Transvaal, instead of being little more than twenty-five miles from the railway at Frere. But I suppose with the roads blocked by transport, and the stoppages at the different camps en route, they have to take time by the forelock.

Colonel Byng of the South African Light Infantry went out with two guns of the artillery, with a view to catching Boers on the road between Colenso and this; we heard later on that though he did not succeed in intercepting wagons, etc., he arrived in the nick of time to extricate a patrol of Thorneycroft’s Mounted Infantry from a perilous position. . .

Meanwhile General Lyttelton and his staff made an expedition to the two hills called Zwartzkop, and I went with them. We started about 11, with two guides. We had to ride round the top of the ridge before descending into the intervening valley, then crossed the plain and began the ascent of the opposite hill. It is lovely country. The hills are covered with thick brush, of semi-tropical character, to be found on our own river valleys as distinguished from the higher hillsides.

About halfway up we left our horses with the orderlies, and climbed the rest, which was steep, on foot. Then we took elaborate surveys of the position as it appeared from there. First to the east, towards the part of the river where Byng was on the look out for the Boers. Of course we could not see him, as he would keep under cover, and might be a good way off. At that part the hills come nearer to the river, and are steep, so that the road is forced nearer to the bank. There is a drift there, with a road leading to it; it is just possible that we might make an attempt there. Then we looked out to the north, and searched the hills for Boer intrenchments with glasses. There is less need of them there, however, for on the right the hills are steep and rocky. Then we looked towards the hills to the north-west, where the road from Potgieter’s Drift crosses the hills, to see if the guns on the hills commanded the back of some small kopjes just across the river; seeing them in profile here, we could judge better than from our camp. A spice of excitement was added here, as we saw just below us, at the foot of the hill, on our side of the river, a lot of cattle herded together, with some ponies, and our guides said that these must be Boers; and if they were, they might have a try to cut off our return to camp. However, we saw nothing of them when we descended the hill. We called at the Kaffir kraal at the foot and bought some chickens, and then returned by another road. Colonel Byng was to have come to dinner, but had not returned from his expedition.’

A peculiar pleasure

The poet and teacher William Johnson, later called Cory, died 120 years ago today. Educated at Eton, he returned to the school to teach immediately on leaving university (like A. C. Benson, a generation later). He taught there for a quarter of a century before resigning because of a minor scandal. His very readable diaries and letters were published privately soon after his death.

Cory was born in 1823 to a Devonshire family. His father had been an indigo planter in India, and his mother was a great-niece of Sir Joshua Reynolds. He was educated at Eton and Kings College, Cambridge, and then returned to Eton in 1845 to work as an assistant master for over 25 years. He is said to have been a brilliant teacher and to have had a great influence over many of his pupils, some of whom went on to be important statesmen of the day. He contributed to education theory with two pamphlets, Eton Reform and Eton Reform II. He also developed a reputation as a poet; and A. C. Benson, in fact, later edited one volume of his poems (Ionica).

In 1872, Johnson was forced to leave Eton after an indiscreet letter to a pupil was discovered (his ODNB biography states: ‘he was dangerously fond of a number of boys’). He changed his name to Cory, and retired to an estate leased from his brother at Halsdon. Subsequently, he travelled abroad, and settled in Madeira where he married (aged 55) Rosa Caroline Guille with whom he had one son. While there he also wrote Guide to Modern English History (which is considered somewhat idiosyncratic). He and his family returned to live in Hampstead, North London, in 1882 where he died on 11 June 1892. Further information is available from Wikipedia, or (with login) from the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography.

Cory’s personal writings were edited by Francis Warre Cornish and published privately - thanks to funds raised by friends and former pupils - in 1897. This book, Extracts from the Letters and Journals of William Cory, is freely available online at Internet Archive, but, as far as I know, has never been reprinted or republished. It is more letters than diary (and, unfortunately, there are no diary entries about his resignation from Eton, only letters). Nevertheless, here are a few diary entries from his time at Eton, and a couple from his travels in Egypt.

10 February 1864
‘School, the last chapter of both Timothies - half the boys got punishments for being late - this is one of the results of our hateful irregularities; for if we began every day with a regular lesson or prayers no one would be late. I railed. Took refuge in the good and steady lads who have too much self-respect to be late, and read with them; expounded the peculiarly ecclesiastical nature of these epistles, the liturgical flow of some passages, the germs of a Creed found herein, the obscure nature of the evidence about the government of the early Church, &c., &c. . .

8.45. Times at the fireside; F. W. late for breakfast because of prayers at 9.0.

Took it easy by way of keeping Lent: did some exercises, read Latin and Greek for Rawlins, which I found more edifying than the curses of the Jewish law. . .’

12 February 1864
‘I was on Myrtle, with a dog at each stirrup, the soft rain in my face, and the kind wind coming to me from my home: so I galloped blindly - for the rain disabled the spectacles - up the river as usual, but further than usual, even to Bray; back the same way, chirruping to the dogs and meditating on Colenso, whether it would be expedient to subscribe.’

24 July 1864
‘I wrote two sheets full of outlines of a discourse on youth and its rising above the world. I wrote with hardly an erasure, and finished what looks complete, in time for Church.

We were not out of Church till 12.30, when my listeners met. I began my talk easily by speaking to R. Lewis about his essay on music which he is to write - its effects - its use in training - rhythm - form - how to the performers it is finite, regular, formal; how to non-musicians who have imagination it suggests the infinite, awakens longings that we cannot satisfy; how this desire for what is unattainable blends with all our pleasure, which is not the ‘pleasure’ spoken of by the old pagan philosophers; that our pleasure, as soon as we become men, is indissolubly blended with regret, remembrance, regard; that early manhood is a sort of autumn; that we repine, reproach ourselves, often with injustice, &c., &c.

One notion followed another, and I was helped by what I had written, but not bound by it.

Among other things I told the lads that manhood will bring them Ephphatha, that they will some day ‘dare to seem as good and generous as they are.’ A strange sermon: but they listened, and answered me when I questioned them of their own experience; and my friend, in the evening, gladly took my MS. to keep for his brother to read; so perhaps I had as much success as the dignitary with his pulpit. . .’

27 July 1864
‘I had a peculiar pleasure - a letter from the father of a boy who had been in my division, thanking me for making his boy’s work pleasant to him; the most gratifying letter I ever had on professional matters.’

4 March 1873 [In Egypt]
‘That night was my sleep murdered. When I woke from my last attempt at sleep, it was still quite dark, but the sakyeh was making distant melancholy, bagpipe, humming-top, grasshopper music. Donkeys were ready for three; the purser and I set off in haste to be at Philae by sunrise, breaking fast on a bit of bad bread and half a teacupful of Marsala drawn fresh from the cask. The donkey-drivers sucked air loudly to encourage the quadrupeds, which were feebler by far than their predecessors at Siout and Keneh.

We left the hideous human warren, following a fair, broad, clean sandy trough with teeth of granite on either ridge, reminding me of the hilltops in the Vivarais, only much nearer to us. After half an hour’s chilly riding, the increasing glow showed us a little village, and then the smooth river; the rapids, falsely called cataract, were heard, but not after the Ciceronian Catadupa style - no fear of being deafened. The sun slanted well upon the innumerable rock edges of creeks and reaches, and told me at least that the island mass over against us had no trees nor mud huts on it, only the stately peristyles growing out of the live rock as at the Acropolis - a solemn, clean, calm mass, but in the dawn not highly coloured, not mysterious. I must try to see it again at sunset. . .

