Modesty, prudence, piety

’I never knew a man of a more universal and generous spirit, with so much modesty, prudence, and piety.’ This is the diarist John Evelyn writing about his friend, Thomas Tenison, who died 300 years ago today. Indeed, Tenison was an industrious cleric, rising rapidly through the church’s hierarchy, bringing order and renewal to his successive parishes. He was particularly active as rector of St Martin-in-the-Fields (now in Trafalgar Square) developing charity schools, a library, and the building of chapels. He won the favour of King William III with his firm stance against the Church of Rome, and served as Archbishop of Canterbury for the last 20 years of his life.

Tenison was born in 1636 into a clerical family in Cottenham, Cambridgeshire. He attended Norwich School, going on to Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, as a so-called Parker scholar (Matthew Parker, Archbishop of Canterbury from 1559 to 1579 who instituted financial reforms at Corpus Christi and endowed various scholarships). Tenison graduated in 1657, but his prospect in the church looked uncertain so he turned, briefly, to medicine. He was ordained privately (Anglican ordinations being still forbidden) in 1659; and was briefly rector at Bracon Ash. In 1662, he was made fellow of Corpus Christi, while Francis Wilford, the college master and new dean of Ely, presented him to the prestigious parish of St Andrew the Great, Cambridge. There he became highly regarded during the plague for being the only college fellow to remain in residence.

In 1667, Tenison married Anne, daughter of a former dean of Ely, and he was presented to the living of Holywell-cum-Needingworth, Huntingdonshire. Three years later he added the living of St Peter Mancroft, Norwich. By this time, Tenison was starting to make a name for himself as a writer with The Creed of Mr Hobbes examin’d, A Discourse on Idolatry and Baconia. Also, he became chaplain to the king. Further advancement followed when he was recommended for the living at St Martin-in-the-Fields in 1680 (the same year, in fact, that he was made Doctorate of Divinity). He became well known as a staunch opponent of the Church of Rome, but also a man of liberal religious views - he preached at the actress Nell Gwyn’s funeral representing her as truly penitent.

While at St Martin-in-the-Fields, during a time of rapid population expansion, Tenison oversaw many parish changes, and the building of new chapels; he pioneered the development of charity schools; and he built the first public library in London. He was recommended to King William III for early preferment, and was appointed archdeacon of London, then to the large see of Lincoln. However, in 1695, having been in constant attendance at the bedside of Queen Mary prior to her death in December 1694, and preaching at her funeral, he was elected archbishop of Canterbury. Subsequently, he attended the King on his deathbed, and crowned William’s successor, Queen Anne. But his influence declined as he fell out of favour with the new queen, who preferred John Sharp, Archbishop of York.

Tenison is considered to have been the first archbishop to take sustained personal interest in the church’s mission overseas, especially in the American colonies, encouraging, in 1701, Thomas Bray to found the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts, Much afflicted by gout in his later years, Tenison was still able to perform the coronation service for George I. He died, not long after, on 14 December 1715. The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (requires log-in) quotes James II as calling Tenison ‘that dull man’ with ‘languid oration’, and Jonathan Swift as describing him as ‘the dullest good for nothing man I ever knew.’ Further information is also available at Wikipedia.

There is no evidence that Tenison left behind diaries, but he is mentioned frequently in the diary of his friend, John Evelyn, who had an altogether better opinion of the man. There have been various editions of Evelyn’s diaries, many of which can be found online at Internet Archive. The following entries about Tenison all come from the second volume of a 1901 printing of The Diary of John Evelyn, as edited by William Bray. (See more on Evelyn’s diaries in an earlier Diary Review article - Virtues and imperfections - about the death of Charles II.)

21 March 1683
‘Dr. Tenison preached at Whitehall on 1 Cor., vi. 12; I esteem him to be one of the most profitable preachers in the Church of England, being also of a most holy conversation, very learned and ingenious. The pains he takes and care of his parish will, I fear, wear him out, which would be an inexpressible loss.’

15 February 1684
‘Dr. Tenison communicated to me his intention of erecting a library in St. Martin’s parish, for the public use, and desired my assistance, with Sir Christopher Wren, about the placing and structure thereof, a worthy and laudable design. He told me there were thirty or forty young men in Orders in his parish, either governors to young gentlemen or chaplains to noblemen, who being reproved by him on occasion for frequenting taverns or coffee-houses, told him they would study or employ their time better, if they had books. This put the pious Doctor on this design; and indeed a great reproach it is that so great a City as London should not have a public library becoming it. There ought to be one at St. Paul’s: the west end of that church (if ever finished) would be a convenient place.’

23 February 1684
‘I went to Sir John Chardin [. . .] Afterwards, I went with Sir Christopher Wren to Dr. Tenison, where we made the drawing and estimate of the expense of the library, to be begun this next spring near the Mews.’

7 March 1684
‘Dr. Meggot, Dean of Winchester, preached an incomparable sermon [. . .] Afterwards, I went to visit Dr. Tenison at Kensington, whither he was retired to refresh, after he had been sick of the small-pox.’

30 March 1684
‘Easter day. The Bishop of Rochester preached before the King; [. . .] I had received the sacrament at Whitehall early with the Lords and Household, the Bishop of London officiating. Then went to St. Martin’s, where Dr. Tenison preached (recovered from the small-pox); then went again to Whitehall as above. In the afternoon, went to St. Martin’s again.’

15 February 1685
‘Dr. Tenison preached to the Household. The second sermon should have been before the King; but he, to the great grief of his subjects, did now, for the first time, go to mass publicly in the little Oratory at the Duke’s lodgings, the doors being set wide open.’

17 March 1686
‘In the morning, Dr. Tenison preached an incomparable discourse at Whitehall, on Timothy ii. 3, 4.’

25 March 1687
‘Good Friday. Dr. Tenison preached at St. Martin’s, on 1 Peter ii. 24. During the service, a man came into near the middle of the church, with his sword drawn, with several others in that posture; in this jealous time it put the congregation into great confusion; but it appeared to be one who fled for sanctuary being pursued by bailiffs.’

10 August 1688
‘Dr. Tenison now told me there would suddenly be some great thing discovered. This was the Prince of Orange intending to come over.’

7 October 1688
‘Dr. Tenison preached at St. Martin’s, on 2 Tim. iii. 16, showing the Scriptures to be our only rule of faith, and its perfection above all traditions. After which, near 1,000 devout persons partook of the Communion. This sermon was chiefly occasioned by a Jesuit, who in the Masshouse on the Sunday before had disparaged the Scripture and railed at our translation, which some present contradicting, they pulled him out of the pulpit, and treated him very coarsely, insomuch that it was like to create a great disturbance in the City.’

18 July 1691
‘To London to hear Mr. Stringfellow preach his first sermon in the new-erected church of Trinity, in Conduit Street; to which I did recommend him to Dr. Tenison for the constant preacher and lecturer. This church, formerly built of timber on Hounslow-Heath by King James for the mass-priests, being begged by Dr. Tenison, rector of St. Martin’s, was set up by that public-minded, charitable and pious man near my son’s dwelling in Dover Street, chiefly at the charge of the Doctor. I know him to be an excellent preacher and a fit person. This church, though erected in St. Martin’s, which is the Doctor’s parish, he was not only content, but was the sole industrious mover, that it should be made a separate parish, in regard of the neighbourhood having become so populous. Wherefore to countenance and introduce the new minister, and take possession of a gallery designed for my son’s family, I went to London, where . . .’

19 July 1691
‘. . . in the morning Dr. Tenison preached the first sermon, taking his text from Psalm xxvi. 8. “Lord, I have loved the habitation of thy house, and the place where thine honour dwelleth.” In concluding, he gave that this should be made a parish-church so soon as the Parliament sat, and was to be dedicated to the Holy Trinity, in honour of the three undivided Persons in the Deity; and he minded them to attend to that faith of the Church, now especially that Arianism, Socinianism, and Atheism began to spread amongst us.  In the afternoon, Mr. Stringfellow preached on Luke vii. 5, “The centurion who had built a synagogue.” He proceeded to the due praise of persons of such public spirit, and thence to such a character of pious benefactors in the person of the generous centurion, as was comprehensive of all the virtues of an accomplished Christian, in a style so full, eloquent and moving, that I never heard a sermon more apposite to the occasion. He modestly insinuated the obligation they had to that person who should be the author and promoter of such public works for the benefit of mankind, especially to the advantage of religion, such as building and endowing churches, hospitals, libraries, schools, procuring the best editions of useful books, by which he handsomely intimated who it was that had been so exemplary for his benefaction to that place. Indeed, that excellent person. Dr. Tenison, had also erected and furnished a public library [in St. Martin’s]; and set up two or three free-schools at his own charges. Besides this, he was of an exemplary holy life, took great pains in constantly preaching, and incessantly employing himself to promote the service of God both in public and private. I never knew a man of a more universal and generous spirit, with so much modesty, prudence, and piety.’

12 January 1691
‘My grand-daughter was christened by Dr. Tenison, now Bishop of Lincoln, in Trinity Church, being the first that was christened there. She was named Jane.’

