One wave after another

Eighty years ago today, ‘with this very nib-ful of ink’, Virginia Woolf finished a first draft of her most experimental novel, The Waves. It is ‘full of holes and patches’, she tells her diary, and needs ‘re-building’. A few days later, she wants to begin cutting out ‘masses of irrelevance and clearing, sharpening and making the good phrases shine. One wave after another.’

Virginia was the second daughter of Sir Leslie Stephen, the first editor of the National Biography. The family, very well connected in literary circles, lived in Hyde Park Gate but had a country home at St Ives in Cornwall. Woolf’s mother died when she was 13 and her father died ten years later. Both these losses precipitated mental breakdowns which left the young Virginia psychologically fragile for the rest of her life. She settled in Gordon Square with her sister Vanessa and her brother Adrian, and subsequently married Leonard Sidney Woolf. The Woolfs and their many literary friends became known as the Bloomsbury Group.

In 1917, Virginia and Leonard launched the Hogarth Press, which published their own works as well as those by other literary and artist figures, such as T S Eliot, Laurens van der Post, Dora Carrington and Vanessa Bell. Two years later, they bought Monks House in Rodmell, East Sussex. It was there, and in the 1920s, that Virginia wrote most of her novels, such as To the Lighthouse (1927), Orlando (1928), and The Waves (1931). It was also during the 1920s that she had a long-term affair with Vita Sackville-West, wife of Harold Nicolson.

According to the Wikipedia biography, the onset of World War II, the destruction of her London home during the Blitz, and the cool reception given to a biography of her late friend Roger Fry all contributed to a growing depression. On 28 March 1941, she put on her overcoat, filled its pockets with stones, walked into the River Ouse near her home, and drowned herself. Further biographical information is available from The British Library, Biography.com or The Virginia Woolf Society.

Although she did not write a diary every day, Virginia Woolf was a committed diarist. She began keeping a journal in 1915 and continued to do so until a few days before her death. Extracts were published for the first time in A Writer’s Diary by The Hogarth Press in 1953. The extracts were chosen by Leonard Woolf specifically to reflect his wife’s life as a writer. In the introduction, though, he talks more generally about Virginia’s diary, and says: [It] gives for 27 years a consecutive record of what she did, of the people whom she saw, and particularly of what she thought about those people, about herself, about life, and about the books she was writing or hoped to write.’

A much fuller (and more faithful - Leonard had made Virginia’s prose more formal than it was) version of the diary was published by The Hogarth Press in five volumes during the late 1970s and early 1980s. These were edited by Anne Olivier Bell, the wife of Woolf’s nephew, and were much acclaimed at the time. Apart from being beautifully written in their own right, they also provide a first-hand account of the revered Bloomsbury Group, and an excellent insight into a writer’s creative processes. See The Diary Junction for links to a few online extracts.

Here, though, are two extracts from A Writer’s Diary, the first taken from exactly 80 years ago today, when Virginia was finishing a first draft of The Waves, a novel that would prove to be her most experimental (Internet Archive has the e-texts of both works freely available).

29 April 1930
‘And I have just finished, with this very nib-ful of ink, the last sentence of The Waves. I think I should record this for my own information. Yes, it was the greatest stretch of mind I ever knew; certainly the last pages; I don’t think they flop as much as usual. And I think I have kept starkly and ascetically to the plan. So much I will say in self-congratulation. But I have never written a book so full of holes and patches; that will need re-building, yes, not only re-modelling. I suspect the structure is wrong. Never mind. I might have done something easy and fluent; and this is a reach after that vision I had, the unhappy summer - or three weeks - at Rodmell, after finishing The Lighthouse. (And that reminds me - I must hastily provide my mind with something else, or it will again become pecking and wretched - something imaginative, if possible, and light; for I shall tire of Hazlitt and criticism after the first divine relief; and I feel pleasantly aware of various adumbrations in the back of my head; a life of Duncan; no, something about canvases glowing in a studio; but that can wait.)

And I think to myself as I walk down Southampton Row, ‘And I have given you a new book.’ ’

1 May 1930
‘And I have completely ruined my morning. Yes that is literally true. They sent me a book from The Times, as if advised by Heaven of my liberty; and feeling my liberty wild upon me, I rushed to the cable and told Van Doren I would write on Scott. And now having read Scott, or the editor whom Hugh provides, I won’t and can’t; and have got into a fret trying to read it, and writing to Richmond to say I can’t: have wasted the brilliant first of May which makes my skylight blue and gold; have only a rubbish heap in my head; can’t read and can’t write and can’t think. The truth is, of course, I want to be back at The Waves. Yes that is the truth. Unlike all that I begin to re-write it, or conceive it again with ardour, directly I have done it. I begin to see what I had in my mind; and want to begin cutting out masses of irrelevance and clearing, sharpening and making the good phrases shine. One wave after another. No room. And so on. But then we are going touring in Devon and Cornwall on Sunday, which means a week off; and then I shall perhaps make my critical brain do a month’s work for exercise. What could it be set to? Or a story? - no, not another story now . . .’

Napoleon’s young bride

‘I set out from Compiegne, delighted with the idea of such a pleasant journey. I had never before travelled without sadness, but now felt the undertaking would be delightful and am certain I shall love travelling to distraction. . . In every place the Emperor was received by the inhabitants with ringing of bells and firing of salutes, expressions of a devotion as simple as it was touching. Everywhere the young ladies presented us with flowers and poems, most of the latter were very poor.’ Thus wrote Napoleon’s second wife, the 19 year-old Marie Louise, in a diary exactly 200 years ago today, at the very start of her first royal visit, and only weeks after she had married Emperor Napoleon.

Marie Louise was born in 1791 at the Hofburg Palace in Vienna, the daughter of Francis II, Holy Roman Emperor, and of his second wife, Maria Teresa. In March 1810, she was married by proxy to the French Emperor Napoleon, a further ceremony taking place in the chapel of the Louvre on 1 April 1810. For Napoleon, this his second marriage was both an attempt to father a legitimate heir and to validate his Empire by marrying a member of the House of Habsburg, one of the oldest ruling families of Europe. Napoleon and Marie Louise had one son, in 1911, given the title King of Rome (and the future Napoleon II).

For short periods when Napoleon was absent, Marie Louise acted as Regent of France. But when Napoleon was exiled to the island of Elba, she returned to Austria, and, under the terms of Treaty of Fontainebleau, became the Duchess of Parma (and other territories). In 1821, four months after Napoleon’s death, Marie Louise married her lover, Count Adam Albert von Neipperg (having already borne him two children; another one would follow). Together they governed their duchies more liberally than did most other princes in Italy. After Neipperg’s death she married again, to Charles-René, Count of Bombelles in 1834; and she died in 1847. For more biographical information see Wikipedia or an entry at Authorama.

A first edition of Marie Louise’s diaries was edited by Frédéric Masson and published in 1922 by John Murray, London, with the title The Private Diaries of the Empress Marie-Louise. Masson explains, in his introduction, how he found the diaries:

‘In 1918 I received a communication from London in which Lady Thompson invited me to consider a Diary of the Journeys of the Empress Marie-Louise, which had been bequeathed to her, with a view to its publication. I accepted this proposal with much pleasure, and shortly after received the manuscript, the contents of which convinced me of its authenticity. This manuscript, the size of note-paper, is bound into a red morocco volume, the covers and fly-leaves being lined with green satin. The script is contemporaneous with the early years of last century, being regular and well-formed. At first it did not appear to me to be the handwriting of the Empress; the perusal of the text, however, removed all doubt as to its origin.

In answer to my inquiries as to how this manuscript had come into her possession, Lady Thompson forwarded me a letter from her grandmother, Mrs Smijth Windham, which runs as follows: ‘In the year 1836 I became acquainted with a Swiss governess, called Mdlle Muller, who lived many years with Lady Jane Peel. She was very intimate with a governess I had for my children, and I came into the room one day as she was reading these Memoirs to her friend. I stopped to listen, and then borrowed the book, which amused us much. Some months after this I proposed to her to let me purchase it, and after some hesitation she agreed. All she knew of it was, her brother Monsieur Mullier was tutor to one of Marie-Louise’s pages who was in waiting when she escaped from the Tuileries; he picked it up from the floor and gave it to his tutor some time afterwards. The page’s name is written in small characters on the first leaf of the book - Vicomte de . . . - I forget the name. This is all I know. Kath. Smijth Windham.’

Nevertheless, there are cogent proofs to demonstrate the authenticity of the manuscript. It is divided into three parts; the first records the Imperial journey in the departments of Northern France and Belgium, between April 27 and May 13, 1810; the second comprises the journey of Marie-Louise to Mayence from July 23 to August 9, 1813; the third, her journey to Cherbourg from August 23 to September 5, 1813. These three journeys mark important epochs in the Emperor’s history; the first was made in the full enjoyment and splendour of a destiny fulfilled; the second and the third were undertaken when sinister rumours were in the air, when treason was breeding, when the very basis of the system, the Austrian Alliance, had been destroyed. . . The Diary commences on April 27, 1810, the journey during which Marie-Louise jotted down the first pages. . .

