A spear through the throat

‘During the days march we passed many rings of fires made by the natives, doubtless for the performance of some one of their extraordinary ceremonies; the inner space in all are perfectly bare, and the small fires forming the ring are about a foot apart, in some I counted ten and in others 12 fires. [. . .] What the ring is for would be very interesting to know, perhaps in some way connected with their superstitions.’ This is  from the Australian outback expedition diary of the British naturalist John Gilbert, born 210 years ago today. He would never discover any more about the rings as that very night, after completing this diary entry, his camp was attacked by aborigines: he was killed by a spear through the throat. 

John Gilbert was born on 14 March 1812 in Newington Butts, south London. Very little is known about his childhood but aged 16 he was employed by the Zoological Society of London where he was trained by the ornithologist John Gould. In 1836, Gilbert seems to have married a widow, Catharine Clump, but she must have died for he then married Esther Sadler. He was appointed curator for a newly-established Shrewsbury natural history museum as well as for a private collector, but, before long, he was back in London, staying with Gould. Gilbert employed by Gould to take part in his forthcoming expedition to Australia to gather material for books on the birds and mammals of the (almost unexplored) new continent.

Reaching Hobart Town with his employer’s party in September 1838, Gilbert at once set about field-work in (what was then still) Van Diemen’s Land. The following February he was sent to the Swan River settlement (later to become Perth) in Western Australia. There he stayed for nearly a year, collecting birds and mammals, and making notes on their habits and native names. On returning to Sydney in April 1840, he found that the Goulds had left for England three weeks earlier. Uncertain what to do, he landed at Port Essington (in the very north of Australia), which had been smitten by a hurricane, remaining until March 1841. Landing back in England in September, he was soon persuaded by Gould to return to Australia.

On his second visit, Gilbert stayed a year and a half in Western Australia collecting over 400 specimens of birds, 300 specimens of mammals, many reptiles, and a great many plants. By the end of January 1844, he was in Sydney again, and thence travelled to the Darling Downs (east of present day Brisbane). There, he joined an expedition to Port Essington led by Ludwig Leichhardt, a Prussian naturalist and explorer, soon proving himself experienced enough to become second in command. However, Gilbert was killed by a spear through the neck during an aborigine attack at Mitchell River (Queensland), and died on the night of 28 June 1845. Various geographic features in Australia have been named after him, as have several animals. Further information is available from Wikipedia, the Australian National Dictionary of Biography, and the National Museums of Liverpool.

Gilbert’s three diaries of his last expedition are held by the State Library of New South Wales. The library’s website gives the following detailed description of these diaries: ‘Volume 1 is a small field notebook. The account of the journey towards Port Essington, written in ink, begins on page 81, with the heading ‘Port Essington Expedition’, and covers the period from 18 Sept. to 31 Dec. 1844. This volume also includes entries for the last part of the diary, 23 to 28 June 1845, written in ink over pencil notes (pp.2-10). Includes pencil sketches of Biggs Range (p.126), Peak Range (pp.159-160) and Expedition Range (p.164). Pages 11-59 contain notes, mainly on birds, in very faint pencil. Pages 60-79 contain diary entries from 10 March to 21 May 1844, in extremely faint pencil, for a journey which began with a steamer trip from Sydney to the Hunter River near Maitland. Volume 2 is written on sheets of paper which have since been sewn together. The account covers the period from 1 Jan. to 21 June 1845. The concluding part  of the diary is contained in volume 1. Volume 3 comprises fragments kept with the diary, including the entry for Sunday 22 June 1845.’

The diaries have not been published as such but the library does have a typed transcript freely available as a pdf on its website. Here are several extracts including the very last one, as well as a note from the transcriber on Gilbert’s death.