27 April 1693
‘My daughter Susanna was married to William Draper, Esq., in the chapel of Ely House, by Dr. Tenison, Bishop of Lincoln.’

9 December 1695
‘I had news that my dear and worthy friend. Dr. Tenison, Bishop of Lincoln, was made Archbishop of Canterbury, for which I thank God and rejoice, he being most worthy of it, for his learning, piety, and prudence.’

The Diary Junction

Life and fate

‘Stalingrad is burned down. I would have to write too much if I wanted to describe it. Stalingrad is burned down. Stalingrad is in ashes. It is dead.’ This is from the diary notebooks kept by Vasily Grossman, born 110 years ago today, during his 1,000 days with the Red Army during the Second World War. After the war, he fell foul of the Stalinest regime which prohibited publication of his novels, and he died without knowing how famous one of them would become.

Iosif Solomonovich Grossman was born on 12 December 1905 in Berdychiv, Ukraine (then in the Russian Empire) into a Jewish family. A Russian nanny is said to have been responsible for first calling him Vasya (a diminutive of Vasily). His parents separated, and for several years he lived in Switzerland with his mother, before returning to Kiev to stay with his father. He studied physics and mathematics at Moscow State University, and married Anna (Galia) Petrovna Matsuk from a Cossack family in 1929. They had one child, born in 1930, but divorced two years later.

Grossman went to work in Donbass as an engineer-chemist, writing occasional articles for the Literary Donbass. After recuperating from tuberculosis, he returned to Moscow and worked in a pencil factory. However, he was determined to pursue a literary career and, in 1934, published a much-admired short story, In the Town of Berdichev, and a novella, Glyukauf, about the Donbass miners. In 1936, he married Olga Mikhailovna, days after her divorce from a friend of his. During 1937, Grossman was admitted to the Union of Soviet Writers, but also Olga was arrested for not having denounced her former husband, considered an enemy of the state. Grossman first registered himself as guardian of Olga’s two children, and then bravely wrote to the state authorities arguing for, and winning, Olga’s release. Grossman’s first full novel Stepan Kolchugin was published in instalments between 1937 and 1940.

When Germany invaded the Soviet Union in 1941, Grossman’s mother was murdered in Berdychiv along with thousands of other Jews, and although exempt from military service he volunteered for the front, becoming a war correspondent for the Red Army newspaper, Krasnaya Zvezda (Red Star). He used his experience - covering many of battles of the war years, not least Stalingrad - for novels such as The People are Immortal and For a Just Cause (not fully published until after Stalin’s death). Also, he is credited with reporting some of the first eyewitness accounts - as early as 1943 - at Treblinka of what later became known as the Holocaust. He worked with other writers on a project known as The Black Book to document the horrors suffered by Soviet Jews at the hands of the Nazis, but became disillusioned with Stalin’s regime when it suppressed the work.

Grossman became critical of other Soviet policies, a dissident, and few of his works, thereafter were published. After submitting, what is now considered his magnum opus, the novel Life and Fate (a semi-autobiographical sequel to For a Just Cause), the KGB raided his flat and confiscated all related manuscripts. He appealed to Nikita Khrushchev, but to no avail; and he died in 1964, not knowing whether Life and Fate would ever see the light of day. In fact, it was finally published in 1980 in Switzerland thanks to dissidents smuggling out photographs of the text, and then in the Soviet Union in 1988. Further biographical information is available at Wikipedia, New World Encyclopedia, Encyclopedia of Soviet Writers, and Encyclopedia of Holocaust Literature (page 64, viewable at Googlebooks).

During the war, while embedded with the Red Army, Grossman kept detailed diaries or notebooks. These were edited, translated and weaved into a narrative by Antony Beevor and Luba Vinogradova for publication by The Harvill Press in 2005 as A Writer at War - Vasily Grossman with the Red Army 1941-1945. The authors say: ‘The notebooks reveal a good deal of the raw material which he accumulated for his novels as well as his articles. Grossman, a special correspondent for the Red Army newspaper, Krasnaya Zvezda, or Red Star, proved to be the most perceptive and honest eyewitness of the Soviet frontlines between 1941 and 1945. He spent more than a thousand days at the front - nearly three out of the four years of war. The sharpness of his observation and the humanity of his understanding offer and invaluable lesson for any writer and historian.’ The book (now in paperback under the Pimlico imprint) can be previewed at Random House or Googlebooks. And a review by Andrey Kurkov can be read in The Guardian.

Much of Grossman’s writing, as translated, in the book does read like a diary. However, as all of his words are woven into the authors’ text, particular entries are rarely given a specific date (whether or not there was one in the originals) - thus all the extracts below are undated.

1941
‘The headquarters has been set up in the Paskevich Palace. There is a wonderful park, and a lake with swans. Lots of slit trenches have been dug everywhere. Chief of the political department of the front, Brigade Commander Kozlov, receives us. He tells us that the Military Council is very alarmed by the news that arrived yesterday. The Germans have taken Roslavl and assembled a great tank force there. Their commander is Guderian, author of the book Achtung-Panzer!.

We leafed through a series of the Front newspaper. I came across the following phrase in a leading article: ‘The much-battered enemy continued his cowardly advance.’

We sleep on the floor in the library of the ‘Komintern’ club, keeping our boots on, and using gas masks and field pouches as pillows. We have dinner at the canteen of the headquarters. It is situated in the park, in an amusing multicolored pavilion. They feed us well, as if we were in a dom otdykha [Soviet house of rest] before the war. There’s sour cream, curds, and even ice-cream as a dessert.’

***

‘We came under fire near a cemetery. We hid beneath a tree. A truck was standing there, and in it was a dead rifleman-signaller, covered with a tarpaulin. Red Army soldiers were digging a grave for him nearby. When there’s a raid of Mssers, the soldiers try to hide in ditches. The lieutenant shouts: ‘Carry on digging, otherwise we won’t finish until the evening.’ Korol hides in the new grave, while everyone runs in different directions. Only the dead signaller is lying full length, and machine guns are chattering above him.’

***

‘Cucumbers. Four men from the fruit and vegetable store load cucumbers at the station, during a bombing raid. They are crying with fear, get drunk, and in the evenings they recount, with Ukrainian humour, how scared they were and laugh at one another, eating honey, salo [pork lard], garlic and tomatoes. One of them imitates wonderfully the howling and explosion of a bomb.

B. Korol is teaching them how to use a hand grenade. He thinks they’ll become partisans under German occupation, while I sense from their conversation that they are ready to work for the Germans. One of them, who wants to be an agronomist for this area, looks at Korol as if he were an imbecile.’

1942

‘Spent the night  in the house of the RAIKOM chairman. He talks about collective farms, and about chairmen of collective farms who take their livestock far into the steppe and live like kings there, slaughtering heifers, drinking milk, buying and selling. (And a cow now costs 40,000 roubles).

Women talking in the kitchen of the RAIKOM canteen: ‘Oh this Hitler, he’s a real Satan! And we used to say that communists were Satans.’

***

‘Stalingrad is burned down. I would have to write too much if I wanted to describe it. Stalingrad is burned down. Stalingrad is in ashes. It is dead. People are in basements. Everything is burned out. The hot walls of the buildings are like the bodies of people who have died in the terrible heat and haven’t gone cold yet.

Huge buildings, memorials, public gardens. Signs: ‘Cross here.’ Heaps of wires, a cat sleeping on a window sill, flowers and grass in flowerpots. A wooden pavilion where they sold fizzy water is standing, miraculously intact among thousands of huge stone buildings burned and half destroyed. It is like Pompeii, seized by disaster on a day when everything was flourishing. Trams and cars with no glass in their windows. Burned-out houses with memorial plaques: ‘I. V Stalin spoke here in 1919’.

Building of a children’s hospital with a gypsum bird on the roof. One wing is broken off, the other stretched out to fly. The Palace of Culture: the building is black, velvety from fire, and two snow-white nude statues stand out against this background.

There are children wandering about, there are many laughing faces. Many people are half insane.

Sunset over a square. A terrifying and strange beauty: the light pink sky is looking through thousands and thousands of empty windows and roofs. A huge poster painted in vulgar colours: ‘The radiant way’.

A feeling of calm. The city has died after much suffering and looks like the face of a dead man who was suffering from a lethal disease and finally has found eternal peace. Bombing again, bombing of the dead city.’

Carry on carping

The British Library has just bought, for over £200,000, the personal archive of Kenneth Williams, including all his diaries and many letters. Williams was one of Britain’s great 20th century comic personalities - a star of 26 Carry On films and several long-running and very popular radio programmes - his camp character seemingly becoming more and more exaggerated with age. Although a selection of his diaries was first published in the 1990s, and was acclaimed for revealing him as an intimate, gossipy (and often bitchy) diarist,  the British Library says that more than four-fifths of Williams’s diary material, never before seen by researchers, will - from next year - be publicly available for the first time.