And here are the first entries in that diary from exactly two centuries ago today (taken from the etext of The Private Diaries of the Empress Marie-Louise which is freely available at Internet Archive).

27 April 1810
‘I set out from Compiegne, delighted with the idea of such a pleasant journey. I had never before travelled without sadness, but now felt the undertaking would be delightful and am certain I shall love travelling to distraction. The Queen of Naples and the Grand Duke of Wurtzburg accompanied us. It was a particular pleasure to have the latter with me, he is so kind and vivacious.

We left Compiegne on April 27 at nine in the morning. The country as far as St Quentin is very pretty, even beautiful, also very fertile. All along the road are little hills covered with fruit trees now in full bloom, and fields of the most fascinating green intersected by small streams bordered with willows. There are many hamlets and villages, but what struck me most was the quantity of wind-mills.

In every place the Emperor was received by the inhabitants with ringing of bells and firing of salutes, expressions of a devotion as simple as it was touching. Everywhere the young ladies presented us with flowers and poems, most of the latter were very poor.

We arrive at St Quentin at midday and were lodged in the Préfecture where everything was uncomfortable and dirty, and what was worse was the fact that I was a quarter of a league away from the Emperor. He took luncheon at once and rode off to visit the fortifications and the source of the St Quentin canal, which had just been finished from a plan provided by the Emperor himself. I went to bed with lumbago, not yet being accustomed to continuous travelling over paved roads.

The Emperor made me get up at four o’clock to visit a cotton-mill belonging to the prefect, which is remarkable, the machines are wonderful inventions.

On our return we received the chief officials. The Emperor conversed with them for over two hours. These audiences are enough to kill one, for it is necessary to stand all the time! Afterwards young ladies presented me with specimens from their factories.

The Emperor was much amused while telling me of an accident which happened to M Joan [Jouan, knight of the Legion of Honour, surgeon-major] who, while galloping without looking where he was going, was caught on the branch of a tree; the horse went on and after a few minutes he fell to the ground without hurting himself in the least. Malicious tongues say that for more than an hour he thought himself dead, which is very like him!

After dinner there was a ball at the town hall and a cantata was sung which contained the most fulsome compliments. The Queen opened the ball by dancing a Contredance francaise with Chamberlain de Metternich.

The town of St Quentin has about 12,000 inhabitants. It is very old and badly built, but commercially flourishing. The local manufactures are longcloth, linen, cambric, leather, and morocco; the trade in cotton brings in over 3 millions annually.

The next day
We left St Quentin at seven in the morning, and after passing through the whole of the city, which is not very large, we arrived at the canal, where we found two gondolas awaiting us. The canal begins at St Quentin and terminates at Cambrai, where it joins the Scheldt. It is over 22 leagues in length having 23 locks, and is very wide and deep. We went on board and continued our way beneath a blazing sun which gave us terrible headaches. We reached the first tunnel into which the water had not yet been admitted and entered carriages in order to pass through it. The length is a quarter of a league, entirely cut out of the rock. The vault is very high and was illuminated by two rows of lamps which made a magnificent effect. It is a masterpiece, unique of its kind. We continued our journey by carriage as far as the entrance to the second tunnel, where tents had been pitched for lunch, which we welcomed like famished travellers. We went through this tunnel, which is a league and a half long, in a boat rowed by men, which was not very serviceable, for it let in two inches of water, which wetted our feet, but as there was no means of remedying it, one had to bear up gaily, which for me was not difficult as I have an iron constitution which nothing injures. In addition we narrowly escaped capsizing because the fat Prince Schwarzenberg was continually leaning out of the boat and his weight threw it all on one side. This second tunnel was illuminated like the first, and at the end of every hundred toises (about 650 feet) there was a shaft to let in daylight. After an hour and a half we reached the mouth of the canal and got into the carriages again.

We saw the source of the Scheldt, that majestic river, which 40 leagues farther on is so wide and deep that the largest battleships can navigate it, but is here so narrow that one can easily cross it by a standing jump. It passes twice under the canal, which is carried over it by means of an aqueduct; the bridge is so narrow that we were obliged to leave the carriages which were then lifted over by men. This affair delayed us more than an hour and put the Queen of Naples into such a bad temper that no one could speak to her for the rest of the day. I cannot understand how people when travelling can grumble and get impatient over such trifling accidents! To me they were very insignificant in comparison with all I had had to put up with in other journeys, of which I had never complained.

We went on board again half a league from Cambrai, and at half-past three entered the basin at the end of the canal, where a number of trading vessels, laden with coal, were waiting to enter the canal to carry their cargoes to Paris.

On reaching the Hotel de Ville I went to bed, for the sun had given me a shocking headache. I was, however, quite pleased with myself at not having grumbled once during the journey. Truly the bad temper of several of the ladies was enough to prevent me from fault finding.’

Daffodils so beautiful

William Wordsworth, one of the great British Romantic poets, died 160 years ago today. Although he was not a diarist, his sister, Dorothy, was - and not a bad one either. She never wrote for publication, nor was she published in her lifetime, but her journals, when they were finally put into print 40 years after her death, revealed not only a writer of great literary talent but also much about her brother’s life and, in particular, the genesis of his poems.

Both William and Dorothy were born in Cockermouth, Cumberland, in 1770 and 1771 respectively. Their parents were reasonably well off but, when their mother died in 1778, they were separated. William was sent to Hawkshead Grammar School, near Windermere, and then, from 1787, he studied at Cambridge. That same year he made his debut as a writer with a sonnet in The European Magazine. Having already been to the continent on a hiking tour, he returned to France in 1791, and became passionate for the Republic cause. He also had an affair with Annette Vallon who, a year later, bore him an illegitimate daughter, Caroline. William, however, was obliged to return to England; and war with France kept him away for nearly a decade.

In 1793, William Wordsworth published his first poetry collections An Evening Walk and Descriptive Sketches. Two years later he met Samuel Taylor Coleridge in Somerset, and two further years later, William and Dorothy, moved to Alfoxton House, Somerset, just a few miles from Coleridge’s home. Together, William Wordsworth and Coleridge (with contributions from Dorothy) produced Lyrical Ballads in 1798 - which is considered an important work in the English Romantic movement.

The three friends then travelled to Germany before William and Dorothy moved to the Lake district, near Grasmere. William went on to marry Mary Hutchinson who bore him five children, two of whom died while young. When Robert Southey died in 1843, Wordsworth was named Poet Laureate. By 1805, William had already completed a first draft of, what is now considered, his autobiographical masterpiece, but it was only published posthumously, as The Prelude. He died on 23 April 1850 - 160 years ago today. Further biographical information is available from Wikipedia, The Victorian Web, The Poetry Foundation or The Atlantic.

Dorothy lived to 1855, but for the last 20 years she was plagued by physical and mental illness. None of her writing was ever published in her lifetime - mostly she wrote exclusively for herself and her brother - but the journals are considered to be beautifully written and important works of literature in their own right. Moreover, they are important because they throw light on William’s life and, in particular, the circumstances of the writing of many, if not most, of his poems. It is clear that William was often inspired by his sister, but some acedamics argue that he might have borrowed from her writing too.

Journals of Dorothy Wordsworth was first edited by W Knight and published in two volumes by Macmillan in 1897. These editions are freely available at Internet Archive, but many other editions were published in the 20th century. Further information and links for extracts from her diaries are available at The Diary Junction.

Here are two extracts from Dorothy’s journal written while at Grasmere (taken from a 1941 edition of the Journals edited by E de Selincourt). Both relate to poems her brother was writing or would write. The second extract is generally considered to be about the walk which inspired one of Wordsworth’s most famous poems, Daffodils, which starts: ‘I wander’d lonely as a cloud’.

14 March 1802
‘William had slept badly - he got up at nine o’clock, but before he rose he had finished The Beggar Boys, and while we were at breakfast that is (for I had breakfasted) he, with his basin of broth before him untouched, and a little plate of bread and butter he wrote the Poem to a Butterfly! He ate not a morsel, nor put on his stockings, but sate with his shirt neck unbuttoned, and his waistcoat open while he did it. The thought first came upon him as we were talking about the pleasure we both always feel at the sight of a butterfly. I told him that I used to chase them a little, but that I was afraid of brushing the dust off their wings, and did not catch them. He told me how they used to kill all the white ones when he went to school because they were Frenchmen. Mr Simpson came in just as he was finishing the Poem. After he was gone I wrote it down and the other poems, and I read them all over to him. We then called at Mr Oliff’s - Mr O walked with us to within sight of Rydale - the sun shone very pleasantly, yet it was extremely cold. We dined and then Wm went to bed. I lay upon the fur gown before the fire, but I could not sleep - I lay there a long time. It is now halfpast 5 - I am going to write letters - I began to write to Mrs Rawson. William rose without having slept - we sate comfortably by the fire till he began to try to alter The Butterfly, and tired himself - he went to bed tired.’

