Like being an upended turtle

 ‘Guards go out with heavy sniper rifles. Sleep is cold - pile wet sleeping bags on top but sleeping in a flak jacket is like being an upended turtle with a detached shell - have to sleep on back and keep sliding down.’ This is from the diaries of Maria Colvin, a fearless foreign correspondent reporting from Kosovo for The Sunday Times. Two years later, she would lose the sight of one eye reporting from Sri Lanka, and a decade or so later - 10 years ago today - she would be murdered by the Syrian government. From an early age she kept regular diaries, and these were used for and quoted from by Lindsay Hilsum, a friend and once a fellow foreign correspondent, in her 2108 biography, In Extremis.

Colvin was born in Queens, New York, in 1956, but grew up on Long Island. Both her parents worked in the public school system, though her father had been a WW2 veteran. She went to Oyster Bay High School and spent a year abroad on an exchange program in Brazil before entering Yale University where she majored in anthropology. She worked briefly for a trade union in New York City before starting her journalism career with United Press International. In 1985, she went to work for The Sunday Times, and the following year was assigned as the paper’s Middle East correspondent. In 1986, she was the first to interview Muammar Gaddafi after the American bombings of Libya. In 1995, she was promoted to foreign affairs correspondent.

Colvin made international headlines in 1999 after refusing to evacuate a United Nations compound under attack by Indonesian-backed forces in East Timor. She stayed as other journalists left. The stand-off brought attention to the plight of 1,500 women and children, who as a result were eventually evacuated to safety. She won the International Women’s Media Foundation award for Courage in Journalism for her coverage of the conflicts in Kosovo and Chechnya. Apart from her newspaper reporting, she also wrote and produced documentaries, including Arafat: Behind the Myth for the BBC. She was married twice to fellow journalist Patrick Bishop, and briefly to a Bolivian journalist, Juan Carlos Gumucio. She also had a long term relationship with Richard Flaye, the two of them sharing a passion for sailing.

In 2001, while reporting the Sri Lankan civil war, Colvin lost the sight in her left eye; thereafter, she always wore a black eye patch. She remained committed to reporting on the realities of war, but most especially the effects on civilians. She was killed in Homs on 22 February 2012, along with a French photographer, when a makeshift media centre was bombed by Syrian rocket fire. Her death sparked a massive outpouring of tributes by heads of state, colleagues, admirers and victims of war around the world. The Guardian said she ‘was a fearless but never foolhardy war correspondent who believed passionately in the need to report on conflicts from the frontline’. Seven years later, a US court found Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s government liable for her death. Further information is available from Wikipedia, the BBC, the Maria Colvin Memorial Foundation, the Marie Colvin Center for International Reporting,

In Extremis: The Life of War Correspondent Marie Colvin by Lindsay Hilsum was published by Chatto & Windus in 2018. The publisher promotes the book as ‘the story of our turbulent age and the life of a woman who defied convention’. Some pages can be previewed at both Amazon and Googlebooks. Hilsum includes many quotes from some 300 diaries kept by Colvin since the age of 13 - indeed she refers to the diaries as ‘the backbone’ of her biography. All the diary entries quoted, however, are used for, and in the context of, her narrative, mostly edited, reduced, and thus cannot be read as whole entries for a single date. Here are some of the entries quoted by Hilsum.

2 January 1969
‘Everyone is wearing pants. I’ve got to talk mommy into letting me do it, for honor’s sake. I’m not sure I want to but I must.’

6 January 1969
‘Wore pants. Blue dungaree bell bottoms. Hard playing instrument, pants are so tight.

28 May 1969
‘Today I went HS in shorts. So did everyone else. But mine were v short and v tight. Wore a vest and sandals too. When we got back was mommy mad. We had a mother to daughter talk about why I was doing this. She told me how provocative I looked.’

10 July 1977
‘My father’s death has had such an influence on my life, I still don’t realise the extent. But I watched a man go from a virile, happy man - a man with everything he wanted - and that was pretty much true, everything was the family, the family was the purpose to everything. Why go to work every day, save up your money, buy that house, buy that car, if there is no purpose? It has begun to seem meaningless to my mother since he left. He went from this to that cadaver, cold, calm with such a dignified peace - he was so righteous even in the coffin. “I have lived a good life. I made people happy. And I did what I thought was right!” The last one - it is the essence of my father. I feel so weak-spirited when I think of him. Why should all the pettiness matter to me? But I did learn - LIFE IS TOO SHORT. [. . .]

There’s so much I wanted to show him - prove myself to him. Somehow, he was and is still my standard. I did everything to make him proud. That’s probably going to seem like, “you say it now, now that he is gone.” And it’s not entirely true - but it is necessary to make the statement so bald, because if I made him proud that was the main thing that mattered. Yes, I do have my own goals, and no, there is no chance I’ll not persevere now that he’s dead, but I did so want to make him proud . . . [. . .]

There are so many things I want to put my energy into, I often ask why I’m not happy completely without a man. Is it ingrained? My sense of self is not independent of men - I need their feedback. That old dichotomy, I want my liberty, I want to be free to create, be the free spirit, but at the same time I guess, I’ve admitted that I want security.’

12 October 1978
‘For me, it was my father’s death. It’s as if my prior life had been lived unconscious; as if looking back, it had been lived by someone else . . . The realization that what mattered was being able to write, that I was scared to attempt it because of fear of failure; everything has always come so easy for me. To fail at anything else would not really be to fail; to fail at writing would be real failure. And to succeed the only success I would value.

17 August 1992
‘Horrible disturbing anxiety dreams, can’t remember them. Realization today: first I was bulimic, then I discovered smoking. Everyone, even Iraqis, comments on my chain smoking. 2 1/2 packs a day, start when I wake up, before coffee. No desire to quit.’

23 April 1999
‘Terrifying walk in night down slope from camp, log over a stream. Dine hands me butt of his rifle as I almost slip in. Walk through compound of stone homes. Deserted. Roofs crashed in by mortars. Lights of Djackovica about 1 km away. Can’t tell what’s happening there. Camp in a gully. Camouflage sheets up over branches. Stack of sleeping bags but they are damp with rain all day. Guards go out with heavy sniper rifles. Sleep is cold - pile wet sleeping bags on top but sleeping in a flak jacket is like being an upended turtle with a detached shell - have to sleep on back and keep sliding down. Bursts of automatic fire and shots during night, one sustained about 2am impossible tell where coming from.’

My trip to Seychelles

‘When I awoke at about 7am on Thursday, I never dreamt that next day I would be on board one of H.M. ships bound for an unknown destination. Well, this is going to be the record of my trip to Seychelles and a diary of our stay there.’ This is the first entry in the published diaries of Husayn Fakhri al-Khalidi, a Palestinian leader who was mayor of Jerusalem for some years, and prime minister of Jordan for some days! He died 60 years ago today, but it was only very recently that a set of his diaries - covering a period when he was exiled by the British to the Seychelles - were published in English.

Al-Khalidi was born in Jerusalem, then part of the Ottoman Empire, in 1895. He completed his education at an English college in the city, and began medical studies at the Syrian Protestant College (later the American University of Beirut). With the outbreak of war in 1914, he was drafted into the Turkish army which sent him to the Ottoman Medical School in Istanbul to finish his medical studies. In 1915, he was made First Lieutenant and was posted by the army to Sinai to work in hospitals there and in the Negeb Desert. He witnessed the Battle of Gaza and the battle for Jerusalem. Injured twice, he was hospitalised himself in Damascus. Further assignments in northern Palestine and Aleppo followed. 

In 1920, al-Khalidi returned to British-occupied Palestine where he worked in Jerusalem as a government doctor and later as head of forensic medicine. Several more senior posts followed before, in 1934, he resigned his senior posts (head of the General Medical Board and head of the infectious and epidemics department) to pursue a political career. In early 1935, he succeeded in being elected mayor of Jerusalem, and became one of the founders (and General Secretary) of the Palestinian Arab Reform Party. At the time of the Palestinian Rebellion, it joined other Palestinian parties to form the Arab Higher Committee (AHC). But, in October 1937, he and other high-ranking AHC members were exiled by the British authorities to the Seychelles.