Williams was born in 1926 in London, the son of a hairdresser, and educated at Lyulph Stanley School. At 18 he joined the army, and went with the Royal Engineers survey section to Bombay, and then to Sri Lanka, but managed to transfer to Combined Services Entertainment. After the war, he tried to establish himself as a serious actor in the theatre, but gravitated to radio where his voice and style suited programmes such as Hancock’s Half Hour and the Kenneth Horne shows. Indeed, he remained a radio star for the rest of his life, appearing, for example, in Just a Minute for over 20 years.

Having established a comic persona with radio, Williams did win roles in television and films, most notably in the Carry On series of films. Despite all the bawdiness of his comedy, he publicly insisted that he was celibate, and his diaries later revealed unconsummated passions towards various men. Stanley Baxter was a lifelong friend; and Williams was known to take holidays with Joe Orton and Kenneth Halliwell. He died, in 1988, from an overdose of barbiturates. It was never established whether his death was accidental or suicide, but some have argued that he would not have committed suicide without leaving a note for his dearly loved mother. Further biographical information can be found at Wikipedia, from a selection of obituaries at the Kenneth Williams Appreciation Society website, or at Dangerous Minds.

Williams kept diaries all his life, from as young as 14 until his death. The earliest surviving diary is from 1942, but there are no diaries for 1943-1946 when he was touring with the army. His last diary entry was written on 14 April 1988, the day before his death: ’By 6.30 pain in the back was pulsating as it’s never done before . . . so this, plus the stomach trouble combines to torture me - oh - what's the bloody point?’

In 1993, HarperCollins published The Kenneth Williams Diaries as edited by Russell Davies - nowadays it’s called an ‘outrageous bestseller’. Substantial parts of the book can be freely read online at Googlebooks and Amazon. At the time of publication, the book was reviewed with frenzied adjectives, recently echoed by the Daily Mail in describing the diaries as ‘excoriating, furious, bitter, resentful, occasionally self-hating and almost always bitchy on an epic scale’. See also a review in The Independent - Carry on carping with Ken.

Having been kept locked away, Williams’s 43 diaries (along with 2,000 letters) have now been bought by the British Library for £220,000, although copyright remains with the Williams estate, owned by Paul Richardson, his friend and neighbour. According to the British Library press release: ‘It is estimated that 85% of the newly-acquired archive is unpublished material never before seen by researchers, and the archive will be of huge interest to social historians of post war Britain, detailing the experience of a gay man both before and after the Wolfenden Report and the decriminalisation of homosexuality in 1968, alongside the mundane details of everyday life in London. The diaries and letters also record the actor’s experience of the dying days of the repertory theatre system and the growth of modern celebrity culture, something he seemed both to love and loathe.’

In announcing the purchase, the British Library has committed itself to making the diaries available in its Reading Rooms from March next year. It has also made available - courtesy of the Kenneth Williams estate - a number of extracts, from the diaries, not published before.

21 August 1950
‘Dreary day spent watching the lousiest production of ‘Seagull’ in rehearsal. It was monumentally boring. Can’t see it EVER being a success. CE [Clifford Evans] in London, R [Richard West, assistant director] rehearsing company. Very dreary for him. Performance in evening bad. Lousy house.’

12 June 1954
‘It seems almost incredible to me now, that I have come through 6 weeks of this kind of purgatory. I am genuinely perplexed as to how I have come through it. A team of people for whom I have practically no affection whatsoever. Plays so wretched that I blush to think I’ve helped to propagate them: and a kind of acting which is so dirty that I mentally vomit. This lesson has been learned. Proximity with such muck is dangerous. It is also futile artistically. One achieves nothing. One is in danger of losing everything. How right everyone was in London! What a fool I was to venture near such crap!’

10 January 1957
‘I’ve had my hair cut short again so it doesn’t blow about in the wind. Eden has resigned. That equally mediocre fossil-Macmillan has taken over! The Tory situation is quite pathetic since that old hypocritical ratbag Churchill left. He excelled so greatly in the oratorical sense - in the corruption of the poetic consciousness.’

4 May 1966
‘We went to see DR ZHIVAGO - the Robert Bolt screenplay - directed by David (dreary) Lean. Starring Omar Sharif. This may be the Great Russian Novel, but it’s a pain in the arse as a film. Then same old faults with Lean:m- pretentious shots that mean NOTHING, and a story that is almost without any really interesting & dramatic momnets. Everyone has LONG PROFOUND looks at each other - they frequently cry on meetings, or seeing people shot or something. But the fact is that no film should be boring, and this one is.

With the exception of ROD STEIGER’s performance. When he was on, it really came to life. I’m astonished on reflection, to find that his scenes are still clear in my mind, tho’ most of the others have vanished entirely. Him pacing up and down in the house during the attempted suicide - him in the restaurant when the workers go by singing - him being shot, and his stoical reaction at the Ball - his asking the girl to leave and falling down the stairs - all the sugar etc. It all stays clearly in the mind. Vivid. V. good actor.’

19 July 1967
‘Sitting in their lounge, in the quiet of the evening. I felt I would love to have a place of my own where there was such peace. I suppose one never really does get it in London. I should think I’ve heard more noise and drilling these last few years than ever before in my life. O! for those old days of quiet when new building was rare, and road mending was once in a blue moon!’

17 February 1969
‘Home by 4.30. Purchased black leather address book & blotting paper on the way. 4.45 JOHN SIMMONDS rang. He talked in v. hushed & mournful tones about KH and said Barry Took said this and that and I said ‘Its Barry Took who should go’ and he said he rather agreed. I said we should bring back the team & re-vamp the show and carry on. Phoned Hugh P. after and he agreed with me. (Rang Gordon [Jackson] and the boys told me he was opening tonight in HAMLET at the Roundhouse! I’d forgotten (if I ever knew) and didn’t send him a wire. This study is so cold - I’ve had to put my jacket on! ) I feel particularly annoyed about the radio series being cancelled, because its another source of revenue gone bust. Thank goodness I started the ‘Just A Minute’ series because that’s a source of income. Peter Eade telephoned to say that Bill Cotton had been on the phone saying that they’d take 6 of the Kenneth Williams (Pilot) series but they couldn’t afford more than £400 each, including the writer’s fee!! (We’re asking 500 an episode and 150 for the writing) so Peter said he’d have to discuss it with me. Then Cotton said they were going to repeat the Int. Cabaret series on BBC2 at the same TIME! This sounds like LUNACY to me.’

15 April 1969
‘At lunch I had the great shouting match with Joan Sims. Her patronage & assumption at times that she should tell me what to do, is intolerable. I shouted ‘You cow cunted mare’ and Hattie intervened and told me to stop it. Afterwards, Joan apologised and then of course, I apologised as well & suddenly I remembered that it has all happened before! The same sequence in ‘Camping’ – ugh! I loathe her standards & her mouldy respectability but not her personally. Oh! I don't know tho. I don’t like her either. Not anything about her really.’

21 April 1969
‘Did SMA at the Paris. Peter B drove me there. Joan S was v buoyant and performed quite brilliantly in the show - her characterizations and singing are quite superb. There’s no doubt, she’s an asset all right.’

22 June 1979
‘On the news they announced that JEREMY THORPE had been acquitted!! So that lying crook Scott has not succeeded in his vindictive quest!! They were cheering Jeremy outside the Old Bailey, and he rather spoiled it by making a sanctimonious speech about JUSTICE etc. Whereas he should have just expressed satisfaction and breezed away!’

29 June 1984
‘Up at 6.40. Got papers round corner at 6.45. Went out at 9.20 to get fags. Returned at 9.50 and Almanac asked where Louie was… Nosey nit… He’s left telephone directories lying in foyer for DAYS. HE pointed to them and told me ‘that’s what they waste your money on!’ and railed against wastage. Never heard such humbug.

Did the accounts for the month and walked with them to Smee handing the stuff over to Lynn. Walked home via Aldwych. Reflected that nothing really changes. I’m still walking about this city dragging my loneliness with me, putting on a front, whistling in the dark. It is getting darker all the time.

Went to Tesco’s and got fish and ham and tomatoes and had that at 5.30. Tried doing a bit more writing but my heart, it isn’t in it. Think I’ll have to leave it for a bit. Feel more like weeping.’

12 October 1985
‘TURNED OFF HEATING ‘cos the weather is so WARM.

Up at 7.15 and got papers on Warren Street. Quite a lot of letters to answer AND the endless invitations to speak at functions… I sent the usual printed refusal. … Now PAUL came at 11.45 and we walked with Louisa to VECCHIA where he gave us lunch. It was very good. PAUL said he was v busy with ‘Merry Widow’ production at the Wells. We got a cab back and I felt very tired so went to lie down, but the rest was all intermittent and uneasy.

M came at 7.30 and we went to ROYS where he gave me dinner. It was fine til the table next to us filled with dreadful people: one sneezing and spraying germs everywhere. Thankfully we’d finished the meal and M readily agreed to leave these loathsome neighbours. That DAVID (John Maynard’s friend) was very kind to us. M said of the clientele ‘bit off-putting seeing such a gathering of clones’ and I agreed. Society NEEDS women because it wants the leavening only THEY can provide. There is something very unhealthy about the homosexual world: no wonder they arouse such antagonism.’

