A cold clownish woman

After yesterday’s William Cole anniversary, today is the 380th anniversary of the birth of another English antiquarian - Anthony Wood. Although Wood’s diaries are dryer and more impenetrable than Cole’s, they do have some interest, and are valuable for being relatively early in historical terms.

Wood was born in Oxford, on 17 December 1632, and educated at a free grammar school and Trinity College. In 1647, he entered Merton College and was made postmaster. During subsequent years, he seems to have developed an interest in ploughing, bell-ringing and violin-playing. He published a book of sermons preached by his late brother Edward. Thereafter, he steadily investigated local antiquities, as well as researching into historical records, and this led, in 1669, to publication of Historia et Antiquitates Universitatis Oxoniensis.

In 1678, Wood was relieved of the university registers, which had been in his custody for the best part of two decades, because it was thought he might be implicated in the Popish Plot. Subsequently, to recover his position, he swore oaths of allegiance. In 1693, though, he was banished from the university for a libel in Athenae Oxoniensis against the late Edward Hyde, 1st Earl of Clarendon, but he then recanted. It is said that Wood was an uncouth man, but one who led a life of self-denial, and devoted himself entirely to antiquarian research. He died in 1695. Wikipedia has more biographical information, as does the Notable Names Database.

There would not be much to remember Wood by were it not for the scholarly five volume biography put together by Andrew Clark, Fellow of Lincoln College, Oxford. This was published by the Oxford Historical Press in the 1890s under the title The Life and Times of Anthony Wood, antiquary, at Oxford, 1632-1695, described by himself. The volumes were collected from Wood’s ‘diaries and other papers’, and, indeed, there are numerous references and quotations from the diaries in the first three volumes. However, all the diary entries are heavily annotated, with additions (in brackets) and notes, and often taken second place to the text and chronology of Wood’s daily life as constructed by Clark. Moreover, the diary entries themselves are largely rather dry records of events.

All five volumes are freely available at Internet Archive. Here are a few extracts to give a flavour of Wood’s diary (the parentheses are all by Clark).

9 May 1671
‘At 7 in the morning the King’s crowne endeavoured to be taken away by (Thomas) Blood and his son and 3 others out of the Tower of London, but 3 of them were taken. The said Bloud and his son, who call themselves by the name of Hunt, were 2 of those 6 that set upon the duke of Ormond a little before last Xtmas, and they now confess that they had a designe to sell him to the Turks, because that by his meanes they had lost their estates in Ireland while he was Lord Deputy.’

24 June 1673
‘Midsomer day. Din’d at my brother Kit’s. Cold meat, cold entertainment, cold reception, cold clownish woman. Talking of players and praising them, shee asked me to goe with her and give her a play: ‘if I had money I would, I must be forced to borrow of my brother’ - I told her. Then shee began to extoll Mr. (Edward ?) Fettiplace and Den(nis ?) Huntingdon for cloiying with curtesies, doing any thing that she desired. I told her ‘if I had it, or were in my power, I would doe it.’ She told me that shee ‘had 300li. per annum and scorne(d) to goe.’ I told her ‘I came to be merry and not be scolded at.’ Shee, angry at the word ‘scolding,’ told me ‘if I did not like it’ (the diet), ‘I should leave it.’

14 July 1673
‘M., Mr. (John) Shirley, the Terra filius, of Trinity College, appeared and spoke a speech full of obscenity and prophaneness. Among the rest that he reflected upon, was me and my book: that I made it my employment to peere upon old walls, alters, tombes &c.; that I threated to geld the translator for gelding my booke; that I should say that he had altered my book so much that I did not know whether it was French or Latin; that I perused all privy houses to furnish me with matter to write my book (i.e., meaning from the shitten papers); and when all was done, my book was but fit to returne there againe, etc. But so obscure and dull it was, that few could understand who he meant or what, and therfore had no applause: all looked upon Dr. Wallis, but none upon me who sate within two places (?) of him (one of Peers’ low drunken company). But this was my comfort, that what he had uttered to my great disgrace, the vicechancellor in his concluding speech recruited all againe for upon speaking of the eminent men that have sprung from the University, he said that he would leave it (being too long to recite) to a book that would lately come forth.’

8 July 1693
‘Musick speech, (Hugh) Smith of Univ. Coll. spoke in the Theater. Above 2000 in the Theater, as many as in the great Act 1669, or when the Morocco ambassador was here. Mr. Smith was very baudy among the women: (he had) a grand auditory, while some lecturers had none - so you may see what governs the world. In the afternoon full againe.’

Cole visits Walpole

William Cole, an English clergyman and antiquarian best remembered for his long friendship with Horace Walpole, passed away 230 years ago today. Cole was curiously reluctant to put much of his learning and research into print, though he did bequeath a large collection of historical documents and his own extensive writings - including some diaries - to the British Museum.

Cole was born in the parish of Little Abington, Cambridgeshire, in 1714. He was sent to live with his maternal grandmother in Cambridge at a very early age, and then was educated at Eton. Although an unhappy schoolboy, it was at Eton that he started, what would become, a lifelong friendship with Horace Walpole. He went on to study at Cambridge, graduating in 1737, and being awarded an MA in 1740. Having inherited money, he travelled frequently on the continent (and in Scotland, too), and several times thought about retiring abroad.

In 1745, he was ordained as a priest, and took a living at Hornsey in 1749. However, he was unhappy there, and not able to leave until 1751. A little later, in 1753, he became a rector of Bletchley and remained so until 1767. After leaving Bletchley he moved to Waterbeach, near Cambridge, and then to Milton. Throughout his life, Cole indulged his passion for antiquities, becoming one of the most learned men of his generation; he bequeathed 114 folio volumes to the British Museum. He died on 16 December 1782. There is more information available at Wikipedia and the out-of-copyright Dictionary of National Biography.

Cole was curiously shy of publishing, and much of his reputation today stems from correspondence with Walpole which was preserved and published. However, Cole did also keep a diary for some years, and it was publication of this, in 1931, which enhanced Cole’s reputation, and brought him a wider public. Cole’s dary was edited by Francis Griffin Stokes and published by Constable in two volumes: The Blecheley Diary of the Rev. William Cole, 1765-67 and A Journal of my Journey to Paris in the year 1765.

The following two extracts are not taken from either of the above volumes but from the Yale Edition of Horace Walpole’s Correspondence with the Rev. William Cole II, edited by W S Lewis. (Quotes from which can be found in Horace Walpole: The Critical Heritage and English Historical Documents.) The original diary accounts are in the 114 volumes Cole bequeathed to the British Museum.

30 October 1762
‘Sir William Stanhope, brother to the Earl of Chesterfield, now lives in Mr Pope’s house on the banks of the Thames; you pass over his grotto, immediately under the common highway, as you come from the town of Twickenham to Mr Walpole’s house of Strawberry Hill. Next to it is the house belonging to the late Earl of Radnor, which is the last house on the Thames bank next to Strawberry Hill, a road going by the Thames-side to Kingston Bridge, being between the river and Mr Walpole’s garden, which, however, is within a furlong or two of the river, and his own meadows go quite down to the banks of it, and nothing to obstruct the view of that most beautifying fluid, which makes everything handsome that is within its influence. From the garden you discover the elegant Chinese Temple, being the last building on the bank of the Thames, and close to my Lord Radnor’s house or garden wall - though the house belonging to it is on the other side of the road, and is the last house on that side next to Strawberry Hill, and is an handsome new square building - I say, from this garden of Mr Walpole you discover the Chinese summer house in which, about last August, Mr Isaac Fernandez Nunez, a Jew, shot himself through the head, on the loss of the Hermione, a rich French ship which he had insured, and by that means ruined his fortune and family. His house and furniture were sold by auction while I was at Strawberry Hill, and I was at the sale for a few minutes.

From Mr Walpole’s garden and house you have the most beautiful and charming prospect of Richmond, with variety of fine villas and gardens on the banks of the Thames, which river alone would sufficiently recommend any situation; though when I was there last, viz., in October and the beginning of November, 1762, the excessive rains which had lately fell had so swelled the river that it caused such inundations as were never known in the memory of man; insomuch that during my stay there, two islands just before the garden were totally covered by the waters and could not be seen. The floods did infinite mischief all over England, and particularly in Essex. At Cambridge it was within six inches of the highest flood ever known or recorded there, of which a mark is cut in the wall of King’s College Senior Fellows Garden, on the river’s bank; and the waters came into the cellars of Queens’ College in such a torrent that the butler had not time to go in to stop up the vessels, they having just newly filled their cellars for the year; by which means the water got in, and spoiled all their beer.’

29 October 1774
‘Very rainy day. I set out after breakfast, and went at the back of the town, through Padington, and through Hyde Park, and got to Twickenham by noon. Before dinner Mr Walpole walked with me into the garden to show me his newly erected Chapel, as he calls it, with the shrine in it from the Church of Santa Maria Maggiore at Rome, where it was erected in 1256, [. . .] It is a very curious monument of white marble, standing on twisted pillars, and inlaid with other rich marbles; [. . .] It is also mended and completed by the ingenious artist who erected the beautiful marble chimney-piece in the circular drawing room at the end of the gallery. This occupies the whole end of the chapel, the great and only window to which is filled with painted glass from Bexhill in Sussex. There are besides a strange jumble of crucifixes and profane ornaments. It is so small that half a dozen people will fill it. The front is exquisitely performed in the truest Gothic taste. [. . .]