Al-Khalidi was released less than 18 months later, enabling him to take part in the London Conference in February 1939, but he rejected the British Government’s plans. He lived mostly in Lebanon for four years, only being allowed to return to Palestine in 1943. In 1946, he was elected Secretary of the Arab Higher Commission, remaining thereafter in Jerusalem. There he witnessed the endorsement of the Partition Plan by the UN in 1947, leading to the gradual withdrawal of the British Army, the disintegration of Palestine, and the birth of Israel. He declined to join the All-Palestine Government in Gaza in 1949, choosing to take a break to write his memoirs. In 1951, he joined the Jordanian Government as Custodian of Holy Sites in Jerusalem. Subsequently, he was appointed foreign minister, before, in fact, becoming Prime Minister of Jordan in 1957. Popular pressure, however, led to him resigning after 10 days. He later became a senator, and remained so until his death on 6 February 1962. Further information is available from Wikipedia, The Jewish Virtual Library and Encyclopedia.com

Recently, in 2020, I. B. Tauris (part of Bloomsbury) published Exiled from Jerusalem: The Diaries of Hussein Fakhri al-Khalidi as edited by Rafiq Husseini. In his forward to the diaries, Rashid Khalidi, Edward Said Professor of Modern Arab Studies at Columbia University, writes: ’[Al-Khalidi’s] diaries of his Seychelles exile were written at the end of the two decades between the two World Wars, a period when not one single colonized people, with the sole exception of the Irish, achieved full independence from their imperial rulers. His struggle, and that of the Palestinian people, against the British and against the Zionist movement they sponsored was unsuccessful, like that of every other colonized people in this period. These diaries can nevertheless help us to understand why this happened and they give us a unique perspective on this struggle, which continues to this day.’ The published diaries can be freely previewed at Googlebooks and Amazon. Here are several extracts, including the very first one.

30 September 1937
‘When I awoke at about 7am on Thursday, I never dreamt that next day I would be on board one of H.M. ships bound for an unknown destination. Well, this is going to be the record of my trip to Seychelles and a diary of our stay there. I am writing now while sitting on the north western veranda of Villa Curio in Port Victoria - Mahé Island.

I think I better record what happened on Thursday before I left Jerusalem. I had a very busy day before noon at the [Jerusalem] Municipality preparing the agenda for my Council meeting due at 3pm in the afternoon. I went home at about 1pm and returned to the municipality at 3pm sharp. Farraj, Darwish, Dajani and [Hashma] Schwilli did not come, all the others were present. We had a long agenda to deal with. With the exception of a few hot words between me and Auster on the question of the cadre, the meeting terminated successfully at 7.30pm. I thought that before going home I better clear all my trays and issue the necessary instructions to Heads of Departments, arising out of the meeting. In fact, I left nothing outstanding. At 8pm Rasem [Khalidi] came to the municipality and we stayed there till 9pm. He told me all about his trip to Gaza, Beersheba and the North. From the municipality we went to uncle Moustafa’s house where we stayed about an hour and then went home. Rasem stayed with me till 11pm.

 I stayed late tonight chatting with Wahideh about the childrens schools and so on, when I ultimately went to sleep at about 12 midnight.’

10 October 1937
‘Every one on board seems to be preparing for the ceremony which was to take place, we were told, at exactly 10.40am. Out of a total of 120 (including officers) only 19 had passed the equator before and the remaining 101, including the Captain, had to go through that ceremony. At 10am we were asked to come to the front of the ship.

At 10.30 the ceremony began by Neptune (the chief engineer) with his wife (an officer) heading the procession followed by eight (seadogs) in peculiar dress. The seadogs were naked and had rope stuff around their waists and over their elbows and wearing wigs. Their faces, chests, backs smeared with black paint. Followed [by] a few musicians with mouth organs. Neptune with his wife mounted his throne and sat beside us when his assistants (barbers) and the seadogs went around the canvas tub filled with sea water. A spokesman read out the names and a few poems in languages that made everybody laugh.

They began with the captain who was wearing a white suit. He sat on a stool with his back to the tub which was now full of swimming sea dogs. A poem was read and the two barbers, one with a huge shaving brush, applied a soapy material from a bucket containing flour, soap and a blue paint, all over his beard, face, nose, head, brushing briskly. Another put a big pill of soda and citric acid in his mouth to make it effervescent. The other barber with a huge wooden razor began imitating shaving, sharpening the razor with his shoe. You should see and hear the cheers of the sailors and their roars of laughter. As soon as the shaving was complete, the captain, with full clothes, was thrown backwards into the canvas tub full of sea water, to be caught by the seadogs each holding a limb who gave him four dippings under water by hoisting him up and dipping him again, with the pill fizzing in his mouth. He was then thrown out.

This was repeated with Barker, the doctor, and every one of the 101 men.

We are now steaming to the south of the equator and approaching our destination. We were informed we shall be at Mahé at 10am tomorrow morning.’

24 October 1937
‘Fuad left for church with Westergreen this morning and Yacoub went to the Rockies. I remained alone. Breakfast as usual and writing my diary.

How long are we staying on this island? Jumeau tells me that the general impression of the Seychellois public - he also heard it from our advocate - is that we will leave before the end of December 1937. It is good after all to hear the local gossip and I usually have a talk with our guards on local affairs. For example, I had a talk with him on labour. He informs me that a black person and his family employed on a plantation by the whites get from 5-6 rupees a month, i.e. 42 piasters as an average of 1.5 piasters a day. Isn’t that sheer slavery? They speak about cheap labour in Palestine and what government and the Jews have done to raise their wages and standard of living. And the rascals call Seychelles a Crown Colony and yet look at labour wages here; I would like to see Ben Zvia and tell him all about it. And these wages are paid in Victoria - the capital. What about the outlying islands? I am sure they get only half those wages.

I was told that as the first of January is a national feast to the Seychellois, many of the inhabitants economize all the year round as everybody must have plenty to eat on the first three days of every new year. There is a lot of feasting - eating and booze. Dancing, singing and plenty tom-tom beating. If we stay till January, we will watch this rather interesting occasion.

When I told Jumeau that the wage of an unskilled Arab labourer was over two rupees - three sometimes - and the Jewish labourer from 5-6 rupees per day he was astonished. A labourer in Jerusalem gets in one day what an African gets even in a month; and they dare say that slavery is abolished.

Yacoub was imprisoned today at the Rockies on account of the rain and I had lunch alone with Fuad.’

Spiritless generals!

It is 150 years since the death of the soldier William Swabey. Having served in the British army, he spent twenty years farming and politicking in the Canadian colony of Prince Edward Island. However, he is largely remembered today because of the diary he kept during the Peninsular War. Arthur Ponsonby, the early 20th century expert in diaries, rates it as a good example of a soldier’s diary with ‘rather humorous comments’.

Swabey was born in Buckinghamshire, England, in 1789. He married Mary Ann Hobson in 1820 and together they had 11 children. For 18 years he served in the British Army, rising to the rank of captain and fighting in the Peninsular War (between France and the allied powers of Spain, Portugal and UK for control of the Iberian Peninsula) and at Waterloo. Following his retirement from the army in 1840, Swabey and his family emigrated to Prince Edward Island colony in Canada, where he leased land and took up farming.

In November 1841, Swabey was appointed to the Legislative Council as a Tory, but he then switched his allegiances to become a leading spokesman for the Reform Party. In 1851, Swabey joined the Executive Council of George Coles’ Liberal government, and served in various posts until the Liberals were defeated in 1859. He also served for the best part of two decades on the Board of Education. In 1861 Swabey left Prince Edward Island to return to England. He died on 6 February 1872. The most comprehensive biography of Swabey online can be found at the Dictionary of Canadian Biography.

Swabey’s diaries, which only cover the period of the Peninsular War, were edited by F. A. Whinyates and published in 1895 as Diary of Campaigns in the Peninsula for the years 1811, 12 and 13. Despite being out of copyright, there do not appear to be any copies of the book freely available to read online (at Internet Archive for example). A portion of Swabey’s diaries - from July to October 1807 - was also published in Journal of the Royal United Service Institution in 1916. A description of Swabey’s diary and some extracts are available in English Diaries by Arthur Ponsonby (Methuen, 1923) which can be downloaded from Internet Archive. Ponsonby says Swabey’s is ‘a good example of a soldier’s diary, which in addition to technical military details contains descriptions of scenery and places and some rather humorous comments.’

Here are a few (undated) extracts from Swabey’s diary quoted by Ponsonby.

‘I found this day as well as many of late so little worthy of being remembered that I begin to think of curtailing my plan of journal altogether and am the more tempted to do so from the habits that necessity imposes on us.’

‘The first ceremony was that the whole dinner with the two servants and myself went bodily to leeward on the floor. I kept fast hold of a chicken by the leg and we fell to without knives and forks. I think I have not laughed so much since I left Christchurch.’

‘Rather troubled with a headache which was not deserved by idleness.’

‘I am apt to be desponding when too quiet and unemployed.’

‘There is such a complete vacancy and want of employment in our time that I cannot congratulate myself of a night on having done anything either useful or entertaining.’

‘I feel myself so constantly engaged in the daily pursuits of infantry officers in England viz: watching fishes swim under the bridge, throwing stones at pigs, etc. I am ashamed of it but have nothing else to do.

‘The beds had counterpanes of satin with lace borders and fringe ornaments but oh comfort where are you gone?’

‘Confound all dilatory and spiritless generals!’

