Son eaten by sow

Today marks the 330th anniversary of the death of young Sir Thomas Isham, the third to hold the Isham Baronetcy title. As a teenager, his father, the second Isham Baronet, ordered Thomas to keep a diary in Latin, as an educational exercise. And it is thanks to this lively and colourful diary - said to be the only diary by a 15 year old boy in 17th century England - that the Third Baronet is remembered today.

Thomas was born at Lamport, Northamptonshire, in 1656, the eldest son of Sir Justinian Isham, himself the son of John Isham, High Sheriff of Northamptonshire, for whom the Isham Baronetcy was created in 1627. Thomas studied at Christ Church, Oxford, and soon after succeeded to the title on the death of his father, but he died, still a young man, on 27 July 1681 (see Wikipedia). Today the title is held by Sir Norman Isham, the 14th Baronet, who was born in 1930.

Sir Thomas is largely remembered today thanks to a diary he kept in Latin at his father’s behest from 1671 to 1673. It is made up of brief entries, sometimes only one sentence, and when the entries are longer this is usually because Isham is recording an anecdote - a local murder or other crime, for example - told by a visitor. Nevertheless, the diary does give a lively picture of the everyday country life of a gentry class boy in his teens.

The diary was first published in 1875 by Miller and Leavins of Norwich, but a more recent edition dates from 1971 when Gregg International published The Diary of Thomas Isham of Lamport (1658-81) kept by him in Latin from 1671 to 1673 at his Father’s command. This was based on a translation by Norman Marlow, and was annotated by Sir Gyles Isham. Here are a few extracts.

10 November 1671
‘. . . The carpenter made new shelves to put our public books on. A white cock of brother Justinian’s, named Taffy, which was at Thomas Pole’s, had one of his spurs violently wrenched off and died, from which it is clear that the people of Houghton are indeed rustic and altogether ignorant of learning, not to remember the trite saying, ‘Never lay hands on a white cock’.’

2 December 1671
‘A stranger died here while on a journey, and was buried in the churchyard.’

16 December 1671
‘Tom a’ Bedlam [local lunatic] paid us a visit, and said that his only son had been eaten by a sow, that his wife was home consumed with grief and that he had become melancholy.’

20 December 1671
‘Today we challenged the Maidwell men to a cock fight. Two oxen were killed for Christmas . . .’

8 January 1672
‘Mr Wikes came and promised to bring four cocks to help us . . .’

11 January 1672
Maidwell was beaten in the cock fight. . .’

27 January 1672
‘John Chapman told us that a woman convicted of clipping coin of the realm has been condemned and burned alive in the cattle market at Smithfield, London.’

29 January 1672
‘John Chapman came to dinner and said that a new telescope, far more perfect than previous ones, had been invented [probably Isaac Newton’s reflecting telescope].’

8 April 1672
‘Father forbade us to keep cocks . . .’

30 April 1672
‘Michael Wright . . . while pulling and handling the largest church bell unskilfully, threw it over, which pulled him up to the ceiling and nearly knocked his brains out; I know for certain that his leg is broken . . .’

24 May 1672
‘Today my sister Vere’s bees swarmed.’

25 May 1672
‘They say we have taken a Dutch vessel which was full of riches, and that her captain died of grief. A French galley took a Dutch ship laden with salt, and other merchandise.’

4 June 1672
‘The bull was castrated today and grew so savage that he broke his rope that bound him and after the operation charged at everyone he met.’

Breathless Machu Picchu

Today marks the centenary of Hiram Bingham’s discovery of Machu Picchu, an Inca citadel in Peru, now one of the world’s most famous tourist sites. The anniversary gives me another chance to revisit my own diaries since, almost exactly 35 years ago, I was there, a youthful round-the-world traveller, ‘breathless’ but, nevertheless, trying to convince myself that I wasn’t really impressed.

Machu Picchu is a pre-Columbian 15th-century Inca site located, somewhat precariously, over 2,000 metres above sea level on a mountain ridge above the Urubamba Valley in Peru. Most archaeologists believe it dates from the 15th century, but was abandoned at the time of the Spanish conquest. Although known locally, it was unknown in the West until ‘discovered’ on 24 July 1911 by Hiram Bingham, an American academic, leading a Yale University expedition.

Bingham soon started archaeological studies and completed a survey of the area, calling the complex ‘The Lost City of the Incas’, which was also the title of his first book. He continued studying the site until 1915, collecting various artifacts - ceramic vessels, silver statues, jewellery, and human bones - which he took back to Yale. Recently, Yale and Peru have reached agreement for the artefacts to be returned to their original home. See Wikipedia for more.

Today Machu Picchu is one of the most famous tourist sites in the world. It was declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1983, and, in 2007, it was voted one of the New Seven Wonders of the World in a worldwide internet poll. It was certainly a key destination for me on my travels around the world in the mid-1970s.

I had been held up in Lima for a month by a bout of hepatitis, but, by mid-July 1976, I was on my way again, with Cuzco and Machu Picchu waiting for me further south. I found three companions on the road: Didier, a delightfully gentle Frenchman; Jim, a bearded Canadian with spiritual tendencies and an empathy for nature; and Annabelle, a beautiful Englishwoman with long dark curls.

Here is an entry from my diary, almost exactly 35 years ago to the day - (taken from my journal entries on the Pikle website).

21 July 1976
‘BREATHLESS MACHU PICCHU
The river fjords, peaks and pikes, moss-covered cliffs. A hawk glides a spiral upwards, upwards, 1,000ft above the meandering Urubamba. Once people lived here in the sky, carving building bricks, hiding from the ground, from the river. Once people toiled here in the sky and worshiped the sun. A sun that came sometimes to warm, to grow, to live. A sun that came through the mists. And a myth that grew with gold. A myth grew and crumbled. And now is grass. A pasture for hungry tourists, for ego-hunting travellers. A pasture for writers and artists to see the mountains, the river, the sky. Few walls of interlocking stone are left, few Inca building bricks, but more a crumbling cottage stone of a poor man built, the Inca slave, the Inca beggar. Some flowers grow, and Peruvian government llamas or alpacas graze. A yellow pipeline sprints upon another mountain. Specks of colour dawdle from wall to stone from hut to rock from step to step.

And I am unimpressed. I am here but I am unimpressed. Sitting on a rock, watching the play of every day: red-helmetted grass cutters, drifting wind-carried chatter, people strolling, like in a park. I was talking a while with Didier just now - as we watched the tourist train pull in - about the Buddhist ruins I investigated near Peshawar. It was a very hazy memory. Didier is not interested in the old stone but likes the green mountains and green river. Jim sits on the other side of the saddle meditating. Annabelle takes photographs for a granny. The wind is smiling. Machu Picchu.

Have you seen this old old city
Have you seen, have you seen
This old old city, have you seen

CUZCO - AN OLD LADY

What is Cuzco? It is situated in a mild valley, a patchwork of red tiles, cobbled streets, hybrid Inca walls, churches, squares, parades of modern arches. It’s a cool city with beggars, ice-cream sellers and blind harp players. The Spanish added some churches to the place after removing the Inca civilisation. But giving the people Catholicism was sinful.

We arrived on the Saturday (in time to dress up for dinner and mingle with the swarms of French and German bees). Initial impressions were of bustling markets, lots of gringos and old churches. For two days we did a lot of sitting in cafes drinking teas and milk and leches, or eating doughnut and honey in the main market in San Francisco square. The cathedral (a hideous place with galleries of ancient Spanish bishop portraits and alcoves of broken christs in ghastly glitter) and museums were empty. Our hotel, Roma, had falling down shacks for toilets. Our room was large with four beds brightly coloured and patterned walls and a roof that sagged several feet in the middle.

One very amusing evening started with Jim painting and me being very speedy - lying on the floor breathing heavy to cool down. I noticed little beads in the cracks of the floorboards and started picking them out. Derek and Eric, the comic due, joined in the bead searching party. Didier was rolling joints, Annabelle wrote endless letters. Jim’s painting got progressively darker, and my bead chain got progressively longer, and more colourful. Finally, I’d made a whole bracelet from the beads in the floorboards of Hotel Roma.

Another evening we went to see Zardoz and then played blow football in a late night cafe (the Canadian Rollocks beat the English Whizzers by three goals to one).

There was a strange moment watching a very old lady standing in the doorway of a trinket shop, looking at a display case of cheap ear-rings. She pointed with her finger from one ring to another putting a whole lot of feeling into the pointing process. I stood watching her and felt almost impelled to buy her one pair. After an extra emphatic point at one particular pair, she walked away. I thought that she hadn’t noticed me watching her, but when she’d walked 100 metres or so up the road, she turned and looked straight at me. There was anger in her eyes which spoke saying: ‘Why haven’t you bought me those ear-rings?’ A very odd feeling.’

Dried bear’s meat

Today marks the 350th anniversary of the birth of Pierre Le Moyne d’Iberville, one of Canada’s great soldiers and explorers, though at the time his homeland was still called New France - indeed he is dubbed Canada’s first hero. A few of his journals have been published, notably those recording voyages to the Mississippi to establish a colony in Louisiana. Other accounts of the same exploration also exist.