15 April 1802
‘It was a threatening, misty morning, but mild. We set off after dinner from Eusemere. Mrs Clarkson went a short way with us, but turned back. The wind was furious, and we thought we must have returned. We first rested in the large boat-house, then under a furze [gorse] bush opposite Mr Clarkson’s. Saw the plough going in the field. The wind seized our breath. The Lake was rough. There was a boat by itself floating in the middle of the bay below Water Millock. We rested again in Water Millock Lane. The hawthorns are black and green, the birches here and there greenish, but there is yet more of purple to be seen on the twigs. We got over into a field to avoid some cows - people working. A few primroses by the roadside - woodsorrel flower, the anemone, scentless violets, strawberries, and that starry, yellow flower which Mrs C calls pile wort. When we were in the woods beyond Gowbarrow park we saw a few daffodils close to the water-side. We fancied that the lake had floated the seeds ashore, and that the little colony had so sprung up. But as we went along there were more and yet more; and at last, under the boughs of the trees, we saw that there was a long belt of them along the shore, about the breadth of a country turnpike road. I never saw daffodils so beautiful. They grew among the mossy stones about and about them; some rested their heads upon these stones as on a pillow for weariness; and the rest tossed and reeled and danced, and seemed as if they verily laughed with the wind, that blew upon them over the lake; they looked so gay, ever glancing, ever changing. This wind blew directly over the lake to them. There was here and there a little knot, and a few stragglers a few yards higher up; but they were so few as not to disturb the simplicity, unity, and life of that one busy highway. We rested again and again. The bays were stormy, and we heard the waves at different distances, and in the middle of the water, like the sea. Rain came on . . .’

Fifty heads in one day

Oxford University Press has just re-published Antera Duke’s diary. Antera Duke was an African slave-trading chief, and his diary is said to be the only surviving eyewitness account of slave trading by an African merchant. And pretty callous the trade was too. One entry in the diary reads: ‘So we got ready to cut heads off and at 5 o’clock in the morning we began to cut slaves’ heads off, fifty heads off in that one day.’

Not much is known about Antera Duke. He is thought to have been born around 1735 and to have died around 1809. He was an Efik chief from Duke Town, Calabar in eastern Nigeria (now in Cross River State) about 40 miles from the Atlantic Ocean - see Wikipedia for more on the Efik people. But, thanks to a diary he kept, we also know he was a slave trader.

Written in Nigerian Pidgin English, the diary was discovered in Scotland over half a century ago, and published in 1956 for the International African Institute by Oxford University Press (OUP): Efik Traders of Old Calabar: Containing the Diary of Antera Duke, an Efik Slave-Trading Chief of the Eighteenth Century together with an Ethnographic Sketch and Notes by Donald Simmons & an Essay on the Political Organization of Old Calabar by G. I. Jones. This diary is said to be the only surviving eyewitness account of the slave trade by an African merchant, thus providing valuable information on Old Calabar’s economic activity both with other African businessmen and with European ship captains who arrived to trade for slaves, produce, and provisions.

OUP has now (February in the US, May in the UK - see Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk) brought out a new edition of Antera’s diary with the original (and difficult to understand) trade-English along side a translation into standard English on facing pages. The Diary of Antera Duke, an Eighteenth-Century African Slave Trader is edited by Stephen D Behrendt, A J H Latham and David Northrup. The publisher says the new edition draws on the latest scholarship: ‘Introductory essays set the stage for the Old Calabar of Antera Duke’s lifetime, explore the range of trades, from slaves to produce, in which he rose to prominence, and follow Antera on trading missions across an extensive commercial hinterland. The essays trace the settlement and development of the towns that comprised Old Calabar and survey the community’s social and political structure, rivalries among families, sacrifices of slaves, and witchcraft ordeals.’

Jon Silkin, writing a review of the 1956 edition for African Affairs, found the diary itself fascinating but was not very impressed by the scholarship attached to it. He wrote: ‘The most enlightening two sections in the book, enlightening in the sense that they tell you more about the Efiks than any of the stuff elsewhere, are the two versions of the fascinating diary kept by Antera Duke. These two versions: the original one and its more Anglicised equivalent, re-inforce what after all one might suspect the people to have been: avaricious, anxiety-ridden, superstitious, cheerful, propitiatory and extremely cruel, capable of extreme savagery and violence not only on other tribes (whom they enslaved), but on their criminals (whom they also enslaved) as well as each other.’

He provides an example of the diary in the two versions (1787, but otherwise undated):

Original: ‘. . . wee tak grandy Egbo and cany to Henshaw and Willy Tom for brow for not Captain for send and Callabar poun was putt for tak my slave goods to not send them poun way in Tender so wee have Tatam Tender go away with 330 slaves . . .’

Transcription: ‘We carried Grand Ekpe to Henshaw and Willy Tom to blow forbidding and Captain to send Calabar pawn, which was given for my slave goods, away in his tender. Tatam’s tender went away with 330 slaves. . .’

And here is a final diary entry, Silkin says, which treats cruelty with all the assumption of naturalness.

‘About 4 a.m. I got up; there was great rain, so I walked to the town palaver house and I found all the gentlemen here. So we got ready to cut heads off and at 5 o’clock in the morning we began to cut slaves’ heads off, fifty heads off in that one day . . .’

Charge of the Light Brigade

‘Many officers of Light cavalry were killed, and a number slightly wounded. There were no infantry early in the morning, and when they did come they were not engaged. The light cavalry were murdered in doing work, when infantry should have been first engaged, and artillery were indispensable. A very fine, warm day.’ This is Edward Hodge, a British army officer born 200 years ago today, writing in his diary about the Charge of the Light Brigade, one of the most famous incidents of the Crimean War.

Born in Weymouth, Dorset, on 19 April 1810, Edward Cooper Hodge was the only son of Major Edward Hodge, a soldier who distinguished himself throughout the Napoleonic wars but who died when his son was only five. Educated at Eton, Edward Cooper developed a reputation at rowing. In 1826, he left the school to join his mother and sisters in Paris. Aged 16, he was given a Cornetcy in the 13th Light Dragoons but, after only four months, switched to the 4th Dragoon Guards, in which he served throughout his army career, reaching the rank of general. He died in 1894. A little more biographical information is available from the British Medals and Irish Masonic History websites.

Hodge is remembered largely because of a diary he kept during the Crimean War. It was edited by the Marquess of Anglesey, and published by Leo Cooper 1971 as Little Hodge: Being Extracts from the Diaries and Letters of Colonel Edward Cooper Hodge Written During the Crimean War, 1854-1856.

The Crimean War, part of a larger conflict for influence over lands once dominated by the Ottoman Empire, was fought in the mid-1850s between the Russian Empire and an alliance of the British, French and Ottoman Empires. The Battle of Balaclava, on 25 October 1854, was one of the key events of a campaign within the Crimean War to capture Sevastopol, Russia’s principal naval base on the Black Sea. And much the best remembered event of that battle if not of the whole Crimean War is the Charge of the Light Brigade, which was immortalised in a poem by Alfred Tennyson.

Hodge’s diary is filled with short succinct entries, though one of the longest is for the day of the Battle of Balaclava. Here is that entry, and another short one for the following day.

25 October 1854
‘The Russians in great force attacked the outposts and forts garrisoned by the Turks, who were quickly turned out with a loss of 9 guns.

In fact the Turks, opposed by at least ten times their number, put up an heroic resistance which gave the allies more than an hour’s invaluable breathing space.

After suffering 170 casualties, they were driven from the first three redoubts. The Russians now poured infantry into these, and brought up to them a number of field-pieces. All this time Lucan could do nothing but make threatening demonstrations whilst falling back before the slowly advancing Russians, and ordering his horse artillery to try to reply to their much bigger guns. On Sir Colin Campbell’s advice, Lucan soon withdrew to the left, so as to be out of the line of fire of both the Russian guns and the 93rd, and in a position to attack the flank of the Russians should they charge the Scottish infantry. This now happened.

Their cavalry attacked the 93rd, who perceived them with a volley, and turned them.

The left column was only a small part of Liprandi’s mounted arm, perhaps 400 in number. Almost immediately after its defeat, a large body of cavalry came into the plain and were charged by the Greys and the Inniskillings. We were in reserve, and I brought forward our left and charged these cavalry in flank. The Greys were a little in confusion and retiring when our charge settled the business. We completely routed the hussars and cossacks, and drove them back.

[The editor, the Marquess of Anglesey, says here: ‘A more pithy description of the charge of the Heavy Brigade does not exist.’]

They retired, and then Lord Raglan should have been satisfied. The Russians retired to a strong position, a valley with batteries on the heights in front and on each flank. There was a battery of 9 guns in front of us, and a body of cavalry, and all these batteries on the heights.

Lord Raglan ordered the light cavalry to charge these guns and cavalry. They did so in the most gallant manner, but at the sacrifice of nearly the Brigade. The guns played upon them at about 200 yards from the batteries in front and flank. They advanced, took the guns, and charged the cavalry, who met them well. They were so knocked to pieces by the guns that the cavalry overpowered them, and they were obliged to retire having lost in every regiment some two 3rds of their men and officers. We advanced to cover their retreat, but the batteries got our range and began cutting us up terribly. I was not sorry when we were ordered to retreat.

[The editor says here: ‘Except for the facile way in which the blame for it is unhesitatingly placed upon Raglan, this is a surprisingly accurate outline of the famous Charge of the Light Brigade.’]