Ponsonby adds: ‘The military engagements are fully described, and in many places there are additional notes inserted by [Swabey] at a later date. He is much more concerned in giving a full account of the victory at Vittoria than in relating the incident of his being wounded in the knee. Afterwards, however, he chafes a good deal at being incapacitated, and finally he is invalided home. [. . .] Swabey returned afterwards to active service, fought in the battle of Toulouse and also at Waterloo.’

And here is one dated extract from an article on the Napoleon Series website.

7 August 1912
‘I woke this morning with the most violent and insupportable pain in my head I ever felt, which having endured for some hours, at last turned into a fit of the ague, which I was extremely glad to change for the apprehensions that an alarming fever occasions. Mr. Peach of the 9th Dragoons who attended me, made me immediately get into water during the hot fit, and repeat this operation several times. The getting into water in a fever makes one shudder almost as much as if told to get into a furnace. One of the worst of my complaints was the total want of money, so that I could not even get fruit and wine, that were particularly recommended. When the fit left me after 3 hours, I began to feel a wish to be quietly reposing in some cool spot in England, and it brought to my remembrance every tender recollection and regret. Sickness is at any time bad, but under all my circumstances and with the probability of the army’s moving in which case I could not have stirred, it put me in mind of French prisons, Bayonne and all its horrors.’

This article is a slightly revised version of one first published on 6 February 2022.

Tired of the cinema

Derek Jarman, the extraordinarily inventive film-maker, was born 80 years ago today. He was a fervent campaigner for gay rights, but died in his early 50s from an AIDS-related illness. He decamped to a cottage on the shingle flats at Dungeness in the last years of his life, where he found fulfilment in gardening. Here also he kept a diary of autobiographical reflections, often wistful in tone, which illustrate his passion for his garden and the wildlife nearby, and also reveals a jaded relationship with film.

Born near London on 31 January 1942, Jarman spent much his childhood at boarding schools, such as Canford in Dorset, before winning a place at Slade School of Fine Art. However, in deference to the wish of his father, by then a retired RAF officer, he put off his art studies to go to King’s College London, to take a more academic degree, in English, history, and the history of art. Thanks to the influence of Nikolaus Pevsner, according to the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, this left Jarman with an ‘exhaustive and exhausting knowledge of London architecture’. After three years at King’s, he spent four at Slade, where he gravitated towards theatre and film studies.

In the late 1960s, Jarman found himself designing sets for West End operas; but, by 1970, he was working on designs for films, notably Ken Russell’s The Devils. Around this time, though, he acquired a Super-8 camera which allowed him to make his own short films without the restraints of more traditional methods. From the mid-1970s, he found success making full-length, but highly individual films, such as Sebastiane, with its positive take on homosexuality, and Jubilee, sometimes dubbed the first punk film.

In the 1980s, Jarman continued to design for celebrated stage productions, but he also moved into making pop videos for, among others, Marianne Faithfull, Bryan Ferry and the Pet Shop Boys. Through much of the 1980s, Jarman struggled to finance his first conventional 35mm film - Caravaggio. Finally released in 1986, the film brought him his widest audience, partly thanks to the involvement of a television company (Channel 4). That same year, though, he was diagnosed as HIV positive, and, in keeping with his overt homosexuality and his persistent fight for gay rights, he was very open about the condition.

Jarman’s illness led him to move away from London to Prospect Cottage on the shingle flats around Dungeness, in Kent, close by the nuclear power station. Although he continued to work with frequent visits to London, his life at the cottage was dominated by nature more than art, and in particular the development of his garden. One of his last films, Blue, was as alternative or radical as his earliest work - being no more than a single shot of luminous blue with a collaged sound track of original music and Jarman’s thoughts. It was released just months before his death of an AIDS-related illness in 1994. More biographical information about Jarman is available at Senses of Cinema, the British Film Institute, The Independent or The Guardian.

After moving to Prospect Cottage, Jarman began keeping a diary. Extracts from 1989 and 1990 were first published by Century - Modern Nature: The Journals of Derek Jarman - in 1991. A second collection, covering the final years of his life, were edited by Keith Collins and published posthumously in 2000, also by Century, as Smiling in Slow Motion. The Times said the latter was ‘the life-affirming expression of an artist engaged in living to the full’.

The diaries are very readable, full of wistful recollections about his past (his parents and his youthful years in the London arts scene), as well as passion towards the garden he is planting and developing, and the wildlife he finds in the area around his cottage. But here are a couple of extracts in which he shows little enthusiasm for the world that loved him, and also one that is the last entry in Modern Nature.

22 February 1989
‘I’ve grown tired of the cinema, the preserve of ambition and folly in pursuit of illusion, or should I say delusion?

Yesterday I was subjected to a barrage of questions for nearly seven hours without a break, my head spinning like a child’s top. I fled. Back home at the flat at Charing Cross Road another enormous pile of letters blocked the door: Would I write? Judge? Give advice? Approve? Help? The phone rings till I find myself running. What happiness has this cacophony brought? And what have I achieved when Pliny’s miraculous villa can vanish with barely a ripple?’

8 March 1989
‘I have re-discovered my boredom here. The train could carry me to London - the bookshops, tea at Bertaux’, a night in a bar; but I resist.

Film had me by the tail. Once it was naively adventurous - it seemed then there were mountains to climb. So I slogged onwards and upwards, often against a gale, only to arrive exhausted, and find I had climbed a molehill from where I had a view of a few yards, not endless mountain vistas. All around the traps were set. Traps of notoriety and expectation, or collaboration and commerce, of fame and fortune.

But the films unwinding themselves in the dark seemed to bring protection. Then came the media and the intrusion. At first a welcome trickle, something new. Then a raging flood of repetition, endless questions that eroded and submerged my work, and life itself. But now I have re-discovered boredom, where I can fight ‘what next’ with nothing.

You can’t do nothing: accusations of betrayal, no articles or airtime to fill. I had foolishly wished my film to be home, to contain all the intimacies. But in order to do this I had to open to the public. At first a few genuine enthusiasts took up the offer, then coachloads arrived.’

30 March 1989
‘March 30 is my parent’s wedding anniversary, neither of whom were particularly interested in gardening. Though in our family film it might seem otherwise: my mother picking the roses, and dad pushing a large wheelbarrow jauntily along blooming herbaceous borders.

On this day nearly 50 years ago my parents posed for their wedding photo under a daffodil bell hanging in the lych gate of Holy Trinity, Northwood. The photo, with my father in his RAF uniform and my mother holding a bouquet of carnations, her veil caught in the March breeze - captured the imagination of the press. It appeared in national papers - hope at a time of encroaching darkness.

Dungeness has luminous skies: its moods can change like quicksilver. A small cloud here has the effect of a thunderstorm in the city; the days have a drama I could never conjure up on an opera stage.’

17 August 1990
‘Sunlit cool autumnal day. Writing this diary on my way to St Mary’s in a taxi that cruises down Oxford Street alongside a lovely lad on a bike. Today London is a joy.’

This article is a slightly revised version of one first published on 31 January 2012.

Obsessed by new poems

‘Working like mad. Obsessed by new poems, writing and rewriting difficult, aware of one’s limitations. To surmount one’s limitations. That’s the great secret.’ This is from the published diaries of Marya Zaturenska, a Russian-born American poet who died 40 years ago today. She won the Pullitzer Prize for poetry when still in her mid-30s, and published, with her husband, a history of American poetry.

Zaturenska was born in Kiev in 1902, though she never knew the exact date. Her parents were Jewish and her father a tailor. The family emigrated to New York when she was eight. Her mother died soon after, and her father remarried. She worked in a clothing factory during the day, but was able to attend school in the evenings.

Zaturenska was an outstanding student with a leaning towards literature. She was encouraged to write poetry by Jeanne Foster who also helped her obtain a scholarship to Valparaiso University in Indiana. Her writing flourished and won her a fellowship to the University of Wisconsin. Before she was even 20, she had published numerous poems in different periodicals and was being recognised as a prodigy. In 1925, she met fellow poet Horace Gregory, a recent Wisconsin graduate; they married within weeks. Two children followed in 1927 and 1932. 

Zaturenska published her first volume of poems - Threshold and Heart - in 1934, and the following year the couple moved to Bronxville, New York, so Horace could be closer to his teaching post. In 1938, her next volume - Cold Morning Sky - won the Pulitzer Prize for poetry. That year also saw the couple move again, to New York City in 1938. From 1940 to 1942, they worked together on a collection of essays that would become their History of American Poetry, 1900-1940. She wrote eight volumes of poetry and edited six anthologies, and was published in The New York Times and Poetry Magazine.