D’Iberville was born on 16 July 1661 one of many children fathered by Charles LeMoyne who had arrived in New France 20 years earlier as an indentured servant. When he died in 1685, he was considered one of the wealthiest and most powerful citizens in Montreal. Young Pierre, who had grown up in Montreal, sailed on his father’s boat and was sent to France on several occasions. In the 1680s and 1690s, he led expeditions against the British fur-trading posts on Hudson Bay. In 1690, he took part in a raid on Schenectady, and in 1692 he unsuccessfully attacked Fort Pemaquid, Maine. Later, he successfully attacked St John’s, Newfoundland, and temporarily ousted the British from the area.

In 1698, he set out from France with his younger brother Bienville and four ships full of colonists. They landed on the Gulf of Mexico and founded Old Biloxi. D’Ibberville is considered to be the first man to ascertain the mouth of the Mississippi from the Gulf approach and to explore its delta. Between 1700 and 1702, he kept the new colony supplied; and built additional forts. But then illness prevented him making further voyages.

After recovering his health, d’Iberville led a force which captured the British islands of Nevis and St Kitts in the West Indies. He was ready for further forays when he died at Havana, probably in 1706, having gone there to trade and collect supplies. Further information on d’Iberville is readily available at the Dictionary of Canadian Biography Online (which names him as Canada’s first hero) or Wikipedia.

D’Iberville’s own French journals of three ‘voyages to the Mississippi’ were edited and translated by Richebourg Gaillard McWilliams and published by the University of Alabama Press in 1981 as Iberville’s Gulf Journals. Part of this book is viewable online at Googlebooks. However, a fuller (and richer) account of the same explorations is freely available (at Internet Archive) within the Historical Collections Louisiana and Florida published by Albert Mason (New York) 1875. The relevant section is entitled Historical Journal: or Narrative of the Expedition made by order of Louis XIV, King of France, under command of M. D’Iberville, to explore Colbert (Mississippi) river and establish a colony in Louisiana.

Here are two extracts, both about the same day: one from D’Ibberville’s own diary, and the other from the anonymous record of the expedition as contained in Historical Journey.

14 February 1699
‘I continue to follow the tracks of the Indians, having left at the place where I spent the night two axes, four knives, two packages of glass beads, a little vermillion; for I was sure that two Indians who came at sunrise to watch me from a distance of 300 yards would come there after we left. [. . .] I noticed a canoe crossing over to an island and several Indians waiting for it there. They joined five other canoes, which crossed over to the land to the north. As the land where I was was separated from them by a bay 1 league wide and 4 leagues long, I got into my canoe and pursued the canoes and overtook them as they were landing on the shore. All the Indians fled into the woods, leaving their canoes and baggage [. . .] I found an old man who was too sick to stand. We talked by means of signs. I gave him food and tobacco; he made me understand that I should build a fire for him. This I did and, besides, made a shelter, near which I placed him along with his baggage and a number of bags of Indian corn and beans that the Indians had in their canoes. I made him understand that I was going half a league from there to spend the night. My longboat joined me there. I sent my brother and two Canadians after the Indians who had fled, to try to make them come back or to capture one. Toward evening he brought a woman to me whom he had caught in the woods 3 leagues from there. I led her to the old man and left her, after giving her several presents and some tobacco to take to her men and have them smoke.’

14 February 1699
‘On Saturday, the 14th, having breakfasted, we marched along the shore. M D’Iberville and his Indian guide at the same time perceived the tracks of two savages who had come from their hiding-place. He returned to our fire, took two hatchets, four knives, some beads, vermilion, and two pipes filled with tobacco, as presents, and to show them that our intentions were peaceable. The shallops and bark kept along the shore, while M D’Iberville, his Indian guide, and Father Anastasius walked on foot. At some distance they saw three Indians who took flight in their canoes; seeing which M D’Iberville also took to his canoe and forced them on shore. Two made good their escape, but the third, who was old and sickly, fell into his hands. Presents were given to him, and he was made to understand that our mission was friendly and not warlike. The Indian appeared to comprehend and be well satisfied. M D’Iberville added that he was going to tent a short distance from this spot; he made a sign for us to go on shore and kindle a fire for him, which we did with pleasure. His thigh was badly diseased. Some of our men who had gone out to hunt, surprised an old woman who had concealed herself. They conducted her to the old man where we were. She was nearly frightened to death. We gave her some presents, and she saw how well we treated the old man, who promised that so soon as his people returned he would make them pull some Indian corn for us. We left them together and returned to our cabin. The old woman visited the Indians that same evening and told them all that had happened.’

And here are two more extracts from Historical Journey (i.e. about d’Iberville, not written by him).

7 March 1699
On Saturday, the 7th, we embarked, after having erected a cross, and marked some trees. Weather calm. At nine o’clock, in ranging along the river we saw three buffaloes lying down on the bank. We landed five men to go in pursuit of them, which they could not do, as they soon got lost in the thick forest and cane-brakes. A short time after, in turning a point, we saw a canoe manned by two Indians, who took to land the moment they saw us and concealed themselves in the woods. A little farther on we saw five more who executed the same manoeuvre, with the exception of one, who waited for us at the brink of the river. We made signs to him. M D’Iberville gave him a knife, some beads and other trinkets. In exchange he gave us some dried bear’s meat. M D’Iberville commanded all of our men to go on board the long-boats for fear of intimidating him, and made signs to him to recall his comrades. They came singing their song of peace, extending their hands towards the sun and rubbing their stomachs, as a sign of admiration and joy. After joining us they placed their hands upon their breasts, and extended their arms over our heads as a mark of friendship. M D’Iberville asked them by signs, if the Indians we had seen on the sea-shore, where the vessels were at anchor, had arrived. They gave us to understand the affirmative, and that they had gone up by a branch of the river, which empties into the sea, near the same place where he had crossed it. He then asked them if their village was far off. They told him it was five days journey hence.

What troubled us most, was, that we began to be wearied, and our provisions were falling short. M D’Iberville gave them some beads, knives and looking-glasses; in return they gave us dried bear’s meat, which they had in their canoes. Our men also trafficked with them for some trifling objects. One good old man extended his meat upon the ground, after the same manner our butchers do in our markets of Europe, and sat down beside it. Two of our men went to him, and each one gave him a knife and took the whole of the meat, consisting of at least one hundred pounds. All seemed satisfied with their bargain. M D’Iberville asked them if they would show him their village. They gave him to understand they were going on a hunt, and could not accompany him. But having offered a hatchet to one of them, who seemed very desirous to possess it, he agreed to go. We asked them if they had heard the sound of the swivel; they said they had heard it twice. We fired it again before them, at which they were greatly astonished, for it was the first time they had ever heard it so near them. We passed two hours among them. One of them came on board of our shallop. We made him a present of a shirt, the others did not appear jealous of the gift, so indifferent are they. The river at this place was NW by SW.

At one o’clock we dined. Our course was now SSW by S. With a half a league again tended NW by W. At six o’clock landed and encamped, our men standing guard as usual. This day we made five leagues, and were thirty-five leagues from the mouth.

8 March 1699
On Sunday, the 8th, after mass, we embarked at seven o’clock; river tending SW by NW and W. The current was stronger than ordinarily, which made it necessary for us to keep in the bends and cross the river from one point to the other, three or four times. The weather was very warm all day. Towards five o’clock a storm arose, which compelled us to land and encamp. Some of our men killed a crocodile (alligator), which they skinned and afterwards cooked the flesh to eat. They also killed a rattle-snake upwards of six feet in length, the bite of which is said to be mortal. The wind was from the north all night and very cold. We this day made four leagues.

Diary briefs

Armed robber nabbed by his own diary entry - The Mirror

More diaries from Alastair Campbell - The Guardian, Amazon

More of Mengele’s diaries to be auctioned (see Mengele’s vile ‘diary’) - US News. 

What Murdoch learned from the Hitler Diaries - The New Yorker

A bath in Albert

Today marks the 30th anniversary of the death of Robert Lindsay Mackay, an infantry soldier in the First World War, present at the famous battles of the Somme and Ypres. While in action, he managed to keep a near daily diary of his activities, and this, though not published in print, has been made available online by one of his grandchildren. Of particular note are entries about ‘MUD’ and visiting the town called Albert (in the Somme region) for a bath.

Mackay was born in 1896 in Glasgow and studied at the university there. During the war, he served with an infantry regiment, the 11th Argyll & Sutherland Highlanders, holding the posts of Signalling Officer, Assistant Adjutant, and Platoon Officer, eventually achieving the rank of Lieutenant. He fought in the Battles of the Somme, Ypres and Arras, and was awarded a Military Cross and Bar.

After the war, Mackay trained as a doctor. He married Margaret McLellan, and they had four children. In 1941, he rejoined the army and, with a neurosurgical unit, was posted to the Middle East. Before the end of the war, he was also posted to Normandy and Northern Norway, to treat Russians who had fallen sick while prisoners of the Germans. He retired in 1961, and died on 2 July 1981. Further biographical information is available on the University of Glasgow website and some Mackay family tree web pages.