What country this is, I was not curious to inquire. But I guess it to be Sussex, and near Chichester, where Mr Trevigar was beneficed, and as she seemed to be acquainted with the Guilford Road, whither I was going, about which she gave me instructions, as I was unacquainted with the way. He called her by the name of Mrs Day, which was, probably, her mother’s name. On her coming to town, and being informed of the story, she was instructed to apply to the Bishop, who was not disposed to lend a favourable ear to it; upon which, he drew up a letter for her, and omitted no circumstance to alarm the Bishop, who was well aware, as Mr Walpole said to me, that a bishop in his hands would meet with but little quarter; when, therefore, she was directed to add, by way of postscript, to direct his answer to her at Mr Horace Walpole’s in Arlington Street, it had its effect. And the Bishop proposed to give her the £600 or interest for that sum; and, accordingly, he contrived meanly, as Mr Walpole expressed it, to send her the interest the very day before quarter day, and by that means defrauded her of about £5, as well as I remember. This, Mr Walpole said, he was glad of, as the Bishop by so doing either cheated her, or owes her that sum to this day. Now I have related the story, as well as I can recollect it, I must needs add this caution about it. Mr Walpole is one of the most sanguine friends or enemies that I know. He has had a long pique, I well know, against the Bishop; and indeed his being a bishop is a sufficient reason for his spleen and satire. I love to hear both sides of the question. No doubt Bishop Keene had his reasons, right or wrong, for his acting in the manner he did. Mr Walpole added that he often met the Bishop, now his house is building in Dover Street, but that he always avoided looking at him and constantly held down his head. Mr Walpole best knows what occasions of goodness or shyness there may be between them. The Bishop, I allow, is as much puffed up with his dignities and fortune as any on the bench; and I believe Mr Walpole to be as likely to throw out contemptuous behaviour occasionally on those whom he supposes not to acknowledge his merit, or deserve his disregard, as any person living. They are both my friends, and I can see the blemishes in each. The Bishop was ever esteemed a most cheerful, generous, and good-tempered man. Great fortune with a wife and great dignity in the church often make the wisest men forget themselves. Mr Walpole is one of the best writers, an admirable poet, one of the most lively, ingenious, and witty persons of the age; but a great share of vanity, eagerness of adulation, as Mr Gray observed to me, a violence and warmth in party matters, and lately even to enthusiasm, abates, and take off from, many of his shining qualities. I have given the story as it was related to me, without reserves or caution whatever. I mean to take notice of it to no one; though I make no doubt but Mr Walpole, as he told it to me, has done the same to others. His zeal against churchmen and the church carries him to such lengths as is scarcely consistent with a wise and ingenuous heart.

On a secretaire, as it is called, or upright writing-stand or desk, in the breakfasting room, which commands a delicious prospect across the Thames up to Richmond Hill, is a most delicate and elegant small statue of Cupid sitting, winged, and holding up one hand, in the Seve or St Cloud manufacture, in white; and on a cartouche in front is this inscription. Cupid sits on a bank or hillock ornamented with roses.’

The crimes of war

‘I want to write a poem about the crimes of war, the crimes that have strangled to death millions of pure and bright loves, strangled to death the happiness of millions of people, but I cannot write it.’ This is one of many heartfelt entries in the diary of Dr Dang Thuy Tram, a Vietnamese doctor, who might have turned 70 today had she not been killed by US forces. More or less forgotten, Dr Tram only came to national prominence with the publication of her diaries in 2005 which turned her into a national hero - a Vietnamese Anne Frank.

Tram was born on 26 November 1942 into a prosperous family of doctors, and trained as a doctor herself. She volunteered for duty in a military hospital in Quang Ngai province during the Vietnam War, and died in 1970, shot by US troops. For the last two years of her life, she kept a diary, and it is the story of this diary that takes up most of Tram’s Wikipedia entry, indeed there is far more information about the diary available across the internet than about Tram herself (except in the published diary’s introduction available to read at Amazon - see below).

One of Tram’s diary books was captured by US forces in 1969, and another was found by an American lawyer. Fred Whitehurst, serving with the military intelligence unit, after her death. Whitehurst defied an order to burn the diary - the story goes that an interpreter alerted him by saying, ‘Don’t burn this one, Fred. It has fire in it already.’ Later, Whitehurst, recovered the other diary also, and hoped to return them to Tram’s family. Not until 2005, was a family member traced, and the diaries were published soon after - in July that year - becoming a Vietnamese bestseller. Tram was subsequently dubbed Vietnam’s answer to Anne Frank. The diaries were then translated by Andrew Pham and published in English by Random House - Last Night I Dreamed of Peace, the Diary of Dang Thuy Tram - and since then in many other languages too.

The introduction to Last Night I Dreamed of Peace and several pages of extracts can be read online at Amazon, and further extracts can be read at the California Literary Review.

31 May 1968
‘Today we had a major base evacuation to evade the enemy’s mopping-up operation. The whole clinic was moved, an infinitely exhausting undertaking. It’s heart-wrenching to see the wounded patients with beads of sweat running on their pale faces, struggling to walk step by step across narrow passes and up steep slopes. If someday we find ourselves living in the fragrant flowers of socialism, we should remember this scene forever, remember the sacrifice of the people who shed blood for the common cause. Who has brought this suffering upon us, comrades? They are the devils [US military] robbing our country.’

4 June 1968
‘Rain falls without respite. Rain deepens my sadness, its chill making me yearn for the warmth of a family reunion. If only I had wings to fly back to our beautiful house on Lo Duc Street, to eat with Dad, Mom, and my siblings, one simple meal with watercress and one night’s sleep under the old cotton blanket. Last night I dreamed that Peace was established, I came back and saw everybody. Oh, the dream of Peace and Independence has burned in the hearts of thirty million people for so long. For Peace and Independence, we have sacrificed everything. So many people have volunteered to sacrifice their whole lives for two words: Independence and Liberty. I, too, have sacrificed my life for that grandiose fulfillment.’

20 July 1968
‘The days are hectic with so much work piling up, critical injuries, lack of staff personnel; everybody in the clinic works very hard. My responsibilities are heavier than ever; each day I work from dawn till late at night. The volume of work is huge, but there are not enough people. I alone am responsible for managing the clinic, treating the injured, teaching the class. More than ever, I feel I am giving all my strength and skills to the revolution. The wounded soldier whose eyes I thought could not be saved is now recovering. The soldier whose arm was severely inflamed has healed. Many broken arms have also healed. . . All these successes are due mainly to the nurses and me working day and night at the patient’s bedside.’

25 July 1968
‘I came to sit by Lam’s bedside today. A mortar had severed the nerves in his spine, the shrapnel killing half of his body. Lam was totally paralyzed. His body was ulcerated from the chest down. He was in excruciating pain. Lam is twenty-four this year, an excellent nurse from Pho Van. Less than a month ago, he was assigned as supplement to the District Civil Medical Department. The enemy came upon Lam while he was on the road during his recent assignment; Lam tried to get into a secret shelter, but the Americans were already upon him when he opened the cover; the small shrapnel painfully destroyed his life. Lam lay there waiting for death. In the North, a severed spinal cord is already a hopeless case, let alone here. Lam knows the severity of his injury and is deep in misery and depression.

This afternoon as I was sitting next to him, Lam handed me a letter from Hanh (Lam’s young wife), then said in a low voice, “Big Sister, you and the other sisters here - you are my family - you have dedicated yourselves to nurturing me. What for? I will die sooner or later; if I live, I will only bring more hardships for you and the family.” A single tear rolled down Lam’s gaunt cheek.

My heart was breaking for him, but I didn’t know what to say. If I were Lam, I certainly would have said the same. But I couldn’t stop encouraging him. . . Oh! War! How I hate it, and I hate the belligerent American devils. Why do they enjoy massacring kind, simple folks like us? Why do they heartlessly kill life-loving young men like Lam, like Ly, like Hung and the thousand others, who are only defending their motherland with so many dreams?’

29 July 1969
‘The war is extremely cruel. This morning, they bring me a wounded soldier. A phosphorus bomb has burned his entire body. An hour after being hit, he is still burning, smoke rising from his body. This is Khanh, a twenty-year-old man, the son of a sister cadre in the hamlet where I’m staying. An unfortunate accident caused the bomb to explode and severely burned the man. Nobody recognizes him as the cheerful, handsome man he once was. Today his smiling, joyful black eyes have been reduced to two little holes - the yellowish eyelids are cooked. The reeking burn of phosphorus smoke still rises from his body. He looks as if he has been roasted in an oven.’

I stand frozen before this heartbreaking tableau.

His mother weeps. Her trembling hands touch her son’s body; pieces of his skin fall off, curled up like crumbling sheets of rice cracker. His younger and older sisters are attending him, their eyes full of tears.

A girl sits by his side, her gentle eyes glassy with worry. Clumps of hair wet with sweat cling to her cheeks, reddened by exhaustion and sorrow. Tu (that’s her name) is Khanh’s lover. She carried Khanh here. Hearing that he needed serum for a transfusion, Tu crossed the river to buy it. The river was rising, and Tu didn’t know how to swim, but she braved the crossing. Love gave her strength.

The pain is imprinted on the innocent forehead of that beautiful girl. Looking at her, I want to write a poem about the crimes of war, the crimes that have strangled to death millions of pure and bright loves, strangled to death the happiness of millions of people, but I cannot write it. My pen cannot describe it all, even though this is one case I feel with all my senses and emotions.’