And here are a few further extracts, from The Kenneth Williams Diaries as edited by Russell Davies.

2 June 1948
‘Feeling awful. Will probably die tonight at about eleven.’

11 June 1949
‘Went to the Bank and arranged to have my account transferred to Newquay. Deposited £7 - which means that £3.10.0 a week saved, since I started on full salary, which is not so good. Must do better than this.

Richard came to my room and read this! - funny he’s the only one I’ve ever allowed to read my private and so personal! diary. But s’pose that apart from S., he’s the only one I can really trust, who will never abuse my confidence.

Met some queers in the New, and got sent up by two young matelots - rotten! awful!’

22 May 1951
‘Letter from Robert Sheaf, asking me to take part in a Shakespearean tour of villages. Sounds delightful. He saw me in Bordeaux, obviously thinks I’m young and inexperienced and would be delighted to join him and a few intense young men, doing Romeo all over Oxfordshire. Very funny reely. This little chic stays single. Read ‘The City and the Pillar’ by [Gore] Vidal. Wonderful book. Commended by Stanley in his last letter.’

28 November 1952
‘Fred Treves came to tea and there was a furious argument - spiritual versus rational. Hell! Roman Catholicism from the foundation by Peter, Christ’s meeting with John the Baptist, Individual Revelations - Church Antipathy to, etc. etc., the end. I was angry about getting worked up as I always do when discussing organised religion. I hate the aggressiveness which automatically follows its assumption of power.’

5 January 1953
‘It is always so easy for me to read what I have just written and find it vastly entertaining and well done. It seems that everything I accomplish is of enormous interest to me and I am full of admiration for myself. Is this a good thing? Or does it much matter whether it is or not? Enough of this self-analysis. Too fashionable by half in this day and age.’

17 March 1955
‘The business of actually sustaining a performance night after night is peculiarly difficult for me: my temperament seems so against it. I am by nature erratic - given to enthusiasm which wane after a time; quick to grasp the bones of a subject, slow to develop them.’

15 March 1963
‘Stanley B. [Baxter] rang me. I was delighted & I shot up there to see him on the 30 bus. He drove out to Bucks. & we talked & talked. There are times (when he is prepared to be vulnerable)) when he is just superb. Disarming, honest, charming, and hilariously funny all at once. When he’s like this one could die for him. It was so good for me to see him.’

The Diary Junction

An inner confession

‘A symphony is not just a composition in the ordinary sense of the word; it is more of an inner confession at a given stage of one’s life.’ This is Jean Sibelius, Finland’s greatest composer and a national hero born 150 years ago today, writing in his diary. While sometimes demonstrating such considered wisdom, though, his diary often descends into existential angst as well, like in this entry written a few months later: ‘Don’t give in to tobacco or alcohol. Better to write rubbish in your “diary”. Confide your miseries to paper. In the long run it’s better so! Yes - in the long run.’

Johan (colloquially Janne, and later Jean) Christian Julius Sibelius was born on 8 December 1865 in Hämeenlinna, a small garrison town in the Grand Duchy of Finland, part of the Russian Empire. His father was the city medical officer, but he died young leaving his estate bankrupt. Sibelius was brought up in the household of his maternal grandmother, with summer holidays at his paternal grandmother’s in Loviisa. In 1872, Sibelius started at the Swedish preparatory school of Eva Savonius, but soon moved to Lucina Hagman’s Finnish-language preparatory school.

Early music instruction came from relatives; and, as Sibelius and his two siblings grew up, so they would play in a trio, he preferring the violin. On graduating from high school, he began to study law at the Imperial Alexander University in Finland but quickly switched to the Helsinki Music Institute (now the Sibelius Academy) from 1885, remaining until 1889. For the next two or three years, Sibelius travelled in Europe, studying in Berlin and Vienna, starting to compose in earnest, and absorbing many different musical experiences. In late 1891, he appeared for the first time in public as a conductor at a concert in Helsinki. And, in 1892, he completed Kullervo, a suite of symphonic movements.

Sibelius, having wooed Aino, the daughter of a Baltic aristocrat for several years, married her in mid-1892, her parents, apparently, having warmed to the penniless Sibelius thanks to the success of Kullervo. They would have six children, and live, from 1904, in a newly-built family home, Ainola, on Lake Tuusula, Järvenpää. For several years, Sibelius supplemented his income with teaching work, which left him insufficient time for composing. Biographers note that the influence of Wagner which could be heard in some of his compositions faded eventually; and, as the century neared its end, the Finnish senate awarded him a significant annual grant, allowing him more freedom to compose.

In 1899, at a time when the Russian emperor Nicholas II was restricting the Grand Duchy’s powers, Sibelius premiered his First Symphony, as well as patriotic compositions, Song of the Athenian Boys and Press Celebration Music (including, what become known as, Finlandia). These brought him much wider attention, and fame as a national figure. And soon he was making a name for himself abroad, as he accompanied, in 1900, his friend Robert Kajanus and orchestra on a tour of European cities - playing Sibelius’s new works. The following year, Sibelius’s Symphony No. 2 in D Major was conducted by Ferruccio Busoni in Berlin, and the British composer Granville Bantock commissioned his Symphony No. 3 in C Major in 1907.

After an operation to remove a throat tumour in 1908, Sibelius abstained from alcohol and tobacco; some see a link between this and the darker, more uncompromising music that followed, En Saga, for example, and Symphony No. 4 in A Minor. During the war years, he continued to compose smaller works, and made progress on his Fifth Symphony, but he also started drinking again. In 1918, he conducted a march in Helsinki at the conclusion of the Finnish Civil War, reinforcing his position as a national hero.

After the war, Sibelius travelled to Denmark, and also to England, giving successful concerts. Two further symphonies followed, but, from 1926 onwards he barely produced any new compositions. Biographers believe he was working on an eighth symphony, perhaps through to the early 1930s, but, in the mid-1940s, he burned a large number of papers, and left behind no trace of any such new symphony. His 90th birthday, in 1955, was widely celebrated in Finland, but two years later, in 1957, he died in Ainola. For more biographical information see The Finnish Club of Helsinki’s Sibelius website, Wikipedia, Sonos, or Encyclopaedia Britannica.

Sibelius began to keep a diary while in London in February 1909, jotting down his travel finances, but also confiding, as if to a friend about his life and thoughts. He continued writing in this journal until the end of 1913; and in mid-1914 he began a new journal, which he wrote in regularly until the 1920s. The two diaries contain around 90,000 words (in Swedish, Sibelius’s native language).

The Sibelius website gives this overview of the diary: ‘Sibelius writes down weather reports, finances, natural phenomena, the names of people he has met and discussions he has had. He reports everyday incidents, his journeys and family gatherings. The diaries also reveal the composer’s times of gloom. Negative criticism depressed him, as did the temporary - and often well-founded - periods when his wife would not speak to him. To his family he sometimes said that he would go and get rid of his bad moods in his diary, and once he called his diary his “spittoon”. In fact, the diary tends to portray Sibelius as a more melancholy person than he actually was.’

Although the diaries have not been published in their own right, they are available to researchers at the Finnish National Archive; and Erik Tawaststjerna used them extensively for his biography of Sibelius. In Finnish and Swedish this was published in five volumes. However, for the English market, they were condensed by Tawaststjerna, translated by Robert Layton, and published (between the 1976 and 1997) by Faber & Faber in three volumes. Each one can be previewed at Amazon (Vol. I - 1865-1905, Vol. II - 1904-1914, Vol. III - 1914-1957) or Googlebooks (Vol. I, Vol. II, Vol. III).

Indeed, Tawaststjerna opens his biography, in the first volume, with a Sibelius diary entry that, he says, ‘resembles in certain respects the Finland he himself knew as a child’: (12-13 April 1915) ‘When I shut my eyes I can picture in my mind a small town with one-storey barracks from the Swedish epoch. It is a late summer’s day between five and six in the afternoon some time during the 1820s. The sun is slowly sinking towards the horizon; an officer is visiting a family with two daughters, their mother and brother, and is obviously not his first visit. They have been enjoying themselves, reading novels, playing the piano; there are geraniums in the window and the house is an old-fashioned one of considerable style. Tea is served and afterwards the party breaks up; they are all fond of each other and there is an atmosphere of real friendship, perhaps love.’

Otherwise, however, it is not until the second volume that the chronology of Sibelius’s diary entries becomes useful for Tawaststjerna’s narrative. The translator, Layton, adds a note: ‘The style of the diaries is very difficult to convey. They make even fewer literary aspirations and convey the feeling of an information dialogue with an alter ego; they are cryptic jottings, highly idiosyncratic in their vocabulary and more often than not unsyntactical and badly punctuated. Indeed, at times they are difficult to make much of and in order to convey what Sibelius’s intentions are, I have found myself drawing on idioms that may not have enjoyed currency in English in the early part of the century. However, I hope that something of their flavour and also what he is trying to say to himself comes across.’