My Poetic Side has this assessment: ‘Zaturenska achieved great popularity as a poet despite being regarded, in some quarters, as an “old fashioned writer”. This was mainly due to her stubborn refusal to change her style which borrowed much from the English Decadent movement of poetry which was prevalent during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. She was, most certainly, a technically skilled writer and her work was often optimistic and full of hope, but sometimes dark and illustrative of a society in decay. At this time America was going through a long period of depression both socially and economically and she belonged to the school of thought that “life must go on” despite the trials and tribulations.’ She died on 19 January 1982. Further information is available online from Wikipedia, Milwaukee Public Library, and Encyclopedia.com

Zaturenska kept diaries throughout most of her adult life. A selection of entries from them was first published by Syracuse University Press in 2002 as The Diaries of Marya Zaturenska 1938-1944 (edited by Mary Beth Hinton). The book includes an introduction by her son Patrick Gregory. He says: ‘The selections published here were drawn from three diary notebooks dated respectively August 1938 to December 1940, December 1940 to May 1942, and May 1942 to October 1944. These volumes were chosen because of what the editors considered their combined interest as biography and history. They were written during a critical period of their author’s personal and literary life, a period when, in spite of illness, acute depression, and near despair, she was beginning the work that was to constitute her most enduring legacy as a poet. They also reflect with a remarkable sense of immediacy the tumultuous historical events of the time. In these pages the connection between poetry and politics is made real, and the focus of literary history shifts, as it were, from the poet’s living room to the battlefield, and back. “The war is too large, too dreadful, too heart-breaking,” she wrote. “I am not fit to touch a theme of such scope and tragedy - only a little of the sadness and terror bit by bit, almost unconsciously, can appear in my poems.” Above all, these notebooks record one woman’s perilous journey, nel mezzo del cammin de nostra vita, through that dark wood where the straight way was all but lost.’

The book can be previewed at Googlebooks and borrowed digitally from Internet Archive. A short review can be read at Publishers Weekly. Here are several extracts including a longish one concerning a visit to the famous American poet, Robert Frost.

22 August 1938, Boulder, Colorado
‘The immensity and inhuman beauty of the mountains and the scraggly Velasquez-like landscape. Austere - half desert, half treeless plain, closed in by mountains.

Illness - the same pain, a continual pressure behind the eyes. Not a day spent without pain. The doctors say nonchalantly that it is not serious - that everything will clear up - but months pass, all is the same, and the world grows terrifying seen with eyes that are strange to me.’

25 September 1938, Bronxville
‘Working like mad. Obsessed by new poems, writing and rewriting difficult, aware of one’s limitations. To surmount one’s limitations. That’s the great secret.

Norman Pearson aristocratic, sensitive. His half-tendency toward fascism, his exquisite courtesy to all who worked for him, his generosity to the poor, his kindness and feeling of responsibility to servants. B. the Communist brutal to his servants, robbing the sick who were dependent on him as a doctor, saying that since we live under a corrupt system one must be corrupt too. His intense racial consciousness - awkwardness, fear, servility and contempt towards gentiles. When he talks of Mary he means Moses. Would really be happier as a Zionist. Wants a world where the Jews can live in a golden unmolested ghetto. N. P.’s attitude of tolerance and sympathy towards the Jewish problem. But he dislikes Jews and wouldn’t have one too close to him. Yet he would die defending them from persecution - on principle. Neither type is representative of the best or worst of their kind, of course.’

27 November 1938
‘Bought such a pretty winter coat with a heavy beaver collar. My old fur coat that I had bought with some of the Shelley Award money (1934) is almost all worn out and Horace insisted that I get a new one. Couldn’t afford a fur coat so I got this one instead. It’s not expensive but I have a fearful sense of guilt and extravagance and dreamed about it last night. Still it’s a good feeling - being able to have nice things exactly when one needs them. It should have happened when I was younger. It would have made another person of me.

The stripped black trees on Riverside Drive leaning into the water, more beautiful than when clothed with leaves. The pure anatomy.’ 

1 December 1938
‘Unable to write, revision so exhausting that I become ill. Read one of those foolish reviews where the reviewer divides all poetry into Personal Poetry, Nature Poetry and Poetry of Social Vision! Angry at the bad journalists-poets who inflict their stupidities on every sensitive, honest poet who can’t follow a formula and has no important political job like Louise Bogan to protect them. Personal Poetry and Nature Poetry is romantic, says the theory. Poetry of S. V. is not (so they say) - but I’ve seen more romantic nonsense, more flagrant unrealities in poetry of S. V. than in the whole romantic movement. For instance the foolish optimism of the Daily Worker, pretending that the Revolution is almost here - when reaction is triumphing almost everywhere. It is silly, dangerous and romantic and based on unrealities.’

4 April 1939
’Returned yesterday from a trip to Boston. I left on April 1, on a beautiful spring morning, very much excited because it was the first trip I had taken by myself for years. I went at the invitation of M. B., a young woman on the Atlantic Monthly who had praised my last book warmly and who seemed anxious to have me visit her. Arrived in Boston and it rained and rained. Felt that I talked too much and too excitedly and that Miss B. was not particularly finding me to her liking. I was modest and humble about my work when I should have been impressive and arrogant. But honestly I can’t put up great claims for my work - yet. Yes it’s good - but it will be better if I can keep on writing and printing. As a great treat (and it was) M. B. took me to visit Robert Frost. We had dinner with him and then we went to his apartment near Louisburg Square where he lives alone. Frost still shows the remains of great physical charm, but he is potbellied now, pale, looks ill and old.

He was charming, warm, and friendly, and in response to his tactful questioning I opened up and talked a great deal. Miss B. sat overcome with awe and reverence, looking horrified when I disagreed with him from time to time. We talked “shop,” which seemed to be annoying M. B., but Frost evidently enjoyed it for he went on and on. Some good malicious stories about E. A. Robinson, his stinginess, his sponging, his drunkenness, the awfulness of his disciples. All this with a deprecating smile and a rather disarming “Of course I was jealous of him. And he of me. But we were good friends.” More stories about Ezra Pound. “The poor devil hasn’t a friend on earth. No one but a group of young disciples whom he changes from year to year and eventually antagonizes. He is so lonely he even ran into Louis Untermeyer’s arms when he met him at Rapallo. He abused him afterwards of course.” Also comments on Kreymborg and J. G. Fletcher. Of the last: “He behaved so badly while in England that all I had to do was to be mild-mannered and quiet and everyone took me to their bosom saying, ‘You see there are Americans who are decent fellows.’ ” Of his beautiful, luxuriously furnished apartment: “Oh friends got it and fixed it up for me. I never bother about such things.”

In speaking of Frost I should emphasize his remarkable and indescribable charm, which made me forget some of the small petty things I knew he had done to people who hadn’t praised him as he felt he had a right to be praised. One forgets his malice; I only felt that air of warmth, naïveté and kindliness which he contradicts by his own words. No intellect but a lot of worldly wisdom and shrewdness. He knows literary politics as no one else does, but the air of naïveté half disguises it. I think I know his faults very well - and yet I could see that one could grow so fond of him that his faults would be forgotten. And he is not incapable of using the love he inspires for his own ends - if it were usable. His literary taste is bad - but he instinctively knows what to do with his own work and is really interested in no one’s work but his own. But no one blames any artist for that. A great critic is as rare as a great poet and he is rarely both. Self-criticism is all we can expect.’

30 April 1944
‘Correcting the final proofs of The Golden Mirror. I have never felt more fatalistic, more troubled about a book though I do feel that it’s the best book I’ve done so far. It certainly leaves me dissatisfied and I feel incapable of judging it dispassionately. It’s completely out of the vogue - the current fashions. And I haven’t the least idea of anyone who might like it. Small as Horace’s public is mine is even smaller. My only hope is in a miracle. It’s as if one is going against the grain so far that I can’t expect a word of praise. And the review sections are full of poets who can’t get books published, and who will wonder why I can publish at all. I know of no critic who will care for what I do - since I’m neither “traditional,” in the sense that the almost fashionable Yvor Winters group speaks of “tradition,” or “esoteric” enough or smart enough and my personality in literary circles has not been a successful one. I’ve been too humble, timid, unpoised to have aroused confidence in myself.

Dined at Lyons

‘London - walked to Evans’ the booksellers - dined at Lyons.’ This from a diary kept by John Nash, born 270 years ago today. He was one of Britain’s foremost architects of the early 19th century, being the designer of Regent Street, Buckingham Palace and the Royal Pavilion in Brighton. Considering his importance as a historical figure, it comes as a disappointment to find, firstly, that only two of his diaries have survived, and, secondly, that they are filled only with the scantest of entries - entries which are considered to have ‘little value where major biographical issues are concerned’.