To-day Hadji-bidge-bidge, the Herberee sailor, has come to ask for oil to put on his sick wife’s head. He squatted down in his white drapery while examined by the Sitt through her son as to the malady. As Arabic is not his language, it was not very easy talk. Two interviews: trust on one side, patience and friendliness on the other: no snivelling. The Reis came to listen to it, so did Mohammed, and a tall blue sailor who said thanks for Hadji, leading off for him. This they often do, and we like it. After the aconite and the quinine had been given, with clear orders, accepted with nods of assent, the man was called back to receive a coin. He kissed it, but gravely; no Irish effusion.’

21 March 18873
‘Egyptian summer is said to begin to-day. We think it very hot, but have no thermometer. Yesterday we had an illustrious sunrise, which glorified the 400 feet scarp level strata, and one deep shadow cradle of Gebel el Aridi. For an hour there was the pink and glaucous hue on the hills, which melting into the water reflections is, for me, a feast of beauty such as I do not get when I look through other men’s eyes by looking on a picture. We rowed straight at the cliff, and as we came nearer, of course we exchanged the glamour of distance for the clean, bare quarry, and the regular embrasures which stand for tombs, or hermitages, or workmen’s lairs. They were busy hewing stone for building, but we heard no ‘shots’ nor any sound of tools. Sunset was nearly as good in the sky, and I feasted on it undisturbed in a little walk, undisturbed by men, though the gilt green plain was all alive with troops of cattle and sheep-drivers going from pasture, and the bank with lively singing troops of nimble people, towing big boats which were crammed with cheerful creatures going home from their month’s corvée. . .’

A remedy for laziness

Celia Fiennes, an extraordinary early British traveller, was born 350 years ago today. She journeyed all across England on horseback at a time when very few people, let alone women, travelled just for the sake of it. She kept detailed notes of her travels, and prepared them for publication, yet a first complete edition did not emerge until long after her death. In this, she advises her readers to travel round England to cure the ‘itch’ of foreign travel, and as a cure for laziness. Although not strictly a diary, since there are no dates and the narrative is continuous, more like a memoir, Arthur Ponsonby does include a chapter on Fiennes in his English Diaries because, he says, her notes are ‘quite obviously written on the day and on the spot’.

Fiennes was born in Wiltshire, near Salisbury, on 7 June 1662, the daughter of a colonel in Oliver Cromwell’s army. Not much is known about her life, except that she never married, and travelled extensively - riding side-saddle - round Britain, so much so that she is credited with being the first woman ever to visit all the English counties. She is sometimes identified with the nursery rhyme, ‘Ride a Cock Horse’, since the phrase ‘on a fine horse’ could be construed as a corruption of ‘on a Fiennes horse’ but there appears to be no evidence for this link. She died in 1741. See History Net, Wikipedia, British Heritage or the Encyclopaedia Britannica for a little more biographical info.

Fiennes is remembered today because she kept comprehensive and interesting notes on all her travels. Although she prepared a book from these notes for publication, none of it appeared until 1812, when the poet Robert Southey included at least one short and unattributed extract in his Omniana or Horae Otiosiores. The first published edition of Fiennes’ diary did not appear until 1888 under the title Through England on a Side Saddle in the Time of William and Mary (Leadenhall Press). This is now freely available on the internet at Vision of Britain, A Celebration of Women Writers, or Internet Archive. A scholarly edition - The Journeys of Celia Fiennes - was edited by Christopher Morris and published by Cresset Press in 1947, and other editions have followed since.

According to Arthur Ponsonby, the early 20th century doyen of diaries (author of English Diaries and More English Diaries), Celia Fiennes diary is peculiar: ‘It is not divided up into days with dates. In fact, no date is mentioned in it except the years 1695 and 1697. But the notes she makes are quite obviously written on the day and on the spot, except perhaps the descriptions of London and the Lord Mayor’s Show.’

Ponsonby explains: ‘The value of Celia Fiennes’ diary rests in the picture it gives of country houses, gardens, and the towns, fashionable watering-places, and villages of England at the end of the seventeenth century, for there is very little literature of this description belonging to that period. Her language is by no means florid. Indeed, her vocabulary is somewhat limited. An expression of praise she uses over and over again in connection with cathedrals, houses, gardens, etc., is that they are “neat.” But in a simple way she gives quite effectively little pictures of what she sees, and uses many quaint but happy expressions, as, for instance, when she says of the spire of Salisbury Cathedral: “it appears to us below as sharpe as a Dagger, Yet in the compass on the top as bigg as a cart wheele.” ’

Here is Fiennes’ (edifying) preface ‘To the reader’ (with added paragraph breaks).

‘As this was never designed: soe not likely to fall into the hands of any but my near relations, there needs not much to be said to Excuse or recommend it. Som. thing may be diverting and proffitable tho’ not to Gentlemen that have travelled more about England, staid longer in places, might have more acquaintance and more opportunity to be inform’d.

My Journeys as they were begun to regain my health by variety and change of aire and exercise, soe whatever promoted that Was pursued; and those informations of things as could be obtein’d from inns en passant, or from some acquaintance, inhabitants of such places could ffurnish me with for my diversion, I thought necessary to remark: that as my bodily health was promoted my mind should not appear totally unoccupied, and the collecting it together remain for my after conversation (with such as might be inquisitive after such and such places) to wch might have recourse; and as most I converse with knows both the ffreedom and Easyness I speak and write as well as my deffect in all, so they will not expect exactness or politeness in this book, tho’ such Embellishments might. have adorned the descriptions and suited the nicer taste.

Now thus much without vanity may be asserted of the subject,. that if all persons, both Ladies, much more Gentlemen, would spend some of their tyme in Journeys to visit their native Land, and be curious to Inform themselves and make observations of the pleasant prospects, good buildings, different produces and manufactures of each place, with the variety of sports and recreations they are adapt to, would be a souveraign remedy to cure or preserve ffrom these Epidemick diseases of vapours, should I add Laziness? -it would also fform such an Idea of England, add much to its Glory and Esteem in our minds and cure the evil Itch of overvalueing fforeign parts; at least ffurnish them with an Equivalent to entertain strangers when amongst us, Or jnform them when abroad of their native Country, which has been often a Reproach to the English, ignorance and being strangers to themselves.

Nay the Ladies might have matter not unworthy their observation, soe subject for conversation, within their own compass in each county to which they relate, and thence studdy now to be serviceable to their neighbours especially the poor among whome they dwell, which would spare them the uneasye thoughts how to pass away tedious dayes, and tyme would not be a burthen when not at a card or dice table, and the ffashions and manners of fforeign parts less minded or desired.

But much more requisite is it for Gentlemen in [general] service of their country at home or abroad, in town or country, Especially those that serve in parliament to know and jnform themselves ye nature of Land, ye Genius of the Inhabitants, so as to promote and improve Manufacture and trade suitable to each and encourage all projects tending thereto, putting in practice all Laws made for each particular good, maintaining their priviledges, procuring more as requisite; but to their shame it must be own’d many if not most are Ignorant of anything but the name of the place for which they serve in parliament; how then can they speake for or promote their good or Redress their Grievances?

