First US balloon flight

Jean-Pierre Blanchard, a pioneer of balloon flight, died 210 years ago today. His first successful flight was made in Paris in 1784, but by 1793 he had crossed the Atlantic to make the first ever balloon flight in North America, an event witnessed by President George Washington. Blanchard published a journal of the experience - inscribed to Washington - which may have the distinction of being the briefest diary ever published.

Blanchard was born in 1753 in Les Andelys, France, the son of a skilled craftsman. He showed an early interest in inventing things, such as a firing pistol rat trap, an early velocipede, and a hydraulic system that pumped water from the Seine uphill to a chateau. In 1774, he married Victoire Lebrun, and they would have four children - though, in time, he would abandon her, and she would die in poverty.

Blanchard’s fascination with birds led him to build a flying machine with four wings with pilot-operated levers and pedals, but it didn’t work. However, when a balloon, designed by the Montgolfier brothers, was successfully demonstrated in 1783, Blanchard, too, turned to balloons. He made his first successful flight the following year. He soon moved to London, where after two flights, he and John Jeffries, an American physician, successfully flew across the Channel for the first time. The achievement was praised and rewarded by King Louis XVI.

Over the next few years, Blanchard toured Europe, demonstrating balloon flights wherever he went, and notching up first flights in many countries. In 1791, he gave a balloon performance during the coronation of Holy Roman Emperor Leopold II as King of Bohemia in Prague. As well as developing his balloon expertise, Blanchard also contributed to the development of the modern parachute, invented a few years earlier by fellow Frenchman Sébastien Lenormand. Although Blanchard’s early demonstrations involved dogs, he, too, was forced to use a parachute once when his balloon ruptured in flight.

Arriving in 1793, Blanchard spent several years in North America. That year, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, the capital of the United States, he demonstrated balloon flight for the first time in North America - an event witnessed by President George Washington, and, in fact, by several future presidents also. Blanchard remained in Philadelphia until 1795, and then moved to Charleston, Boston and New York, mostly giving performances of tethered balloon flights with animals. Generally, his attempts to secure funding for further manned balloon attempts were ill-fated, for lack of investment or bad luck. 

Blanchard returned to France in 1797, where he was able to raise enough interest for a dozen more balloon flights. He married his second wife, Sophie Armant, in 1804 who also became a balloonist. In early 1808, Blanchard suffered a heart attack while in his balon, and fell to the ground. He died a year later, on 7 March 1809, leaving behind many debts. Sophie continued to support herself with balloon demonstrations, but she also died in a balloon accident, in 1819. Further, information on the Blanchards is available at Wikipedia, Encyclopaedia.com, Normandy Then and Now, and the SciHi Blog.

Soon after the first US flight, Blanchard published an account of the event. He inscribed this to George Washington and titled it Journal of my forty-fifth ascension, being the first performed in America, on the ninth of January, 1793. The booklet runs to only 26 pages long, and, as it concerns but a single day, it might well be considered the shortest diary every published. A reprint by William Abbatt from 1918 is freely available online at Internet Archive.

Blanchard’s preface reads as follows: ‘Having so happily succeeded in the 45th attempt of my aerial flight, in the presence of the enlightened citizens of Philadelphia, I thought I could still afford them some pleasure, by offering to them an accurate description of the operations preparatory to this ascension, and by acquainting them with my various situation during this excursion, as well as with the motives which induced me to a return, and the means I made use of to accomplish it.

I will then account for the thoughts and feelings which agitated my breast at the time of my ascension: I will display them with confidence, to those candid and feeling men whose eye traced me across the vast expanse of the aerial regions.

To such as are not unacquainted with the mechanism of the aerostat, some of these details may appear trifling and superfluous; but as I felt them, I will therefore describe them: nor do I think I should be justifiable in concealing from the curious public any part of the operations which attended so extraordinary an experiment, of which they for the first time witnessed the complete success.

And here I request the indulgence of my readers for the style of my narrative - Elegance is not what I aim at in this performance: Truth is intended as its sole ornament.’

The following is part of the text of the brief journal, though I have removed various meteorological readings for ease of reading.

9 January 1793
‘At 9 o’clock the mist dissipated, the sky was wrapt in thin clouds, pervious to the rays of the sun; wind S. W. Reaumur’s thermometer [various meteorological figures]

At ½ past 9, the sun which broke in through the clouds dissipated them in such a manner that they appeared no more than cobwebs on the irradiated atmosphere - A gentle westerly breeze [figures].

The hour fixed for my departure now drew near, and I was anxious to keep my word with a numerous people, whom repeated discharges of the artillery of the city had already forewarned of the execution of my experiment; I then disposed in order all the apparatus requisite for my observations: I adapted Reaumur’s thermometer to the center of an excellent barometer, in order to rectify, with the greatest possible exactness, the degrees of expansion or condensation which the mercury in the barometer should undergo by the changes in the temperature of the air. The altitude, as corrected at that time, [figures]

At 10 o’clock, the sky was still finer and clearer; a light breeze from the W. N. W. [figures]

Already the balloon, inflated by the inflammable gas, lifted itself from the ground, and having assumed its spherical form, was equally pressed on all the points of its concave surface. Already specifically lighter than the column of air which it had displaced, it hovered majestically in the middle of that fluid in a vertical situation, striving to break loose from the fastening which held it by its base and reluctantly kept it down. Repeated experiments have made these various circumstances so many data from which to determine the moment of my departure.

At 9 minutes after 10, the sky being clear, serene and propitious, little wind and nearly calm at the surface of the earth; [figures] I affixed to the aerostat my car, laden with ballast, meteorological instruments, and some refreshments, with which the anxiety of my friends had provided me. I hastened to take leave of the President, and of Mr. Ternan, Minister Plenipotentiary of France to the United States. I then received from the President the most flattering mark of his good will in the passport which he was pleased to deliver to me with his own hand. I never felt the value of glory so much as I did in that moment, in the presence of a Hero, whom she had constantly attended at the head of armies, and with whom she still presided over the councils of his country.

The moment of my departure was announced by the last discharge of the artillery; I then ascended my car, studied the proportions of aerial gravities, and threw out as much of my ballast as appeared necessary to leave the aerostat at liberty, and to render my ascent certain. I soon found myself possessed of every requisite; I felt myself balanced at 15 inches from the ground. This was all I wished for; I requested Messieurs Nassy and Legaux, who held the aerostat, to let it loose.
My ascent was perpendicular, and so easy that I had time to enjoy the different impressions which agitated so many sensible and interesting persons, who surrounded the scene of my departure, and to salute them with my flag, which was ornamented on one side with the armoric bearings of the United States, and on the other with the three colors, so dear to the French nation. Accustomed as I have long been to the pompous scenes of numerous assemblies, yet I could not help being surprized and astonished, when, elevated at a certain height over the city, I turned my eyes towards the immense number of people which covered the open places, the roofs of the houses, the steeples, the streets and the roads over which my flight carried me in the free space of the air. What a sight! How delicious for me to enjoy it! This people naturally serious and reflecting, whose mirth is so much more true and national, as it is not apt to give away to the transports of the moment, shewed from all parts the most unequivocal marks of astonishment and satisfaction: I, for a long time, followed their rapid motions: for a long time could I hear the cries of joy which rent the air: I thought myself carried on the vows of their hearts. I had at that instant nothing but the success of my voyage to answer for my gratitude, and the waving of my colours to express the same. At present I make it my duty to express the same in this feeble essay; may it be agreeable to the inhabitants of a city whose approbation is so glorious for me.

I still continued to rise; the calm state of the atmosphere, whereinto I had now launched, offered no kind of difficulty, and I followed the ascending motion of my aerostat with a gradual uniformity, at once easy and majestic.

I was at a perpendicular height of 200 fathoms, when I felt a somewhat stronger breeze spring up, which carried me in an easterly direction towards the Delaware: here I met a numerous and thick flock of wild pigeons: they seemed to be much frightened. Alas! it was never my intention in traversing the ethereal regions to disturb the feathered inhabitants thereof: they separated into two different parties and left a passage open for me. I soon perceived them again at a great distance from me. I ascended constantly, being carried towards the south-east by a light and pleasant breeze. At 10h. 10m. I let go my anchor, to serve as a point of observation, keeping the same course, though rather a little more to the southward.

At 10h, 19-20-21m. bearing constantly towards the S. S. E. my ascent became more rapid, owing solely to the dilatation of the inflammable gas which filled the balloon. At this moment my position was perpendicular over the middle of the Delaware, which the reflecting sunbeams painted to my eyes of a transparent white; and at the height I was then at, this river appeared to me like a ribband of the breadth of about four inches.

At 10h. 35m. being now in a much more rarified fluid, and the force of the inflammable gas having increased in proportion to its dilatation, the aerostat was soon raised to the highest elevation which it is susceptible of. I had lost nothing of my ballast consisting of four bags and an half filled with sand, containing 24lb. English weight each, together 108 lb. A little black dog, which a friend had entrusted to me, seemed to feel sick at this height; he attempted several times to get out of the car; but finding no landing-place he took the prudent part to remain quietly beside me: the whining of this little animal raised nevertheless reflections in my mind, which would have affected me very much, had not the view of the country, whose vast extent was expanded before my eyes, opened my mind to softer and more agreeable contemplations.’