Here are several of Sibelius’s diary entries as found in Volume II of Tawaststjerna’s biography.

Undated in the biography
‘Don’t you understand now? By being so open, you have forefeited the respect that you feel to be your entitlement. Keep your thoughts to yourself and guard your tongue in talking to others. And then your pupils (!), stand fast by them. Otherwise the best and first will have every right to treat you in kind.’

Undated in the biography
‘Don’t worry about your being 44. There’s still time. All major composers found their way to the stars by discipline and self-study. Don’t be so overawed by youth that your creativity is stifled. They won’t be able to silence your art.’

Undated in the biography
‘Don’t change the colouring before it’s necessary. In scoring one should, as a rule, avoid leaving a paragraph without any strings. The sound can seem rough. Remember the differences in wind instruments in different countries, layout of strings and so on, keep a flexible balance that can be adjusted depending on circumstances. A satisfactory sonority still depends to a large extent on the purely musical substance, its polyphony and so on. In small orchestras the oboe, usually badly played, has to be treated with the same caution as the trumpet. In some orchestras the bassoon in its middle and high register cannot play piano. Only the bottom seems capable of that. In such orchestras the lower register of the flute is almost only usable in forte. Usually both in the wind and brass, the initial entry can be tentative and leave much to be desired in terms of intonation and ensemble. Beginning must be carefully marked. Also there is need for great care when the main burden of the melodic line moves from one instrument to another.’

21 April 1910
‘Again in the deepest depression. Working hard at the newcomer.’

27 April 1910
‘Light, expectant, hopeful thoughts. Worked in my own way. Try to concentrate. ‘A must.’ Now or never.’

7 May 1910
‘Took a ten-kilometre walk while composing, forged the musical metalwork and fashioned sonorities of silver.’

12 August 1910
‘This business of concerning yourself with practical affairs when you are a creative artist. Think of all the time and energy you waste on them every day. For you this is corrosive. But press on, in spite of all the derision and abuse. Worked well today on the development of the first movement. Don’t lose the sense of life’s pain and pathos!’

16 August 1910
‘When will I get this development finished? i.e. be able to concentrate my mind and have the stamina to carry it all through. I managed when I had cigars and wine, but now I have to find new ways. I must!’

17 August 1910
‘Crossed out the whole of the development. More beauty, and more real music. Not just scoring or crescendos but stereotyped writing. Now I have to speed up. Now or never!’

5 November 1910
‘Worked well. Forged onwards into the finale. Wonderful day with snow interlacing the trees and their branches - typically Finnish.

A symphony is not just a composition in the ordinary sense of the word; it is more of an inner confession at a given stage of one’s life.’

25 December 1910
‘Christmas - ! Aino sick . . . Continue to work. Money worries begin again! Of my State Prize only 400 remains. Eight doctors’ bills unpaid. Misery wherever one turns.’

31 August 1911
‘Don’t give in to tobacco or alcohol. Better to write rubbish in your “diary”. Confide your miseries to paper. In the long run it’s better so! Yes - in the long run.’

Anna with Gestapo

Anna Freud, a key figure in the development of psychoanalytic child psychology, was born 120 years ago today. It seems unlikely that she never kept a diary, but her papers remain under the control of the Freud archive and, to date, there has been no published evidence of any journals or diaries. Her famous father wasn’t much of a diary keeper either, but, in the latter years of his life, he kept a ‘chronicle’ consisting of no more than a single phrase for most days. This has been published in a large book - as The Diary of Sigmund Freud - with half-page explanations for every phrase! According to the editors, Anna’s name ‘absolutely dominates’ the record - with entries such as ‘Anna with Gestapo’.

Anna Freud was born in Vienna on 3 December 1895 to Sigmund Freud and Martha Bernays, the youngest of six children. She is said to have been competitive with her siblings, and to have been naughty, learning more at home than at school. From 1915, she worked as a teacher in her old school, the Cottage Lyceum, remaining there until 1920. She left, apparently, due to illness. By this time, she was already undergoing analysis by her father.

Having had the chance to observe children on a daily basis while teaching, Anna Freud was drawn to child psychology, and began her own psychoanalytical practice. From 1927 until 1934, she was General Secretary of the International Psychoanalytical Association, originally started by her father, where she presented papers outlining her approach to child psychoanalysis. Having taught at the Vienna Psychoanalytical Training Institute for some years, she became its director in 1935. The following year, she published The Ego and the Mechanisms of Defence, a founding work of ego psychology, establishing her reputation as a pioneering theoretician.

In 1938, the Freuds fled from Austria in response to Nazi harassment of Jews - indeed Anna had been arrested by the Gestapo. They immigrated to London, to a house in Maresfield Gardens, Hampstead, (not a 100 metres, in fact, from where I spent my early childhood in the 1950s). Sigmund Freud died a year later, but Anna continued to live in the same house (now a museum) for the rest of her life. Anna’s teaching in London led to a conflict between her and Melanie Klein - who had evolved her own theory and technique for child analysis - which threatened to split the British Psychoanalytical Society. A series of war-time ‘Controversial Discussions’ ended with the formation of parallel training courses for the two groups.

During the war, Anna set up the Hampstead War Nursery to provide foster care for over 80 children of single-parent families. Together with her lifelong friend Dorothy Burlingham, she published studies of children under stress in Young Children in War-Time and Infants without Families. By 1947, Freud and Kate Friedlaender had established the Hampstead Child Therapy Courses, training English and US child therapists, and a children’s clinic was added a few years later. From the 1950s, Freud travelled regularly to the US to lecture and teach. At Yale Law School, for example, she taught seminars on crime and the family, leading to publication of Beyond the Best Interests of the Child (1973) with Joseph Goldstein and Albert Solnit.

The publication of her collected works was begun in 1968, but the last of the eight volumes did not appear until 1983, a year after her death. The International Journal of Psycho-Analysis put out a memorial issue, and the clinic was renamed the Anna Freud Centre. Further information is available from The Freud Museum, Wikipedia, the BBC, Psychology’s Feminist Voices or The Philosophers’ Mail.

If Anna Freud kept a diary at any point in her life, there’s been no sign of it being published or being used for biographical purposes. The only diaries kept by Anna held in the Freud Museum archives are appointment diaries. The so-called Freud Archive, held by the US Library of Congress, has a significant number of documents which remain sealed for years to come - see an article by Joseph L. Sax in RBM. But, whether any of these are Anna’s or not is hard to tell. A review of the fictional Hysterical: Anna Freud’s Story by Rebecca Coffey states, ‘Anna’s papers and diaries remain under the control of the Freud Archives’.

In the absence of any diaries left by Anna, I turned to her father. But he wasn’t much of a diary writer either. Ilse Grubrich-Simitis, in her book Back to Freud's Texts: Making Silent Documents Speak (Yale University Press, 1996, see Googlebooks) refers to his ‘diary like personal jottings’ and specifies: ‘the slim “Geheim-Chronik” [secret chronicle] kept jointly with his fiancée from 1883 to 1886; the “Resiejournal” [travel diary], also comprising only a few pages, on the beginning of the voyage to America in 1909 with Ferenczi and Jung; the entries in “Prochaskas Familien-Kalender”; the “Kürzeste Chronik”.’

This latter, the “Kürzeste Chronik” or “Shortest Chronicle”, was published in English by the Hogarth Press in 1992 as The Diary of Sigmund Freud 1929-1939: A Record of the Final Decade (translated and annotated by Michael Molnar). The book is large and thick, and lavishly illustrated with many black and white photographs, but the actual diary entries by Freud are so short - a few words - that they are even included verbatim within the index (as well as at least three times elsewhere)! The bulk of the book, however, is taken up with extensive annotations of each diary entry - explanations, embellishments and analysis of Freud’s daily life.

Molnar explains in his introduction that, in 1986, the papers stored all over the house were assigned to an archive, and how, at that point, Freud’s diary was handed over to him. He goes on to say: ‘It is worth noting how frequently various names are mentioned in the diary. Not surprisingly, it is Anna’s name which absolutely dominates the record, for it was during these years of sickness that she became Freud’s constant companion, his faithful “Anna-Antigone”.’ Here are some, but not all, of Sigmund Freud’s laconic diary entries mentioning his daughter.

3 December 1929
‘Anna’s birthday 34 yrs’

17 December 1929
‘Anna to Essen - cut stones bought’

21 December 1929
‘Anna back’

26 March 1930
‘Anna to Bpest. Elkuss +’

27 March 1930
‘Anna back - Eitington from Paris’

15 April 1930
‘Anna & Dorothy to Paris’

17 April 1930
‘Anna & Dorothy back’

14 September 1930
‘Anna at Mother’s burial’

22 February 1932
‘Anna and I have infectious cold’

3 December 1933
‘Anna 38 yr’

23 January 1935
‘Anna’s lecture’

11 June 1937
‘Anna’s accident’

22 March 1938
‘Anna with Gestapo’

20 May 1939
‘Anna to Amsterdam’

I hope not a ‘what it was’

Robert Charles Benchley - the early 20th century American columnist and comic actor - died 70 years ago today. He seemed to find his métier early on, while at Harvard through writing for its literary and comic magazines. But, after university, it took him some years to settle into what became a successful career as both a drama critic/humorist in New York, and a comic actor/monologuist in Hollywood. He did, at times, keep diaries, and although these have not been published, as far as I know, Benchley’s son Nathaniel drew on them extensively for his 1955 biography, as did Wes D. Gehring almost 40 years later.