. . . [I] shall conclude with a hearty wish and recommendation to all, but Especially my own Sex, the studdy of those things which tends to Improve the mind and makes our Lives pleasant and comfortable as well as proffitable in all the Stages and Stations of our Lives, and render suffering and age supportable and Death less fformidable and a future State more happy.’

The following extract in the diary itself is taken from Fiennes’ tour in 1698, when travelling through Cornwall.

‘The people here are very ill Guides and know but Little from home, only to some market town they frequent, but will be very solicitous to know where you goe and how farre and from whence you Came and where is ye abode. Then I Came in sight of ye hill in Cornwall Called ye Mount, its on a Rock in the sea wch at ye flowing tyde is an jsland, but at Low water one Can goe over ye sands almost just to it, its but a Little market town wch is about 2 mile from Panzants, and you may walke or Ride to it all on ye sands when ye tyde’s out. Its a ffine Rock and very high - severall Little houses for fisher men - in ye sides of it just by the water. At ye top is a pretty good house where the Govenour Lives sometymes, - Sr - Hook his name is - there is a tower on the top on wch is a fflag. There is a Chaire or throne on the top from whence they Can discover a Great way at sea and here they put up Lights to direct shipps.

Pensands is Rightly named being all sands about it - it Lies just as a shore to ye maine South ocean wch Comes from ye Lizard and being on ye side of a hill wth a high hill all round ye side to ye Landward it Lookes soe snugg and warme, and truely it needs shelter haveing the sea on ye other side and Little or no ffewell - turff and ffurse and fferne. They have Little or noe wood and noe Coale wch differences it from Darbyshire, otherwise this and to ye Land’s End is stone and barren as Darbyshire.

I was surprised to ffind my supper boyling on a fire allwayes supply’d wth a bush of ffurse and yt to be ye only ffewell to dress a joynt of meat and broth, and told them they Could not roast me anything, but they have a Little wood for such occasions but its scarce and dear wch is a strange thing yt ye shipps should not supply them. They told me it must all be brought round the Lands End and since ye warre they Could not have it.

This town is two parishes, one Church in ye town and a Little Chappell and another Church belonging to ye other parish wch is a mile distance. There is alsoe a good meeteing place. There is a good Key and a good Harbour for ye shipps to Ride, by meanes of ye point of Land wch runns into ye Sea in a neck or Compass wch shelters it from ye maine and answers the Lizard point wch you see very plaine – a point of Land Looks Like a Double hill one above ye other that runns a good way into ye sea.

Ye Lands End is 10 mile ffarther, pretty steep and narrow Lanes, but its not shelter’d wth trees or hedg Rows this being rather desart and Like ye peake Country in Darbyshire, dry stone walls, and ye hills full of stones, but it is in most places better Land and yeilds good Corne, both wheate Barley and oates and some Rhye.

About 2 mile from the Lands End I Came in sight of ye maine ocean on both sides, the south and north sea and soe Rode in its view till I saw them joyn’d at ye poynt, and saw the jsland of Sily wch is 7 Leagues off ye Lands End. They tell me that in a Cleer day those in the Island Can discern the people in the maine as they goe up ye hill to Church, they Can Describe their Clothes. This Church and Little parish wch is Called Church town is about a mile from from the poynt. The houses are but poor Cottages Like Barns to Look on, much Like those in Scotland, but to doe my own Country its right ye Inside of their Little Cottages are Clean and plaister’d and such as you might Comfortably Eate and drink in, and for Curiosity sake I dranck there and met wth very good bottled ale.

The Lands End terminates in a poynt or Peak of Great Rocks wch runs a good way into ye sea, I Clamber’d over them as farre as safety permitted me, there are abundance of Rocks and Sholes of stones stands up in the sea a mile off some here and there, some quite to ye shore, wch they name by severall names of Knights and Ladies Roled up in mantles from some old tradition or ffiction - Ye poets advance description of ye amours of some Great persons; but these many Rocks and Stones wch Lookes Like ye Needles in ye Isle of Wight makes it hazardous for shipps to double ye poynt Especially in stormy weather.

Here at ye Lands end they are but a Little way off of France, 2 dayes saile at farthest Convey them to Hauve de Grace in France, but ye peace being but newly entred into wth ye Ffrench I was not willing to venture at Least by myself into a fforreign Kingdom, and being then at ye End of ye Land, my horses Leggs Could not Carry me through ye deep, and so return’d againe to Pensands 10 mile more, and soe Came in view of both ye seas and saw ye Lizard point and Pensands and ye Mount in Cornwall wch Looked very fine in ye broad day, the sunn shineing on ye rocke in ye sea.’

Victoria’s diary online

Images of all 40,000 pages plus of Queen Victoria’s diary - from 1832 to 1901 - have been published online as part of the Diamond Jubilee celebrations for HM Queen Elizabeth II. Hitherto, only relatively little of her diary has been published in any form, and the full manuscripts have only been accessible to scholars by appointment. This initiative - funded by Oxford University and two Jewish foundations - is thus making a valuable primary resource on 19th century history available for the first time to a much wider, indeed a global, audience.

The Royal Archives in collaboration with Bodleian Libraries today announced publication of the ‘first release of Queen Victoria’s Journals.’ This, they said, marks not only the anniversary of Queen Victoria’s birth (24 May 1819), but also the current Diamond Jubilee celebrations of HM Queen Elizabeth II.’ An official launch was carried out by The Queen who was given a remote control in Buckingham Palace’s throne room to point at a computer screen.

Digital images of every page - 43,765 of them - in the entire sequence of the diaries are now available online. Full transcriptions and keyword searching are also available but only for the period up to February 1840 when Victoria married Prince Albert. Transcription of the remaining diaries is a work in progress.

The announcement has attracted plenty of press in the UK. The BBC drew attention to what David Ryan, assistant keeper of the Royal Archives, said: ‘The virtue of digital access is its ability to reveal the thoughts of Queen Victoria to millions around the world, providing them with a record of the important political and cultural events surrounding a monarch whose name defined an age.’ It also noted that a Twitter account @QueenVictoriaRI will tweet excerpts from Queen Victoria’s Journals throughout the Diamond Jubilee period.

The Sun noted this: ‘When asked by Bodleian librarian Sarah Thomas if she herself wrote a diary, The Queen replied to laughter from those gathered to mark the launch: “Mine’s not being published.” ’ The Telegraph says Victoria’s diaries ‘provide a fascinating insight into her life as Queen’.

Hitherto, there have been various published collections of Queen Victoria’s diary entries. The first were Leaves from the Journal of Our Life in the Highlands and More Leaves, both edited by Arthur Helps, and published by Smith, Elder & Co in 1868 and 1883. Arthur Ponsonby, author of English Diaries, says she made £2,500 from the first publication and used the money to set up university and school bursaries for the people of Balmoral. Of both volumes, Ponsonby remarked: ‘the entries are so much cut and trimmed and edited for public consumption that the charm of personality is almost entirely eliminated’. In the 20th century, John Murray brought out various other editions, some edited by Viscount Esher, starting with two volumes of The Girlhood of Queen Victoria: a selection from Her Majesty’s Diaries 1832-40.

