Burning at the heart

François Mauriac, a French novelist and Nobel Prize winner barely read in the English world, was born 130 years ago today. As an old man emerging from the Second World War, he was a strong supporter of Charles De Gaulle; indeed, Mauriac’s son worked for the president. For some of his life, Mauriac kept diaries, but these - like most of his novels - have not been translated into English. One extract, though, in Robert Speaight’s biography, tells of him struggling to find the balance in his writing so that ‘the young saint, my hero, is burning at the heart of the furnace.’

Mauriac was born on 11 October 1885 in Bordeaux, France. His father died soon after, leaving his mother to raise five children, of which he was the youngest. He studied at the University of Bordeaux and then at the École Nationale des Chartes, Paris, but soon left to pursue a career in literature. He managed to publish his first work, a collection of poems - Les Mains jointes - in 1909. But, it was to novels that he soon turned, publishing L’Enfant chargé de chaînes and La Robe prétexte in 1913-1914. In 1913, he married Jeanne Lafon and, between 1914 and 1924, they had four children. In 1923, Le Baiser au lépreux (The Kiss to the Leper) made him famous in France, and established his literary reputation.

Further novels followed, including Le Noeud de vipères in 1932, a marital drama often considered Mauriac’s masterpiece. The following year, he was elected to the Académie Française. As the decade progressed, he wrote more novels, but also plays. He took a strong stance against totalitarianism, and denounced Fascism in Italy and Spain. During the war he lived in occupied territory, and worked with writers of the Resistance. After the war, he was a great supporter of Charles De Gaulle, who made him Grand Officer of the Legion of Honour. From the mid-1950s, he wrote a popular weekly newspaper column, Bloc-Notes.

Mauriac was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1952. Though his fame did not spread far outside France, some consider him the country’s greatest writer after Marcel Proust. He died in 1970. One of his sons, Claude, was a writer and also worked as personal secretary to Charles de Gaulle. And, through a daughter, he was the grandfather of Anne Wiazemsky, actress and novelist who married Jean-Luc Godard. Further biographical information is available in English at Wikipedia (a fuller bio can be found at the French Wikipedia), the Nobel Prize website, Encyclopædia Britannica or Authors’ Calendar. A little more information can also be gathered from English reviews of Jean-Luc Barré’s biography of Mauriac (at the TLS for example).

Very few of Mauriac’s novels appear to have been translated into English, so it is no surprise to find that there are no diaries published in English either. However, it seems, he did keep a diary. In 1948, he published Journal d’un homme de trente ans: (extraits); and, from 1950 on, I believe, the French publisher Gallimard, began publishing his complete works. One volume, published in 1952, contains a series of his journals - see the British Library holding. But the only diary extracts I can find that have been translated into English are in Robert Speaight’s biography - François Mauriac: A study of the writer and the man (Chatto & Windus, 1976) - as per the following:

9 June 1916
‘Paris. Temptations. Passions go on velvet feet in the jungle. Huge beasts. Perfume of sensuality.’

18 July 1916
‘Must free our body of desire.’

28 January 1917
‘My son Claude to keep me pure.’

2 March 1917
‘Paris is disgusting.  “Great Ladies”, pederasts, lesbians, everyone is procuring for somebody else.’

1918
‘The war is ending on a picture postcard where we see the French re-entering Metz and Strasbourg . . . Frightening absence of God in the triumphal cries of Clemenceau.’

Undated
‘Perhaps it is always enough that a creature we love should live beside us, not perhaps that we should love them less, but that we should no longer realise that we love them.’

1934
‘Still, after many years, to have so much to say to one another, from the most trivial to the most serious, without any desire to astonish or to be admired - what a wonderful thing that is!. No more need of lies; man and wife have become so transparent to each other that lying can no longer be of any use. This is the only love that cherishes immobility, that feeds on the habitual and daily round.’

29 July 1953
‘At my age, the conflict between the Christian and the novelist has moved on to another plane. It’s much less a question of the Jansenist scruples that used to trouble me in describing the passions than a kind of disenchantment with everything to do with art in general, and with my own art in particular. A feeling that art is literally an idol, that it has its martyrs and its prophets, and that for many people it is a substitute for God. And not art alone, but the word - the word that has not been made flesh. [. . . Having resumed work on a new novel, L’Agneau, he is determined not to put it aside] ‘until I have found the balance that I’m looking for, and the young saint, my hero, is burning at the heart of the furnace.’

Undated
[Whatever the motives of General de Gaulle’s withdrawal from power in February 1946, Speaight says, Mauriac could only look back on a great dream that was dead:] ‘All the Resistance tightly gathered round its leader; the C.N.R. as the nucleus of the new Assembly; prompt punishment for traitors and assassins by regular court martial, whose impartiality was beyond suspicion - a punishment followed, after a few months, and in despite of all the complaints, by a total amnesty for those whom the legality of Vichy . . . had led astray; the prisons reserved for crime, and adolescents rescued from their corruption; and finally reforms, at once bold and proportionate to the needs of a country which has been drained of its blood, and is covered with graves and ruins.’

Breaking with Burr

Harman Blennerhassett, an Anglo-Irish aristocrat who emigrated to the US and got caught up in a 19th century land-grabbing conspiracy led by Aaron Burr, a former US vice-president, was born 150 years ago today. The plot was hatched with Blennerhassett’s money and while Blurr was staying at his estate on the Ohio river. President Thomas Jefferson ordered the conspirators to be arrested, and though eventually cleared of charges, Blennerhassett lost everything. From the first day of his arrest, he kept a journal, in which he detailed every twist and turn of the case, and his daily struggle to comprehend the enigmatic schemer, Burr.

Blennerhassett was born on 8 October 1765 in Hampshire, England, but, aged two, he returned to the family home, a large estate in County Kerry, Ireland. Later, he studied in London at Westminster School and Trinity College, Dublin, before reading law at the King’s Inns. He went on a grand tour of Europe, and then began to practice at the Irish bar. However, he preferred to cultivate his interests in science and literature. He also dabbled in politics, by joining the secret Society of United Irishmen, which aimed at securing independence from British control. After the death of his father, though, he wanted to escape the forthcoming rebellion against the British, so he divested the estate, amassing more than £100,000, and removed to London. Somewhat scandalously, he married his niece, Margaret Agnew, and, in 1796, they escaped to the United States.

Although planning to explore as far as Kentucky and Tennessee, Blennerhassett found himself much taken with an area along the Ohio river, where he spent time visiting families and exploring. The following spring, he bought 170 acres of an island in the river, downstream from what is now Parkersburg, West Virginia. There he built, with no expense spared, a European-style estate with a large mansion and landscaped lawns and gardens. For a period, it is said, the Blennerhassetts’ home became famous as the largest, most beautiful private residence in the American West, and was the scene of lavish parties. Blennerhassett continued his scientific, literary and music interests, but was also fond of hunting. Into this Eden, the Early America website says, there soon came a serpent!

During three sojourns at the estate, Aaron Burr, a former US vice president, planned a land-grabbing expedition to the southwest - possibly to separate the American west from the union, and to conquer Spanish Texas. The expedition, partly financed by Blennerhassett, was identified as a treasonous plot by Burr’s enemy, President Thomas Jefferson, who issued an arrest warrant for Burr, Blennerhassett and scores of other followers. In late 1806, the mansion and island were ransacked by local Virginia militia, and Blennerhassett fled. However, he was soon arrested, and then imprisoned in the Virginia state penitentiary. Only after a long trial and Burr’s acquittal was he released. Although he returned to the island, he could not afford to repair the damage; and the house was further ruined by a fire in 1811.

The Blennerhassetts settled on a cotton plantation near Port Gibson, Mississippi, but lost whatever had been left of their money. Thereafter, they moved to Montreal, Canada, where Blennerhassett tried to practice law, but, eventually, they returned to England, to live with family at Bath, before moving to the Channel Islands. There, Harman Blennerhassett died in 1831. Margaret returned to the US, to petition the government for compensation, and Congress decided to redress the grievance, but it was too late for she died at a New York City home for the poor. In the 1980s, the state of West Virginia undertook to restore the mansion, which opened to the public in 1991. ‘Today,’ the Early America website states, ‘the Blennerhassetts have reach an almost cult status in the Ohio River Valley. Plays and pageants remember and honor this couple that defied convention and for one shining moment established Eden.’ Further biographical information is also available at Wikipedia, and the Blennerhassett family tree website.

On the day Blennerhassett was taken into custody (at Lexington, Kentucky), 14 July 1807, he began to keep a detailed diary. He wrote in three notebooks (all now held by the Library of Congress), though the diary comes to an abrupt end in the third book with blank pages left. Most of the text was published in 1864, in William H. Safford’s The Blennerhassett Papers. This is freely available at Internet Archive. More recently, in 1988, the Blennerhassett’s diary was given a more thorough treatment in Raymond E. Fitch’s punningly-but-aptly titled Breaking with Burr - Harman Blennerhassett’s Journal 1807, published by Ohio University Press. According to Fitch, the edition by William H Safford in 1864 ‘does not accurately convey either the texture or the content of the original’ and he ‘suppressed passages of the journal which he evidently thought were distastefully personal or irrelevant to the objective progress of “historical” events.’