5 August 1969
‘I’m on a night emergency-aid mission, going through many dangerous parts of the national highway on which enemy vehicles frequently commute, and passing through the hills filled with American posts. Lights from the bases shine brightly; I go through the middle of the fields of Pho Thuan. Bright lights shine from three directions around me: Chop Mountain, Cactus Mountain, and the flares hanging in midair in front of me. The light sources cast my shadows in different directions, and I feel like an actor on stage, as in the days when I was still a medical student performing in a choir. Now I am also an actor on the stage of life; I am taking the role of a girl in the liberated area, wearing black pajamas, who night after night, follows the guerrillas to work between our areas and those of the enemy.

Perhaps I will meet the enemy, and perhaps I will fall, but I hold my medical bag firmly regardless, and people will feel sorry for this girl who was sacrificed for the revolution when she was still young and full of verdant dreams.’

20 June 1970 [the final entry published in Last Night I Dreamed of Peace - two days later she was shot.]
‘Still no one comes. It has been almost ten days since the second bombardment. People left with a promise to come back quickly and get us out of this dangerous area. We suspect that spies pointed out our location. [ . . .]

No I am no longer a child. I have grown up. I have passed trials of peril, but, somehow, at this moment, I yearn deeply for Mom’s caring hand. Even the hand of a dear one or that of an acquaintance would be enough. Come to me, squeeze my hand, know my loneliness, and give me the love, the strength to prevail on the perilous road before me.’

The Schindler of China

‘I saw a Japanese soldier lying completely naked on a young girl, who was crying hysterically. I yelled at this swine, in any language it would be understood, ‘Happy New Year! and he fled from there, naked and with his pants in his hand.’ This is John Rabe - who was born 130 years ago today - writing in his diary on 1 January 1938, during the weeks of the Rape of Nanking. The diary was only discovered some 60 years later, and inspired an American historian to dub Rabe the Oskar Schindler of China for his heroic efforts to protect Nanking’s residents from Japanese atrocities.

Rabe was born in Hamburg, Germany, on 23 November 1882. His father was a sailor. Rabe was apprenticed to a merchant, and in time assigned to a post in Africa. In his mid-20s, he went to China and then, from 1910, was employed by Siemens in its Beijing office. When the Second Sino-Japanese War broke out in 1937, the foreign community and much of the Chinese population, including the government, were evacuated from Nanking, where Rabe was living. Although Siemens ordered him to leave too, he declined (although his family did leave).

With other foreign nationals, Rabe established a temporary safety zone for Chinese refugees. Subsequently, he was made head of an international committee to administer the zone. During what became known as the Rape of Nanking, the efforts of this committee managed to save many lives, possibly hundreds of thousands. In 1938, Rabe travelled to Germany, where he undertook a series of lectures, using photos and an amateur film, to publicise the extent of Japanese violence in China. At one point he was arrested by the Gestapo, and only released (under censorship) after an intervention by Siemens. He was posted to Afghanistan briefly.

After the Second World War, Rabe, a member of the Nazi party, was obliged to go through denazification procedures. He appears to have left Siemens employ in 1945, and, thereafter, lived in poverty until his death in 1950. There is plenty of biographical information about Rabe online, thanks to, among others, Wikipedia, a New York Times article and Emily Paras’s Can a Nazi be a Hero?. There are also many websites with details about the Rape of Nanking, such as The Pacific War Historical Society website.

It was Iris Chang, an American historian researching the Nanking events, who discovered John Rabe’s diaries. In her famous book The Rape of Nanking: The Forgotten Holocaust Of World War II published in 1998, she wrote: ‘In 1996 I began an investigation into the life of John Rabe and eventually unearthed thousands of pages of diaries that he and other Nazis kept during the Rape. These diaries led me to conclude that John Rabe was “the Oskar Schindler of China”. The diaries were translated by John E. Woods, edited by Erwin Wickert and published in the late 1990s as The Good German of Nanking: The Diaries of John Rabe by Little Brown in London (and The Good Man of Nanking by A. A. Knopf in New York).

Chang also discovered diaries written by Minnie Vautrin, an American missionary who was in Nanking at the time - see more on her diaries in the 2010 Diary Review article - In darkness and fear.

A few extracts from Rabe’s diaries can be found online at Wikipedia, and in Chang’s book (at Googlebooks).

13 December 1937
‘It is not until we tour the city that we learn the extent of destruction. We come across corpses every 100 to 200 yards. The bodies of civilians that I examined had bullet holes in their backs. These people had been presumably fleeing and were shot from behind. The Japanese march through the city in groups of ten to twenty soldiers and loot the shops [. . .] I watched with my own eyes as they looted the café of our German baker Herr Kiessling. Hempel’s hotel was broken into as well, as almost every shop on Chung Shang and Taiping Road.’

15 December 1937
‘No sooner am I back in my office at Committee Headquarters, than my boy arrives with bad news - the Japanese have returned and now have 1,300 refugees tied up. Along with Smythe and Mills I try to get these people released, but to no avail. They are surrounded by about 100 Japanese soldiers and, still tied up, are led off to be shot. [. . .] It’s hard to see people driven off like animals. But they say that Chinese shot 2,000 Japanese prisoners in Tsinanfu, too. We hear by way of the Japanese Navy that the gunboat U.S.S. Pany, on which the officials of the American embassy had sought safety, has been accidentally bombed and sunk by the Japanese.’

17 December 1937
‘Two Japanese soldiers have climbed over the garden wall and are about to break into our house. When I appear they give the excuse that they saw two Chinese soldiers climb over the wall. When I show them my party badge, they return the same way. In one of the houses in the narrow street behind my garden wall, a woman was raped, and then wounded in the neck with a bayonet. I managed to get an ambulance so we can take her to Kulou Hospital. [. . .] Last night up to 1,000 women and girls are said to have been raped, about 100 girls at Ginling Girls’ College alone. You hear nothing but rape. If husbands or brothers intervene, they’re shot. What you hear and see on all sides is the brutality and bestiality of the Japanese soldiers.’

24 December 1937
‘I have had to look at so many corpses over the last few weeks that I can keep my nerves in check even when viewing these horrible cases. It really doesn’t leave you in a “Christmas” mood; but I wanted to see these atrocities with my own eyes, so that I can speak as an eyewitness later. A man cannot be silent about this kind of cruelty!’

28 December 1937
‘He [Fukui Kiyoshi of the Japanese embassy] also informs me that our Zone has now been surrounded by Japanese guards, who will see to it that no prowling soldiers are allowed into the Zone. I’ve now had a better look at these guards and discovered that they did not stop and interrogate a single Japanese soldier. I even saw soldiers carrying looted items out of the Zone, and with absolutely no questions asked by the guards. What sort of protection is that?’

1 January 1938
‘The mother of a young attractive girl called out to me, and throwing herself on her knees, crying, said I should help her. Upon entering [. . .], I saw a Japanese soldier lying completely naked on a young girl, who was crying hysterically. I yelled at this swine, in any language it would be understood, ‘Happy New Year!’ and he fled from there, naked and with his pants in his hand.’

10 February 1938
‘Fukui, whom I tried to find at the Japanese embassy to no avail all day yesterday, paid a call on me last night. He actually managed to threaten me: “If the newspapers in Shanghai report bad things, you will have the Japanese army against you”, he said. [. . .] In reply to my question as to what I then could say in Shanghai, Fukui said “We leave that to your discretion.” My response: “It looks as if you expect me to say something like this to the reporters: The situation in Nanking is improving everyday. Please don’t print any more atrocities stories about the vile behavior of Japanese soldiers, because then you’ll only be pouring oil on fire of disagreement that already exists between the Japanese and Europeans.” “Yes”, he said simply beaming, “that would be splendid!” ’

My only anxiety

Mary Berry, a celebrated literary figure in 19th century London, died 160 years ago today, a few months after the death of Agnes, her sister, lifelong companion and ‘only anxiety’. Mary never married, though she was courted by Horace Walpole, 50 years her senior, and was for a time engaged to a general. Her diaries, published shortly after her death, provide an engaging social record of the times, but also show she led a busy life, and had a lively self-analytical mind.

Mary Berry was born in 1763 at Stanwick, Yorkshire. The birth of her sister and lifelong companion, Agnes, followed a year later. Their mother died in childbirth along with a third daughter in 1767. Thereafter, the two sisters lived with their grandmother, first in Yorkshire then on the Thames riverside in Chiswick. In 1783, Mary and Agnes went with their father on an extended tour of the Continent - the first of many they would take.

In 1788, the family took a house at Twickenham Common and made the acquaintance of Horace Walpole, who - famously - described the daughters as ‘the best informed and the most perfect creatures I ever saw at their age’. He also wrote that they were ‘entirely natural and unaffected, frank, and, being qualified to talk on any subject, nothing is so easy and agreeable as their conversation’. By then, Walpole was in his 70s, and the Berrys were still only in their early 20s, but nevertheless a strong, almost intimate, attachment developed between him and both women.

In 1791, the sisters and their father went to live near Walpole, at his Little Strawberry Hill property. They also had a house in London, in North Audley Street. After a long courtship Mary became engaged to General Charles O’Hara, but the relationship soon broke down. After Walpole’s death, the Berrys inherited Little Strawberry Hill, and Mr Berry was assigned to prepare some of Walpole’s writings for publication. However, it was Mary who edited the five volumes of Walpole’s work published in 1798. Thereafter, her literary reputation grew, and she worked on several more biographical works and social histories. Much of the time, though, she was to be found travelling in Europe.