The British Monarchy website has long since offered a few choice extracts from Queen Victoria’s diaries, and both the Arthur Help books are freely available online at Internet Archive. The Diary Review has published two previous articles about Queen Victoria’s diaries (with extracts): The crown hurt me, on the 110th anniversary of the death; and The Great Exhibition, on the 160th anniversary of its opening.

According to the newly established Queen Victoria’s Journals website (established by The Royal Archives and Bodleian Libraries with the involvement of the publisher ProQuest), the diaries detail household and family matters, reflect affairs of state, describe meetings with statesmen and other eminent figures, and comment on the literature of the day.

There is plenty of other interesting information on the website about the diaries. There are, for example, four different versions, none of which covers the whole period, from 1832 to 1901: the original which she wrote herself (only 13 small purple and marbled volumes survive); a manuscript, abridged transcript written by the Queen’s youngest daughter, Princess Beatrice; a typed transcript prepared for Lord Esher (the first Keeper of the Royal Archives); and four volumes of drafts written by the Queen herself (all relating to visits to and from various members of European royal families).

Without any further information or explanation, the website says ‘The digital version of Queen Victoria’s Journals has been managed and funded by the Bodleian Libraries, thanks to the generosity of the following supporters: The Polonsky Foundation, The University of Oxford, The Zvi and Ofra Meitar Family Foundation.’ The Bodleian, which has managed the project, is part of the University of Oxford; and the other two are both funded by wealthy Jewish interests.

The Polonsky Foundation’s primary objectives ‘are to support higher education internationally, principally in the arts and social sciences, and programmes favouring the study and resolution of human conflict’. Much of this work, it says, is part of ongoing programmes being undertaken in conjunction with various Departments of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and the Bezalel Academy of Art and Design, as well as other organisations within the United States and the United Kingdom.’ The Polonsky Foundation, which was set up by Leonard Polonsky, an American who studied at Oxford, and now runs Hansard Global Plc, provides financial solutions for international clients. The Zvi and Ofra Meitar Family Foundation says it ‘contributes to a broad range of organizations and activities in education and culture in Israel and abroad’. It was established by Zvi Meitar in 2004 to support young people outstanding in their field and to promote selected projects.

The new online archive of Queen Victoria’s diaries will remain freely available to British users and some specific libraries elsewhere, but, it will only remain freely available to other users until July 2012.

H-t was with me

August Strindberg, considered by some to be the most celebrated Swedish author and playwright of all time, died a century ago today. Not known as a diarist, he did keep an intermittent journal - with very brief entries - for 10 years or so towards the end of his life. Parts of the journal were published in an English translation in 1965; and now, in celebration of the centenary, a Stockholm gallery has made the diary entries available online.

August was the third of seven children born to Carl Strindberg, a Stockholm shipping magnate, and his religious wife Ulrika, who died when August was 13. He attended the University of Uppsala for two years, but thereafter did various jobs including being a journalist, tutoring and accounting for some local theatres. In 1870, his first play was produced by the Royal Dramatic Theatre; other, mostly historical, plays followed to mixed reviews. In 1874, he took up a post at the Royal Library, a position he would keep until 1882.

In 1877, Strindberg married Siri Wrangel, who had been an officer’s wife but was avidly interested in the theatre. The couple had three children but the marriage was always under strain, partly because of Siri’s determination to be an actress. Strindberg’s first major success did not come until 1879 with publication of The Red Room, a satirical novel. In 1882 a short story collection, The New Kingdom, so scandalised Stockholm society that Strindberg left Sweden.

For much of the 1880s, Strindberg and his family lived in Paris and Switzerland. In 1887, the couple divorced and Strindberg moved to Denmark. It was also the year, he had his first major play, The Father, published and performed (in Copenhagen). The following year he wrote Miss Julie. Strindberg, not feeling appreciated in Scandinavia, moved to Berlin for a short period. He married his second wife, the young Austrian Frieda Uhl, and they had one daughter, but after a year or so, they too divorced. Around 1895, Strindberg appears to have become interested in occultism, which led to him writing The Inferno.

In 1897, Strindberg returned to Sweden and embarked on a productive period of his life, writing more plays. In 1901, he married for a third time, to Harriet Bosse, a young actress, but by the time the couple’s daughter was born in 1902, they were living apart. In 1907, he launched the Intima Teater, to show off his own plays. Although initially successful, it ran into financial problems and closed in 1910. Strindberg died on 14 May 1912. Further information in English is available from Wikipedia, Encyclopaedia Britannica or the Theatre Database. The Strindberg Museum in Stockholm and the Stockholm Visitors Board both have listings of events connected with the centenary of Strindberg’s death.

Towards the end of his life, from 1896 to 1908, Strindberg kept a diary. The entries are usually very brief (sometimes only a single word) and intermittent, and many of them concern his relationship with Harriet Bosse. It was first published in Swedish in 1963, as Ur Ockulta Dagboken, and then it was translated into English by Mary Sandbach for publication in 1965 by Secker & Warburg as From an Occult Diary: Marriage with Harriet Bosse.

To coincide with the centenary, the City of Stockholm’s Liljevalchs art gallery is preparing a major Strindberg exhibition later this year; and, in connection with this, has launched the Strindberg2012 website to ‘let August himself do the talking’ by publishing the Occult Diary entries online - in Swedish and in English. The website cites as it sources the original manuscript, Mary Sandbach’s translation, and further translation by Hans Olsson. Annika Hansson Wretman of Liljevalchs and Mats Ingerdal of AGoodId (a communications agency) are credited with the website’s conception, transcription and realisation.

13 May 1897
‘Had horrible coffee in the morning, which ruined my nervous system and made me unable to work the whole day.’

22 January 1898
‘I’m turning 49 (7x7) years old. Last night: dreamt I found some occult books, black magic. Wanted out from a cowhouse but it was dark and I couldn’t find the exit. Woke with palpitations, and heard people above leaving. Kléen arrived.’

3 January 1901
‘Have been plagued for a couple of months by a smell of Celery; everything tastes and smells of Celery. When I take off my shirt at night it smells of Celery. What can it be?’

1 March 1905
‘Awoke by seeing a bedbug on my quilt, which I killed.’

15 January 1906
‘Spent the evening with H-t. Poisonous, gloomy, so I had to leave. H-t told me she had had a terrible inferno day; absolutely indescribable.’

10 February 1908
‘Today, the eagle was removed, which Harriet and I bought for our home. (It was, however, an eagless.) At the same moment, I broke a Japanese vase; dry rose petals fell to the floor.’

