Doomed to beggary

‘Could you see and hear what I have seen and heard during this Rural Ride, you would no longer say, that the House “works well.” Mrs. Canning and your children are dear to you; but, Sir, not more dear than are to them the wives and children of, perhaps, two hundred thousand men, who, by the Acts of this same House, see those wives and children doomed to beggary.’ This is William Cobbett, an early 19th century campaigning journalist, born 250 years ago today, whose diary offers some of the best early travel pieces about England - Rural Rides - as well as criticisms of government policy towards farmers and the need for parliamentary reform.

Cobbett was born in Farnham, Surrey, on 9 March 1763, the son of a tavern keeper. He was educated at home, and worked as a farm labourer until 1783 when he moved to London. There he took a position as a clerk for a year, before joining the army and seeing service in the British colony of New Brunswick. But, after making accusations of theft against some officers, he left the army, escaping to France, first, and then the United States, where he published pro-British pamphlets under the pseudonym of Peter Porcupine. Before leaving England, though, in early 1792, he had married Anne Reid, an English woman first met in New Brunswick.

Cobbett returned to Britain in 1800, where he applied himself to journalism. At first, he started a magazine called The Porcupine but then, having sold his interest in that, he launched Political Register, which was often critical of the government. In 1809, for example, he attacked the use of German troops to put down a mutiny in Ely, and subsequently was tried and convicted for sedition and sentenced to two years’ imprisonment in Newgate Prison. When released he continued his popular campaigns, and, by reducing the price of Political Register, turned it into the main newspaper for the working class. In 1817, on rumours that he might be arrested again for sedition, Cobbett fled to the US. There he wrote a text on English grammar and, with the help of a friend in London, continued to publish Political Register. By the time he returned to England, in late 1819, he had lost all influence, and was poor, but still he remained politically active.

In 1821, Cobbett began a tour of Britain on horseback, which led to a series of articles in Political Register, later published as Rural Rides. His single greatest concern at this time was the distressed state of English farming, and the only solution, he argued, was for a radical reform of parliament, including universal manhood suffrage. He wrote in Political Register that his purpose in riding through England was to hear ‘what gentlemen, farmers, tradesmen, journeymen, labourers, women, girls, boys, and all have to say; reasoning with some, laughing with others, and observing all that passes’. In 1830, he was tried and acquitted of sedition. In 1832, he was elected to Parliament for Oldham, focusing his energies on attacking corruption in government and the 1834 Poor Law. He died in 1835. Further information is available from Wikipedia, Dictionary of Canadian Biography, or Peter Landry’s website.

Rural Rides, which is considered Cobbett’s most enduring work, is essentially a collection of diary entries written on journeys across England between 1821 and 1832. The 1853 version of Rural Rides, published by A. Cobbett, is available at Internet Archive, as are reprints published a century later with an introduction by the historian Asa Briggs. The much-issued two volume 1885 edition by Reeves and Turner is also available at Internet Archive. The Vision of Britain Through Time website has put chunks of Cobbett’s text into chapters with maps of the areas covered.

10 January 1822
‘Lewes is in a valley of the South Downs, this town is at eight miles distance, to the south-south-west or thereabouts. There is a great extent of rich meadows above and below Lewes. The town itself is a model of solidity and neatness. The buildings all substantial to the very outskirts; the pavements good and complete; the shops nice and clean; the people well-dressed; and, though last not least, the girls remarkably pretty, as, indeed, they are in most parts of Sussex; round faces, features small, little hands and wrists, plump arms, and bright eyes. The Sussex men, too, are remarkable for their good looks. A Mr. Baxter, a stationer at Lewes, showed me a farmer’s account book, which is a very complete thing of the kind. The inns are good at Lewes, the people civil and not servile, and the charges really (considering the taxes) far below what one could reasonably expect.

From Lewes to Brighton the road winds along between the hills of the South Downs, which, in this mild weather, are mostly beautifully green even at this season, with flocks of sheep feeding on them. Brighton itself lies in a valley cut across at one end by the sea, and its extension, or wen, has swelled up the sides of the hills and has run some distance up the valley. The first thing you see in approaching Brighton from Lewes, is a splendid horse-barrack on one side of the road, and a heap of low, shabby, nasty houses, irregularly built, on the other side. This is always the case where there is a barrack. How soon a reformed parliament would make both disappear!

Brighton is a very pleasant place. For a wen [a large overcrowded city] remarkably so. The Kremlin, the very name of which has so long been a subject of laughter all over the country, lies in the gorge of the valley, and amongst the old houses of the town. The grounds, which cannot, I think, exceed a couple or three acres, are surrounded by a wall neither lofty nor good-looking. Above this rise some trees, bad in sorts, stunted in growth, and dirty with smoke. As to the “palace” as the Brighton newspapers call it, the apartments appear to be all upon the ground floor; and, when you see the thing from a distance, you think you see a parcel of cradle-spits, of various dimensions, sticking up out of the mouths of so many enormous squat decanters. Take a square box, the sides of which are three feet and a half, and the height a foot and a half. Take a large Norfolk-turnip, cut off the green of the leaves, leave the stalks nine inches long, tie these round with a string three inches from the top, and put the turnip on the middle of the top of the box. Then take four turnips of half the size, treat them in the same way, and put them on the corners of the box. Then take a considerable number of bulbs of the crown-imperial, the narcissus, the hyacinth, the tulip, the crocus, and others; let the leaves of each have sprouted to about an inch, more or less according to the size of the bulb; put all these, pretty promiscuously, but pretty thickly, on the top of the box. Then stand off and look at your architecture. There! That’s “a Kremlin!” Only you must cut some church-looking windows in the sides of the box. As to what you ought to put into the box, that is a subject far above my cut.

Brighton is naturally a place of resort for expectants, and a shifty ugly-looking swarm is, of course, assembled here. Some of the fellows, who had endeavoured to disturb our harmony at the dinner at Lewes, were parading, amongst this swarm, on the cliff. You may always know them by their lank jaws, the stiffeners round their necks, their hidden or no shirts, their stays, their false shoulders, hips and haunches, their half-whiskers, and by their skins, colour of veal kidney-suet, warmed a little, and then powdered with dirty dust. These vermin excepted, the people at Brighton make a very fine figure. The trades-people are very nice in all their concerns. The houses are excellent, built chiefly with a blue or purple brick; and bow-windows appear to be the general taste. I can easily believe this to be a very healthy place: the open downs on the one side and the open sea on the other. No inlet, cove, or river; and, of course, no swamps. I have spent this evening very pleasantly in a company of reformers, who, though plain tradesmen and mechanics, know I am quite satisfied more about the questions that agitate the country than any equal number of lords.’

25 November 1822 [Some months earlier George Canning had been made Foreign Secretary and Leader of the House of Commons in the government led by Robert Banks Jenkinson, 2nd Earl of Liverpool.]
‘In looking back into Hampshire, I see with pleasure the farmers bestirring themselves to get a County Meeting called. There were, I was told, nearly five hundred names to a Requisition, and those all of land-owners or occupiers. Precisely what they mean to petition for I do not know; but (and now I address myself to you, Mr. Canning,) if they do not petition for a reform of the Parliament, they will do worse than nothing. You, Sir, have often told us, that the HOUSE, however got together, “works well.” Now, as I said in 1817, just before I went to America to get out of the reach of our friend, the Old Doctor, and to use my long arm; as I said then, in a Letter addressed to Lord Grosvenor, so I say now, show me the inexpediency of reform, and I will hold my tongue. Show us, prove to us, that the House “works well,” and I, for my part, give the matter up. It is not the construction or the motions of a machine that I ever look at: all I look after is the effect. When, indeed, I find that the effect is deficient or evil, I look to the construction. And, as I now see, and have for many years seen, evil effect, I seek a remedy in an alteration in the machine. There is now nobody; no, not a single man, out of the regions of Whitehall, who will pretend, that the country can, without the risk of some great and terrible convulsion, go on, even for twelve months longer, unless there be a great change of some sort in the mode of managing the public affairs.