Best president Nigeria never had

Today marks the 110th anniversary of the birth of Obafemi Awolowo, a Nigerian politician some describe as the best president Nigeria never had. The son of a Yoruba farmer, he pressed himself through layers of education to become a successful lawyer, and then a powerful mover for his country’s independence, one embracing a federal structure, inclusive of all tribes and regions. Though never president, he served in various positions which allowed him to introduce much progressive social legislation. He wrote several influential political books, and some autobiographical works.

Awolowo was born on 6 March 1909 in Ikenne, some 50km northwest of Lagos, then part of British controlled Southern Nigeria. His father, a farmer, died when he was 10. He went to a local Baptist school and Wesley College in Ibadan. To support himself, he worked as a teacher, a clerk, and a newspaper reporter. He was an active trade unionist. In 1927, he enrolled at the University of London as an external student, graduating with a degree in commerce. Back in Nigeria, during the 1930s, he became increasingly involved in nationalist politics, rising to become an official in the Nigerian Youth Movement. In 1937, he married Hannah Adelana, and they had five children. In 1944, he returned to London to study law, and was called to the bar in 1946. While in the UK, he founded Egbe Omo Oduduwa to promote the culture and unity of the Yoruba people. He also published an influential book Path to Nigerian Freedom, in which he made his case for an independent Nigeria in which the interests of each ethnic nationality and region were safeguarded.

Returning to Nigeria in 1947, he set up a sucessful law practice, acting as a solicitor and advocate of the Superior Court of Nigeria. In 1949, he founded the newspaper The Tribune to help disseminate his political ideas, and the following year he cofounded a political wing of Egbe Omo Oduduwa called Action Group, and became its first president. He won the first Western Region elections in 1951 and was chosen as minister for local government structure. In 1954, he was appointed the first premier of the Western Region. It was a position in which he was able to improve education, social services and agricultural practices. He resigned his post, in 1959, to run for a seat in the Federal House of Representatives, but his Action Group party was heavily defeated in the election, leaving Awolowo as leader of the opposition.

A power struggle soon developed between Awolowo and Samuel Akintola, his Action Group deputy, who had taken over as premier of the Western Region. Ultimately, this led to the federal government suspending the Western Region’s constitution, and to Awolowo being prosecuted for treason. In 1963, he was found guilty of conspiring to overthrow the government, and was sentenced to 10 years in prison. Three years later, as the result of a coup and the empowerment of a military government, Awolowo was released. He became a member of the National Conciliation Committee, which attempted to mediate a rift between the federal government and the Eastern Region (inhabited predominantly by the Igbo people), but when this failed, and the region seceded as the Republic of Biafra, he backed the government. During the civil war that followed, Awolowo was federal commissioner for finance and vice chairman of the Federal Executive Council. In the mid-1970s he was chancellor of the University of Ife (now Obafemi Awolowo University) and Ahmadu Bello University.

In 1977, Awolowo published The Problems of Africa: The need for ideological reappraisal. And, the following year, when a 12-year ban on political activity was lifted in preparation for a return to civilian rule, he emerged as the leader of the Unity Party of Nigeria. He ran for president in 1979 and 1983 but was defeated both times by Shehu Shagari. Following yet another military coup at the end of 1983, political parties were again banned, and Awolowo retired from politics. He died in 1987 (though his wife Hannah lived to 2015, just a few months short of her 100th birthday). Further information can be found at Wikipedia, Encyclopaedia Britannica, New World Encyclopedia, the Obafemi Awolowo Foundation or Zaccheus Onumba Dibiaezue Memorial Libraries.

Apart from his political books, Awolowo left behind a couple of autobiographical works: Awo - Autobiography of Chief Obafemi Awolowo; My Early Life; Adventures in Power: Book 1 - My March Through Prison; Adventures in Power: Book 2 - Travails of Democracy. None of them seem to be available online (nor available for preview at Amazon or Googlebooks). It’s possible that the first Adventures in Power book contains a prison diary by Awolowo but I’m not sure. Two biographies, however, do make mention of diaries (described variously as personal, political or prison diaries), and both these can be previewed at Googlebooks: Chief Obafemi Awolowo: The Political Moses by Adedara S. Oduguwa (Trafford Publishing, 2012); and The Political Philosophy of Chief Obafemi Awolowo by Olayiwola Abegunrin (Lexington Books, 2015).

In his preface to the first book, Oduguwa states: ‘As readers will discover, Chief Obafemi Awolowo: The Political Moses is a book that encompasses politics, law, and the search for power, as well as incarceration, denial, and betrayal by respected members of the Action Group (AG) and the political environment of Nigeria in the 1960s. It is a book that vividly investigates a 1962 treasonable felony, bringing into focus the case hearings and its implications for the young Nigerians. [. . .] This book reminds us of how a man who dedicated the entirely of his life (as stated in his diary) to serve his fatherland was denied his ambition, and now, twenty-five years after his death remains the most celebrated Nigerian that ever lived. Even one of his contemporaries at the time attested “Awo is the best president Nigeria never had.” ’

Here is one quote he provides from Awolowo’s diary.
19 August 1959
‘I affirm that by the grace of God, the AG will win 200 seats at the federal elections, I also affirm that I Chief Awolowo will be the Prime Minister of Nigeria. In the return for this privilege, I solemnly aver and promise in the presence of God that I will strive and do my utmost best for the entire people of Nigeria irrespective of their tribe, religion, political affiliation and ensure individual freedom, human dignity and cultural progress, for Jesus says: whatever we ask for, we shall have it; I believe the AG will win 200 seats and 1 will become the prime minister of Nigeria. I affirm that by the grace of God, the AG will win 200 seats. I also affirm that I Chief Awolowo will be the prime minister of Nigeria at the conclusion of the election.

As prime minister of Nigeria, I will strive to ensure the rule of law; happiness and spiritual well being of the people of Nigeria. I therefore believe firmly that the AG will win 200 seats: I thank God for granting my desire.’

And here are two quotes provided by Olayiwola Abegunrin in his biography of Awolowo.

7 March 1939
‘After rain comes sunshine: after darkness comes the glorious dawn. There is no sorrow without its glorious joy: there is no joy without its admixture of sorrow. Behind the ugly terrible mask of misfortunes lies the beautiful soothing countenance of prosperity. So. tear the mask.’

2 August 1966
‘On this triumphant occasion I believe that the following decision of mine is irrevocable under all and any circumstances, namely: That I hereby solemnly and resolutely dedicate the rest of my life, even second of it, to the service of the peoples of Nigeria in particular, and of Africa in general, by promoting their welfare and happiness. So be it-Amen.’

Trungpa’s escape from Tibet

Chögyam Trungpa, the Tibetan monk who became a renowned lay teacher of Buddhist teachings in the United States and founded the Shambhala organisation, was born 80 years ago today. When the Chinese invaded Tibet, he was no more than 20 years old. At first he went into hiding, but then took part in an heroic expedition across the Himalayas to escape into India. For a few weeks during the latter part of that journey, he kept a diary which he included in his first autobiographical work, Born in Tibet.

Trungpa was born in the Nangchen region of Tibet on 5 March 1939, and was eleventh in the line of Trungpa tülkus, of the Kagyu lineage, one of the four main schools of Tibetan Buddhism. He was trained in the Kagyu tradition, receiving his degree at the same time as Thrangu Rinpoche (who would go on to become another important Buddhist figure in the West). Trungpa was also trained in the Nyingma tradition, the oldest of the four schools. 

In 1958, aged only 19, Trungpa’s home monastery was occupied by the Chinese People’s Liberation Army, and so he spent the winter in hiding. The following year, he started out with Akong Tulku and a small group of other monastics to escape China. As they travelled, often through mountain wildernesses, others joined them swelling the group to some 300 refugees. They eventually reached the  Brahmaputra River. Under heavy gunfire, about 70 managed to cross it, but they then had to climb 19,000 feet over the Himalayas, with little food, before reaching the safety of Pema Ko. On reaching India, in early 1960, the party was flown to a refugee camp. The full story has been told by Grant McLean’s in his 2016 book From Lion’s Jaws: Chogyam Trungpa’s Epic Escape To The West.

In India, Trungpa had one son (who is today the head of Shambala network) with a nun he had met on the journey. He set about learning English, and by 1963 had won a scholarship to study comparative religion at St Antony’s College, Oxford University. In 1967, he and Akong were invited to take over Johnstone House Trust in Scotland to run a meditation centre, which then became Samye Ling, the first Tibetan Buddhist monastery in the West. Around 1969, he married Diana Judith Pybus, a wealthy rebellious 16 year old, with whom he had at least one son. He also had a car accident which left him partially paralysed for the rest of his life. When Trungpa split with Akong, in 1970, the former moved to the United States. By then, he had dispensed with his monastic way of life (allowing himself to be promiscuous and drink heavily), and set course as a lay teacher. He travelled widely around North America, gaining renown for his ability to present the essence of the highest Buddhist teachings in a form readily understandable to Western students, in particular he introduced and opened up, to the West, the esoteric practices of the Vajrayana or Tantric Buddhism.