14 January 1845
‘Continuing our route down the Mackenzie, at 2 1⁄2 miles crossed a large Flagstone creek running in from the westward, this was the extent of the Drs. reconnoitring: from this we kept the banks of the river, passing many fine reaches of water, the banks very much cut up into deep gullies and ravines, rendering it rather difficult travelling, but our Bullocks have now become so accustomed to this sort of work, they face the crossings without any attempt to throw off their loads as at first. At about three miles from the flagstone creek we came upon a sudden bend of the river to the westward, on the opposite side of which a large creek from the eastward came in; up to this part the rivers course was about NE, it now ran West and NW for about 5 miles, at first very narrow and the bed frequently dry; at the end of a large pool we came upon the rocky shallow bed, from the sides jutted out several thin layers of Coal, nodules of Quartz, Iron stone &c were lying in the bed, but the general formation is sandstone. Here we found three new shells, a Cyclas and a Potamis and a Paludina. From this we came upon a beautiful clear grassy flat, and where we could have camped, but the bed of the river was dry: we moved on about half a mile further and camped at the junction of a small creek, the banks of the river still as steep and as difficult to reach water as before; it being but a small pool we did not succeed in catching any fish. Just before coming to camp, we saw two Native women busily engaged in collecting Mussel from the opposite bank; as soon however as they observed us they ran up the banks in the greatest fright. That we are in a country much inhabited seems clear to us all from the many indications we everywhere meet with, but more particularly from the immense collections of Mussel shells everywhere met with in heaps on the banks; as yet however we have not met with bones of fish and very few of Kangaroo and other animals. The Dr. & Brown set off to explore the river downwards, Charlie accompanied them to lead us a short stage tomorrow. We today made a discovery which is important to us all, particularly those with indifferent teeth, hitherto our dried Beef which has always been so excessively hard and ropey that, notwithstanding the different methods of cooking, always produced a pain in our jaws and gums. Today we beat the meat with a hammer before stewing and found a most agreeable change in consequence, the general flavour of the meat seems improved and the soup richer and the meat not at all stringy.’

26 May 1845
‘Today we got through the rocky pass tolerably well; one Bullock, a large & very heavy beast, was however very lame from the commencement, and the rocky days work did not at all improve the poor brute; with this exception our whole number of Bullocks travelled exceedingly well the whole day. In the afternoon, the Dr. with Brown started off to reconnoitre the next stage. The Dr. returned in the evening; Brown succeeded in shooting a Bustard & 3 Ducks, which will be a welcome breakfast to us tomorrow. Our Salt is now reduced to half a pound, which is kept for our next killing tomorrow; having not salt, none of us feel at all inclined to take our soup as formerly, but prefer having it grilled; cooked in any way dry we do not feel the loss of salt so much. While out this morning, the Dr. came upon a camp of Natives, who at first handled their spears as if disposed to stop him, but seeing that their threats had no effect, they all rushed off in the most hurried & alarmed manner: on the Dr’s return he was surprised to see they had not returned during his absence, and he helped himself to a drink of their prepared Honey water, and ate some of their potatoe-like roots. At night we had a change of weather; heavy clouds with a strong westerly wind began rising at sunset, and during the night it rained in light showers.’

6 June 1845
‘Today we made a further addition of 10 miles down the river; during the whole stage we had tolerable good travelling; there are several rocky ranges still coming upon the river bank, some of which we crossed without difficulty, and one or two of the worst parts we avoided altogether by taking the bed of the river; several large creeks came in from the North & East. During this stage, I was fortunate enough to kill for the first time Geophaps plumifera, a species hitherto only known from a single specimen sent home by Mr. Byrnes of the Beagle; the irides were bright orange; naked skin before and surrounding the eye bright crimson; bill dark greenish grey; scales of the legs and toes greenish grey; the naked skin separating the scales light ashy grey; in its flight and actions on the ground it precisely resemble the two other described species of Geophaps. I only saw the single specimen killed, but I afterwards learnt from Brown, that he had just before observed a flock rise, as do the G. scripta. At the pool of water we camped beside a second pair of Tadorna rajah was killed. The morning set in with very cloudy weather which continued during the day, with a tolerably strong breeze from the Eastward.’