20 April 1908
‘This evening she came again, like roses, loving and full of longing. Night came; she slept on my arm, but did not desire me until towards morning, then x x x’

21 April 1908
‘The whole morning, solely as roses. Later she disappeared! In the evening she returned, but went again. At night apathetic and calm until the morning,when she sought me x x x’

23 April 1908
‘A heavy day, spent in idleness. Slept much. H-t away, but towards evening could feel her stretching me below the chest. Went to bed, grew calmer. No contact with H-t during the night. I sought her but did not find her until 5 o’clock, x x’

24 April 1908
‘A glorious morning; H-t was with me all forenoon, gentle, loving, like flowers in my mouth! Now I believe that she is free, and that we are united! But no, she disappeared in the evening, when Axel came; and although I received a summons to go to bed at 10 o’clock, she was not there to meet me. Slept, and experienced faithlessness; had bad dreams but was left in peace until morning when she sought me with passion, but without love. I responded x x x.’

Awfully tortured by fleas

Edward Lear, the great illustrator and creator of ‘nonsense’ poems, was born 200 years ago today, the day after, in fact, the assassination of Spencer Perceval (see previous story). Though best known for his poetry - such as The Owl and Pussycat - and limericks, he was a very capable landscape painter and a diligent diarist, and loved to employ both talents when travelling. Much of Lear’s diary material is available online: four years worth of daily extracts have recently been published as a web blog exactly 150 years after they were written; and three highly illustrated travel journals, published in Lear’s lifetime, are available at Internet Archive.

Lear was born in Highgate, near London, on 12 May 1812 - the 20th child of Jeremiah Lear, a stockbroker, and his wife Ann. From a young age, he was looked after by a much older sister, and from 15, he was already able to earn a living by drawing. In 1831, he was employed by the Zoological Society of London, and a year later published a large-scale book of his coloured drawings of parrots.

Still as a young man, Lear worked for the British Museum, and also lived at Knowsley, Derbyshire, where he made illustrations of the Earl of Derby’s private menagerie. It was for the Earl’s grandchildren that he first wrote Book of Nonsense, which became a children’s classic. By the mid-1830s, he was turning his artistic talent to landscape painting, since this was less taxing on his eyesight.

Lear suffered all his life from epilepsy, and never robust, after 1837, lived mostly abroad, firstly in Rome, and later in Corfu and Malta before settling (with his cat Foss) in San Remo on the Italian coast, close to the border with France. These years saw him publish various travel books; and, in the 1870s, he produced more ‘Nonsense’ books (including Nonsense Songs, Stories, Botany and Alphabets which contains the famous Owl and the Pussy Cat rhyme).

Lear died in 1888 (having never married). Further biographical information is available from Wikipedia, The Victorian Web, or A Blog of Bosh, an extensive website devoted to Lear which also has a list of bicentenary events.

There are thirty extant volumes of Lear’s diaries covering the second part of his life, from 1858 to 1887. All are housed in the Houghton Library, Harvard University. However, Lear himself refers to ‘60’ volumes and to the fact that he kept journals during his Knowsley years, but later destroyed them. During his lifetime, Richard Bentley published three books based on journals Lear kept while travelling. Journals of a Landscape Painter in Albania &c. came out in 1851, and this was followed a year later by Journals of a Landscape Painter in Southern Calabria &c. Twenty years on, in 1870, Robert John Bush published Journal of a Landscape Painter in Corsica. All of these titles are freely available at Internet Archive.

It was not until 1952, that any more of Lear’s diaries appeared in print: Journals : A Selection was edited by Herbert Van Thal and published by A. Barker. The following year, Jarrolds brought out Indian Journal (edited by Ray Murphy). It would be another 30 years before Denise Harvey published The Cretan Journal (edited by Rowena Fowler).

Otherwise, several years worth of Lear’s diaries have been published online, as a blog, each day’s entry exactly 150 years after it was written. The blog was started in 2008 - the diaries were painstakingly transcribed from the Houghton Library archive by Marco Graziosi - and the intention was to finish today, on Lear’s 50th birthday. It appears, however, as though the transcribing process is continuing beyond the targeted four years on this Wordpress site.

Lear wrote his diary at some length, especially when travelling - indeed, one wonders how he had time to paint when he was writing so much. Here are two entries. The first (taken from the blog mentioned above) is from his 50th birthday, i.e. 150 years ago today, when he was in Corfu. (I have replaced several phrases in Greek with their English translations, as given by Graziosi in footnotes, in square brackets.) The second extract is from Journal of a Landscape Painter in Corsica.

Monday, 12 May 1862
‘My 50th birthday. Rose at 4.20: - off by 5.15.

Long winding paths through olive groves: then dips & struggles with quite wild places, stuffed with all sorts of underwood, the old olives growing tangly all about. Frogs there were also, & rushes. A man passing, & asked the way to Sparterò - said - [Why do you want to go to my village?] I shall not tell you.” - Small miserable collection of huts are Nicori, Palaiocori, & Βαστάτινα, & I see no fun in going back by them: so having drawn the Northern distance above the last village but one - Dragolenà, & great groups of vast olives higher up - we arrived at Σπαρτηρῖο, 20 little houses scattered here & there; [goats], & rayther wretched: - the people only half polite. Nevertheless there is superb scenery all about the place. We took a boy to guide us to Ἅ. Προκόπιος - (the best place to pass the rest of the day in,) - ever winding paths, thro’ thickets, a few scared cattle. A church (in a wilderness,) & thus by 10 - or 10.30 - reached the groves of the Holy Προκόπιος. Lunched & drew in the wide grove till 1: nothing but a very elaborate study of this wood - even if that, - could convey an idea of this beautiful place: - the quiet, warmth, & semishade are delightful. The Elements - trees, clouds, &c. - silence - [All of nature that is] - seem to have far more part with me or I with them, than mankind. After death perhaps I shall be a tree - a cloud - a cabbage - or silence in the next world: but most possibly an ass. In these Προκόπιαν holy glades are but 3 very manifold colors, - the warm pale green of the floor - with long shades: - the gray uniform freckly shimmer of the roof: & the dark brown gray of the supporting pillar trunx. At 1, or 1.30 - into the Monastery, & drew till 3 - awfully tortured by fleas, & obliged to stand in the sun all the time. As soon as I got to the sea I bathed - killing 11 fleas first. At 6. Reached the Casa [Curì]: paid Dimitri 2 dollars [. . .] - 7.30 dinner - [very much too much], & I was horribly bored by a flea!

Bed by 10.15.

Kindly good folk.’

21 April 1868
‘6 a.m. - After drawing an outline of the mountains, I am picked up by Peter, G., and the trap. After three days’ stay (and I could willingly remain here for as many weeks; for what have I seen of the upper valley or the opposite hills?) I leave Sartene, and can bear witness to the good fare, moderate charges, and constant wish to oblige of Fatima, padrona of the Hotel d’ltalie. Poor Fatima, rumour says, is forsaken by her husband, and “dwells alone upon the hill of storms,” as in the literal sense of the expression Sartene must certainly be, for it is exposed to all the winds of heaven, and from its great elevation must needs be bitterly cold in winter.

Just above the town, where the high road to Bonifacio passes the Capuchin convent, there is the finest view of Sartene and the mountains; the whole town stands out in a grand mass from the valley and heights, and there is something rough and feudal in its dark houses that places its architecture far above that of Ajaccio in a picturesque sense. But to halt for drawing now is not to be thought of, inasmuch as this day’s journey to Bonifacio is not only a long one, but because in the whole distance (some fifty-three kilometres, or thirty-two miles) there is only a single wayside house, where the horses are to bait, yet where humanity, expecting food, would be severely disappointed. Hearing which, the Suliot has taken care to pack the old Coliseum sack with food for the day.