Benchley was born in 1889 in Worcester, Massachusetts. His elder brother, Edmund, died in the Spanish-American war when Robert was but 9, and subsequently Edmund’s rich fiancee, helped Robert attend Phillips Exeter Academy in Exeter, and later, from 1908, Harvard. At Harvard, Benchley became involved with theatrical productions and the Harvard Advocate and the Harvard Lampoon, being elected, in his third year, to the board of the latter. In 1914, her married Gertrude Darling, who he’d met at high school, and they had two sons, Nathaniel (one of whose children, Peter, would write the famous book, Jaws) and Robert.

After Harvard, Benchley tried a variety of jobs in New York City - copy work, translation, press agent, reporting - but too often found himself not quite at ease with the work or the expectations of others. Having written freelance articles for Vanity Fair since 1916, he was taken on as managing editor in 1919, along side his Harvard Lampoon collaborator, Robert Sherwood, and Dorothy Parker, who had taken over as theatre critic from P. G Wodehouse. Although Vanity Fair suited Benchley well, allowing him to vent his humorous style, he, along with Sherwood and Parker soon fell out with the managers. When Parker was fired, Benchley resigned in sympathy, and returned to freelancing. The three friends had been meeting for lunches at the Algonquin Hotel, and, as this continued, so they became known as the Algonquin Round Table.

In 1920, Benchley joined the staff of Life magazine as the drama critic, eventually managing the whole drama section, and remained until 1929. During this time, the Round Table put on a one-night review, but Benchley’s contribution - The Treasurer’s Report - was so popular that he was asked to reprise it often. Irving Berlin, in fact, hired him for $500 a week to perform it nightly during Berlin’s Music Box Revue which ran for a year in 1921-1922. This led to work writing work for film screenplays and Broadway musicals, including, in 1928, a film version of The Treasurer’s Report. Benchley then wrote and/or starred in many more short films. On leaving Life, he was invited to be the theatre critic for the newly-established magazine The New Yorker, which would publish an average of nearly 50 Benchley pieces a year during the early 1930s.

The 1930s and early 1940s saw Benchley often in Hollywood, moving from Paramount to MGM and back again to Paramount, making 40 short films and appearing in minor roles in some 50 feature films. His How to Sleep (1935) won an Academy Award for best live-action short film. Biographers say, however, that though films brought Benchley fame, it is his writing that must be considered his lasting achievement. From 1920s on, and every few years, he published a compendium of his columns and essays, illustrated by Gluyas Williams: Pluck and Luck (1925), for example, My Ten Years in a Quandary, and How They Grew (1936), and Inside Benchley (1942). In later years, Benchley’s drinking led to him being diagnosed with cirrhosis of the liver, and he died, still in his mid-50s, on 21 November 1945. A limited amount of further information can be found at Wikipedia, The Worcester Writers Project, or Encyclopædia Britannica.

In 1955, McGraw-Hill published Nathaniel Benchley’s biography of his father - simply called, Robert Benchley - drawing on diaries Benchley had kept as a young man. More recently, in 1992, Greenwood Press published Wes D. Gehring’s “Mr B” or comforting thoughts about the bison: a critical biography of Robert Benchley, and this too culled significant details from Benchley’s diaries. Indeed, where Nathaniel’s book contains no introduction, and no acknowledgement of sources, Gehring’s book does, at least, provide some background on the diaries.

According to Gehring, Benchley’s diaries are contained in five bound volumes, for the years 1911-1914 and 1916, and these are held by the Mugar Memorial Library, Boston University. There were also, he says, childhood diaries, and possibly adult diaries (the library holds travel diary fragments, from 1922 and 1930), but these were most likely destroyed by his wife. Gehring believes she might have done this to carry out Benchley’s wishes. And, in support of this idea, he quotes Benchley as having said once, ‘no one else is ever going to get a look at these diaries so long as I have a bullet in my rifle.’

Gehring quotes extensively from Benchley’s diaries, but in a very bitty way, weaving phrases and sentences into his own text. (He does, though, scrupulously provide a date for each one.) Here’s an example from Gehring: ‘Besides his wedding, 1914 was also memorable as Benchley received his first check for a story (the amount was forty dollars). The September 28 timing could not have been more opportune, because as Benchley noted in his diaries: “our bank account was nil, it lacking two days of pay-day.” He would later describe their first married New Year’s Eve together, “sitting up in bed going over the bills to be paid tomorrow.” (From the notes: the first quote is dated 28 September 1914, the second 31 December 1914.)

The following, more complete, extracts from Robert Benchley’s diaries can be found in Nicholas Benchley’s 1955 biography.

23 July 1907
‘Then Lucy, Miss Jean, Jessie, Miss Ida and I went on the river in the moonlight in the two canoes. Sang and drifted. Took my mandolin. Slick.’

22 November 1907
‘Played football in the moonlight until nearly 11 o’clock. Came back to the room and fooled around.’

10 December 1907
‘Had a peach of a rough-house up in John’s room trying to put Fat on one bed.’

25 February 1908
‘Fat and I went to the Town Hall and hear Jacob Riis lecture on “The Battle with the Slums.” Illustrated. Very interesting.

1911 [on being elected to the board of Harvard Lampoon - undated in Nathaniel’s book]
‘It will mean a lot of work and a lot of worry and responsibility for it is a responsible position, yet I am very happy to be given it - not least of all because Mother will be so proud - and Gertrude too - and maybe my course will seem a little more worth while to Lillian. I never dreamed when I was a struggling freshman toiling over bum jokes that I would some day be the dreaded censor of the jokes of others - I trust I remember enough of how I felt, to be as nice as Hallowell was to me then. It is the biggest thing so far in my college course, but it doesn’t seem so big now that I’ve got it - I can see lots of bigger things that I ought to do, a “cum laude,” for instance.’

30 July 1914
‘Europe seems tottering on the brink of a general war over the Austria-Servia affair, but I can’t make it seem possible that they really will fall back so far into the middle ages after having come so far.’

31 July 1914
‘The stock markets are closed, and Germany is on the point of declaring war on Russia. Still, I can’t help feeling that things will be straightened out without a general European war.’

3 August 1914
‘A depression seems hanging over everything that is ominous - reflected from Europe where all the progress of 100 years is going to smash. H. G. Wells wrote better than he knew. But if any one is to lose, I hope that it is Germany and Austria, on whose aggressive brutality rests the blame.’

4 August 1914
‘Germany has declared war on England and Turkey on Servia. It is almost ludicrous in its immensity, yet frightful.’

16 August 1914
‘Japan has jumped in now and given Germany till August 20 to get out of Kaeow Chow. It is something of the “kick-him-in-the-teeth-he-ain’t-got-no-friends” attitude, and “come-on-in-and-get-a-piece-while-the-getting-is-good.”

13 November 1915
’12:27 - GAME CALLED. Nurse (a new one) comes in and asks my name. “Benchley.” Well, Miss Erbstadt just telephoned down & said the baby has just arrived and they are both all right. She said she didn’t know whether it was a boy “or what it was.” I hope not a “what it was.” “Both all right” is more to the point.

12:32 - Another nurse says she thinks she said a boy, but not sure. It ought to be fairly easy to ascertain before long.

12:35 - A Boy! and love from the Wife! Yea! Nurse tried to tell me “twins,” but I was a sly dog and didn’t bite.’

The 33rd Vice President

‘Hoover is apparently on his way toward becoming a kind of American Himmler.’ This is Henry Agard Wallace, the 33rd Vice President of the United States, who died 50 years ago today. A clever and successful farmer, he played an important political role in Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal policies, and was a whisker away from becoming President, but, after the war, he found himself opposing the US’s growing antipathy towards the USSR. Wallace kept a daily diary during the latter years of WW2, and it contains much of interest about his own politics, and about the Roosevelt and Truman administrations.

Wallace was born in 1888 on the family livestock farm near the town of Orient, Iowa. In 1892, the family moved to Ames, where his father, having given up farming, became professor of agriculture at the Iowa State Agricultural College. Soon after, the family took in a student, George Washington Carver, the African-American later to become a well-known botanist and inventor, who took the young Wallace on nature walks. Carver left when Wallace was still only 8, but is said to have left a deep and lasting influence on the boy. While a student at West High School, he attended lectures at Iowa State University given by the vice-dean Perry G. Holden who believed the quality of corn yield could be predicted by how good it looked. Wallace, using five acres of land behind his home, proved there was no relationship between yield and appearance.