28 June 1845
‘Ten miles further gives us no greater indication of the coast than hitherto: we had again rather a change of country on crossing the creek, we entered a finer forest than we have met with for some time past, the timber consisting principally of Stringy Bark, Box and Bloodwood, and very fine grass; from this we entered a flat wet country again; at about four miles we crossed a considerable creek, or as the Dr. thinks the Nassau, running to the westward; from this the remaining part of the stage was through a beautiful open country, thickly studded with Lotus ponds, at one of which we camped. Natives fires in every direction and very near us, but none of the natives seen: about a mile to our right appeared the dark line of a scrub probably edging the creek we crossed. Dendrocygna again abundant, Brown killed 6 at a shot. The wood Duck, Teal and Black duck still abound, and the Kites as numerous as ever, in fact we have marked several of them and seen them again and again at succeeding camps, so that there is no doubt that they regularly follow us from place to place, as do the crows, which we a long time ago remarked. Another new incident worth noticing are the beautifully constructed ant hills, which are miniatures of the large Turreted ant hills of Coberg Peninsula. Today we passed another of the singular constructions of the natives, which the Dr. thinks are houses. This like the former, had its piece of ground with bent sticks, and as observed in all the former ones, two detached platforms which have no marks of fires. During the days march we passed many rings of fires made by the natives, doubtless for the performance of some one of their extraordinary ceremonies; the inner space in all are perfectly bare, and the small fires forming the ring are about a foot apart, in some I counted ten and in others 12 fires. Round them at a little distance are round heaps of stones sunk in a slight hollow of the ground, where they appear to have been engaged in cooking their food, and pieces of bark or bough, showing it has been a regular camping ground. What the ring is for would be very interesting to know, perhaps in some way connected with their superstitions.’

Transcriber’s note 
‘During the night of the 28 June, the aborigines attacked the camp, throwing a shower of spears among the tents, but were frightened off with gun shots. Roper and Calvert suffered severe spear wounds. John Gilbert was killed with a spear through his throat. The site of his grave was not discovered until 1983. There is a Memorial to Gilbert in St. James Church, Sydney.’

Waiting for Horace

‘Waiting for Horace to come home. The hours drag. I wait for his footsteps - his breathing - this long day at the college must be very exhausting. I feel ready to burst into tears with loneliness and worry.’ This is an extract from the diaries of the Russian-born American poet Marya Zaturenska about her poet husband Horace Gregory. She died 40 years ago in January (see The Diary Review), and he died just a couple of months later, 40 years ago today. 

Gregory was born in 1898 in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, and educated mainly at home. In 1918 he visited New York and Long Island but returned to Wisconsin to attend the university in Madison. He started to write poetry while studying Latin at college; he moved to New York in 1923 to earn a living as a copywriter and reviewer. During his years in New York, he married the poet Marya Zaturenska and they had two children. A first collection of his poems - Chelsea Rooming House - came out in 1930, and is said to have combined the idiom of modern life with literary influences. Seven or so more collections would follow. He also published translations of Ovid and Catullus.

In 1933, Gregory published Pilgrim of the Apocalypse, a study of D. H. Lawrence;  and in the late 1950s, he would also write biographies of Amy Lowell and James McNeill Whistler. Together with Zaturenska he compiled A History of American Poetry, 1900-1940. He taught modern poetry and classics at Sarah Lawrence College until 1960. He was awarded the Bollingen Prize in 1965. His collected essays, Spirit of Time and Place, were published in 1973. Over the decades his work appeared in many magazines, including The New York Times, The New Yorker, Contemporary Poetry, and Poetry Magazine. He died on 11 March 1982. Further information can be found at Wikipedia, The Poetry Foundation and Encyclopaedia Britannica.

Gregory does not seem to have been a diarist but Zaturenska kept diaries throughout her life. A selection of her diary entries - replete with references to her husband - were published in 2002 as The Diaries of Marya Zaturenska 1938-1944. This can be previewed at Googlebooks and borrowed digitally from Internet Archive. See also Diary Review article on Zaturenska - Obsessed by new poems. 

Here’s a few sample extracts in which Zaturenska is close to obsessing about her husband. 

14 December 1938
‘Endless days in which the tension lifts when dear Horace comes in the house again after a hard day’s work. Count the days when the Christmas holidays will begin and we can be together. I feel safe and secure when he is near me.’

19 January 1939
‘Horace exhausted with overwork. When he returns he talks over and over again of the difficulties and strains at the school. It’s as if he couldn’t shake off the load from his shoulders.’