‘Blennerhassett’s journal, which records for his wife and a few friends the events and aftermath of the Burr trials, is an intimate yet often eloquent account,’ Ohio Univeristy Press says, ‘not only of the arguments, intrigues, and personalities involved, but also of the American social scene of the early nineteenth century. Included are striking vignettes and dramatic moments drawn from the diarist’s visits to Washington, Baltimore, and Philadelphia. But the recurrent theme of the journal, and its chief interest, is the interior trial it recounts: the chronicle of Blennerhassett’s growing disillusionment with Burr, his almost daily struggle to comprehend the enigmatic schemer, and his frustrating attempts to make Burr recognize and reimburse his losses.’

Here are several extracts from Blennerhassett’s diary, the first (28 September) from the earlier (Safford) edition, and the rest (all in November) from the more recent (Fitch) edition.

28 September 1807.
‘I had, this morning, a long double letter from my adored wife. Its red seal was as welcome to my eyes as the evening star to the mariner after the agitation of a storm. For I had, last week, suffered no small anxiety from the want of a letter. But the seal, notwithstanding its color, and every curve and turn of the letters in the superscription, had long passed under jealous inspection, to undergo every scrutiny from which I could augur the import of the intelligence within, before I would venture to break it open. But I was assured by the seal there was no mortality, at least on the 25th ult., as by the postmark. I trust, then, the heartfelt offerings of thanksgiving I tried to breathe forth to Heaven were borne to Almighty God, before I consulted the contents of the letter. There I soon saw how industriously my beloved continued to practice the only fraud her pure soul is capable of conceiving - that of endeavoring to hide from me all she feels for me, and has suffered for our dear boys. Her complaint in her chest is mentioned in a way to alarm me, through, the vail of disguise she has attempted to throw over it. But the weekly reports she will not fail to see of the criminal proceedings here, will, I trust, lighten much of the anxiety she labors under, which, I know, so much aggravates the affection in her breast. I next find my boys have, both of them, had fevers; and my dear Harman, who has suffered most, was perhaps at the height of his disease, about the period when I last dreame’d I had lost him. [. . .]

The Court does not sit to-day, on account of Burr’s illness. I find he is much worse than yesterday. He says he will take my medicine to-night, and has rejected bleeding, proposed to him by McClung, in which I fully agreed with him that he should not part with his blood, even at a Joe a drop. I called upon De Pestre, this morning, at Mr. Chevalier’s, where Mr. C. kindly pressed me to dine en famille, which I declined, through a desire to write at home and attend a private quartette-party at the Harmonic Society’s room this evening. The invitation of Chevalier was given in the most friendly manner, with a reprobation of the restriction imposed on the hospitable dispositions of the families of this town by the effects of a system of espionage, which is kept up by Government and its agents to a degree that has generally prevented those attentions we should otherwise receive. This must be the case, as I have not received a visit from any family-man, much less an invitation, since my release from imprisonment, though Mr. Pickett, who lives in the first style here, informed my landlord, Walton, the other day, he means to invite me to his house. So that etiquette seems also to be totally disregarded; and, no doubt, here, as in other countries, a want of better breeding is received by strangers as a proof of inhospitality not merited.’

10 November 1807
‘Soon after breakfast visited Burr and Pollock. Burr has again opened an audience chamber, which is much occupied. Altho’ I found 2 or 3 friends with him at breakfast; he was called out the moment he had breakfasted, and was absent about 1 3/4 hour; during which interval Mr Pollock gave me his company. [. . .] With respect to Burr, whatever may have been the ground of his present intimacy with Mr P. I can venture to affirm, it has already been abused, on the part of the former, altho’ the latter as yet, is evidently unaware of it. Upon B’s return P. withdrew, and I entered upon the objects of my visit. After informing Burr that Martin was resolved to appear for us at Chilicothe, he seemed all surprise and nothing could be more natural than the collision of such generosity with his own ingratitude. For he had fled fr Balt. without waiting even to thank his friend for the long and various services he had rendered him. [. . .]

This business being thus dispatched I next solicited him on the subject of his finances, on which indeed, he had partly anticipated me, by inquiring “what were my prospects thro’ my friends, the Lewises?” I informed him I had no expectations in that quarter, and shd absolutely starve whilst I was possessed of such splendid hopes in Europe if I was not relieved in the mean time. He regretted much the absence fr. town, of 2 persons with whom he expected to do something; but he had he said, negotiations on foot, the success of which he cd not answer for, but shd know in 2 or 3 days. [. . .]

by the bye, it is remarkable that many persons of penetration and intelligence who have indulged an eager interest in investigating every thing during the last year, relating to Burr, within the reach of their own inquiries, should have permitted that irredeemable passage of Alston’s letter imputing Burr a design to deprive his infant grandson of his patrimony.’

15 November 1807
‘I am much mortified by my detention here - thro’ the probably delusive hopes Burr has held out to me of the possible success of his efforts to raise money. I have almost let slip the season for descending the Ohio, for there is much appearance of an early winter: and thus will another item be probably added to the long account of my sufferings by this man.’

17 November 1807
‘Had a note fr. Burr this morning, to dine wth him tomorrow, at 4 o’clock, which invitation I have accepted, in anticipation of mixing probably for the last time with a few of his choice spirits.’

18 November 1807
‘To day however I did a little shopping, before I came home to dress for Burr’s party, which I joined at half past 4 [. . .] The party was as insipid as possible. Burr is evidently dejected, and tho’ he often affected to urge and enliven the conversation it languished - thro’ the stupidity of Randolph, the unconcern of Pollock, the vacant reserve of Cummins, the incapacity of Butler, the nothingness of Biddle and the aversion of myself to keep it up till 8 o’clock - when it expired and I took leave soon after the entrance of a General Nichol who seemed another of Burr’s gaping admirers [. . .] Thus ended the last invitation I shall ever probably receive fr this American Chesterfield, who is fast approaching the limits of that career he has so long run thro’ the absurd confidence of so many dupes and swindlers.’

20 November 1807
‘Having determined last wednesday, I wd not see two days more pass away, without leaving my ultimatum with Burr, I set out this morning for his quarters, resolved to burst the cobweb of duplicity of all his evasions with me upon money-matters. It will be seen every where in these notes, how long and how insidiously he has trifled with my claims upon him, fr. the time, when he assured Barton, I was a bankrupt, and denied to him, my possessing any legal claims upon Alston or himself, whilst at the distance of 1,500 miles he was writing most affectionately to me, ‘till the last interview I have this day, had with him, in which, he treated me, not as a faithful associate ruined by my connection with him, but rather as an importunate creditor invading his leisure or his purse with a questionable account. [The entry continues for another two pages and then breaks off, the rest of the journal being blank pages.]

Encountering the natives

‘It appeared, that the natives entertained the idea, that our clothes were impervious to spears, and had therefore determined on a trial of strength by suddenly overpowering us, for which purpose they had “planted” (i. e. hidden) their spears and all encumbrances, and had told off for each of us, six or eight of their number, whose attack was to be sudden and simultaneous.’ This is Sir Thomas Mitchell, Surveyor-General in colonial Australia who died 160 years ago today, writing in his exploration diary about fears of native plots.

Mitchell was born at Grangemouth in Scotland in 1792, the son of a harbour-master, but he was brought up by his uncle. He joined the British Army as a volunteer, aged 16, and received his first commission as 2nd Lieutenant in the 1st Battalion 95th Rifles. During the Peninsular War in Spain, Mitchell was promoted to major. He had a recognised talent for draughtsmanship, and after the war he remained in Spain and Portugal to complete sketches of the battlefields. With cuts in government funding, he wasn’t able to finish them for many years, and they weren’t published until the late 1830s (within Wyld’s atlas of the Peninsular War).

In 1818, Mitchell married Mary (daughter of General Blunt) with whom he had 12 children. In 1827, he was appointed deputy to the Surveyor-General of the Australian New South Wales colony, and soon became Surveyor-General himself. He set about exploring the colony and establishing a major road system. He made four expeditions between 1831 and 1846, discovering the course of the Darling river among others, and being first to penetrate that area which became known as Australia Felix. On a leave of absence, he visited England in the late 1830s, and is said to have brought specimens of gold and the first diamond found in Australia. During the same visit he published the diaries of his first three expeditions, and was knighted.

In 1841, Mitchell completed a new Gothic-style family home, Carthona, on the water’s edge in Darling Point, Sydney. Three years later, he was elected to the New South Wales Legislative Council. However, he couldn’t marry the roles of a politician with that of a government officer, and he resigned after some months. Increasingly, his survey department came under criticism, and was investigated by a Royal Commission. The Australian Dictionary of Biography (ADB) article on Mitchell provides this overview of his position at the time:

‘The report of the Royal Commission severely condemned the methods and results of Mitchell’s surveying and the administration of his department but it is not a fair summary of his life’s work. The criticism of his surveying technique is largely a priori and neglects both the substantial accuracy achieved, the inadequate and often primitive means at his disposal and the magnitude of the tasks he was required to perform. Mitchell was, however, a poor administrator. He had too many other interests and ambitions and was too often and too long away from his department either in England or exploring the interior. He had also a fatal inability to delegate responsibility to his subordinates with whom his relations were often very bad, and thus, despite enormous labours, he never got ahead of accumulating business. There was also insufficient supervision of surveyors in the field and consequently opportunities for the lazy and dishonest. But Mitchell was not responsible for the shortage of surveyors, the unrealistically large amount of work expected of them and, in particular, the division of the department into salaried and licensed surveyors which itself was a guarantee of inefficiency.’

