Jailed for making soap

‘A lady friend of mine got three weeks in jail for making her own soap, an article monopolized, but not supplied, by the Soviets and much missed by the people who under the old regime had become accustomed to buying it in the open market in any quantity and at a low price.’ This is from the Russian Civil War diary of Alexis Babine, an author and scholar, born in Russia 150 years ago today but who emigrated to the US, and spent much of his working life at the Library of Congress. For a decade or so in his middle years, however, he returned to Russia, and was caught up in the Civil War. The diary - written in English - is now considered a unique historical resource.

Alexis V. Babine was born into a family of provincial merchants in the small Russian town of Elatma (170 or so miles southeast of Moscow), on 22 March 1866. He studied at the prestigious Institute of History and Philology in St. Petersburg, between 1885 and 1887, and then taught at Okhta Trade School. Following a shooting dare, he accidentally killed his best friend. His parents paid ‘blood money’, while Babine worked his way across the country, eventually to Riga. There, in 1899, he was taken on, as a stoker, by a German ship, which carried him to the United Sates.

Once in the US, Babine studied American history and worked in the library at Cornell University, after which he was appointed a librarian at Indiana University. He moved to Stanford where he was given the post of assistant librarian, and where he taught bibliography and Russian. In 1902, Sabine arrived at the Library of Congress, according to its own website, where he took the position of ‘specialist in charge of the Slavic literature’. He is remembered for negotiating the purchase of a large Russian language collection (from a wealthy Siberian merchant, Genadii Yudin), not only making all the necessary arrangements, transferring 80,000 volumes from Russia to the Library of Congress, but also publishing a bilingual description of the collection, and beginning the work on a catalog for the collection.

In 1910, however, Babine returned to Russia, partly to see his mother who was ill, and partly because he wanted to publish a popular history of the United States in Russian. With that project completed, he worked as an inspector of schools in Kharkov province, and then, after the February revolution, he was appointed to teach English at Saratov university. He may well have died from starvation during the civil war years, but for his participation in the activities of the American Relief Administration (ARA), which supplied its employees with food, as well as with packages from friends in the United States.

Babine went back to the US in 1922, as an émigré, and from 1927 served as the assistant head of the Slavic section of the Library of Congress. He died in 1930. The only further information about Sabine available online appears to be at the Library of Congress website. The Library also holds Babine’s papers, including a very detailed journal he kept in Saratov from 1917 to 1922. This documents the deprivation experienced by the city’s population during the civil war years. The journal has been used by Eugene G. Pivovarov, a visiting scholar, to analyse price changes of basic foodstuffs. Pivovarov concluded: ‘The increase in prices, together with other factors, resulted in the destruction of the middle class in the entire region. Merchants, teachers, engineers, and craftsmen lived in equal poverty. They sold practically everything they had before the revolution and food became “a great blessing” for most of them’

Otherwise, Babine’s journal has been edited by the historian Donald J. Raleigh, and was published in 1988 by Duke University Press as A Russian Civil War Diary - Alexis Sabine in Saratov, 1917-1922. According to Raleigh: ‘Sabine kept his diary in the expectation that it would be published someday. He also wrote it for an American audience. Disgusted with what he called the “backwardness and barbarity” of his native country, Sabine could be a myopic observer. He expressed longing for a return to the old regime that had become politically and morally bankrupt even in the eyes of Saratov’s (and Russia’s) middle class. [. . .] The diary is a unique historical source because it offers readers a rare glimpse into daily life during the Civil War in the provincial city of Saratov. Sabine not only had an unusual story to tell, but also the ability to do so, and his writing casts fresh, if refracted, light on the Russian Civil Ware from an unfamiliar angle.’

Here are several extracts from the published journal.

19 March 1917.
‘I was waiting for my relay horses to rest before taking me to my next school, when an excited traveler suddenly broke into the dirty station room and gleefully announced the new millennium: Nicholas II has abdicated in favor of his brother Michael. A free constitutional rule, perhaps even a republic, is assured. The man’s accent bespoke a Pole. The stationmaster and his peasant help looked at him sourly. One could read in their eyes: “What joy can there be in a tsar’s abdication - except for an infidel like you?” It was now questionable whether I should hurry home by rail and cut short my school inspection program, or disregard the change of rule and carry out my plans as though nothing had happened. I chose the latter course.’

21 March 1917
‘At Nikolsk the liberals - social revolutionaries - are forcing themselves to the fore in matters of local administration. Old government officials are beginning to feel pressure from the oncoming disorderly tide. Teachers feel their positions threatened by anarchist inroads and do not know where to turn. I calmly ignore the new developments and attend to my work in utter disregard of what has happened in St. Petersburg.’

27 March 1917
‘Meetings have been held in the auditorium of the Totma Manual Training School by revolutionary agitators who would not have even dreamed two weeks ago of entering the school premises without proper - i.e., my - sanction. The master of the relay station tells me that German prisoners living in a house nearby claim that the war will soon be over. “And they know everything.” ’

29 March 1917
‘Straggling, worn out, shabbily clad soldiers are beginning to line the road, trudging wearily along, with half empty knapsacks on their backs, homeward bound.’

7 March 1918
‘3:40 p.m. At about 5 p.m. yesterday I saw on the corner of Nemetskaia and Aleksandrov streets a number of Red Guardsmen rather energetically ordering the crowd assembled there to disperse. I had barely time to return home from Tiedeman’s music store when sharp firing was heard from the same corner, and people rushed up Nemetskaia Street. A few minutes later the howl of what sounded like a wounded boy filled the air. From my window I saw two soldiers driving the crowd and brandishing their muskets on the opposite side of the street. But the street was full of people again in a few minutes.

This morning I was told that a number of people had been killed and wounded on Aleksandrov Street. My informant with his own eyes saw a wounded man.

In front of the post office building a young man came up to the crowd assembled there and without any warning shot a man dead. The crowd made a rush at the murderer and killed him on the spot. Mr. Luchinkin told one of our janitors that on his way to the university library this morning he saw on one of the streets the body of a man killed apparently last night, and by ten o’clock this morning not yet removed.’

22 November 1918
‘At the tea table of a socially humble friend’s, with the samovar hospitably whispering and sizzling, I was introduced to a friend of the family, a Soviet official, pale from rheumatism, but good-looking and well built, apparently a mechanic by profession. When the conversation turned to the treatment of the bourgeoisie by the new regime, my new acquaintance spoke firmly in support of a statement of his: “I by no means regret shooting and killing my fourteen men, not in the least.” My friend, giving him a quiet look, explained: “Of course, you only saw to their being executed,” and nicely shifted the conversation to another topic. My friend is a perfectly respectable man, but his company - sumptuously treated considering the times - was a revelation to me.’

24 November 1918
‘Was fortunate enough to get the address of a peasant woman in Monastyrka that sold me 10 lbs. of onions for only forty rubles. It was a three-mile long jubilation to carry them home on my back in a gunnysack, without risk of confiscation, onions being an article the Soviets have forgotten to nationalize.

25 November 1918
‘The Allied powers are said to have presented an ultimatum to the Bolshevik misrulers in Moscow, demanding unconditional surrender. An order is said to have been received here from Moscow to disarm the Red Army. Some local companies have refused to part with their weapons, though willing to surrender.’

26 November 1918
‘Petrograd is said to have been occupied by the Allies - to everybody’s secret joy.’

28 November 1918
‘A sudden search of guests in one of the new socialist cafes produced an unexpected result. One customer had a large amount of small change that is so scarce nowadays; another had a large sum of money in Astrakhan and Samara local currencies.’

15 August 1919
‘A lady friend of mine got three weeks in jail for making her own soap, an article monopolized, but not supplied, by the Soviets and much missed by the people who under the old regime had become accustomed to buying it in the open market in any quantity and at a low price.’

27 August 1919
‘Not wishing to patronize the dirty Soviet barber-shops and out of respect for the typhus raging all around, I have been clipping my hair myself with a 000 clip. It takes over two hours, and two mirrors, to do the work right. Two years ago I would not have thought the trick possible.’

28 August 1919
‘A couple of bachelors have been poisoning cockroaches in their kitchen with arsenic. They threw the dead insects into the yard, upon which their neighbors’ chickens died one after another. “Don’t worry about our being suspected,” quoth the younger of the two: “I’ve already thrown a quiet hint that our Jewish neighbors must have done it.”

5 September 1919
‘A paroled prisoner of war happened to come in quest of milk. My peasant landlord wanted to know what Denikin’s political platform was. The soldier mentioned among other things “the one and indivisible Russia.” “That is right,” said my landlord, with an air of supreme satisfaction stroking his long gray beard: “What’s mine is mine, and I ain’t got to divide it with no riff-raff as they wants it done under this here Communism.”

21 February 1922
‘Robberies of supplies from our trains are so frequent, the transportation so bad, cooperation on the part of the railroad authorities, employees, and the Soviets in general so luke-warm and inefficient, that both Kinne and Cobb feel very much discouraged and want to leave the country as soon as they can. Our town transport agent (a young German-Russian) has been reported as removing, with the connivance and cooperation of the railroad service, supplies from the care of ARA before making out his statements of shortages. He is being watched by Soviet secret service men - who know too well on which side the bread is buttered.’