13 April 1939
‘Horace went to a dinner at the Oxford University Press for Auden, Isherwood and MacNeice. He had a very good time, the crowd, as is usual in these things, was diverse and curious. Freddy Prokosch, who H. says has gotten very fat in the behind, was a sort of social hostess or master of ceremonies. Auden, says Horace, was very gay and witty and Isherwood, utterly delightful. He thought that Auden bore the most amazing resemblance to the portraits of Oscar Wilde. The Boys were surrounded by fawning satellites so Horace, his curiosity satisfied, left early, having had a pleasant enough time. This must have impressed the Boys, for the next day Isherwood phoned and said they all wanted to see him again. Would he come this Sunday to a small party at Selden Rodman’s? Selden, who had been chilly for a long time, phoned too to tell Horace how much the Boys liked him and would I come to the party too. Horace said that no doubt he may have pleased them by talking lightly and cheerfully about nothing in particular and avoiding “shop” and “politics.” ’

13 May 1940
‘A rainy Saturday - closing a difficult week. Work on my book, overcome with dissatisfaction at it - do not dare to lean too heavily on Horace for criticism on it, since I feel he resents my taking his time. When he drinks nowadays I prepare for torment. He is not unjustified. I have become a complete parasite on him and my looks are going. He is nerve-wracked, overworked - no time for his own writing - isolated (and as a good wife I should build some social life around him - and I don’t seem to be able to do it). My only excuse is that I too am far from well - but my ill health has lasted so long that I may as well learn to adapt myself to it. Have had more infected teeth pulled recently. An ordeal.’

16 August 1940
‘Left for Europe on the eleventh - a hot day. Helen McMaster and my brother Max seeing us off. Excited and trembling with joy. Even Horace worn out with last-minute work at Columbia lightened up as the boat came in view. We shall never get over the delight, the joy of traveling.

Horace and I working on our poetry history book, and I’ve just finished a piece on Lizette Reese and am almost through with a piece on Adelaide Crapsey. Though Horace’s critical pieces are sounder than mine, yet I do think my little essays are well written and with a fine narrative sense and a real feeling for the form of the thing. I’m enjoying doing prose very much. And if only Horace had more time for collaboration our book would be going along at a great rate.’

15 December 1940
‘Horace turned in the manuscript of his selected book of verse, Poems, 1930-1940. Have much hope and fear for it. It’s a beautiful and powerful book.’

10 April 1941
‘Dear Horace’s birthday and the first day of real spring weather. The gold, the brightness of the green utterly astonishing. One is taken by surprise every year.

Muriel is giving a birthday party for Horace today. Dread facing people. Wish only to be with Horace. The rest of the world is full of horror, murder, poisonous spirits; the air drips blood, the ground is wet with it and the streets smell like a jungle.

Took a bus ride to town with Joanna, very lively, pretty and gay. We met Horace in front of the Forty-second Street library looking a little guilty because he had bought a new English ash walking stick at a sale. My poor dear, he needs a stick badly and he has bought almost nothing for himself.

Waiting for Horace to come home. The hours drag. I wait for his footsteps - his breathing - this long day at the college must be very exhausting. I feel ready to burst into tears with loneliness and worry.’

Depressed and neurotic

‘Home very tired, midnight. Message to phone Marcia. Did so. She is very depressed and neurotic. Talked for 75 minutes. Attacks Joe, Albert and me. Says we are all out for ourselves. Ganging up against her. And that I am out to replace her. She says she will retire to her country house and wait for HW to sack us all and come personally to ask her to return.’ This is from the Downing Street diaries of Bernard Donoughue, a political adviser to Harold Wilson. Donoghue is writing about Marcia Williams (later Baroness Falkender) - born 90 years ago today - who, notoriously, wielded a powerful influence over Wilson.