The Russians did not follow, or quit their strong position, and we remained on the ground till 8pm, when we were ordered to return to our camp, and to go to the rear some two miles, which we did.

Both my servants got brutally drunk, and I found them lying on their backs, and with difficulty I was enabled to save my baggage. I got up my bed in Forrest’s tent and slept there.

Our loss today was 1 killed (Ryan), 1 severely (Scanlan) and 4 slightly wounded.

Many officers of Light cavalry were killed, and a number slightly wounded. There were no infantry early in the morning, and when they did come they were not engaged. The light cavalry were murdered in doing work, when infantry should have been first engaged, and artillery were indispensable. A very fine, warm day.’

26 October 1854
‘I find my rascally servants not only got drunk, but they committed robberies upon the officers’ stores. They have lost my tent, and I only wonder that I have any kit left. I am most uncomfortable with such blackguards as these about me. I am far from well today. I am much purged and griped.’

Diary briefs

Battle of Britain diaries to be tweeted in real time - The Daily Telegraph

Twitter Updates likened to 18th century diaries - The Wall Street Journal

Diaries of the seventeenth century by Dr Mark Knights - BBC

More sex and bribery diaries in China (see also . . . and 50,000 yuan) - China Daily

Two days in Alicante

Today is the 30th anniversary of the day I met Manu in an Ibiza cafe, a lovely man with whom I am still in touch today. But that encounter only happened because, after a fated bus ride from Madrid, I’d missed a boat by minutes and been stranded in Alicante for two days. Here is how I wrote the story in my diary all those 30 years ago.

3 April 1980
‘At first I didn’t even know if I wanted to go to Ibiza, I thought I might go to Barcelona and thence to Menorca. So, right at the beginning, I was full of indecision. As the weekend turned itself over slowly, though, I began to make plans to go to Ibiza.

Pepe rings a friend who works for the shipping company. Although the boat is already booked up, she says she will get me a ticket. On Monday I go to collect it - leaving at midnight Wednesday 2 April.

In the afternoon, I go to the Corte Ingles travel agency where I’m told there is no place on the Wednesday afternoon train to Alicante, I swear under my breath, and let her book me on the morning train. I am not happy because this means I lose the Wednesday but I still have work to do. Back at the flat, I talk with Pepe and Pia, who suggest I go by bus. It takes some effort, but eventually I get the number for Estacion Sur and am told there is a bus leaving at 2pm on Wednesday. I run to Estacion Sur, but, on arriving, my heart sinks at the sight of the long queues. I suffer two hours of waiting. Fights and arguments break out everywhere, tempers are high. I finish a novel before arriving at the ticket office. Once at the buying window I discover there is an even later bus at 3:30pm (arriving at 9pm) as well as at 2:00, so I buy a ticket for that bus and head back for the apartment. I am pleased with myself that I’ve managed to sort out an itinerary.

The following morning between work appointments I squeeze a visit to the Corte Ingles to cash in my train ticket. I lose £2.50 on the refund, but at least everything is organised. I begin to look forward to Ibiza. I spend Wednesday on the telephone working, but none of the work proves useful, and I could so easily have taken the 2:00 bus.

On the 3:30 bus - all the way there are long queues of holiday traffic, and long, long waits, and the bus is three hours late. A taxi speeds me through the streets, clocking up pesetas, faster, faster, down to the port, along the quay, but by the time I get to the quay, the boat has left - 10 minutes earlier! Now there isn’t another boat for two days.

I am by the stone columns of a church that is now three-quarters cinema and one quarter cafe. . . I walk around the old city of Alicante, looking for a smile, a meeting, a hand to touch. One area seems very alive with hip youth. They move about from group to group, bar to bar, stand around drinking wine and rolling cigarettes fuelled with grass. Not far away another mass of people - the old, the mourning, the middle-aged, the regimented young, the crippled and the scarred - are pouring out of mass.’

5 April 1980
‘I made it. Ibiza. I managed to use the wrongly-dated ticket, but only just. My adrenalin was on its racing track. There was some confusion as I was checked against the cabin list but the official failed to notice the wrong date.

In the queue to get on the boat I befriended Ronny, a guitarist, who says he can live from playing, but is not good enough to get rich. He has blond hair curling all over his brown-tanned face. He has just spent two weeks on a boat skippered by his brother. It’s a half-a-million job and its owner hasn’t been near it in 18 months. He tells stories of contracts with ATV and MAM and the guitar centre in Palma where he hopes to work. When he has money he spends it, first class all the way. He doesn’t believe in guarding it at all, and explains why: he had a girlfriend who had used all her savings to start a hairdressing business, then, after a year or so when it was going very well, she was riding her bicycle and was killed by a lorry. He tells me that he also knew the daughter of the pilot that was flying a Trident in which a hundred people were killed near Heathrow ten years ago. Apparently, the pilot had a heart condition and put the wrong signals into the computer!

Although it started to rain on arriving, I was not unlucky. Within half an hour, I met a man called Manu. He happens to be at the Lecoq school in Paris and knows my friend Harold, and has a house on the other side of the island. Manu’s father, a German painter, lives half in Berlin and half in Ibiza. Manu himself speaks at least five languages, and is an accomplished musician. Right now, though, he’s into theatre. We drink yierba at Ibecenco and wine at Pepi’s with home cured sausage and baked bread.

Alicante, as it happens, only got better and better. I discovered El Castillo de Santa Barbara and some beautiful terraced houses. I watched Easter processions with all those shiny satin clothes and dunce hats. I wrote my business report. I ate a meal, I talked to some English people. I took lots of photos. The two days weren’t so bad after all.’

Music was sounding

‘When I woke up I heard a sound, it grew even louder, I could no longer imagine myself in a dream, music was sounding, and what music!’ This is Cosima Liszt Wagner - who died 80 years ago today - writing in her diary about the first birthday she celebrated as Richard Wagner’s wife. Her diaries, written very much to be a record about Wagner rather than herself, are justly famous because they provide so much interesting and intimate detail about his domestic and composing life.

Cosima, born at Bellagio, Italy, was the illegitimate daughter of the famous pianist and composer, Franz Liszt, and Countess Marie d’Agoult, an author who later used the pen name Daniel Stern. In 1857, Cosima married Hans von Bülow, an orchestral conductor, who mistreated her. They had two children. In 1862, she became the mistress of the German composer, Wagner, who was much older than she, and also married. From 1866, they lived together at the villa Triebschen, provided by King Ludwig II of Bavaria, on the shore of Lake Lucerne, Switzerland. She had three children with Wagner, all of whom were born before they finally married in 1870. After the death of Wagner, in 1883, she became director of the Bayreuth Festival. She died on 1 April 1930, eighty years ago today.

The detailed diary kept by Cosima about her life with Wagner was suppressed for nearly a century, largely by Eva, their youngest daughter, but was finally published in English in two volumes by Collins, London, in 1978 and 1980 (and by Harcourt Brace Jovanovich in New York). Volume one of Cosima Wagner Diaries covers the period 1869 to 1877, and volume two 1878-1883. Both are edited and annotated by Martin Gregor-Dellin and Dietrich Mack and translated by Geoffrey Skelton. More recently, in 1997, Yale University Press published Cosima Wagner’s Diaries: An Abridgement - a few pages can be read at Amazon.com. Otherwise, several websites have some extracts from the diaries: The Nietzsche Channel, Porges.net and The Guardian.

Skelton, in his introduction, explains how Cosima began keeping a diary to continue a biographical account of Wagner’s life that until then he himself had been writing in the form of autobiographical notes - and this was at the request of King Ludwig II. Once together with Cosima, he claimed she was better able to continue the biography. Occasionally, though, Wagner himself would write in the diary, or comment on Cosima’s entries.

‘Whatever the original intention,’ Skelton says, ‘it is clear from the very first page of her Diaries that Cosima considered them as much more than mere aids to memory for a future biography. Their avowed purpose was to provide a sort of apologia for her children, so that in later years they would be better able to understand her conduct in leaving Hans von Bülow for Richard Wagner, and would at the same time gain a proper appreciation of the man of genius to whom she had dedicated her life. If she frequently loses sight of this maternal intention and to confide in her diary intimate reflections of a purely private kind, she never forgot that the focus of her attention was always Richard. On the only occasion when she left home alone with the children for a few days, she made no entries, since she had nothing to record about him. And the last entry (February 12, 1883) was made on the day before he died.’

Here are a few extracts. The first and last were written on her birthday - the former on her first birthday with Wagner after their marriage the previous August.