In 1824 the sisters took up residence in Curzon Street, where they established a salon frequented by many prominent society figures, including William Makepeace Thackeray. Agnes died early in 1852, and Mary on 21 November, just months after having been presented to Queen Victoria. There is more biographical information about Mary Berry at Wikipedia and the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (login recquired, free with a UK library card).

Berry’s diary was first edited by Lady Theresa Lewis and published by Longmans & Co in 1865 in three volumes as Extracts from the journals and correspondence of Miss Berry, from the year 1783 to 1852. All three volumes are freely available at Internet Archive. The introduction to the first volume, by Lewis, explains Berry’s prominence in society: ‘Miss Berry has more than ordinary claims to live in the memory of those to whom she was personally known. For an unusually lengthened period of years she formed a centre round which beauty, rank, wealth, power, fashion, learning, and science were gathered; merit and distinction of every degree were blended by her hospitality in social ease and familiar intercourse, encouraged by her kindness, and enlivened by her presence. She was not only the friend of literature and of literary people, but she assiduously cultivated the acquaintance of intellectual excellence in whatever form it might appear, and to the close of her existence she maintained her interest in all the important affairs in life, whether social, literary, or political. Without any remarkable talent for conversation herself, she promoted conversation amongst others, and shed an air of home-like ease over the society which met under her roof, that will long be remembered by those who had the opportunity of witnessing it, and who saw the consequent readiness and frequency with which the guests of her unpremeditated parties availed themselves of her general invitation.’

Volume one is mostly letters, with the journal entries written during her Continental travels - here are the first entries from her first trip overseas.

26 May 1783.
‘Set out from Charles Street at four o’clock; slept at the Blue Posts at Witham.’

27 May 1783
‘Arrived at Harwich at four o’clock; sailed on board the Prince of Wales packet-boat, Capt. Nasson, at eight at night.’

28 May 1783
‘All day at sea with a very brisk gale; monstrously sick; came to an anchor at the mouth of the harbour at Helveot at ten o’clock at night.’

29 May 1783
‘Came on shore to the Golden Lion at Helveot between three and four in the morning; breakfasted at six with some of our fellow-travellers; at eight, went on board a yacht sent by Mr Crauford to convey us to Rotterdam. These yachts are elegantly fitted up with every convenience for eating, drinking, and sleeping, and are often hired by Dutch families for several weeks together on parties of pleasure. The passage from Helveot to Rotterdam is commonly made in four or five hours, but there being little or no wind, and the tide being against us, we were from eight in the morning till nine at night in the yacht, and were at last obliged to get into a little rowing boat, in which we arrived at Mr Crauford’s house at Rotterdam between ten and eleven o’clock, not a little delighted to find ourselves again on terra firma and in company of our friends.’

30 May 1783
‘Spent the day in visiting the principal buildings and streets of Rotterdam, which must strike all strangers with its appearance of great bustle, cheerfulness, and most remarkable cleanliness. The canals are broad with rows of trees on each side, and generally full of vessels of all sizes, which are enabled to come up to the very doors of the merchants’ and traders’ houses. The canals are crossed by drawbridges, of which there are commonly more than one in every street, and which gives them such a look of similarity that it was with difficulty I could distinguish one street from another.’

The second and third volumes are more taken up with journal entries, at home and abroad.

23 November 1807
‘A dismal, rainy, and to me melancholy day, for I was out of humour with myself. A number of little circumstances lately have served to convince me that my manner is often tranchante, my voice often too loud, and my way of meeting opposition unconciliating. All these circumstances are exactly the contrary from what they ought to be, to make me what I wish, and what alone I can be, at my time of life. It is odd that I, who have been always thinking of growing old, and have such clear ideas of what alone can make a woman loved and amiable after her youth is past, what her views and manners should be, and what can ensure her any degree of consideration - it is odd, I say, that I should fall into the very faults I am the most aware of, and put myself into the situation I have always deprecated; but it is not too late, and at least I am not too old to mend.

In Madame Neckar’s ridiculous Remains, published by her husband, are some of the very best rules and advice for the manners and conduct of a woman no longer young in society. I will read them again. They always strike me as most justly conceived.’

26 November 1807
‘Walked about the garden at Little Strawberry Hill. My greenhouse looks well. Read Madame du Deffand’s letters in the evening.’ [Berry edited four volumes of Deffand’s letters to Walpole.]

27 November 1807
‘Spent a part of the morning at Little Strawberry Hill in my greenhouse. Read Madame du Deffand in the evening.’

1 December 1807
‘Left Strawberry Hill, after spending five weeks there very comfortably and quietly. North Audley Street for the first time felt cold after the great logs and extreme warmth of Strawberry.’

15 November 1810
‘Accepted Mr Hope’s proposal of going with him to Brighton.’

17 November 1810
‘Mr Hope came soon after eleven. It was a fine sunny day, well calculated to raise one’s spirits when travelling comfortably in a chaise and four. But I was out of spirits with myself. My companion, always acute and intelligent in a tete-a-tete, was another circumstance in my favour; but all did not do. We arrived at Brighton in the dark and the rain at half-past five.’

20 November 1810
‘We drove to the West Cliff. The extent of Brighton along the cliff to the Crescent, the furthest houses on the East Cliff, cannot be much less than two miles. Went to the play (‘The Rivals,’ and the ‘Agreeable Surprise’), which had been bespoken. The house was more than three parts empty; and the company in the Prince’s box, which is always given to the lady who bespeaks the play, talked so loud by way of being so very genteel, that one could hardly hear the players.’

23 November 1810
‘Walked with Mr Ward; his observations are always acute, often droll. But there is nil grande in that man; and with a keen and too accurate observation of the littlenesses and vanities of others, he is, if I am not much mistaken, overcharged with both himself.’

25 November 1810
‘In the evening had some conversation with Mr Grattan. His manner is singular, with much action, and his pronunciation, without being Irish, so very foreign that nobody at first could possibly take him for a native of these islands; his language is good, however, and his choice of words figurative, and out of the common way; but his manner upon the whole in society is much more odd than pleasant.’

26 November 1810
‘Went with Mrs Hope to the church on the hill above the town. It is crowded with tablets and monuments within, and tombstones without; in short, the town and its inhabitants have fairly outgrown their church, for there is but one here.’

13 December 1811
‘Went with Lady Charlotte to hear the military band in the Prince’s Pavilion. Luckily, we only heard two pieces, for the noise of so many loud instruments in a room (the dining-room) which could hardly hold them, was not a remedy for my headache. After the music, having an order, we saw the apartments of the Pavilion. All is Chinese, quite overloaded with china of all sorts and of all possible forms, many beautiful in themselves, but so overloaded one upon another, that the effect is more like a china shop baroquement arranged, than the abode of a Prince. All is gaudy, without looking gay; and all is crowded with ornaments, without being magnificent. The interior of the stables is imposing, though badly arranged for the comfort of the horses, and will only accommodate sixty beneath this large building. The riding house, which is attached to it, perfectly suits its purpose, and is, I think, likely not to be finished, though it is the only part of the habitation of the Prince which deserves preservation. He ought to have a tennis court of the same size, making a pendant to the riding house.’

31 March 1814
‘Went, in the Duke of Devonshire’s box, to see Kean in ‘Hamlet’. I must confess I am disappointed in his talent. To my mind he is without grace and without elevation of mind, because he never seems to rise with the poet in those sublime passages which abound in ‘Hamlet’, and for what is called recitation of verse he understands nothing.’

20 April 1814
‘I went this evening to see Lady H. Leveson, to arrange our going to her sister’s empty house to see the entry of the King of France [Louis XVIII had taken over as de facto ruler of France on 11 April after Napoleon’s defeat]. The streets and the park were, before twelve o’clock, filled with people and carriages; the latter were not allowed to enter the park. At five o’clock we saw seven carriages of the Prince Regent’s pass, drawn by six horses, in dress livery, preceded by several hundreds of gentlemen on horseback, and accompanied and followed by a detachment of Light Horse and the Blues; but that was all we saw, because from Park Street the distance was too great to see well into the carriages, and, if we could have seen so far, the people on foot, and the crowd on the rails and walls of the park, would have prevented our doing so. The people took off their hats and saluted the carriages as they passed with much goodwill, but without the least enthusiasm.’

21 April 1814
‘Everybody who wished to see the King of France went to Grillon’s, in Albemarle Street, where he lodged. I was not amongst the number, but during all the day one could hardly pass through the streets, there were so many carriages and people on foot. He went to see the Prince, and in the evening there were a great many people at Carlton House. All who were not there went to Lady Jersey’s, where there was a very agreeable, and not too numerous a society.’

23 April 1814
‘The King of France left London at nine o’clock this morning. If about the same interval elapses between the visits of the Kings of France to London, we shall not see another for 500 years.’

12 December 1843
‘I have an internal sentiment that I cannot count on myself for a single day. I am therefore most anxious - indeed it is the only thing about which I am anxious - to have all ready, to give as little trouble and hurry at the last as possible. I am very anxious our intimate friends should support poor Agnes, if I leave her behind me. Jane, I hope, will do much for her. I swore her, before she went to Scotland, if I dropped off during her absence, to come immediately up to Agnes. I knew nobody else that could fill her place on that occasion for dear Agnes.’