Williams was born Marcia Matilda Field in Northamptonshire on 10 March 1932. Her father, a Tory, managed a brickworks. Her mother may have been an unacknowledged illegitimate daughter of Edward VII when he was Prince of Wales. She studied history at Queen Mary College London and was chairman of the college Labour Club. In 1955, she became secretary to the General Secretary of the Labour Party, and the same year married Eddie Williams, chairman of the Conservative Club (though they divorced in 1961). A year later, she became political and private secretary to Harold Wilson, MP, a position she retained through until 1983, covering the years of his leadership of the Labour Party and his premiereship. She had two sons in the late 1960s by the former political editor of the Daily Mail, Walter Terry

Williams was elevated to the peerage in 1974 as Baroness Falkender (her mother’s maiden name). She wrote two books about her time in Downing Street: Inside Number 10 and Downing Street in Perspective. After retiring from working in Downing Street, she worked as a columnist for the Mail on Sunday, though she continued to work for Wilson, handling his private business from the time of his resignation in 1976 until his death in 1995. 

Throughout the Wilson years, there was much speculation about Williams’ role in No. 10, and her influence over Wilson. Indeed, when he unexpectedly resigned in 1976, it was claimed Lady Falkender drafted his controversial resignation honours list, dubbed ‘The Lavender List’ because some of the names were written on lavender-coloured paper in Lady Falkender’s handwriting. In 2007, she successfully sued the BBC for libel over her portrayal in a drama-documentary which wrongly claimed she had compiled the list and that she had included people for her own personal interests. She died in 2019. Further information is available from Wikipedia and various obituaries (The Guardian and the BBC for example). 

There is no evidence that Williams kept a diary, but she figures very prominently in the first volume of diaries kept by Wilson’s political adviser, Bernard Donoughue - Downing Street Diary: with Harold Wilson in No. 10 (see Donoughue's Downing Street Diary). The book can be freely borrowed and read online at Internet Archive. Here are two extracts which give insight into how Williams wielded her power within Wilson’s entourage.

7 March 1994
‘In the morning I telephone Marcia from home. She was ill. Had fainted in the night. Not coming into the office this morning. I offered to bring her in by car, but she declined.

Went in to Downing Street at 9.30. HW seeing ministers. I talked to Jim Callaghan. Saw Albert Murray, who is very depressed about his insecure position in the PM’s entourage. He is a marvellous cockney and we must help him. [. . .]

Return to my room at noon. There waiting are Mary Wilson, Marcia and HW’s long-time housekeeper, Mrs Pollard (also from a Northamptonshire village close to where Marcia and I were born). They want me to recruit a cook for No. 10 to provide meals at all times. We spend some time discussing this. I had not realised I was also to be head of catering, but it appears so. I have already secured a fridge, an infra-red stove and a lot of frozen food. Now we need personnel.

Gerald Kaufman joins us. A family gathering.

But Marcia is jumpy. We go off upstairs to lunch - HW, Marcia, Joe, Albert and myself. Discuss appointments. Marcia starts a row over the exclusion of Bill Rodgers from the government. She thinks it is wrong and a political mistake. Joe and HW say that he was not a complete success as a minister previously. She says nor were most of the people he has appointed. It would be a stupid error, possibly a disaster, to leave Bill out.

I sit silent at first because they all know I am a friend of Bill’s. Then I said I thought he was very capable and disagreed with their criticism. But could not see how my intervention at this stage would help.

At the end of the meal Marcia walks out in a temper and HW is clearly upset. She had attacked him viciously in front of the waiter. He was very calm and patient with her. I get the feeling that everything he does in politics is to please her. He does not care about the people, the party or himself. She is the daughter who he delights in, however outrageous, and who he is working to please. It is amazing to watch. His patience with her is endless.

He leaves the table and Joe goes to help him with the next speech.

I go downstairs and have some appointments. I went into Marcia’s room and she is there with Albert, with her coat on. She has a temperature. Is leaving. We see her out and I said I would telephone her later.

Home very tired, midnight. Message to phone Marcia. Did so. She is very depressed and neurotic. Talked for 75 minutes. Attacks Joe, Albert and me. Says we are all out for ourselves. Ganging up against her. And that I am out to replace her. She says she will retire to her country house and wait for HW to sack us all and come personally to ask her to return.

She was also disturbed by what she called my ‘coolness’. Because I never got angry or upset. She also attacked HW bitterly and said he did not understand how to deal with civil servants.