Mackay only kept a diary during the First World War, and later on wasn’t even sure why he had done that. In 1972 he wrote the following note to his children: ‘I am not quite clear why I wrote this diary, day by day, a scrappy record of a scrappy period. I had no literary or military ambitions. My parents did not read it. Perhaps it was to provide a kind of continuous alibi, to remind me where I had been, perhaps an interesting memorial if I failed to return. Like cakes off a hot griddle, it was written as events occurred, or immediately thereafter, in four little brown leather-covered notebooks, and when the war ended these were in no state to last long for they were soiled and grubby, and, where written in pencil, the writing was fading. So, in 1919, I copied their contents, straight off, without editing, into two larger note-books, and destroyed the four little ones.’

The text has been made available online by one of Mackay’s grandchildren, Bob Mackay, at Firstworldwar.com, and on his own web pages. Here are a few entries.

12 September 1916
‘Ordered up to the 11th. Service Battalion Argylls - the one to which I most of all wanted to go. Train due to leave at 2 p.m. Left punctually at 4.30 p.m., which is not bad for a French train. Reached Albert on the Somme Front about 6.30 p.m. on the 13th. - a distance of some 70 - 80 miles in 28 hours - not bad going for a French train either! Albert is where the battle now going on began, so I hope to see something decent. Reported to the Details Orderly Room of the 11th. Bn. who heard next day that we were coming. Went along to a park after tea to see our latest form of frightfulness about which mystery hangs, namely, the tanks. They have not been used against the enemy yet. Heyworth (who joined with me) and I then went along to the Divisional Reinforcement Camp at Mericourt.’

14 September 1916
‘Loafed around.’

15 October 1916
‘Had a bath.’

16-17 October 1916
‘16th, 17th, and so on till the end - MUD, MUD, MUD!’

18 October 1916
‘Our ‘rest’ is now finished - when did it begin? Left Lozenge Wood, for Martinpuich.’

18 October 1916
‘Rotten ration party to take up to the Royal Scots. Bed 3 a.m. Half a bed is better than no bed at all!’

20 October 1916
‘Round the companies. The C.O. (MacNeil of Oban) got a mouldy haggis, which he ate all by himself. It came in a parcel labelled ‘CAKE’. He had kept it for three weeks!’

21 October 1916
‘Canadians on our left attack the ‘Quadrilateral’ and village of Pys. Partial success. Bombardment all night.’ Back to Martinpuich from the line. Frost came on us suddenly and played the mischief with the mens’ feet. Had to send a number to hospital.’

24 October 1916
‘Relieved by 7/8th. K.O.S.B. Back to Lozenge Wood. Roads heavy on way back. Got stuck in the mud.’

30 October 1916
‘Still at Bécourt, ‘X 27’ district, as bleak and as barren a place as the Western Hebrides. It is said that grass once grew here!’

31 October 1916
‘Front line again.’

2 November 1916
‘Chased by snipers. Relieved by 5th. Bn. Gloucesters, of 48th. Division.’

3 November 1916
‘Left Bécourt Dell for Albert and a bath.’

4 November 1916
‘Albert is knocked about in the most up-to-date fashion, in accordance with the most advanced ideas. There is not a pane of unbroken glass in the place. Every house, if not entirely demolished or with a gable or two missing, has a few holes in the roof, which help the ventilation and also assist materially in the disposal of surplus rain. Ye Gods! It is a funny life!

Albert Cathedral has been very badly smashed but the tower still remains with the figure of the Virgin and Child held out at right angles to it at the top and threatening to fall at any moment on the heads of countless people who pass below. It is commonly said that the War will not end until the Virgin falls. As the French don’t want it to fall (preferring to keep it as a monument of the Huns’ occupation of the place), what can we do?’

Elizabeth at Hope End

Today marks 150 years since the death of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, a popular poet in her time, who was married to Robert Browning, another significant poet of the era. The only diary material of Barrett’s that has been published relates to a period in her 20s when she was still living with her father on the Hope End estate in Herefordshire. Her diary at the time is full of concerns about having to move from Hope End, which was being sold to pay family debts, and about her friendship with the blind classical scholar Hugh Stuart Boyd.

Elizabeth Barrett was born in 1806 at Coxhoe Hall, Durham, but moved to Hope End, a 500-acre estate near Ledbury in Herefordshire, when only three. The eldest in a large family she was educated at home, learning classics and several modern languages. When 13, her father arranged to have one of her epic poems (The Battle of Marathon) printed. When 15, she suffered a bad fall and injured her spine. Subsequently, poor health meant she devoted most of her time to reading and writing.

In her early 20s, Barrett became friends with a classicist, Hugh Stuart Boyd, who had moved into a house nearby. In 1828, her mother died, and, during the following years, her father’s income (based on Jamaican sugar plantations) declined badly. The family sold Hope End, and moved first to Sidmouth in 1832, then, three years later, to London. In 1838 Barrett published her first major book, The Seraphim and Other Poems, which received critical acclaim. The same year she went to stay in Torquay, Devon, for health reasons, and it was there that her favourite brother, Edward, drowned. The accident caused her much distress. Eventually, she returned to London where her reputation as a poet continued to grow.

In 1844, the poet Robert Browning began a correspondence with her, which led to an engagement in 1845, and, because her father disapproved, a secret marriage in 1846. The couple went to Italy where Elizabeth’s health improved, where she had a son, and where she stayed for the rest of her life. She died in Florence on 29 June 1861. Further biographical information can be found at Wikipedia, The Victorian Web, or The Browning Society.

A first edition of Barrett’s diary did not appear before 1969, when Ohio University Press published Diary by E. B. B.: The Unpublished Diary of Elizabeth Barrett Barrett 1831-1832 edited by Philip Kelley and Ronald Hudson. Five years later, in 1974, John Murray published The Barretts at Hope End - The Early Diary of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, edited by Elizabeth Berridge.

Here are two extracts from The Barretts at Hope End.

11 June 1831
‘Sam told me that Hope End is advertised in the Sun newspaper, to be sold in August - no name, but a full description. He & Bro heard it yesterday from Henry Trant!. I begged him to tell nobody, & to let me tell Bummy [Arabella Graham-Clarke, Elizabeth’s aunt]. Ran down stairs & found Bummy in the drawing room by herself. Told her. She shed tears - we both shed tears! When will tears cease to be shed? She seems to fear the worst: but mentioned that Papa had written to Sam, who, he says, is able to assist him. If he is able, he is willing - if he is still Sam! So there may still be hope in that quarter. There is fear in every other. In every other? Can I not still look unto the hill from whence cometh my hope? That hope is a hope of spiritual blessing; but I have found & known it to be one of temporal comfort also! Walked out with Bummy & Arabel, on the bank on the other side of the water. Strangers may soon walk there, with other feelings than mine. Read as I have often done lately, not for the pleasure of thinking: but for the comfort of not thinking. Papa in better spirits. How often I thought of Mr Boyd today! He is the only person in this neighbourhood, whom it will affect my happiness to leave. . .’

26 August 1831
‘Read some passages from Shelley’s Revolt of Islam before I was up. He is a great poet; but we acknowledge him to be a great poet as we acknowledge Spenser to be so, & do not love him for it. He resembles Spenser in one thing, & one thing only, that his poetry is too immaterial for our sympathies to enclasp it firmly. It reverses the lot of human plants: its roots are in the air, not earth! But as I read him, I may reverse my opinion. . .

Let me consider circumstances, while I am calm, in a degree. I may have to leave this place where I have walked & talked & dreamt in much joy; & where I have heard most beloved voices which I can no more hear, & clasped beloved hands which I can no more clasp: where I have smiled with the living & wept above the dead & where I have immortal books, & written pleasant thoughts, & known at least one very dear friend . . . I will wait for letters, & in the meantime, get on with Isocrates.

Thank God!. Hope End, dear Hope End, is not sold. It was bought in by our antagonists themselves; & may yet go by private contract: but still, thank God for this reprieve. A letter from Papa!

I was in the dining room. Bummy came in to me with overflowing eyes, & an exclamation of “Good news!” The good news were too much for me, prepared as I was for the worst news: and I should have sunk to the floor, if she had not caught me. Thank God for this blessed good news! Many tears were shed, & all for joy, at Hope End today.’

Diary briefs

New Che Guevara diary published in Cuba (see also Che’s last days) - BBC, The Guardian

Arrested Maoist’s diary reveals top secrets - The Times of India

Obscene Diary: The Secret Archive of Samuel Steward - PRWeb

Diaries expose missionaries’ ‘spiritual war’ on uncontacted Indians - Survival International

University of Iowa puts civil war diaries online - University of Iowa

A terrible ordeal

One hundred years ago today, the British people were celebrating the coronation of King George V and his wife Queen Mary. Both George and Mary kept diaries, and although these have not been published, a few extracts are in the public domain, including some about their Coronation Day. In one, George calls the day ‘a terrible ordeal’ - though without further explanation.