Towards the end of his life, Mitchell investigated the Bathurst gold fields, visited England again, and patented a propeller system for steamers. Despite the scandal of delays at the survey department, he remained a popular figure in Australia until his death on 5 October 1855. Further information is available from Wikipedia, ADB, and Roma Reilly’s Australian Explorers website.

In his lifetime, Mitchell published the diaries of his four expeditions: Three Expeditions into the Interior of Eastern Australia, with descriptions of the recently explored region of Australia Felix and of the present colony of New South Wales came out in two volumes in 1838; and Journal of an Expedition into the Interior of Tropical Australia, in search of a route from Sydney to the Gulf of Carpentaria, came out in 1848. Both are freely available online through various websites, not least Internet Archive. Much of Mitchell’s daily narratives are concerned with describing the landscape, its topography, geography and flora/fauna, searches for food and water, and encounters with natives. Here are several extracts from Three Expeditions.

4 January 1832
‘Continuing due north, we just avoided some thick scrubs, which either on the right or left would have been very difficult to penetrate. The woods opened gradually however, into a thick copse of Acacia pendula, and at the end of three miles we reached the eastern skirts of an extensive open plain, the ground gently undulating. At 4 3/4 miles, on ascending a slight eminence, we suddenly overlooked a rather deep channel, containing abundance of water in ponds, the opposite banks being the highest ground visible. The vast plains thus watered consist chiefly of a rich dark-coloured earth, to the depth of 30 or 40 feet. Unabraded fragments of trap are not uncommon in the soil of these plains, and I imagined there was a want of symmetry in the hollows and slopes as compared with features more closely connected with hills elsewhere. At 8 1/2 miles, perceiving boundless plains to the northward, I changed the direction of our route 24 degrees east of north. The plains extended westward to the horizon, and opened to our view an extensive prospect towards the north-east, into the country north of the range of Nundewar, a region apparently champaign, but including a few isolated and picturesque hills. Patches of wood were scattered over the level parts, and we hastened towards a land of such promising aspect. Water however was the great object of our search, but I had no doubt that I should find enough in a long valley before us, which descended from the range on the east. In this I was nevertheless mistaken; for although the valley was well escarped, it did not contain even the trace of a watercourse.

Crossing the ridge beyond it, to a valley still deeper, which extended under a ridge of very remarkable hills, we met with no better success; nor yet when we had followed the valley to its union with another, under a hill which I named Mount Frazer, after the botanist of that name.

No other prospect of relief from this most distressing of all privations remained to us, and the day was one of extraordinary heat, for the thermometer, which had never before been above 101 degrees on this journey, now stood at 108 degrees in the shade. The party had travelled sixteen miles, and the cattle could not be driven further with any better prospect of finding water. We therefore encamped in this valley while I explored it upwards, but found all dry and desolate. Mr. White returned late, after a most laborious but equally fruitless search northward, and we consequently passed a most disagreeable afternoon. Unable to eat, the cattle lay groaning, and the men extended on their backs watched some heavy thunderclouds which at length stretched over the sky; the very crows sat on the trees with their mouths open.

The thunder roared and the cloud broke darkly over us, but its liquid contents seemed to evaporate in the middle air. At half-past seven a strong hot wind set in from the north-east and continued during the night. Thermometer 90 degrees. I was suddenly awoke from feverish sleep by a violent shaking of my tent, and I distinctly heard the flapping of very large wings, as if some bird, perhaps an owl, had perched upon it.’

31 May 1836
‘I now ventured to take a north-west course, in expectation of falling in with the supposed Darling. We crossed first a plain about two miles in breadth, when we came to a line of yarra trees which enveloped a dry creek from the north-east, and very like Clover-creek. We next travelled over ground chiefly open, and at four miles crossed a sand-hill, on which was a covered tomb, after the fashion of those on the Murray. On descending from the sand ridge, we approached a line of yarra trees, which overhang a reach of green and stagnant water. I had scarcely arrived at the bank, when my attention was drawn to a fire, about a hundred yards before us, and from beside which immediately sprung up a numerous tribe of blacks, who began to jump, wring their hands, and shriek as if in a state of utter madness or despair. These savages rapidly retired towards others who were at a fire on a further part of the bank, but Piper and his gin going boldly forward, succeeded, at length, in getting within hail, and in allaying their fears.

While he was with these natives, I had again leisure to examine the watercourse, upon which we had arrived. I could not consider it the Darling, as seen by me above, and so little did it seem “the sister stream” to the Murray, as described by Start, that I at first thought it nothing but an ana-branch of that river. Neither did these natives satisfy me about Oolawambiloa, by which I had supposed the Darling was meant, but respecting which they still pointed westward. They, however, told Piper that the channel we had reached contained all the waters of “Wambool,” (the Macquarie), and “Callewatta” (the upper Darling), and I accordingly determined to trace it up, at least far enough to identify it with the latter. But I thought it right that we should endeavour first to recognise the junction with the Murray as seen by Captain Start. The natives said, it was not far off; and I accordingly encamped at two o’clock, that I might measure back to that important point.

Thirteen natives set out, as if to accompany us, for they begged that we would not go so fast. Three of them, however, soon set off at full speed, as if on a message; and the remaining ten fell behind us. We had then passed the camp of their gins, and I supposed at the time, that their only object was to see us beyond these females, Piper being with us. I pursued the river through a tortuous course until sunset, when I was obliged to quit it, and return to the camp by moonlight, without having seen anything of the Murray. I had, however, ascertained that the channel increased very much in width lower down, and when it was filled with the clay-coloured water of the flood then in the Murray, it certainly had the appearance of a river of importance.’

1 June 1836
‘The country to the eastward seemed so dry and scrubby, that I could not hope in returning to join Mr. Stapylton’s party or reach the Murray, by any shorter route, than that of our present track; and I, therefore, postponed any further survey back towards the junction of the Darling and Murray, until I should be returning this way. We accordingly proceeded upwards, and were followed by the natives. They were late in coming near us however, which Piper and his gin accounted for as follows: As soon as it was known to them, the day before, that we were gone to the junction, the strong men of the tribe went by a shorter route; but they were thrown out and disappointed by our stopping short of that “promising” point. There, they had passed the night, and having been busy looking for our track in the morning, the earth’s surface being to them a book they always read, they were late in following our party.

Kangaroos were more numerous and larger here, than at any other part we had yet visited. This day one coming before me I fired at it with my rifle; and a man beside me, after asking my permission, fired also. The animal, nevertheless, ran amongst the party behind, some of whom hastily, and without permission, discharged their carabines also. At this four horses took fright, and ran back at full speed along our track. Several of the men, who went after these horses, fell in with two large bodies of natives coming along this track, and one or two men had nearly fallen into their hands twice. “Tantragee” (McLellan), when running at full speed, pursued by bands of savages, escaped, only by the opportune appearance of others of our men, who had caught the horses and happened to come up. The natives then closed on our carts, and accompanied them in single files on each side; but as they appeared to have got rid of all their spears, I saw no danger in allowing them to join us in that manner. Chancing to look back at them, however, when riding some way ahead, the close contact of such numbers induced me to halt and call loudly, cautioning the men, upon which I observed an old man and several others suddenly turn and run; and, on my going to the carts, the natives fell back, those in their rear setting off at full speed.

Soon after, I perceived the whole tribe running away, as if a plan had been suddenly frustrated. Piper and his gin who had been watching them attentively, now came up, and explained to me these movements. It appeared, that the natives entertained the idea, that our clothes were impervious to spears, and had therefore determined on a trial of strength by suddenly overpowering us, for which purpose they had “planted” (i. e. hidden) their spears and all encumbrances, and had told off for each of us, six or eight of their number, whose attack was to be sudden and simultaneous. A favourable moment had not occurred before they awoke my suspicions; and thus their motives for sudden retreat were to be understood. That party consisted of strong men, neither women nor boys being among them; and although we had little to fear from such an attack, having arms in our hands, the scheme was very audacious, and amounted to a proof, that these savages no sooner get rid of their apprehensions, than they think of aggression. I had, on several occasions, noticed and frustrated dispositions apparently intended for sudden attacks, for the natives seemed always inclined to await favourable opportunities, and were doubtless aware of the advantage of suddenness of attack to the assailants. Nothing seemed to excite the surprise of these natives, neither horses nor bullocks, although they had never before seen such animals, nor white men, carts, weapons, dress, or anything else we had. All were quite new to them, and equally strange, yet they looked at the cattle, as if they had been always amongst them, and they seemed to understand at once, the use of everything.