She felt upset that she had carried the brunt of supporting Bill Rodgers at lunch.

Then it all came out. That HW was no longer consulting her. And I had not telephoned her this evening. She suspected because we all wanted to appoint the government without consulting her. Quite paranoic. Yet still shafts of bright perception and immense intelligence and judgement among the neuroses.’

8 March 1974
‘Spent restless night thinking about the conversation with Marcia. Decided to offer my resignation. Have not come into this, taking massive cut in income and mistrust of old political friends, to sit up half the night being accused of self-seeking. Even worse were the attacks on Albert.

Arrive at No. 10 at 9.30 a.m., before anybody else. Sort out my letters and papers. Then go to sec HW. Tell him two points:

(1) If I stay, have decided to accept a lower position in No. 10 rather than be a deputy secretary on the staff of the Cabinet Office. I want my position to be totally at No.10. And I don’t want him bothered by my personal problems any more. It means a cut of £7,000 p.a. in my income.

(2) I report that Marcia has talked to me, is afraid I am replacing her, and that I do not wish myself or him to be in that position. Therefore he has my resignation in his pocket from that moment. And when he wishes to exercise it, I promise to say to everybody, private as well as public, that it is because of my heavy family commitments, with no mention of Marcia’s jealousy and hostility.

He is very charming, says he appreciates the offer and that the fact that I have made it means it won’t have to be exercised. He tells me that Marcia has at one time or another demanded the resignation of all his previous assistants, including G. Kaufman and J. Haines. And when HW has suggested he might sack them, each time she has reacted by saying that if he did she would resign and tell the press that he was betraying his loyal aides.’

Mochtar Lubis in prison

Mochtar Lubis, one of Indonesia’s best-known and respected journalists of the 20th century, was born a century ago today. Variously imprisoned under the Surkarno and Suharto post-independence regimes for, essentially, defending his and his newspaper’s right to free speech, he also kept diaries during at least two of his prison terms.

Lubis was born on 7 March 1922 in Padang, West Sumatra, to a high-ranking civil servant working for the Dutch administration. After studying at business school, Lubis worked as a teacher in Nias, North Sumatra, and for a bank in Batavia. During the Japanese occupation in World War II, Lubis translated international radio news for the Japanese army (and also for his brother who was in the resistance). In 1945, he married Asia Raya, and they had three children.

Also in 1945, after independence, Lubis joined the Indonesian news agency Antara as a reporter; and, in 1949, he cofounded the daily newspaper Indonesia Raya, later serving as its chief editor. From 1952 to 1954, he concurrently edited the English-language Times of Indonesia. But his responsibility for Indonesia Raya led to him being imprisoned several times for dissent, the longest period being between 1957 and 1966, during the latter three years of which he was held in Madiun, East Java. The newspaper, too, was intermittently shut down (such as between 1958 and 1968), until its permanent closure in 1974.

In 1975, Lubis was again arrested, this time in relation to the 1974 riots during the visit of Japanese Prime Minister Kakuei Tanaka. He was imprisoned, without trial, but then released after a few months. He went on to found and co-found numerous other publications and foundations, including the Obor Indonesia Foundation in 1970, Horison magazine, and the Indonesian Green Foundation. He was generally regarded as an honest, no-nonsense reporter; and, in 2000, he was named as one of the International Press Institute’s 50 World Press Freedom Heroes of the past 50 years. He died in 2004. Further information is available at Wikipedia, and from The Ramon Magsaysay Award Foundation.

Lubis appears to have kept a diary during some of his prison periods. In 1980, Sinar Harapan published Catatan Subversif (Subversive Notes) which is said to be a diary of his time in prison in the late 1950s and 1960s. For a bit more about this, see C. W. Watson’s Of self and injustice: autobiography and repression in modern Indonesia which can be read at Googlebooks.

Then, in 2008, Yayasan Obor Indonesia published a diary that Lubis had written during his detention in 1975 - Nirbaya: catatan harian Mochtar Lubis dalam penjara Orde Baru (Nirbaya, Diary of Mochtar Lubis in a New Order Prison). Some parts of the book - in Indonesian - can be read online at Googlebooks, but a few extracts translated to English can be found in a Jakarta Post article. ‘The late Mochtar Lubis,’ the article states, ‘is arguably Indonesia’s best known, internationally acclaimed newspaperman and veteran political prisoner of two presidents. [His] diary is a sharp, open rebuke to Indonesia’s legal system.’