George V, born in 1865, was the second son of Edward VII. He served in the Royal Navy from the age of 12 until 1892 when he became heir to the throne on the early death of his elder brother Albert (from pneumonia). The following year, he married Princess Victoria Mary of Teck, known as May, who had previously been engaged to Albert. They became Duke and Duchess of York and lived on the Sandringham Estate, in Norfolk. They had six children - Edward, George, Mary, Henry, George and John. The eldest two went on to become King, although Edward held the crown for less than a year before abdicating in favour of George (VI).

George V succeeded to the throne when King Edward VII died in May 1910, though his coronation did not follow until the following summer, on 22 June 1911. A film of the event can be seen at the British Pathé website. According to The Royal Collection website, the crowning of the Sovereign at the start of a new reign is ‘an ancient ceremony, rich in religious significance, pageantry and historic associations’, and has changed little in form since medieval times. To mark the 50th anniversary of the Coronation of Her Majesty The Queen, in 2003, a special exhibition was held at Windsor Castle. Among the items on display were the personal records of several monarchs: Queen Victoria’s sketchbook filled with her drawings of the day’s events, a press release at the time said, and ‘a poignant extract from the diary of King George V’ describing how his coronation ‘brought back many sad memories of 9 years ago when the Beloved Parents were crowned’.

There do not appear to be any published versions of George V’s diary. Robert Lacey, in his biography, Royal: Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II, which contains a generous section of historical background, might provide an explanation: ‘Every day of his adult life, King George V dutifully wrote up his diary - unlike his father, who never kept one. Edward VII had better things to do at bedtime. Bound in successive volumes of green leather, the diary of King George V is the journal of a very ordinary man, containing a great deal more about his hobby of stamp collecting than it does about his personal feelings, with a heavy emphasis on the weather. The simple, round schoolboy hand scarcely changes from the age of fifteen, when he started it, until the last entry, completed three days before his death . . .’

Nevertheless, some excerpts dating from the early days of the Great War were broadcast in 2004 for the first time by BBC Radio Four in its Book of the Week slot. This was by special permission from the Queen to mark the 90th anniversary of the outbreak of the First World War.

Nor is there a published version of Queen Mary’s diary - see an earlier Diary Review article about one extract (Princess Mary’s marathon). However, in his widely-respected biography, Queen Mary, James Pope-Hennessy draws extensively on diary material, particular Mary’s own diaries, but also occasionally her husband’s. Here is Pope-Hennessy, in the biography, looking back at that Coronation Day.

‘Although it improved later in the summer, the weather of June 1911 was windy and cool. Frequent rainstorms had been causing the London public, and the vendors of seats on the stands set up along the coronation processional route, some disquiet. In the whole month of June there were only five good days. Coronation Day, the twenty-second, was not amongst them. “Dull but fine - Our Coronation Day”, Queen Mary recorded in her Diary. King George’s comment in his Diary was longer, but it was equally characteristic: “It was overcast and cloudy with slight showers, & a strongish cool breeze, but better for the people than great heat.” The weather of Coronation Day, 1911, thus formed a sharp, symbolic contrast to that of the July morning, eighteen years before, when Princess May had, for the first time in her life, driven in state from Buckingham Palace as the central figure of a carriage procession. She was then driving to be married at the Chapel Royal; we may recall the sparkling sunshine of that July morning, and the cheers of the surging crowds. Her prospects then had seemed gay and exciting; her prospects now were a lifetime of dedication and responsibility. The overcast sky suited her serious mood.’

Pope-Hennessy goes on to describe other differences between the two occasions, before then returning to the diaries, and the entries for 22 June 1911.

Queen Mary: ‘Magnificent reception both going & coming back.’

King George V: ‘There were hundreds of thousands of people who gave us a magnificent reception. . . The service in the Abbey was most beautiful & impressive but it was a terrible ordeal. . . Darling May looked so lovely & it was indeed a comfort to me to have her by my side as she has been ever to me during these last 18 years.’

Goose Lane Editions

Goose Lane Editions, a Canadian publishing company founded in 1954 and said to be one of the country’s most exciting showcases of home-grown literary talent, has, in the last couple of years, published several intriguing diaries. Those of Tappan Adney record his wonderings in the New Brunswick wilderness, in particular with exquisite details of birds, birchbark canoes and a caribou hunt; while the diary of Robert Wyse describes, in all too gruesome detail, what life was like in a Japanese prisoner of war camp.

Adney was born in Ohio in 1868, but moved to New York as a teenager where he worked in a law office by day, while attending art classes by night. In 1887, he first went to Canada, with his sister, to stay for a few weeks with friends, the Sharp family, in Upper Woodstock, New Brunswick. However, having taken to the outdoor life there, he stayed on for nearly two years.

In 1897, Adney went back to Canada, this time to the west, lured to the Klondike Gold Rush as a special correspondent for Harper’s Weekly. He married Minnie Bell Sharp in 1899; and, in 1900, Harper published Adney’s photos and text in The Klondike Stampede. That same year, he returned to the north to record the gold rush in Nome, Alaska.

During the war, Adney joined the Canadian Expeditionary Force, and constructed scale models of fortifications for training purposes. In 1917, he became a Canadian citizen; and, after the war, he became widely known for his knowledge of decorative historical heraldry and the 3D shields he created for the Canadian provinces. He put forward a design for a Canadian national flag which won a competition but was not adopted; and he built more than 150 models of native canoes, now housed in Mariner’s Museum, Newport, Virginia.

As Adney grew older, Yukon News says, his behaviour and demeanour became more eccentric, to the point where he was seen shambling around Woodstock like a hobo. He died in 1950 in his tiny forest bungalow surrounded by notes, drawings and models. Further biographical information is available from Wikipedia and Jim Wheaton’s web page.

As a young man, amazed by all he saw in Canada, Adney began filling notebooks with his diary jottings and other observations. He recorded, for example, the details of snowshoes, and birchbark canoes, and the native names for birds and animals. He also chronicled a caribou hunt on snowshoes in winter conditions, decades before woodland caribou became extinct in eastern Canada. Some of his notes were published, for the first time, last September by Goose Lane Editions, a New Brunswick-based publishing company, under the title The Travel Journals of Tappan Adney: 1887-1890.

Goose Lane Editions, established more than 50 years ago, describes itself as ‘a small, lively company’ and ‘Canada’s oldest independent publisher’ which ‘successfully combines a regional heart with a national profile to introduce readers to work by the best established and emerging authors.’

The Travel Journals of Tappan Adney: 1887-1890 was edited by C Ted Behne, another builder of model birchbark canoes and an Adney enthusiast. According to Goose Lane, the book is the first published version of Adney’s earliest two journals, though he would write three more before his last in 1896. Though beautifully produced and full of reproductions of Adney’s original sketches and early photographs, there are relatively few in-the-moment diary entries - the bulk of the text being more retrospective recordings of his journeys, observations and thoughts. Here, though, are a few dated entries from early on in the book.

4 July 1887
‘An excursion of the Natural History Society [from New York City] to Manawagonish Island in the Bay of Fundy off Saint John. Thirty of us went along in two small yachts. Manawagonish Island [is] a rocky island covered with dense, stunted spruce and a small clearing where some sheep were browsing. Dense fog swept in, enveloping all things with reeking, dripping moisture, shutting out all things but the tinkle of a sheep bell, the murmuring of the waves on the beach, and the voices of a few hardy birds. Strong, clear, like a flute in the hands of a master, the Hermit thrush - a pathos that is known to no other bird. There is no song of more pure beauty, and one must come here or listen in the early morn in some far New Brunswick wilderness, to hear this, the most beautiful of bird music. I found the nest, containing four blue-green eggs, on the ground, among the cool, damp mosses and luxuriant ferns. The fog was so thick we could hardly find our way back to the harbor.

5 July 1887
‘An early walk with Mr. Chamberlain and noted three new species of birds. It was marvelous to me how Chamberlain could identify from a single note that [which] would have escaped me altogether.’

6 July 1887
‘Mr. Chamberlain was to give a lecture before the Society and wanted some fresh birds, so I went out back of the city and found myself in wild woods. I poked about in a dense cedar swamp. The usual fog came in. I lost my bearings and walked in a circle until I remembered that the wind was probably constant. Then I took a course by the wind and got out. Thankfully, I got a crow for the lecture.’

8 July 1887
‘Took passage aboard a small side[-]wheel steamer, the David Weston for Fredericton up the river. Next morning, arrived at the capit[a]l. . . I sketched the curious wood boats, two-masted schooners with tremendous sheer forward, loaded on deck with deals so that the hull[s] of the boats were actually submerged, all but the high nose of the bow. They came down wing-and-wing under a northwest breeze. Going back, it is said they make better time than the steamer. Here at Fredericton were the booms with their enormous quantities of logs from up river.

There was a tall bank of sawdust several miles below the city, and I went there and found hundreds of Bank swallows nesting in the face of the heap, which was as hard and firm as a bank of sand. I got several sets of eggs.’