Trungpa soon began to establish many meditation centres and retreats, all managed by an umbrella organisation, Vajradhatu, based in Boulder, Colorado. Also in Boulder, he found the Naropa Institute which would become the first accredited Buddhist university in North America. Allen Ginsberg and William Burroughs were hired at one point to teach poetry and literature respectively. (Joni Mitchell even sang about Trungpa in Refuge of the Roads, on the Hejira album.) From 1976, he began a series of secular teachings, some of which were gathered and presented as the Shambhala Training, inspired by his vision, when younger, of the legendary Kingdom of Shambhala. His whole organisation eventually took on the Shambala name.

In 1981, Trungpa hosted a visit by the 14th Dalai Lama to Boulder. In 1983, he established Gampo Abbey, a Karma Kagyü monastery in Cape Breton, Nova Scotia, Canada; the following year, he observed a yearlong retreat in a rural community in Nova Scotia, and in 1986 he moved his home and international headquarters to Halifax. However, he was, by this time, suffering failing health; after a heart attack in 1986, he died in 1987. Further information can be found at Shambhala, Wikipedia, Encyclopaedia Britannica, or Stripping the Gurus.

A diary kept by Trungpa for a few weeks during his heroic escape to India was first published by George Allen & Unwin in 1966 as part of the autobiographical Born in Tibet (as told to Esmé Cramer Roberts). This has been republished several times, and can be previewed at Googlebooks. Born in Tibet is also included in the first volume of The Collected Works of Chögyam Trungpa, edited by Carolyn Rose Gimian, and published by Shambala in 2003. Furthermore, the diary itself can be found online at The Chronicles, ‘a repository of teachings, articles, interviews, news and podcasts pertaining to the life and teachings of Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche’.

Here are several extracts (as found at The Chronicles).

‘With the morning light we started off and walked down the slope and as we turned uphill again we met the peasant husband carrying a large bag of tsampa. To our amazement he said that he and Tsepa had overtaken Akong Tulku’s elder brother in company with Dorje Tsering’s wife and three nuns and they had given him the tsampa to tide over our immediate needs. They told him how they had been captured by the Chinese near the backwater, but managed to escape from the headquarters where they were being held and had afterward joined up with some Kongpo peasants who were also escaping. The party had heard Tsepa’s gun the night before and had been so frightened that they had rushed away. It appeared that the gun had only been fired to scare a wild animal which seemed as if it might attack. Tsepa had sent the peasant husband back to us while he himself went up to the village on the mountainside to buy provisions. He sent us a message saying that we were to go to a cave below that place where the other party was waiting for us; he would join us there later with the food. We soon reached the cave and spent a very happy morning telling each other of our experiences. They told us that a group of them had crossed the river and the backwater and had tried to follow us; however, they had lost their way and after lying hidden in the long grass for a time they reached the village. When the Chinese discovered them, there was no fighting; all the refugees were taken prisoner and removed to a village which was a local Chinese headquarters, on the south side of the Brahmaputra. Their baggage was thoroughly searched; all the contents of their amulet boxes were thrown out and all religious books were immediately destroyed. Each person was privately questioned to find out if their stories tallied; they were asked where they came from and where they were going. Most of them said that they were trying to escape to India, though a few said that they were going on pilgrimage to that country. The lamas and leaders were separated from the rest and put under guard to be interrogated more closely. They were given the most menial work to do, such as cleaning out latrines. One of the lamas despaired and hanged himself, he had already escaped from one prison camp in Derge and this was the second time that he had been captured. As other prisoners were brought into the camp all our party were relieved to find that no members of our little group were among them; but when the Chinese could not trace Akong Tulku, Yak Tulku, or me among the senior prisoners, they thought we might be lurking disguised among the crowd, since they knew that we had been the leaders of the party; so the prisoners were checked again, especially the younger ones.

At night everyone was locked up together in a single room, but women and the less important men were allowed to go out into the village during the day: They were, however, called in for individual questioning from time to time. The Chinese would then tell them that now that Lhasa was liberated they could go there whenever they wished to, there would be no trouble on the roads; but of course there were more useful things to be done than wandering off on pilgrimages, which were indeed only superstition. The prisoners were even told that should they wish to go to India for this purpose, the Chinese administration were quite ready to let them out; however, such a journey would be exceedingly dangerous, for anyone might die of starvation or fall ill from the hot climate there.

When a rumor went round the camp that all the able-bodied refugees were shortly to be sent north to join labor camps on the other side of the Brahmaputra and that the senior people and those too old for work were to be sent to concentration camps, one of the nuns contrived to buy food for herself and Akong Tulku’s brother, she also obtained information about the best way to reach Doshong Pass. Dorje Tsering’s wife and two other nuns were also able to procure some food and all five managed to escape together. They stopped in a wood the first night and crossed the Doshong Pass the following day. Here they met the family from Kongpo who knew the country and were also making their escape, so they joined forces.

The Kongpo family were camping in a valley below our cave and the man came up to see me, bringing a jug of soup made of meat and barley which was much appreciated. He told me how he and his people had escaped: It had been very difficult to get out of their village as permits were only given to visit friends in the near neighborhood and when the visit was over the holder had to apply to the local authorities for permission to return to his own home. Having obtained the permits to leave his village, our friend and his family took the opposite direction toward the mountains to the south. A number of the villagers had wanted to do the same thing, but knowing the danger they would have to encounter in crossing the snowbound Doshong Pass, they had not dared to undertake the journey.

Some refugee lamas from Lower Kongpo were sheltering in the small monastery in the village above our cave. A monk came down with Tsepa to request me to conduct a devotional service for them as well as for the villagers. I was surprised to see him wearing a long dagger which looked somehow wrong for a monk. He was particularly friendly and invited us all to stay in the monastery. However, we felt that this village was too near Lower Kongpo and might not be a safe place for us so, seeing that one could not get to the monastery and back again that same afternoon, we stayed where we were in and around the cave. We had an excellent meal with some pork the villagers had supplied and made dumplings with their wheat flour which they also gave us. We tried the local dish of millet, but found this difficult to swallow.

23 January 1960
‘No one knew how we could get to India proper, for there was a waiting list for the few airplanes flying to and fro. However, we no longer felt anxious: We were free at last and were able to wander about the town at will. I was struck by the fact that people here were much gayer and more cheerful than in the Communist-controlled Tibetan towns. As we were having our midday meal, a messenger came to tell us to go down to the airport, as there was every possibility that we would get a lift that same evening. A tractor arrived with a trailer behind it, into which we all bundled. The winding road led through a valley and we came to the gate of the airport. It was built in decorative Tibetan style, surmounted by the ashoka emblem. We disembarked and waited. No one knew of any airplanes likely to arrive that day. The evening drew in and it was quite dark. A jeep came to take me to see the local district administrator; he gave me a bag of rice and a few vegetables and apologized that supplies were so scanty and the accommodation so limited. However, he was sure that the plane would come the next day. He asked me to leave my blessing in the place, that things should go well. I thanked him and presented him with a white scarf. We spent that night in the hut.’

24 January 1960
‘In the morning an official came and read out a list of our names. He told us that we would be given priority on the next plane. It arrived that morning and, since it was a transport plane, its cargo of building material was first taken off and seats screwed in afterward. There was only room for six of us: myself, my own attendant, Yak Tulku and his attendant, Tsethar, and Yunten; the rest of the party followed in a second plane that same day.

This, our first flight, was a strange new experience, skimming over cloud-covered mountains, seeing far below us the small villages and footpaths leading up to them; only by the moving shadow of the plane on the ground could we gauge how fast we were traveling.

We thought about the teaching of impermanence; this was a complete severance of all that had been Tibet and we were traveling by mechanized transport. As the moments passed, the mountain range was left behind, and the view changed to the misty space of the Indian plains stretching out in front of us.’

I do not quit my post here

‘The sea may be open both above and below, and even if open off-shore, may never release this ship from her present prison until every matter requisite for her extraction is fairly prepared, and nothing left but taking advantage of the first lead, I do not quit my post here.’ This is from a published narrative written by Captain Edward Belcher - born 220 years ago today - during his last and disastrous expedition to the Arctic region. In fact, despite the above sentiment, he abandoned four of his five ships, hopelessly stuck in ice (though, one subsequently drifted free on its own), and was never given another commission again. Previously, he had undertaken two successful long surveying expeditions, and had published narratives of those journeys too. While the narratives appear to be have been written in retrospect (presumably from diaries), Belcher often - especially in the account of the last expedition - resorts to using diary-type dated extracts.

Belcher was born on 27 February 1799 in Halifax, Nova Scotia (then British, now Canadian), where his father Andrew Belcher was a prominent member of the Nova Scotia Council. Aged 13, he enlisted in the British Royal Navy as a first class volunteer. In 1816, as a midshipman in HMS Superb, he took part in the Battle of Algiers; and in 1818 he was promoted to lieutenant. After 1820, he visited the United States, investigated channels near Bermuda, and served on the Nova Scotia station in the Salisbury. In 1825, for more than three years, he sailed with Captain Frederick William Beechey in the HMS Blossom on an exploration of the Pacific and Alaskan coasts. He was made commander in March 1829, and from 1830 to 1833 commanded the Aetna, surveying parts of the west and north coasts of Africa. In 1830, he married Diana Joliffe, but the marriage was soon blighted by her claims of cruelty, and legal actions that eventually led to an arranged separation.