Wallace moved on to study at Iowa State Agricultural College, and to write for his family’s successful magazine, Wallaces’ Farmer. He married Llo Brown in 1914, and went to live on a 40 acre farm near Johnson County. They would have three children. He taught himself statistics, and introduced econometrics into the field of agriculture. When his grandfather died, he became joint editor, with his father, of Wallaces’ Farmer, and then, after the end of WWI, he took over as sole editor, offering solutions to the agricultural depression - often at odds with Herbert Hoover, who had been in charge of the Office of Food Administration during the war. In particular, Wallace believed that farm surpluses were the cause of much misery in rural areas, and sought to find ways to limit production.

In 1923, Wallace developed a strain of hybrid corn - disease resistant and with higher yields - so commercially successful that a few years later he was able to launch Hi-Bred Corn Company. Increasingly, Wallace was drawn into politics - not as a Republican like the Wallaces before him - and in 1933, Franklin Roosevelt appointed him Secretary of Agriculture. He soon established and began to administer the Agricultural Adjustment Act, to control production, raise and stabilise farm prices, conserve soil, and store reserves. Widely regarded as a champion of human welfare, detractors saw his approach as too wasteful. In 1940, he was chosen to be Vice President to Roosevelt, a role he expanded beyond its normal remit, travelling to Latin America and the Far East. During WWII, he took on additional duties, especially in national economic affairs, though was stripped of these after publicly feuding with Secretary of Commerce Jesse H. Jones.

In 1944, however, Democratic Party conservatives - especially Southerners - opposed Wallace’s renomination as Vice President, and Harry S. Truman was chosen instead, succeeding to the post in January 1945. So it was Truman that became President less than three months later, when Roosevelt died. A few weeks before then, though, Roosevelt had named Wallace as Secretary of Commerce, a post he was to hold onto for little more than a year - being the last of Roosevelt appointees to be fired by Truman. Subsequently, Wallace became the editor of The New Republic magazine, a platform he used to oppose Truman’s tough cold war foreign policies; and then he set  himself up as a presidential candidate, with a newly-formed Progressive Party, standing in the 1948 presidential election. His stance on closer relations with the USSR, and his soft approach towards communism in the US, were against the political current, and seriously undermined his support.

Wallace resumed his farming interests, and, among things, developed a hugely successful breed of chicken. In 1950, when North Korea invaded South Korea, he left the Progressive Party and supported the US effort in the Korean War. In 1952, he published an article Where I Was Wrong trying to explain his once trusting stance toward the Soviet Union, and declaring that he now considered himself an anti-Communist. He died on 18 November 1965. Further information can be found at Wikipedia, US Senate, Spartacus Educational, The New Yorker, American University, or New Deal Network.

Wallace kept a diary at various times in his life: in 1935 during the controversy within the Department of Agriculture; in 1939-1940, preceding, during and following his nomination for Vice President; and from early 1942 to September 1946. Generally, he dictated his diary daily to a secretary, but also would keep pocket journals when on travels. Some of this diary material was published by Houghton Mifflin Company in 1973 in The Price of Vision - The Diary of Henry A. Wallace 1942-1945, as edited by John Morton Blum. Blum notes that ’as his temperament dictated, Wallace was a frank but never an intimate diarist.’ The book does not appear to have been reprinted or reissued since the 1970s, and, indeed, Wallace himself is little remembered these days. One review can be found online in the Annals of Iowa, which concludes: ‘Because he was so often involved in decision-making at the highest levels, Wallace’s diary illuminates one of the most critical periods in American history.’

14 April 1944
‘. . . Major General Leslie Groves [commanding officer of the Manhattan Project, developing the atomic bomb] presented me with a report on a governmental secret project which is the most interesting report I have ever seen. This is a project about which I have talked with Vannevar Bush for the last two years. This is a project which should result in definitely ending the war within another 18 months at the outside . . .’

20 May 1944, Edmonton, Canada
‘Gen. Gaffney, born in Massachusetts, raised in Texas, strong for the North. Prefers it to the tropics. Likes to hunt. Tells of unpreparedness in Alaska. Japs could have taken Seward. We had no cruisers up there. Army high command was convinced Japs would not strike at Alaska. Thinks there are great mineral and agricultural possibilities in northwest territory. Prof. Blackfoot of University of Alberta thinks there are enormous possibilities for dairying and hog possibilities. Soil marvelous, deep, black . . .’

29 August 1944
‘. . . At lunch with the President. The President seemed to be looking quite well, in good spirits and very cordial. He complimented me on the work I had been doing in New England and said they would want me to do a lot of work of this kind during the campaign. He then started to skate over the ice at once as fast as he could, saying that I was four or six years ahead of my time, that what I stood for would inevitably come. I told him I was very happy about what had been demonstrated at the convention and following the convention because I now knew that the people were for me. [. . .] I went on to say that I knew just exactly what happened at the convention but that the reason I had come out for him was because his name was a symbol of liberalism not only in this country but in the whole world. He then hastened to say how much he appreciated that and said if everything went well on November 7 [when President Roosevelt would be elected to a fourth term] I could have anything I wanted in the government with one exception. The exception was the State Department. [. . .]

The President said he thought the election was going to be very close but in case we won, one of the first things we would do would be to sit down with me and make a list of folks we were going to get rid of, said the first on the list would be Jesus H. Jones. I said, “Well, if you are going to get rid of Jesse, why not let me have Secretary of Commerce with RFC and FEA thrown in? There would be poetic justice in that.” The President said, “Yes, that’s right.” ’

19 December 1944
‘I got it on very good authority yesterday that Edgar Hoover continually has Drew Pearson [a journalist and diarist - see Salty and Petulant] shadowed. Hoover specializes on building up a file against the various public figures and especially against the columnists. He has not yet built up much of a file against Walter Winchell. Winchell has so far been too smart for Hoover. Hoover is apparently on his way toward becoming a kind of American Himmler.’

14 January 1945
‘. . . Ernst asked what the President was going to do with Jesse Jones? I said, “Why should he do anything with Jesse Jones?” Ernst replied, “Well if he takes care of Jesse in some way, it will reduce the amount of discord.” I said, “Well, it seems to me it would be better for the President to fight on this issue and get licked than to give Jesse something.” In other words, what I was really saying to Ernst was that I would rather not to be confirmed by the Senate than to have Jesse Jones still in government.’

[This was the last entry Wallace made as Vice President, and he only took up the diary again the following April. In the meantime, his nomination as Secretary of Commerce was almost not confirmed, Blum explains in a footnote, as Jones and others fought to block him in the Senate.]

12 September 1946
‘At the meeting with the President I went over page by page with him my Madison Square Garden speech to be given on September 12. Again and again he said, “That’s right”; “Yes, that is what I believe.” He didn’t have a single change to suggest. He twice said how deeply he appreciated my courtesy in showing him my speech before I gave it.

The President said that Secretary Byrnes’ speech of September 6 had been cleared with him over the telephone and then it had been sent back to Washington for minor checking. He said also that he thought it must be a pretty good speech because neither the British, the French, nor the Russians liked it.

The President apparently saw no inconsistency between my speech and what Byrnes was doing - if he did he didn’t indicate it in any way. He spoke very hopefully about the future, saying that he thought the situation between the United States and Russia was much more peaceful than the newspapers would have us believe. He said the dark cloud on the horizon was the state of Stalin’s heath; that Stalin was now an old man. He said also it was almost impossible to do business with Molotov . . .’

Diary briefs

Gangster diary names crime network - Hindustan Times

Lawrence Ferlinghetti travel journals - Liveright, The Paris Review

Childhood diaries from Maoist cult - The Telegraph

Mid-19th century diaries of Perth bishop - The West Australian

Hillary diaries added to Unesco Memory - Radio New Zealand

Diary of WWII medic uncovered - Simcoe.com

Samuel Pepys: Plague, Fire, Revolution - National Maritime Museum, The Guardian

Diary entry delays murder trial - Cleveland.com

NZ war diaries kept by Leeds university - New Zealand Herald

Baseball reporter’s drinking diary - Daily News

WWI diaries of Irish hero - Irish Mirror

Orville Wright’s diaries online - Library of Congress

Canada’s rebel hero

Louis David Riel - one of the most divisive and controversial figures in Canadian history - was executed 130 years ago today. While many revere him as a heroic rebel who helped the French-speaking peoples across Canada stand up to the Anglophone domination of Canadian territories, others see him as no more than a half-insane religious fanatic. During the last year or so of his life, Riel kept diaries, and these - at least the later entries when he was on death row - reveal his religious zeal.

Riel was born in 1844, within the Métis community, an ethnic group of mixed Native American and European descent, in the Red River Settlement, near what is now Winnipeg, Manitoba. The eldest of 11 children in a respected, religious family, he was educated by Roman Catholic priests at St. Boniface and then at the Séminaire of the Collège de Montréal. However, he left college on hearing of the death of his father, and took work as a law clerk. He became engaged to a young woman, but her family objected to her marrying a Métis. He moved for a while to Chicago, mixing with literary types, before returning, in 1868, to Red River Settlement, then nominally administered by the Hudson Bay Company.