* * *

Another recent Goose Lane diary volume concerns Robert Wyse. He was born in 1900, in Newcastle, New Brunswick, into a prosperous family, one of six children. The family soon moved to Moncton, 100 miles or so south, but also in New Brunswick. Robert was too young to serve in the early years of First World War, but managed to sign up for the RAF in 1918 - though he did not see any action. Twenty years later, he left New Brunswick, partly to escape an unhappy marriage (from which he had one son, Robert) and travelled to England where he joined the RAF, and trained as a gunner. After a year, he switched to work as a flight controller; and then, with Squadron 232, he found himself in the Far East.

Following a mis-handled Allied campaign on Sumatra, and a retreat to Java, Wyse, along with many tens of thousands of Allied troops, was captured by Japanese forces. He spent over three years a prisoner of war before being liberated in the late summer of 1945. Thereafter, he was hospitalised before returning home in late 1946. He divorced his first wife, and married Laura Teakles with whom he had a daughter, Ruth. However, his health never fully recovered, and he died in 1967.

Although prisoners of war were forbidden to keep diaries, Wyse did write a journal during his incarceration, hiding it in a bamboo pole beside his bed, for over two years. When the practice became too dangerous, he buried his notes (just as others did, including the more famous diarist in the same camp, Laurens van der Post). After the war, he managed to arrange for his notes to be returned to Canada where he and Laura’s sister transcribed them to a typescript. The original notes no longer exist, but Jonathan F Vance, professor of history at the University of Western Ontario, edited the typscript (deleting passages added after the war) for publication by Goose Lane as Bamboo Cage - The P.O.W. Diary of Flight Lieutenant Robert Wyse, 1942‐1943.

This is, in fact, the 13th volume in a series of Goose Lane books for the New Brunswick Military Heritage Series. Initiated in 2000 by the Military and Strategic Studies Program of the University of New Brunswick, its purpose is to inform the public of ‘the remarkable military heritage of the province, and to stimulate further research, education and publication in the field’.

Here are a few extracts from Bamboo Cage.

1 September 1942
‘Hurried in to lorries at 10 a.m. and departed shortly after, no waiting around with the Japanese. Lovely drive through thickly populated country to Soerabaja, the largest sea port in Java. Our prison here is a former race course and fair grounds, thick concrete walls, sentry boxes at the four corners, and guards perpetually patrolling through the atap huts. Every Nippon guard seen even at a great distance must be saluted or bowed to, and one must stand rigidly at attention until they are out of sight. Another search of our meagre possessions on arrival, very thorough and much more of our stuff taken. Saw a small British flag being stamped on. About 1,000 British troops here already, about 3,000 Dutch, some Australian, American, and all other nationalities represented. Managed to get some bed space on some bamboo raised up from the ground, most of the troops on the ground here, but it is the dry season.’

2 September 1942
‘Practically no outside labour here. The camp is horribly dusty and dirty but fortunately there are a few showers. The bog holes are a seething mass of microbe life. Wing Commander Cave’s party went to Batavia in March and they are here now, many officers and men that I knew. P/O Shutes ... offers 5 guilders for my lighter. Woodford advises me to keep it for a better price.’

3 September 1942
‘Getting used to it but this is pretty hard living. Food even worse than at Malang and not so good for a Westerner. Small piece [of] bread in the morning with a cup of tea, bread very heavy and soggy. Lunch, boiled rice. It is generally too well cooked, naturally with no sugar, salt, or milk. Supper, steamed rice, a small ladle of stew (so called), no fat, no sugar. With a cup of tea, no accessories. That’s all there is, there ain’t no more. At the canteen you can buy cigarettes only - understand they used to sell tea and coffee.’

4 September 1942
‘At noon today informed of another move, don’t know where but think old English to be sorted out and confined together. Trying to sell my lighter at any price, sorry I didn’t take the five guilders, am stone broke. The Nippons had allowed us to keep some of our English iron rations. Now the C.O. is giving us each a share. I had a share in a can of apples, a small spoonful, a half a can of bully beef and an eighth of a tin of potatoes - that, with my noontime ration, à la Dai Nippon, made one good bellyful. . .

There is damn-all charity between the British prisoners of war. Never in all my life have I seen such examples of selfishness. There was a riot over a case of corned beef, several boys injured. [Just] a spirit of ‘the hell with you, jack, I am looking after myself.’ Officers and men alike sit in front of others and fairly gloat over food that they have been able to purchase. When the capitulation came, huge impresses were handed out to officers for disbursement and the common good, [but] large sums of it remain in their own pockets and those of their friends. Tonight I sold a pair of socks, a gift, which I do not need, for 2; also a half cupful of petrol for 1. Our atap huts present a lively spectacle tonight as the Dutch come from all over to buy up the few remaining possessions of the English. I don’t know who wins. Our lads need the money for food, they certainly don’t need many clothes in this climate, but we have been at great pains to issue them with shirts and shorts to cover their nakedness, and the minute they get a new shirt off they go to see how many guilders they can get, guilders of course representing food.’

Many thanks to Goose Lane Editions for permission to quote from both their books, and for use of the two portrait photographs.

Browning’s friend Domett

Alfred Domett, a literary man who emigrated to New Zealand and became its prime minister for a short time, was born two centuries ago today. His diary, though not well known, is often quoted as a source of information about his friend, the much more famous poet Robert Browning, and other artists of the time.

Domett was born in Camberwell, Surrey, on 20 May 1811. He studied at St John’s College, Cambridge, but did not finish his degree. After travelling in North America and the West Indies, he returned to study law at Middle Temple before being called to the bar in 1841. He published several volumes of poetry during this period, and contributed to Blackwood’s Magazine. He was a friend of Robert Browning, who wrote a poem (Waring) about him.

In 1842, Domett emigrated to New Zealand where he had purchased some land, and took up farming. He was invited to enter politics after working for a while as editor of the Nelson Examiner. He rose rapidly, being appointed Colonial Secretary for New Munster in 1848, Secretary for the Colony in 1851, and became Prime Minister in 1862 (although he only served in this office for a little over a year). During the rest of the 1860s, he was Secretary for Lands and Registrar-general of lands. He also established the General Assembly Library.

Domett returned to England in 1871 with his wife, Mary George, a widowed schoolteacher whom he had married in 1856. Once back in London he re-established his friendship with Browning, and pursued his literary interests, including publishing more poems, one of which was Ranolf and Amohia. He died in 1887. There is not much biographical information about him available on the internet, though Wikipedia has a short entry, and the ONDB a longer one (subscription or library card log in required).

Domett certainly kept a diary for some periods of his life, and the extant volumes are kept by the British Library. None of this material, though, was published until 1953 when Oxford University Press brought out The Diary of Alfred Domett, 1872-1885, edited by E A Horsman. Another volume appeared two years later, published by University of Western Ontario: The Canadian Journal of Alfred Domett: being an extract from a journal of a tour in Canada, the United States and Jamaica, 1833-1835. This was also edited by Horsman, as well as by Lillian Rea Benson who appears to have been largely responsible for unearthing the travel diary.

Here are a few extracts from The Diary of Alfred Domett, 1872-1885, all to be found on The Victorian Web, except the one for 30 March 1876 which can be found at the Armstrong Browning Library website (see no. 4).1 April 1873
‘[Thomas] Thornycroft [sculptor of the group representing Agriculture, flanking the Albert Monument, among others] shewed us his studio. His large group of Boadicea with her daughters beside her driving her chariot into battle, with the expression of one of the faces, looking forth into the ‘hurly-burly’ with a kind of daring awe, seemed very fine. Pity they don’t find a place for the group on the top of one of our tame abortive-looking park porticoes or arches not very ‘triumphal’. We saw too the plaister model of his group for a new drinking-fountain in Park Lane; the poet-figures, Shakespeare, Milton & Chaucer by Thornycroft Senr., the gilded Fame surmounting it, by his son.’

10 May 1873
‘Called on the Thornycrofts, Wilton Place. Found Mr T at work on a model of the horse for an equestrian statue of Lord Mayo he had been commissioned to make for Calcutta. He was modelling his horse without sketch or other original as a guide. Said he had made so many he did not require any. When he wanted to study a horse, he used to go & walk in the Park, Rotten Row, where his living models were in plenty.

He never exhibits at the Royal Academy, nor sends his works there as he does not belong to it. Does not care to belong to the Academy now though when he was young it would have been of use to him.

Talking with Mrs Thornycroft and praising her beautiful and simple statues of the Queen’s children she said the Queen had had copies of them made to send to several of the Royal Families of Europe. . .’

29 October 1873
‘[John Henry Foley - designer of the Albert Memorial] was very kind and affable and shewed us through his studio. The model of the Statue of Prince Albert for The Hyde Park monument was there. He says when the Queen came to see it, she liked the expression of the face so much that she desired it might not even be touched by him any further, and so, though he had not considered it quite finished he had complied with her request and left it as it was. The statue, to be in bronze gilt, had been so long in execution, because in the hurry to get it done, the molten metal had been poured into the mould before the latter was thoroughly dry, so that the generated steam had exploded and destroyed it. Thus to save a week, they had lost 6 months at least for the extra work required to make a second mould.’