We continued our journey, and soon found all the usual features of the Darling; the hills of soft red sand near the river, covered with the same kind of shrubs seen so much higher up. The graves had no longer any resemblance to those on the Murrumbidgee and Murray, but were precisely similar to the places of interment we had seen on the Darling, being mounds surrounded by, and covered with, dead branches and pieces of wood. On these lay, the same singular casts of the head in white plaster, which we had before seen only at Fort Bourke. It is, indeed, curious to observe the different modes of burying, adopted by the natives on different rivers. For instance, on the Bogan, they bury in graves covered like our own, and surrounded with curved walks and ornamented ground. On the Lachlan, under lofty mounds of earth, seats being made around them. On the Murrumbidgee and Murray, the graves are covered with well thatched huts, containing dried grass for bedding, and enclosed by a parterre of a particular shape, like the inside of a whale-boat. On the Darling, as above stated, the graves are in mounds, covered with dead branches and limbs of trees, and are surrounded by a ditch, which here we found encircled by a fence of dead limbs and branches. [. . .]

The natives were heard by Piper several times during the day’s journey, in the woods beyond the river, as if moving along the right bank, in a route parallel with ours; but they did not appear near our camp, although their smoke was seen at a distance.’

The Diary Junction

An old, leaky, faded umbrella!

Yale University Press has just published an abridged version of the diaries of Ivan Maisky (Maiskii), the Soviet Union’s highly educated and very social ambassador in London during the 1930s and the early 1940s. The diaries, never before available in English, are beautifully written (and translated), and provide a very observant and colourful view of London’s political and intellectual life - such as, for example, when Maisky writes of Neville Chamberlain in 1939: ‘This is the leader of a great Empire on a crucial day of its existence! An old, leaky, faded umbrella! Whom can he save?’. The publisher also claims that Maisky’s narrative provides ‘a fascinating revision of the events surrounding the Second World War’.

Ivan Maisky was born in 1884 in Kirillov to a Polish family living in Imperial Russia. Apparently, early revolutionary activities led to him being expelled from St. Petersburg University in 1902. Following a period of exile in Siberia, he travelled to western Europe, where he learned English and French, and took a degree in economics at Munich university. He remained in London between 1912 and 1917, where he became friends with Georgii Chicherin and Maxim Litvinov, as well as with writers, such as G. B. Shaw, H. G. Wells and Beatrice Webb. He returned to Russia in February 1917, shortly after the tsar was overthrown, but it was only in 1919 that he renounced an association with the fading Menshevik party and joined the Bolsheviks. His command of foreign languages and familiarity with the international scene, bolstered by his friendship with Litvinov, secured a rapid rise in the Soviet diplomatic service.

Following various postings, during which time he also edited the new Petrograd literary magazine Zvezda, he was appointed Soviet ambassador to Finland in 1929, and, in 1932, official Soviet envoy to the UK, a position he then held until 1943. This was an important role, since Stalin considered Britain to be the Soviet Union’s main rival in the European power struggle. Maisky’s efforts to unify a security agreement against Nazi Germany through the League of Nations, however, collapsed in the face of the Ribbentrop-Molotov Pact, a non-aggression treaty between Moscow and Berlin. For two years, thereafter, Maisky struggled to cope with tense relations between London and Moscow. Only with Hitler’s invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941 did Stalin switch allegiance to the Allies.

During the later years of his London posting, Maisky maintained close contact with Winston Churchill and Anthony Eden, personally visiting the Foreign Office every day to get the latest news. In 1943, Maisky (and Litvinov, ambassador to Washington) were recalled to Moscow and entrusted with the preparation of the Soviet agenda for the peace settlement. Maisky advocated the continuation of collaboration with the Western Allies, and, as chief adviser to Stalin at the Yalta and Potsdam summits, he helped formulate Soviet strategy calling for a division of Europe into spheres of interest. With the onset of the cold war, Maisky retired to the Russian Academy of Sciences, where he took up historical research, and wrote his memoirs.

In 1953, shortly before Stalin’s death, Maisky was arrested and charged with espionage, treason, and involvement in a Zionist conspiracy. It would be two years before he was pardoned and released, and re-instated at the Academy of Sciences where he continued with his historical research, and with writing his memoirs. He died in 1975. Further biographical information is available online through Wikipedia or the Yivo Encyclopaedia.

During his term as ambassador to the UK, Maisky kept a detailed and personal diary, typing his entries each evening. This was frowned on by Stalin who discouraged his staff from keeping any written notes. Indeed, later, when he was arrested, his diaries and personal archive were confiscated, and they remained inaccessible to researchers for many years. Only in 1993, did Gabriel Gorodetsky uncover them in the Russian Foreign Ministry. The process, Gorodetsky says, of having the diaries declassified and then published in Russia (a prerequisite for publication in the West) was ‘long and arduous’. Translation of the diary entries has been undertaken by Tatiana Sorokina and Olivery Ready. The final result will be a three volume edition of the full diaries, to be published by Yale University Press, with commentary and annotations.

However, in the meantime, Gorodetsky says, he was encouraged to produce an abridged version to make the diary accessible to a wider audience. Publication of this single volume edition - The Maisky Diaries - Red Ambassador to the Court of St James’s 1932-1943 - took place in the UK on 1 September, but is not scheduled until 27 October in the US. Parts of the book can be read online at Googlebooks or Amazon; and several articles by Gorodetsky himself, with generous extracts from the diaries, can be read at the Yale Books blog (part 1, part 2, part 3). Reviews of the book can be read at The Conversation, The Telegraph, and The Spectator.

In his introduction, Gorodetsky says: ’For non-experts, with limited access to the rich and fascinating documents published by the Russians on the events leading up to the war, the diary provides a rare glimpse into the inner state of the Soviet mind: its entries question many of the prevailing, often tendentious, interpretations of both Russian and Western historiography.’ Apart from their political importance, though, Maisky’s diaries offer an intriguing, intelligent, vibrant and often humourous portrait of London, as well of many of its important characters and famous places. Here are several extracts.

15 November 1934
‘Today I attended the dinner given by the ancient guild, the Worshipful Company of Stationers and Newspaper Makers (already 600 years old). I had expected the dinner to be accompanied by some very old customs, but I was disappointed. It was a dinner like all others, right down to the inescapable turtle soup, and only the painted arched windows of the dining hall suggested the past. I tell a lie: there was also ‘The loving cup’, but I had seen that already at the lord mayor’s banquets. The guests, though - they really did bring the odd whiff of medieval times. To my right sat Lord Marshall (a big publisher and former lord mayor of London), who proudly declared that he had been in the guild for 55 years!

‘Is membership hereditary?’ I asked in some perplexity. ‘No,’ answered Lord Marshall, ‘it is not. I joined the guild as soon as I became an apprentice in my profession.’

It turned out that my neighbour was already 70. To my left sat Lord Wakefield, a major oil industrialist, prominent philanthropist and London alderman. He’s also about 70 years old (a schoolmate of Marshall’s!). This venerable notable of the British Empire told me that about 30 years ago (a truly English time span!) he had planned to visit St Petersburg and had even the tickets when suddenly, at the last moment, he received a telegram claiming ‘plague in Russia’. Naturally, he decided not to travel. Perhaps now was the time to go? . . . I seconded his intention.

‘Tell me,’ he continued, wiping his brow and appearing to remember something, ‘You seem to have a man . . . Lenin . . . Is he really terribly clever?’

‘I can assure you he was,’ I answered, smiling, ‘but unfortunately he died back in 1924.’

‘’Died?’ Wakefield sounded disappointed. ‘Really? . . . I wasn’t aware of that.’

See how well the cream of the English bourgeoisie is informed about Soviet affairs! Truly it smacks of the Middle Ages!’

29 November 1934
‘The royal wedding finally took place today. From first light, and even from the previous night, London seemed to be overflowing its banks. Up to half a million people descended on the capital from all over the country. Many foreigners arrived from the Continent. The streets along which the wedding procession would pass were filled to bursting by an immense crowd that had gathered on the previous evening to occupy the best places. Typically the crowd consisted almost entirely of women. I, at least, noticed barely a single man on my way from the embassy to the Westminster Abbey. [. . .]

On this occasion I was obliged to attend the wedding ceremony itself, in Westminster Abbey. That’s what Moscow decided. It was the first time I had attended a church service since leaving school, 33 years ago! That’s quite a stretch.

The diplomatic corps sat to the right of the entrance, and members of the government on the left. Simon was my partner on the opposite side. MacDonald zealously chanted psalms during the service. Baldwin yawned wearily, while [Walter] Elliot [minister for agriculture] simply dozed. Churchill looked deeply moved and at one point even seemed to wipe his eyes with a handkerchief.’

5 August 1939
‘Went to St Pancras railway station to see off the British and French military missions. Lots of people, reporters, photographers, ladies and young girls. I met General Doumenc, head of the French mission, and a few of his companions. The heads of the British mission - Admiral Drax (head), Air Marshal Burnett and Major General Heywood - were my guests for lunch yesterday and we greeted one another like old acquaintances.

On my way home, I couldn’t help smiling at history’s mischievous sense of humour.