Could you see and hear what I have seen and heard during this Rural Ride, you would no longer say, that the House “works well.” Mrs. Canning and your children are dear to you; but, Sir, not more dear than are to them the wives and children of, perhaps, two hundred thousand men, who, by the Acts of this same House, see those wives and children doomed to beggary, and to beggary, too, never thought of, never regarded as more likely than a blowing up of the earth or a falling of the sun. It was reserved for this “working well” House to make the fire-sides of farmers scenes of gloom. These fire-sides, in which I have always so delighted, I now approach with pain. I was, not long ago sitting round the fire with as worthy and as industrious a man as all England contains. There was his son, about 19 years of age; two daughters from 15 to 18; and a little boy sitting on the father’s knee. I knew, but not from him, that there was a mortgage on his farm. I was anxious to induce him to sell without delay. With this view I, in an hypothetical and round-about way, approached his case and at last, I came to final consequences. The deep and deeper gloom on a countenance, once so cheerful, told me what was passing in his breast, when turning away my looks in order to seem not to perceive the effect of my words, I saw the eyes of his wife full of tears. She had made the application; and there were her children before her! And, am I to be banished for life if I express what I felt upon this occasion! And, does this House, then, “work well?” How many men, of the most industrious, the most upright, the most exemplary, upon the face of the earth, have been, by this one Act of this House, driven to despair, ending in madness or self-murder, or both! Nay, how many scores! And, yet, are we to be banished for life, if we endeavour to show, that this House does not “work well?” However, banish or banish not, these facts are notorious: the House made all the Loam which constitute the debt: the House contracted for the Dead Weight: the House put a stop to gold-payments in 1797: the Home unanimously passed Peel’s Bill. Here are all the causes of the ruin, the misery, the anguish, the despair, and the madness and self-murders. Here they are all. They have all been acts of this House; and yet, we are to be banished if we say, in words suitable to the subject, that this House does not “work well!” ’

No good barber in Italy

Michel de Montaigne, the great 16th century French essayist and philosopher, was born 480 years ago today. His essays on any number of topics - from sleep to smells and from cannibals to cruelty - remain in print to this day, and a new biography, by Sarah Bakewell, even credits him with inventing the idea of writing about oneself. For a short while in the 1580s, he travelled beyond the French borders, often seeking out spas in search of relief for his kidney stones. He kept a fine journal of his journeys, often full of detail about the cures he found, and several translations are freely available online.

Montaigne was born in Chãteau de Montaigne, near Bordeaux, in southwest France, on 28 February 1533. His father was a soldier and a lawyer, and his mother came from a Spanish Jewish family converted to protestantism. He studied at Collège de Guyenne in Bordeaux, and then trained for the law in Bordeaux and Toulouse. He worked at the Court des Aides of Périgueaux, and then in 1557 was appointed to the Bordeaux Parliament. From 1561 to 1563 he served at the court of Charles IX. In 1565, he married Françoise de la Chassaigne. They had one daughter that survived infancy.

After his father died in 1568, Montaigne moved to the family Chãteau. There he wrote the many essays - on numerous topics including sadness, idleness, the education of children, sleep, smells, the greatness of Rome - which, subsequently, brought him fame. From 1578, he suffered from kidney stones which led him in search of cures in Switzerland, Germany and Italy. In 1581, while at La Villa, in Italy, Montaigne found out he had been elected mayor of Bordeaux. He returned to the city, and served in that post for four years. In 1588 he accompanied Henry III to Rouen. He died in 1592. Further information is available from Wikipedia, Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, or Adam Thorpe’s review of Sarah Bakewell’s How to Live: A Life of Montaigne in One Question and Twenty Attempts at an Answer.

Montaigne was no regular diarist, but he did keep a journal during his travels of 1580 and 1581 - across France to Switzerland, Germany, Austria and Italy - and this often appears with his essays as part of a set of ‘complete works’. The most modern translation of the journal was made by Donald M. Frame in The Complete Works of Montaigne published by Stanford University Press in the US in 1957, and Hamish Hamilton in the UK in 1958.

Frame says, in his ‘notes on the travel journal’, that Montaigne’s journal has a curious history. Part of it was dictated in French to a secretary, and part of it was written by Montaigne in French and Italian. The manuscripts lay buried in a chest at the Chãteau for two centuries before being discovered by a historian in 1770. This led to it being published soon after in five editions during the mid-1770s; thereafter, though, the original manuscripts vanished during the Revolution. All subsequent editions and translations, thus, rely on the French printed editions from the 1770s which, according to Frame, ‘offer only many variants but also a good many apparent misplacements and misreadings’. Nevertheless, more modern editions in French and Italian, Frame adds, are helpful for their geographical amendments or conjectural emendations.

The Journal, Frame explains, has been translated into English three times, by William Hazlitt (1842), W. G. Waters (1903) and E. J. Trechmann (1929), though he only rates the latter as any good. All three of these translations are available freely online, the first two at Internet Archive, and the latter at the Hathi Trust Digital Library. The following extracts are taken from Frame’s The Complete Works of Montaigne. (The journal reads more as a narrative than a diary in that the dates are incorporated into the text, and I have left the extracts thus.)

1581
‘Monday early we left there. And along the road, without dismounting, after stopping a while to visit the villa of the bishop, who was there (and were made much of by his men, and invited to stay there to dinner), we came to dine at the baths of La Villa, fifteen miles. I received a warm welcome and greetings from all those people. In truth it seemed that I had come back to my own home. I went back to the same room I had the first time, at the price of twenty crowns a month, and on the same conditions.

Tuesday August 15th I went to the bath early and stayed there a little less than an hour. I again found it rather cold than otherwise. It did not start me sweating at all. I arrived at these baths not only healthy, but I may further say in all-round good spirits. After bathing, I passed some cloudy urine; and in the evening, after walking a good bit over alpine and not at all easy roads, I passed some that was quite bloody; and in bed I felt something indefinably wrong with the kidneys.

On the 16th I continued the bathing, and I went to the women’s bath, where I had not yet been, in order to be separate and alone. I found it too hot, either because it was really so or indeed because my pores, being opened from the bathing of the day before, had made me get hot easily. At all events I stayed there an hour at most and sweated moderately. My urine was natural; no gravel at all. After dinner my urine again came turbid and red, and at sunset it was bloody.

On the 17th I found this same bath more temperate. I sweated very little. The urine rather turbid, with a little gravel; my colour a sort of yellow pallor.

On the 18th I stayed two hours in the aforesaid bath. I felt I know not what heaviness in the kidneys. My bowels were reasonably loose. From the very first day I felt full of wind, and my bowels rumbling. I can easily believe that this effect is characteristic of these waters, because the other time I bathed I clearly perceived that they brought on the flatulence this way.

On the 19th I went to the bath a little later to give way to a lady of Lucca who wanted to bathe, and did bathe, before me; for this rule is observed, and reasonably so, that the ladies may enjoy their own bath when they please. I again stayed there for two hours. There came over me a little heaviness in my head, which had been in the best of condition for several days. My urine was still turbid, but in different ways, and it carried off a lot of gravel. I also noticed some commotion in the kidneys. And if my feelings are correct, these baths can do much in that particular; and not only do they dilate and open up the passages and conduits, but furthermore they drive out the matter, dissipated and scatter it. I voided the gravel that seemed really to be stones broken up into pieces.

In the night I felt in the left-side the beginning of a very violent and painful colic, which tore me for a good while and yet did not run its ordinary course; it did not reach the belly and the groin, and ended in a way that made me believe it was wind. [. . .]

On the 27th after dinner I was cruelly tormented by a very acute toothache, so that I sent for the doctor, who, when he had come and considered everything, and especially that my pain had left me in his presence, judged that this defluxion had no body unless a very subtle one, and that it was wind and flatulence that mounted from the stomach to the head and, mingling with a little humor, gave me that discomfort. This indeed seemed to me very likely, considering that I had suffered similar accidents in other parts of the body.

On Monday, August 28th, at dawn, I went to drink at Bernabo’s spring and drank seven pounds four ounces of the water, at twelve ounces to the pound. It made my bowels move once. I voided a little less than half of it before dinner. I clearly felt that it sent vapors to my head and made it heavy. [. . .]

On Thursday, September 7th, in the morning I was an hour in the big bath. This same morning they delivered into my hands, by way of Rome, letters from Monsieur de Tausin, written in Bordeaux on August 2nd, by which he advised me that the day before, by general consent, I had been made mayor of that city; and he urged me to accept this charge for the love of my country.

On Sunday, September 10th, I bathed for an hour in the morning in the women’s bath; and since it was a bit warm, I sweated some. After dinner I went alone on horseback to see some other places in the neighbourhood, and a little villa called Granajolo, which stands on top of one of the highest mountains in these parts. As I passed over these heights, they seemed to me the most beautiful, fertile, and pleasant inhabited slopes that could possibly be seen.

Talking with the natives, I asked one very elderly man whether they used our baths, and he replied that it worked out with them as it did with the people who live near Our Lady of Loreto; that those people rarely go there on a pilgrimage, and that there is little use of the baths except for the benefit of foreigners and those who live far away. He said he was very sorry about one thing, that for a number of years he had observed that the baths did more harm than good to those who used them [. . .].

Monday, September 11th, in the morning, I voided a good quantity of gravel, most of it looking like millet, solid, red on the surface and grey inside.

On September 12th, 1581, we left the baths of La Villa early in the morning and came to dine at Lucca, fourteen miles. These days they were beginning to gather the grapes. The Feast of the Holy Cross is one of the principal ones in this city; and for a week around it freedom is given to anyone who wants it and who has been banished on account of a civil debt, to return in security to his house, to give him opportunity to attend to his devotions.