30 March 1876
‘[Alf - Domett’s son] and I going to R Curling’s house to dinner in Princess square, as we were crossing Hereford St, heard someone calling loudy ‘Domett!’ Turned, and Browning came rushing up. Alf’s being a Royal Academy student, made us ask how ‘Pen’ [Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barret Browning only child] was getting on.

‘He has had a wonderful success!’ said Browning. He brought over with him at Xmas a ‘study’ of a priest reading a book. Millais had seen the picture and pronounced ‘the drawing perfect.’

Lehmann [Frederick Lehmann, a wealthy industrialist] expressed a desire to purchase it and offered Pen 150 guineas for it. Pen said ‘It was absurd - it could not be worth so much!’ that he did not wish to sell it, knowing its defects. The other persisted in his offer. ‘Let me wait another year and then I will paint you a picture if you like and if I can,’ said Pen. ‘Then your price will probably be beyond me’ replied Lehmann, ‘I must have this one.’ Browning said Pen was ‘quite wise’ about it and still declined to take so much money, until at last he (Browning) said ‘Pen, don't be a fool - take it as it is offered.’ Then he consented but stipulated that it should not be exhibited - not on account of misgivings as to its merit, whatever he may have entertained, but because the book the priest was represented as reading was a very uncanonical one indeed - certain notorious memoirs of a French Madame - and Pen did not wish to give offence to the many who ‘reverenced priests.’

29 May 1877
‘Went to London Library. A meeting of members was being held up-stairs . . . I stood by the door while Gladstone was speaking near the fire place. Gladstone, a dusky-complexioned spare middle-sized man, with grey hair, thin and straggling; eyes very black and rather bright; earnest expression; with a sort of approach to a slouch in his manner and bearing. He spoke fluently but not at all rapidly; sentences rather winding and long drawn out like honey you must twist the spoon to break off. When he had spoken, an old benevolent looking aquiline-nosed stooping man (the Archbishop of Dublin) made a few remarks, in the course of which, Gladstone quietly took his hat and sloped out stealing close by me to the door.’

5 June 1877
‘Being at the Zoological Gardens, I looked in at the Lecture Room. Huxley was lecturing. A dark-complexioned man, with deepset eyes, prominent forehead and turned-up nose, thick rather coarse hair slightly streaked with grey, parted on one side, and brushed back from his forehead in the middle; lower part of the cheeks a little flabby making a sort of fold overarching the mouth; lips loose and mouth working; fidgety, rather excitable in manner, passing the back of his hand across his nose nervously, but as if from habit, not in the least from diffidence. He spoke in a low conversational tone; taking a snake from a box, handling and describing it; explaining some of the motions of its head and body by pawing with his hand in the air.’

3 May 1883
‘At Edinburgh for my first time! A wonderful place with all that a town should have, in compactness and completeness unmatched - a perfect ideal of a city! Romantic site of hill and vale - fine buildings and monuments mediaeval and modern; palace and castle; antiquated gloomy wynds and closes and lofty houses towering up like cliffs, dotted with windows like loopholes; all teeming with associations, historical, poetical, scientific - national and individual - heroic, tragic, comic, quaint, terrible or humorous; all in their appropriate places, disposed like a scene in a theatre - all as it were within a space to be seen almost at a glance! . . .’

The literary profession

Yale University Press has just published a first substantial edition of the journals written by Alfred Kazin, one of the most important American literary critics of the 20th century. The journals, the Press says, collectively tell the story of Kazin’s journey from Brooklyn’s Brownsville neighborhood to his position as a dominant figure in twentieth-century cultural life.

Kazin was born in 1915 in Brooklyn to uneducated Yiddish-speaking immigrants, but went on to study at City College of New York. He became a book reviewer for The New Republic, and while still in his 20s, he wrote On Native Grounds, a much-lauded re-interpretation of American literature - a book of literary criticism which read, according to The New York Times, ‘like a passionate communication intended for intelligent, living human beings rather than like a 1940s academic exercise or a 1930s political tract.’

Although there is a published biography of Kazin, there is not much detailed biographical information about him freely available on the internet. Christopher Hawtree, in his review (for The Telegraph) of Alfred Kazin: a Biography, by Richard Cook, says that after publishing On Native Grounds ‘other literary studies progressed as tentatively as his four marriages; affairs distracted him as readily as new ideas did from the book in hand. He found succour and success, however, with three acclaimed autobiographical works. . . A Walker in the City (1951), Starting Out in the Thirties (1965) and New York Jew (1978).’

In 1996, Kazin was awarded the first Truman Capote Lifetime Achievement Award for literary criticism. He died two years later - see The Independent or The New York Times for obituaries.

For most of his life Kazin kept a diary, and though he planned to release parts of it during his lifetime, no volume appeared until 1996 when HarperCollins published A Lifetime Burning in Every Moment - From the Journals of Alfred Kazin. ‘Written with the vividness and power of first-rate fiction,’ HarperCollins says, ‘it brings to life the great artists and thinkers who shaped the times, including Saul Bellow, Bernard Malamud and Hannah Arendt, and shares Kazin’s insights on politics, literature, Jewish life after the Holocaust and American society. It is an immensely rich and resonant memoir from an observer whose eloquence can imbue each moment lived with a lifetime of thought and passion.’

Now, another 15 years later, Yale University Press has published Alfred Kazin’s Journals - ‘judiciously’ selected and edited by Kazin’s biographer Richard Cook. The publisher’s promotional material states: ‘To Kazin the daily entry was a psychological and spiritual act. To read through these entries is to reexperience history as a series of daily discoveries by an alert, adventurous, if often mercurial intelligence. It is also to encounter an array of interesting and notable personalities. Sketches of friends, mistresses, family figures, and other intellectuals are woven in with commentary on Kazin’s childhood, early religious interests, problems with parents, bouts of loneliness, dealings with publishers, and thoughts on the Holocaust. The journals also highlight his engagement with the political and cultural debates of the decades through which he lived. He wrestles with communism, cultural nationalism, liberalism, existentialism, Israel, modernism, and much more.’

Cook himself explains this about Kazin’s diaries on The American Scholar website: ‘Since high school he had been writing almost daily in a private journal that he had hoped to publish. He never did, though he published a memoir, A Lifetime Burning in Every Moment, based loosely on a few dozen undated and heavily edited entries. Why the journals or a substantial selection of entries never appeared is unclear. Other projects apparently intervened, and Kazin eventually despaired of working his way through the “pile-up of words,” 7,000 pages, amassed during 65 years of journal keeping.’

A generous number of extracts from the new book are available on the same website.

3 May 1945
‘Interview with T S Eliot, at his offices (Faber & Faber). Eliot now, if I calculate correctly, must be 57; face has aged and relaxed greatly, so that one’s first impression of him physically is of a rather tired kindness as opposed to the otherworldliness & hauteur of his early pictures. He was extremely kind, gentle, spoke very slowly and hesitatingly, livened up a bit when I pushed the conversation on to literary topics (at first, because of my official business, he spoke a little about popular education and his own experiences teaching for the WEA and LCC). He looks like a very sensitive question mark - long, winding, and bent; gives the impression that his sensibility is in his long curling nose and astonishing hands. I was so afraid that he would be standoffish or just reluctant that I spoke more than I wanted to, just to keep the conversation going. He said things which just verged on “you Americans,” but I grinned when he spoke of Truman and Missouri and he grinned back. . .’

6 October 1952
‘The literary profession - what a misnomer, what a horror. This very profession (of faith!) to which I entrust my life (for by that I mean my thinking) is also a mad scramble for social prestige and a job. So that at every point (but obviously most on Sunday night, before the treadmill gets me back) I oscillate between the native purity, the relative selflessness of my inner thought - and this splintery, tormented, boring, boring attempt to get things by my profession - my name on this list, my bank account full. The profession which by its incarnated incarnation the nullity of egotism, serves (how often!) only our egotism.

What a monster it is, then, this being not a writer, a thought-bearer, but a WRITER quoted on the jackets of the latest books, much sought-after by summer workshops, an object of mystery, a perpetual mode of unbelief, to the vulgar - “And do you write under your own name?” As if most us wrote for any purpose other than publicizing our own name!

No name, no writer.’

26 April 1972
‘Met Isaac Bashevis Singer in the Braniff waiting room at Laguardia. [. . .] He makes an impression on all around him even when they are not exactly sure who or what he is. His bags (which he insisted on carrying at all times) were crammed with mss. in large manila envelopes. He writes on loose pages torn out of school exercise books, and said, among other wonderful things, that the Jews hypnotize the outsiders & then get hated when they themselves desert “their” cause (i.e., first Christianity & then Marxism). He brightened up (without the help of any strong meat or drink whatsoever) at dinner, became positively pixieish at times. The essential solitude of the man, a kind of genial indifference to the world while happily tasting its money, prizes, etc. (his only recreation is travel) was very noticeable. It no longer matters where he is; he does not believe in anything outside his creative mind & fancies. . .’