22 February 1922
‘Someone told me about Professor Stadnitskii’s statement in his lecture this afternoon to the effect that a country doctor had been eaten up by the starving peasants in one of the outlying districts. Dr. Uroda has corrected the statement: it was a feldsher (a trained male nurse) that had been eaten, at Balakovo. He was a big, portly man, and his patients did not want him to go to waste when he died from some cause or other. A medical friend of Dr. Uroda’s has had an occasion to taste human flesh. Lost in a blizzard in the boundless Novouzensk prairies, he and his companion came across some frozen bodies, probably victims of the same blizzard and, to save themselves, they carved up, cooked, and ate part of them. The doctor stated that the worst part of that experience was the insuperable and uncomfortable craving he and his companion had acquired for human flesh.’ [. . .]

‘A medical inspector of ours, driving through a German village, caught glimpse of a couple of little girls running toward the road. He looked back and saw the girls pick up the fresh, warm horse dung and eat it.’

An antiphonal chorus

Alasdair Maclean - a Scottish shipyard worker, a poet, a sometime crofter, and eventually a recluse - was born 90 years ago today. He published two books of poems, but his most memorable work is an unusual literary memoir - Night Falls on Ardnamurchan - in which he uses diaries kept by his father as well as his own diaries to, well I suppose, mourn the passing of the crofting way of life. As he explains in the book’s preface, he wants to tell ‘something of the rise and fall of a crofting hamlet in a remote and little-known region of these islands’ through the life and hard times of his father. However, he is aware that a few of his own concerns, not least his literary aspirations, might appear here and there, and concludes: ‘The reader should picture me as an antiphonal chorus to Father and make what allowance he can when I show myself too much the soloist.’

Maclean was born on 16 March 1926 in Glasgow where his father had come after the First World War in search of work. His father, in fact, had been born in the tiny hamlet of Sanna in Ardnamurchan, a wild and remote peninsula in Western Scotland. Maclean left school when only 14, and worked in the Clydesdale shipyards before doing his National Service, in India and Malaya. He lived for 10 years in Canada, and then, on returning to Scotland, studied English at Edinburgh University (from 1966 to 1970). His parents, who had retired to the family croft in Sanna many years previously, both died in 1973.

Although Maclean had written poetry from an early age, he returned to writing poems in his 40s, publishing a first collection From the Wilderness in 1973. Waking the Dead followed in 1976. In 1984, Victor Gollancz published Maclean’s third and final book, the autobiographical work, Night Falls on Ardnamurchan: The Twilight of a Crofting Family, which brought him a modest amount of literary attention. It includes a substantial section from his father’s diaries (never named, and only called ‘Father’ throughout) in 1960 and 1970, with a commentary by Maclean, as well as a series of Maclean’s own diary entries from the time when he was living in Sanna and working on the book (1979-1980).

Subsequently, Maclean lived an increasingly isolated life at his Fife cottage, journeying less and less often to the Sanna croft. He died in 1994. There is very little further information about Maclean readily available online, but Wikipedia has a short entry, and The Herald has an obituary.

Here are a few paragraphs from Maclean’s preface to Night Falls on Ardnamurchan: ‘I can at least inform the reader that my book is built around extracts from two journals, my father’s and my own, both set (mostly) in the same small village but featuring rather different ways of life and having very different aims and methods. About the circumstances in which each journal was kept and about the plan followed in using it I shall have more to say later. Father was a working crofter, if that is not too much like saying of someone that he was a fare-collecting bus conductor, and his portion of the book constitutes a factual and totally unadorned account of his daily round, an aide memoire for his own benefit as much as anything. His record of crofting life forms the backbone of the book.

Following the extracts from his journal I have included selections from my own daily notes. These sometimes gloss Father in a more extended and looser way, a more indirect way, than the immediate glosses I have given him. Sometimes, too, they reflect on his life and work and sometimes diverge totally into my own concerns. To the extent that I was a crofter it was intermittently and never considering it my chief of occupations. I was a part-time assistant to my father and, briefly after he died, a later and lesser follower. Mainly I thought myself a writer, a poet, and the records I kept necessarily suggested my quite different business. I have tried to prevent the more strictly literary part of my life and thought from overwhelming the rest of my material, reckoning a tale of poetry and its production too narrow a specialization in this day and age for the general reader. But that aspect of things was naturally insistent for me and I have let it intrude on a number of occasions. Were I to present any other picture of myself I should be guilty of serious falsification.

What matters is that there should emerge from these pages something of the rise and fall of a crofting hamlet in a remote and little-known region of these islands, and that this should be displayed through an account of the life and hard times of my father, who was the last man to practise the art of crofting in that hamlet. If, parallel with this account and rounding it off, there should also appear a little of myself, who watched that life and that death and who, perhaps, survived it, I trust the reader will not think it too great an imposition. My literary work, indeed, grows out of that background, or did so when I kept my Ardnamurchan journal, and even where I may appear to depart most radically from the matter in hand a link of some kind could generally be found, for all that it might take a course in psychoanalysis to trace its windings. The reader should picture me as an antiphonal chorus to Father and make what allowance he can when I show myself too much the soloist.’

And here are several extracts from Maclean’s diary.

8 October 1979
‘It is two o’clock in the morning and I feel very tired. But a point of terminology nags at me and I may not rest till I have said something about it.

I have been describing this record of mine, I notice, as a journal, not a diary. What is the difference?

I think that a diary functions at a lower level. It represents - or is thought to represent - a lesser species of literature. It is more gossipy and slapdash, more concerned with jottings, more practical, less obviously intended for other eyes. So we speak of Pepys’ Diaries but of Dorothy Wordsworth’s Journals and mean, I believe, to denigrate Pepys a little when we make the distinction. Yet who would exchange the former for the latter? Not I, at any rate, though I am fond of both.

I suspect that nowadays at least, there is an element of snobbishness involved in the journal-diary antithesis. Schoolgirls, archetypally, keep diaries; poets, therefore, must write journals. (It is true that Yeats wrote a diary but true also that he took the precaution of dignifying it with a fairly resounding tide: ‘Estrangment’ [sic].)

My father, old seaman, was unbothered by such nuances and called his daily notes a ‘log’. I shall stick to journal.

5 December 1979
I came today to a corner on the seaward edge of the dunes where a mummified thistle, one of last summer’s crop, still held its form against rain and gale. It was not a Carline Thistle, so attractive and about here so rare. These commonly survive as husks sometimes well into the next season. This fellow was an ordinary Spear Thistle, brown and shrunken, like an old man dead in all but will. It might have been nature’s master copy, struggling to preserve the idea of a thistle for the next generation of plants. Two or three of its heads lolled brokenly in the wind, yet its spikes stuck out more prominently than ever from its withered leaves. I thought of a cornered dog, retracting its gums the better to show its teeth. How admirable it was, how puritanically beautiful! I stood beside it for a long time, studying it and trying to fix it in my mind.’

10 January 1980
‘How trusting-hungry are the small birds now! When I scattered crumbs at the garden gate this afternoon (later than usual for it was dusk and town-bred birds would have been well-filled to bed an hour before), a dozen of sparrows hung precariously in the gusts, a bare yard or two from my hand. Though the gale thrust them constantly downwind, away from the source of food, still they persisted, flapping like little machines in an effort to keep pace with their own lives. At times they took the whirling nourishment on the wing.

I wonder now, sitting over my late journal, in what corner of this many-cornered village do these birds roost? Surely there is no hiding-place here that can so well hug its angles to itself but that the wind pokes a long cold finger in? Yet somewhere they crouch, fluffed out and twittering, and their thin blood slowly crystallizes as the stars wheel overhead.

Not all survive such nights. You find them here and there in the mornings, on their backs, their claws tenaciously gripping air. Even when they live who can tell what transformations may not haunt them as they perch the dark away? When a night like this comes along I think it is a little hibernation that sees these sparrows through. Ghost birds I think they become, for the space of a few hours; approximate creatures. Yet when day appears, or even the appalling masquerade that may substitute for it at this time of year, out from bush or cave they tumble, like toy trumpets from a lucky dip.’

26 March 1980
‘I am now well into 1970 with my editing task. Another month, at most, should see me finished. As well, too, for I grow very short of money. I must look to the future now. I must consider what may happen when the last shilling goes and I have to leave here.

If I were sure of being able to support myself with my pen I should not care so much. But freelance writing is such a precarious and at times degrading way of earning a living. Constantly a buttering up of editors, constantly a hinting at commissions. And constantly, too, looking out for the postman, with his good news or his bad news and constantly waiting for a cheque that may or may not be coming or may be coming when someone in an office somewhere gets around to sending it.

I have had my share of all that in the past and am none too keen on going through it again. It is hardly even that the freelance is doing what he wants to do or is doing something at least closely related to his vocation. Very often he isn’t.

Yet a small voice inside me says, ‘Still it is better than working.’ Perhaps so. I have had my share, too, of soul-destroying jobs and know what they can do to one. Nevertheless I have taken the precaution of pulling the one or two gossamery strings I yet hold, to see if I cannot arrange for employment of some kind in Kirkcaldy, where I lived before and where I know people. I should get on faster if I were better able to transfer my written notes to typescript. The typewriter is a hateful machine. I had rather have the toothache than change a ribbon. And I have coined a new definition of Sod’s Law: ‘When two typewriter keys are struck at once the one that gets to the paper first is never the one that is wanted.’