I have not found in Italy a single good barber to shave my beard and cut my hair.’

The Reichstag on fire

Eighty years ago today, the Reichstag building in Berlin, which had housed the German Diet since its opening in 1894, suffered a major arson attack. The newly-elected German Chancellor, Adolf Hitler, blamed a Communist Party conspiracy and quickly won support for emergency measures to restrict civil liberties, thus allowing him to make mass arrests. The Reichstag fire is considered an early and important turning point in the Nazi story. Widely available is the diary entry for that day by Joseph Goebbels, Nazi Minister of Public Enlightenment. Also, though, US historian John L. Heineman has made available online two diary texts. One of these is by a young writer who reports on his father’s cynicism regarding the Nazi’s response to the fire; and the other is by a young housewife, married to a Jew, who is clearly being so affected by the Nazi propaganda that she is frightened of the communists and even believes the US and Britain should send money to help Germany fight Bolshevism.

The Reichstag building opened in 1894 to house the Imperial Diet, and it did so until 27 February 1933 when it was severely damaged in a fire started by Marinus van der Lubbe, a young and mentally handicapped Dutchman who also was a communist. Thereafter, the building was rarely used, except for propaganda purposes; and then it was further damaged during Second World War air raids. A reconstruction took place in the first half of the 1960s, but with West Germany’s capital in Bonn, there was little use for the building. However, in October 1990, it was the site chosen for the official German reunification ceremony. The following year, Germany decided to shift its capital back to Berlin, and this led to a high profile project to rebuild the Reichstag. It was opened in 1999, with the Bundestag convening officially for the first time on 19 April. According to the Reichstag’s Wikipedia entry, the building is now the second most visited attraction in Germany, not least because of the huge glass dome that was erected on the roof as a gesture to the original 1894 cupola.

The 1933 Reichstag fire remains a much studied historical event, partly because it proved so pivotal in the Nazi’s fortunes, and partly because no definitive version of the events leading to the fire has yet been arrived at. On the night of the fire, police found van der Lubbe in the building, and his communist sympathies were quickly established. Adolf Hitler, who had only come to power four weeks earlier, used the arson attack to pressure President Paul von Hindenburg for emergency measures to tackle the communist threat. The following day a decree was passed ‘for the protection of the people and state’ which dispensed with all constitutional protection of political, personal and property rights. Encyclopædia Britannica says this was the day Hitler’s dictatorship began. Communists were very quickly rounded up, even those sitting in parliament, thus allowing the Nazis to take their seats and establish a parliamentary dominance.

The following autumn, van der Lubbe and others (indicted for their roles in the communist plot to burn down the Reichstag) were tried in Leipzig before judges from the old German Imperial High Court. Only van der Lubbe was found guilty, and subsequently beheaded by guillotine; others, though not found guilty, were expelled to the Soviet Union. Hitler, angered by the trial’s outcome, established a new forum for treason (and other offences), the People’s Court, which would hand down many death sentences in the years to come.

To this day, historians continue to debate over the events of that night. Many argue that van der Lubbe was part of an elaborate plot not by communists but by the Nazis, to give them an excuse to crack down on civil liberties in general and the communists in particular, and this theory, in various guises, was favoured for many years. However, nowadays, there seems to be more of a consensus towards the idea that, after all, that responsibility for the fire rests with van der Lubbe alone. There is a wealth of information online about the fire: Wikipedia has a good summary of the main facts; the World Socialist Web Site has a review of a book providing ‘authoritative evidence’ on the Nazi involvement; and, for a more detailed account, try Fritz Tobias’s The Reichstag Fire with an introduction by A. J. P. Taylor at the WN Library website.

Online, I have found references to three diarists who wrote an entry on/about that day. Joseph Goebbels, the Nazi propaganda genius, kept a detailed diary, although the entry about that day is rather short. It can be found on the Mae Brussel website, or at Googlebooks in William L. Shirer’s book The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich (Simon and Schuster, 1960) which makes extensive use of Goebbels’ diaries. More information on these diaries can be found from The Diary Junction or Wikipedia.

Here is Goebbel’s diary extract in Shirer’s narrative: ‘On the evening of February 27, four of the most powerful men in Germany were gathered at two separate dinners in Berlin. In the exclusive Herrenklub in the Vosstrasse, Vice-Chancellor von Papen was entertaining President Hindenburg. Out at Goebbels’ home, Chancellor Hitler had arrived to dine en famille. According to Goebbels, they were relaxing, playing music on the gramophone and telling stories. “Suddenly,” he recounted later in his diary, “a telephone call from Dr. Hanfstaengl: ‘The Reichstag is on fire!’ I am sure he is telling a tall tale and decline even to mention it to the Fuehrer.” ’

Much quoted also is this entry from Goebbels’ diary dated a few weeks earlier, 31 January 1933, the day after Hitler was named Chancellor: ‘In a conference with the Fuehrer we lay down the line for the fight against the Red terror. For the moment we shall abstain from direct countermeasures. The Bolshevik attempt at revolution must first burst into flame. At the proper moment we shall strike.’

John L. Heineman, Professor Emeritus retired from Boston College, maintains many web pages full of historical information, including one on the Nazi seizure of power. This includes extracts from the diaries of two young Germans: Erich Ebermayer, a novelist and playwright, and Frau Luise Solmitz, a housewife and former elementary school teacher married to an ex-pilot and decorated war hero, who was Jewish.

27 February 1933 (Ebermayer)
‘Suddenly at the beginning of the midnight news report, the radio announcer’s voice in great excitement proclaims: “The Reichstag Building is burning.” Every conversation in the small café ceases. We learn that the Reichstag in Berlin was today set afire by the Communists. The whole building is engulfed in flames. The dome threatens to collapse. One of the arsonists is already arrested; he is a young Dutch communist named van der Lubbe. We are all dumbfounded. How can anyone understand this insane act, shortly before the elections, shortly before the voting which Goebbels has so carefully prepared and called the “Day of the Awakening Volk.” What could have driven the communists to such a heroic act of despair! Didn’t they know that the Nazis would gladly welcome such an event?M accompanied me to the house....  My father was still working at his desk. I bring him the news. He was silent a few seconds, and then announced in his finest Bavarian dialect?: “Course, they’ve set it themselves....” But the arrested communist? Can they simply invent him?” From his fifty years of experience as a prosecuting attorney, my father smiles.’

28 February 1933 (Ebermayer)
‘In violation of the rights of parliamentary immunity, all Communist Reichstag members are arrested. All Communist Party functionaries are arrested. So too are the leaders of the Social Democratic Party. Why? Does the government assume that they stand behind the setting of the fire? Will the government claim that the Socialists encouraged and incited the arsonist? But no, it appears that we must stop trying to find rational arguments. The Revolution creates its own legalities.... Now for the first time since last night, the Revolution has truly begun.’

February 1933 (Solmitz)
‘The Communists have set the Reichstag on fire, a horrible fire, which has been deliberately started in various places in the building. The thoughts and hopes of most Germans is completely concentrating upon Hitler; his reputation soars to the stars; he is the savior for an evil and saddened German world.... When we ask people of every rank and educational background “Who are you voting for?”, [the answer] is always the same: “Why we’re voting for the same as everyone else, list #1, only Hitler.”  And a few cases, like us, are hesitating between #1 and #5 [DNVP]. …  An ordinary looking young man walked by, seeing nothing, hearing nothing, but all by himself singing in a booming voice a Nazi song. Franz said “It sounded like he was praying. It’s becoming a religion.” ’

1 March 1933 (Solmitz)
‘I telephones.... She never had any use for Hitler. I asked how her house was voting? She was almost insulted: “Why Hitler, naturally! No one else can even be considered. We must support his cause with all means!” This conversation decided me ... for all those who once would never even consider him are now voting for the man who has long been the only one who has really excited me politically, because without any formal program he wants exactly that which I want, and which Germany, also without any program, wants....

The government has issued a statement [on the Reichstag Fire].... Göring, speaking like an old, experienced official, reports in a dry yet completely serious fashion the horrible murderous plans of the Communists who have withdrawn into their stronghold of Hamburg. He began with the account of the raid on the Karl Liebknecht House, where the police found a complete system of subterranean passages and attic chambers.... Hundreds of implicating documents were uncovered: hostages to be taken from bourgeois families, wives and children of police officers to be used as shields, destruction of all cultural monuments just as in Russia palaces, museums, churches. They were to begin with the Reichstag. Twenty-eight different fires set there. The entire Communist leadership [in Germany] arrested. Thälmann has fled to Copenhagen. The Communists had intended to send armed groups of Reds into the villages to murder and burn, and then when the cities had been stripped of police, the terror would break out in the large municipalities: poison, boiling water, any implement from the most refined to the most primitive, would be turned into a weapon. It reads like a cops and robber story were it not for the fact that we have the case of Russia, which has experienced all the asiatic torture and orgy, which a German mind, even when sick, is incapable of devising, and, when healthy, is unable to believe.