How grand at this hour is the broad light and shade of these mountains valleys! (notwithstanding that such as leave their houses at ten or eleven A.M. complain of “want of chiaroscuro in the south.”) How curious are the chapel-tombs, so oddly and picturesquely placed, and frequently so tasteful in design, gleaming among the rocks and hanging woods! At first, after leaving Sartene, the road passes through splendid woods of clustering ilex, and then begins to descend by opener country, shallower green vales and scattered granite tors or boulders, here and there passing plots of cultivation, and ever farther away from the high central mountains of the island. Now the distance sweeps down to lower hills, all clothed in deep green “maquis,” and at every curve of the road are endless pictures of gray granite rocks and wild olive.

While I am thinking how pleasant it would be to get studies of this very peculiar scenery, by living at Sartene, and walking seven or eight miles daily, Peter suddenly halts below the village of Giunchetto, which stands high above the road. “What is the matter?” says G.; but Peter only points to the village and crosses himself, and looks round at me. “What has happened?” I repeat. Peter whispers, “In that village a priest has lately died, and without confessing himself.” In the midst of visions of landscape - “What,” as Charles XII said to his secretary, “What has this bomb to do with what I am dictating?”

Farther on, near the eleventh kilometre, are some enormous granite blocks, with two or three stone huts by the road-side, and then follows a steep descent to the valley of the Ortola; looking back, you see a world of mist-folded mountains in the north-east, while ahead are “maquis,” and cystus carpets, sown with myriads of star-twinkling white flowers, broom, and purple lavender. The descent to the Ortola valley abounds with beauty, and by its verdure reminds me of more than one Yorkshire dale - here, instead of the oak or ash, depths of aged evergreen oak and gray-branched cork-trees, shading pastures and fern.

At 8, the river, a shallow stream, is crossed by a three-arched bridge; and here, near a solitary stone hut, are a few cattle and some peculiarly hideous pigs - the only living things seen since I left Sartene. Then, at the eighteenth kilometre, an ascent on the south side of the valley brings me in sight of the long point and tower of Cape Roccaspina and of the broad sea, above which I halt at 9 A.M., for the great Lion of Roccaspina may not be passed without getting a sketch of it. And, truly, it is a remarkable object - an immense mass of granite perfectly resembling a crowned lion, placed on a lofty ledge of the promontory, and surrounded by bare and rugged rocks.

The road now becomes a regular cornice coast-way, alternately descending and rising, always broad and good, and well protected by parapets; long spurs of rock jut out into the sea beyond odorous slopes of myrtle and cystus, while in some parts enormous blocks and walls of granite form the left side of the picture. Presently the road diverges more inland, and is carried through wild and lonely tracts of “maquis,” varied by patches of corn at intervals, and recalling the valleys of Philistia when you begin to ascend towards the Judaean hills from the plains near Eleutheropolis. Two flocks of goats - of course, black - and a few black sheep and pigs, who emulate the appearance of wild boars, with one man and one boy, are the living objects which a distant hamlet (I think Monaccia) contributes to the life of the scene. Occasionally glimpses of the distant sea occur; but, as far as eye can reach, the wild green unbroken “maquis” spreads away on every side.

At 10.30 “half our mournful task is done,” and the mid-day halt at a house (one of some six or seven by the wayside) is reached. The appearance of these dwellings is very poor and wretched; and a gendarme informs me that from the end of May till November they are all deserted, so unwholesome is the air of this district; and that the few peasants at present here go up at that season to the villages of Piannattoli or Caldarello - small clusters of houses higher up on the hill-side. How little cheerful the aspect of this part of the island must be then, one may imagine from what it is even in its inhabited condition.

On a rising ground close by are some of those vast isolated rocks which characterise this southern coast of Corsica - a good spot whereat to halt for Fatima’s breakfast. Looking southward, green lines of campagna stretch out into what is the first semblance of a plain that I have seen in this island, and which is exceedingly like portions of Syrian landscape. It was worth while to get a drawing of this, and I would willingly have stayed longer, but at 1 P.M. it is time to start again.

The road continues across comparatively low ground by undulating inequalities, through wide “maquis”-dotted tracts, where here and there the tall giant-hemlock is a new feature in the more moist parts of the ground. Twice we descend to the sea at inlets or small creeks - Figari and Ventilegne - in each case passing the stream which they receive by a bridge, and at these points marshes and “still salt pools” show the malarious nature of the district. Nor does the landscape painter fail to rejoice that he has chosen this method of “seeing all Corsica,” and that he is able to drive rapidly over this part of it, where there is no need of halt for drawing, for the higher mountains are far away from the south of the island, and the hills nearer the coast stretch seaward with a persistent and impracticable length of line not to be reduced to agreeable pictorial proportion. Once only, at 3 P.M., about seven kilometres from Bonifacio, I stop to draw, more to obtain a record of the topographic character of the south-west coast than for the sake of any beauty of scenery, of which the long spiky promontories hereabouts possess but little, although there is a certain grace in some of those slender points running far out into the blue water, and, though far inland, you may at times catch a glimpse of some heights of varied form; yet, be your drawing never so long or narrow, the length of the whole scene is with difficulty to be compressed within its limits.

At 3.30 I send on Peter and the trap to Bonifacio, and walk, for so many hours of sitting still in a carriage cramps limbs and head. As the hills, from the ascent to which I had made my last drawing, are left behind, Bonifacio, the Pisan or Genoese city, becomes visible; extreme whiteness, cliffs as chalky as those of Dover, and a sort of Maltese look of fortified lines are the apparent characters at this distance of a city so full of interest and history. Opposite, towards the south, a thick haze continues to hide the coast of Sardinia, and this has been no light drawback to the day’s journey, since the sight of remote mountains and the blue straits would have gone far to relieve the “maquis” monotony, driving through which has occupied so much of the time passed between Sartene and Bonifacio.

Meanwhile a space of three or four miles has to be done on foot, shut out from all distant view, as well as very uninteresting in its chalky white dryness of road, about which the only features are walls, with olives all bent to the north-east, and eloquently speaking of the force of the south-west wind along this coast. But at 4.30 P.M. fields of tall corn and long-armed olives replace this ugliness, and the road descends to a deep winding gorge or valley, closely sheltered and full of luxuriant vegetation, olive, almond, and fig. After the boulders and crags of granite, which up to this time have been the foregrounds in my Corsican journey, a new world seems to be entered on coming to this deep hollow (where a stream apparently should run, but does not), for its sides are high cliffs of cretaceous formation, pale, crenelated, and with cavernous ledges, and loaded with vegetation.

At 5 P.M. the road abruptly reaches the remarkable port of Bonifacio, which forms one of the most delightful and striking pictures possible. Terminating a winding and narrow arm of the sea, or channel, the nearer part of which you see between overhanging cliffs of the strangest form, it is completely shut in on all sides, that opposite the road by which alone you can reach it being formed by the great rock on which the old fortress and city are built, and which to the south is a sheer precipice to the sea, or rather (even in some parts of it visible from the harbour) actually projecting above it. At the foot of this fort-rock lies a semicircle of suburban buildings at the water’s edge, with a church, and a broad flight of shallow steps leading up to the top of this curious peninsular stronghold; all these combine in a most perfect little scene, now lit up by the rays of the afternoon sun, and which I lose no time in drawing.