In 1836, Belcher was given command of the Sulphur, a surveying ship (after its captain, Beechey, was invalided home), and continued its work for the next three years along the coasts of North and South America. At the end of 1839, he received orders to return to England by way of the Western route. However, in Singapore, he was ordered back to China, and was subsequently engaged in war operations along the Canton River. In 1841, he made the first British survey of the Hong Kong harbour. After seven years, he and his ship finally returned to England in 1842, where he was knighted the following year. Thereafter, he was engaged on HMS Samarang, initially to survey the coast of China (the war having opened up the area to trade), but was diverted further east to Borneo and the Philippines, among other places, where he remained five years surveying coasts and fighting pirates.

In 1852, Belcher was given command of a large expedition (five ships led by HMS Assistance) with the aim of searching for Sir John Franklin’s expedition which had been lost in 1845 when attempting to find the Northwest Passage. Belcher spent two years scouring for signs of Franklin’s expedition, often making long trips on land by sledge, but found little evidence of what had happened to it. His own ships then also got into serious difficulty because of the winter conditions, so much so that he abandoned four of them to the ice before making it back to England in HMS North Star. (However, one of the abandoned ships, the Resolute, broke free and drifted until picked up by an American whaler. The ship was returned to the UK, where many years later some of its timbers were used to make a desk for the American president. Given as a present by Queen Victoria, the Resolute desk remains in use in the Oval Office.)

Although exonerated by the Navy for losing his ships, Belcher never received another command. However, he was made Knight Commander of the Order of the Bath in 1867, and an admiral in 1872. He died in 1877. Further information can be found at Wikipedia, the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (log-in required), and the Belcher Foundation (though the latter two have markedly different assessments of the man).

Belcher published three two-volume narratives describing in detail each of his major expeditions: Narrative of a Voyage Round the World (1843); Narrative of the Voyage of HMS Samarang, During the Years 1843-46 (1848), and The Last of the Arctic Voyages (1855). Most of the text in these books reads like a narrative, not a diary, but they were surely written with the help of an expedition diary, kept by Belcher or a subordinate. I can’t find any evidence of such diaries extant today, with one exception: the National Library of New Zealand holds Belcher’s private journal from his time on HMS Blossom in 1825-1827. Otherwise, the National Maritime Museum in Greenwich holds the Royal Navy order books for Belcher’s expeditions.

Nevertheless, within the published ‘narratives’ there are entries that are dated and read as though they were taken directly from a diary (much more so in the last set than in the first). The following examples are taken from the second volume of The Last of the Arctic Voyages: Being a narrative of the expedition in H.M.S. Assistance under the command of Captain Sir Edward Belcher, C.B. in search of the Sir John Franklin, during the years 1852-53-54. Both volumes (Vol 1 and Vol 2) are freely available at Internet Archive.

5 February 1854
‘The weather still remains line, but the temperature still clinging to -40°. Yesterday, under a change of wind to the northward, a point from which it seldom blows, we experienced a fall of snow, the temperature dropping, contrary to rule, as low as -50°; this was succeeded by calm and a rise to -40°.

After prayers today the bodies of our two men were interred in the same grave, with the customary solemnities. I had already deferred it some days, in the hope of milder weather; indeed, in a great measure, to enable me to officiate in my proper place; but the superstitious feelings of the crew were at work, and I thought it better to stop talking and conclude the ceremony. The service was read by Commander Richards; indeed I suffered severely from the exposure, which sent me to bed with severe rheumatism, or, what I am more inclined to believe, an attack of jaundice.
 
4 March 1854
‘I have not progressed towards recovery as I had anticipated; in fact, I learn that this is not a climate to trifle with. Undue exertion of the lungs (reading the service on Sunday) has thrown me back and confined me to cabin exercise. The following ideas have lately been 
impressed on me: 1. Never to pass over, as unworthy of thought, after the first year particularly, any symptoms similar to rheumatism, affection of chest or voice, discoloration, emaciation, etc., but at once meet the question by full diet, stimulated even by curries, etc. Exercise is important; injudicious exposure to severe cold should not be risked. This probably has been my fault, or possibly not quite my own, for my preaching has ever been, “not to expose the lungs unnecessarily to a lower temperature than can be avoided.” Latterly our upper deck, under the housing, has maintained a higher temperature by nineteen degrees above the external atmosphere, with a complete shelter from the slightest breeze.’

15 March 1854
‘Our ice-gauge having been raised, we content ourselves with the simple measurement of the in-shore ice, principally with the intent of discovering the approximate moment when the sea-water season terminates; or when the ice crystals, constantly pervading the sea beneath the floe, cease to attach themselves to the under surface, and thus increase the homogeneousness of the floe. Our thickness today affords sixty-five inches, = five feet five inches, and the last ten-day temperatures as under:- Max - 19.00°; min. -49.62°; mean, -34.629°; previous, -32.733°
 
Our last Division has been delayed to this preconceived date, in the expectation of a decided change of season; and the temperature having risen to -23°, and the wind lulled, I determined to push forward Messrs. Grove and Pim, with the ‘Dauntless’ and ‘Reward,’ on the morrow, should the weather continue propitious.’

19 March 1854
‘The breeze has failed and the temperature again fallen to -40°. We have not been visited by the old noises termed “bolt-breaking” for some time, but last night the outer ice evinced great uneasiness, and reports of heavy and repeated cracks were heard during the whole night. From the report of those sent to examine the outer ice, I gather that the exterior ice already exhibits large rents, and the fissures generally seem to indicate a probability of off-shore leads whenever the ice is relieved from off-shore pressure. To those accustomed to view these matters it will of course be apparent; but to the uninitiated it may be necessary to explain, that this dislocated state of the off-lying pack affords us better grounds for release than if we had been frozen up in smooth continuous floe of equal thickness, as the pack invariably falls asunder at the first thaw, and may either float off or be compressed into smaller space, and thus afford space for motion, the great desideratum in these cases; on the other hand, when the floe is continuous and of equal thickness, it is only disrupted by forces which would entail destruction on our insignificant vessels.

My own conviction is, that no opinion as to ultimate release can be formed on this side of Beechey Island, and then not before July or probably until the 22nd of August, notwithstanding the unprecedented open water found here on the 14th of the latter month in 1852, and that, as it appears by reports of not many hours later, was closed almost to boats.

Last year Commander Pullen, on his first journey to Cape Becher, on the 10th of April, found the ice very treacherous with many pools of water; but then we experienced many warm days during the months of February and March. But the open water above our present position and that below, or southerly to Beechey Island, are dependent on very different conditions. We know, from actual experience now, that the Polar Sea may be open and in active motion as early as the 18th of May, as noticed on that date from Britannia Cliff, and we also know that the sea was open on the 14th of July, last season, at Northumberland Sound, yet still sealed near Hamilton Island late in August. But to my mind the cause is very clear - as clear as the North Sea and British Channel flood-tides meeting at high water near Dover. North of our present position, the flood-tide sets in from the Polar Sea and brings its warmer oceanic water; southerly, the flood has to pass up Lancaster Sound, then to be deflected up this channel, and makes high water somewhere between this and Beechey Island; hence the inaction in this particular neighbourhood when the sea may be open both above and below, and even if open off-shore, may never release this ship from her present prison. But until every matter requisite for her extraction is fairly prepared, and nothing left but taking advantage of the first lead, I do not quit my post here.’

Making of a Russian censor

‘The minister of education summoned me for a talk. I arrived at 1 o’clock. “The matter of your appointment to the Press Committee,” the minister said to me, “has taken a rather serious and delicate turn. The emperor has expressed his desire for your appointment [. . .] “Yes,” I replied, “this really puts me in an awkward position. I am prepared to undertake any kind of work which would offer at least some hope for a cause which means so much to me as learning and literature. But if this committee was created for the moral supervision of literature, as its members claim it was, there are no grounds for its existence and it doesn’t have a leg to stand on. If it is going to turn into a secret committee, it is standing on muddy ground and I don’t want to soil myself on it.” ’ This is the Ukrainian, Aleksandr Nikitenko, writing in his diary, exactly 160 years ago today, about being offered a top posting as a central committee censor - all the more remarkable an achievement since he had been born into serfdom. The diary was published in English, some 100 years after his death, as The Diary of a Russian Censor.

Nikitenko was born in Sloboda, Ukraine, in 1804 or 1805, a serf and the property of Count Nikolai Sheremetev, for whom his educated father acted as an estate manager. By 1822, he was working in Ostogozhsk scraping a living as a private tutor. In 1924, he came to the notice of several educated and influential individuals, who then helped him, first, to become a free man, to take up residence in the household of E. P. Obolensky (a future Decembrist), and to study history and philosophy at the Saint Petersburg University. In 1826, he published his first article ‘On Overcoming the Misfortunes’, and was subsequently hired as secretary by the district superintendent of education, K. M. Borozdin. In that position, he compiled a commentary for the new censorship code. He married in mid-1833.

By 1834, Nikitenko had been appointed professor of philology at the university, and in 1837, he was awarded his Doctor of Philosophy (with a dissertation ‘On Creative Power of Poetry or Poetic Genius’). From 1833 to 1848, Nikitenko was a member of the local censorship committee, and a liberal one it seems, since he was arrested on more than occasion for allowing certain literary works to be circulated. From 1853, he worked for the Ministry for People’s Education as extraordinary commissioner; and from 1859 until 1865 he served as a member of the Central Censorship Department, ardently promoting the importance of literature. Otherwise, he acted as editor for several publications, such as Sovremennik (1847-1948) and Zhurnal Ministerstva Narodnogo Prosveshcheniya (1856-1860), and Severnaya Pochta (1862). He died in 1877. A little further - though not much - biographical info can be gathered from Wikipedia, the Saint Petersburg Encyclopaedia, or H-Net. In 2001, Yale University Press published Nikitenko’s Up from Serfdom. My Childhood and Youth in Russia, 1804-1824 as translated by Helen Saltz Jacobson. Some pages of this can be read at Amazon.