10 February 1975
‘Food rations at Nirbaya are no better than during the Old Order [Suharto was the Old Order, Sukarno was the New Order]. The rations for the Gestapu/PKI detainees [those allegedly involved in the abortive coup of October 1965] are worse. Hariman and I still get one piece of scrambled egg for lunch, and once in a while a perkedel [potato-based dumpling] in the morning or in the evening, with some cooked vegetables. But the Gestapu/PKI prisoners get only one piece of tempeh [fermented soybean cake] or bean curd with vegetables morning, noon and night.’

19 March 1975
‘They have been held for too long without any trial. This is not good for the soul of Indonesia.’ [When Lubis was released, in May 1975, he lamented that he was freed sooner than the others, who had been in custody for more than nine years.]

22 March 1975
[Of the pride in his wife for staying calm.] ‘I want you to be like that always. Do not worry about me. If you are strong, I will be strong too. I get my strength from you, and hope you will get strength from me. . . Thank you for your flowers. Each time I look at them I see your love in them.’

14 April 1975
‘Many detainees were held for months, and in some cases for years, before they were brought to trial. Judges tended to sentence them according to the existing length of their detention. This situation shakes confidence in the rule of law.’

‘This is a good read for younger Indonesians,’ The Djakarta Post concludes about the book, ‘to learn about the untold chapters of the Soeharto years and of the character of one man in facing the trials of that period.’

This article is a slightly revised version of one first published on 7 March 2012.

Byrom’s universal shorthand

John Byrom, the deviser of a once widely-used shorthand system, was born 330 years ago today (give or take a leap day). He also kept a diary for much of his life. It is often dull but, buried among the daily record of his movements, there are interesting details about his shorthand work, the Royal Society, and the food/ale he was consuming.

Byrom was born in or near Manchester on 29 February 1692. He was educated at Merchant Taylors School and Trinity College, Cambridge, where he first started writing poems and devising shorthand ways of writing. Although he went abroad, to Montpelier, to study medicine, he never practised as a doctor. Instead he spent many years promoting and trying to sell his shorthand system. In 1721, he married his cousin Elizabeth, and they had four children one of whom was also called Elizabeth (Beppy). He was elected a fellow of the Royal Society in 1724.

Byrom’s shorthand became widely adopted, being used by, among others, the Wesley brothers and Horace Walpole. On the death of his elder brother in 1740, Byrom inherited the family property which relieved him of giving shorthand lessons (for income), though he remained closely associated with the method. Indeed, in 1742, an act of parliament gave him the sole rights to the system for 21 years; thereafter it became freely available as The Universal English Short-Hand.

Apart from promoting his shorthand system, Byrom wrote comic and serious poems, the most widely known of which is the Christmas hymn, ‘Christians, awake, salute the happy morn’. He died in 1763. Some further biographical information is available at Wikipedia and Authors’ Calendar.

Byrom is remembered mostly for his diaries (extracts below) which were published by The Chetham Society in two volumes, each consisting of two parts (i.e. four books in all) between 1854 and 1857. They were edited by Richard Parkinson and titled The Private Journal and Literary Remains of John Byrom. The volumes are freely available at Internet Archive, but, for the most part, they are rather bland and weighed down with too much ordinary detail. (The fourth volume also contains a diary kept by Beppy which provides an eyewitness account of the arrival in Manchester of Bonnie Prince Charlie, the Young Pretender.)

1 February 1724
‘This day (being Saturday) I did for the first time advertise my shorthand in the Evening Post, and the writer of that paper made a mistake of Byron for Byrom, and from this time I design to take notice of any thing that shall happen in relation to it.’

29 February 1724
‘This day I am years old thirty-two. Mr Leycester and I went to get our advertisement printed. I gave 5s to the Daily Courant for an advertisement of my own, something different from the former, and have given 7s 6d to the Post Boy for the answer to Weston, which he also put in the Daily Post. From this place I went to Mrs de Vlieger’s in Leicester fields where I dined; and from thence we went to the opera, where we found Mr Leycester waiting at the door; we went to the first row in the gallery; I did not much like this diversion.’