Nash was born on 18 January 1752 in London. From the mid-1760s to the mid-1770s, he trained with the architect Robert Taylor. He married Jane Kerr in 1775, and they had two children. Around 1777, he established his own architectural practice, and invested inherited money in building projects. However, these were unsuccessful and left him bankrupt. At the same time, relations with his wayward and adulterous wife were deteriorating, leading, eventually, to legal proceedings and, in 1787, divorce. He moved to live in Carmarthen in 1784, and over the next decade re-established himself as a country house architect. In the late 1790s, he returned to London as an informal partner of the landscape gardener Humphry Repton. He married Mary Anne Bradley (then 25 years old) in 1798.

In the coming years, he designed many now famous country houses, public buildings and groups of houses. From 1813, he served as an official architect to the Office of Works, and as such advised on the building of many new churches. On commission by the Prince Regent, he laid out Regent’s Park and the Regent Street area (from land that had reverted to the Crown) complete with canal, lake, wooded areas, a botanical garden, shopping arcades and residential terraces. He re-landscaped St James’s Park, and transformed the Royal Pavilion in Brighton. He was involved with building two theatres on London’s Haymarket. Other commissions included the remodelling of Buckingham House (Palace) and the building of Marble Arch.

However, when George IV died in 1830, Nash was dismissed before he could complete Buckingham Palace, and he faced an official inquiry into the cost and structural soundness of the project. Because of the controversy, Nash received no further official commissions, nor was he awarded a knighthood. He retired to East Cowes Castle, a mansion he had built for himself earlier. He died in 1835, after which his wife had to sell the castle and much of its contents to clear debts. Further information is available from Wikipedia, Encyclopaedia Britannica and the BBC.

Nash probably kept a diary or ‘pocket journal’ throughout his adult life, but only two of these have survived, both from the last years of his life. They were published in a small spiral-bound pamphlet by Malcolm Pinhorn in 2000 as The Diaries of John Nash Architect - 1835 and 1835. The British Library has a copy (but, as far as I can tell, there are no secondhand copies available online). A preface in the booklet states: ‘In the 1980’s Mr Peter Laing, a great, great, grandson of Mrs John Nash’s relative Sir James Pennethorne, through whom they had descended, allowed the late Sir John Summerson, former Curator of the Soane Museum in London and Nash’s biographer, the loan of the surviving diaries of the architect John Nash for 1832 and 1835.’ 

And, in his introduction, Summerson says the diaries are of ‘little value where major biographical issues are concerned’. However, he adds, ‘they do give a lively picture of the aged architect (he was eighty-two when he began the first diary) in retirement, surviving comfortably among his friends, his books and flowers, his architectural perspectives and his Turner landscapes at East Cowes Castle on the Isle of Wight.’

Indeed, Nash’s entries in the diaries are rarely more than a sentence or two, and banal in the extreme. Here are a few examples.

14 May 1832
‘London - went to the exhibition with Mrs Nash & Anne and drove around the parks -’

15 May 1832
‘London - not out - the Vaughans, Lyons, Hopkinsons & Miss Tierney dined with us - Lord Grey & his colleagues sent for by the Kind - teh Duke of Wellington having failed to make a Cabinet -’

18 May 1832
‘London - called upon Lord Wenlock - read the Papers at the Atheneum - went to Evans the bookseller - and in the Evening to the German opera - Lord Grey announced that he & his colleagues had resumed office -’

19 May 1832
‘London - walked down to the office of Woods - went to the Zoological Gardens -’

23 May 1832
‘London - walked to Evans’ the booksellers - dined at Lyons.’

31 October 1832
‘Cowes - Estimated the value of Lady Lucy Foley’s House in London & wrote to her on the subject - dined at Mr Oglanders - took Mr Hewett & Mrs Smith & brought them home at night - ’

So I held my tongue

‘For my part, I should have liked to put a word in now and again, but as soon as it was on the tip of my tongue, I said to myself: “There’s nothing very extraordinary about that. That’s not going to interest them.” So I held my tongue. And they must have thought: “That poor Léautaud isn’t often very bright,” or even: “That poor Léautaud! Is he half-witted?” ’ This is from the diary of the (apparently insecure) French drama critic Paul Léautaud, born 150 years ago today. Though virtually unknown in the English-speaking world, he only achieved celebrity status in France late in life thanks to a series of radio interviews.

Léautaud was born in Paris on 18 January 1872, but was abandoned soon after by his opera singer mother. He was brought up by this father, also working in the theatre, who married again and had another son. After studying at the Courbevoie municipal school, he spent several years doing odd jobs in the city. In 1894, though, he became a legal clerk, and from around this time be began to submit poetry to the Mercure de France. From 1902 to 1907, he worked with a judicial administrator on the liquidation of estates, and from 1908 he joined the staff of Mercure nominally as a secretary. However, he was given freedom to write as he wished, submitting mostly drama reviews under the pseudonym Maurice Boissard

From 1912 onwards, Léautaud lived in the suburb of Fontenay-aux-Roses. Although he never married, he had many affairs. But, it seems, his first love was animals. Through his life, he owned hundreds of pets, with sometimes more than 50 in the house. It is said that he even went so far as to sell his correspondence with Paul Valéry, a portrait by Matisse and signed first editions of famous authors for money to feed his animals. In the first half of the 1950s, when already nearly 80, he found a modicum of fame thanks to a series of radio interviews with Robert Mallet. He died in 1956. Further information is available online at Wikipedia (the French page is substantially more informative than the English), in a New York Times profile, or in James Harding’s biography, Lost Illusions: Paul Léautaud and His World (can be previewed at Googlebooks).

Léautaud kept diaries for over 50 years. They have been published in French in many volumes (around 20). Mavis Gallant, writing in The New York Times in 1973, said of them: ‘They are the faithful notes of a misogynist who could not do without women; of a bachelor who trusted only the dependent love of animals; of a drama critic who thought that seeing a play and then describing it was all nonsense; of an instinctive writer who lacked imagination (he could not write about anything except his father, his mother and himself); of a pitiless observer who craved “nothing but tenderness” in return for sarcasm; of a narrow Parisian who never traveled and still knew that “one’s country is one's language,” and that “the only country that matters is life itself.” They are also an account of theatrical and literary Paris between 1893 and 1956, wide in scope and full of sharp, biased detail.’

As far as I can tell only one volume and one edition of Léautaud’s diaries exist in English: Journal of a Man of Letters 1898-1907, as translated by Geoffrey Sainsbury (Chatto & Windus, 1960). According to Sainsbury his translation is also an abridgement; it covers most of the first volume of the French edition and about a quarter of the second. The book also includes a preface by Alan Pryce-Jones. This starts as follows: ‘There are few odder figures in literature than Paul Léautaud. He could have existed nowhere but in Paris, unless possibly in the London of Richard Savage. He wrote very little beyond literary journalism and the diary which comprises this book. He was not particularly easy or agreeable. And until advanced old age he had a reputation for no more than eccentricity. At seventy-eight, a series of broadcast conversations with Robert Mallet turned him into a national celebrity overnight [. . .] and for the last five years of his life Léautaud, with a mixture of reluctance and delight, tasted the fruits of an ever increasing fame.’ Here are several extracts from Sainsbury’s translation of the diaries.

10 September 1898
‘This morning’s papers report Mallarmé’s death yesterday in his little house at Valvins. A master - to me, at any rate. When I came to know his poetry it was a revelation, prodigious, dazzling, a penetrating beam of beauty. But while it showed me verse at its greatest power and perfection, it discouraged me from attempting it, for I understood that no poetry could match his and that to follow along the same road (i.e. to imitate) would be neither dignified nor meritorious.

I think it was really due to Mallarmé that I got to know Valéry. I had seen Valéry often enough at the Mercure’s “Tuesdays”, but I had hardly spoken to him. One Tuesday, when I was on my way to the Mercure, I went into the tobacconist’s in the Rue de Seine, between the Rue Saint-Sulpice and the Rue Lobineau. Valéry was just coming out. He waited for me, and we walked together. I don’t know how he got on to Baudelaire, but I answered that there was a poet I put much higher - Mallarmé. Since then we seem to have been bound by a sort of sympathy, and we have had many talks together. This very winter he was going to take me to the Rue de Rome, but I shan’t have that pleasure now. I had been thinking of writing a Hommage au Poète with Mallarmé as the subject. The work’s still to be done.’