27 December 1843
‘I have had a severe fit of illness in the form of influenza. Repose, solitude, and a book are all I can attempt. I still make an effort to gather together some sparks of life for my sister’s sake. My only anxiety! my only one! is thinking what I can do to secure her some comfort of society after I am gone. I think of this without ceasing.’

Not counting hedge hogs

University of Nebraska Press has just published The Ojibwe Journals of Edmund F. Ely. The diary is said to provide an ‘unprecedented insight into early nineteenth-century Ojibwe life and Ojibwe-missionary relations’ - the Ojibwe being among the largest groups of native Americans north of Mexico. At £49/$65 the new book is a bit pricey, but some extracts from Ely’s diaries can be read freely online thanks to the Minnesota Historical Society.

Edmund Franklin Ely was born in Wilbraham, Massachusetts, in 1809. As a young divinity student in Albany, he taught music and became the leader of the choir of the Fourth Presbyterian Church to help with his expenses. But, in 1833, he managed to get an appointment with the American Board of Commissioners of Foreign Missions whose missionaries were working with native Americans, as well as overseas.

Ely left New York to travel a 1,000 miles west to Lake Superior, where he would stay, serving with Ojibwe missions in Wisconsin and Minnesota, for the next 16 years. The Ojibwe, or Chippewa, who lived along the northern shore of Lake Huron, and both shores of Lake Superior, spoke a form of Algonquian, and are now considered one of the largest groups of Native Americans-First Nations north of Mexico.

Ely married Catherine Bissell (whose mother was a half-blood Chippewa Indian) in 1835 and they are said to have had 13 children. In 1849 he left the mission field but remained living in the area, in St. Paul, and then Oneota (now part of Duluth), where he served as postmaster for six years, and as a St. Louis County commissioner in 1861 and 1862. In 1873, the family moved to California, and Ely died in 1882, two years after his wife.

Ely left behind diaries covering more than 20 years of his life, the first of which was written in 1933 during his journey west from Albany to the Indian country. Most of the content of these diaries has now been edited by Theresa M. Schenck and published for the first time by University of Nebraska Press as The Ojibwe Journals of Edmund F. Ely, 1833-1849.

The publisher’s abstract states: ‘Twenty-four-year-old Edmund F. Ely, a divinity student from Albany, New York, gave up his preparation for the ministry in 1833 to become a missionary and teacher among the Ojibwe of Lake Superior. During the next sixteen years, Ely lived, taught, and preached among the Ojibwe, keeping a journal of his day-to-day experiences as well as recording ethnographic information about the Ojibwe. From recording his frustrations over the Ojibwe’s rejection of Christianity to describing hunting and fishing techniques he learned from his Ojibwe neighbors, Ely’s unique and rich record provides unprecedented insight into early nineteenth-century Ojibwe life and Ojibwe-missionary relations.’

The manuscripts are held by Northeast Minnesota Historical Center at the University of Minnesota, and consist of twenty separate volumes. Further details about the diaries can be found in the new book’s introduction (freely available on the University of Nebraska Press website): ‘A few were written by candlelight during canoe trips, others in the comfort of Ely’s lodge. Some parts are faint and written over in blue. A few pages are so faded that they cannot even be read. For the first four years the journals were kept meticulously; they are thorough accounts of the day-to-day activities of Ely and the people with whom he interacted. Thereafter it seems that he maintained his journals somewhat sporadically or only for specific occasions. They nevertheless present a unique picture of a missionary’s life, his reflections on the state of his soul, and his observations of a people little known at the time.’

A few extracts from Ely’s diaries can be found on the web, in articles made available by the Minnesota Historical Society: Roy Hoover’s To Stand Alone in the Wilderness - Edmund F. Ely Missionary, and Grace Lee Nute’s The Edmund Franklin Ely Papers. 

Here are a few extracts taken from the above sources.

5 November 1833
‘This evening, the Frenchmen & Indian Girls, have had a dance in Mr Aitken’s Room. Mr Davenport played the Violin for them. Their feet are happily well inured to hardships - or Else, one would suppose, from the Modus operandi, that they would raise some blisters - not to mention the consequences to’ the floor on which they Jump.’

8 January 1834
‘Today Mr A. started off - 2 Horse trains for Fondulac & is to follow in the Morning with a Dog train.’

26 February 1834
‘Was much amused, this evening, in the wigiwam, to hear a Child 3 Yrs old, sing several of Our Indian Hymns - in tunes whh the Children have learned from me. This family left here last fall & went down the river. The Child has learned them of its Br. & Sister.’

8 February 1834
‘As I walked past, some cried out ‘Nogomota’ - (let us sing). I went into the room & Commenced Singing, when all flocked in & joined in the hymn, spent some time thus - read a short chapter . . . & concluded with prayer.’

23 April 1834
‘Two Indians, who arrived from their hunt last night - made it [the traverse] this P. M. in a very Small Canoe. These men brought in 3 or $400 worth of furs, the result of the Spring Hunt.’

26 April 1834
‘This afternoon, an Indian came to the House (who had previously given to Mr [William] Davenport’s man, the result of his hunt -) who had taken a credit last fall, - & instead of paying his credit, wanted to trade the amo of his Pack. Mr D. told him he must pay his credit - the Indian refused. [the Indian] raised himself up his knife in his hand. Mr D. caught a lance, which was at hand, & told the Ind. to be peacable, or consequences might follow. The Ind. was intimidated, & put by his knife, after waiting an hour or more, & seeing that Mr D. was not to be moved, the Ind. settled his business & - went off. It is a common thing - for some Stubborn Ind to endeavor to intimidate the traders [by] drawing their knives, & the only way is, for the trader to show them, that he is not afraid of him. . . let an Indian see that you are perfectly calm & determined, & he will quail before you.’

7 March 1835
‘As an example of Indian providence - I will note a statement just made me by Osana Amik. Two or three lodges hunted - together. There were 5 Men - 6 Women & 6 Children (mostly small). Between the 15th Nov. & 15th Jan they have Killed 13 Moose 9 Bears & 2 Deer - not Counting Hedge Hogs - Rabbits & pheasants & furred Game.
13 Moose - Equal to 13 Common horses
9 Bears [ - Equal to ] 9 Small-Hogs
2 Deers [- Equal to ] 1 large do
when I passed them (to Yellow Lake) I bot some meat at one lodge - but at another of the lodges found them hungry & gave them part of my Meat, & other things, on my return I bot more meat. They came in from their hunt hungry & are now at the Lake depending on the fishing.’

29 March 1854
‘B. & Slaughter started early to watch their corners - (accompanied by 11 resolute follow[er]s - ) The Surveyor was closely followed by Stinson & Thompson with about 25 men. They were armed with Pistols… They took Perry’s & Barrett’s, who have claims on the Mineral Range. Chase, who also has a claim on the range, had taken a [blank in MS] claim directly back of the townsite, remarked to me that he supposed he could not hold his without fighting for it. I told him if he would give it up to me, I would go on to it - as I presumed they would acknowledge my right to preempt it. He agreed to it. He is to have an undivided fourth - (or 40 acres) which he is to pay for, & help me put up a shanty - on it. I went with him immediately and commenced a shanty - while at work the Surveyor came - running the Section line - northward & on my East line. He noted every street in his field book - thus considering it a town site - Stinson & Thompson with their retinue - were close at hand. The North line of the section was then run out to the lake - & the two parties marched out - side by side with the surveyor - who closed his days work at the Lake. The line is to be corrected back to the N. & S. line before the section is considered as surveyed - consequently no demonstration was made to take possession by the Messrs Stinson & Thompson & Co. The excitement was very great - & very plain talk dealt off to S. & T. B. & S. & party are determined - & will fight terribly if encroached upon. Blood will most certainly be spilled.

30 March 1854
‘Began to snow last night. Has continued to snow heavily all day. About 8 inches has fallen - Equal to 1 foot dry snow. No surveying today - all quiet.’

31 March 1854
‘Forest loaded with snow. Went to work on the shanty. Have got up all the timbers. No Surveying - too much snow on the timber - considerable excitement among the Miners & other claim holders concerning the course of Messrs S. & Thompson. B. & Slaughter will receive some very important accessions, when the Survey commences again. We learn there is a party - close at hand - from St. Paul - feel rather impatient for their arrival.’

Finishing Three Oranges

Today, Faber and Faber is publishing the third and last volume of the diaries of Sergei Prokofiev, one of the 20th century’s most celebrated composers. Born in Russia, he spent much of his life in Paris, that is until the 1930s when he returned to live in his home country despite the difficulties of Stalin’s rule. While still in his teens, Prokofiev began keeping a diary, and he continued to do so until his early 40s, intelligently documenting his personal, artistic and public life with some literary flair.

Prokofiev was born in 1891 in Sontsovka (now part of Ukraine), into a musical family in which his mother often played the piano. He was something of a musical prodigy, composing his first piano piece aged five, and his first opera at nine. By the age of 11, he was already under professional musical tuition, and by 13 or so he had entered the St Petersburg Conservatory. He became a fixed part of the city’s music scene, albeit as a rebel against musical traditions. His father died in 1910, leaving Prokofiev without financial support; however, critical recognition from the renowned musicologist Alexander Ossovsky led to Prokofiev being offered a contract. His first piano concerts were premiered in 1912-1913, and 1913 also saw his first foreign trip, to Paris and London, where he encountered Sergei Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes.