The friends of liberty

Joseph Hunter, a little remembered Yorkshire antiquarian, died 150 years ago today. He started to keep a diary with some determination - perhaps to follow the example of Ralph Thoresby, another antiquarian who lived a century earlier - but doesn’t seem to have continued keeping it for long. Nevertheless, it provides some illuminating detail for those who study the history of reading.

Hunter was born in 1783 in Sheffield, the son of a cutler. Educated at Attercliffe, he later studied theology at New College in York, becoming a Presbyterian minister in Bath in 1809. He married Mary, daughter of Francis Hayward, and they had six children, of whom three sons and a daughter survived Hunter himself. A long-term interest in antiquarian studies led him to be appointed, in 1833, a sub-commissioner of the Records Commission to London. Five years later, he became an Assistant Keeper of the Public Records. He wrote much on history and archaeology.

After his death - on 9 May 1861 - a large number of his manuscripts became the property of the British Museum, the most important of which is a volume of some 650 pages completely filled with pedigrees of families based in Yorkshire, Derbyshire, Cheshire, and Lancashire. Wikipedia and the website of St Mary’s Parish Church, Ecclesfield, have short biographies.

Early on in his life, when only 23, Hunter decided to become a diarist, but he left behind less than a year’s worth of entries. Arthur Ponsonby, author of English Diaries, describes Hunter’s diary thus:

‘He notes the lectures he attends, the people with whom he has conversations and to whom he writes letters, sermons he hears, the establishment of ‘a society of literary conversations’ where they have a debate on a universal language; an attack of a severe cold (‘believe t’is epedemic and what is called influenza’) a tea-party where the conversation is ‘merest chit chat and scandal,’ etc. It would almost seem as if he were settling down to be a diarist when he begins describing people, for instance George Dyer, ‘a strange quizz, such a rough head of hair was never seen, but an entertaining fellow, takes snuff to wean himself from smoking.’ But after recording immense lists of books he is reading he breaks into a sort of shorthand just to give the division of the day, every hour of which is occupied in the study of Greek, Hebrew, mathematics, etc. and on September 20 he leaves off for good.’

Stephen Colclough, however, in his essay entitled Readers: Books and Biography contained within A companion to The History of the book edited by Simon Eliot and Jonathon Rose (published by Blackwell in 2007) makes good use of Hunter’s diary. Here are several paragraphs from his essay (available at Googlebooks).

‘. . . Institutions of reading (such as subscription libraries) helped to shape individual reading practices by encouraging the public discussion of texts. Several readers who were members of such institutions left records of their readings. The diaries of one such reader, Joseph Hunter, reveal that it was possible for a member of such an institution to interpret text in ways that were fundamentally opposed to the rules that governed their reading community.

During the late 1790s, Hunter was a member of the Surrey Street Library in Sheffield, Yorkshire. Surrey Street was a subscription library owned by its members. Members were charged an annual fee of one guinea, and both they and the books that they ordered had to pass the scrutiny of the library committee to be admitted. As Hunter records, he made frequent trips to the library to borrow a wide range of texts, including novels and magazines. The Analytical Review was a particular favourite, and he made notes on its contents and read texts, such as Robinson’s The Causes and Consequences of English Wars (1798), reviewed in its pages. However, in the autumn of 1798 the committee decided to remove many of the texts associated with the contemporary radical movement from its shelves. As Hunter noted on October 31, 1798: ‘[I] brought the 2nd number of the Anti-Jacobin Review & Magazine, which is got into the Surry Street Library instead of the Analytical which they have turned out. It is a most virulent attack upon all the friends of liberty or jacobins, as they are pleased to stile them; it is ornamented with caricature prints’.

Conservative writers viewed the Analytical as an important source of opposition to the war that Britain was fighting against France in the 1790s. . . The library committee may well have excluded the Analytical because it wanted to disassociate itself from opposition to the war against France, but the effect on Hunter was to make him aware of his own position as a member of an audience that was under attack. He is referring to himself as one of the ‘the friends of liberty’ in this passage from the diary, and it is from this position that he completed an oppositional, or resisting, reading of the contents of the Anti-Jacobin.

As this example suggest, Hunter’s diaries provide an important account of both the range of his reading (which included everything from ephemera to novels) and of the variety of strategies that he used to make sense of the texts. He even noted the presence of posters for political meetings in the streets and that he had seen men reading seditious periodicals at work. Such autobiographical documents are an important source of information about how texts were used. They provide vital evidence about reading as an everyday practice (sometimes passive, sometimes, as in his reading of the Anti-Jacobin, resisting) that cannot be recovered from inert sources such as publisher’s records. Hunter’s diary records that he was exceptionally well read in contemporary texts, but he was also exposed to older texts which he borrowed from his guardian or bought second-hand.’

Finally, it is also worth noting that Hunter edited and prepared for publication the diaries of Ralph Thoresby, another northern antiquarian who was born more than century earlier than himself. (See The Diary Junction for details.)

Royal wedding - Prussian style

Today marks the 150th anniversary of the death of Sir George Jackson, a 19th century diplomat of quiet distinction. Though little-remembered today, his diaries and letters were edited by his wife (a slightly better-remembered author) and published not long after his death. Typically, the diaries describe his diplomatic life. One interesting entry focuses on the marriage of Prince William to Princess Amelia - a royal wedding, Prussian style.

Jackson was born in 1785, the youngest son of Dr Thomas Jackson, one of the canons of the Abbey of Westminster at the time, and subsequently canon residentiary of St Paul’s. Although initially destined to follow his father into the church, he went instead, in 1801, to Paris. There he acted as unpaid attache to his much older brother, Francis, who had been appointed minister during negotiations that were to lead to the Treaty of Amiens (and a temporary halt in the ongoing war between France and Britain).

In 1805, during his brother’s temporary absence, George Jackson was presented at the Prussian court as charge d’affaires. The following year, he was sent to north Germany to oversee a renewal in friendly relations with Prussia, and, in 1807-1808, he helped with the negotiations and ratification of a new treaty with the Kingdom of Prussia. He was subsequently appointed as one of the secretaries of legation in the mission to the Spanish Junta.

Later, Jackson was posted to the headquarters of the allied armies in Germany throughout the campaigns of 1813-1814; finally entering Paris with the allies. On the return of the King of Prussia to Berlin, he was charge d’affaires to that court, remaining until 1816, when he was appointed to St Petersburg. Subsequently, he was sent to Madrid, and, from 1823 to 1827, he was posted to Washington, as commissioner, under the first article of the Treaty of Ghent, for the settlement of American claims.

After several years in Sierra Leone, as Commissary Judge, he was appointed, in 1832 (the year he was knighted), Chief Commissioner for the convention on the abolition of the African slave trade. This took him first to Rio Janeiro, until 1841, then to Surinam, and, from 1845, to St Paul de Loanda. He retired in 1859, having married only three years earlier; and he died at Boulogne-sur-Mer on 2 May 1861. There is very little information about Jackson online, not even a Wikipedia article - although there is one about his wife, Catherine, who went on to become author.

After Jackson’s death, Catherine edited her husband’s diaries and letters from when he was still a young man in the early days of his diplomatic career. These were published in 1872 by Richard Bentley in two volumes as The Diaries and Letters of Sir George Jackson K C H - From the Peace of Amiens to the Battle of Talavara. A year later, two more volumes were published: The Bath Archives - A Further Selection from the Diaries and Letters of Sir George Jackson K C H from 1809 to 1916.

Lady Jackson says in her introduction to the first volume: ‘The great interest taken by Mr G Jackson in public affairs, from the very outset of his career, and the especial advantage he possessed of a thorough diplomatic training, under his brother - a man of considerable talent, and distinction in his profession - give to the observations and opinions contained in the diaries and letters of this young attache, a certain value, as outlines of the events of the above-named period, which are traced, it is thought, with sufficient firmness to convey a fairly correct notion of the scenes depicted and the characters portrayed.’

Here is one long extract from Jackson’s diary (available at Internet Archive) about a Prince William getting married - though the royal family is Prussian, and the wedding took place in Berlin.

13 January 1804
‘Yesterday, the marriage of Prince William and the Princess Amelia took place at the palace. The royal diadem was placed on the head of the bride by the queen mother, in the presence of the royal family. They then went in procession to the state rooms, fitted up by Frederick I, and where all royal marriages are performed.

The prince, in the uniform of a Prussian general, with the princess, dressed in white satin and silver - four maids of honour bearing her train - walked first; the king, with the queen mother; the queen, with Prince Henry, and eight other royal couples followed. Each was preceded by gentlemen of their respective courts, and followed by their chief officers, with the maids of honour attending the royal ladies.

The procession passed through the old court chapel and the gallery - two hundred feet in length - to the White Hall, in which are the statues, in white marble, of the old electors.

Here the Court chaplain, M Sack, was waiting, under a canopy of red velvet, to perform the marriage ceremony. All the royal family, with the exception of the queen mother - for whom a velvet-covered chair was provided - stood in a half circle round the bride and bridegroom; the rest of the company formed a second half circle outside the royal one.

At the moment when the rings were exchanged, a signal was given, and the twenty-four cannon before the palace were fired in succession three times.