2 December 1902
‘I have been thinking again of my shyness and self-consciousness, of the clumsiness it produces on me, and the way it belittles me in the eyes of others. Passing the Mercure, I went in. It was Tuesday, and several people were there. I stood near the mantelpiece. Coming in, I had shaken hands with Régnier, to whom I had written a few days before to thank him for his book La Cité des Eaux. Presently he got up and came over to the mantelpiece. I was at once uneasy at the thought that he was going to talk to me and I should have to answer. Fargue joined us. We spoke of what a book ought to be when it’s rounded off, finished, and published, if one’s not going to be tempted to correct it afterwards or even to rewrite it. I say: we spoke, but I mean they did. For my part, I should have liked to put a word in now and again, but as soon as it was on the tip of my tongue, I said to myself: “There’s nothing very extraordinary about that. That’s not going to interest them.” So I held my tongue. And they must have thought: “That poor Léautaud isn’t often very bright,” or even: “That poor Léautaud! Is he half-witted?” ’

22 July 1906
‘Dinner with Mme Dehaynin and her daughter. We laughed a lot over the excellent meal which, in the last resort, was to cost so little! What an adventuress! She told me she prided herself on being able to spend a couple of months at the best seaside resort without paying a franc and then get away scot free, so clever was she at twisting people round her little finger. “When I’ve worn this place out,” she said, “I’d like to go to the Ritz.” After dinner we sat in the drawing-room. We were alone, and Mme Dehaynin went to the piano and sang us La Femme à Papa, La Mascotte, Madame Angot - a whole epoch of pleasures and follies, providing a few good minutes for me.’

28 November 1906
‘Spent the day copying out some Stendhal letters for the Pages Choisies. Comforting hours. In that respect I haven’t changed. What tone, what style, what spontaneity in those letters, what wit, what finesse! My ideas, my mental vivaciousness, are awakened, my inner self thaws, comes to life.

Went to the Mercure. Talked to Jean de Gourmont about his literary column in which he hands out bouquets so freely. It’s hopeless. On all sides indifference and laziness. It’s astonishing the fear people have nowadays of speaking their minds. Newspapers and reviews, even the most daring, are as mild as the academicians. Some are prompted by self-interest, some by fear, some by friendship. Everyone is drenched in mutual eulogies, and the lowest of the low are hailed as geniuses. Great mediocrity, great poverty of spirit, great stupidity at the bottom of it all.

I have always loved, I only love, those who go too far, the wild men, the souls that have escaped the rut. A Byron, a Stendhal, a Chateaubriand, a Poe, a Baudelaire. Those âmes en marge, with which my own feels so closely bound, help me to rise above the miserable life of every day, the miserable days so like their predecessors, to rise above them, transcend them, forget them.’

22 November 1907
‘Went this morning to fetch the proofs of my chronique dramatique . . . When I got them I told Morisse I was going to surprise every passage which might lead anyone to think I was tinted with antisemitism. He protested. But Dumur was there, and he sided with me, saying it was quite unlike me to say anything antisemitic.

But at five, when I took the corrected proofs back, Morisse reproached me almost bitterly for my cowardice in suppressing the passages in question, saying he would never have expected it of me, etc. It took me a long time to convince him there was no question of cowardice, and that in any case there was in me something that went beyond all questions of cowardice or courage and that was the pleasure I derived from saying what I had it in my heart to say to all and sundry, whether it be for or against. In this particular case I didn’t want people to think I thought what I didn’t think, and that was all, except that I wasn’t very sure of my facts and didn’t relish having passed remarks on a subjet I was not sufficiently well-informed about.’

Robert Boyle’s workdiaries

Robert Boyle, the great English scientist, died 330 years ago today. Famed for his role as the father of chemistry and modern experimental methods, he is also known for discovering Boyle’s Law, various inventions, and for leaving behind a large number of writings, not least his workdiaries. These latter have been made freely available online thanks to the Robert Boyle Project at Birkbeck College, London.

Boyle was born in 1627, son of Richard Boyle, an Elizabethan adventurer-colonist who made his fortune in Ireland and became ennobled as the 1st Earl of Cork. (Richard Boyle, in fact, was a noted diarist - see The Diary Junction and The Great Earl of Cork.) He studied for a short while at Eton before travelling on the Continent with a French tutor. After returning to England in 1644, he went to live at a manor in Stalbridge, Dorset, inherited from his father. He also tried moving to Ireland, where he owned other estates, but by the 1650s was living mostly in Oxford where he associated with a group of natural philosophers.

Boyle’s travels abroad had given him a taste for scientific research, and, although his first writings had largely been concerned with moral and literary aspects of life, once in Oxford he began to focus more on science. A first achievement - improvements to the air-pump invented in Germany - came with the help of Robert Hooke; and in 1660 Boyle published New Experiments: Physico-Mechanical, Touching the Spring of the Air, and its Effects: Made, for the most part, in a New Pneumatical Engine.

In the early 1660s, Boyle described in print what has since become known as Boyle’s Law, i.e. that there is an inversely proportional relationship between the absolute pressure and volume of a gas, if the temperature is kept constant within a closed system. Around the same time he also became a founding member of the Royal Society, as incorporated by Charles II (though later when elected President he declined the honour). In 1668 he moved to London, where he lived at the house of his sister, and where he continued to experiment and write until his death on 31 December 1691. Among his more significant publications during this period were: Experiments, Notes, &, about the Mechanical Origin or Production of Divers Particular Qualities; sequels to his New Experiments; Memoirs for the Natural History of Human Blood; and Medicina Hydrostatica.

See the Stanford Encyclopaedia of Philosophy or Wikipedia for further biographical information. However, there is also a large amount of information about Boyle on the Robert Boyle Project website hosted by Birkbeck College, part of the University of London. In 2001, the Project published an online edition of Boyle’s so-called workdiaries, written between 1647 and 1691. More recently, the workdiaries have been given their own website hosted by Cell (Centre for Editing Lives and Letters).

The Project website says: ‘These modest-looking bundles of papers and stitched books, some stained with chemicals and covered with notes and comments, reveal the methods and procedures of Boyle’s scientific enquiries.’ They also include ‘records of recipes, measurements, apparatus and data collection, as well as notes from Boyle’s reading and conversations with travellers and artisans.’ Here’s two tasters of the workdiaries taken from the start of workdiary 16

1 January 1657
‘Take Linseed Oyle {pound}1 frankinsence {pound}; comon Amber {ounce} 2 Gummi Lacca {ounce} 1; Aloes {ounce} 2 Beat the Amber by it selfe & melt it by it selfe Beat the Gumme into fine powder Boyle all these with a gentle fire 2 houres (keeping the Liquor constantly stirring with a Stick least it Burne) till the Materialls be perfectly dissolv’d in the Oyle And then have you made your vernish to guild Leather with’.

2 January 1657
‘Take Aquila Cælestis & dissolve it in as much water as will barely suffice for the solution of it, In this Liquor dissolve as much Sal Infernalis as you can in a gentle heat Then let it stand in the open aire, (stirring it often) till the humidity be evaporated & the bodies united this masse you may if need be once more moisten/original pagination, with the Solution of the Infernall Salt & to make it dry the sooner you may Incorporate it with sifted bone=ashes & when it is perfectly dry draw it over with a strong fire & if need be severall Cohobations, In like maner you may imbibe the fixt Salt of the Homogeneous Menstruum with as much of the dissolvd volatile Salt or Sp: of the same as the fixt salt will retaine & Conjunction being made in the open aire the united Salts may be drawne over with Due Cohobation as formerly’.

This article is a slightly revised version of one first published on 31 December 2011.

That’s all I am to him

‘Any mistake I make, I’m out and he starts again. Really, I thought love was forever and that I, Jane, was more important as a person with all my faults than anyone else in the world, but I’m not. At least that illusion is gone. “Do you love me?” He says, “Of course, otherwise I would have chucked you out.” After six years and all we’ve been through, that’s all I am to him.’ This is from the youthful diaries, recently published, of the singer and actress Jane Birkin. At this point - about half way through her decade-long relationship with the French actor and musician Serge Gainsbourg - Birkin had two daughters, a three year old with Gainsbourg, and a seven year old with her ex-husband. Birkin is 75 years old today.

Birkin was born on 14 December 1946 in London to an actress and a spy, and raised in Chelsea. She was educated at Upper Chine School, Isle of Wight. She married the composer John Barry in 1965. The couple had a daughter, Kate, born two years later, but divorced soon after. In the late Sixties, she won acting roles in films with erotic content, such as Blowup and La Piscine, and then in the French film Slogan, alongside Gainsbourg, with whom she started an affair (despite him being nearly 20 years her senior). In 1969, the two of them released the single Je t’aime... moi non plus (originally written for Gainsbourg’s love at the time, Brigitte Bardot). The song became infamous for its sexual content and was banned by radio stations in several European countries.

After the birth of a second daughter (with Gainsbourg) Birkin took a break from acting in 1971-1972, but returned as Bardot’s lover in Don Juan, or If Don Juan Were a Woman, and then appeared in Gainsbourg’s first film, Je t’aime moi non plus, which was banned in the UK (but earned her a Best Actress César Award). She separated from Gainsbourg in 1980 but by then she was much in demand as an actress. In 1985, she co-starred with John Gielgud in Leave All Fair; and in 1991 she appeared in in Jacques Rivette’s La Belle Noiseuse earning her another Cesar award. By this time she was also regularly recording albums. In 1982, she had given birth to her third daughter from her relationship with director Jacques Doillon, though they too were to separate, in the 1990s. She also was to have a relationship with the French writer Olivier Rolin.