A dozen of so years after Nikitenko’s death, in 1888-1992, a diary he had kept throughout his adult life was published in three volumes. An English edition, abridged, edited and translated by Jacobson, was brought out in 1975 by University of Massachusetts Press as The Diary of a Russian Censor. This can be previewed at Googlebooks. The Saint Petersburg Encyclopaedia says of the diary that it provides ‘a unique and valuable source for the study of the history of Russian society, literature and culture’. Here are two extracts, from the English translation, written as Nikitenko was reflecting on whether to accept an offer to join the central censorship department.

20 February 1859
‘The minister of education summoned me for a talk. I arrived at 1 o’clock.

“The matter of your appointment to the Press Committee,” the minister said to me, “has taken a rather serious and delicate turn. The emperor has expressed his desire for your appointment, and now I am conveying his wish to you. Count Adlerberg has informed me about it.”

“Yes,” I replied, “this really puts me in an awkward position. I am prepared to undertake any kind of work which would offer at least some hope for a cause which means so much to me as learning and literature. But if this committee was created for the moral supervision of literature, as its members claim it was, there are no grounds for its existence and it doesn’t have a leg to stand on. If it is going to turn into a secret committee, it is standing on muddy ground and I don’t want to soil myself on it.”

We talked about it for a long time and finally I promised Evgraf Petrovich that I would try my best to change this whole situation for the better.

While we were discussing this, Mukhanov arrived, and I immediately got involved in a conversation with him on this issue.
 
Mukhanov tried to prove to me that the committee had no reactionary intentions; that it did not have anything in common with the Committee of April 2; that the emperor was certainly not interested in creating a similar apparatus.

“Personally, Your Excellency,” I replied, “I am not worried about it becoming another Committee of April 2, because I think that’s impossible. I consider the very thought of it repugnant to the spirit of our times as well as an insult to our enlightened emperor. But I can’t hide the fact from you that the public is very prejudiced against this new committee.” ’

26 February 1859
‘All week I’ve been busy thinking about the proposal to join the committee and have been involved in discussions with them about it. I was invited to a meeting on Monday, the 23rd, where I came face to face with Count Adlerberg, Timashev and Mukhanov.

I was received very courteously, particularly by Count Adlerberg. I had made up my mind to express frankly both my convictions and my views on the committee, so they could decide for themselves whether I could participate in their affairs. They listened to me very attentively.

I told them of the public’s negative attitude toward the committee; that it considered it another April 2nd committee; that I personally considered it an impossibility today and thought their committee could not be either repressive or reactionary; that its sole function was to serve as an intermediary between literature and the emperor and to influence public opinion by getting the government’s views and aims across via the press in much the same way as literature did by bringing its ideas to the public.

They took all this very well. Then I added that if I were to sit on the committee, it would have to be with the right to vote. It was decided that I would give them a memorandum containing the gist of my remarks and that I would bring it with me on Thursday.

Today, Thursday, I read my memorandum to them in which I outlined my ideas in greater detail. Enlarging upon the thesis that literature did not nurture any revolutionary schemes, I took the position that there wasn’t the slightest reason to take repressive measures against it; that ordinary censorship measures were completely adequate; that literature couldn’t and shouldn’t be restrained by administrative measures; and that, perhaps, the committee should limit itself, according to the emperor’s wishes, to keeping a watchful eye on the mood of the public and to guiding public opinion, rather than literature, on to the right path.

I forgot to mention that, on Monday, after my discussion with the committee, I went to see the minister and told him that I was demanding voting rights. He completely supported my demand and tried to persuade me to accept the position of administrative director of the committee on that condition, since the voting right would put me in a position where I could undoubtedly be a force for good.

He also told me that, on Sunday, at the ball, he had spoken to the emperor about me and referred to me as one, who, in his opinion, could be more useful on the committee than anyone else. The emperor turned to Adlerberg and said: “Hear that, Aleksandr?” Earlier, too, while the committee was being formed, the minister had proposed my name for membership along with the names of Vyazemsky, Tyutchev, Pletnyov, and E. P. Kovalevsky (his brother).

After all this my memorandum was accepted, and tomorrow a report goes to the emperor. The die is cast. I am now embarking on a new career in public service. I shall certainly encounter difficulties - and enormous ones, too. But it would be wrong and dishonest of me to evade them, to refuse to do my part. There will be a great deal of gossip. Perhaps many will reproach me because I, with my spotless reputation, have decided to sit on a tribunal which is considered repressive. But that’s exactly the point, gentlemen. I want to stifle its appetite for repression. If I can work effectively - fine. If I can’t. I’ll leave.

In any case, I am absolutely determined to fight to the bitter end against repressive measures. But, at the same time, I am convinced that literature ought not to sever all its ties with the government and assume a hostile stance. If I am right, then it is incumbent on one of us to hold on to this tie and to assume the role, so to say, of a connecting link. I shall try to be that link.

Perhaps I shall succeed in convincing the committee that it must approach this sort of business in broad statesmanlike fashion; that it should not war with ideas, with literature, or with anything at all, because it is not a clique but a public figure; that it should not irritate people; that it has an enormous responsibility toward Russia, the emperor and posterity, and that because of this responsibility, it must not get involved in petty literary squabbles, but should look beyond all that and view literature as a social force which can do a great deal of good for society. Yes, I shall assume this new responsibility, if I am given the right to vote. Tyutchev, Goncharov, and Lyuboshchinsky warmly endorse my decision.

I think even the committee understood the purity of my intentions. Not a word was mentioned there about any kind of benefits or rewards. As far as salary is concerned, I shall be satisfied with the first figure to be named. As far as my other activities are concerned, it goes without saying that I shall have to curtail them.’

Panic & muddleheadness

‘Think how the whole world wd be changed for me if I could get on with this novel, even though at no higher level than the present. I see that it was infinitely better to write The Beating, mediocre as that was, than to write nothing. But what’s holding me up anyway? Panic & muddleheadness. I must face up to the thing again with confident determination, with willingness instead of revulsion.’ This is from the private (and unpublished) diaries of Edward Falaise Upward, a British teacher and writer who died 10 years ago today, aged 105. He was part of the Auden generation in the 30s, producing poetry and surrealist stories, but then he lost his way, barely producing any work for decades. It was only after retiring that he produced his main work, The Spiral Ascent, an autobiographical trilogy. Soon after his death, his sister donated a lifetime’s worth of his diaries to the British Library. They document, in excruciating detail, the depths his literary and political angst.

Upward was born in 1903, in Romford, a large town now part of Greater London. His father was a doctor, and his mother a nurse. Aged 14 or so, he was sent to Repton School, where he published his writing in the school magazine and became a close friend of Christopher Isherwood. He moved on to Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, reading history and then English. Isherwood, too, went to Cambridge, and together they created the fictional and surreal town of Mortmere, a vehicle for parodying the upper-classes. Upward’s poem Buddha won him the prestigious annual Cambridge poetry prize, the Chancellor’s Gold Medal.

On leaving Cambridge, Upward took up teaching, with posts at various schools, only settling in 1932 when employed as an English master at Alleyn’s School, Dulwich, where he remained until his retirement. In 1932, he joined the Communist Party, and took part in a delegation visiting the Soviet Union. He also visited Isherwood and Stephen Spender in Berlin. In 1936, he married Hilda Percival, a fellow teacher and Communist. They had two children. Although they remained committed to socialism, they left the Communist Party in 1948, frustrated that it was trying to appease the Labour government, and was no longer revolutionary.

Upward published his first novel, Journey to the Border (Hogarth Press) in 1938. Full of poetic prose, it describes the rebellion of a private tutor against his employer and a nightmarish state, concluding with the idea that he must join the workers’ movement. Subsequently, he found it very difficult to write anything else. In 1952-1953, he took a sabbatical from teaching in order to focus on his writing, but fell into a cycle of depression. Having concluded grotesque and fantastical fiction was inappropriate in a post-Holocaust world, he destroyed most of his Montmere stories.

By the mid-1950s, Upward was writing again, and soon after his retirement (to the Isle of Wight) in 1961, he published In the Thirties, the first part of a autobiographical trilogy, The Spiral Ascent, that would take him until 1977 to complete (with The Rotten Elements and No Home but the Struggle). It tells of a poet’s efforts to be creative and politically committed, and ends, in the third volume, with the poet finding new meaning by joining the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND) and being able to write again. In old age, he returned to writing short stories which were published, along with reprints of his novels, by Enitharmon Press. In 2005, he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and awarded its Benson Medal. He died on 13 February 2009, aged 105, having been Britain’s oldest living author. Further information on Upward, as well as free-to-download pdfs of his books and poems can be found at the Edward Upward website. See also Wikipedia, The Guardian obituary, and The New York Times obituary.