A broad and good carriage road leads up to the city, huge grim walls enclose it, and before you enter them you become aware how narrow is the little isthmus that joins the rock-site of Bonifacio to the main land; from a small level space close below the fort you see the opposite coast of Sardinia, and you look down perpendicularly into the blue straits which divide the two islands. Very narrow streets conduct from the fortifications to the inner town; the houses are lofty and crowded, and Bonifacio evidently possesses the full share of inconveniences natural to garrison towns of limited extent, with somewhat of the neglected and unprepossessing look of many southern streets and habitations. There was no difficulty in finding the Widow Carreghi’s hotel, but its exterior and entrance were, it must be owned, not a little dismal, and the staircase, steep, narrow, wooden, dark, dirty, and difficult, leading to the inn rooms on the third floor, was such as a climbing South American monkey might have rejoiced in. Nevertheless, once safe at the top of this ladder-like climb there are several little and very tolerably habitable rooms; and, as seems to be invariably the rule as to Corsican hostesses, the two here are very obliging and anxious to please.

There was yet time to walk through the town, which I was surprised to find so extensive and populous. Some of the churches are ancient, and near the end of the rock (though the lateness of the hour, together with a powder magazine and obstructive sentry, prevented my getting quite to its extremity) a considerable plateau with barracks and other public buildings exists, and I can well imagine some days might be spent with great interest in this ancient place. As it was, I could but make a slight drawing from the edge of the precipice looking up to the harbour or sea-inlet, but from such examination it was evident that the most characteristic view of this singular and picturesque place must be made from the opposite side of the narrow channel, though it does not appear how, except by boat, such a point can be reached.

Bonifacio is doubtless a most striking place and full of subjects for painting; the bright chalky white of the rocks on which it stands, the deep green vegetation, and the dark gulf below it, add surprising contrasts of colour to the general effect of its remarkable position and outline. Returning to the Widow Carreghi’s hotel, confusion prevailed throughout that establishment, owing to its being crowded at this hour by, not only the officers of the garrison, who take their food there, but an additional host of official civilians, gendarmerie, &c, to-morrow being a day of great excitement, on account of the conscription taking place, in consequence of which event the Sous-prefet is here from Sartene, with numerous other dignitaries.

It was not wonderful that the two obliging women, who seemed joint hostesses, were somewhat “dazed” by the unbounded noise in the small and overfull rooms; nevertheless, they got a very good supper for me and my man, only apologising continually that “le circonstanze” of the full house, and of the late hour at which I had arrived, prevented their offering more food and in greater comfort and quiet. Everybody seemed to be aware that I was a travelling painter, and all proffered to show me this or that; the Sous-prefet, they said, had gone out to meet me, and the Mayor, for whom I have left a card and a letter from M. Galloni d’Istria (he lives in the Carreghi house), would come and see me to-morrow. Another of the persons at the table gave me his address at Casabianda, and begged that, if I should come there, he might show me the ruins of Aleria. The whole party, “continentals” and “insulaires,” were full of civility.

All night long there was singing and great noise in the streets, so that in spite of my camp-bed very little sleep was attainable.’

An agony of tears

Today marks the 200th anniversary of the only assassination of a British Prime Minister - that of Spencer Perceval. He was shot down in the lobby of the House of Commons by a Liverpool merchant who was detained immediately under orders from Charles Abbot, Speaker of the House of Commons. Abbot kept a diary for most of his political life, and in it he records, the day after the murder, that there was ‘an agony of tears’ in the House.

Perceval was born in 1762, the younger son of an Irish earl, and was educated at Harrow and Trinity College, Cambridge. He studied law at Lincoln’s Inn, and practised as a barrister on the Midland Circuit, becoming King’s Counsel in 1796. The same year he was elected as a Member of Parliament for Northampton. Known as an admirer of William Pitt the Younger, he was politically conservative, and an active Anglican, opposing (unlike Pitt) Catholic emancipation. When Pitt resigned as Prime Minister in 1801 over the issue of Catholic emancipation, Perceval continued to prosper politically, and was appointed Solicitor General in 1801 and Attorney General the following year.

After a period in opposition, Perceval was appointed Chancellor of the Exchequer in the Duke of Portland’s administration; and, then, after Portland’s resignation, a political compromise led to him taking over as Prime Minister. He soon faced a number of crises, not least the disastrous Walcheren expedition (see Walcheren Fever story), and the madness of King George III; but, he won the support of the Prince Regent. By the spring of 1812, his position as Prime Minister was looking stronger, when John Bellingham, a Liverpool merchant, shot him dead in the lobby of the House of Commons. Further biographical information is available from the No 10 website, Wikipedia and the National Archives.

Wikipedia has a good account of Bellingham and the reasons for his killing Perceval. Essentially, he felt he had been wrongly imprisoned in Russia, where he had been posted as an export representative, and that the British government therefore owed him compensation. After several years of petitioning without result, he bought two pistols, and had a pocket created inside his coat to hold one. On 11 May 1812, he waited in the lobby of the House of Commons for Perceval to arrive, and shot him through the heart. He then sat down on a bench, was soon detained, and sent to Newgate. Tried on 15 May at the Old Bailey, he was executed on 18 May.

At the time of the murder, Charles Abbot was Speaker, and thus the presiding officer, of the House of Commons. He was born in Abingdon, the son of a rector, in 1757, and studied at Westminster School and Christ Church, Oxford. He worked as a lawyer first, and was then elected to Parliament in 1795. He helped reform certain legal and financial processes, and to launch the first census in 1801. That same year he became Chief Secretary and Privy Seal for Ireland. In February 1802, he became Speaker of the House of Commons, a position he held until 1817. He died in 1829.

Abbot appears to have started keeping a diary at the time of his election to Parliament, and continued through to the end of his life. It was first edited by his son Charles, Lord Colchester, and published by John Murray in 1861 as The Diary and Correspondence of Charles Abbot, Lord Colchester, Speaker of the House of Commons, 1802-1817. This is freely available to rad online at Internet Archive. Though lacking in colour, the diary is considered to be a useful historical record. Here are some of Abbot’s diary entries from the day of the murder to a week later.

11 May 1812
‘The House of Commons being in Committee hearing evidence on the Orders in Council, at a few minutes after five, I was called down from my room into the house by a message that Mr Perceval was shot in the lobby.

As soon as I had taken the chair, the assassin, a bankrupt Liverpool merchant, John Bellingham, was forcibly brought to the bar. I detained him till a Magistrate was brought, who came almost instantly; and then the assassin was conducted to the prison room belonging to the Serjeant-at-Arms, where he was examined before Mr White, a Westminster Justice; and Mr Alderman Combe and Mr Taylor, two Members who were also Justices, and thereupon committed to Newgate for murder.

Mr Perceval’s body (for he fell lifeless after he had staggered a few paces into the lobby) was brought into my house, and remained in the first picture room till the family removed it (for privacy) at one o’clock in the morning to Downing Street.’