Anxiety among the Métis, about an ongoing influx of Anglophone Protestant settlers, escalated in 1869 during negotiations designed to transfer territorial rights in parts of Western Canada from the Hudson Bay Company to the newly-formed Dominion of Canada - the Métis not having English-style title to their land. Riel assumed leadership to counter these moves. He and his supporters intervened to stop a government survey of the area, and to bar William McDougall, the governor-designate, from entering Red River. They also seized Fort Garry, the headquarters of the Hudson Bay Company. A few weeks later the Métis National Committee declared a provisional government with Riel its president.

While the provisional government established a legislative assembly and published its own newspaper, discussions continued with the Canadian government, leading to a draft agreement, the Manitoba Act. Implementation, however, was stalled by the provisional government executing Thomas Scott, an English-speaking surveyor. He had been imprisoned in Fort Garry, had tried to escape, and was considered an agitator. The act led to outrage across English-speaking Canada. Part of the agreement had been an amnesty for the insurgents, and this was now withdrawn. Forces were sent to the region, and recaptured Fort Garry; Riel fled across the border to St. Joseph’s mission in the Dakota Territory.

Civil government was eventually established in the settlement later that same year (1870), with many of Riel’s former supporters having been elected into power. Riel returned to Manitoba quietly, and was even tacitly accepted by the lieutenant-governor Adams George Archibald in thanks for the supportive role Riel had played in helping repel raids from across the border by Irish revolutionaries (Fenians). Nevertheless, such a de facto amnesty for Riel was not accepted in Ottawa, and he was obliged to go into exile again. He continued to play a part in the politics of the region, even being elected member of parliament several times. He was, though, still fugitive, unable to take his seat because of a large government reward posted for his capture. Instead, he spent time with priests of the Oblate order in Plattsburgh, New York. Eventually the Liberal leader Alexander Mackenzie secured a deal from Parliament allowing Riel an amnesty but only after five years of exile.

Riel became rather unstable, started to believe he had been divinely chosen to lead the Métis, and ended up in mental asylums for a year or so, possibly suffering from megalomania. He returned home briefly, but moved on west, to Montana Territory, where he became a trader and interpreter. In 1881, he married Marguerite Monet dit Bellehumeur, a young Métis, and they had three children. (Tragically, all were to die before long: his youngest son on the day of his birth, another son in his teens, and, later, his wife and then his other child would both die in their mid-20s.) Riel turned to teaching to support his family, and got involved in Montana politics, campaigning for the Republican Party, and taking on US citizenship. In 1884, the Métis in Saskatchewan appealed to Riel to take up their land claims with the Canadian government. Riel arrived in Batoche in July that year, and set about preparing a manifesto detailing grievances and settlers’ objectives. Although, initially, many found his approach reasonable, Riel began alienating different groups - his megalomania having returned - notably the church with his heretical speeches, and, before long, many of the Métis too.

When the government appeared to prevaricate over its response to the manifesto, and ordered more armed troops to the region, Riel and a band of remaining supporters seized arms, took hostages, cut the telegraph lines and declared, on 19 March 1885, a Provisional Government of Saskatchewan. Confrontation came to a head in May at the Battle of Batoche, the outcome of which was never in doubt. Riel surrendered on the 15th. He was found guilty of treason, and hanged on 16 November, an outcome which led to fierce outbreaks of racialism in Quebec and Ontario, and marked the beginning of the nationalist movement. Indeed, Wikipedia notes that ‘historians have debated the Riel case so often and so passionately that he is the most written-about person in all of Canadian history’. Further information is also available at the Dictionary of Canadian Biography, University of Missouri-Kansas’s Famous Trials website, the Manitoba government website, or Library and Archives Canada.

Four diaries kept by Riel in the year before his death have survived. One of these - covering just a week prior to the Battle of Baroche - was lost for a century and only came to light in 1970. Soon after, it became the object of a famous literary sale, and was bought by private investors for $26,500. All four diaries were translated into English and edited by Thomas Flanagan for publication by Hurtig (Edmonton) in 1976 as The Diaries of Louis Riel. The full text is available at Our Roots - Canada’s Local History Online; and the short text of the Batoche diary is also available at the University of Saskatchewan’s Northwest Resistance website.

4 May 1885
‘The Spirit of God made me see two fighting men; they were walking down from Prince Albert. There was something big in front of them. I don’t know what it is. But I can tell you that it’s nothing good. The two men are not together. One is coming behind the other. They are not going very fast. The purpose of their mission is evil. They are trying to cause a great deal of trouble and confusion. But they are not achieving the goal they have in mind.

Evening of May 4
I see the troops coming, they are on foot. I see them in the aspens on the slope this side of Baptiste Vandale’s farm.

I see a pure white horse bearing a rider. The white colour of the horse flashes in the sun. The rider is leaving the road, he wants to get into the open.

I saw a big grass snake striking at the stake.’

5 May 1885
‘My wife encompasses my life. My nation encompasses my way of life. My army, the army which God has given me, encompasses the life I lead. My family has no other life than mine. The Church follows my example and is good to the same extent that I am good.

Be careful, watch out. The white man and the Orangeman want to trick you. The trap is wide open. It is set, do not rush into it.

For from another side, I see something stupendous coming: a great blow. Stay back, keep together. Let us be ready.’

6 May 1885
‘I see the white man with his battle helmet. The white man is tall. He sees far enough, but his steps do not take him very far, they lead him behind. The white man stumbles; his two feet slowly slide to the wrong side. He cannot stand up; he is effaced little by little; he gradually disappears; he vanishes - because his heart only has room for evil. To be more precise, he has no heart. When I speak of white men. I do not mean brown men.

Here I am, squarely arrived at the time God has marked in the order of things to come. With my own eyes, I saw all the signs of the times which were shown us before now. I did not want to believe that they were really signs of the times. But finally I had to recognize what they were. Yes, before me lies the time identified in many ways, the time announced with all the signs that are supposed to accompany it, as we are told in the Scriptures.

Boue-Chaire-Vile, previously such a fine place, is abandoned! The once fair city of Boue-Chaire-Vile now has no one to protect it. I am calling for help. I would like to wake those who sleep in the profound slumber of sin. They do not hear me, they do not listen to me, they do not obey me. The enemy is coming up the river, he is arriving, he is going to bombard the city. How is it going to resist? No one takes its interests to heart. It is going to fall into the hands of the conqueror. For, having first abandoned God, it is now abandoned by God. It is done. Oh, how many times will you come true, O prophecy? Oh, how many times each century! Oh, how many times each generation?

The Spirit of God has made me see that my prayers and obeisances are good, that they are pleasing to Him. But the government is harming me; the government’s army is waging war upon me. And yet, however harmful that obstacle may have been to me, I am surprised at how easily I have removed it from my path. Anyone who wanted to stop me from praying has been put in his place. When you have confidence in God and Jesus Christ, nothing is difficult any more.
The Spirit of God made me realize the extent of the rights which the Indian possesses to the land of the North-West. Yes, the extent of the Indian rights, the importance of the Indian cause are far above all other interests. People say the native stands on the edge of a chasm. It is not he who stands on the edge of a chasm; his claims are not false. They are just. The land question will soon be resolved, as it must, to his complete satisfaction. Every step the Indian takes is based upon a profound sense of fairness.’

20 May 1885
‘Why do we have comfortable houses? Our home is not here. O Mary conceived without sin, pray for us.’

21 May 1885
‘At my table, I will only have what is strictly necessary - water or milk to drink, no dessert, no syrup.

I do not even want to sit comfortably. I want to punish myself, mortify myself in everything.’

23 May 1885
‘Down with beautiful hair and vain hair styles! Pretty heads are full of impure thoughts, they speak them aloud, they commit impure acts in great number.

No more useless words! I want to speak meekly. My thoughts must be charitable.’

[From the beginning of August, Riel wrote at length in his diary, but his entries were mostly prayers and meditations on death.]

22 August 1885
‘Death destroys the trees around me. She takes her victims from among my livestock. Even if I sacrifice one of the animals from my flocks, I become an instrument of death.

The language of death is eloquent. It is a language expressed in facts, not figures of speech. The birds of the air are subject to the laws of mortality. The fish hiding in the fathomless depths of the oceans are not concealed from death.

Man, whom God has placed at the head of creation, will obey death because he has disobeyed his Creator. Death! It is sin which has invited you into the world. You did not keep us waiting; it was not long after the invitation that you made your appearance. You are our guest. You deserve a kind and warm reception, for you only come to us after being summoned. Man has made a deliberate choice between immortality and mortality; and in exercising his freedom, he has consented to be your servant. Death, you have power over him because he has chosen you to be his mistress; it is fair that you should be obeyed. I am getting ready to receive you whenever it pleases God to send you to me. For imperious as you are, Death, you are subject to a power which must be acknowledged and obeyed - the absolute power of the One who, being life itself, has nothing which belongs to you; the sovereign power of the all-loving God without whose permission you cannot approach me.’