25 December 1870
‘About this day, my children, I can tell you nothing - nothing about my feelings, nothing about my mood, nothing, nothing, nothing. I shall just tell you, dryly and plainly, what happened. When I woke up I heard a sound, it grew even louder, I could no longer imagine myself in a dream, music was sounding, and what music! After it had died away, R came in to me with the five children and put into my hands the score of his Symphonic Birthday Greeting. I was in tears, but so, too, was the whole household; R had set up his orchestra on the stairs and thus consecrated our Tribschen forever! The Tribschen Idyll - thus the work is called. - At midday Dr Sulzer arrived, surely the most important of R’s friends! After breakfast the orchestra again assembled, and now once again the Idyll was heard in the lower apartment, moving us all profoundly (Countess B was also there, on my invitation); after it the Lohengrin wedding procession, Beethoven’s Septet, and, to end with, once more the work of which I shall never hear enough! - Now at last I understood all R’s working in secret, also dear Richter’s trumpet (he blazed out the Siegfried theme splendidly and had learned the trumpet especially to do it), which had won him many admonishments from me. ‘Now let me die,’ I exclaimed to R ‘It would be easier to die for me than to live for me,’ he replied. - In the evening R reads his Meistersinger to Dr Sulzer, who did not know it; and I take as much delight in it as if it were something completely new. This makes R say, ‘I wanted to read Sulzer Die Ms, and it turned into a dialogue between us two.’

27 June 1871
‘Still rain; but R is working - that is my sunshine! When, visiting him while he is at work, I tell him that, he says; ‘And do you know what makes me feel so irresponsible toward everything? The fact that I have you; none of our evil experiences touches the nerve of things; so I, too, can be single-minded. If I had had you with me in Paris, I should not have let myself in for all those things. The only trouble is, we came together late, I want to enjoy it for a long time yet.’ - Uncharitable feelings over my father’s behaviour. - R has composed Hagen’s aria [Hagen - a character in Götterdämmerung]. He says, ‘While doing it I was thinking of you asleep; I was uncertain whether to let himself express himself in silence or not; then I remembered how you talk in your dreams, and I saw I could let Hagen voice his emotions, which is much better.’ . .’

27 June 1872
‘R reads in the newspaper that there have been uprisings among the workers in Vienna, and again it is the misguided poor people who have been punished and persecuted. ‘The demagogues, the ringleaders, should be trodden underfoot like vermin,’ says R, very indignant that the misguided people are once again the victims. - Visit from the conductor Herbeck. Proposals for Vienna, inquiry whether R would perhaps do Die Walküre there, before Bayreuth - all of it nonsense. - Family lunch, the faces of musicians are discussed, and R says the handsomest was Méhul’s. On my remarking that these French musicians (Grétry, Méhul, etc.) were very gifted: ‘Oh the French are significant, no question of that, what they lack is an ideal, something which, when it comes to the point, doesn’t concern itself at all with form - like Bach for instance, who simply ignored the laws of euphony, which meant everything to the Italians, in favor of independence for his voices.’ - R has done some work, despite the interruption of Herr H. Walk with the children after the rain, renewed pleasure in the park: ‘If one could conjure it up with a wish, one couldn’t make it any lovelier.’ In the evening took up our old Gibbon again and continued with him, remarking as we did so that the English are much better and more original interpreters of Latin ways, their classical form and their settled outlook, than the French.’

27 June 1874
‘Quite a lot of things all at once; furnishing of the hall, which is to be consecrated today; visit from the machinist Brandt, arrival of the singer Scaria (Hagen) and visit from Frau Löper, back from Karlsbad. Herr Scaria sings somem of Hagen’s music straightaway, but since he knows nothing of the text, R reads it to him. Curious the dealings with these implements! -’

27 June 1876
‘Again 2nd act of S, again Herr Unger hoarse! Its impact greatly hindered in consequence. R and I both tired in the evening. Trouble with Herr Kögel (Hagen!), Gura has been chosen for Donner. - Things are said to be looking bad in Turkey.’

25 December 1877
‘Real brilliant sunshine, the first time for two months! R says to me, ‘Your birthday is my Sunday!’ He decides on a walk with the children before lunch, we go into the palace gardens, Siegfried’s new suit, in old Germanic style, gives us much pleasure. A merry meal, R solemnly proposes my health. In the evening the history of the Arabs again, after which R reads the first 3 cantos of the Divina commedia, to our great delight; then I ask him for something from Parsifal, and he plays Gurnemanz’s narration, the entry of Parsifal - divine blessings for my birthday!’

Heartbreaking day

‘I have always thought it would be unwholesome for me to attempt to write a diary. I’m sure it will make me think my life drab and strain after sensation to make copy for my autobiography.’ So begins a diary written during the First World War by Cynthia Asquith, described by some as one of the most fascinatingly beautiful women of her time. She died 50 years ago today.

There is a dearth of freely available information about Lady Cynthia Asquith on the internet. Wikipedia has a short entry, as does The Diary Junction; and the garish-looking Fantastic Fiction website has a bibliography. The Liberal England blog tells a cute story about how Lady Cynthia did in 1957 what Judith Keppel became famous for in 2000 - being an aristocrat and winning a big TV quiz prize!

Cynthia Charteris was born in 1887. In 1910 she married Herbert Asquith (the son of Herbert Henry Asquith, Prime Minister at the time) and they had three children. She is most well known, perhaps, for being private secretary to the author J M Barrie and for inheriting a large part of his fortune. She herself wrote for children, as well as horror/fantasy stories, and books of reminiscences. She died on 31 March 1960 - half a century ago today.

At the suggestion of a friend, she began to keep a diary during the First World War. This was published by Hutchinson, but not until 1968, as Lady Cynthia Asquith Diaries 1915-1918 - with a foreword by her lifelong friend L P Hartley. He wrote: ‘Lady Cynthia was one of the most fascinatingly beautiful women of her time - painted for love by McEvoy, Sargent, and Augustus John - and her lively wit and sensitivity of intelligence made her the treasured confidante of such diverse characters as D H Lawrence and Sir James Barrie, but when she died in 1960 she left a new generation to discover yet another of her gifts - as a rarely talented diarist. . .’

Hartley gives three reasons for the ‘value and fascination’ of
her diary: ‘Familiar figures cross her pages, often in ‘undress’, and a pulsing cross-section of the society of her time is shown. . . Secondly, the diary is also the story of the end of an era, symbolised perhaps in the curious anachronism of the Viceregal court in Dublin she describes with such delicious malice. . . And, finally, it is the unconscious analysis of a family and a woman’s identity - developing, maturing, changing, and almost completely breaking under the pressure of the most disastrous events that any generation had ever known.’

Here are a few extracts from Lady Cynthia Asquith Diaries 1915-1918, starting with the very first entry.

15 April 1915
‘I have always thought it would be unwholesome for me to attempt to write a diary. I’m sure it will make me think my life drab and strain after sensation to make copy for my autobiography. I shall become morbidly self-conscious and a valetudinarian about my career, so I shall try not to be un-introspective, and confine myself to events and diagnoses of other people. In any case I am entirely devoid of the gift of sincerity, and could never write as though I were really convinced no other eye would ever see what I wrote. I am incurably self-conscious. This impromptu resolution sprung from an absurd compact I made with Duff Cooper [a British politician and writer] that we would both begin a diary at the same moment, and bind each other over to keep it up. He has given me this lovely book - but instead of inspiring, it paralyses me and makes me feel my life will not be sufficiently purple. . .’

15 April 1916
Margot [second wife of her father-in-law, the Prime Minister] had given me a hat of hers a few days before - too ugly to be seen dead in, and also much too small. I went into Jays to ask if they would change it, but to my humiliating embarrassment they said it must be at least three or four years old.

Lunched at Downing Street with . . . Great discussion about Pamela Lytton. I - in my opinion platitudinously, but in Elizabeth’s paradoxically - supported her claims to superlative charm, saying I should have married her if a man, etc. Elizabeth and the unnatural men there demurred. Jack Tennant admitted she had made his heart beat quicker, but didn’t endorse my good opinion of her intelligence. I said, ‘But, surely, you don’t want a woman to be good at political economy?’ - rather a floater, as that is exactly his wife’s forte! The PM, coming in late, warmly supported me, saying Pamela had had the greatest erotic success of her day and was the most accomplished ‘plate-spinner’. It is bad tactics on Elizabeth’s part to belittle in women just those assets she is without, scoffing at Pamela, Ruby, and other beautiful sirens. . .’

30 July 1916
‘Glittering, scorching day and the town teeming like an anthill. No signs of war, save for the poor, legless men whom Michael tried to encourage by saying, ‘Poor wounded soldiers - soon be better.’ There is no doubt that Brighton has a charm of its own, almost amounting to glamour. I am beginning to be quite patriotic about this end of the town - Kemp Town as it is called - in opposition to the parvenu Hove, which has less character and is to this rather what the Lido is to Venice.

We joined the children on the beach - painfully hot and glaring. We took them in a boat to try and get cooler. Beb and I bathed from the rather squalid bathing machines - perfect in the water, except for the quantity of foreign bodies. . .’

19 September 1916
‘Heartbreaking day. Came downstairs in high spirits, opened newspaper and saw in large print: ‘Lieutenant Asquith Killed in Action’. Darling, brilliant, magically charming Raymond [her brother-in-law] - how much delight and laughter goes with him! It seems to take away one’s last remains of courage. One might have known that nothing so brilliant and precious could escape, but after each blow one’s hopes revive, and one reinvests one’s love and interest. Now I feel I have really relinquished all hope and expect no one to survive.’