The Diary Junction

The longest whisper ever

‘My words can give no suggestion of the self-transcendence invoked, and I fear, too, that any music I eventually write can only give the palest hint. One of the most serendipitous moments came when a snow avalanche poured and billowed down the mountain directly to starboard - imagine the mightiest, gentlest, longest whisper ever - we were enveloped for a space in mad, dancing flakes, a white-out - a moment that will last a lifetime.’ This is from the diary of Sir Peter Maxwell Davies - who has just died - on a visit to the Antarctic, some 20 years ago, a journey which provided the inspiration for his Antarctic Symphony (Symphony No. 8).

Peter Maxwell Davies (most commonly known as Max) was born in 1934, in Salford, Lancashire. He had piano lessons and began composing from an early age, submitting a composition called Blue Ice to the BBC when only 14. The BBC producer Trevor Hill nurtured Davies young talent, introducing him to professional musicians. After attending Leigh Boys Grammar School, he studied at the University of Manchester and at the Royal Manchester College of Music. With fellow students, including Harrison Birtwistle, he formed New Music Manchester, a group committed to contemporary music. He studied for a year under Goffredo Petrassi in Rome thanks to an Italian government scholarship, and, in 1959, became director of music at Cirencester Grammar School.

In 1962, Davies won a Harkness Fellowship for Princeton University (with the help of Aaron Copland and Benjamin Britten), after which he was composer-in-residence at the Elder Conservatorium of Music, University of Adelaide. In 1966, he returned to the UK and went to live in the Orkney Islands, initially to Hoy and later to Sanday. In 1977, he was part of a group that founded the midsummer St Magnus Festival held on the islands. He was artistic director of the Dartington International Summer School from 1979 to 1984, and from 1992 to 2002 he was associate conductor/composer with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, a position he also held with the BBC Philharmonic Orchestra. He conducted a number of other prominent orchestras, and was also Composer Laureate of the Scottish Chamber Orchestra.

Davies published over 200 musical works during his lifetime, including 10 symphonies and 17 concertos, operas (such as Taverner, The Martyrdom of St Magnus and The Doctor of Myddfai), and the full-length ballet Salome. One of his most popular shorter works, An Orkney Wedding with Sunrise, was written on commission for the Boston Pops Orchestra. He also wrote many works for performance by children, premiering them at the St Magnus Festival. Other notable compositions include Antarctic Symphony (Symphony No. 8), jointly commissioned by the Philharmonia Orchestra and the British Antarctic Survey, Mr Emmet Takes a Walk, and Sea Orpheus.

Davies was openly homosexual, though had a messy, and all-to-public separation from his long-term partner in 2012. He was often at odds with the establishment, whether politically or musically, though time found him embracing, and being embraced by, this very same establishment. Once considered a kind of enfant terrible, producing overly avant-garde music, he became one of the world’s most respected composers, being knighted in 1987, and, in 2004, being appointed Master of the Queen’s Music. Davies, for his part, abandoned his youthful republicanism, turning latterly to support the idea of monarchy. Davies died on 14 March. Further information can be found online via the official Peter Maxwell Davies (MaxOpus) website, Wikipedia, Boosey & Hawkes, inter.musica, Schott Music or many obituaries (The Guardian, for example, The Telegraph, The New York Times, and The Scotsman).

Before writing the Antarctic Symphony, Davies was invited by the British Antarctic Survey (BAS) to join its supply and research vessel RRS James Clark Ross on a visit to the region, and, in particular, BAS Rather station. Davies kept a detailed diary on the journey, which was later published in a limited edition of 1,500 as Notes from a cold climate : Antarctic Symphony (Symphony No. 8). The diary text can be found on the MaxOpus website, which is the source of the following extracts.

21 December 1997
‘A procession of icebergs, mysterious and deeply awe-inspiring. Of course it is we who are moving faster, but in calmer waters one has the illusion of a stately mannequin parade, as the model’s outlines modulate, revealing new and secret shapes and colours. Contours suddenly glow with an irridescent blue of an unimaginable intensity: this is the best exhibition of abstract sculpture I ever saw. All that one has read of fractals and the Mandelbrot set floods the brain, perhaps as some kind of bulwark against the wonder, which I quietly admit is overwhelming, even transcendental. Some icebergs pick up and maintain the upward surge of wave motion: some repeat and develop the forms of clouds: others, seen against a backdrop of snow-covered cliffs and hills, take up the forms and energies characteristic of these, while the best combine all of these features with a capricious dynamism that constantly modifies and transforms as we pass. A whale, travelling at a furious fifteen knots, faster than the ship, briefly surfaces, its back confirming a neighbouring iceberg’s. Another iceberg suddenly appears as a gigantic swan. Another reveals a Norman arch, fifty foot high, with ice packed above this for another hundred feet - a broken-off fragment of a medieval abbey.

Sometimes I find mealtime conversation quite baffling - top scientists talk shop, their jargon bristling with acronyms. They are very patient when I enquire about their particular speciality and any possible future practical application.’

22 December 1997
‘The engines stop, and 33 scientists, Judy and I file down a rope ladder into a launch already bulging with boxes, barrels, crates. We are delivering supplies to the tiny station of Port Lockroy, and dropping off Dave Burkitt and Rod Downie who will man the place, alone for three months. It was established in 1944, and abandoned in 1962. In 1996 it was restored by the U.K. Antarctic Heritage Trust, and now boasts a small museum and post office, to open in summer for visits by cruise ships and private yachts.

The pack ice has broken up enough for us to land without problems - a very small, rocky island, with gentoo penguins nesting everywhere, so that you must take great care not to disturb them, right away upon beaching. The smell of penguin guana crinkles your nose - all pervasive bad fish. Everybody carries the cargo into the store-shed or up to the house: each case is clearly marked, and checked on a tally by Dave, who semaphores the operations. The privilege of raising the British flag to the top of its mast, at the highest point by the house, falls to Linda, on behalf of BAS, and me. Such an unaccustomed honour makes me very nervous, as I fumble with intransigent ropes, tugging ineffectively and desperately. A great relief when the flag ascends and unfurls.

A magical spot, an island surrounded by mainland cliffs, monumental white mountains. The all-pervasive sound is of broken packice lifting on and off the shore rocks - a Gargantuan cocktail shaker. Add to that the gentle buzz of conversation among the ubiquitous penguins, with the occasional raised squawk as a sheathbill - a small grubby white seabird - lunges towards a penguin egg - and that’s the island's sound spectrum.

The mainland is only 100 yards away from one point, but safety regulations determine that the keepers are not allowed to have a boat. Their accommodation is sparse but solid - there is plenty of coal still from the forties - and the museum has relics evocative of that time - ancient cans of food, oatmeal packets, tools in situ, all with excellent explanatory displays.

Once we have determined that the radio link to the main station at Rothera is operative, we pile back into the launch and return to the RRS James Clark Ross. This was the first time I had worn any of the Antarctic gear issued by BAS - it was surrealistic being kitted out at headquarters in Cambridge last July, pulling on the layer after layer of thermals and waterproofs on one of the hottest days ever - but here we would not survive without these. It is a great relief to take them off for lunch - particularly the huge guana-smeared boots. There are strict dress codes for meals on board, to be transgressed at one’s peril.

This afternoon we glide through the Lemaire Strait - a narrow passage between the almost vertical sides of mountains jutting thousands of feet up into cloud. Apart from the gentle hum of the boat’s engines - the JCR is extremely quiet, to facilitate very precise sonar experiments - the silence is profound. There is hardly any talk, either on the bridge or on deck - everyone is so over-awed by the grandeur, the power of the unfolding spectacle. My words can give no suggestion of the self-transendence invoked, and I fear, too, that any music I eventually write can only give the palest hint. One of the most serendipitous moments came when a snow avalanche poured and billowed down the mountain directly to starboard - imagine the mightiest, gentlest, longest whisper ever - we were enveloped for a space in mad, dancing flakes, a white-out - a moment that will last a lifetime.

Shortly after 4 p.m. a small party descended a very long rope ladder into a very small launch, to take Christmas mail to Vernadsky, the Ukranian Antarctic Expedition base. This base was formerly British, named Faraday after Michael Faraday, the Physicist and was handed over to the Ukrainians in 1995. John Harper, the mate of the JCR, was in charge, standing tall at the stem, shouting instructions and semaphoring to the wheel-house, to ensure a safe passage through the ice-flows. Even the unfrozen sea-water was like oil, thickly viscous. A gaggle of long huts on a small rise, where we tie up, welcomed enthusiastically, and are helped through deep snow to the Christmassy domestic warmth of the settlement. Such a joyful, beautiful welcome from the dozen or so men and women - we take off our boots and layers of gear, and troop up to the bar. This is the biggest and most famous bar in the Antarctic - a riot of decorative carving, made by over-enthusiastic British joiners, who, for the waste of time and wood, were promptly sent home.

Delighted hosts and guests, excellent black coffee of the kind that dissolves the spoon and scalds your tonsils, chocolate, generous globes of Ukrainian cognac. A welcoming speech from Vladimir Okrugin, the head of the team, and we are shown round the base by Svetlana, a meteorologist, climbing champion, guitarist and computer expert. Many things - equipment, notices, photographs - have been left as they were when the British ran the station. Up a ladder into a loft office, where we met Daphne, a Dobson spectrophotometer, the piece of scientific equipment, from 1957, which was the means of discovering the hole in the ozone layer. A speech by Julian Paren, generous vodka all round, stirring Ukranian music, and we are bobbing our way through corridors of ice back to the RRS James Clark Ross. A huddle of figures waving on the jetty: one wonders when anyone will visit them next. Pete Bucktrout, our official photographer, asks why all international and diplomatic relations can’t be like this. Why indeed?! I sport the badge of the Ukranian Antarctic Expedition, and clutch a book about their homeland.’