19 March 1724
‘That day I was admitted Fellow of the Royal Society by Sir Hans Sloane, and Mr Bobert Ord at the same time. He and I went there together, gave Mr Hanksbee two guineas, and signed bond to pay fifty-two shillings a year.’

1 March 1726
‘Rose after six, went to Torbock’s; thence to Fairchild’s at Hogeden, called at Mr Ghaddock’s by the way, met Dr Eaton and Mr Digles; Fairchild showed me his garden, his ananas, melon, thistle, misletoe, inoculations, said at first he had no Paradise stocks to spare, but after we had talked he said my friend might have half a dozen. Thence back to Moorfields, where I went through the books; [. . .] Torbock carried most of them for me; coming through Wood-street we bought steel for punches, files 2s. 8d.; then we went to see a turning engine, the man not within; then to Pingo’s the medal caster, he not at home, but the woman showed us some of his casting; then to Bridgets auction.’

5 March 1726
‘Went to Mr Johnson’s, where I dined upon potted hare, very good; thence to George’s, where I saw Mr Sanderson, Pennant, and Coatsworth; thence to Mr Nicholls, writ out some of Finch’s speech to Queen Elizabeth, he would have had me write it all out, but I would not; Hunt told me his affairs succeeded very well; home near nine, had a fire made, stayed up reading Collin’s Enquiry concerning Human Liberty, sat up till near two.’

7 March 1726
‘Empson and Butterwick came this morning and had their first lesson in shorthand, and paid me each five guineas.’

27 February 1729
‘Called upon Mr Stanley, he began, paid five guineas, and promised no soul living should see it but himself; I showed him the way of coming at the alphabet, and left him to blunder by himself, and appointed to call on him to-morrow at nine. Thence to the Guildhall, met Woolston, who told me that he should not be tried to-day, because the Attorney General was not there; called upon Mr Lethuillier and drank a dish of chocolate with him; thence to Meadow’s, who put four Knight Errants in my pocket, and desired me to send them something, a poor introduction to such a design. I went to Will’s coffeehouse to enquire for Mr Salkeld, not there; I wrote shorthand in answer to Phebe and Mrs Byrom. To Richard’s; thence to the Royal Society, Vernon there from Cambridge; Dr Rutty read about ignis fatuus; humming bird’s nest and egg, mighty small; Molucca bean, which somebody had sent to Dr Jurin for a stone taken out of a toad’s head; Desaguliers made some experiments about electricity. [. . .] we had a very elegant supper, salmon, fowls, jellies, and a pint of Moselle very good, and a bowl of punch.’

5 January 1731
‘At night Houghton, Lloyd, and I came to the King’s Head, and the club being there, viz. two Hoadlys, Brown, Ray. I brought them in, and we had brawn and beefsteaks, and talked about Cheselden and the drum of the man Ray’s ear, and about the Royal Society, and futurity. Houghton and I went into the city, saw Salkeld at Will’s, who treated us with chocolate; thence we followed a man in a Turkish dress, I spoke and paid for a barrel of oysters to the woman at the Cross Keys; to Moorfields, where I bought J. Lead, Pordage, 1s. apiece; thence to Castlon’s the type maker, where Houghton and I went into the printing cutting place; he was married to another wife, who made excuses for his undress, we drank a pint of wine at the Swan, and he said types could not be made for our shorthand.’

31 August 1742
‘I have been at the other end of the Strand to enquire of a lady about a book that her brother-in-law, Dr Gheyne at Bath, is very fond of, from whom I have just received a letter, but could not find her at home. I won a pint of wine of Mr Pickering; he would lay that Prague was taken before he went, but we hear not of it in the Gazette yet, for I called in at the coffeehouse where Dr Pellet and company meet by Mr Lloyd’s lodgings; he is gone, I suppose, to the Guild, which makes a noise even here.’

This article is a slightly revised version of one first published on 29 February 2012.

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 - ’