Campaigning against slavery

Today is the 250th anniversary of the birth of Thomas Clarkson, a major figure in the anti-slavery movement of the late 1700s and early 1800s. He rode tens of thousands of miles across Britain - not once, but several times in his life - to promote, first, the anti-slave trade cause, and then the complete emancipation of slaves. Occasionally on these travels, Clarkson kept diaries. None of these have been published, but one is available online thanks to the excellent Abolition Project Website.

Clarkson was born at Wisbech in Cambridgeshire on 28 March 1760, and attended the local grammar school where his father was headmaster. He was sent to St Paul’s School in London, and won a scholarship to St John’s College, Cambridge, where he was ordained a deacon. However, the course of his life was ordained in a different direction thanks to winning an essay competition about the legality of slavery. Famously, he was on his way to London, when he stopped at a small village called Wadesmill, and underwent a kind of spiritual conversion. He wrote later that it was at Wadesmill where he realised ‘if the contents of the essay were true . . . it was time some person should see the calamities to their end’.

Clarkson soon published the essay, which received much attention and drew him into abolitionist circles. In May 1787, he and others (mostly Quakers but including Granville Sharp as chairman) formed the Committee for the Abolition of the Slave Trade. The young MP William Wilberforce provided a useful link to Parliament. Clarkson, himself, was asked to collect evidence to support the abolition of the slave trade, a task he undertook with much resolve. For two years, he rode around England (some 35,000 miles), interviewing sailors (20,000 of them), surgeons, and pub landlords, collecting equipment used on slave ships, and meeting with local anti-slave trade groups. As his evidence mounted, so he published more essays which were circulated widely.

And in 1791, Wilberforce put forward to Parliament a first draft law aimed at abolishing the slave trade. But, as a legitimate and lucrative business, generating prosperity for many ports, the trade had powerful supporters, and the bill was easily defeated. For the next few years, until the outbreak of war with France, Wilberforce continued to propose bills, and the Committee continued trying to mobilise public opinion in their support. However, the war only reinforced the opinion of many MPs that the slave trade provided important wealth for the nation as well as valuable training for the Navy. In 1794, an exhausted Clarkson retired from the campaign and bought an estate in the Lake District, where he became friends with William Wordsworth. After marrying Catherine Buck, from Bury St Edmunds, though, he set up home with her in Suffolk.

In 1804, the anti-slave trade campaign started up again in earnest and Clarkson again went travelling round Britain canvassing support, particularly from MPs. Three years later, in 1807, a bill for the abolition of the trade was finally passed. Thereafter, Clarkson published his History of the Rise, Progress and Accomplishment of the Abolition of the African Slave Trade in two volumes; he also travelled abroad to try and secure international agreements on abolition. By the early 1820s, Clarkson was once more riding through Britain, this time for the newly-formed Anti-Slavery Society (for which he had been appointed vice-president) trying to secure support for the total emancipation of slaves. A law to that effect was passed in 1833. For the rest of his life - he died in 1846 - Clarkson continued to campaign internationally, and was the principal speaker at the opening of the World Anti-Slavery Society Conference in London in 1840.

There is no shortage of biographical material about Clarkson on the internet - see Wikipedia, Thomas Clarkson website, or Brycchan Carey’s website for example; and the full text of his two volume history of the slave trade can be read at The Online Library of Liberty (and other sites).

Although there are no published versions of any diary by Clarkson, the National Archives website refers to three locations which have either diary or journal material: Howard University Library in Washington DC, Atlanta University Center Archives, and the National Library of Wales in Aberystwyth. The Howard University Library website, however, only lists correspondence among its Clarkson papers. The Robert W Woodruff Library at Atlanta University Center lists a journal, dated August 1789, which ‘recounts Clarkson’s trip to France and his observations in Paris of French Revolutionary activity’. The National Library of Wales is supposed to hold, what the National Archives says, is ‘1823-24: diary of a tour through Britain’ but I can find no trace of it on their website.

There is, though, a further diary held by St John’s College, Cambridge, dating from 25 June to 25 July 1787 and described by the College’s library as follows: ‘Diary of travels in the West Country and Wales. Gives description of travels and scenery, especially Bristol and surrounding area. Gives detailed account of visits to docks, investigation into shipping in Bristol and meeting with local luminaries to gather support for the abolition cause’.

Thanks to the Abolition Project Website, which has substantial information on Clarkson, for providing photographs of the pages of the 1787 diary, and a transcript. Here are some extracts:

3 July 1787
‘In crossing the ferry from Mr Feast’s Yard, I saw a Boat painted Africa on her Stern coming to the same Landing Place. On inquiring of the Crew Whether they belonged to the Africa, a Vessel in the Slave Trade, they answered, yes - I told one of them that I wondered how any seamen would go to Africa, and if he was not afraid - To this he answered in the following Words - If it is my Lot to die in Africa, why I must, and if it is not, why then I shall not die though I go there. And if it is my Lot to live, why I may as well live there as anywhere else. The Same Person told me that the Brothers, Capt. Howlett, then lying in King Road?, could not get Men - that he was cruel Rascal - that a Party of Men had shipped themselves on board him, but that they had all left him on Sunday Morning - I cannot describe my feeling in seeing these poor Fellows belonging to the Africa. They were seven in Number - all of them young, about 22 or 23, and very robust - They were all Seamen; and I think the finest Fellows I ever beheld - I am sure no one can describe my feelings when I considered that some of these were devoted, and whatever might be their spirits now, would never see their native Home more. I considered also, how much the Glory of the British Flag was diminished by the Destruction of such noble fellows, who appeared so strong, robust, & hardy, and at the same Time so spirited as to enable us to bid Defiance to the marine of our Enemies the French’

5 July 1787
‘rode to Mr Bonvilles in Company with John Lury & Robert Lawson - The Downs were beautiful & .... ... went on board the Prince. The People were then busy - The Mate conducted us into their Cabin and invited us to dine: having dined we declined it - but drank some Grogg - The People on board were poor, palefaced, meagre looking Wretches - we were told that the Ship was not half manned - We left her, and went on board the Africa - The Crew of this Vessel, which was fully manned, consisted of as fine Seamen, as could possibly be collected - We drank some Grogg on board this Vessel -. Mr Sheriff, a very humane, good sort of man, was one of the Mates of the Ship, but, though he had been to Sea all his Life, had never yet been a voyage to the Coast - This Mr Sheriff, on account of some misrepresentation of him to Captain Wright was then preparing to leave the Ship. - He sent his Chest to Bristol by the Africa’s Boat, but took his Passage with Us in ours - This man was so beloved by the Seamen on board, that they all came to the Ship’s Side, when he left it, pulled off their Hats, and wished him his Health - We then proceeded again to the Prince, where we drank Tea, after which, we sailed with a fine Wind into the River - I had some Conversation with Mr Sheriff - He informed me that the Men on board the Africa had signed their Articles, but that they had never seen what they signed - He says that he himself also had signed without seeing them, though he did not like it, but as an Officer, did not object, thinking it might be a bad Example in him to set . . .’

18 July 1787
‘9 o’Clock at night - On hearing that Mr Thomas, Surgeon Mate of the Alfred, had been most cruelly treated by Capt Robe, and was then ill in Bed - I went to see him in Company with a Seaman of the Same Ship - I found him ill in Bed. He said that he had been most excessively ill-treated by Capt Robe & the 1st Mate, but that he forgave them. His Thighs were wrapped up in Flannel - The Poor Man was delirious. He asked me if I was a Gentleman - if I was a Lawyer, etc - He seemed much agitated & frightened and repeatedly asked me if I was come with an Intent to take Captain Robe’s Part. I answered no, that I was come to take his & punish Captain Robe - However he did not comprehend me, and was manifestly in a disordered State. This young man leaped three times overboard to drown himself, in consequence of the Cruelty committed, and to avoid it for the future, but was taken up - The last time he leaped overboard, a Shark was within a yard of him, when he was taken up’

Frightfully tomahawked

‘This day news reached the town that three men had been murdered in Omata. With wilful imprudence, and in defiance of general remonstrances, they had persisted in looking for some stray sheep. As they were engaged in their fatal search, several rebels in ambush sprang suddenly upon them and put them to a horrible death. Their bodies were afterwards discovered, frightfully tomahawked.’ So wrote Sergeant William Marjouram in his diary exactly 150 years ago today. These were the first days of the Taranaki wars, in which indigenous Maoris fought against the New Zealand government’s land acquisitions and the imposition of a British administration on the Maori way of life.

Marjouram was born in 1828 in Suffolk the son of a gardener to the Duke of Hamilton. He had a common school education, but ran away to sea as a young teenager (aged 14 the first time), returning home twice before finally enlisting permanently with the Royal Artillery in 1844. He worked for a while as a recruiter in Newcastle-on-Tyne, and in 1848 was promoted to corporal. However, he was then demoted to the rank of gunner for being drunk and associating with the wrong types; and while on a training course he absented without leave to marry Catherine Pool in 1850.

Thereafter, though, his life changed radically. After being posted to Canada in 1851, he turned hard-working and sober, and became an evangelical Christian. He was promoted to an officer’s batman, and in 1854 was made corporal. The same year he was sent to New Zealand, though circumstances led him to return to England once before being sent again to New Zealand in 1855. There he fervently tried to convert the locals in his spare time. He fought in the First Taranaki War, but was invalided back to England in 1861, and died soon after arriving home.