In subjective terms, it is difficult to imagine a situation more favourable for an Anglo-German bloc against the USSR and less favourable for an Anglo-Soviet bloc against Germany. Indeed, the spontaneous preferences of the British ‘upper ten thousand’ most definitely lie with Germany. In his sleep, Chamberlain dreams of a deal with Hitler at the expense of third countries, i.e. ultimately at the expense of the USSR. Even now the PM still dreams of ‘appeasement’. On the other side, in Berlin, Hitler has always advocated a bloc with Britain. He wrote about this fervently back in Mein Kampf. Highly influential groups among the German fascists, bankers and industrialists also support closer relations with England. I repeat: the subjective factor is not only 100%, but a full 150% behind an Anglo-German bloc.

And yet, the bloc fails to materialize. Slowly but unstoppably, Anglo-German relations are deteriorating and becoming increasingly strained. Regardless of Chamberlain’s many attempts to ‘forget’, to ‘forgive’, to ‘reconcile’, to ‘come to terms’, something fateful always occurs to widen further the abyss between London and Berlin. Why? Because the vital interests of the two powers - the objective factor - prove diametrically opposed. And this fundamental conflict of interests easily overrides the influence of the subjective factor. Repulsion is stronger than attraction.

The reverse scenario holds for Anglo-Soviet relations. Here the subjective factor is sharply opposed to an Anglo-Soviet bloc. The bourgeoisie and the Court dislike, even loathe, ‘Soviet communism’. Chamberlain has always been eager to cut the USSR’s throat with a feather. And we, on the Soviet side, have no great liking for the ‘upper ten thousand’ of Great Britain. The burden of the past, the recent experience of the Soviet period, and ideological practice have all combined to poison our subjective attitude towards the ruling elite in England, and especially the prime minister, with the venom of fully justified suspicion and mistrust. I repeat: the subjective factor in this case is not only 100%, but a full 150% against an Anglo-Soviet bloc.

And yet the bloc is gradually taking shape. When I look back over the seven years of my time in London, the overall picture is very instructive. Slowly but steadily, via zigzags, setbacks and failures, Anglo-Soviet relations are improving. From the Metro-Vickers case to the military mission’s trip to Moscow! This is the distance we have covered! The abyss between London and Moscow keeps narrowing. Field engineers are successfully fixing beams and rafters to support the bridge over the remaining distance. Why? Because the vital interests of the two powers - the objective factor - coincide. And this fundamental coincidence overrides the influence of the subjective factor. Attraction proves stronger than repulsion.

The military mission’s journey to Moscow is a historical landmark. It testifies to the fact that the process of attraction has reached a very high level of development.

But what an irony that it should fall to Chamberlain to build the Anglo-Soviet bloc against Germany!

Yes, mischievous history really does have a vicious sense of humour.

However, everything flows. The balance of forces described above corresponds to the present historical period. The picture would change dramatically if and when the question of a proletarian revolution outside the USSR becomes the order of the day.’

31 August 1939
‘Another day of tension and suspense. . . . At about five o’clock, Agniya and I got into a small car and drove around town to see what was going on. It was the end of the working day. The usual hustle and bustle in the streets, on the underground, and on the buses and trams. But no more than usual. All the shops are trading. The cafés are open. The newspaper vendors shout out the headlines. In general, the city looks normal. Only the sandbags under the windows and the yellow signs with arrows pointing to the nearest bomb shelters indicate that England is on the verge of war.

In the evening, Agniya and I went to the Globe to see Oscar Wilde’s delicious comedy The Importance of Being Earnest. The actors were superb. An image of the ‘good old times’ - without automobiles, radio, airplanes, air raids, Hitlers and Mussolinis - seemed to come alive. People were funny and naive then, to judge by today’s standards. We laughed for two hours. That’s something to be grateful for.

When we got back from the theatre, the radio brought sensational news: the 16 points which Hitler demands from Poland. The immediate return of Danzig, a plebiscite in the ‘Corridor’, an international committee made up of Italian, British, French and Soviet representatives, a vote in 1940, and so on and so forth.

What’s this? A step back? Slowing down?

I doubt it. It’s too late for Hitler to retreat. It’s almost certainly a manoeuvre. Is it an attempt to hoodwink the world’s public and perhaps the German people as well before a decisive ‘leap’?’

1 September 1939
‘Yesterday’s doubts have been fully justified. Today, early in the morning, Germany attacked Poland without any prior warning and began bombing Polish cities. The Polish army and air force are putting up strong resistance everywhere.

So, war has begun. A great historical knot has been loosened. The first stone has rolled down the slope. Many more will follow. Today, the world has crossed the threshold of a new epoch. It will emerge from it much changed. The time of great transformations in the life of humankind is nigh. I think I’ll live to see them unless, of course, some crazy incident cuts my days short. . .

Parliament met at six in the evening. As I drove up to Westminster, photographers began snapping away. And why not? What a sensation: the Soviet ambassador at a parliamentary session on the matter of war. And this directly after the signing of the Soviet-German pact!

A nervous and panicky mood reigned in the Parliament corridors. A motley crowd of every age and status had gathered. There were many rather young women and girls, gesticulating frantically and speaking in raised voices. I walked down the corridors, saluted in the usual manner by the Parliament policemen, and approached the entrance to the diplomatic gallery. It was quite jammed with ambassadors, envoys, high commissioners and other ‘notables’. As soon as the door attendant caught sight of me, he pushed back a few ‘ministers’ to clear a narrow path for me to the staircase.

. . . I looked down. The small chamber of the Commons was full to bursting with agitated, tense MPs. They were packed in like sardines. The Government bench was just the same. All the stars - if there are any - were present: Chamberlain, Simon, Hore-Belisha, Kingsley Wood, and the rest. The atmosphere was heavy, menacing and oppressive. The galleries of the Lords, the press and guests were jam-packed. Near the ‘clock’, wearing plain grey suits, sat the duke of Gloucester and the duke of Kent. A few MPs were in khaki . . . All eyes were trained on me. The mood was the same: restrained hostility, but with a hint of deference. I calmly endured this bombardment of glances. Then I began to make out individual faces. Lady Astor, as is her custom, seemed to be sitting on needles, and looked at me as if she meant to grab me by the hair. Mander, Nicolson and Ellen Wilkinson looked at me with friendly, sparkling eyes. I had the impression that Eden also cast a quick, and not remotely hostile, glance at me, but I can’t say for sure.

Chamberlain, looking terribly depressed and speaking in a quiet, lifeless voice, confessed that 18 months ago (when Eden retired!) he prayed not to have to take upon himself the responsibility for declaring war, but now he fears that he will not be able to avoid it. But the true responsibility for the unleashing of war lies not with the prime minister, but ‘on the shoulders of one man - the German Chancellor’, who has not hesitated to hurl mankind into the abyss of immense suffering ‘to serve his senseless ambitions’. . . . At times, Chamberlain even tried to bang his fist on the famous ‘box’ on the Speaker’s table. But everything cost him such torment and was expressed with such despair in his eyes, voice and gestures that it was sickening to watch him. And this is the head of the British Empire at the most critical moment in its history! He is not the head of the British Empire, but its grave-digger! . . .

Unless an extraordinary miracle happens at the very last moment, Britain will find itself at war with Germany within the next 48 hours.’

3 September 1939
‘Today, the denouement really did take place . . . the prime minister went on air at 11.15 a.m. and declared that, as of then, Britain was at war with Germany.

Half an hour later the air filled with the bellowing sounds of the siren. People scampered off to their houses, the streets emptied, and cars stopped in the road. What was it? A drill? Or a genuine raid by German bombers?

Fifteen minutes of tension and anxiety - then we heard the prolonged siren wail: ‘all clear’! It had been just a drill. There were no enemy planes.

I got to Parliament by midday. I was a couple of minutes late because of the alarm. I took the first available seat in the second row. Chamberlain was already speaking. A darkened, emaciated face. A tearful, broken voice. Bitter, despairing gestures. A shattered, washed-up man. However, to do him justice, the prime minister did not hide the fact that catastrophe had befallen him.

‘This is a sad day for all of us,’ he said, ‘and to none is it sadder than to me. Everything that I have worked for, everything that I hoped for, everything that I have believed in during my public life - has crashed into ruins.’

I sat, listened and thought: ‘This is the leader of a great Empire on a crucial day of its existence! An old, leaky, faded umbrella! Whom can he save? If Chamberlain remains prime minister for much longer, the Empire is ruined.’ . . .’

Diary briefs

John Hunton’s diaries of the Old West - Heritage Books, Torrington Telegram

St Kilda diaries - National Trust for Scotland, Island News

Shackelton’s Heroes - The Robson Press, The Sydney Morning Herald

Star Shell Reflections 1916 - Pen & Sword Books, News Letter

Legal dispute over Chiang Kai-shek’s diaries - The China Post

Burma POW’s diary - BBC

Russian kept diary of her serial killings - Daily Mail, The Independent

German suicide pilot kept a diary - The Telegraph

Kelly’s War - Blink Publishing, Stratford-upon-Avon Herald

Padre, Prisoner & Penpusher - Helion Publishing, The Falmouth Packet

Pete Doherty’s prison journal for sale - International Business Times

War diaries of Born Free star - Independent on Sunday

Emilie Davis’s Civil War - Penn State University Press, Main Line Today

The New Zealand soldier in WWI - Exisle Publishing, Radio New Zealand

Stephen Warner diaries - Lowewood Museum, Hertfordshire Mercury

Hero diaries published by Academia Historica - The China Post

As beautiful as her legend

‘The evening sunlight fading to make the colours hum more and more melodiously was a pleasure to us all. Greta did not seem to notice the magical effects, of which she in pink with pink and white striped trousers became a part and in this light she became as beautiful as her legend.’ This is Cecil Beaton writing in his diary about Greta Garbo, his ex-lover who was about to turn 60. Beaton, once obsessed by Garbo had wanted to marry her. They remained friends for decades, at least until Beaton published his diaries revealing the intimacies of their relationship. Today marks 110 years since Garbo’s birth.