If Italy, America, and England were clever, they would send us money right away, in order to fight Bolshevism. For our destruction will be their destruction! Göring says that he has not lost his nerve, and he won’t lose it. I hope the voters won’t lose their nerve and stay away from the polling booths out of fear. For truly the streets are today a battle field!’

O God George, can’t you see

Today marks the centenary of the birth of George Barker, one of the 20th century’s most Bohemian and charismatic of British poets. Though championed by T. S. Eliot, and loved by women - he had 15 children with four different partners - he is less well remembered than his contemporary, the similarly roguish Dylan Thomas. Scant evidence exists of Barker having been a diarist, though, Robert Fraser, uses a few diary notes in his 2002 biography, The Chameleon Poet. More interesting are the many references to Barker in the diaries of Elizabeth Smart, who wooed him, won him occasionally, had four children with him, but spent most of her life resenting his absence.

Barker was born in Loughton, Essex, on 26 February 1913, and raised by his Irish mother and English father in Battersea, London. Having left school at an early age, he soon found he wanted to pursue a career in writing. Encouraged by an elder sister, he sent the text of a recent journal to John Middleton Murry, editor of The Adelphi, who then gave him reviewing work and an introduction to other literary figures of the time. Aged just 20, Barker published his first book of poetry - Thirty Preliminary Poems - with Parton Press. The same year, he married his childhood sweetheart Jessica Woodward, and they moved to a cottage in Worth Matravers, Dorset. They would have three children together.

Barker soon came to the attention of T. S. Eliot at the publishers Faber and Faber, who supported him with advice and money, and published his next collections of poetry, Poems (1935) and Calamiterror (1937). Eliiot also helped him to get a position in Japan, in 1939, as Professor of English Literature at Tohoku University. But he hated the job, even his inaugural lecture went wrong, when his notes ran out with an hour still to go (see diary entry below). He then travelled to the United States, where he began a liaison with a Canadian writer, Elizabeth Smart, who had been pursuing him for a while. In 1943, Barker returned to England, leaving his wife and her children in New York, and joined Smart who had relocated to the Cotswolds. In 1945, Smart published her now famous autobiographical novel - By Grand Central Station I Sat Down and Wept - about her affair with Barker. In 1950, Barker responded with The Dead Seagull, describing his view of the affair.

By the 1950s, Barker was living in London with the film-maker Betty Cass, and spending some weekends with Smart, though Smart, in fact, spent much of her life filled with resentment towards Barker. By the end of the decade, Barker was living in Rome with yet another woman, Dede Farrelly, who would bear him children (three sons). In 1963, he met the young Scottish writer Elizabeth Langlands with whom he lived in Norfolk, and with whom he had five more children. He continued to produce books of poetry every few years, and to teach occasional semesters in the US. His Collected Poems were edited by Robert Fraser and published in 1987 by Faber and Faber. He died in 1991. Further information is available from Wikipedia, London Grip, The Guardian and Richard Warren’s blog. Also worth reading is Christopher Barker’s article in The Observer about his parents.

Barker does not seem to have left behind a diary of any significance, but there are a few mentions, and even an occasional quote, from Barker’s ‘journal’ or ‘diary’ in Fraser’s biography, The Chameleon Poet, published by Jonathan Cape in 2002. Unfortunately, Fraser does not provide any source for Barker’s diary, and the references to it peter out in the early 1940s. The University of Victoria library, in British Columbia, Canada, which has a significant archive of Barker’s literary remains, lists a ‘Manuscript Diary for 1968’: ‘Not a busy year, with probably less than 1,000 words of entries. Covers somewhat stained, as usual with Barker’s books.’ Otherwise, Fraser’s biography relies heavily on Barker’s letters, and, to a lesser extent, on the published diaries of Elizabeth Smart: Necessary Secrets (Grafton, 1991) and On the Side of the Angels (HarperCollins, 1994). For more on Smart’s diaries see The Diary Junction; her own centenary will be later this year, on 27 December.

Here are two extracts from Barker’s diary as found in The Chameleon Poet, the first about his inaugural lecture in Japan, and the second about Elizabeth Smart. They are followed by several about Barker from Smart’s published diaries.

6 February 1940 (Barker)
‘So I began to improvise a speech on the inveterate incomprehensibility of poetry - this is true anyhow - until, in the middle,, my mind fused and I went blank and knew that I would just walk out if nothing happened to stop me - so I held my heart, apologized for palpitation, drank some more water and saw the double line of absolutely negative faces and went on talking nonsense for an hour.’

22 July 1941 (Barker)
‘The grammar of glorification is demonstrated at the flick of her head in the candlelight and at her smile the foundation of vocal admiration collapses in the magnificat. Mythology, in a poverty of raiment, cannot clothe her and god almighty on his throne of grace serves only to adorn the ring on her little finger. O my Canadian!’

14 May 1944 (Smart)
‘In the evening we walked to Longborough, and I had 1½ pints of cider and was nicely drunk. On the way home I dashed into the prickles because George made a tit-for-tat remark about dedicating his book [. . .]. I lay among the prickles along the hedge and wanted to cease. When I got home, George was having supper and reading. He got into bed, and neither of us said anything, except George who made a few caustic remarks. But when I got into bed we made love.’

16 May 1944 (Smart)
‘George went off on his bicycle to go to . . . to catch the train to London. Georgina [born 1941] cried brokenheartedly. She’s consoling herself with ‘George’s going to bring me a present’. After he had gone she stamped her feet and screamed.’

28 June - 4 July 1944 (Smart)
‘All those days George sulking and hating me [. . .]. Nothing will ever be right until he wants more children, not necessarily per se, but necessarily and because of the nature of love. I know I know I know he’s only trying to keep the situation OPEN for Jessica so his misinterpretations, (I mean lies) will work out. O hell. O Heaven. O horror and he expects me to take this merely marking time and call it love and be willing. Of course I can’t really write in this book because he reads it and takes offence throwing up continually the fact that I wrote, “I am going to leave George.” I know that I am not a wise woman, or I could wait wisely, or say nothing and never want to see his letters or know to whom he writes or what he does in London or how he feels about J. But it is four years ago today since we met, and it is still as messy, if not messier than ever. The trouble is, for me, that there is always hope, i.e. either J. is a wonderful woman, in which case a terrible solution might be possible, or she is not, and he might eventually realize it. As for me, I feel myself getting less and less wonderful, and I shall certainly not be able to make any more noble omissions, or stand any more chicaneries, or sit back while he stands on his head to get back to devotions. If only, even for this limited period, he were really given to me and loving me without always (wondering!) whether he’ll be able to camouflage what he’s doing.’

26 April 1945 (Smart)
‘It is unbearable loving George. I always knew he (wouldn’t) couldn’t come and yet I always expect him and sit in that insane fever of anticipation no matter how I keep telling myself his coming is out of the question. What can I possibly do? I really can’t bear it. It gets worse, not better. He won’t let me leave him, yet he won’t stay with me. he won’t settle my difficulties, and yet he won’t let me try and settle them for myself. I love him desperately, but he continually ruins my hopes that we are going to lead a happy married life together. I always believe that this time it will really happen and there is never anything but the same disappointments and frustrations. He never comes when he says he will. He always stays away two or three times as long as he says he will. He always vanishes and lets me sit waiting for him in my best clothes, relishing the hour to come. O God George, can’t you see that I can’t bear this life of continual frustration and solitude? Suddenly one day I will crack, snap, break in two and BE GONE.’

Chuck ’em

Thirty years ago today, half my life give or take a few months, I bought a four bedroom house, in Kilburn. Until then, I had been living in a short-life housing association flat in Iverson Road, a few streets away, so this was quite a step up into the grown-up world. Here is my diary entry for that day.

Wednesday 16 February 1983
‘Completion Day. The nervous lanky solicitor kept ringing me up all morning to clarify the position of the keys. She’s on her way to Kilburn as though Kilburn were north of Newcastle. 13 Aldershot Road, NW6. Keep it simple. Like it simple. Never was a house owner before.

A nervous sort of tension has kept me high and arrogant for days with little peace of mind to sit and write. The new house has kept me more preoccupied than the thought of the new job at McGraw-Hill.

I pack slowly in an effort to sift my jumble of belongings. There is little of value and little of quality from one end of them to the other, from scalfs to furniture, from cutlery to enlarger. Despite a tingling excitement about the new house, I am also acutely aware that it will be full of the same possessions. Books are a bind. They fill endless boxes and make them heavy. Why do I keep such books, old Penguins, hard back copies of Dickens, compilations of 50s photographs, Time Life books on the sea and the like. And trousers. What do I do with those baggy flares that swallow up the carpet as well as my feet? Will they ever come back into fashion? Chuck ’em. And those new trousers with a waist too tight for my stomach line. Do I keep old jumpers with holes in to work on the car. Chuck ’em, Chuck ’em not, Chuck ’em . . .’