Marjouram is remembered today largely because of his diary, first published by James Nisbet in 1863 in Memorials of Sergeant William Marjouram, Royal Artillery including six years service in New Zealand during the late Maori War. The full text is available at Googlebooks. Much more recently, though, in 1990, Random Century New Zealand published a re-edited version of the diary as Sergeant, Sinner, Saint, and Spy - The Taranaki War Diary of Sergeant William Marjouram, R.A. This was edited by Laurie Barber, Garry Clayton, and John Tonkin-Covell.

The editors of Sergeant, Sinner, Saint, and Spy say Marjouram’s diary provides ‘a fascinating insight into the life of a sergeant in Queen Victoria’s army on colonial service in the late 1850s and early 1860s’. It first appeared on book shelves (as Memorials) throughout the English reading world, because it was valued for its ‘literary encouragement of soldierly Christian dedication to the cause of British imperial and British Protestant civilisation.’ Today, though, ‘the diary demonstrates the stark antithesis between good and evil that dominated the Victorian Protestant evangelical psyche and reveals a complex, at times contradictory, attitude by the Queen’s soldiers towards the New Zealand Maori, who appear at times barbarous and at times as merciful Christians.’

More specifically, they add, Marjouram’s diaries show his evangelical Protestant passion for personal and social reformation: ‘They reflect the concerns of a well-disciplined and reliable NCO, reveal a keen interest in the characteristics of Maori life, and provide a unique perspective of an army fed on boiled meat and potatoes, housed in insanitary barracks, and inferior in numbers for their garrison task. Marjouram was a centurion of Victoria’s army and centurions were the backbone of the imperial legions.’

Marjouram’s diary also provides a first hand account of and eyewitness testimony to the First Taranaki War. The New Zealand History website has lots of information about the war, but the following background is taken from Wikipedia’s extensive entry. The catalyst for the war was a disputed land sale at Waitara, 16km east of New Plymouth, in the Taranaki district of New Zealand’s North Island. The land was sold to the British despite a veto by the chief of the Maori tribe; and the local governor’s acceptance of the purchase was made in full knowledge that it might lead to an armed conflict.

Wikipedia continues: ‘Although the pressure for the sale of the block resulted from the colonists’ hunger for land in Taranaki, the greater issue fuelling the conflict was the Government’s desire to impose British administration, law and civilisation on the Maori as a demonstration of the substantive sovereignty the British believed they had gained in the 1840 Treaty of Waitangi. The hastily-written Maori translation, however, had given Maori chiefs an opposing view that the English had gained only nominal sovereignty, or ‘governorship’ of the country as a whole while Maori retained ‘chieftainship’ over their lands, villages and treasures. By 1860, it was tacitly recognised that British law prevailed in the settlements and Maori custom elsewhere, though the British, who by then outnumbered Maori, were finding this [latter] fact increasingly irksome.’

The British, it seems, were convinced that their system represented the best that civilization had to offer and saw it as both their duty and their right to impose it on other peoples. On the other hand, in the 20 years since the signing of the Treaty, the Maori had made significant political advances. For example, they had moved from being a collection of independent tribes to an effective confederation, and one of its uniting principles was opposing the sale of Maori land and the concomitant spread of British sovereignty.

On 15 March 1860, the Maori built an L-shaped pa, or defensive strong point, at one corner of the disputed land block, and the following day they uprooted the surveyor’s boundary markers. When ordered, on 17 March, to surrender, they refused and the British troops opened fire, thus starting the First Taranaki War. Here are a few extracts from Marjouram’s diary from the opening days of the war.

24 March 1860
‘This evening, about 5 o’clock, a message came from New Plymouth stating that the rebels were collected at Omata, a village about four miles distant. In less than half an hour the whole of the artillery, with two 24-pounders, one 12-pounder howitzer, and about two hundred men of the 65th Regiment, were on their way to New Plymouth. After a heavy and dangerous march along the beach, we came to the Bell Blockhouse, built with heavy logs of wood, and manned by settlers. The appearance of the neighbourhood was very gloomy, and as surrounding houses were all closed and deserted, the sad tale of apprehension was sufficiently told. On passing this lonely house we gave its noble defenders three hearty cheers, which were as heartily returned. Proceeding on our way, we arrived in town about ten o’clock, greatly to the relief of hundreds of terrified women and children.’

27 March 1860
‘This day news reached the town that three men had been murdered in Omata. With wilful imprudence, and in defiance of general remonstrances, they had persisted in looking for some stray sheep. As they were engaged in their fatal search, several rebels in ambush sprang suddenly upon them and put them to a horrible death. Their bodies were afterwards discovered, frightfully tomahawked, and a pair of bullocks that had been shot lay beside them. This event has caused a great sensation and a deep thirst for revenge among the settlers, each of the murdered men having left a wife and family to lament.’

28 March 1860
‘Late last night, the bodies of two English boys were found at Omata, both fearfully mutilated. Surely the Lord will avenge the blood of the defenceless and unarmed on the heads of these savage butchers! The Rev. Mr Brown with two or three English families, being still at Omata, and great doubts being entertained of their safety, a strong body of troops, under command of Colonel Murray, had been ordered to proceed by different routes for the purpose of removing them from so dangerous a neighbourhood. They had scarcely arrived before they were attacked by the rebels, who had taken up their position in a gully thickly studded with trees. Soon a smart fire commenced on both sides, and our rockets did much execution. The action continued until after dark, about which time Captain Cracroft with a portion of the Niger’s crew rushed to the pa and seized the enemy’s colours. Unfortunately, at this critical moment, an order arrived for the troops to return at once. I need hardly add that it was most reluctantly obeyed. We arrived in town about midnight, our loss being two killed and about fourteen wounded. We ascertained that the natives had lost by this affray ten chiefs and ninety killed or wounded.’

2 April 1860
‘Today an escort, consisting of two hundred militiamen, with one 24-pounder howitzer and about 30 carts, went to Omata to fetch in some potatoes and wheat. We remained there all day, during which time about one and forty bushels of wheat were threshed and forty tons of potatoes dug, or rather ploughed, up. The appearance of the village was dreary in the extreme: every house had been plundered; and many of the natives seemed to have taken more than they were well able to carry, for the road was strewn for miles with feather pillows, chairs, wearing apparel, and articles of every description. The offensive smell arising from the thinly covered graves of the Maoris, and the carcasses of the still unburied cattle which had been shot and left to decay, together with the innumerable signs of desolation on every side, rendered the place as loathsome as it is possible to conceive.’

3 April 1860
‘Today I mounted guard for the first time in New Zealand. I had charge of the main guard, and at night a drunken prisoner was committed to my care. He was so riotous that I was compelled to bind him hand and foot.’

Barthes and his mother

Roland Barthes, one of France’s great 20th century thinkers, died thirty years ago today. Although not known as a diarist, he did occasionally write journals, and, since his death, some of these have been published, albeit amid controversy. Mostly, the diaries seem to concern his erotic needs or the extraordinary relationship with his mother.

Roland Barthes was born in 1915 in Cherbourg, northern France, but he and his mother moved to Bayonne, in the south, after his father, a naval officer, died in battle. In 1924, they moved again to Paris. Barthes studied classical literature, grammar and philology at the Sorbonne, but suffered intermittently from TB first contracted in 1934.

During the 1940s, Barthes worked at a teacher in many different places in France and abroad (Bucharest and Alexandria). In 1952 he settled at the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, where he studied lexicology and sociology. In subsequent years, he began writing a series of essays on the myths of popular culture for the magazine Les Lettres Nouvelles.

In 1960 Barthes joined École Pratique des Hautes Études, and by the late 1960s he had established a reputation as one of the leading critics of Modernist literature. He traveled to Japan and the US, teaching for a while at John Hopkins University. It was in this period that he produced his best known work: the 1967 essay The Death of the Author, and, in 1970, the dense critical reading of Balzac’s Sarrasine entitled S/Z. Throughout the 70s, Wikipedia says, Barthes continued to develop his literary criticism, ‘pursuing new ideals of textuality and novelistic neutrality through his works’. In 1977 he was elected to the chair of Sémiologie Littéraire at the Collège de France.

Also in 1977, his mother, with whom he had lived all his life, died. Barthes himself died three years later, on 25 March 1980 (30 years ago today), as a result of being hit by a van while walking in Paris. Apart from Wikipedia, Encyclopaedia Britannica has a short biography, and there are biographical details in some book reviews, such as that in The Independent. In the latter, Ben Rogers sums up Barthes: ‘[He] was a contradictory figure. He combined a Protestant passion for order and routine with nights in Tunisian brothels and Parisian gay bars. He was a radical critic of the fashion system who liked classic English clothes, a Marxist who recoiled from ’68, a champion of hedonism who never publicly proclaimed his homosexuality.’