Upward was a keen diarist, and he left behind a large number of journals (76 notebooks), many if not most full of his small cramped hand-writing. These were donated by his daughter to the British Library soon after his death in 2009. The British Library provides this description of its holdings: ‘A continuous run of journals, preoccupied in the main with Upward’s progress (and frustrations) as a writer. The journals record the planning and development of Upward’s novels in terms of plot and characterisation, and also record the psychological journey of their writing. The journals are not diaries as such, and therefore sometimes omit to record aspects of Upward’s life that diaries would usually include, but they record vividly the course of Upward’s inner life and particularly his determination to complete The Spiral Ascent.’

None of the journals have been published, even in part, although at least one biography quotes from them briefly: Edward Upward and Left-Wing Literary Culture in Britain edited by Benjamin Kohlmann (see Googlebooks). However, the 76 notebooks are available for public inspection at the British Library, and I have transcribed the following extracts from three of them. In particular, the extracts from 1952 show the extent of his encroaching depression, although, in fact, his feelings then seem to echo those he had been having for many years (as shown by the extracts below).

1 September 1936
‘In eight days I shall be thirty three. And I have not yet written a book.

A vile dog is basking in the next door garden.

I must get on with my work.

The pt is that the sp people are quite expensively dressed but their dress does suggest expense. Neither deliberately unassertive nor assertive.’

2 September 1936
‘Moments like last night that the B.L. is good make all my worries worth while. These can be rather compensative, no other satisfaction compares with such moments.

My life and my writing - what is the connection between them?

I ought to give my whole life to writing, but capitalism prevents me. Writing is the highest form of my fight, of my defiance.

Only writing whose content is anti-capitalist can be good.’

1 February 1944
‘Firewatching in the porter’s office office to-night. The rat-holed dado. String and keys and the bucket filled with damp coal dust. The coal-hole in the gothic turret. But my eye is stale. The complex telephone apparatus.

Prattle less in this book, if only to save paper. Think more.

Wd last night in the lab hut told of how he had been negotiating to buy the land on which it stands. The Co-op would not lend him the money but the Midland bank did. He is tenacious, pessimistic only in words. He got the hut against the opposition of most of his party. Now they hold the Fylde Divisional meetings there.

The substance of the sequel has I think passed the test. The problem now is the beginning.

Postage stamp the theme of the book. Imagination is needed to help action. But imagination is suspect because in the past it led away from action. But the present imagination is justified because it shows the faults of past imagination and shows the prime necessity for action.

Now don’t repeat that everywhere in this journal. It’s correct and the book must stand or fall by it.

If at the beginning he knows that imagination is needed then there’s no justification for the book.

“If only I cd use my imagination as I did in the past - but do so legitimately.”

He knows he wants to use his imagination; but he doesn’t know that he wd be justified in using it (i.e. that action needs it)?

Is that the initial position?’

15 June 1944
‘If only I cd write - then I’d put up with most things - my job for instance.

I want to write. But why? Simply because it is the only way I can justify my existence. Only when I am writing am I fully alive. Everything cd be borne if I had writing in hand which I felt was really worthwhile. And what is that constitutes worthwhileness in writing? I know it when I see it. Solidity, depth, feeling. Above all reality. But not my reality.

Something in the form of an essay, dealing not only with ideas but with places & persons. De Quincy.’

24 December 1952
‘Think how the whole world wd be changed for me if I could get on with this novel, even though at no higher level than the present. I see that it was infinitely better to write The Beating, mediocre as that was, than to write nothing. But what’s holding me up anyway? Panic & muddleheadness. I must face up to the thing again with confident determination, with willingness instead of revulsion.’

27 December 1952 [Last but one entry of ‘Journal of the Sabbatical Year’]
‘The only reason I am not in ill thoughts at present is that I’m not attempting to write the novel.

Is it worth writing something that one knows to be poor stuff? Possibly, for practice and in the tenuous hope that one day one will be able to write satisfactorily.

I’ve got to see this novel as in some way attractive, or I shall never write it? But I shall never see it as something attractive. Therefore I can only write it from a sense of duty.

There’s not one scene throughout the whole book that attracts me. Why? Because I have lost faith in the world of imagination.

I fool myself if I think that “the whole world wd be changed for me” if I could get on with the novel. Probably it wd make me feel even worse than quiescence.

What should I do? The best thing to do wd be to go on struggling, if only sanity will stand up to that. It’s the uncontrollable misery of the struggle that I fear.

Try common sense. Here I am with eight free months before me. I have started the novel for which I obtained a year’s leave of absence from teaching. The novel is, so far, poor stuff, and doesn’t look like getting any better, in fact it might well get worse. Shall I abandon it? Against such a line of action (inaction) there are several objections. 1) It’s a surrender and admission of failure. 2) What shd I do with my time? But on the other hand there are objections to continuing with the bk, the main one being that it makes me so miserable that I begin to fear for my sanity. A possible solution wd be to regard the novel as of no importance but to continue it as a daily task. But that wd be more miserable than anything.’

Mother of the Revolution

Deolinda Rodríguez de Almeida, Mother of the (Angolan) Revolution, was born 80 years ago today. She was a gifted individual, a poet and translator, but circumstances led her to become a militant nationalist. She was a defender of human rights, but also an activist enabling women to play a role in the Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA). Aged only 29, she was captured, with others, by an opposing liberation movement, and tortured and murdered. She left behind a diary written during most of her adult years, although it was not edited and published until 2003.

Rodríguez was born in Catete on 10 February 1939 into a Methodist family. Her parents were teachers, and she was educated at Methodist missionary schools. In 1956, she joined the MPLA as a translator. She won a scholarship to study sociology at Methodist University of São Paulo; and from there, in 1959, she exchanged correspondence with Martin Luther King. Fearing political problems in Brazil (because of her support for growing Angolan independence movement), she moved to the United States, where she studied at Drew University. However, in 1961, before concluding her studies she returned to Angola. She took part in an MPLA attack on São Miguel fortress prison and police headquarters in Luanda at the start of, what would be known as, the Portuguese Colonial War.

Rodríguez traveled to Guinea-Bissau and Congo Kinshasa, where she helped found the women’s division of the MPLA (Organização da Mulher de Angola - OMA). She underwent guerrilla training in Kabinda. Back in Angola in 1962, she emerged as a revolutionary leader and activist, but also campaigning for human rights. Later, she was given the honorary title of ‘Mother of the Revolution’. She was also associated with the Corpo Voluntário Angolano de Assistência aos Refugiados.

The following year Rodríguez and the rest of the MPLA leadership were expelled from Angola. They fled to Brazzaville, Republic of the Congo, and then to Cabinda, an Angolan province within Congo. There, fighting intensified, and in 1967, she and four other members of OMA were captured by Holden Roberto’s National Liberation Front of Angola. They were tortured, dismembered and killed in a Zaire prison. The date of Rodríguez’s death, 2 March, came to be celebrated as Angola’s Women’s Day. A little further information is available at Wikivisually, Bookshy books, and in Immortal Heroes Of The World by M S Gill (at Googlebooks).

Deolinda left behind a diary - a rarity in African cultures -  that she had kept from 1956 to 1967. This was edited by her brother, Roberto de Almeida, and published first in 2003 (with an updated second edition in 2018). The book is titled Diário de um exílio sem regresso (Diary of an Exile without Return), and includes a letter sent by Martin Luther King to Deolinda. A short article about the book can be found in the Portuguese language Journal de Angola, and there is a film, based on the diaries, available at YouTube (from which I’ve taken two screenshots). In 2017, Roberto de Almeida handed over his sister’s diaries and letters to MAAN, the Memorial Dr. António Agostinho Neto in Luanda. Unfortunately, I have not been able to find any extracts of the diary, in English or Portuguese.

John Ruskin’s birthdays

Today is the double centenary of the birth of John Ruskin, one of the greatest art and social commentators of the Victorian period in Britain. He was a man of many talents, also producing paintings and poems, and a diary which he kept for most of his life. Although many of the entries are fairly brief and even mundane (about the weather), there are plenty with interesting observations about society, architecture, nature and art.

Ruskin was born in London on 8 February 1819, the son of a wine merchant. His family moved to Herne Hill when he was but four, and to Dulwich when he was 20. In 1836, he began studying at Christ Church, Oxford University, and, while still in his early 20s, travelled with his parents to Italy and Switzerland. Thanks to funding by his father, Ruskin was able to indulge a passion for collecting art, in particular the paintings of Turner.

Aged only 24, Ruskin published Modern Painters, an important and controversial work arguing that modern landscape painters - and in particular Turner - were superior to the so-called Old Masters of the post-Renaissance period. Further volumes followed. In 1848, he married Euphemia Chalmers Gray, the daughter of friends of his parents, but the marriage did not last long. In the early 1850s, Ruskin became involved with the Pre-Raphaelites, one of whom, John Everett Millais, married Euphemia (after her marriage with Ruskin was annulled).

Ruskin went on to write many important and influential books, such as The Seven Lamps of Architecture. He became a great advocate for the Gothic style, and an opponent of the debasing effects of the industrial revolution. In the 1860s, he had a calamitous affair with a very young Irish girl, Rose La Touche, which dragged on until she died in 1875. In 1869, he was elected the first Slade Professor of Art at Oxford University, and achieved some success as a lecturer. He resigned his post after ten years, and, thereafter, was subject to more frequent bouts of the mental illness that had beset him through much of his life.