Thomas Crosfield’s diary

Thomas Crosfield was buried three and a half centuries ago today. Born and bred in the Lake District, he became an Oxford university man for most of his life, and lived through the turbulent civil war period. He is only remembered today because of his diary - not published until 1935 - which is full of detail about university life, in particular under the chancellorship of William Laud, who went on to become Archbishop of Canterbury.

Crosfield was born in Kendal, Westmorland (now Cumbria) in 1602, the son of a scrivener who later became mayor of Kendal. He was educated locally, and then at Queen’s College, Oxford, which made him a fellow in 1627. By then, he had already begun to preach in nearby parishes. In 1638, he became vicar of the Queen’s College living at Godshill, Isle of Wight, but this was sequestered by parliament in 1644. He may, according to the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (log-in required), have been vicar of Windermere, Westmorland, for a few months in 1644-1645.

Crosfield married Helen Wyvill in 1645, and the couple had two sons and three daughters. In 1648, Crosfield obtained the rectory of Chale, Isle of Wight, and in 1649 became rector of Spennithorne (50 miles east of Kendal on the other side of the Pennines) in the Wyvills’ gift, after his father-in-law’s death. He died in early 1663, and was buried at Spennithorne church on 15 February. 

There is very little information about Crosfield available on the web, and most of what we do know comes from a diary he kept intermittently - from 1626 to 1640 and then again in the mid-1650s - published in 1935 by Oxford University Press. Secondhand copies of The Diary of Thomas Crosfield are available for about £10 from Abebooks. Some references to Crosfield’s diary can be found in The Mathematicians’ Apprenticeship: Science, Universities and Society in England, 1560-1640 by Mordechai Feingold and published in 1984 by Cambridge University Press (which can be read at Googlebooks).

The most accessible online information about the diary comes from the ONDB: ‘The main run of Crosfield’s manuscript diary, Queen’s College MS 390, stretches, with gaps, from January 1626 to January 1640. There are also accounts of conversations between provost and fellows, or among the fellows, from 1632 to 1638, and analyses of books. Much of the diary proper and some other portions, but by no means all that is of significance, was edited in 1935 by F. S. Boas. The text, in English and Latin, with some passages in idiosyncratic French, throws light on collegiate and university life in a period which included William Laud’s chancellorship. [Laud, also a diarist, went on to become Archbishop of Canterbury from 1633 to 1645]. Christopher Potter, provost from 1626 to 1646, who favoured the diarist, comes to life in table-talk, theological views, disciplinary measures, careful husbanding of resources, and efforts to beautify the chapel. [. . .] 

He was interested in town politics and assizes, and particularly in theatrical performances. A keen observer of national and international events, he frequently summarized ‘currantos’ and letters. His diary offers incidental evidence for the study of French, Hebrew, Arabic, mathematics, and astronomy; the royal visit to Oxford in August 1636 is also described. [. . .] Diary entries recommence in February 1653 and run until February 1654, replete with concern about money and litigation, debts and tithes, but also touching on Quakers. They suggest that Crosfield had come to accept Cromwell.’

I noticed my feet

The British Library has acquired Sir Alec Guinness’s personal archive, including over 100 volumes of diaries. Guinness did publish two books of diaries, when he was alive, but they only concerned a few years in the 1990s. The large number of diaries, to be opened up for public scrutiny in 2014, are likely to be much in demand, if media interest in the Library’s new acquisition is anything to go by.

Guinness was born in London in 1914 to Agnes Cuff. Though the identity of his father was never confirmed, a Scottish banker, Andrew Geddes, paid for his private education. Guinness went to work in advertising but then switched to the theatre, making his stage debut in 1934 as an extra at the King’s Theatre. In 1937, he joined John Gielgud’s acting company and appeared in many theatre classics. A year later he married Merula Salaman, and they had one son. During the war, he served in the Royal Navy, first as a seaman then as an officer with various commands in the Mediterranean area.

Although Guinness returned to the stage after the war, he also became increasingly involved with films, starring in many of the Ealing comedies, such as Kind Hearts and Coronets, The Ladykillers and The Man in the White Suit. In 1954, he converted to Roman Catholicism. Guinness remained a star in the late 1950s and 1960s thanks to films such as Lawrence of Arabia and The Bridge on the River Kwai (for which the British Academy awarded him a best actor award). He was knighted in 1959.

In the 1970s, Guinness seemed to have more success in television, particularly in the role of George Smiley in several serialisations of John le Carré novels. And then, in the late 1970s and 1980s, he won over a new generation of fans by appearing in the Star Wars movies. He died in 2000. For more biographical information see Wikipedia,  the British Film Institute, or any number of obituary notices (The Guardian, The Telegraph, The New York Times, BBC).

In the last decade of his life, Guinness revealed himself to be an entertaining diarist, first, in 1996, with My Name Escapes Me: The Diary of a Retiring Actor, with a preface by John le Carré; and then, in 1999, with A Positively Final Appearance: A Journal 1996-1998. Both books were first published by Hamish Hamilton.

Now, it has been announced, Guinness left behind a lot more than two published diaries. The British Library made this announcement on 7 February: ‘The British Library has acquired the personal archive of Oscar-winning actor Sir Alec Guinness. The archive, which charts Guinness’s career from the late 1930s to his death in 2000, includes more than 900 of his letters to family and friends and over 100 volumes of diaries, and was purchased with generous support from The Friends of the British Library. [. . .] Cataloguing is due to take place over the next year and the Library anticipates that the archive will be open for research in 2014.’

The press release goes on to say: ‘These papers, which will be publicly available for the first time, offer an intimate account of Alec Guinness’s life, detailing his wartime responsibilities and his conversion to Roman Catholicism in 1956, as well as his successful career on stage and screen. Highlights include [. . .] a diary entry following the death of Laurence Olivier in which Guinness reflects on Olivier’s acting technique and contribution to the stage, and Guinness’s account of his premonition of death the day before his boat went down in a freak storm during World War II.’ The archive, reportedly, cost the British Library some £320,000.

Of various stories (The Independent, The Times, BBC) in the media about the British Library’s purchase - largely focusing on Guinness’s opinion of other knights of the stage -  The Guardian reveals most about the diaries.

They often have, The Guardian says, ‘a slightly Pooterish tone, with careful notes about the weather, his blood pressure and his finances. In 1983 he buys sweaters as presents for his son and grandson, “Italian and handsome but fiendish prices, £170 and £125”. Both diaries and letters reveal him as deeply superstitious. Also in 1983, soon after learning of the death of [Ralph] Richardson, he was putting on “a very heavy grey overcoat” and felt somebody invisible help him on with it. “I felt a shiver of fright, made the sign of the cross and then laughed . . . I laughed I believe because I thought it was the sort of thing Ralph might have done.” ’

The BBC gives this extract, dating from 12 July 1989, the day after death of Sir Laurence Olivier: ‘His “I defy you, stars” in Romeo was memorable. And so was his Poor naked wretches etc in Lear. But his famous howl in Oedipus I thought just tiresome. [. . .] He knew every trick of the trade and used every one, including, when he made his first entrance the lights coming up a few points and going down again when he left. [. . .] He was always very conscious of the audience - and his own powers over them. I’m not sure he was an artist but he was total actor - a giant among actors.’

Here, meanwhile, are two published extracts, including the first that appears in My Name Escapes Me.

1 January 1995
‘Through a chink in the bedroom curtains my unenthusiastic eye caught an early-morning glimpse of the New Year: it looked battleship grey. As I reluctantly swung out of bed I noticed my feet - never something on which I like to dwell. They appeared to be crumbling, sandstone monuments, the soles criss-crossed with ancient, indecipherable runes, which probably hold the secrets of eighty years of living and partly living - of happiness and fears, of distresses, of rather embarrassing successes and expected failures. I drew open the curtains and found the sky was in fact cloudless blue and the tops of the trees promised sunlight. It was all very different exactly fifty-one years ago when I was wrecked in a hurricane in the Adriatic, chucked around by thirty-foot waves and a wind of 120 m.p.h. I never liked New Year’s Day anyway; it has too often felt like a day of foreboding.

No resolutions have been made. Experience has taught me they barely survive a week. But I have made a few negative wishes for other people. I never wish to see again any reproduction of Andy Warhol’s portrait of Marilyn Monroe. Also I am anxious about that elderly lady lying on her face at the bottom of her stairs, clutching the accident alarm which is meant to alert her neighbours. She has been prostrate there for about two years and still no one has come to her aid. And I long for twelve months when no politician will used the word ‘clear’ to describe what is manifestly muddy or incomprehensible. Would all BBC (and other) announcers please read and inwardly digest Robert Burchfield’s The Spoken Word? It is slim, pocketable, authoritative and, after all, a BBC publication by a great lexicographer.