After 1918, Prokofiev lived abroad, first in the US, where his opera The Love for Three Oranges was staged, and where he met Carolina Codina (stage name Lina Llubera, but whom he also called Linette), a singer with a French father and Russian mother. They married in 1923, and subsequently had two sons, Sviatoslav and Oleg. That same year, the couple moved to live in Paris, where Prokofiev became a peripheral member of the Diaghilev set, writing several works for his ballet company.

By the early 1930s, Prokofiev was again choosing to take commissions from his home country, Russia, and to premiere his new works there. The Kirov Theater in Leningrad, for example, commissioned the ballet Romeo and Juliet, which would become one of his most famous works. In 1936, he returned to live in Moscow, and stayed domiciled in Russia for the rest of his life, despite being constrained musically by Stalin’s cultural policies. In this time, he wrote music for children, including Peter and the Wolf, and collaborated with Eisenstein on the historical epic Alexander Nevsky.

During the Second World War, state demands that composers should write in a ‘socialist realist’ style were lessened, and Prokofiev was able to compose more freely. He was evacuated together with a large number of other artists, initially to the Caucasus. By this time his relationship with the young writer Mira Mendelson had led to separation from Lina (though they never divorced). In 1944, Prokofiev moved to a composer’s colony outside Moscow where he created his Fifth Symphony, the one which would become his most popular. But after the war, government control over artistic expression again tightened, leading Prokofiev to withdraw from musical life. He died in 1953, on the same day as Stalin. Further information is available from Wikipedia, Boosey & Hawkes, or the Encyclopaedia Britannica biography on PBS.

Lina, who had been imprisoned for spying during Stalin’s latter years, outlived her estranged husband by many years, dying in London in 1989. She and her sons spent much of their lives promoting Prokofiev’s work. It was Lina who set up The Serge Prokofiev Foundation (Sprkfv) in 1983; and it is the Foundation that first published Prokofiev’s diaries. A good introduction to the diaries, by Sviatoslav, can be found on the Sprkfv website.

‘It is well known,’ he writes, ‘that my father was an indefatigable writer who kept a considerable correspondence with numerous personalities of his times. The author of a remarkable autobiography, he also wrote some short stories during his travels in his early years. Yet another side of his genius has remained in the shadow, that of an attentive, objective and critical writer with a good sense of humour, who fixed vividly his daily life, time and contemporaries in a diary that covers a great many years (1907-1933). This is of special interest since Prokofiev’s life spans a period particularly rich in political and cultural events throughout the whole world.’

Prokofiev’s diaries were first published in Russian in two volumes by Sprkfv (along with a third volume of photographs): a first part (1907-1918) covering Prokofiev’s youth, studies at the St. Petersburg Conservatory, journey to the US through Siberia and Japan; and a second part (1918-1933) covering his first steps in the West, first concerts in the US and Europe, work with Diaghilev in Paris, family and life in France. Subsequently, the diaries were translated into English by Anthony Phillips, and published by Faber and Faber in three volumes: 1907-1914, 1915-1923, 1924-1933. The first came out in 2006, the second in 2008 (see The Diary Review - Prokofiev’s literary gifts, though most of the links no longer work!), and the third has just been published today (1 November 2012) with the subtitle Prodigal Son.

According to Faber, ‘The Diaries document the complex emotional inner world of a Russian exile uncomfortably aware of the nature of life in Stalin’s Russia yet increasingly persuaded that his creative gifts would never achieve full maturity separated from the culture, people and land of his birthplace. Since even Prokofiev knew that the USSR was hardly the place to commit inner reflections to paper, the Diaries come to an end after June 1933 although it would be another three years before he, together with his wife and children, finally exchanged the free if materially uncertain life of a cosmopolitan Parisian celebrity for Soviet citizenship and the credo of Socialist Realism within which it struggled to straitjacket its artists.’

Here are several extracts taken from the second published volume of Prokofiev’s diaries, subtitled Behind the Mask.

21 August 1919
‘Stella tells me that she is probably going with her father for a two month tour to London. I responded: “Fine, then I’ll look for someone else.” This alarmed her: surely I didn’t place so little value on our relations that I could contemplate replacing her with “any old person”? We had dinner together somewhere in the country and spent the time very voluptuously.’

25 August 1919
‘I was in town. The copyist, scoundrel that he is, having copied 200 pages of score now refuses to do more on the grounds of ill health and tired eyes. It’s true he was cheap, at 25 cents a page. He said that when he recovers he will be able to resume, but at 60 cents a page. I said I would be happy to pay 80, but not to him. Still, it is not a good situation: I have to deliver it by 1 September and there are 50 pages still to do. I telephone Altschuler to see if he could suggest another copyist, but Altschuler has not paid his telephone bill and I could not get through to his number.

Stella and I went out of town for dinner. She is leaving on 15 September and since we have become reconciled to this she has been nicer and more loving.’

1 October 1919
‘Today is the contractual deadline for the score of Three Oranges, and I finished the last page at exactly two o’clock in the afternoon. “Terribly chic,” as Max Schmidthof would have said. Quite true; it was calculated to a nicety.’

12 October 1919
‘My first recital. A little early on in the season, but we had wanted a Sunday, and all the later ones had been taken. I was a little nervous of the Bach, but the performance passed off without incident. The Beethoven Contredanses were very good, also the Schumann Sonata. But the greatest success was reserved for the five shorter pieces of mine with which I concluded the programme, ending up with Suggestion Diabolique. This had an extraordinary success, reminiscent of the good old days in Petrograd. I gave six encores.’

18 Ocober 1919
‘Went [. . .] to the Stahls where it was nice and sunny. I flirted with my new admirer, Linette, who in spite of her youth - she is twenty - is quite demure. Stahl says, however, that this is only a facade, and indeed she agreed to sing in front of everyone provided that I accompanied her.

And Stella - well, it is now a month since she left, and I have not heard a word from her. About ten days ago I sent her a box of chocolates but I didn’t write either, although I have thought of her a lot.’

1 November 1919
‘When I arrived in New York [. . .] a letter from London was waiting for me, proposing a production of Three Oranges at Covent Garden in June. Now this is an event of truly enormous importance! A year ago I entered into correspondence with Bakst trying to get Three Oranges produced in the autumn season in Europe, but it came to nothing because Bakst was relying on Diaghilev, and I already knew that there would be no resurrection (at least in the operatic sense) for Diaghilev in that season. But now Coates, the clever fellow, has had the excellent sense to take up the idea. It if works, then hurrah! in six months I shall have a quick and brilliant entrée into Europe.’

9 December 1919
‘Linette came in the evening. It is a long time since anyone loved me as this dear girl seems to do.’

22 December 1919
‘Sent Mama a telegram via the Consul. Ilyashenko is going the day after tomorrow straight to Rostov, where Mama currently is. I must send some money with him for her. Although it will take him five weeks to get there, there may be a delay in the £100 cheque reaching her, the Bolsheviks may get really close to Rostov, in which case somehow or other she will have to get away to Constantinople.’

23 December 1919
‘Scraped together my last remaining money (there’s not much left) and bought a cheque for £40 for Constantinople (cheques for Russia are unobtainable). Ilyashenko came to see me in the evening; he loves my music very much. I played to him until I dropped, so that he would take the greatest care of my letter and cheque.

Bought a ticket to go to Chicago and took $100 for expenses. After paying for the apartment there are $80 remaining in the bank account. Not much. If the Chicago concert doesn’t produce any profit, I’ll have to borrow from Kucheryavy.’

24 December 1919
‘Practised the piano for Chicago. Lunched with Blanche, who, not having heard from Stella for over a month, is very annoyed with her. Some reports say that the theatre company is in trouble and will be coming back to American in January, but others say that everything is going well for them and Stella is “happy as a butterfly”. Well, so she may be. Although I always think of her with happiness, might I not be better concentrating more intently on Linette’s gentle devotion? And when, that evening, Linette and I took the boat on our way to the Stahls to celebrate Christmas Eve and Christmas Dad, my heart somehow felt more loving towards Linette knowing that over there Stella was ‘as happy as a butterfly’.

He shines in the dark

Files newly-released by the UK’s security services (MI5) to The National Archives include the diaries of Guy Liddell from the post-war period when he was MI5’s Deputy Director-General. According to The National Archives, Liddell’s diaries ‘provide a fascinating new insight into the early Cold War era’ including key moments such as the uncovering of Klaus Fuchs as a nuclear spy, and the defection of Guy Burgess and Donald Maclean. But they also reveal how elements of subsequent science/conspiracy fiction - involving, for example, ‘a luminous man’ or bubonic plague experiments - were actually part of Liddell’s every day world.

Liddell, born in 1892, served with the Royal Field Artillery in the First World War, before working with Scotland Yard, and, in 1927, joining MI5 where he became an expert on Soviet subversive activities. During the Second World he was head of counter-espionage, but after the war his career was curtailed because of his relationship with Guy Burgess (who defected in 1951), and suspicions that he too might have been a double agent. He died in 1958.

Liddell kept detailed diaries about his working life from the start of the Second World War. His wartime diaries were only released to The National Archives in 2002, since when they have been available online for a subscription fee. They were also edited by Nigel West (pen name of Rupert Allason) and published by Routledge in 2005 in two volumes: The Guy Liddell Diaries Vol I: 1939-1942; The Guy Liddell Diaries Vol II: 1942-1945. (See The Diary Review article Liddell, Tyler and internment for more.) Now the UK’s security services have released a second batch of Liddell’s diaries to The National Archives covering the post-war years, 1945-1953, when Liddell was Deputy Director-General of MI5.