After the death of his parents, and for the last 30 years of his life, Ruskin’s main residence was at Brantwood, in the Lake District, which is where he died a few days after the start of the 20th century. Further information is available from Wikipedia, The Victorian Web, The Ruskin Society, The Ruskin Museum or Encyclopaedia Britannica.

Ruskin’s diary, covering most of the timespan of his adult life, was published around 60 years ago (1956-1959) in three volumes by Clarendon Press (1835-1847, 1848-1873, 1874-1889). The entries for the book - The Diaries of John Ruskin - were selected and edited by Joan Evans and John Howard Whitehouse. They also included a good number of Ruskin’s small sketches which accompany some of the diary entries, of landscapes, nature or architecture. Some years later, in 1971, Yale University Press published The Brantwood Diary of John Ruskin. This was based on some of Ruskin’s diaries, written while living at Brantwood, which had not been made available to Evans and Whitehouse. The Victorian Web has an informative review of The Brantwood Diary, and quotes from the diary itself. And the second volume of the Clarendon edition of the diaries is freely available online at Internet Archive thanks to Digital Library of India.

Meanwhile, here are some extracts form Ruskin’s diary taken from the Clarendon Press volume 2. The first, when Ruskin was 30, is representative of the more interesting parts of his diary. When he was abroad he sometimes wrote long entries, but at home and later in his life, there were often long gaps in his diary, and the majority of entries he did make were short, a sentence or two. I have included a selection of entries written on his birthdays, including the one for his 50th birthday, in 1869, which is rather maudlin.

3 June 1849
‘I walked up this afternoon to Bloney, very happy, and yet full of some sad thought; how perhaps I should not be again among these lovely scenes; as I was now and ever had been, a youth with his parents - it seemed that the sunset of to-day sunk upon me like the departure of youth.

First I had a hot march among the vines, and between their dead stone walls. Once or twice I flagged a little, and began to think it tiresome; then I put my mind into the scene, instead of suffering the body only to make report of it; and looked at it with the possession-taking grasp of the imagination - the true one; it gilded all the dead walls, and I felt a charm in every vine tendril that hung over them. It required an effort to maintain the feeling; it was poetry while it lasted, and I felt that it was only while under it that one could draw, or invent, or give glory to, any part of such a landscape. I repeated, ‘I am in Switzerland’ over and over again, till the name brought back the true group of associations, and I felt I had a soul, like my boy’s soul, once again. I have not insisted enough on this source of all great contemplative art. The whole scene without it was but sticks and stones and steep dusty road.’

2 June 1853
‘Sunday. Walking home from Dr. Cumming’s through Holborn and Oxford Street, note shops open: nearly all tobacco and cigar shops: tobacco pipe shops: small confectioners selling ginger beer - large confectioners modestly, and in sly corners of shutters; taverns of all kinds and eating houses.’

31 January 1854
‘To Mr. Melville’s. Wrote a little. Numbered Chamouni drawings. Quiet evening writing Giotto. Summary of month: nearly got Giotto done; Mr. Brown’s MS. a little, 13 pages only of Modern Painters, but house quite in order and everything set going, and a great deal done in learning MS. at Brit[ish] museum.’

8 February 1854
‘Began description of valley of Chamouni and finished my rocks at Glen Finlas [in the Ashmolean Museum]. Went up with Sophy to Mr Griffiths and saw a wonderful Turner, of a Diligence deep in snow by moonlight and firelight [probably The Dover Mail]. . .’

13 February 1854
‘Monday. All day at British museum, drawing Hebrew ornament for my book binding - hardly anything done.’

8 February 1857
‘Hear Mr Spurgeon on ‘Cleanse thou me from secret faults’ - very wonderful.’

8 February 1858
‘Brilliant intensely, with hard frost’

8 February 1863
‘Walked lazily in pine wood, and to Regny chateau. Talked with peasant.’

8 February 1869
‘How utterly sad these last birthdays have been, in 67 and 68. I am not much better today, but in better element of work. Wild wind and dark morning. I proceed to botanize.’

8 February 1872
‘Oxford, Corpus Christi College. Came into my rooms last night, after a lovely walk on Seven Bridge Road.’

8 February 1873
‘The sun does not rise by ten minutes, her to that time, we so westing, and the days last already till full six, with long twilights.

Yesterday glorious walk in snow to the tarn in hollow - Goat’s water - and not in the least touched with fatigue by a mile’s row and six mile’s walk up sixteen hundred feet; and write this and my Greek notes at 7 in the morning, sans spectacles. . . I must try to make my daily life more perfect as I grow old.’

16 April 1873
‘Wednesday. Y[esterday] a hot, thunderous day. I very languid and ill, hearing from Joanna of her mother’s death. My work all hanging fire sadly.

Primroses and periwinkles a great comfort.

Dreamed last night that I saw my Fluelen Turner blown down a steep bank into the sea; that I woke from my dream and said what a relief it was to find it was only a dream; that nevertheless I might as well go down to look at the sea; and there, sure enough, was my Turner floating in it, in its frame. When I took it out, the salt was crystallized all over the picture, moist, and I could not think how to wash it off, or carry the picture - for we were travelling. I was announcing my misfortune to my father, when I woke in reality.

Plagued also with letters from madmen and fools, whom I am mad and foolish enough to try to mend.’ 

This article is a revised version of one first published 10 years ago on 8 January 2009.

Montagu and the Indian tiger

‘When they came after the tiger, throwing at it hand grenades, firing blank cartridges, and so forth, in order to move it and prevent it charging back, flying foxes were disturbed from the trees, peacocks moved backwards and forwards, parrots flew about; four sambhur passed before my first shot at the tiger, but I am afraid I did not see them. It is a very artificial form of sport, but it gave me sufficient thrill to last me a lifetime.’ This is Edwin Montagu, an early 20th century British Liberal politician born 140 years ago today, best remembered for his stint as Secretary of State for India, or perhaps for his marriage to Venetia. Though the marriage was one of social convenience (she had had an illegitimate child beforehand, and continued to have affairs after), they remained together throughout Montagu’s short life; and it was Venetia that edited Montagu’s India diaries for publication.

Montagu was born in London to Samuel Montagu, 1st Baron Swaythling, a rich banker and his Jewish wife Ellen, on 6 February 1879. He was educated at Clifton College boarding school and the City of London School before studying biology at University College London and Trinity College, Cambridge. In 1902, he was elected president of the Cambridge Union. The following year he joined a firm of solicitors, but was soon more interested in politics than the law. He became friends with Raymond Asquith, son of H. H. Asquith, and was recruited as a speaker for the Liberal Party. Then, in the 1906 general election, he was elected Member of Parliament for Chesterton. Asquith, who was made Chancellor of the Exchequer, appointed Montagu as his parliamentary private secretary.

In 1910, Asquith, by now Prime Minister, promoted Montagu to the post of Under-Secretary of State for India, to Financial Secretary to the Treasury, and then to Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster (with a seat in the Cabinet). In 1915, he was sworn of the Privy Council, and a year later was appointed Minister of Munitions. Although initially left out of David Lloyd George’s coalition government at the end of 1916, he was appointed Secretary of State for India in mid-1917, a position he had sought, and which he then held until 1922. Wikipedia says, he was primarily responsible for the Montagu-Chelmsford Reforms which led to the Government of India Act 1919, committing the British to the eventual evolution of India towards dominion status.

In 1915, Montagu married Venetia Stanley, a friend of Asquith’s daughter, after she had converted to Judaism. For several years prior to the marriage, she had been courted by Asquith as well as Montagu. The union was not a conventional one (Venetia had several affairs); it did however produce one daughter, though historians believe Montagu was not the father. A 2012 book, Bobbie Neate’s Conspiracy of Secrets, suggests that the marriage was one of social convenience, to cover Montagu’s homosexuality, and Venetia’s earlier affair with Asquith (which had produced an illegitimate child - Louis Stanley, who was Neate’s stepfather). Montagu is also remembered for his strident anti-zionist stance, and his opposition to the Balfour Declaration of 1917 (for more on this see How I saved the Balfour papers!). Montagu lost his seat in the 1922 general election which delivered a landslide for the Conservatives. He died soon after, in 1924, aged only 45, from an unknown cause. Further information is available at Wikipedia, Liberal History, Spartacus, or the Zionism website.

From his first day on the sub-continent as Secretary of State for India - having arrived in Bombay in late 1917 - Montagu kept a detailed diary. His main purpose was to keep the Prime Minister, Lloyd George, informed of his progress: batches of his diary were regularly sent back to London by mail. After his death, Montagu’s wife, Venetia, edited the diary which was published by William Heinemann in 1930 as An Indian Diary (freely available at Internet Archive). In a short preface, Venetia explains: ‘Now that India is looming so largely in the public eye, I have thought it a fitting time to give this document to the world, hoping that it may help to make a little clearer the great part which the writer played in India’s destinies.’ ‘When he resigned in 1922,’ she adds, ‘he seemed, in saying good-bye to his work for India, to lose the greater part of his interest in life; he was never the same man again.’