Birkin continued film acting and singing into the 2000s though at a lesser pace; and she announced in 2017 that she had no plans to return to acting. Her oldest daughter, Kate, who had suffered from drug addictions over many years, tragically died in 2013. In 2021, her second daughter released a film about her own relationship with her mother, which premiered at Cannes: Jane by Charlotte. For more biographical information see Wikipedia, Interview Magazine, The Washington Post, and several media articles about recovering from a recent stroke (The Guardian and the BBC).

Birkin began keep a diary from the age of 11 and continued sporadically throughout her life - until Kate’s death. In 2018, Fayard published extracts from them in France; and in 2020 Weidenfeld & Nicolson brought out an English edition entitled The Munkey Diaries 1957-1982. Although the French and other editions have been published in two volumes, the second volume covering the years 1982-2013 has not yet appeared in English. According to the publisher: ‘Munkey Diaries re-creates the flamboyant era of Swinging London and Saint-Germain-des-Pres in the 1970s, and lets us into the everyday life of an exceptional woman. There are intimate revelations about Jane’s tumultuous life with her first husband, the composer John Barry, and her romantic and professional collaboration with Gainsbourg, as well as keen insights into a working life as an actor, singer and songwriter.’

In her preface, Birkin explains the term ‘Munkey’. 

‘I wrote my diary from the age of eleven, addressed to Munkey, my confidant, a soft toy monkey dressed as a jockey that my uncle had won in a tombola and given to me. He slept by my side, sharing the sadness of boarding school, hospital beds and my life with John, Serge and Jacques. He witnessed all the joys and all the unhappiness. He had a magic power; we took no planes, stayed in no hospitals without him being by our side.

Father said, “Maybe when we get to heaven it’ll be your monkey that welcomes us with open arms!”

Kate, Charlotte and Lou had his sacred clothes, without which travel was unthinkable. Serge kept Munkey’s jeans in his attaché case until the day he died. Faced with my children’s grief, I put Munkey beside Serge in his coffin, where he lay like a pharaoh. My monkey was there to protect him in the afterlife.

On reading my diaries it seems to me that one doesn’t change. What I was at twelve, I am still today. The lack of confidence, the jealousy, wanting to please . . . I understand better why my loves couldn’t last. The reader will be surprised, as I was, to see how little I talk about my professional life. I hardly mention the films, the plays - not even the songs. When people die, I talk about it months later - the happy times I was too busy living.’

A review of the book in the Evening Standard notes that the ‘relentless introspection comes at the expense of a more detailed survey of Birkin’s early career’; and The Guardian says ‘reading these diaries is like being trapped at a particularly demented piece of performance art, where the actors are clearly having much more fun than the audience.’ The Spectator says the ‘book is lachrymose to the point of sogginess’; but the Daily Mail calls it ‘enchanting’. Some pages can be read online at Amazon or Googlebooks. Many of the published extracts are identified only by the year they were written and a day of the week, but some are fully dated, such as this one.

13 November 1974
‘Dear Munkey,

The silence is so awful I have to write to someone. If I had done something, at least I would have a thing to be ashamed of, but I have nothing because I love someone; I love Serge more than any living thing, I would not lose him or his love for me for anything but sometimes I feel that he could write me off as a ‘bad lot’ and think no more of me. I don’t think he cares about me, except that I am his, but if I was even TEMPTED to be all that is bad, he would never have to think of me again and he would lie to the next girl. He would say, “La petite Birkin is my fabrication; I can make any number of them and better and younger but they’re nothing without me.”

He said last night that I drank only because he let me drink, that I lived only because he let me live. I’m his “poupée” (“doll”) with my “qualités’ as a poupée but completely re-makable with better material than me. All this is maybe just self-protective for my feelings, but I’m sure if I put one foot astray, he would be incapable of taking me back for me. I would have made my “erreur” and that would be an end to it.

My erreur tonight was being one hour late for dinner because I was honest and told him I was having a drink with C and we’d join him at the restaurant. It was 8 o’clock and I turned up at 9.30. He said he would be there at 9, so I was chronometrically half an hour or so late.

The reason was C. I wanted to talk to him. I’m twenty-seven, nearly twenty-eight. I’m afraid I have put him in a mess in spite of myself. I don’t know what he expects of me. I told him I love Serge, that no one can take away that love, it’s important. I care tor C, I like him, I wanted him to be my friend. It’s unimportant except I have a right to have a friend. He’s never tried to make love to me. He’s interested in me as a person. Why I do certain things, why I am embarrassed about certain things, what makes me not a cardboard poster, because that’s what most people associate me with. I wanted Serge to like him, I wanted him to like Serge the way I do - I’ve gone on and on about him. If only I’d kept my big mouth shut. Its almost like Bobby telling cousin Freda about his love life and expecting her to say “Poor Bobby”. I know that. I can’t say that he’s like a girlfriend. But people are doing far worse things, sneaking and not getting caught. Everyone has been unfaithful but I haven’t. So why should I suffer for what I haven’t done? I don’t want to have a sneaky “amant” (“lover”) like the bourgeois people do. I didn’t knock it off with Trintignant. Why? Serge. I didn’t want to spoil my thing with Serge.

Serge is sleeping peacefully and maybe he’s had affairs but is far too clever to tell me about then. And the strange thing is that I now know I wouldn’t mind as much as I thought. I would still love him, maybe hurt, certainly furious, but not to breaking-up point. I love him too much for that. I can’t imagine having a holiday, having a memory, having my life end with anyone but Sergio. So what does the rest matter? I wouldn’t like to look like a fool over the other girl, but if she was a pute or a thing of the moment, would I really die? I don’t think so. I feel happy. I love Serge, I’ve come into my own, I’m standing on my own feet. I had a drink; maybe I wanted a drink. I wanted to talk; I talked. In ten years I’m finished, no one will love me any more, I’ll be old and “moche” (“ugly”). My problems won’t interest anyone, I will no longer be à la mode. I won’t be twenty-seven, I will be thirty-seven and it’s over. I don’t want to get old. I won’t get old. Well, Serge will be looking at girls of seventeen and if I get jealous he will go “Allez-y ma vieille” (“Go ahead, old girl”) and it will be too late, even to have a drink, even to have a friend, and I will realise that life has gone and I’d be bitter of all the things I could’ve done if only I’d known.

But Serge has been twenty-seven, he’s had fun with what he wanted, with who he wanted, in Paris. I’m not asking that, a weekend to screw all Paris. I don’t like screwing. I just want to be wanted and not feel ashamed and old and responsible. And if after six years being with someone you turn up late - and each to his own, and considering everything I have done - and with a child in tow . . . well, I thought Serge loved me more than that, but sometimes he makes me think because of what he says or doesn’t say that six years is nothing, I’m only an episode in his numerous adventures. He’s allowed to be proud of it, to shout about it, and I’m nothing more than Dalida, or Gréco, or Bardot and I’m certainly much less than his precious wife, because he married her.

Any mistake I make, I’m out and he starts again. Really, I thought love was forever and that I, Jane, was more important as a person with all my faults than anyone else in the world, but I’m not. At least that illusion is gone. “Do you love me?” He says, “Of course, otherwise I would have chucked you out.” After six years and all we’ve been through, that’s all I am to him.’

I just shot a bear

‘ “Good evening, Mr. Baldwin, did you hear shooting just now?”
“No. Why?”
“I just shot a bear down the channel.”
“Well, we’ll go back to camp, hitch up a team, and bring him in.” ’ This is an extract from the diary of Russell Williams Porter - architect, artist, Arctic explorer and telescope maker - born 150 years ago today. Although the diaries of his expeditions to the Arctic remain unpublished, Porter himself quotes from them in a memoir which was published, albeit posthumously.   

Porter was born on 13 December 1871 in Springfield, Vermont. His father was an inventor, toy manufacturer and a successful producer of baby carriages. Russell was schooled at Vermont Academy in 1891 and went on to take engineering at Norwich University and the University of Vermont, later studying architecture and art at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). He became interested in the Arctic when he attended lectures on Greenland by Robert Peary. In 1893, he signed up to sail on the ship Miranda as surveyor and artist for Frederick Cook’s voyage to Greenland that next year. The voyage ended with the ship colliding with an iceberg and the crew being rescued by Inuit. He continued to travel to the Arctic with Peary, and Greenland again in 1896, to Baffin Island in 1897, with the Yukon gold rush in 1898, to Labrador in 1899, and northern Greenland in 1900.