The National Archives say the diaries ‘provide a fascinating new insight into the early Cold War era. Daily entries record Liddell’s impressions of key moments including the discovery in 1949 that the Soviet Union had tested its first atomic bomb, the uncovering of the spy Klaus Fuchs and the defection of Guy Burgess and Donald Maclean.’ There is also a discussion of the Liddell diaries (with a topical link to the new James Bond film, Skyfall) on The National Archives blog.

Associated Press has a report on the newly-released diaries with the headline, ‘Overstaffed, overconfident and all too often over here’. ‘That’s how,’ the article continues, ‘a top British spymaster saw his American counterparts at the FBI and CIA, according to newly declassified diaries from the years after World War II. Friction between British spies and their American colleagues is a recurring theme in journals. . .’ It also notes how Liddell called FBI boss J. Edgar Hoover, ‘a cross between a political gangster and a prima donna’. Reuter’s report focuses on the ‘slice of everyday espionage life’ revealed by the Russian spy Klaus Fuchs who, according to Liddell’s diaries, was told to throw a magazine into a London garden to set up a rendezvous with his Russian contact.

The BBC notes how ‘Liddell provides a day-by-day account of the unfolding drama, while the diaries’ matter-of-fact writing style barely conceals how personal the betrayal was for the MI5 man who was close friends with some of the key protagonists and who struggled to believe what they had done’. And for The Guardian, the diaries ‘reflect the panic inside the Security Service as it faced the awful truth that a Cambridge spy ring existed at the heart of British intelligence’.

Here are a few extracts from the Liddell’s post-war diaries, all transcribed from scanned pages on The National Archives web pages. (Klaus Fuchs, born in 1911, was a German-British theoretical physicist and atomic spy who worked in the US, British and Canadian atomic bomb research programme during and after the Second World War. He was convicted as a Soviet spy in 1950, and imprisoned for nine years. On being released, he emigrated to East Germany, and continued, successfully, his scientific career. He died in 1988. History has judged that Fuch’s espionage was of prime importance to the Soviets, allowing them to know that the US did not have sufficient nuclear weapons to deal simultaneously with the Berlin blockade and the Communists’ victory in China. His actions are also said to have been influential in the cancellation of an Anglo-American plan in 1950 for Britain to receive US-made atomic bombs.)

23 September 1949
‘The preliminaries to this meeting are quite fantastic. SHAG is to look for a chalk Z which will be placed on a telegraph post near his home. This will mean that if he can manage it he is to attend a meeting at that spot at a given hour on the same day. To confirm he will be there, he has to turn the Z into an H. The man meeting him will be smoking a cigarette and have a rubber band on his little finger. SHAG will bring out his snuffbox and take a pinch of snuff - no conversation will pass. The second meeting will take place at a different rendezvous with another person, when the same pantomime will be gone through. The visitor will ask for a light, then offer SHAG a cigarette, when the latter will reply that he takes snuff. This will be the all clear for further conversation.’

8 February 1950
‘[Fuchs] has told us that his Russian contact in London is known by the name of ALEXANDER. We believe him to be Alexander KRAMER. He also said that he was told, if he wished for a further meeting, to throw a magazine into a garden in Kew with an indication of the rendezvous on page 10. [. . .] If a meeting was to take place there would be a chalk mark on a local lamp post. This is interesting as it is the same technique given by . . . to SHAG. Lastly, FUCHS made it fairly clear that he does not intend to go back on his confession.’

16 February 1950
‘I then asked BURGESS what his next move was. He said that there was a serious accusation on his file, which he considered to be ill-founded, and that if it stood against him his career in the Foreign Office would, to say the least, be seriously blighted. He wondered, therefore, whether, in view of his explanations, the whole thing could be expunged from the record. I said that as far as I was concerned I could not answer for the Foreign Office, but that I would certainly let them know about the specific charges which I had made and BURGESS’s replies.’

31 March 1950
‘There has been a lot of trouble at the Canadian end of the FUCHS case. Pearson of External Affairs has stated that information regarding FUCHS in the HALPERIN diary was passed to us. Meanwhile the Lord Chancellor, in making a speech on the FUCHS case in the House of Lords, had stated that no such information was passed. In fact what happened was that Peter Dwyer, who was in Canada at the time, was told that he could have access to the enormous number of documents seized in a raid on HALPERIN’s house. Included among these documents was the diary, which he did not see. He was working closely with the Canadians and relying on them to bring to his notice anything of special significance affecting this country. The Canadians passed on a photostat copy of the diary to the FBI, but did not send one to us; the first we knew of it was when we started intensive investigations into FUCHS. The information was from the Americans, but not from the Canadians. In fact it had very little significance, since when the entry was made FUCHS had made no decision to act as a spy. Had we known of the existence of this entry, it might have caused us to make closer enquiries and it might have influenced us when the decision was made to allow FUCHS to go to Harwell after his return to this country.’

1 April 1950
‘The DG had seen both the PM and the Lord Chancellor, who now realises how the mistake occurred. I am afraid, however, that we have to admit that our statement in the Lord Chancellor’s brief, that the Security Services were not informed about the entry in the diary, was not strictly accurate. It would have been possible, I suppose, for Peter Dwyer to wade through every single document and to send us a copy of the diary, and it may well be that if we had had our own representative there, who would have had an MI5 rather than MI6 approach to the problem, this would have been done. The Lord Chancellor took the whole thing extremely well and will correct his statement in due course.’

18 September 1952
‘. . . The enquiry may relate to an individual known as “The Luminous Man”, a man who has been working in one of our atomic energy establishments and has become radio-active. Apparently he shines in the dark. If this is so, it is difficult to see why there should be so much secrecy - in fact I cannot imagine how the Press have not already got on to this extraordinary case, since it is clearly a matter that cannot be kept in the dark!’

19 September 1952
‘Bacteriological trials have been going on from Stornoway, to ascertain whether or not bubonic plague germs could or could not be used in wartime. The experiment involved the release of a number of these germs - I imagine over some vessel containing a number of unfortunate animals. At the critical moment, when the cloud had passed over, a fishing trawler from Iceland was bearing down on the scene of the experiment. It disregarded the signals to keep away, and it was calculated that it might have been on the outer fringe of the cloud. The question then arose as to what action should be taken. High level conferences went on, when the rather courageous decision was made to limit the precautions to informing the medical officer at Fleetwood, and also the skipper of the ship, that if during the course of the next three weeks any member of the crew, or anybody in Fleetwood developed boils, isolation precautions should be taken immediately. The alternative would have been to innoculate all members of the crew and all the rats on board with strepto-myoscin, or some other drug, thus making the nature of the experiment quite clear with all the resulting publicity and criticisms.’

I bought her a jet plane

‘I bought Elizabeth the jet plane we flew in yesterday. It costs, brand new, $960,000. She was not displeased.’ This is the actor Richard Burton writing in his diary in 1967, at the height of his fame and in the early years of his first marriage to Elizabeth Taylor. The diaries, which span more than four decades though written rather sporadically, have just been published by Yale University Press.

Burton was born Richard Walter Jenkins into a large family in Pontrhydyfen, Wales, in 1925, but his mother died two years later, and he was brought up by a sister. He left school at 16, and soon joined the Air Training Corps as a cadet. There he met Philip Burton a former teacher of his who subsequently adopted him, helped him through further education, and encouraged his theatrical skills. The young Burton served two years in the RAF, between 1944 and 1947. Prior to his military service, though, he had already begun to work as an actor, and after his discharge he moved to London to further his career. He met his first wife, Sybil Williams, working on a film set. They had two daughters.

Burton found work easily enough, in films and narrating for the BBC, but a major turning point came in 1951 when he starred in two Shakespeare productions for Anthony Quayle at Stratford-upon-Avon and received excellent reviews. Several films in Hollywood followed (Desert Rat and The Robe), and then a major Shakespeare season at the Old Vic. When his fellow-Welshman and friend Dylan Thomas died, Burton performed the lead role in Dylan’s Under Milk Wood (to benefit Dylan’s family), which today remains one of the most celebrated radio drama productions of all time. Further Hollywood films followed, and with them the wealth that would lead him to relocate to tax-friendly Switzerland in 1957.

After performing on Broadway, Burton was brought in to star in Twentieth Century Fox’s troubled production, Cleopatra, a film which would become the most expensive ever made at the time, and which would usher in Burton’s most successful Hollywood period. On set, famously, he met Elizabeth Taylor who, like him, was married at the time. The affair was widely reported in the media, but the couple were not free to marry until their divorces in 1964. Together, they produced a number of memorable films, not least Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?. The fiery marriage lasted 10 years, but once they had divorced they soon remarried. Burton adopted Taylor’s daughter by a previous marriage (whose father had died); and together Burton and Taylor adopted a German child.

Burton’s output in later years was more prolific than admired as he often took mediocre work for financial reasons. He did have some success, though, with Equus (which he had played on stage to great acclaim) and The Wild Geese. From 1976 to 1982, he was married to Susan Hunt, and from 1983 to his death in 1984 to Sally Hay. He was only 58 when he died, but he had been a heavy smoker and drinker all his life. Further information is available from Wikipedia, the Richard Burton website, or IMDB.