The Court then proceeded to the card-room, where the newly-married couple sat down to whist with the king and the queen mother. The Queen, Prince Henry, the bride’s mother - the Landgravine of Hesse - and the Prince of Orange, formed another table; the rest of the company made up four others. When they had finished their rubber, they adjourned to the state-room, and the royal party took supper; which was served on gold plate, and under a canopy of red velvet. During the repast a band of music was stationed in the silver orchestra. This orchestra is, in fact, only plated; the original one was of solid silver, but at the commencement of the Seven Years’ War, the Great Frederick, finding his coffers rather empty, melted it down for crowns, and supplied its place with the present one.

The meats served to the royal table were cut up by Generals Elsna and Beville - standing - and were afterwards distributed, or handed round, by the marshal, and officers of the Court, les grandes maîtresses, and maids of honour. These menial offices are performed by them only on such exceptional occasions, and their duties end when the royal party have drunk their first glass, which, according to court etiquette, is always immediately after the first course is served. Their distinguished attendants then retire to take supper also, with the rest of the company, at adjoining tables. There were five of those extra tables, each presided over by a person of high rank.

Supper ended, they returned to the White Hall, and the ministers of state, each with a fourfold burning torch of white wax in his hand, assembled near the throne to await the arrival of the Court to commence the Fackel dance, with which the marriage ceremony concludes; a custom observed only at this Court, and supposed to have been originally intended to represent the Court of Hymen conducting the new-married pair to the nuptial chamber.

As soon as the royal party entered, the trumpets and kettle-drums of the king’s Garde du Corps, and the regiment of Gendarmes, struck up a sort of polonaise. The grand marshal, with his long black wand, led off first. The ministers, with their flaming torches, followed. Then came the prince and his wife, and the four maids of honour bearing the train. Slowly marching towards the royalties, ranged in a circle round the throne, the princess left the arm of her husband, and advancing towards the king, curtseyed profoundly, thus inviting him to make the first tour with her. This over, the same ceremony was gone through with all the princes, according to the order observed in the marriage procession. The prince then commenced his tours, first with the queen mother, then the queen, and all the princesses in succession; the ministers, with their hymeneal torches, preceding each couple. To some of the festive torch-bearers these numerous tours seemed to be tours de force they were hardly equal to; and they must surely have succumbed if Providence had not spared them the minuets with which they at first were threatened. But at length the tours were ended; and the royal bride and bridegroom were then escorted to their apartments to undress; the former by the queen mother and the other royal ladies, the latter by the king and princes.

When the princess was supposed to be in bed, the company assembled in the ante-room to receive from her grande maîtresse small pieces of embroidered riband, representing her royal highness’s garter.

Thus ended this royal wedding, which put me in mind of an old drama, got up with new scenery, dresses, processions, banquets, trumpets, kettle- drums, &c, &c.

We take our share of the general fuss, and celebrate the happy event by a ball on the 18th.’

My birthday again

Today, one hundred and ninety years ago, was born Anthony Ashley Cooper, who later became the 7th Earl of Shaftesbury. A religious man, and, in his day, a well-known philanthropist, he campaigned to improve factory conditions and to restrict the hours children were allowed to work. His diaries were quoted extensively in a three volume biography published the year after his death.

Cooper was born in Richmond, near London, on 28 April 1801, the eldest son of ten children. He was educated at Harrow and Christ College, Oxford, and when only 25, was elected as MP for Woodstock, a Shaftesbury family borough. He married Emily Cowper, whose real father was rumoured to be Lord Palmerston (who did marry Emily’s mother after Lord Cowper’s death). They had ten children some of them beset with health problems.

From the outset in his Parliamentary career, Cooper was interested in social reform. Early on he was a member of a committee looking into the treatment of lunatics, a subject which he followed through for much of his career. In 1832, he became the leader of the factory reform movement in the House of Commons. A year later he proposed a bill to restrict children’s working time to ten hours. It was defeated, but the government nevertheless brought in new restrictions on child labour in the 1933 Factory Act. Some years later, in 1840, Lord Ashley helped set up the Children’s Employment Commission which led to the Coal Mines Act prohibiting women and children from working underground.

In 1851, on the death of his father, Cooper became the 7th Earl of Shaftesbury. He continued to campaign for more restrictive legislation on child working hours, and his work led to the passing of the so-called Ten Hours Act in 1847. He also campaigned on education and was chairman of the Ragged Schools Union which established many schools for poor families. He died in 1885. For more biographical information see The Victorian Web or Wikipedia. The Diary Junction has information on the 1st Earl of Shaftesbury, who lived two centuries earlier, and was also a diarist, and was also called Anthony Ashley Cooper.

Here are several extracts from The Life and Work of the Seventh Earl of Shaftesbury by Edwin Hodder, published in three volumes by Cassell & Company in 1886, all of them written by Cooper on his birthday.

28 April 1826
My birthday, and now I am twenty-five years old - a great age for one who is neither wise, nor good, nor useful, nor endowed with capability of becoming so. People would answer me, ‘Why, you have not lost your time, you have always been engaged;’ quite true, but always upon trifles; indeed, since my quitting Oxford, a space now of three years, I have absolutely done harm to my intellects, by false reasoning which, however rare it may have been, is the only exercise which has disturbed my mental indolence. What might have been performed in three years? but not a study commenced, not an object pursued; not a good deed done, not a good thought generated: for my thoughts are too unsteady for the honour of that title. Visions without end, but, God be praised, all of a noble character. I fancy myself in wealth and power, exerting my influence for the ends that I sought it for, for the increase of religion and true happiness. No man had ever more ambition, and probably my seeming earnestness for great and good purposes was merely a proof of hotter ambition and deeper self- deception than exists in others. That I am not completely in despair must come from God who knows, . . . Latterly I have taken to hard study. It amuses me and prevents mischief. Occasionally the question ‘cui bono’ sours my spirit of application; but generally speaking, I have stilled the passions. An attachment during my residence at Vienna commenced a course of self-knowledge for me. Man never has loved more furiously or more imprudently. The object was, and is, an angel, but she was surrounded by, and would have brought with her, a halo of hell.

28 April 1827.
‘My birthday again; and God be praised that I have arrived at it without any intolerable calamity of mind or body. It has been a year of study and exertion, but I have neither learnt nor done anything. Yet look at the history of all men who have obtained a degree of efficiency. They began much earlier to signalise their merits. Cicero opened his Pleadings at twenty-six, my age, . . ; Scipio was consul at twenty-four ; Pitt prime minister at twenty-three. All the men at the present day started while still of supple years. Peel, Canning, Robinson, were all younger than I am now, who have not done one thing, nor acquired the power of doing one thing, which might be serviceable to my country or an honour to myself. And yet I cannot keep down an aspiring sentiment - a sentiment which, God knows, aims at all virtue, and through that, aiming at all greatness. I cannot understand why my time is less profitably employed than the time of others. I read, think, make every endeavour, but no good result comes of it, and this year has found me as unprepared as the last, and the next year will find me no better than this has done. To be sure my weak stomach has a sad effect upon the head, but this is not all, I must confess painful deficiency, and in humbleness make the best of it.’

28 April 1831
‘Dorchester. Another birthday in the midst of an election and a falling country. Were I not married to a woman whose happiness, even for an hour, I prefer to whole years of my own, I could wish to be away from the scene of destruction and carried to an unearthly place, rather than see my country crumble before my eyes. Whatever be the result of this General Election relative to the Bill, the Ministers have succeeded in rendering some Reform inevitable.’

28 April 1843
‘My birthday. I am this day forty-two years old, more than half my course is run, even supposing that I fulfil the age assigned by the Psalmist to fallen man. ‘A short life, and a merry one,’ says the sensualist’s proverb; a long life and a useful one, would be more noble and more Scriptural; but it is spoken to the praise of Solomon, and by God himself, that he had not asked a long life; neither then will I; but I do ask, for to this we have the warranty of the Holy Word, that the residue of my years be given to the advancement of the Lord’s glory, and to the temporal and eternal welfare of the human race. Surely I may also pray to see, and even to reap, some fruit of my labours, to discern at least some probability of harvest, although to be gathered by other hands!

The Factory Bill drags a long - ten years have witnessed no amelioration - the plan for Education is defeated; the Opium effort is overthrown. On the Colliery Question alone have I had partial success, and that even is menaced by evil and selfish men.’

28 April 1884
‘My birthday, and I have now struck the figure of eighty-three. It is wonderful, it is miraculous, with my infirmities, and even sufferings, of body, with sensible decline of mental application and vigour, I yet retain, by God’s mercy, some power to think and to act. May He grant, for Christ’s sake, that, to my last hour, I may be engaged in His service, and in the full knowledge of all that is around and before me! Cobden used to say of D’Israeli - I have heard him more than once - “What a retrospect that man will have!” Retrospects must be terrible to every one who measures and estimates his hopes by the discharge of his duties here on earth. Unless he be overwhelmed with self-righteousness, he must see that, when weighed in the balance he will be found wanting. But what are the prospects? They may be bright, joyous certain, in the faith and fear of the Lord Jesus.’