The diary was dictated to a secretary ‘at all times and places, sometimes on the back of an elephant, miles out in the jungle’. These week-end shooting trips, Venetia says, ‘were the only way by which he could save himself from a severe breakdown, which indeed continually threatened him’. She continues: ‘Whether he was the guest of honour at a vast tiger-shoot, with 1,500 beaters in a Native State, or standing up to his waist in water for the chance of bagging a few couple of snipe, he was able for the moment to forget his troubles, which had usually redoubled themselves by the time the train steamed into Delhi on each successive Black Monday morning.’ She concludes: ‘I hope that the publication of this diary may [. . .] throw some light on an extraordinarily complex personality whom the great world never understood, but his intimate friends and colleagues knew to be passionately sincere and generous to a fault.’

Naomi B. Levine, in her biography Politics, Religion, and Love: The Story of H. H. Asquith, Venetia Stanley, and Edwin Montagu, rates Montagu’s diary highly. ‘[It] was more than a travelogue and a description of sunsets, flame trees, panther shoots and wild birds. Its chief importance lies in its political observations and warnings. The language of the diary was often sharp and brutally frank and included Montagu’s evaluation of the Indian Civil Service, the military, the police, the Viceroy and the Council, Muslims and Hindus, the abject poverty that existed side by side with the extraordinary luxury of the British raj and the Indian ruling classes and the attitude of the Muslims to Turkey. Most importantly, the diary was a condemnation of British snobbery and racism and the hostility it was creating among educated Indians, which Montagu correctly foresaw as encouraging extremism and ultimately destroying British rule.’

Here are several extracts.

18 November 1917.
‘Lord Chelmsford, Maffey and I left last night at a quarter to eleven for Gagrania. We slept in the train, had an early breakfast, and an excellent but very hard day’s snipe shooting. Net result, thirty-five brace. I think we all shot very well, considering it was very hot and we were up to our knees in water, having to pull our legs each time out of the mud, so that by half-past three we were all exhausted, Chelmsford and I physically, and Maffey being unable to shoot straight. It was a jolly, long gheel completely overgrown - the old bed of the Jumna. All the arrangements, including the carriage to drive five miles, and the bullock wagons, three, to drive one, had been made by a little local Nawab. Bitterns, demoiselle cranes, marsh harriers, fish eagles, big white-breasted blue kingfisher, a jackal, seven sisters, sparrow hawks, shrikes, innumerable doves were the chief birds we saw, and one cattle egret and a large heron. Two of the snipe were painted, and there was a large proportion of jacks in the morning.

The day was by no means wasted. I got far closer to Chelmsford than I have ever got before. I like him better than ever, but I cannot find any vigour or personality in him: great conscientiousness, eager desire for smooth running, complete armoury of consultation. He assured me that he was one of the majority of his Committee. He tells me that the Council were unanimous about Mrs. Besant. I am to see Tilak in a deputation, but not in an interview. He feels that the cross-examination which I submit people to is doing a lot of good. He seems hardening against the splitting of the Viceroyalty. I ventured to come closer to expressing the inadequacy of the Government of India scheme, but I would not express an opinion until I had seen my colleagues.

I forgot to record on Saturday night that we had just had the most depressing information that General Maude was critically ill with cholera. Just before leaving late on Saturday night we heard the news that he had taken a slight turn for the better. I gather that any improvement in cholera is usually hopeful.

We have just heard that General Maude died last night. It is a horrible tragedy at the most critical moment in the Mesopotamian trouble. After consultation with Lord Chelmsford, I felt that I should send a telegram to London suggesting that Sir Charles Munro should go at once to Mesopotamia, and that Kirkpatrick, whom Chelmsford assures me could carry on here, should act as Commander-in-Chicf, subject to the possibilities that the Acts of Parliament permit this arrangement. However, I saw Munro on Monday morning, and although he admits the advantage that he probably knew more intimately Maude’s plans than any other living man, he feels himself, with much regret, too old for Mesopotamia, and as he is very lame and looks very old, I think this is probably true. I hear to-night (Monday) that the War Office have appointed Marshall.’

3 December 1917
‘I suppose I must keep up this wretched practice, so boring to me, and so difficult to discharge efficiently, of recording my proceedings. I do not think I give a thought, waking, and, I fear, sometimes sleeping, to anything but Indian reforms, except for the hour a day which I try to keep for exercise. I read my papers before breakfast, and begin the serried series of deputations and memoranda, copies of which for yesterday and to-day are appended to these notes.

To-day began with four formal deputations. Here it is not necessary to go to a tent. We have a large room with two thrones on the first floor, the drawing-room at nighttime, and certainly under Gourlay’s management these formal deputations go very quickly.

One of these deputations was from the Anglo-Indian Association, which really repeated very much the same tale as we had heard from the All-India Association, this being the Bengal branch.

The other three were interesting. One was from the Bengal Chamber of Commerce, and contained the leaders of the great movement which so forcibly protested against my visit, headed by Sir Hugh Bray, all English; and another was the Calcutta Trades Association of retail traders, equally English and even more prejudiced. Sandwiched between them came the British Indian Association, a more or less conservative body, headed by the Maharajadhiraja Bahadur of Burdwan, the best type of conservative Indian.’

5 December 1917
‘To-day we have had the usual weary round - deputations from various Moslem bodies this morning, the Moslem Association, the Moslem League, and so on, and this afternoon we have had two deputations from Assam.

The Moslem Association pretends to be more conservative than the Moslem League, but submitted an appendix to its suggestions, which was really just as extreme. They were very nice people, and explained that we were to take no notice of the appendix, which really did not represent their views.

The Moslem League was very, very vehement, and I had a long and interesting argument - because he was a very intelligent man - with one of their members, Aminur Rahman, who is certainly very sincere, and does not see any of the difficulties of the Congress Moslem League scheme. He certainly helped me to come nearer to responsible government.’

4 January 1918
‘Breakfast at nine, and the start for the scene of slaughter at quarter to eleven. Twenty miles drive through typical Gwalior country, along dusty roads, with sparse bushes in the sandy and rocky desert. No wonder that it is a good country for tigers, because a tiger, wandering round this detestable and appalling country, finds a beautiful ravine, with water in it, luxuriant, with trees and thick jungle, and remains there; so you know where to look for him. We got to our meeting place, where there were horses and three elephants with howdahs to ride, a dandy in which anybody could be carried who wished it, a whole group of coolies, and a regiment of 400 soldiers to beat. I got on to an elephant and was hurtled over the rocks for about one and a half miles - a very uncomfortable elephant to sit on. Then we got down and walked on tiptoe into the ravine. Right across this ravine stretches a high wall, or rather two high walls, with a passage down in the ravine between them. In the very bottom of this ravine on the wall is a three-storied tower, at the top of which, sheltered partly by a stone awning, sit the guns. The middle story is occupied by a luncheon-room, and the lower story by a sort of cellar. Beyond the tower comes an interruption, and then a smaller wall going up the other side. We got into the tower very quietly and stood whilst the beat came up to us from the shorter side of the ravine. It came quietly, making no noise, and there was no tiger. Nothing appeared, save one peacock and some squirrels. Then we turned round and faced the other way. This time a longer drive took place, accompanied by what the Indians call - a name which we have borrowed - a hullabaloo. Tomtoms beat; there were great shouts and dreadful noises, so that the tiger should start a long way off and come quietly. Nothing had apparently been expected from the first drive; from the second drive great things were hoped for, because a buffalo had been killed on the top and dragged by the tiger down to the valley. It was not long after the beat started before, right in the middle of the ravine, and by some water, I saw the tiger coming out, walking very slowly, about 60 yards away from me - walking towards me, showing his left side at an angle of 45 degrees. I aimed as carefully as my excitement would let me, and had the satisfaction of seeing the tiger sit down on his hind legs, put his head right up, and then roll right over. Before I could get in another shot, however, he was off, crawling lop-sidedly, and leaving behind much blood. The beat was then stopped; the elephants were obtained, but nobody was allowed to go on them because they were notoriously unsteady, and there were reported to be bees in the jungle. They soon sighted the tiger going back towards the beaters. These were then removed, and Gwalior went round to join the beaters. What happened afterwards took almost till dark, but I gather that the tiger was seen crossing a ride towards us, turned by a shot by one of Gwalior’s staff, which missed it. He is not popular for this. He then charged an elephant which was sent for in the middle of the beat. The elephant bolted, and has not been seen since, but a man on the elephant, who was much hurt in the flight, succeeded in getting two shots at it, one of which hit it. It then, now severely wounded, charged a man, and I fear hurt him, but not badly, and was finally despatched lying in some water. It is a fine male tiger, 9 ft. 5 in. long, with a short tail. I do not know how one ought to have dealt with the matter; certainly things were much bungled after the tiger was wounded, I think because of the extraordinary, almost impenetrable, nature of the jungle and the fact that we had no tracker. However, I looked at its body. No shot could have been better than mine; it hit the tiger in exactly the right place. I cannot think why it did not kill it. I am not at all sure that I am happy about Laverton’s split bullets. However, the day was successful. I cannot help thinking about the man, about whom I am sure everything is all right.

We came home thoroughly tired with excitement; could hardly keep awake for dinner, and went to bed immediately afterwards, where I slept from ten to six without moving, a great deal for me.
When they came after the tiger, throwing at it hand grenades, firing blank cartridges, and so forth, in order to move it and prevent it charging back, flying foxes were disturbed from the trees, peacocks moved backwards and forwards, parrots flew about; four sambhur passed before my first shot at the tiger, but I am afraid I did not see them. It is a very artificial form of sport, but it gave me sufficient thrill to last me a lifetime.’