A disappointed man

William Bagshaw Stevens, born 260 years go today, died laughing. But, in his relatively short life, he had been an ineffective headmaster of Repton School, a failed poet, and a disappointed lover. Ironically, perhaps, he is best remembered for a journal he kept, one in which he chronicled his disappointments so candidly that one can hardly imagine he would ever have wanted to see it published. Nevertheless, it was kept safe and passed down the generations, and was finally published in the mid-20th century - it’s editor describing the work as the journal of a disappointed man.

William Bagshaw Stevens was born on 15 March 1756 in Abingdon, Berkshire, the son of an apothecary and surgeon. He studied at Magdalen College, Oxford, and after graduating in 1776 went to teach at Repton School, Derbyshire, succeeding to the post of headmaster. He took deacon’s orders, and was appointed domestic chaplain by Sir Robert Burdett of nearby Foremark Hall (but didn’t take priest’s orders until 1798). 

Having published a volume of verse in 1775 (Poems, consisting of Indian Odes and Miscellaneous Pieces), Stevens published a second in 1782, but it was not reviewed well. Hugh Brogan, however, in his brief biography for the Oxford National Dictionary of Biography (log-in required), says: ‘Stevens was a better poet than his contemporaries knew. Some of his verse was still unpublished 200 years after his death, but, if the whole of it is read, he emerges as a man of real talent, humour, wit, and feeling, though trapped in the limbo of poetic diction that the great Romantics would soon blow apart.’

A promise by Sir Robert to bestow a good living on Stevens came to nothing over the years, and Stevens considered himself too poor to marry - though he did pursue liaisons with some passion. Repton School languished under his headship, as he was, it is said, naturally idle and neglectful of his duties. He did keep up a connection with Magdalen College, and for short periods later in life was a fellow and praelector of moral philosophy. Only in his last year did he attain a rectory (Seckington) and a nearby vicarage (Kingsbury) in Warwickshire, thanks to Sir Robert’s grandson and heir. Stevens died in 1800, from a fit of laughing at the antics of an Italian and his monkey in the village high street! (This knowledge comes from an unpublished journal kept by Stevens’ sister who lived with him - as reported by Galbraith, see below.) Further biographical information can be gleaned from an old version of the Dictionary of National Biography.

Stevens left behind six octavo volumes of a diary he had been keeping since his 37th birthday. This was not published until 1965, when Oxford University Press brought out The Journal of the Rev. William Bagshaw Stevens, as edited by Georgina Galbraith. In her introduction, Galbraith explains how the manuscripts had survived through various generations, well cared-for but quite unexamined, until they were sold in 1957 to Huntington Library, where she found them when researching Repton. The manuscripts are marred, Galbraith says, by many deletions (removal of leaves, blackening out, crossings out etc), especially in the first volume, mostly about his neighbours and benefactors, the Burdetts. She believes most of these deletions were made by Rev. Thomas Bosvile, Stevens’s closest friend, because it would have been dangerous to leave about attacks on the family who were supporting Stevens’s sister.

Many of Stevens’s entries - especially the longer ones - are simply the contents of letters he received or sent, and many shorter entries simply state who he dined with or visited, or where he preached. However, he does write with candid intimacy about his love for Fanny Coutts - a story with a bitter, sad ending - so much so in fact that it’s surely unlikely he would have wanted these diaries to have become public. Galbraith notes that the journal is one of a disappointed man, ‘disappointed in every one of his activities’. Here are several extracts from the published book, including the first few entries and the last three.

15 March 1792
‘On this day I commenced my thirty-seventh year. May God of his mercy grant that the remainder of my Life be spent more agreably to his Will, and with more satisfaction to myself than the former Part has been! . . .’

16 March 1792
‘Dined at the Mitre on Turbot and Claret in consequence of a Wager between Sir R. Burdett and Mr Pyott. Sir R. had laid that old Ashly would live to the 17th of this month. The Bet was made on the 17th of last March. Ashly is now in his 92nd Year. . .’

17 March 1792
‘Drank Tea at Spilsbury’s. Dalrymple there. Much conversation upon the Slave Trade. Dalrymple and Dodsly defended the Trade strongly upon the ground of Policy. I cannot but think that the Policy which disclaims honesty, humanity and religion is not the policy of a Good Man or a Great Minded Nation; but the Policy of a Thief, a Highwayman, and a Murderer.’

18 March 1792
‘After service at Foremark set out for Ashford for the sale of Mr Bullock’s Library on Monday. Spent the evening alone at Wirksworth.’

19 March 1792
‘Reached Bakewell by 10 o’Clock. Found that the Books, a mere collection of trash, would not be sold till Wednesday. Viewed Bakewell Church, a curious structure with a Saxon arched doorway, and an octagon Steeple. The Church contains some of the Richest Monuments in the Kingdom with a very singular large Saxon Font adorned with the Images of Saints in relief.’

14 August 1792
‘All went to Chee Tor, a most romantic, lovely spot - dined on the grass by the head of a Spring - ‘Lady Burdett, You have not performed your promise. You have not given me Fanny’s Picture.’ ‘That’s not my fault. You should have asked me for it.’

Jones and I were to go to the Isle of Man the next day - postponed our Journey that I might get Fanny’s Picture copied. It was agreed to leave Buxton on Saturday and go all together to Foremark. Lady Burdett hoped I would go with them to Tunbridge.’ 

30 July 1792
‘Rowed on Windemere round Christians Island. Curwen and his attendant fleet passed by us - The Bishop of Landaff’s Seat - Wilberforce’s pretty Cottage - The lake said to be 14 miles long and in some places two across, surrounded with magnificent well-wooded Hills - a glorious scene -After dinner rode to Coniston Water of much inferior merit to Windemere. Observed the Ruins of an old Abbey near Hawkshead. Coniston Water about 7 miles from Windemere. The Old Man, a huge Mountain against which the Clouds are continually dashing, appeared at Windemere to stand on its edge. At Coniston we were near it; it stood on the far side of the head of that Lake. Walked in the Evening to Gill Force, a Cascade near the Inn at Ambleside. Thought when filled by a thunderstorm with water, superior to the cascade of Tivoli, it falls in the shape of a Y about 50 yards.’

15 August 1794
‘Before breakfast met Fanny in the Grove. She had found great Comfort, she said, in having talked with me on the Subject. I was the only Person that ever inspired her with a desire of communicating her grief. O that I had the power of pouring balm into your wounded affections. What would I not do? But my Heart was not without an ‘emballed heaviness.’ I thanked her for the ingenuous tale and tender confession of her unfortunate Passion. It was worthy of her. As to myself, if I could do nothing to soothe her Grief, she might be certain I would not abuse her Confidence. I would listen to her for ever and mingle tears with hers. She had one comfort, at least, that Her sorrows were not now shut up in her own breast. Yes, in me she confided. To a younger Person she could not with propriety have unbosomed herself, but she was sometimes amazed at the impulse she had long felt to communicate her Distress of Mind to me. I spoke feelingly. She felt the force of my feelings. ‘You allow me to consider you as my Friend. You may safely place Confidence in me. Fanny, you may have occasion to pity me but shall never blush for me. It shall be the peculiar satisfaction of my Life, my Pride and my Glory to compell You in despite of yourself to esteem me.’ [. . .]

After breakfast again walked with Fanny. Her Heart, she said, was a great deal lightened. It was her duty to struggle with her grief. She wished I could be with her, wished I knew more of her Father, spoke enthusiastically of Him. When You are no longer with us in your Walks You will often think of us, We shall think and talk of You, and we shall know that you think of us, and this will be a great Comfort.’

15 March 1796
‘I am now Forty. . . A Fool at Forty is a Fool indeed. Dined at the Widow’s. - late home.’

1 February 1797
‘Gouty Pains in my feet - return home - Burdett with me. In his usual kind manner he gave me the Horse that brought Jones and Me from the Isle of Wight. He cost Burdett 60 guineas.’

1 April 1800
‘Leave Tamworth - dine at Wolferston’s. Home.’

5 April 1800
‘To Donnington.’

6 April 1800
‘Dine at Ingleby.’

The Diary Junction

Damascus diaries

It’s four years since Britain, and many other countries, closed their embassies in Damascus, Syria, and withdrew their diplomatic staff, the famous city having become too dangerous to live in or to visit. Before then, though, it had an exotic appeal to Westerners, especially Peter Clark, who fell in love with the place in the 1960s and then returned in the 1990s to run the British Council branch there. His diaries of that time have just been published by the specialist Middle East publisher, Gilgamesh. They paint, Gilgamesh says, ‘a vivid and almost nostalgic picture of life in this remarkable city’. I, too, have visited Damascus, in the mid-1970s, staying just a couple of days as I hitchhiked my way from Europe to Australia. As my own diary entries remind me, I found the Syrians most friendly and hospitable.