A sudden little blizzard made us too apprehensive to drive the couple of miles to Mass in the evening, so I threw a log on the fire and mixed a lethal cocktail called, I believe, the Claridge. (Half and half gin and French vermouth, with a good dash of Cointreau and apricot brandy.) That kept our eyes, slightly unfocused, on the TV production of Cold Comfort Farm.’

6 March 1996
‘Memories of Brighton crowded in on me as we drove home, from visits as a schoolboy to appearances at the Theatre Royal in later life; from doing the officer training course (for RNVR) at HMS King Alfred at the far edge of Hove (it now looks like some sort of leisure complex) to weekends during the fifties at the Royal Crescent Hotel at the eastern end of Brighton front. [. . .] What I liked most about Brighton as a boy was the little electric railway which ran from near the Palace Pier to Black Rock and had a section of its line, all too short for my money, running out over the sea. When the sea was a bit rough this was a thrill; when it was really rough the cissy little train didn’t function. I must have spent many happy, if lonely, hours to’ing and fro’ing. Not absolutely lonely. I have always found the sea, in whatever mood it was in, good and sufficient company.’

Sher-Gil’s Indian women

Today is the centenary of the birth of Amrita Sher-Gil, one of the Indian’s most important 20th century painters with an international reputation - indeed she has been dubbed India’s Frida Kahlo. Sher-Gil lived a rich and talented life but died rather mysteriously aged only 28. She has been the subject of several biographical works, several of which draw on a diary she kept as a child.

Sher-Gil was born in Budapest on 30 January 1913. Her father was a Sikh aristocrat and scholar and her mother a Jewish opera singer. She spent much of her early childhood in Budapest, and was influenced by her uncle, Ervin Baktay, a painter and noted expert on India. In 1921, the family moved to Summer Hill, Shimla in India, where Amrita and her sister would give concerts and act in plays. When not yet a teenager, she was taken to Florence for a short while where she studied in an art school.

By the age of 17, Sher-Gil was living in Paris, and studying at École des Beaux-Arts under Lucien Simon and being influenced by the works of Cézanne and Gauguin. In 1932, her painting Young Girls (see below) led to her being elected as an Associate of the Grand Salon in Paris, making her the youngest ever and, indeed, the only Asian to have received this recognition. In 1934, she returned to India, and launched herself into the traditions of Indian art, later letting herself be influenced by Mughal and Pahari painting and by the cave paintings at Ajanta Caves.

Sher-Gil married her Hungarian first cousin, Dr Victor Egan, in 1938, and lived with him at her father’s family’s home in Gorakhpur, Uttar Pradesh, before moving in 1941 to Lahore, still then part of India. She is said to have had many affairs, with men and women, and, before her marriage, to have pursued a young Malcolm Muggeridge.

Days before the opening of her first show in Lahore, Sher-Gil became seriously ill and died, aged but 28, though the cause of the illness, amid many rumours, has never been established. Subsequently, the Government of India declared Sher-Gil’s works as National Art Treasures and houses them in the National Gallery of Modern Art in New Delhi. Today, she is considered one of the most important Indian women artists of the 20th century, and is sometimes referred to as India’s Frida Kahlo. Further biographical information is available at the Sikh Heritage website, the Tate, and Wikipedia.

Although there are no extracts of any diary kept by Sher-Gil readily-available on the internet, she does seem to have kept a diary as a child - this is referred to in various biographical works. For example, a review of Yashodhara Dalmia’s Amrita Sher-Gil: A Life published by Viking (India) in 2006 (see Amazon for some pages), and recently republished by Penguin India, says this: ‘Although her work was very varied, Sher-Gil’s women are of special interest. Dalmia quotes an entry from Sher-Gil’s diary when she was just twelve, about a child bride, noting the pathos of the little girl sitting silently in a corner, a “helpless toy” in the hands of those responsible for her well-being.’

More recently, in 2010, Tulika Books has published, in two volumes, Amrita Sher-Gil: A Self-Portrait in Letters and Writings edited by Vivan Sundaram. A film by Sundaram’s sister, Navina, called Amrita Sher-Gil, A Family Album also uses texts from Sher-Gil’s diary.

Finally, in 2009, Tulika Books published a children’s book, My Name is Amrita . . . Born to be an artist by Anjali Raghbeer, which ‘reads like a diary, and in fact includes actual lines from Amrita Sher-Gil’s childhood diaries’. This book can be previewed at Googlebooks.

Imagine my feelings!

The legendary Gordon of Khartoum was born 180 years ago today. Though popular with the British public for his exploits in China and Sudan, he died as a result of his own stubbornness in defending Khartoum against Muslim rebels - the British government had wanted him to retreat. In his diary, first published the year of his death, Gordon provides much detail about the year-long siege of Khartoum, but also, and perhaps unusually for a soldier, comments on his own emotions, as in ‘I am on tenterhooks’, ‘what a six hours of anxiety’, and ‘imagine my feelings!’.

Gordon was born on 28 January 1833 in Woolwich, the son of a Royal Artillery officer, and entered the Royal Military Academy as a gentleman cadet when only 15. He had intended to follow his father into the artillery, but eventually graduated in 1852 as a second lieutenant in the Corp of Royal Engineers. After working on Pembroke Dock in Wales he sought, and achieved, a posting to Crimea. There he built huts for the troops in winter, and helped map the Russian trenches. He was present at the siege of Sevastopol, and was decorated for bravery by the French.

In 1860, Gordon volunteered for the Arrow war against the Chinese, and, in 1862, his corps of engineers was assigned to strengthen the European trading centre of Shanghai, which was threatened by the insurgents of the Taiping Rebellion. For the best part of two years, he also commanded a large peasant force which helped defend the city. In 1865, he returned to England a hero, and was nicknamed Chinese Gordon. In 1873 he was appointed governor of the province of Equatoria in Sudan, and subsequently governor-general.

During his time in Africa, Gordon mapped the upper Nile and established a line of stations along the river as far south as present day Uganda; and he also crushed rebellions and helped suppress the slave trade. Ill health forced him back to England in 1880, but he returned to Sudan in 1884 to evacuate Egyptian forces from Khartoum, threatened by Sudanese rebels. The besieged city was eventually over-run, and, in January 1885, Gordon was captured and beheaded. In Britain, where his death had caused a public outcry, he was re-nicknamed Gordon of Khartoum. Although there was strong criticism of the way Prime Minister Gladstone had handled the Sudan situation, historians now believe Gordon was at fault for defying orders by not evacuating Khartoum when it was still possible. Further information is available from Wikipedia, the BBC, or The Victorian Web.

Only months after his death, publishers, keen to take advantage of Gordon’s popularity, brought out books of diaries he had kept during his life, notably one about his exploits in China and another about the last of his ventures, at Khartoum: General Gordon’s Private Diary of his Exploits in China; amplified by Samuel Mossman, published in 1855 by Sampson Low, Marston, Searle & Rivington; and From Korti to Khartum - A journal of the desert march from Korti to Gubat, and of the ascent of the Nile in General Gordon’s steamers by Sir Charles W. Wilson published by William Blackwood. Both these titles are freely available at Internet Archive.

Here are some extracts from the final month of the siege of Khartoum, including Gordon’s last diary extract to survive (an oke is a unit of weight, slightly more than a kilogram).

11 November 1884
‘This morning, 6 a.m., 200 Arabs came to north of Omdurman Fort, and fired vollies towards the village of Tuti and the Fort; the Fort answered, and the footmen of the Arabs retreated; then the Arab horsemen made the footmen go back again, and so on, four or five times; at last they retired. We had three soldiers and one woman wounded; only one wound was at all serious. Arabs must have fired five thousand rounds; evidently they do not wish much to fight. Nineteen Arabs came along the right bank of the White Nile from Halfeyeh to Goba, and captured a donkey; this even the Shaggyeh could not stand, and so I suppose one hundred sallied out and some fifteen horsemen; then came a running fight across the plain, but it was evident the horsemen would not head the Arabs; however, from the roof, it was evident four or five Arabs were killed, and the pursuit is still going on. You may imagine the Arabs have a good deal of confidence, for their nineteen men were distant at least ten miles of desert from their camp and were at a. They were going along b b when they were discovered with the captured donkey. Five at least of these Arabs got away. The Arabs are sure to come down to avenge this.