Barthes is not thought of, or discussed as, a diarist. However, several works have been published posthumously which contain diary or diary-like material, although only one of these (as far as I can tell) has been published in English. In 1987, François Wahl (Barthes’ friend and literary executor) published Incidents, a collection of four hitherto unpublished works by Barthes. These included Soirées de Paris, an erotic diary he wrote during 1979, and Incidents, a diary written in 1969 while Barthes was on holiday in Morocco (again about erotic encounters). It was translated (by Richard Howard) and published by University of California Press in 1992 - a page or two can be read at Amazon.co.uk.

Much more recently, Michel Salzedo, Barthes’ half-brother and the legal guardian of Barthes’ oeuvre, authorised the release of two more works, and these were published last year (2009) in France as Journal de deuil (Journal of Mourning) and Carnets du voyage en Chine (Travel Notebooks in China). The former is a diary written after the death of his mother, and the latter is a diary written during a trip to China in 1974.

According to The Daily Telegraph, François Wahl ‘came out of retirement . . . to angrily challenge their release’. He told the French newspaper Le Monde: ‘The publication of Journal de deuil would have positively revolted [Barthes], in that it violates his intimacy, . . [and] as for the Chinese notebooks, it’s the same type of “unwritten” text, which in his eyes was a real taboo.’ However, the publisher of the new texts said it was hypocritical of Wahl of criticise them since he had personally overseen the release of Soirées de Paris, containing far more intimate revelations.

In The Guardian, Andrew Hussey found himself bemused by the Parisian literary scandal: ‘While the first book delivers (mainly unwittingly) high comedy, the second, an account of maternal bereavement, is a quite touching account of how real life (and death) transformed Barthes’s interior life. Together, these books reveal that he was fond of blow jobs and close to his mother. Neither fact is remarkable. But given that Barthes is still most famous in the English-speaking world as the thinker who gave us the notion of ‘the death of the author’, there is an irresistible irony in the fact that these posthumous publications of his writings should have provoked such a squabble on the Parisian literary scene.’

According to Benjamin Ivry, writing in The Chronicle of Higher Education (and reproduced on the blog, evening redness in the west), ‘neither text radically alters our understanding of Barthes’. The Journal de deuil, he says, does add documentation about the writer’s deep attachment to his mother, from whose death, he told friends, he was never able to recover; and ‘Carnets du voyage en Chine, made also of impromptu jottings rather than the carefully worked out prose that readers of Barthes are accustomed to, is another unusually intimate glimpse into the writer’s daily life, even when bored and out of sorts.’

Thanks to the evening redness in the west for the following few extracts:

5 November 1977
‘Sad afternoon. Quick shopping. At the pastry shop (pointlessness) I buy an almond cake. Serving a customer, the little female employee says, “Voilà.” That’s the word which I would say when I brought Mom something when I looked after her. Once, near the end, she half-unconsciously echoed, “Voilà” (I’m here, an expression which we used mutually during a whole lifetime). This employee’s remark brought tears to my eyes. I wept for a long time (after returning to the silent apartment).’

19 November 1977
‘(Overturning of status) For months, I have been her mother. It’s as if I had lost my daughter (any greater suffering than that? I had never conceived it).’

20 March 1978
‘They say (so Mrs. Panzera informs me) that Time lessens bereavement. No, Time makes nothing happen; it only washes down the emotivity of bereavement.’

29 July 1978
‘(Saw the Hitchcock film Under Capricorn) Ingrid Bergman (it was made around 1946). I don’t know why, and don’t know how to express it, but this actress, the body of this actress, moved me, has just touched something in me which reminds me of Mam. Her carnation, her lovely, utterly natural hands, an impression of freshness, a non-Narcissistic femininity.’

Where was a canteloupe

‘To breakfast, where was a canteloupe. Wretched, it being the season’s first.’ So began one of the most popular American columns of a century ago. It was written in the form of a diary, providing a real commentary on the author’s life, but humorously in the style of Samuel Pepys. Its author, the now largely forgotten Franklin Pierce Adams, died 50 years ago today.

Adams was born in Chicago in 1881, and was educated at Armour Scientific Academy and the University of Michigan. He started out selling insurance, but inspired by one of his customers, he began writing humorous verses and published a small volume of poems. He was taken on as a columnist by the Chicago Tribune, but soon moved to work for the New York Evening Mail, where he wrote a column called Always in Good Humor.

In 1914, FPA, as he always signed his columns, switched to the New York Tribune, and his column was retitled, The Conning Tower. Incredibly popular in its early days, the column is said to have launched the careers of several writers (see Wikipedia). Apart from a brief stint during the war when he was assigned to write for the military newspaper Stars and Stripes, he remained a columnist for different New York papers until 1941, by which time the resonance of his writing and his popularity had faded away.

Adams is also remembered for being one of the members of the Algonquin Round Table, a group of wits who met for lunch during the 1920s at the Algonquin Hotel. The group included Edna Ferber, George S Kaufman and Dorothy Parker. In the 1940s, FPA found a new role, as a panellist on the popular radio show Information, Please!. He married twice, Minna Schwartze in 1904, and Esther Root, with whom he had four children, in 1925. He died 50 years ago today, on 23 March 1960.

The Poetry Foundation has a little more biographical information on Adams, but for more detailed information seek out Sally Ashley’s book - FPA: The life and times of Franklin Pierce Adams (which can be borrowed from Internet Archive).

And it is in Ashley’s biography that one can find details about a diary Adams wrote for many years. This was not a personal diary, but one written for a column. It is less well remembered, perhaps, than The Conning Tower, but in its day was also very popular. In June 1911, Ashley explains, Adams began a breezy personal memoir written in the style of Samuel Pepys, with the intention of including journal entries within the regular column every other day for a month or so. He named it The Diary of Our Own Samuel Pepys and inserted ‘its first grumpy sentence’ on a Wednesday morning: ‘To breakfast, where was a canteloupe. Wretched, it being the season’s first.’

More from Ashley’s book: ‘At first the paragraphs appeared every few days. . . It was a guileless exercise, boring and fascinating at the same time, sprinkled with old Briticisms like ‘bespeaks’ and ‘betimes’ and ‘betook’. Despite its preciousness, his fans welcomed the account of everyday life as observed by a self-proclaimed ordinary fellow.’ But the diary didn’t stop after a month or two, it was still running in 1922 when he decided to run the Diary regularly just on Saturdays. Ashley says, ‘reading the Diary became a Saturday morning treat in many homes, as much a part of New York City life as the crowded subways it endlessly denounced.’

The Diary went along year after year, Ashley says (although like The Conning Tower in different newspapers) describing FPA’s ups and downs, how he spent his days, whom he saw, the food he ate, the funny things people (including him) said, what he hated, and what he enjoyed. Perhaps, Ashley comments, the Diary’s long popularity came because he never fancied it something more than it was; he evidenced irritation often, and contentment, but rarely outrage and never despair. ‘His concerns were those of a conventionally educated middle-class person, and they reflected the interests and inclinations of his readers. His intellectualism was predictable and mildly liberal, though he preferred describing the menu and the identity of his companions to disclosing the content of serious dinner table discussions.’

In 1935, Simon and Schuster published a very full collection of The Diary of Our Own Samuel Pepys in two volumes. According to Ashley, the reviews were favourable, and the volumes sold more copies than any of his other books, but nowadays they are only of interest to biographers of the Algonquin set and historians, for the topics were too of the moment, the style too precious, and the points of view too narrow.

Here are a few extracts from the diary/column (none of which are dated properly in Ashley’s book).

‘Home, and fashioning some verses, and thence to my barber’s to be trimmed and he asketh me something, and, understanding him not at all, what with his accent of Palermo, I did say, Yes, whereat he took a bottle and poured its contents upon my head, and then I did know it for olive oil, by its odour. And he did rub it into my hair till that I did feel like any head of lettuce and was minded to ask him to pass the salt and vinegar, but did not.’

‘With Mr Theodore Dreiser the great tayle-writer to luncheon, and he tells me of many things that have happened to him in Germany and in England and fills me with a great lust to travel.’

‘To luncheon with Jack Reed the poet and he told me of the four days he was in prison in Paterson, and of the horrible uncleanness, and of one man 80 yrs of age and ill that was imprisoned for six months for begging five cents. Also he told me how great a man is Bill Haywood, and it may be as Jack saith. Also he told me that the Industrial Workers are sorely misjudged and that the tayles in the publick prints of their bloodthirstiness are lies told by the scriveners. And out of it all I wish I did know how to appraise what is true and what is false, but I am too ignorant, and ill-fitted to judge truly.’

‘To dinner, and met Mistress Ida Tarbell, who told me of many ways in which a journal! might be made interesting, and some of her notions not bad neither.’

‘So all day at the office, answering the telephone and riding in the elevators and telling a gentleman from what he called the National Broadcahsting Company that I had no desire to say a few hundred words over the wireless, especially at the price offered, which was nothing. I was what my wife would call rude to him, and what I call ineffectually ironick. Then a fellow . . . came in to ask me whether I was busy, and I said, No, I came to the office to practice penmanship, and he said that I had no reason to insult him, that he wanted only to give me a chance to invest my money in a sound company, so I apologized and said that if he would give me only five minutes to myself I could write a fortune, all of which he could have.’