Peter Clark was schooled in Loughborough and Southend before studying at Keele, Cambridge and Leicester universities. He joined the British Council in 1967, mostly working abroad, in the Middle East and Africa, remaining with the institution for 30 years or so. In 1992, he was invited to reopen the British Council office in Syria, a country he’d first visited in 1962, and he remained until 1997. He enjoyed good relations with the British diplomatic staff, and, briefly, met successive foreign ministers, Douglas Hurd and Malcolm Rifkind, on their official visits to Damascus. Among Clark’s cultural successes were a production of Purcell’s opera Dido and Aeneas in Arabic and an exhibition of Freya Stark’s Syria photographs. After retiring from the Council, he returned to Syria occasionally leading lead tour groups.

Clark is fluent in Arabic, and has translated novels, drama, poetry and history by contemporary Arab writers. He has written books on the Islamic scholar Marmaduke Pickthall and the explorer Wilfred Thesiger, and published a collection of writings on the Middle East - Coffeehouse Footnotes - as well as a book on Istanbul. He is a trustee of the International Prize for Arabic Fiction, a contributing editor of Banipal, and an adviser on cultural tourism to Turkey and Syria. He is married, and lives in Frome Somerset. A little further biographical information is available from Debretts, The International Prize for Arabic Fiction, the Gilmour Print Service or a Marmaduke Pickthall fansite.

Throughout most of his adult life, Clark has kept personal diaries, and his time in Damascus was no exception. Perhaps because of the troubles now afflicting Syria and its capital, Gilgamesh - a specialist in Middle East books - has chosen to publish Clark’s diaries of his Damascus years. It says of the book - Damascus Diaries: Life Under the Assads - ‘Here we see the dramas and routines of everyday life played out against the backdrop of the world’s oldest continually inhabited city on the eve of collapse into civil war. Enchanting and alarming by turns, everyday events combine to paint a vivid and almost nostalgic picture of life in this remarkable city.’ Reviews can be read online at The Economist and The Tanjara. Here are several extracts (with thanks to Gilgamesh Publushing).

23 October 1993
‘I am at the office early and at precisely 9.30 we hear the screaming of sirens, and Douglas Hurd, his detective, and the Ambassador arrive, followed by members of his entourage - Richard Culshaw in charge of the press and his Principal Private Secretary, John Sawers, whom I last saw in Yemen in 1980. I take Douglas Hurd round the exhibition of Freya Stark’s photographs, and he talks to some of the staff. He also signs my copy of his novel, The Palace of Enchantments, which was already signed by the co-author, Stephen Lamport, in Abu Dhabi. And that is that. The party disappears and so do we.

Douglas Hurd has called on the President, with Andrew Green. It is the first time Andrew has met him.’

24 October 1993
‘I am in the office very early. The Hurd visit has been seen as a success. A tide is moving in our favour, an enhancement of Syria-British relations. Meanwhile the situation in Algeria gets grimmer by the day. The country is slipping into confusion and foreigners are being kidnapped and assassinated. At this rate the British Council will withdraw and there may be extra funds for Syria. Every cloud has a silver lining.’

20 January 1994
‘In the afternoon we go for a walk, due north, beyond Muhajirin and up the mountain. Jabal Kasiyun has slowly had the city encroaching upon it. We climb up roads that are at a gradient of about 1 in 3. The views over the city get more and more splendid - skyscrapers stand out, tall white buildings, with here and there to the west patches of green, all that is left of the gardens of Damascus. It is invigorating. We descend, passing by an office that is surrounded by dozens of black Mercedes cars and lots of security people. I learn later that this is where the President has his office. It is a shabby building but one can, at least, walk within 20 yards of it, and the residential flats nearby in these leafy suburbs must be desirable.

We are invited to dinner with Dr and Mrs Drubi. He is a prosperous doctor from Homs. She has three daughters, one of whom is studying English at the British Council. Another was Miss Syria in 1986 and is now in Canada. I talk to Zelfa Samman, half-sister of and 20 years younger than the novelist, Ghada, who chooses to live in Paris. Zelfa’s mother is a Shishakli, a niece of the former President, Adib. Her mother’s mother is a sister of Akram Hourani, who is still alive, in exile in Amman, over 80 and frail. Zelfa’s father was President of the University of Damascus and has been briefly Minister of Higher Education. Our host’s brother was Minister of Petroleum. The older ruling official and the contemporary elites merge.’

22 January 1994
‘We walk into the city centre. There are more people around than usual. Men in dark suits persuade shopkeepers to close up and by 1 o’clock all shops have their shutters down. Groups of youths process in hooting cars, carrying pictures of Basil [the President’s son, who died the day before]. Newspapers with large photos are stuck on shop doorways and people pause to peruse. One paper has a long poem by the Minister of Culture. Yesterday people seemed to be too stunned to show any reaction. Today there are demonstrations. A human tragedy is perceived. Everyone can deplore the death of a child before his parent. Basil was writ large across Syria. His father, prematurely aged, must be shattered. I hear there were troop movements all last night, including tanks in the city. The accident, we hear, was on the road to the airport, perhaps late on Thursday night. Basil was perhaps drunk, driving to see a Makhlouf cousin off to Germany.’

23 January 1994
‘I try unsuccessfully to get some guidance from the Embassy. I decide myself to keep the teaching centre closed today. We arrange to put a notice of condolence in the paper and to send a cable to the President. Yesterday there were manifestations of grief: fake orchestrated and genuine. Today there are further demonstrations that border on the contrived. Shops and schools remain closed. I think in years to come Syrians will look on Basil al-Assad as the herald of a golden age that never dawned. His early death will be an alibi for frustration or disappointment.’

8 November 1995
‘At noon I get a summons to go to the Embassy to meet Malcolm Rifkind (or Rifkunt as one of my Syrian colleagues calls him). I bump into a breezy, relaxed Andrew Green who is accompanying him. The Secretary of State is in the loo when I arrive. The top floor of the Embassy is transformed into a mobile office. One man is busy on the phone. Another is scanning faxed press cuttings. A girl is at a typewriter. Coffee pots, teapots and cartons of fruit juice are on a shelf. Malcolm Rifkind comes in, relieved. We stand talking for my allotted five minutes. He fires questions at me and seems well briefed. I tell him that we see our role as subversive, promoting the values of an open and plural society. He laughs encouragingly. He has heard of the success of the opera. (Bully for him!)

I go to the airport to meet Leila Abouzeid, the Moroccan writer. I have been told that she is quite a big woman. I accost all the larger women coming off the plane from Tunis and Algiers and get “old-fashioned looks”. Eventually Leila accosts me. Actually she is quite petite in appearance, looking older than I expected. I take her to the house before the hotel. She is surprised at my interest in contemporary Arabic literature. I tell her I am an endangered species.’

14 December 1996
‘I am translating Sa’dallah’s play and am having difficulties. There is no problem getting the meaning but I am not getting the brio of the Arab text into English. I feel my present version is mechanical. The challenge is the dialogue that has to be spoken. It is different from translating a novel or story that has only to be read. I am now translating something with a production in mind.’

***

I have my own Damascus diaries, but they are only two entries long! In my youthful travelling days, back in 1974, I hitch-hiked from Europe to Australia, by way of the Middle East, stopping in Damascus for only two days. I was befriended by a young man named Khald, who so generously let me stay in his house, and took me around the city with his friends.

13 July 1974, Damascus
‘After a cold shower, I’m up and out quick. The bus driver tries to rip me off 40L for a ride to Syria, so I hitch - 8km of no mans land signalled by barbed wire. A visa costs me nearly £2 - big rip off. I should have got a transit visa. By 10 I am in Syria. I hitch a ride to Allepo and take a bus to Damascus S£5. There is an English couple on the bus, but I take an immediate dislike to them. We three English are befriended - given cucumbers and nuts and asked our names. One of the passengers, a teacher, speaks English so we talk for a while. Several little girls are always smiling. The journey is long - five hours sitting and standing. At first, all the land is ploughed, but dry-looking with something growing but later it becomes arid and desert-like. I see many soldiers, and tanks shunting backwards and forwards. On the bus, Khald befriends me. We arrive by 6:00. Khald takes me to his flat which he shares with his brother and a friend. In the evening, we stroll slowly around the town, stopping to talk to friends, and always shaking hands when meeting and leaving them. Many boys walk together with arms or hands joined, very strange - everywhere is very lively - a glass of ice with lemon juice - a chapati with egg and mayonnaise and tomato, and another with meat and cucumber. I sleep well on the floor even though I sweat a lot at first.’

14 July 1974, Damascus
‘This morning I walk for a few hours - it’s very, very busy with numerous street sellers, and a lot of smoke. I pass by several long narrow covered streets selling mostly clothing, shoes and fancy goods, handicrafts, copper, wood - rickety overhangs balanced on bent beams provide the shade. Everywhere, there are old buildings, once beautiful, but now falling down, and much building of modern blocks too. I visit the Umayyad Mosque. This is the most beautiful place I have yet seen. As you enter through the arches of a vast courtyard, there are the most fantastic mosaics of bright colours far above, with enchanting pictures of villages. To one side, there is a vast edifice with two beautiful altars of mother of pearl in wood and very detailed wood carving. People come here for cool and rest and prayer. In the middle is the tomb of the Prophet Yehia (John the Baptist) with a velvet cloth covering. So beautiful. For S£1 I go next to the Al Azm Palace, the 18th century home of The Pasha - one of the ruling class, a typical rich man’s house - here too are many lovely things. The rooms are smallish with the most beautiful wood carvings on doors and ceilings - painted so intricately with dour colours and gold in square patterns. The courtyard is very pretty, with many green plants - but this is usual. There’s a folkloric museum here too.