12 May 1812
‘[. . .] In the House of Commons, by common consent, no other business was done. Lord Castlereagh presented the Message, and moved the Address. In most faces there was an agony of tears; and neither Lord Castlereagh, Ponsonby, Whitbread, nor Canning could give a dry utterance to their sentiments. The House resolved by common acclamation to present the Address “as a House,” and not by Privy Councillors. All other business was put for distant or nominal days.’

13 May 1812
‘House of Commons. Unanimous votes in Committee upon the Regent’s Message, to grant 50,000 l. among the children, and 2000 l. a year to Mrs Perceval for her life.’

15 May 1812
‘House of Commons. Motion for an address and monument to Mr Perceval in Westminster Abbey carried by 199 to 26.’

16 May 1812
‘Mr Perceval was privately buried at Charlton. Perceval, though by no means an eloquent speaker, was the ablest debater in the House; but his treatment and management of the House of Commons was by no means satisfactory to me; and I think he was not desirous of holding high either its credit or its authority.’

18 May 1812
‘Bellingham was executed at Newgate.’

The scarlet tanager

Today marks the centenary of the birth of the writer May Sarton. She is not well known or remembered in the UK, but the anniversary is being acknowledged online by the New York Public Library and the Maine town of York where she lived for the last two decades of her life. A celebrated poet, she also became better known in her later years as a diarist, regularly publishing journals full of exquisite musings about friends, nature and her own fairly sedate life by the sea. On her eightieth birthday, the diaries reveal how it was the sight of a scarlet tanager that made her day more than any of the festivities arranged by friends in her house.

Eleanore Marie Sarton was born on 3 May 1912, in Wondelgem, Belgium, the daughter of an academic father and artistic mother. The family fled Europe in 1915, and went to Boston, Massachusetts. For eight years she studied at the Shady Hill School in Cambridge, one of the country’s first progressive schools, but, while still a teenager, went to work as an apprentice in the Civic Repertory Theatre in New York.

In 1931, Sarton travelled to Europe and lived in Paris for a year while her parents were in Lebanon. Thereafter, she went on annual visits to Europe, eventually meeting many literary and theatre personalities. In the mid-1930s, she founded the Associated Actors Theatre, though it did not last very long; and, under the pen name of May Sarton, she published her first books, a volume of poetry and a novel The Single House. In 1945, she met Judith Matlack, a professor of English at Simmons College, who became her lover and companion for more than a decade.

Sarton moved to Nelson, New Hampshire, after her father’s death, and then in the early 1970s to York, Maine, where she rented a house called Wild Knoll. Apart from writing much poetry, novels, and many autobiographical works, she taught at several colleges and universities, including Harvard. She died in 1995. Further information is available from the Language is a Virus website, which has a lot of information on Sarton, and extracts of her work, and A Celebration of Women Writers.

Sarton’s earliest published diaries are contained within Journal of a Solitude (Norton, New York, 1973) and concern 1970-1971. Today, this volume is considered the best, though Norton published many others in subsequent years, including: The House by the Sea: A Journal (1977) concerning the early years at Wild Knoll; Recovering: A Journal (1980); At Seventy: A Journal (1984); After the Stroke: A Journal (1988); and Encore: A Journal of the Eightieth Year (1993).

Sarton’s Wikipedia entry says of her memoirs and journals: ‘In these fragile, rambling and honest accounts of her solitary life, she deals with such issues as ageing, isolation, solitude, friendship, love and relationships, lesbianism, self-doubt, success and failure, envy, gratitude for life’s simple pleasures, love of nature (particularly of flowers), spirituality and, importantly, the constant struggles of a creative life. Sarton’s later journals are not of the same quality, as she endeavoured to keep writing through ill health and often with the help of a tape recorder.’

Here is one extract from the day of her eightieth birthday (taken from Encore). (A few other extracts can be read online at Amazon, and the Language is a Virus website.)

3 May 1992
‘My eightieth birthday. It seems quite unbelievable that I have lived eighty years on this earth. It makes no sense, and I do not believe it. Today, here at Wild Knoll, a very English morning with mist, the daffodils come up through the mist - romantic, and intimate.

As I lie here on my bed all dressed, I am looking at delphiniums, the first flowers that came, which are from someone I do not know, a fan in Oregon, and they have been so beautiful. The delicate, yet brilliant blue against white walls. What a joy they have been!

But this whole birthday is such an ascent of celebration that I can hardly believe I have arrived, as though I were at the top of a mountain. These last days, full of cards, many from readers, and all so moving. I was going to say “too many presents” simply because it is tiring for me opening things now - I feel like a little child at Christmas - but I am so touched by all the people who wanted to remember this particular birthday.

There are too many lists to cross off one by one because nowadays I am sending Endgame, my journal, to friends. I also have copies of the little book of my new poems that Bill Ewert has given me for my eightieth birthday to send out. Without Susan, who is here for the weekend, it would all be quite impossible. She creates order out of chaos.

We shall celebrate my birthday today, doing everything with ceremony. How rare the sense of ceremony is! Susan in a beautiful dress last night helped my heart.

And of course I think of Wondelgem, where I was born, with the poignant sadness I always feel about it and especially about my mother. I think of the beautiful garden she created and then had to leave when the German armies invaded in 1914. I wish I remembered more about Wondelgem. I do not. I am told things, so I can see myself crawling to the strawberry bed when I was a year old and being found there covered with strawberry liquid all over my face, happy as a bee. But I do not remember that, and of course I do not remember that it was Céline Limbosch who held me in her arms before my mother did. That deep bond started very early in my life, before she herself had a child.

And I think of all the birthdays. Margaret and Barbara sent two bunches of balloons. It all brought back a birthday party my mother gave me when I was perhaps seven or eight years old in our tiny apartment on Ten Avon Street in Cambridge, balloons all over the ceiling. How thrilling that seemed to me! And I remember my twenty-fifth birthday at Jeakes House, Rye. I and a group of friends rented the house from Conrad Aiken for three months, just down the street from the Mermaid Tavern and Henry James’ Lamb House. The room where I worked looked over the marshes and it was a beautiful, peaceful scene. That whole time was a magic time in my life, but in some ways eighty is an even better age because you do not have to be worried about the future anymore; you can rest on the past. [. . .]

Now Susan has gone out to get the clams to steam for our lunch. Nancy is coming, and Edythe, bringing as she always does for my birthday miniature roses which I plant on the terrace along the border inside the wall. Last year they were in flower until November. Thrilling. [. . .]

It is now eight-fifteen on my birthday night and Maggie and Nancy and Janice Oberacker are washing the dishes and tidying up downstairs. I suddenly felt I must get up here to bed, but before I go to sleep I also want to tell the big event - there were many, but one of the biggest events of today, in some ways the most moving, was when I went down after my nap at half past four and looked out at the bird feeder. There was a scarlet tanager! I have not seen a scarlet tanager here for twenty years. On the day I moved in, there was a scarlet tanager in the andromeda. I never saw him again. This magic bird was there again this evening as we had supper. [. . .]

The whole day has been a festival of love and friendship. And as I say goodnight I think of my mother and of how glad she must have been when I finally came out of her, alive and all right, and she took me in her arms.’