In 1901 and 1903, Porter was given charge of astronomical observations on the Ziegler Polar Expeditions financed by the industrialist William Ziegler. However, during the second expedition, the vessel, the Steam Yacht America, was crushed by ice and sank, and it was two years before the crew were rescued. In 1906, Porter joined a surveying expedition to Alaska’s Denali. After his Arctic adventures, Porter settled down in Port Clyde, Maine, where he tried farming and other ways to make a living. He married Alice Marshall, the postmistress, and they had one daughter. He took up astronomy and telescope making. In 1915, he returned to MIT as a professor of architecture, and during the war he worked for the National Bureau of Standards producing prisms and experimenting with the silvering of mirrors.

Porter moved back to Springfield, Vermont, in 1919 to work at the Jones & Lamson Machine Company, of which James Hartness was president. He helped Hartness to produce an optical comparator, an instrument for accurately checking the pitch, form, and lead of screw threads. He designed the Porter Garden Telescope, an innovative ornamental telescope. With Hartness, he also started a class in making telescopes, and this led to the forming of a small astronomical club. Porter contributed to regular articles in the Scientific American magazine, and to three volumes of the book Amateur Telescope Making. From 1928, he worked at the California Institute for technology on the development of the Hale Telescope, the largest in the world at the time, later to be housed at Palomar Observatory. During World War II, the Hale project was stalled, and Porter produced mechanical drawings for government defence projects. He died in 1949. Further information is available from Wikipedia, the Online Archive of California, and Prologue Magazine at the National Archives.

Porter’s papers were donated to the US National Archives and Records Service in 1974 by his daughter, Caroline Porter Kier. In addition to many artworks, the papers contain diaries, correspondence, notebooks, photographs, and memorabilia. There is also a manuscript and typescript, with nearly 100 drawings, of his memoir. This memoir was eventually edited by Herman Friis and published by University Press of Virginia in 1976 as The Arctic Diary of Russell Williams Porter. Porter began writing the memoir soon after settling in California, many years after his Arctic expeditions - indeed the book’ title is a misnomer. The published memoir includes many of the drawings and paintings he completed while on the expeditions, and, occasionally, verbatim extracts from diaries he kept. These extracts are mostly insubstantial and undated, and sometimes the difference between memoir text and diary quote is unclear. A digital copy can be freely borrowed online at Internet Archive. Here are a couple of extracts from the memoir in which Porter does refer to his diaries.

1899
‘I have told this bear story hundreds of times, and everybody knows how a bear story takes on added thrills at each telling, but I can only offer my diary written and the testimony of Mr. Baldwin, who visited the spot soon after. I met him walking out from camp.

"Good evening, Mr. Baldwin, did you hear shooting just now?”
“No. Why?”
“I just shot a bear down the channel.”
“Well, we’ll go back to camp, hitch up a team, and bring him in.”
Which we did.

“You needn't take my word for it, Mr. Baldwin,” after describing the adventure and as we approached the scene of the fracas. “There is the whole story right there on the snow - footprints, blood, bear - everything.”

On the way to camp I asked to have the skin of that bear and was refused. All I have to remember of the affair is the bear’s jaws, which I chopped off the head after the dogs had eaten the meat and torn the skin to pieces.

There seems to be some question as to whether a polar bear will voluntarily attack a white man. The governor of Umanak, Greenland, once told me of an Eskimo hunting at a seal hole through the ice. The bear came up from behind and got his claws into the fellow’s back. Somehow the Eskimo got hold of his gun, pointed it over his shoulder and shot the bear. The fellow’s back was covered with scars.

However. I am just as well pleased not to have had to prove or disprove the theory. You may be sure that thereafter I saw to it that my rifle was always in working order.’

1903
‘The hundred days in that near-starvation camp (we were on less than half rations) would have proved a godsend to a writer who could portray with true dramatic sense the influence of the long night over the characters fate had thrown so closely together. Take the matter of food - and it was vile stuff, walrus meat that an Eskimo will eat only if he is starving. Now cut this food in half.

I quote here at length from my diary: “But you at home would be surprised if you tried it to see what a craving the flesh would feel should you stop eating before you had had what you wanted.” The favorite topic, of course, was what we would eat if we returned to the States. The dream of the sailors, almost to a man, was a full meal of ham and eggs. The field department was more particular.

The most interesting character was, by far, the skipper, a weatherworn whaler from Edgartown (Mass.), wise about oil, grease, blubber, bone, and ships. He did a good deal of his thinking aloud. I never got a word of it, and probably few of the sailors did. They were sort of stage asides.

The diary has him remark: “Guns? Rifles? Mr. Porter, how many rifles do you think I have bought and sold in my lifetime? I might say thousands. And as for walrus, I’ve seen them so thick you could not see anything else, thousands on thousands of ’em. But we never fool with ’em on our side [meaning Alaska]. Only Norwegians go walrusing, and they can live on almost anything. Why, these walrus here are nothing. I’ve seen, I suppose, tusks three feet long without any exaggeration, and yet there is someone thinks they can tell me something about walrus and how to shoot ’em. They don’t know what they’re talking about, that’s all there is to that.” On and on in this puffed-up strain.

Diary: “This morning when the captain took down his ham tin (full of snow water for washing purposes) hung up by the stovepipe, he found something in it which he had unwittingly scooped up along with the snow in the dark, something as big as my fist, and I would give twenty-five dollars to know who did it.” I never saw him so wrought up with the world at large, ordering me to remove the matches from the wall over his table so that no one would have occasion to come into his corner.

However, someone did invade his corner in a hurry. The lie was passed between two sailors over in the other end of the room, and quick as a flash they came over, giving it to each other in earnest. When they arrived with a bang, over went my oil lamp, the covering over a window fell in, and down came the captain’s table with its contents.

Now that we are on fights, here’s another.

Diary: “The skipper is sitting in his chair mumbling, delivering his usual asides, and the crew is conversing in low tones - some have disappeared into their bunks - when one notices loud talk down the passage by the kitchen.

“Look out now.”
“Don’t you touch me. I’m a sick man.”
“You’re no more sick than I am. Look out now.”
“Bill Ross, if you should hit me now, I would drop like a dead dog. If you ever dare strike me, I will run this knife through your heart.”

A quick, shuffling sound; an oil lamp tumbles to the floor sputtering in its spilt oil; a sound as of a man’s wind being slowly cut off growing fainter and fainter until a sharp metallic ring is heard as the knife falls from relaxing fingers. A man emerges from the passage and throws a long sheath knife on the table in front of the captain.

“Dere, captain, you see, over six inches long - eight, if an inch. I’ve half a mind to run it into him now.” And he makes a move for the knife but does not take it.

These pleasant little affairs at least had the merit of breaking the long monotony. Monotony was there all right, for the next entry (December 21) says: “At last after days and days of waiting, this ‘red letter’ day has arrived. After all, it only means that the sun has stopped going down.”

[. . .]

Diary: “It was the dogs that worried us - I mean their lives. You must remember that we had just emerged from an arctic winter, subsisting on half rations, and were in no physical condition to meet a severe test of staying powers.”

[. . .]

The fifth day found us on an island within sight of the old winter quarters of the Baldwin expedition; that is, we could have seen it had it been clear weather. Here we were held prisoner two days by drift.

Diary: “P.M., March 4. As I feared, bad weather has caught us. We have made only three miles a day for nearly a week. Yesterday the whole afternoon was required to make something under a mile. But we hope for the best. Six of my fingers are badly blistered.”

But the storm that held us in sight of our goal for two days had a silver lining. It packed or blew away the soft snow, making better going, and at the old West Camp we were furiously burning anything at hand to melt enough snow to quench our thirst.

[. . .]

Diary: “Hello, Chips. Come in.”

The bottle was placed on the table before us. It was half full, and I applied my nose to the opening.

“Why, it’s beer,” I exclaimed in surprise. “Where did you find it? And L. Macks Olbrygurie, Tromsø, too. Run across some old cache of the Baldwin expedition?”
“No, no; help yourselves.”

I looked at him. The perspiration was standing out in big drops over his forehead, and he seemed to find difficulty in breathing. Surely, I thought, this fellow has been hitting it rather heavily. Nevertheless, I filled two cups and offered one to Mr. Peters.

“Well, anyway, here’s to - to - the relief ship’s coming this year.” It was all I could think of worth a toast. Even then I couldn’t understand.
“You don’t understand, Mr. Porter, you don’t catch on,” the carpenter protested.

Then Peter’s face began to change. Then, not until then, did the arrival of a ship enter my mind.

“Chips, the ship hasn’t come?”
“Yes.”
“Come, no joking.”
“Yes, it has, it has.”
“Say it again.”
“The ship is at Cape Dillon. The party is at the house now.”

It was hard to believe even then, with so many rumors of ships about. With shaking hands, Mr. Peters and I drained the aluminum cups to the sand dregs and followed the carpenter down to the house. Turning to me, Peters smiled (he rarely smiled when with me) and said, “There’s no need for economizing on paper now.” ’