Noon
Arabs coming down from their camp, Ismailia getting steam up. North Fort reports (?) “Captures, 3 Remingtons! 3 spears! 3 swords! and the killing of 20? 5 got away?” The Arabs are halted on the sand hills. Five soldiers and one woman came in from yjr Arabs at Omdurman, report, “Arab rocket-tube broken; carriage of gun broken; the Arabs deserting; rumoured advance of the Expedition; quarrels going on; Slatin in chains.” The Shaggyeh say they killed twenty Arabs, but they only say they captured nine arms so eleven must have been unarmed!!!

It appears 93,000 okes + 166,000 okes = 259,000 okes of biscuit have been stolen in the last year, only found out now; however, we have now quarter of a million okes, which will see us only for a month or so. It appears that more than thirty of the principal merchants are engaged in the above robbery of biscuit. The process is not finished. One of the greatest problems will be what to do with those Shaggyeh, those Cairo Bashi Bazouks and fellaheen soldiers, whose courage is about equal, perhaps the palm is due to the Shaggyeh. The twenty cows I mentioned as captured by the men of Omdurman Fort (making up forty-one captured cows) were driven in by five soldiers escaping from the Arabs and were not captured. They do not stick at a lie (and, in this, resemble some people in high places I know). 259,000 okes of biscuit was a good haul, nearly two and half million pounds: worth £26,000 now, or £9,000 in ordinary times.’

12 November 1884
‘Last night three slaves came into Omdurman. At 11 p.m. they reported Arabs meant to attack to-day at dawn. It was reported to me, but the telegraph clerk did not choose to tell me till 7 a.m. to-day. We had been called up at 5.30 a.m. by a violent fusillade at Omdurman. The Arabs came out in considerable force, and, as I had not been warned, the steamers had not steam up. From 5.30 a.m. to 8.30 Arabs came on and went back continually. All the cavalry were out; the expenditure of ammunition was immense. The Arabs had a gun or guns on the bank. Details further on, as the firing is still going on.

10:20 a.m.
For half-an-hour firing lulled, but then recommenced, and is still going on. The Ismailia was struck with a shell, but I hear is not seriously damaged. The Husseinyeh is aground (I feel much the want of my other steamers at Metemma).

11:15 a.m.
Firing has lulled; it was very heavy for the last three-quarters of an hour from Ismailia and Arabs; it is now desultory, and is dying away. Husseinyeh is still aground. The Ismailia is at anchor. What a six hours of anxiety for me, when I saw the shells strike the water near the steamers from the Arabs; imagine my feelings! We have £831 in specie and £42,800 in paper; and there is £14,600 in paper out in the town! I call this state of finance not bad, after more than eight months’ blockade. The troops are owed half a mouth’s pay, and even that can be scarcely called owed them, for I have given them stores, and beyond the regulations.

Noon
The firing has ceased, I am glad to say. I have lived years in these last hours. Had I lost the Ismailia, I should have lost the Husseinyeh (aground), and then Omdurman, and the North Fort! And then the Town!

1 p.m.
The Arabs are firing on the steamers with their two guns. The Husseinyeh still aground; that is the reason of it. Firing, 1.30 p.m., now has ceased. The Ismailia, struck by three shells, had one man killed, fifteen wounded on board of her; she did really well. I boxed the telegraph clerk’s ears for not giviing me the telegram last night (after repeated orders that no consideration was to prevent his coming to me); and then, as my conscience pricked me, I gave him $5. He said he did not mind if I killed him - I was his father (a chocolate-coloured youth of twenty). I know all this is brutal - abrutissant, as Hansall calls it — but what is one to do? If you cut their pay, you hurt their families. I am an advocate for summary and quick punishment, which hurts only the defaulter. Had this clerk warned me, of course at daybreak, the steamers would have had their steam up, and been ready.’

14 December 1884
‘Arabs fired two shells at the Palace this morning; 546 ardebs dhoora! in store; also 83,525 okes of biscuit!

10:30 a.m.
The steamers are down at Omdurman, engaging the Arabs, consequently I am on tenterhooks

11:30 a.m.
Steamers returned; the Bordeen was struck by a shell in her battery; we had only one man wounded. We are going to send down the Bordeen tomorrow with this Journal. If I was in command of the two hundred men of the Expeditionary Force, which are all that are necessary for the movement, I should stop just below Halfeyeh, and attack the Arabs at that place before I came on here to Kartoum. I should then communicate with the North Fort, and act according to circumstances. Now MARK THIS, if the Expeditionary Force, and I ask for no more than two hundred men, does not come in ten days, the town may fall; and I have done my best for the honour of our country. Good bye.’

What Nasser has done tonight

Hugh Gaitskell, sometimes dubbed the best Prime Minister the UK never had, died 50 years ago today. For about a decade, and long before it was fashionable, he kept a political diary. Many of his diary entries are long and very detailed, but there are often long gaps between them. In one entry, from July 1956, he describes how Anthony Eden, one of the country’s least successful prime ministers, first informed him of Nasser’s unilateral decision to nationalise the Suez Canal Company.

Gaitskell was born in London in 1906, and educated at the Dragon School, Winchester College and New College, Oxford. He became a socialist during the 1926 General Strike. During the 1930s, he worked as a teacher at University College, London, where he rose to head the Department of Political Economy. He stood for election as MP for Chatham in 1935 but was defeated by the Conservative candidate.

During the war, Gaitskell served in the Ministry of Economic Welfare, and then, in 1945, he was elected Labour MP for Leeds. By 1950, with support from Hugh Dalton, he had risen through ministerial posts to become Chancellor of the Exchequer. He lost the post when Labour was defeated in 1951. Following the resignation of Clement Attlee in 1955, Gaitskell defeated Herbert Morrison and Aneurin Bevan to become party leader. However, his leadership failed to bring Labour victory in the 1959 general election.

The lack of success in the election led the party to a period of internal squabbling and to lurch to the left with a decision to support unilateral disarmament. A year later, Gaitskell managed to secure a reversal of that policy, but not to heal divisions over the issue. In 1960 and 1961, he was challenged for the leadership but successfully held on to his position. In 1962, some of his supporters were alienated by his decision to oppose British membership of the European Economic Community. His sudden death - on 18 January 1963 - led to Harold Wilson becoming party leader. History has been kind to Gaitskell in that, because he never reached the highest office, he has been dubbed by UK pundits as ‘the best prime minister we never had’. Further information is available, from Wikipedia, The Independent, the BBC, and Encyclopaedia Britannica.

Gaitskell began keeping a diary as soon as he was elected to the House of Commons in 1945, and continued through until October 1956, after which no further texts, recorded or dictated, have been found. His purpose, Gaitskell wrote in 1954, was to record ‘what might be called “inside events” . . . of interest to future historians, or even the public generally. It is not a personal diary about my thoughts and feelings to any great extent, but a political diary, and therefore I quite ruthlessly try and restrict it to what people regard as important events.’ His diary writing, however, was only intermittent, weekly or monthly for example, and thus his entries often recollect events over the period since his last entry. Also, there are long gaps when he wrote no diary entries at all.

The Diary of Hugh Gaitskell, 1945-1956 was edited by Philip M. Williams and published by Jonathan Cape in 1983. Williams, who some years earlier had authored Hugh Gaitskell: a Political Biography, explains, in his introduction to the diary, how it reveals a ‘good deal about the daily lives of senior politicians’, and how this was long before it was fashionable to keep political diaries. He also goes into detail as to why he thinks Gaitskell was such an irregular diary-keeper.

Here is part of one entry in which Gaitskell records how he first heard about the forthcoming Suez crisis. (The three Iraqis mentioned at the beginning, including the King, were to be murdered during the military coup in Baghdad two years later.)

26 July 1956
‘During the past fortnight or so the King of Iraq has been here and there have been various functions: one at Buckingham Palace, another at the Iraq Embassy and a third this evening at No. 10 Downing Street. The King, who is a boy of 21, brought with him the Crown Prince, his uncle, and also Nuri es-Said, the old statesman, now aged 67, who has been Prime Minister of Iraq on and off for the last 30 years. [. . .]

But the most dramatic moment was tonight at the dinner at No. 10. At about 10:45, I was sitting next to the King talking to him in one of the apartments, with the Lord Chancellor sitting near. We had been talking for some time about this and that, when Eden came up and said, “I want you to know - and I think the Opposition should know as well - what Nasser has done tonight. He has made a speech announcing that he is going ahead with the Aswan Dam, that they cannot get any foreign money, but that, nevertheless, they are going ahead, and, in order to finance it, they are taking over the Suez Canal Company, and will collect dues which the Company receives from ships using the Canal”. I asked if he had taken action in support of this. Eden said that he understood that the Egyptian police had taken over the offices and the building of the Company already. A little later, Eden corrected what he had said and added that Nasser apparently also indicated that he was going to increase the dues very substantially in order to raise the money for the Dam. I asked him what he was going to do. He said he was getting hold of the American Ambassador immediately. He thought perhaps they ought to take it to the Security Council, and we then had a few moments conversation about the consequences, Selwyn Lloyd the Foreign Secretary standing near.