Greta Lovisa Gustafsson was born in Stockholm on 18 September 1905 into a working class family. She left school at 13, and looked after her ill father. He died in 1920. Thereafter, she worked briefly in a barber’s shop, before taking a job in the PUB department store. Before long, she was modelling hats, and had secured more lucrative employment as a fashion model. In late 1920, she appeared in her first film commercial for the store, advertising women’s clothing. She made further advertising films, but, in 1922, the director Erik Arthur Petschler gave her a part in his short comedy, Peter the Tramp. From 1922 to 1924, she studied at the Royal Dramatic Theatre’s acting school in Stockholm; and it was during this period that she changed her name to Garbo.

The prominent Swedish director Mauritz Stiller recruited Garbo in 1924, and nurtured her for his films; but she then caught the eye of MGM’s Louis B. Mayer who asked her - still only 20 and unable to speak English - to come to the US. Once there, she and Stiller heard no word from Mayer, but eventually MGM’s head of production Irving Thalberg gave Garbo a screen test, and she was cast in Torrent. Stiller was hired to direct the next film for Garbo, The Temptress, but was soon fired. Garbo received rave reviews and went on to make eight more silent movies, turning her into a Hollywood star. John Gilbert, with whom she had an affair, was her co-star in several of these films, and is said to have taught her how to behave like a star, how to socialise at parties, and how to deal with studio bosses.

Despite concerns about her Swedish accent, she proved as much of a success when, from the early 1930s, MGM started making sound movies. Her first talkie, Anna Christie, was the highest grossing film of the year, and led to her first Oscar nomination. By 1933, she had negotiated a new contract with MGM, earning her $300,000 per film. Garbo continued to work, starring in films such as The Painted Veil, Anna Karenina, Camille and her first comedy, Ninotchka. With the success of Ninotchka, MGM chose another comedy, Two-Faced Woman, to be directed by George Cukor (who had directed Camille). This was not a critical success, and the negative reviews deeply affected Garbo. Although not intending to retire, in fact, she never made another film. Many a project was offered her in the 1940s, and she accepted some, but every one of them fell through.

Garbo never married or had children, though she had various affairs with men and women. Among these were the conductor Leopold Stokowski, the author Erich Maria Remarque, the photographer Cecil Beaton, and the poet Mercedes de Acosta. Her relationships with the latter two, in particular, have given rise to books: Greta & Cecil by Diana Souhami and Loving Garbo: The Story of Greta Garbo, Cecil Beaton and Mercedes de Acosta by Hugo Vickers (both published by Jonathan Cape, 1994).

From the early days of her career, Garbo avoided society, preferring to spend her time alone or with friends. She never signed autographs or answered fan mail, and rarely gave interviews. In 1951, she became a naturalised US citizen, and in 1953 bought an apartment in Manhattan where she lived for the rest of her life. She became increasingly withdrawn in time - though she would occasionally take holidays with friends - and was known for walking the city, dressed casually and wearing large sunglasses.

According to the 1979 edition of Encyclopaedia Britannica ‘Garbo had, in the opinion of her directors and most critics, a perfect instinct for doing the right thing before the camera. Her talent, her great beauty, and her indifference to public opinion made her career unique in the history of the cinema.’ She died in 1990. Further information is available from Wikipedia, the ‘Official website for the legendary screen actress and fashion icon’, the fan site Garbo Forever, or the online Encyclopædia Britannica.

There’s no evidence I can find of Garbo ever having kept a diary. However, she was the subject of other people’s journals, and, in particular, the memoir published by de Acosta (Here Lies the Heart) and the diaries published by Beaton. She considered herself betrayed by both ex-lovers for making public such intimate details. Beaton, himself, appeared fully conscious of the hurt he might cause to Garbo by publishing his diaries - though it wasn’t until he was long dead that some of his diaries were published in an expurgated form - see Nerves before a sitting. She also features in diaries kept by Remarque, but these have yet to be published and only short quotes about Garbo have appeared (in Great Garbo: A life apart, by Karen Swenson, for example).

Beaton’s diaries - especially those from the 1940s published as The Happy Years - are full of Beaton’s obsession with Garbo. A New York Times review says: ‘The core material for Loving Garbo was drawn from Beaton’s diaries and letters, in which he recorded his impressions of Garbo in minute detail, along with every seismic tremor of their relationship. Although Beaton’s encomiums to Garbo’s cheekbones and extra-thick eyelashes betray a rhapsodic giddiness, his writing never loses its undertone of shrewdness and common sense. And much as he may adore Garbo, he repeatedly evokes her as an object to be coveted for its social and economic value.’

Here are a few extracts about Garbo in Beaton’s diaries taken from published sources.

3 November 1947 [source: Loving Garbo: The Story of Greta Garbo, Cecil Beaton and Mercedes de Acosta]
‘I was completely surprised at what was happening & it took me some time to recover my bafflement. Within a few minutes of our reunion, after these long & void periods, of months of depression & doubt, we were suddenly together in unexplained, unexpected and inevitable intimacy. It is only on such occasions that one realises how fantastic life can be. I was hardly able to bridge the gulf so quickly & unexpectedly. I had to throw my mind back to the times at Reddish House when in my wildest dreams I had invented scenes that were now taking place.’

October 1956 [source: Loving Garbo: The Story of Greta Garbo, Cecil Beaton and Mercedes de Acosta]
‘She is like a man in many ways. She telephoned to say, I thought we might try a little experiment this evening at 6.30. But she spoke in French and it was difficult to understand at first what she meant. But soon I discovered, although I pretended not to. She was embarrassed and a certain pudeur on my part made me resent her frankness and straightforwardness - something that I should have respected.’

July 1965 [source: Beaton in the Sixties - The Cecil Beaton Diaries as they were written]
‘I arrived at Vougliameni, the appointed bay where the yachts were harboured. Greta was the first I saw, sitting with her back to the quay, she had tied her haired back into a small pigtail with a rubber band. The effect was pleasing, neat and Chinese but the hair has become grey. The surprised profile turned to reveal a big smile. It was almost the same, and yet no, the two intervening years since we’ve last met have created havoc. I was appalled how destroyed her skin has become, covered with wrinkles, double chin, but worse the upper lip has jagged lower and the skin has perished into little lines, and there is a furriness that is disastrous. But no sign of defeat on Greta’s part. She was up to her old tricks. ‘My, my, my! Why can it be Beattie? Me Beat!’ [. . .]

In the apricot-colored light of the evening she still looks absolutely marvellous and she could be cleverly photographed to appear as beautiful as ever in films. But it is not just her beauty that is dazzling, it is the air of mysteriousness and other intangible qualities that make her so appealing, particularly when talking with sympathy and wonder to children or reacting herself to some situation with all the wonder and surprise of childhood itself.’

August 1965 [source: Beaton in the Sixties - The Cecil Beaton Diaries as they were written]
‘The evening sunlight fading to make the colours hum more and more melodiously was a pleasure to us all. Greta did not seem to notice the magical effects, of which she in pink with pink and white striped trousers became a part and in this light she became as beautiful as her legend. But it is a legend that does no longer exist in reality. If she had been a real character she would have left the legend, developed a new life, new interests and knowledge. As it is, after thirty years she has not changed except outwardly, and even the manner and personality has dated. Poor old Marlene Dietrich, with her dye and facelift and new career as a singer, with all her nonsense, is a live and vital person, cooking for her grandchildren and being on the go. That is much preferable to this other non-giving, non-living phantom of the past.’

(However, it is worth noting that, in his diary in 1967, Beaton writes down almost the exact opposite thought: ‘G. looked quite beautiful because she looked completely natural. Her skin was glowing and her eyes filled with so many expressions. Marlene Dietrich, on the stage, can still look marvellously young in an artificial way, but she is a monster. Greta is a real-live human being.’)

13 April 1973 [source: The Unexpurgated Beaton - The Cecil Beaton Diaries as they were written]
‘The day was not without its setbacks. Whether or not it was out of malice a commentator, after a radio interview, gave me a review of my book by - of all people - Auberon Waugh, the son of my old arch enemy. He seems to have inherited the spleen of his father. A devastating attack aimed to reduce me to a shred. It hurt. Then a horrid little woman journalist, referring to it, said, ‘You’re supposed to be a marvellous person, but they say your book is awful’ and she handed me Waugh’s review. [. . .] I do feel terribly guilty about exposing Garbo to public glare. Even though those things happened thirty years ago, my conscience has been pricking me terribly. Yet I know that if I had the option of not publishing it, I would still go ahead - and suffer. I only trust Greta can rise above it in the way she did about Mercedes’s book.’