Burton seems to have kept a diary intermittently through most of his life, and extracts from these were first used by Melvyn Bragg in his biography Rich: The Life of Richard Burton published by Hodder and Stoughton in 1988. In 2005, Burton’s widow, Sally, handed over the diaries - written between 1939 and 1983 - and other personal papers, known as the Richard Burton Collection, to Swansea University; and in 2010 the university formally opened its Richard Burton Archives facility. Now - in October 2012 - Yale University Press has published The Richard Burton Diaries, edited by Chris Williams. A generous number of pages can be read freely at Amazon.

The publisher claims: ‘In his personal diaries Richard Burton is a man quite different from the one we familiarly “know” as acclaimed actor, international film star, and jet-set celebrity. From his private, handwritten pages there emerges a different person - a family man, a father, a husband, a man often troubled and always keenly observing. Understood through his own words, day to day and year to year, Burton becomes a fully rounded human being who, with a wealth of talent and a surprising burden of insecurity, confronts the peculiar challenges of a life lived largely in the spotlight.’

‘At times,’ the promotional material continues, ‘Burton struggles to come to terms with the unfulfilled potential of his life and talent. In other entries, he crows over achievements and hungers for greater challenges. He may be watching his weight, watching his drinking, or watching other men watch his Elizabeth. Always he is articulate, opinionated, and fascinating. His diaries offer a rare and fresh perspective on his own life and career, Elizabeth Taylor's, and the glamorous world of film, theatre, and celebrity that they inhabited.’

The reviews of Burton’s diaries have generally been favourable. The Daily Express says: ‘These diaries are basically his autobiography and, luckily for us, the poetry-loving boyo from the Afan Valley was an articulate, insightful, and introspective man who wrote with much more style and wit than a diary requires.’ The Washington Times says the book makes ‘for utterly involving, fascinating reading, giving a rare insight into a complicated, gifted individual.’ Writing in the Camden New Journal, Gerald Isaaman, who edited the Ham & High for many years, charts Burton’s long association with Hampstead. ‘Professor Williams,’ he says, ‘puts the diaries in context, providing a biography of the boy wonder that gives an understanding of his madcap, star-dusted life of angst and contradiction, too much booze and too much beauty. He includes endless footnotes and references to ensure his intimate analysis is accurate and fair amid a saga of scandal and sensation, and gives us an understanding of restless Burton’s true value.’ This is South Wales has an article by the editor, Williams, on his experience of editing the diaries.

Here are a few extracts culled from the sources mentioned above.

30 September 1967
‘At about 12 noon this same day I did something beyond outrage. I bought Elizabeth the jet plane we flew in yesterday. It costs, brand new, $960,000. She was not displeased.’

19 November 1968
‘Famed as we are, rich as we are, courted and insulted as we are, overpaid as we are, centre of a great deal of attention as we are, [we] are not bored or blasé. We are not envious. We are merely lucky. I have been inordinately lucky all my life but the greatest luck of all has been Elizabeth. She has turned me into a moral man but not a prig, she is a wildly exciting lover-mistress, she is shy and witty, she is nobody’s fool, she is a brilliant actress, she is beautiful beyond the dreams of pornography, she can be arrogant and wilful, she is clement and loving, Dulcis Imperatrix, she is Sunday’s child, she can tolerate my impossibilities and my drunkenness, she is an ache in the stomach when I am away from her, and she loves me!’

10 January 1969
‘The more I read about man and his maniacal ruthlessness and his murdering envious scatological soul, the more I realise that he will never change. Our stupidity is immortal, nothing will change it. The same mistakes, the same prejudices, the same injustice, the same lusts wheel endlessly around the parade-ground of the centuries. Immutable and ineluctable. I wish I could believe in a God of some kind but I simply cannot. My intelligence is too muscular and my imagination stops at the horizon. And I have an idea that the last sound to be heard on this lovely planet will be a man screaming. In fear and terror. It might be more.’

20 March 1969
‘The last six months have been a nightmare. I created one half and Elizabeth the other. We grated on each other to the point of separation. I had thought of going to live lone in some remote shack in a rainy place and E had thought of going to stay with Howard in Hawaii. It is of course quite impossible. We are bound together. Hoop-steeled. Whither thou goest. He said hopefully.’

The heart is musical

Marina Tsvetaeva was born 120 years ago today. She struggled through much poverty in her life - indeed a daughter died of starvation - and political turmoil, but today she is considered a major 20th century Russian literary figure. One of her most important poems - The Encampment of the Swans -  was written about the civil war in the style of a diary; and, recently, a collection of her diary notes has been published in English.

Tsvetaeva was born in Moscow on 8 October 1892. Her father was a professor of art history, while her mother was both literary and musical. She had one sister and two half-siblings, the children of her father’s first wife (who had died). In 1902, Tsvetaeva’s mother contracted TB, and this led the family to seek a healthier climate. They lived abroad - near Genoa, for a while, where there were many Russian emigre revolutionaries - until shortly before her mother’s death in 1906.

While still in her teens, Tsvetaeva studied at Lausanne and at the Sorbonne; and around 1911, she self-published a first collection of her poems. This attracted the attention of the poet and critic Maximilian Voloshin who then befriended her. It was at Voloshin’s home, in the Black Sea resort of Koktebel, that she met a cadet in the Officers’ Academy, Sergei Efron. They married in 1912 and lived in the Crimea, and had two daughters, Ariadna (Ayla) and Irina. After the 1917 Revolution Marina returned to Moscow where she became trapped during a famine. Hoping to save her daughters, she placed them in a state orphanage, but Ayla became ill and Irina died.

In 1922, Tsvetaeva and Alya left the Soviet Union and were reunited with Efron in Berlin. They also moved to Prague and its environs, where they had a son, Georgy, before finally settling in Paris. Tsvetaeva’s writing, during this period, in praise of the Tsarist forces, was not published in Russia until much later. In 1939, still a patriot, she returned to Stalin’s Russia, but Efron and Alya were arrested for espionage. Efron was shot in 1941, and Alya served eight years in prison (though both were exonerated after Stalin’s death). When the German army invaded, Tsvetaeva and Georgy were evacuated to Tatarstan where Tsvetaeva committed suicide in 1941. Further biographical information is available from Wikipedia, Carcanet Press or The Poetry Foundation.

According to the latter source, critics and translators of Tsvetaeva’s work often comment on ‘the passion in her poems, their swift shifts and unusual syntax, and the influence of folk songs’. She is also known for her portrayal of a woman’s experiences during the so-called terrible years. She wrote several plays as well as narrative verse. One cycle of poems in the style of a diary - The Encampment of the Swans - begins on the day of Tsar Nicholas II’s abdication in 1917, and ends in 1920, when the anti-communist White Army was finally defeated.

In 2011, Yale University Press published Earthly Signs - Moscow Diaries, 1917–1922, Marina Tsvetaeva, edited, translated and introduced by Jamey Gambrell. ‘This volume,’ the publishers say, ‘presents for the first time in English a collection of essays published in the Russian emigre press after Tsvetaeva left Moscow in 1922. Based on diaries she kept from 1917 to 1920, Earthly Signs describes the broad social, economic, and cultural chaos provoked by the Bolshevik Revolution. Events and individuals are seen through the lens of her personal experience - that of a destitute young woman of upper-class background with two small children (one of whom died of starvation), a missing husband, and no means of support other than her poetry. These autobiographical writings, rich sources of information on Tsvetaeva and her literary contemporaries, are also significant for the insights they provide into the sources and methodology of her difficult poetic language. In addition, they supply a unique eyewitness account of a dramatic period in Russian history, told by a gifted and outspoken poet.’

Much of the book is available to read at Googlebooks; and below are a few (undated) extracts.

October on the Train
Notes from Those Days
‘Two and a half days - not a bite, not a swallow. (Throat tight.) Soldiers bring newspapers - printed on rose-colored paper. The Kremlin and all the monuments have been blown up. The 56th Regiment. The buildings where the Cadets and officers refused to surrender have been blown up. 16,000 killed. By the next station it’s up to 25,000. I don’t speak. I smoke. One after another, travelers get on trains heading back.

Dream (November 2, 1917, nighttime). We are escaping. A man with a rifle comes up from the cellar. I take aim with my empty hand. He lowers the rifle. A sunny day. We are climbing on some debris. S. is talking about Vladivostok. We are riding in a carriage through ruins. A man with sulfuric acid.’

On Love - From a Diary
‘The complete concurrence of souls requires the concurrence of the breath, for what is the breath, if not the rhythm of the soul?

And thus, for people to understand one another, they must walk or lie side by side.

The nobility of the heart - of the organ. Unremitting caution. It is always first to sound the alarm. I could say: it is not love that makes my heart pound, but my pounding heart - that makes love.

The heart: it is musical, rather than a physical organ.

The heart; sounding line, plummet, log, dynamometer, Reaumur - everything, but the timepiece of love. [. . .]

Old men and old women. A shaved, slender old man is always a little bit antique, always a little bit the marquis. And his attention is more flattering to me, stirs me more than the love of any twenty-year-old. To exaggerate: there’s the feeling that an entire century loves me. There’s nostalgia for his twenties, and joy for one’s own, and the opportunity of being generous - and the utter inopportuneness of it. Béranger has a little song: . . . Your glance is keen, But you’re twelve, And I’m twice eighteen.

Sixteen and sixty is not monstrous, and most important - it’s not at all ridiculous. At any rate, it’s less ridiculous than most so-called “equal” marriages. The possibility of a genuine pathos.

But an old woman in love with a young man is, at best - touching. The exception: actresses. An old actress - is the mummy of a rose.’