I said “Supposing Nasser doesn’t take any notice?” whereupon Selwyn Lloyd said, “Well, I suppose in that case the old-fashioned ultimatum will be necessary”. I said that I thought they ought to act quickly, whatever they did, and that as far as Great Britain was concerned, public opinion would almost certainly be behind them. But I also added that they must get America into line. This should not be difficult, since, after all, the Americans had themselves precipitated this by their decision to withdraw all financial assistance for the Aswan Dam. There was some discussion about what the Russians might do. Evidently, said Eden, they had not provided the money, but, he said, they may, of course, back them up on this. I said that I was not so sure especially if they have to pay the higher dues themselves on their own ships. Moreover, they wanted to be with the big boys now, and it might not suit their policy to support Egypt. In a half-joking way, I said, since the King and Crown Prince were both standing there, “What do you think about it?” The Crown Prince rather wittily replied, after a bit, “We had better send for our Prime Minister too - that’s the constitutional position”. Whereupon there was general laughter.’

This universal religion

Swami Vivekananda, an Indian monk credited with raising the profile of Hinduism on the world stage and introducing yoga to the West, was born 150 years ago today. There is no readily-available evidence that he kept a diary, but his collected works - first published a century ago and widely available on the internet - contain several sections described as being sourced ‘from the diary of a disciple’.

Narendranath Datta was born on 12 January 1863 in Calcutta (now Kolkata) into an upper middle class family. He received a privileged education, that included Western philosophy and history, at the General Assembly’s Institution (now the Scottish Church College). Although initially rejecting the teachings of the famous Indian mystic, Ramakrishna, he was eventually drawn, after the death of his father, to become Ramakrishna’s pupil, and then his chief disciple. After Ramakrishna’s death, he and several other disciples founded the first building of the Ramakrishna Math - the monastery of the first monastic order of Ramakrishna. In 1887, he took formal monastic vows with the name Swami Bibidishananda, though later he was given the name Vivekananda.

In 1888, Vivekananda left the monastery to take up the Hindu religious life of a wandering monk. He travelled extensively in India for five years, mostly living on alms, visiting centres of learning, meeting people from all strata of Indian life and all religions, and taking on disciples. Through these travels he became familiar with India’s diverse religious traditions and social patterns. In 1893, he made his way to the US, via Japan and China, where he took part in the Parliament of World Religions in Chicago. He was an instant success. Wikipedia’s biography of Vivekananda says this about his presence at the Parliament.

‘Dr. Barrows, the president of the Parliament said, “India, the Mother of religions was represented by Swami Vivekananda, the Orange-monk who exercised the most wonderful influence over his auditors.” He attracted widespread attention in the press, which dubbed him as the “Cyclonic monk from India”. The New York Critique wrote, “He is an orator by divine right, and his strong, intelligent face in its picturesque setting of yellow and orange was hardly less interesting than those earnest words, and the rich, rhythmical utterance he gave them.” The New York Herald wrote, “Vivekananda is undoubtedly the greatest figure in the Parliament of Religions. After hearing him we feel how foolish it is to send missionaries to this learned nation.” The American newspapers reported Vivekananda as “the greatest figure in the parliament of religions” and “the most popular and influential man in the parliament”.

The start of Western interest in Indian religions and aspects of them, like yoga, are credited to Vivekananda, and, specifically to his presence at the Chicago Parliament of World Religions. Thereafter, Vivekananda toured the US, lecturing for the best part of two years; he also founded the Vedanta Society of New York in 1894. He stopped touring the following year but gave free classes on Vedanta and yoga. He visited England twice, travelling from the US, before returning to India in 1897. In Calcutta once again, he established the Ramakrishna Mission. It is now based, on the outskirts of Kolkata, at the Belur Math, in a large temple notable for architecture that fuses Hindu, Christian and Islamic motifs.

Despite declining health, Vivekananda left India, in 1899, for England, then the US, and then Europe, where he attended the Congress of Religions in Paris in 1900. He returned to Calcutta in 1902, settling at the Belur Math, where he received many visitors, not least royals and politicians. He died in July 1902, aged but 39. There is much information about Vivekananda on the internet, at Wikipedia, and the Belur Math website.

Vivekananda’s collected writings were first published in English in eight volumes starting in 1915, but have been republished many times since. The volumes contain the few works he published in his lifetime (Karma Yoga, Raja Yoga, Vedanta Philosophy), and many of the lectures he gave. Amazon is offering a 1947 edition, totalling 4444 pages. However, these collected works are also widely available to read freely on the internet at, for example, Advaita Ashram, Holy Books, and Wikisource.

Although there is no evidence of any diary Vivekananda might have written, several of the volumes contain substantial texts described as ‘from the diary of a disciple’ (the disciple being Sharatchandra Chakravarty). These are not dated like conventional diary entries, and largely consist of verbatim reports of Vivekananda’s conversations with disciples. Here is one example (translated from the original language, Bengali) taken from the Belur Math website.

‘It is three or four days since Swamiji has set his foot in Calcutta (On February 20, 1897) after his first return from the West. The joy of the devotees of Shri Ramakrishna knows no bounds at enjoying his holy presence after a long time. And the well-to-do among them are considering themselves blessed to cordially invite Swamiji to their own houses. This afternoon Swamiji had an invitation to the house of Srijut Priyanath Mukhopadhyaya, a devotee of Shri Ramakrishna, at Rajballabhpara in Baghbazar. Receiving this news, many devotees assembled today in his house. [. . .]

While various topics were going on, a man came in and announced that Mr. Narendranath Sen, the Editor of the Mirror, had come for an interview with Swamiji. Swamiji asked the bearer of this news to show him into that small room. Narendra Babu came and taking a seat there introduced various topics about England and America. In answer to his questions Swamiji said, “Nowhere in the world is to be found another nation like the Americans, so generous, broad-minded, hospitable, and so sincerely eager to accept new ideas.” “Wherever work”, he went on, “has been done in America has not been done through my power. The people of America have accepted the ideas of Vedanta, because they are so good-hearted.”

Referring to England he said, “There is no nation in the world so conservative as the English. They do not like so easily to accept any new idea, but if through perseverance they can be once made to understand any idea, they will never give it up by any means. Such firm determination you will find in no other nation. This is why they occupy the foremost position in the world in power and civilization.” Then declaring that if qualified preachers could be had, there was greater likelihood of the Vedanta work being permanently established in England than in America, he continued, “I have only laid the foundation of the work. If future preachers follow my path, a good deal of work may be done in time.”

Narendra Babu asked, “What future prospect is there for us in preaching religion in this way?”

Swamiji said: “In our country there is only this religion of Vedanta. Compared with the Western civilisation, it may be said, we have hardly got anything else. But by the preaching of this universal religion of Vedanta, a religion which gives equal rights to acquire spirituality to men of all creeds and all paths of religious practice, the civilised West would come to know what a wonderful degree of spirituality once developed in India and how that is still existing. By the study of this religion, the Western nations will have increasing regard and sympathy for us. Already these have grown to some extent. In this way, if we have their real sympathy and regard, we would learn from them the sciences bearing on our material life, thereby qualifying ourselves better for the struggle for existence. On the other hand, by learning this Vedanta from us, they will be enabled to secure their own spiritual welfare.”

Narendra Babu asked, “Is there any hope of our political progress in this kind of interchange?”

Swamiji said, “They (the Westerners) are the children of the great hero Virochana! Their power makes the five elements play like puppets in their hands. If you people believe that we shall in case of conflict with them gain freedom by applying those material forces, you are profoundly mistaken. Just as a little piece of stone figures before the Himalayas, so we differ from them in point of skill in the use of those forces. Do you know what my idea is? By preaching the profound secrets of the Vedanta religion in the Western world, we shall attract the sympathy and regard of these mighty nations, maintaining for ever the position of their teacher in spiritual matters, and they will remain our teachers in all material concerns. The day when, surrendering the spiritual into their hands, our countrymen would sit at the feet of the West to learn religion, that day indeed the nationality of this fallen nation will be dead and gone for good. Nothing will come of crying day and night before them, ‘Give me this or give me that.’ Then there will grow a link of sympathy and regard between both nations by this give-and-take intercourse, there will be then no need for these noisy cries. They will do everything of their own accord. I believe that by this cultivation of religion and the wider diffusion of Vedanta, both this country and the West will gain enormously. To me the pursuit of politics is a secondary means in comparison with this. I will lay down my life to carry out this belief practically. If you believe in any other way of accomplishing the good of India, well, you may go on working your own way.”

Narendra Babu shortly left, expressing his unqualified agreement with Swamiji’s ideas. The disciple, hearing the above words from Swamiji, astonishingly contemplated his luminous features with steadfast gaze.’