The nonconformist Newcome

‘I heard today yt a new complaint was gotten to Chester agst mee, wch a freinde hath prevented.’ This is the Rev Henry Newcome, who died all of 320 years ago today, writing in his diary. For a while, he was a very popular non-conformist preacher in Manchester, but he ran foul of new laws designed to shore up the episcopal church, and ostracise those clergy unwilling to follow the strict Church of England rituals. In time, he relaxed his views, and also the state took steps to allow more religious freedom.

Newcome was born at Caldecote, Huntingdonshire, in 1627, the fourth son of the local rector. Orphaned in his teens, he was educated by his elder brothers. From 1644, he studied at St. John’s College, Cambridge. In 1647, he became schoolmaster at Congleton, Cheshire, and, the following year, received Presbyterian ordination at Sandbach. The same year he married Elizabeth Mainwaring, and they had five children. The couple’s first home was with a relation of Elizabeth’s, and it was through her family connections that he was appointed, first, curate at Goosetry in Cheshire and, subsequently, in 1650, minister at Gawsworth where he stayed until 1657. During this period, he sought out other like-minded men who shared with him the ideal of a fully reformed national church; and he became part of a circle which met in the home of his friend and mentor John Machin.

In late 1656, Newcome was elected a preacher at the collegiate church of Manchester (later Manchester Cathedral), and after much hesitation he moved with his family to the city. His ministry was exceedingly popular. In 1660, he welcomed the restoration of the monarchy, but preached against the frivolity of celebrations surrounding the event. Unfortunately, when the constitution of Manchester collegiate church was restored (it having been subverted in 1645), Newcome was not among the elected fellows. He continued to serve as a deputy at the church until the Uniformity Act came into force, two years later, which, among many other things, required episcopal ordination for all ministers - some 2,000 clergymen refused to take the oath and were expelled form the Church of England as a result.

Newcome, having rejected suggestions that he should receive episcopal ordination privately, attended people in a more private capacity; he also preached at funerals, and visited the sick, as if a parish priest. However, even this way of work was prohibited him by the Five Mile Act, which came into force in 1666 further restricting the activities of non-conformists, by forbidding them from living within five miles of a parish from which they had been expelled (unless they swore the appropriate oath). He moved to Ellenbrook, in Worsley parish, Lancashire, but travelled about a good deal, to London several times, and to Dublin even. He returned, as well, to preach in Manchester but was fined for doing so.

In time, Newcome’s non-conformist principles appear to have weakened, drawing criticism from separatists and conformists alike. He tended to blame hardline episcopacy for driving Presbyterianism away from the Church of England, but remained on good terms with conformist friends. Cut adrift from the church, he ran short of money, but was helped by donations and bequests from friends and sympathetic laity. Life became easier after James II’s second declaration of indulgence in 1687, and then, two years later, the Act of Toleration, both steps towards bringing some religious freedom. In 1693, he became a moderator of the general meeting of ministers of the United Brethren in Lancashire; and the next year he preached the first sermon at a newly-built non-conformist meeting-house in Manchester. He died on 17 September 1695. At least two of his sons became Church of England clergymen. Further information can be found from Wikipedia, the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, or Newcome’s own autobiography (see below).

From 1646 until his death, Newcome is known to have kept a diary. However, only one volume, for the period 1661-1663, has survived in manuscript form. This was edited by Thomas Heywood and printed for the Chetham Society in 1849 as Diary of the Rev. Henry Newcome from September 30, 1661 to September 29, 1663. A copy of the book is freely available online at Internet Archive.

‘The value of the book,’ Heywood writes in his introduction, ‘consists in its having been written as the events it describes occurred, and in its being designed solely for the author’s use. The passages of life are set down to be meditated upon, and as disguise would have been the writer’s own fraud upon himself, it evidently does not exist, eripitur persona, manet res. Whilst we perceive some faults in the full revealment thus afforded, as a want of moral courage and an exaggeration of theological trifles into essentials, yet, tried by this severe test, Newcome deserves the reputation which he has ever enjoyed - of being an earnest Christian.’

Three years later, encouraged by the reception of Newcome’s diary, the Chetham Society published a further work, The Autobiography of Henry Newcome (Volume I and Volume II). This was based on Newcome’s own, and much longer, Abstract - a work he completed in his lifetime for his children, and which he based substantially on his diaries - as edited by Richard Parkinson with modernised spelling. Here, however, are several extracts from the original diary as edited by Heywood (without modernised spelling).

19 March 1663
‘I rose not till after 8, and went to ye library. Studdyed a little on Ps. cxii 7. After dinner I was with Mr Hayhurst at Mr Illingw: a little while, and as wee came back Mr Jackson was preaching. Mr Hayh: came with me & stayed a while. I went after & walk’t with Mr Birch in ye Ch: Yard. & after supp: studdyed ag: My wife is ill in her head. The Lord help mee.’

30 March 1663
‘I rose after 8. Was basely imposed upon by Sathan I beleive in some suggestions to mee in my sleepe ye last night. After secret dutys wee went wth ye children to Nicholas Leigh in Salford. Wn wee returned wee went to dutys and after to ye library I went & read a little about lots. Mr Illingw: was wth mee a little before dinner. After I looked up papers in ye cockloft. My Cozen Davenport & his wife &c were here most of the afternoone. Wee should have met at bowles at 4 but it misst. I dispatched after am: my papers. My wive’s distemper & cozen’s toothach might awaken mee to some seriousnes ye night.’

1 June 1663
‘I rose about 8. Went to looke for a horse, & after some time was glad to accept Mr Page’s, tho a trotter. I went to ye feild for him, & ye warden walked wth mee to ye Broadhulme, wre I took horse & got to Dunham iust at dinner. Mr Weston & his wife dined there, & wee were wth ym in ye bouleinge greene all ye afternoone. I was forced to stay all night, tho’ I obtained freely of my Ld his lre to ye Lady Byron for Mr Taylor of Rochdale.

I was troubled yet I used too free a word to expresse my dislike tow: Dr Br: in wt he delivered, sayinge in iest he was a rascall. Yt word repeated not wth my accent might seeme very strange for mee to utter.

Ye horse I rode of was very fright, yet ye Ld preserved mee from fallinge.’

16 August 1663
‘I rose about 7. Wrot hard all ye forenoone. Wee dined at Mr Buxton’s. I was foolishly vexed wth envey & folly. I heard today yt a new complaint was gotten to Chester agst mee, wch a freinde hath prevented at ye chardge of 12s 6d. Mr Illingworth wth mee a while.’

The Diary Junction

To clarify my thoughts

RIP Oliver Sacks, a British neurologist, whose books about patients with neurological conditions sold widely, largely because of his literary flare and his ability to make medical science accessible. Indeed, his books were so popular that, despite their rather obscure content, some were turned into plays and films. Sacks was an inveterate keeper of journals and notebooks, amassing more than 1,000. However, only one has ever been published in book form, the record of a short trip to Oaxaca, Mexico, with a group of fern lovers!

Sacks was born in London, the youngest of four children, in 1933. His father was a physician, and his mother was one of the country’s first female surgeons. During the war, he was sent with a brother to a boarding school in the Midlands. Thereafter, he attended St Paul’s School in London and Queen’s College, Oxford. He graduated in 1956 with a degree in physiology and biology, and then continued to study medicine, with an internship at Middlesex Hospital, completing this in 1960. Uncertain of his next move, he travelled to Canada, and then the US where he took a residency in neurology at Mt. Zion Hospital, San Francisco, and fellowships in neurology and psychiatry at University of California, Los Angeles.

Sacks then moved to New York, where, in 1966, he became professor of neurology at New York University School of Medicine, and consulting neurologist for Beth Abraham Hospital in the Bronx. At the latter, he recognized a group of patients, many of whom had spent decades in a frozen state, as survivors of sleepy sickness pandemic in the 1910s and 1920s. He treated them with a then-experimental drug, L-dopa, enabling them to come back to life. He published their stories in a 1973 book, Awakenings, which later inspired a play by Harold Pinter and a film starring Robert De Niro and Robin Williams.

From 1966 also, Sacks worked as: an instructor and later clinical professor of neurology at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine (until 2007); a neurological consultant to various nursing homes run by the Little Sisters of the Poor; and a consulting neurologist at Bronx Psychiatric Center. From 1992, he held an appointment at the New York University School of Medicine (to 2007). In 2007, he joined the faculty of Columbia University Medical Center as a professor of neurology and psychiatry; and from 2012, he returned to New York University School of Medicine as a professor of neurology and consulting neurologist at the epilepsy center.

After Awakenings, Sacks published more than half a dozen more books based on case histories of his patients - such as The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat and The Mind’s Eye - as well as several autobiographical memoirs, including Uncle Tungsten: Memories of a Chemical Boyhood. In 2015, he published On the Move: A Life, which revealed for the first time personal details about his adult life: a somewhat wild youth, full of drugs, motorbikes and obsessive bodybuilding, followed by several decades of celibacy and living alone. In 2008, he began a relationship with the writer Bill Hayes. Towards the end of his life, he wrote movingly about his own health issues. He died two weeks ago on 30 August. Further biographical information is available from the Oliver Sacks website and Wikipedia, or from obituaries in The New York Times, The Guardian, The Independent, and The Eonomist.