Later, I sit in a cafe drinking real lemon juice and watching a game of chess - everyone plays chess, backgammon or cards - a lot of water-pipes being smoked - iced water is free for all - shoe cleaners takes people’s shoes and clean them while they play or smoke. Khald is very happy because he has money. We all eat chicken brought to the house. They sleep, but I go out to walk a long way up a very steep hill. I turn and see Damascus - a panorama. Hot and weary I return. Khald goes to the cinema with his girl, while I walk in a pleasant garden in a mosque. I play a little chess with someone who claims to be the fifth best player in Syria. Khald is happy; but sad that I am going.’

Michaux in N. America

André Michaux, a French botanist and explorer sent to North America in search of new species to replenish the forests of France, was born 270 years ago today. He is credited with many botanical discoveries, and in particular a species of rhododendron which is the genetic parent of many modern hybrids. When revolution back home cut off his support, he turned to the American Philosophical Society (APS) to fund further botanical trips. Some of his journals were lost in a shipwreck when returning to France, but those manuscripts that survived were donated to, and published by, the APS.

Michaux was born at Satory, near Versailles, France, on 7 or 8 November 1846 (biography links, as below, give a different date) and grew up on a royal farm, where his father was manager. He was taken out of school at 14 to learn horticulture, and when his father died, Michaux shared the management of the farm with his brother. He married in late 1769, but his wife died the following year after giving birth to a son. The naturalist Louis-Guillaume Le Monnier, who lived nearby, recommended that Michaux study how to grow foreign plants in France, which he did with experiments on the farm.

Subsequently, Michaux became a student of the naturalist Bernard de Jussieu in the park of the château of Versailles, and, in 1779, he worked at the Jardin des Plantes in Paris. That year, he began making botanical expeditions, within France, to England and Spain. In 1782, he was appointed secretary to the French consul in Persia, where he is said to have cured the shah of a dangerous illness. He returned, after two years, with a many new plants that were introduced to France’s botanical gardens.

Louis XVI appointed Michaux royal botanist, and he was sent to North America in 1785, to look for new species of shrubs and trees to rebuild the forests of France -  much of their timber having been felled during the wars with England. He took his son with him, as well as a gardener, and established, first, a nursery near Hackensack, New Jersey, and later a 111-acre garden outside Charleston, South Carolina. He made collecting trips throughout the wilderness frontier areas, often being the first botanist to visit, describing and naming species, and shipping many back to France.

After the collapse of the French monarchy, Michaux managed to secure, in 1793, funding from the American Philosophical Society for his explorations. Some consider his greatest discovery, at least for horticulture, was Rhododendron catawbiense, commonly known as Purple Laurel. He found it in the wild on the peaks of the highest mountains in the Southern Appalachians, and in a few places in the Piedmont. It became one of the genetic parents of many modern rhododendron hybrids.

In 1796, Michaux returned to France, being shipwrecked on the way, and for the next few years focused on the cultivation of his collected plants, and writing two books, Histoire des chênes de l’Amérique (1801) and Flora Boreali-Americana, sistens caracteres plantarum (1803), both of which were edited by his son, François-André, and illustrated by Pierre-Joseph Redouté. In 1800, Michaux sailed with Nicolas Baudin’s expedition to Australia, but he left the ship in Mauritius, and travelled to Madagascar to study the flora. There he died of a fever in 1802, or possibly in 1803. Further biographical information can be found at Wikipedia, JSTOR, The Dictionary of Canadian Biography, American Philosophical Society or a Michaux-dedicated website.

A few of the manuscript journal pages kept by Michaux in North America survived the 1796 shipwreck. These were eventually donated by François-André Michaux to the American Philosophical Society, and published with an introduction and notes in the society’s Proceedings (vol. 26, no. 129, 1889). This can be read at Internet Archive or JSTOR, but, although the introduction is in English, the text of the journal is in the original French. It was translated and edited by Reuben Gold Thwaites for Early Western Travels 1748-1846 (vol. 3, 1904) - also available at Internet Archive.

Here are three extracts from the journal.

‘Sunday 23rd of August 1795 started from Post Vincennes situated on the Wabash River for the Illinois on the Mississipi. We journeyed six Miles and camped on the bank of a Little River [Embarras]. I had no other company than a Savage and his wife. I had hired the Savage for ten Dollars and promised him two Dollars more to induce him to carry all my baggage on his horse.

The 24th we made about 25 Miles; the Savage was ill and was obliged to stop more than three hours before sunset.

The 25th crossed several Prairies. Observed a new species of Gerardia. Stalk commonly simple, oval leaves opposite one another, sessile, axillary flowers purpurine flowers.

The 26th the Provision of meat was consumed. The Savage stopped very early, finding a favorable spot for hunting. Moreover heavy Rain fell about three o’clock in the afternoon. An hour after camping the Savage came back laden with a Bear cub and with the two hams of another and much older one. We boiled the kettle twice and had enough to satisfy us. We roasted what remained.

The 27th the Savage killed two Stags. We halted very early to dry the Skirts and to eat, for the Savage and his wife ate five meals a day. Moreover, they regaled themselves with the marrow of the bones which they ate raw; for, being unable to carry away the meat, they contented themselves with a piece of the animal’s loins.

The 28th of August 1795. Just as I was eager to see Game the 1st and 2nd day, so was I afraid to see it then owing to the waste of time. I was all the more anxious to proceed that it rained every day. I had already been obliged once to dry at a fire my baggage that had been wet through especially four books of Botany and Mineralogy I had with me, as I had been unwilling to expose them to the hazards of the River and had sent by way of the Mississipi two Trunks containing grey Paper, Powder, Lead, Alum, Boxes for collecting Insects, and all the articles required for making Collections of Plants, Animals, Insects and Minerals.

Sunday 30th of August arrived at the village of Kaskaskia situated two mile from the Mississipi river and half a mile from the Kaskaskia River. It is inhabited by former Frenchmen under the American Government. The number of families is about forty five. It is agreeably situated but the number of inhabitants had decreased; nothing is to be seen but houses in ruins and abandoned because the French of the Illinois country, having always been brought up in and accustomed to the Fur trade with the savages, have become the laziest and most ignorant of all men. They live and the majority of them are clothed in the manner of the Savages. They wear no breeches but pass between their thighs a piece of cloth of about one third of an ell [in length] which is kept in place before and behind above the hips by a belt.’

***

‘The 7th [December 1795] confirmed once more in my opinion that the Second Bark of Celtis occidentalis (called in the Illinois country Bois connu and toward New Orleans Bois inconnu) is an excellent remedy for curing jaundice; a handful of the roots or leaves of Smilax sarsaparilla is added to it; it is used for about eight days as a decoction.

The 8th of December 1795. The French Creoles call the species of Smilax found in the Illinois country, Squine. Only the thorny species grows there; it loses its leaves in the Autumn. The other species is herbaceous and climbing.

The 9th of December. The root of Fagara as a decoction is a powerful remedy for curing disease of the Spleen. I have no doubt that the root of Zanthoxilum clava-Herculi can be used for obstructions of the liver and Spleen.’

***

‘The 25th [February 1796] started to return to Carolina and slept 10 Miles away at the house of Colonel Mansko, a declared enemy of the French because, he said, they have killed their King. Although I had not dined I would not accept his supper believing that a Republican should not be under obligations to a fanatical partisan of Royalty. I was greatly mortified that the night and the rain should compel me to remain in his House. But I slept on my Deer skin and paid for the Maize he supplied me with to cross the Wilderness.’

The Galtee Boy

The Galtee Boy, a fanatical Irish republican by the name of John Sarsfield Casey, was born 170 years ago today. Imprisoned and then deported for his crimes against the state, he benefitted from an amnesty, allowing him to return to his beloved Ireland, where he helped campaign for the rights of tenants in the Galtee Mountains area. He left behind a memoir about his time in jail, and also a diary of his sea journey to Australia.

Casey was born on 2 March 1846 (according to the Cork City Gaol website) in Mitchelstown, County Cork, Ireland, into a family of shopkeepers. As a youngster, he became involved in the Irish Republican Brotherhood (the Fenians). Calling himself The Galtee Boy, he wrote letters to the Fenian newspaper, The Irish People, describing the round-up of Cork Fenians in 1865, their trials and their experiences in prison. His exposure of tenant conditions in the Galtee Mountains led to a libel case and helped inspire the Land League. Eventually, he was tried and sentenced himself, and then deported along with 60 other Fenians to Australia in 1867.

In May 1869, Casey was granted a free pardon and sailed for Ireland arriving in February 1870, with nine other released Fenians. Immediately, he threw himself again into the Irish struggle, writing articles on conditions in Australia, and becoming noted for his work on behalf of the tenants of the Galtee countryside. Later in life, he became a Coroner for County Limerick, a position he held until his death in 1896. A little further information is available at the Cork City Gaol and Irish Democrat websites.

In 2004, University College Dublin Press published, for the first time, a memoir written by Casey soon after his return to Ireland, called The Galtee Boy - A Fenian Prison Narrative. It is said to be the ‘most extensive surviving account of Cork Fenianism by a participant’. But another document written by Casey has also survived - a detailed diary he kept during his voyage to Australia. Extracts from this were published in Diaries of Ireland - An Anthology 1590-1987 by Melosina Lenox-Conyngham (Lilliput Press, Dublin, 1998) - a few pages can be read at Amazon.

Lenox-Conyngham’s source was a slim edition of the full text of the diary transcribed/edited by a relative of Casey’s, Martin Kevin Cusack, and published a decade earlier by Dorrance & Co, in the US. This was entitled Journal of a Voyage from Portland to Fremantle on board the Convict Ship “Hougoumont” Cap Cozens Commander October 12th 1867 By John S. Casey, Mitchelstown, Ireland. A few copies are available secondhand, at prices upwards of £50 (at Abebooks for example).

In his introduction, Cusak explains why he wanted to publish the text: ‘It had been my hope for many years to somehow help bring about the opening of this Journal and thereby allow the strength of character, the dedication to freedom, the literary talents, and the enduring faith of John Sarsfield Casey to shine forth as an inspiration to all of us. As a descendant relative of The Galtee Boy, I am proud to identify with his determined, life-long pursuit of liberty. He was a first cousin of my grandmother, Ellen Casey Cusack.’

He goes on to provide further background: ‘It is worth noting that the Journal is regarded as being of great historical interest by scholars and serious students of Irish and Australian history. The Casey Journal has been preserved in the family for 120 years. In May of 1969 it was among the papers of Dan Casey of Mitchelstown, last son of The Galtee Boy. Around the time of Dan Casey’s death, the manuscript was inadvertently delivered into the hands of the Cork County Library. Upon discovering this, a friend of the Casey family, believing he was acting in the family’s best interest, insisted upon its immediate return. It was returned promptly but in those few hours of possession, the Librarian made photocopies of it. The official stamp of the Cork County Library can be seen on the last page before the back cover. It is believed the copying was done without the knowledge of the immediate family and it remained unknown to the rest of us in the family until early in 1987.’

Here are several extracts from Cusack’s book (though, for clarity, I have added a few fullstops and dashes in places where extra spaces in the published text appear to signal a separation of phrases).

11 October 1867
‘Wrote letter - miserable arrangements on board in respect to closets &c - Whilst in port nothing of importance has occured - Rumour that we are to sail on to day (Friday) anchor raised & everything in readiness for sailing’

12 October 1867
‘Sails set - Blue Peter hoisted - 2 PM set sail fair wind. Take a farewell glance at Portland as we sail within one mile of its rock bound coast - Emotions of the pleasant kind. Towed out by the gun-boat “Earnest” - deck crowded with anxious faces eagerly pointing out objects of interest to one another - Pass the evening in playing Chess &c’

13 October 1867
‘Ship rolling very much - feel a little “squeamish” On deck nothing visible but sky and water save a few solitary sea-birds that kept eternally skimming over the crested waves - Had several Interviews with Hr Deleany RCC. Begs of me to serve Mass for him - I consent - Mass on board - I serve with difficulty in consequence of being seasick - Majority of hands troops &c on board Catholics - Mass in main hatchway - wind strong speed 6 knots - still towed out by “Earnest” Eat very little to day - 2 OC exceedingly sick - get some ease by lying in bunk - None sick but myself “spued” off everything I eat - Water distilled & measured out 3/4 pint per man per diem - find I cannot read. Ordered below for night at 4.30. Amuse ourselves every night with a concert.’

25 October 1867
‘Morning cloudy with a slight mist - Convoy still in sight 8 OC. A slight fall of rain till 8.30. Clouds clear off & leave the sun shining brilliantly - Ship’s yards truly square for 1st time - Cannot remain on forecastle for any time - Speed 8 knots under full canvas - 2 OC Air mild and balmy like a glorious summers day in Ireland - Home thoughts crowd upon me of pleasant days spent in the green meadow inhaling the fragrant odour of the newly mowed hay or of pleasant hours spent in company of la bella Maria in Kingstons demesne beside the tinkling stream. Passengers relieving monotony of voyage by various games such as Chess Dominoes Drafts Dice Cards &c. Evening enlivened by music (The Banjo) on deck accompanied with singing & dancing alternately reminds of Scotts lines on Don Roderick: “And to the tinkling of the soft guitar; Sweet stooped the ‘western sun’ bright rose the evening star”. ’

26 October 1867
‘Morning calm breeze light speed, 4 knots 12 OC. Breeze increasing - speed 8 knots - 2 Sail in sight - one of them “our Convoy”. A prisoner received 48 lashes from boatswain to day without wincing for beating another prisoner most inhumanly - At conclusion cheered by his Comerades - got cross irons on his feet - Evening looking gloomy - dark sombre clouds flitting across sky - Sunset very stormy looking - fear a rough night wind increasing sailors furling royals &c. 4.30 All hands below - usual amusements.’

27 October 1867
‘Awoke last night at 11 OC by dreadful noise on deck. Ship pitching - all hands “piped” up - great confusion below for 5 or 7 minutes. Ship tossed about like a cork - Terror increases by Sailors refusing to go aloft - fear a watery grave - cry on deck of breakers ahead - orders given to “bout” ship - sheet lightning flashing in all directions - one of the sails fluttering to the wind another minute & it is carried away - Blowing with terrific violence - ship labouring fearfully & timbers creaking mournfully. Officers mount aloft - Ship stands still for a minute & immediately receives several tremendous dashes of waves which almost capsizes her - sea roaring dreadfully & dashing in over gunwale - wind howling dismally through the rigging - 12 OC - Not much calmer all damage apparently over - Some sailors return to their duty & are working away to the jolly chorus of: Heave haul away, Haul away my dandies.’

4 December 1867
‘Blowing exceedingly hard all night. Speed 12 knots. Not better. Stomach bad - raining very hard all night. All hands obliged to remain below all day - Morning calm, 3 knots - 10 of our lads reported - rope 1 pepper box - 8 deprived of wine for week. Sails hanging motionless.’

5 December 1867
‘Morning dark heavy & inclined for rain - a dead calm - very disagreeable on deck - a thick mist falling. Sailing under a cloud of canvas yet scarcely making any progress.’

6 December 1867
‘Morning cloudy - raining all day - all hands obliged to remain below which is dark damp like hell - the most disagreeable day I ever spent almost becalmed.’

7 December 1867
‘Morning cloudy - raining at intervals with Dr off hospital diet - half starved on it - wind coming in fitful gusts - extremely cold all day &  last night - On look out for flying Dutchman - amusing to see passengers with terror depicted on their countenances at idea of meeting him - Sea very rough - Day has a very strange & ominous aspect. The surface of the ocean & glassy & scarcely a breath of air disturbed the solemn stillness that prevailed. The ship lay motionless yielding only to that never ceasing swell that heaves the bosom of the broad Atlantic - the sails reposed uselessly against the masts or flapped to and fro in dead compliance with the breathing sea. The sky vas of a dull grey leaden hue - no clouds could be seen but the XXX XXX vault of heaven was wrapped in one dark impenetrable veil whose dreariness was made much more dreary by reflection in the waters beneath. This universal stillness reigned during the morning broken only by the shriek of the sea bird as it skimmed over the surface of the waters. About mid-day the rain poured down in torrents such as they only who have witnessed can conceive - This lasted for two or three hours yet the sea remained a perfect calm - the air cold thick and still. When the rain ceased all was silent as the grave - 6 OC. Ignorant of danger we sat down to our customary amusements which were only interrupted by an XXXXXXX ocassional wish to have a breeze spring up - At 6 OC Sails were shortened & everything on deck and aloft made ready for a wild night. At 7 OC the ship was sailing under closely reefed topsails & Mr J Flood who came down informed us that the hatchways were nailed down - At 8 OC we retired to rest but scarcely had two hours elapsed before a dull roaring sound was heard in the distance growing louder and louder as it approached until it seemed to burst over us. In a few minutes the sea dashed into fury & the ship speeding through on a gale of terrific violence - Sleep was impossible - The noise on deck.’

6 January 1868
‘Glorious morning promising another broiling day - Still a dead calm - ship scarcely moving - went about 5 knots per hour during the night. Spanish vessel still in sight about 5 miles to NE of us. Mass on board. Dread that this calm will continue for some time - 12 OC - Not a ripple on the surface of the waters shining like a plate of fretted gold. How slowly creep the hours in those calms especially as we are so near our destination. Nothing to read - nothing to discuss - nothing to while away an hour with except to sit in a state of dreamy thoughtfulness watching the sea birds skimming over the surface of the water - your thoughts wandering back to the green hills the shady groves & the pleasant valleys of “That beautiful land far away; That isle of the blue sea carressed; Where the fields are so green & the mountains so grey; In this isle far away in the West”.

Such a life is intolerable. 4 OC - Supper - Cry on deck of - A Shark A Shark - all hands rush on deck in a state of great excitement and in an instant bulwarks & forecastle are crowded. I too rush up and from the forecastle obtain a glimpse of the huge monster as he slowly glides through the blue waters beneath his green eyes gleaming with a fierce and ominous expression and his body assuming the most gorgeous colours - the principal being a bright emerald green. Two immense fins project beneath the jaws. A bait is thrown out attached to a strong iron hook - in an instant he perceives it & slowly and noiselessly glides towards it. When within two feet of it he turns on his back XXX opens his voracious jaws - exhibiting to the spectators two rows of sharp saw like teeth.’