Oliver Sacks was an obsessive diarist and note taker. A dozen years or so before his death, he assessed his collection of journals as totalling over 1,000. Yet they were all written for himself alone without a thought for publication. Here is Sacks himself, writing on the last-but-on page of his autobiography On the Move: ‘They called me Inky as a boy, and I still seem to get as ink stained as I did seventy years ago. I started keeping journals when I was fourteen and at last count had nearly a thousand. They come in all shapes and sizes, from little pocket ones which I carry around with me to enormous tomes. I always keep a notebook by my bedside, for dreams as well as nighttime thoughts, and I try to have one by the swimming pool or the lakeside or the seashore; swimming too is very productive of thoughts which I must write, especially if they present themselves, as they sometimes do, in the form of whole sentences or paragraphs.

When writing my Leg book, I drew heavily on the detailed journals I had kept as a patient in 1974. Oaxaca Journal, too, relied heavily on my handwritten notebooks. But for the most part, I rarely look at the journals I have kept for the greater part of a lifetime. The act of writing is itself enough; it serves to clarify my thoughts and feelings. The act of writing is an integral part of my mental life; ideas emerge, are shaped, in the act of writing.

My journals are not written for others, nor do I usually look at them myself, but they are a special, indispensable form of talking to myself. The need to think on paper is not confined to notebooks. It spreads onto the backs of envelopes, menus, whatever scraps of paper are at hand. And 1 often transcribe quotations I like, writing or typing them on pieces of brightly colored paper and pinning them to a bulletin board. When I lived in City Island, my office was full of quotations, bound together with binder rings that I would hang to the curtain rods above my desk.’

In fact, Sacks did, during his lifetime, release a very few extracts for publication, including two articles for a magazine, and the diary he kept on a tour to Mexico to study ferns, published as Oaxaca Journal by National Geographic in 2001. Of this latter, Sacks says, on his website: ‘I have been an inveterate keeper of journals since I was fourteen, especially at times of adventure and crisis and travel. Here, for the first time, such a journal made its way to publication, not that much changed from the raw, handwritten journal that I kept during my fascinated nine days in Oaxaca.’

It is also worth reproducing Sack’s own introduction in the book (available to preview at Googlebooks), as it sheds more light on his diary habits.

‘I used to delight in the natural history journals of the nineteenth century, all of them blends of the personal and the scientific - especially Wallace’s The Malay Archipelago, Bate’s Naturalist on the River Amazons, and Spruce’s Notes of a Botanist, and the work which inspired them all (and Darwin too), Alexander von Humbolt’s Personal Narrative. It pleased me to think that Wallace, Bates, and Spruce were all crisscrossing in one another’s paths, leapfrogging, on the same stretch of the Amazon during the selfsame months of 1849, and to think that all of them were good friends. (They continued to correspond throughout their lives, and Wallace was to publish Spruce’s Notes after his death.)

They were all, in a sense, amateurs - self-educated, self-motivated, not part of an institution - and they lived, it sometimes seemed to me, in a halcyon world, a sort of Eden, not yet turbulent and troubled by the almost murderous rivalries which were soon to mark an increasingly professionalized world (the sort of rivalries so vividly portrayed in H. G. Wells’s story “The Moth”.

This sweet, unspoiled, preprofessional atmosphere, ruled by a sense of adventure and wonder rather than by egotism and a lust for priority and fame, still survives here and there, it seems to me, in certain natural history societies, and amateur societies of astronomers and archaeologists, whose quiet yet essential existences are virtually unknown to the public. It was the sense of such an atmosphere that drew me to the American Fern Society in the first place, and that incited me to go with them on their fern-tour to Oaxaca early in 2000. And it was the wish to explore this atmosphere which, in part, incited me to keep a journal there. There was much else, of course: my introduction to a people, a country, a culture, a history, of which I knew almost nothing - this was wonderful, an adventure in itself - and the fact that all journeys incite me to keep journals. Indeed I have been keeping them since the age of fourteen, and in the year and a half since my visit to Oaxaca, I have been in Greenland and Cuba, fossil hunting in Australia, and looking at a strange neurological condition in Guadeloupe - all of these travels have generated journals, too.

None of these journals has any pretension to comprehensiveness or authority; they are light, fragmentary, impressionistic, and, above all, personal.

Why do I keep journals? I do not know. Perhaps primarily to clarify my thoughts, to organise my impressions into a sort of narrative or story, and to do this in “real time,” and not in retrospect, or imaginatively transformed, as in an autobiography or novel. I write these journals with no thought of publication (journals which I kept in Canada and Alabama were only published, and that by chance, as articles in Antaeus, thirty years after they were written).

Should I have prettied up this journal, elaborated it, made it more systematic and coherent - as I was to do with my book-sized Micronesian and “leg” journals - or left it as written, as with my Canadian and Alabaman ones? I have, in fact, taken an intermediate course, adding a little (chocolate, rubber, things Mesoamerican), making little excursions of various sorts, but essentially keeping the journal as written. I have not even attempted to give it a proper title. It was Oaxaca Journal in my notebooks, and Oaxaca Journal it remains. December 2001’

And here is an extract (somewhat reduced) from the first (and undated) diary entry in Oaxaca Journal.

Friday
‘I am on my way to Oaxaca to meet up with some botanical friends for a fern foray, looking forward to a week away from New York’s icy winter. The plane itself - an AeroMexico flight - has an atmosphere quite unlike anything I’ve ever seen. We are scarcely off the ground before everyone gets up - chatting in the aisles, opening bags of food, breast-feeding babies - an instant social scene, like a Mexican cafe or market. One is already in Mexico as soon as one boards. [. . .]

My neighbor asks why I am visiting Mexico, and I tell him I am part of a botanical tour headed for Oaxaca, in the south. There are several of us on this plane from New York, and we will meet up with the others in Mexico City. Learning that this is my first visit to Mexico, he speaks glowingly of the country, and lends me his guidebook. I must be sure to visit the enormous tree in Oaxaca - it is thousands of years old, a famous natural wonder. Indeed, I say, I have known of this tree and seen old photos of it since I was a boy, and this is one of the things that has drawn me to Oaxaca. [. . .]

We have a leisurely three hours in Mexico City airport - lots of time before our connection to Oaxaca. [. . .]

5:25 p.m.: We taxi endlessly about the monstrous tarmac, joltingly, too joltingly for me to write. This giant city, God help it, has a population of 18 million (or 23 million, according to another estimate), one of the largest, dirtiest cities in the world.

5:30 p.m.: We’re off! As we rise above the smear of Mexico City, which seems to stretch from one horizon to the other, my companion suddenly says, “See that . . . that volcano? It is called Ixtaccihuatl. Its summit is always covered in snow. There, next to it, is Popocatépetl, its head in the clouds.” Suddenly, he is a different man, proud of his land, wanting to show it, explain it, to a stranger. It is an incredible view of Popocatépetl, its caldera nakedly visible and next to it a range of high peaks covered with snow. I am puzzled that these should be snow-covered, while the higher, volcanic cone is not - perhaps there is sufficient volcanic heat, even when it is not erupting, to melt the snow. With these amazing, magical peaks all around, one sees why the ancient Aztec capital of Tenochtitlán was established here, at 7,500 feet.

My companion (now on his second rum and coke, in which I join him) inquires why I have come to Mexico. Business? Tourism? “Neither, exactly,” I say. “Botany. A fern tour.” He is intrigued, speaks of his own fondness for ferns. “They say,” I add, “that Oaxaca has the richest fern population in Mexico.”

My companion is impressed. “But you will not confine yourself to ferns?” He speaks then, with eloquence and passion, of pre-Columbian times: the astonishing sophistication of the Maya in mathematics, astronomy, architecture; how they discovered zero long before the Greeks; the richness of their art and symbolism; and how the city of Tenochtitlán had more than 200,000 people. “More than London, Paris, more than any other city on Earth at the time, except the capital of the Chinese empire.” [. . .]

As we descend from the plane in Oaxaca city I can see John and Carol Mickel - my friends from the New York Botanical Garden - waiting in the airport. John is an expert on the ferns of the New World, of Mexico in particular. He has discovered more than sixty new species of fern in the province of Oaxaca alone and (with his younger colleague Joseph Beitel) described its seven hundred-odd species of fern in their book Pteridophyte Flora of Oaxaca, Mexico. He knows where each of these ferns is to be found - their sometimes secret, or shifting, locations - better than anyone. John has been to Oaxaca many times since his first trip in 1960, and it is he who has arranged this expedition for us.

While his special expertise lies in systematics, the business of identifying and classifying ferns, tracing their evolutionary relationships and affinities, he is, like all pteridologists, an all-round botanist and ecologist too, for one cannot study ferns in the wild without some understanding of why they grow where they do, and their relationship to other plants and animals, their habitats. Carol, his wife, is not a professional botanist, but her own enthusiasm, and her many years with John, have made her almost as knowledgeable as he is.’

Finally, Lawrence Weschler, author and ex-staff writer at The New Yorker, recently wrote, for Vanity Fair, a moving appreciation of Sacks, and included a number of his own diary entries about his friend.