9 January 1868
‘Blowing hard all night, sailing under scarcely fifty yards of canvas. All hands on deck and hard at work during the night. 6 OC Strong breeze glorious morning. Sky clear - speed 10 knots - On look out for land since 4 OC - 7.45 Land Ahead - on our lee bow a long low range visible surmounted by a lighthouse - Rottenest Island [. . .] The misty outline of the coast is more defined to the R of Island. The mainland appears low & sandy - the range surmounted by “Bush”. The pilot boat appears in the distance - 7 men in her - Fremantle now visible after dinner - a few merchant vessels in roads - prospect cheerless in the extreme - A sober sadness now assails me at idea of being separated from many of my comerades. Look in vain for the emerald green hills dotted with sheep - the waving meadows - the yellow corn fields bowing beneath the golden ear, the broad transparent river meandering through the deep garment of fairest green and the darkly shadowed mountains in the background which gladdened the sight on nearing the shores of Holy Ireland - There all is grand - Here all is dreary desolate & cheerless. How many of the stout hearts now beating are destined to lay their bones in this land. How many will again tread the fair hills of Holy Ireland. Oh! for a dip into the gloomy dark future!’

The Diary Junction

Point of departure

Had he lived, Robin Cook, a British Labour party politician who served as Foreign Secretary under Tony Blair, would have reached three score years and ten today. Considered a great parliamentarian, he was also a man, apparently, of high principles, who resigned rather than be part of the government that supported George W. Bush’s war in Iraq. His only published book - at least as far as I can tell - is a selection of diary entries, written during the second New Labour government. He planned the book, he said, as an ‘honest attempt’ to explain how he ‘arrived at the point of departure’, i.e. resigning from his government cabinet post.

Robert - known as Robin - Finlayson Cook was born on 28 February 1946 in Bellshill, Scotland, the only son of a chemistry teacher, and the grandson of a miner. Educated in Aberdeen, Royal High School, Edinburgh, and the University of Edinburgh, he eschewed the idea of a career in religion for teaching and then politics. In 1969, he married Margaret Katherine Whitmore, with whom he had two sons. In 1970, he contested, unsuccessfully, the Edinburgh North constituency, but then he won Edinburgh Central at the next election becoming an MP in February 1974. When the constituency boundaries were changed in 1983, he transferred to the nearby Livingston constituency, which he represented for the rest of his life.

In Parliament, Cook joined the left-wing Tribune Group of the Parliamentary Labour Party and soon found himself opposing policies of the Wilson and Callaghan governments. He established himself in Parliament as a powerful debater, and rose through the party ranks, winning shadow cabinet posts in Opposition under Neil Kinnock (health 1987-1992), John Smith (trade and industry 1992-1994), and Tony Blair (foreign affairs 1994-1997). As Shadow Foreign Secretary, responding to the government’s presentation of the Scott report into the Arms-to-Iraq affair, he said, famously, ‘this is not just a Government which does not know how to accept blame; it is a Government which knows no shame’.

When the Labour Party came into power in 1997, Blair made Cook Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, a position he held throughout Blair’s first term of office. Only months after becoming Foreign Secretary, however, Cook was hit with a public scandal: before the newspapers released the story, he announced he was leaving his wife and would marry Gaynor Regan, a member of his staff with whom he’d been having an affair. They married the following year. Cook’s period as Foreign Secretary was characterised by controversial British interventions in Kosovo and Sierra Leone, by his helping normalise relations with Iran after the death threats against Salman Rushdie, and by making progress with Libya after a long stand-off following the Lockerbie bombing.

After the 2001 general election, Blair replaced Cook, against his wishes, with Jack Straw at the Foreign Office, offering Cook the job of Leader of the House of Commons, still in the Cabinet but, nevertheless, considered a demotion. After consideration, Cook took the position, and set about trying to reform some Parliamentary practices. By 2003, though, he was increasingly at odds with Blair over the prospect of military action against Iraq; and on 17 March he resigned. In his resignation speech - widely praised -  he asked: ‘Why is it now so urgent that we should take military action to disarm a military capacity that has been there for 20 years and which we helped to create?’ Outside of government, he remained an active Parliamentary Member, commenting on foreign affairs, education, Europe and reform of the House of Lords. He was also reconciled with Gordon Brown, after decades of mutual animosity, with the aim of ensuring progressive Labour Party policies beyond Blair’s leadership.

In 2005, Cook died, unexpectedly, from a heart attack while walking in the Scottish Highlands. Blair, on holiday at the time, was criticised for not attending his funeral, though he delivered a reading at Cook’s memorial in December at St Margaret’s Church, Westminster. Jack Straw said he was ‘the greatest parliamentarian of his generation and a very fine Foreign Secretary’. Further biographical information is available at Wikipedia or from obituaries at the BBC, The Guardian, The Telegraph, or The Independent. A longer profile can be found at the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (though log-in is required).

As far as I can tell, Robin Cook only published one book, and this was based on a diary he kept during his term of office as Leader of the House of Commons: The ODNB says: ‘Since 2001 Cook had kept a diary and in October 2003 he published an edited version as The Point of Departure, his account of the Iraq crisis and other events of the period. The book stood out from other ministerial memoirs, usually evasive and self-serving, of the Thatcher–Blair era. Its style was fluent and sophisticated, and the account of cabinet government under New Labour was analytical and frank, but never vitriolic.’ Interestingly, this is in stark contrast to the bitter and rather self-justifying text, also full of diary material, published by Clare Short - who turned 70 a couple of weeks ago (see No. 10 hostile to me) - a short time after .

Introducing his book, Cook says: ‘The narrative charts a personal journey in which my early enthusiasm over my role in modernising the Commons and reforming the Lords became overshadowed by growing concern and eventual dismay at our complicity in George Bush’s intentions on Iraq. Although the culmination may have been Bush’s war, the prelude records my deepening disaffection with elements of the domestic agenda. It is the story of how I found myself losing touch with a leadership which often appeared to have instincts that were at odds with values that had brought me into the Labour Party and had sustained me through long barren years of Opposition. [. . .] This book is my honest attempt to explain how I arrived at the point of departure.’

It is worth noting that the tone and language of this introduction appear to suggest the book is significantly more than what it appears on the surface, a collection of diary entries: the way Cook writes, for example, of the book as a ‘narrative’, a ‘story’, and ‘my honest attempt to explain’, implies something closer to a moulded memoir. Any how, here are a couple of extracts from The Point of Departure (Simon & Schuster, see Amazon for a preview).

4 December 2001
’Began the day with a visit to Jack Straw at the Foreign Office to make my peace. The Secretary of State’s room has reverted to tradition. My examples of the best of British design have gone from the bookcase which has once again gone back to sleep with a collection of leather-bound early Hansards which no one will ever read.

I began by getting my apology in first. “Look, I’m sorry that I snapped at you at the Cabinet. But what’s important to me now is that we quit the argument as to who saw the document first and who got the document too late, and get on with agreeing on a package for modernisation.” Jack was generous in accepting the apology. “I have now had a chance to read the paper and it does have a lot of good ideas. I’ll make a point of writing in to support the revised version.” ’

13 March 2003
‘I am not out of the house before Jack Straw calls me to urge me not to resign. Jack and I go back a long way and were the two junior members of Peter Shore’s Treasury team in the early eighties. I got the impression that he clearly wants me to stay out of concern for me as a friend.

The case he put to me was rather legalistic. He went over how resolution 1441 gives us all the legal authority we require to launch war. I responded that my problem was the political and diplomatic absurdity of a unilateral war even if it were legal.

I saw Tony before Cabinet. I found him half-amused, half-furious with IDS. He had given IDS a briefing in Privy Councillor terms, and, to his dismay, IDS had walked straight out of the door and disclosed to camera that the Prime Minister thought a second resolution now ‘very unlikely’. Since the fiction that Tony still hopes to get a second resolution is central to his strategy for keeping the Labour Party in check, it is not welcome news that IDS has told the world that not even Tony believes this.

I began by joking: “I’m getting so many regular checks from colleagues that I’m beginning to think I’m on suicide watch. I wouldn’t be entirely surprise if someone came along and took away my belt and shoelaces to keep me out of harm’s way.” He laughed and said - and I think he meant it - “I hope it doesn’t come to that.”

I was frank with him that my mind was made up, and that I would not mislead him into thinking that he could persuade me to change it. However, I was equally clear that I was not running any other agenda, or lending myself to an attack on his leadership. “You have been the most successful Labour leader in my lifetime. I want you to go on being leader and to on being successful.”

At this point his body language visibly softened as his muscles relaxed and he leaned back into his sofa. After that he was open, almost philosophical. All he said confirmed my impression that he is mystified as to quite how he got into such a hole and baffled as to whether there is any way out other than persisting in the strategy that has created his present difficulties.

He told me that he was going to call a special Cabinet meeting when the process in the UN was complete, and I promised that I would make no public move while he was still working for a result in the UN.

After me he was seeing Clare [Short], which had the effect of delaying Cabinet for fifteen minutes. [. . .]

When I got back to the office there was a message from the Foreign Office to say that Jack would be very grateful if I could represent the government at the funeral on Saturday of Zoran Djindjic, the Prime Minister of Serbia, who was assassinated yesterday. I readily agreed as I had worked with Zoran for years. We cooperated closely when I was Foreign Secretary and he was in opposition. It is a terrible irony that throughout those years he managed to avoid being assassinated by Milosevic, only to be killed now that he has brought Milosevic to the bar of justice. There is also something of an irony in that my last official engagement representing the government will be attending a funeral.’