He shines in the dark

Files newly-released by the UK’s security services (MI5) to The National Archives include the diaries of Guy Liddell from the post-war period when he was MI5’s Deputy Director-General. According to The National Archives, Liddell’s diaries ‘provide a fascinating new insight into the early Cold War era’ including key moments such as the uncovering of Klaus Fuchs as a nuclear spy, and the defection of Guy Burgess and Donald Maclean. But they also reveal how elements of subsequent science/conspiracy fiction - involving, for example, ‘a luminous man’ or bubonic plague experiments - were actually part of Liddell’s every day world.

Liddell, born in 1892, served with the Royal Field Artillery in the First World War, before working with Scotland Yard, and, in 1927, joining MI5 where he became an expert on Soviet subversive activities. During the Second World he was head of counter-espionage, but after the war his career was curtailed because of his relationship with Guy Burgess (who defected in 1951), and suspicions that he too might have been a double agent. He died in 1958.

Liddell kept detailed diaries about his working life from the start of the Second World War. His wartime diaries were only released to The National Archives in 2002, since when they have been available online for a subscription fee. They were also edited by Nigel West (pen name of Rupert Allason) and published by Routledge in 2005 in two volumes: The Guy Liddell Diaries Vol I: 1939-1942; The Guy Liddell Diaries Vol II: 1942-1945. (See The Diary Review article Liddell, Tyler and internment for more.) Now the UK’s security services have released a second batch of Liddell’s diaries to The National Archives covering the post-war years, 1945-1953, when Liddell was Deputy Director-General of MI5.

The National Archives say the diaries ‘provide a fascinating new insight into the early Cold War era. Daily entries record Liddell’s impressions of key moments including the discovery in 1949 that the Soviet Union had tested its first atomic bomb, the uncovering of the spy Klaus Fuchs and the defection of Guy Burgess and Donald Maclean.’ There is also a discussion of the Liddell diaries (with a topical link to the new James Bond film, Skyfall) on The National Archives blog.

Associated Press has a report on the newly-released diaries with the headline, ‘Overstaffed, overconfident and all too often over here’. ‘That’s how,’ the article continues, ‘a top British spymaster saw his American counterparts at the FBI and CIA, according to newly declassified diaries from the years after World War II. Friction between British spies and their American colleagues is a recurring theme in journals. . .’ It also notes how Liddell called FBI boss J. Edgar Hoover, ‘a cross between a political gangster and a prima donna’. Reuter’s report focuses on the ‘slice of everyday espionage life’ revealed by the Russian spy Klaus Fuchs who, according to Liddell’s diaries, was told to throw a magazine into a London garden to set up a rendezvous with his Russian contact.

The BBC notes how ‘Liddell provides a day-by-day account of the unfolding drama, while the diaries’ matter-of-fact writing style barely conceals how personal the betrayal was for the MI5 man who was close friends with some of the key protagonists and who struggled to believe what they had done’. And for The Guardian, the diaries ‘reflect the panic inside the Security Service as it faced the awful truth that a Cambridge spy ring existed at the heart of British intelligence’.

Here are a few extracts from the Liddell’s post-war diaries, all transcribed from scanned pages on The National Archives web pages. (Klaus Fuchs, born in 1911, was a German-British theoretical physicist and atomic spy who worked in the US, British and Canadian atomic bomb research programme during and after the Second World War. He was convicted as a Soviet spy in 1950, and imprisoned for nine years. On being released, he emigrated to East Germany, and continued, successfully, his scientific career. He died in 1988. History has judged that Fuch’s espionage was of prime importance to the Soviets, allowing them to know that the US did not have sufficient nuclear weapons to deal simultaneously with the Berlin blockade and the Communists’ victory in China. His actions are also said to have been influential in the cancellation of an Anglo-American plan in 1950 for Britain to receive US-made atomic bombs.)

23 September 1949
‘The preliminaries to this meeting are quite fantastic. SHAG is to look for a chalk Z which will be placed on a telegraph post near his home. This will mean that if he can manage it he is to attend a meeting at that spot at a given hour on the same day. To confirm he will be there, he has to turn the Z into an H. The man meeting him will be smoking a cigarette and have a rubber band on his little finger. SHAG will bring out his snuffbox and take a pinch of snuff - no conversation will pass. The second meeting will take place at a different rendezvous with another person, when the same pantomime will be gone through. The visitor will ask for a light, then offer SHAG a cigarette, when the latter will reply that he takes snuff. This will be the all clear for further conversation.’

8 February 1950
‘[Fuchs] has told us that his Russian contact in London is known by the name of ALEXANDER. We believe him to be Alexander KRAMER. He also said that he was told, if he wished for a further meeting, to throw a magazine into a garden in Kew with an indication of the rendezvous on page 10. [. . .] If a meeting was to take place there would be a chalk mark on a local lamp post. This is interesting as it is the same technique given by . . . to SHAG. Lastly, FUCHS made it fairly clear that he does not intend to go back on his confession.’

16 February 1950
‘I then asked BURGESS what his next move was. He said that there was a serious accusation on his file, which he considered to be ill-founded, and that if it stood against him his career in the Foreign Office would, to say the least, be seriously blighted. He wondered, therefore, whether, in view of his explanations, the whole thing could be expunged from the record. I said that as far as I was concerned I could not answer for the Foreign Office, but that I would certainly let them know about the specific charges which I had made and BURGESS’s replies.’

31 March 1950
‘There has been a lot of trouble at the Canadian end of the FUCHS case. Pearson of External Affairs has stated that information regarding FUCHS in the HALPERIN diary was passed to us. Meanwhile the Lord Chancellor, in making a speech on the FUCHS case in the House of Lords, had stated that no such information was passed. In fact what happened was that Peter Dwyer, who was in Canada at the time, was told that he could have access to the enormous number of documents seized in a raid on HALPERIN’s house. Included among these documents was the diary, which he did not see. He was working closely with the Canadians and relying on them to bring to his notice anything of special significance affecting this country. The Canadians passed on a photostat copy of the diary to the FBI, but did not send one to us; the first we knew of it was when we started intensive investigations into FUCHS. The information was from the Americans, but not from the Canadians. In fact it had very little significance, since when the entry was made FUCHS had made no decision to act as a spy. Had we known of the existence of this entry, it might have caused us to make closer enquiries and it might have influenced us when the decision was made to allow FUCHS to go to Harwell after his return to this country.’

1 April 1950
‘The DG had seen both the PM and the Lord Chancellor, who now realises how the mistake occurred. I am afraid, however, that we have to admit that our statement in the Lord Chancellor’s brief, that the Security Services were not informed about the entry in the diary, was not strictly accurate. It would have been possible, I suppose, for Peter Dwyer to wade through every single document and to send us a copy of the diary, and it may well be that if we had had our own representative there, who would have had an MI5 rather than MI6 approach to the problem, this would have been done. The Lord Chancellor took the whole thing extremely well and will correct his statement in due course.’

18 September 1952
‘. . . The enquiry may relate to an individual known as “The Luminous Man”, a man who has been working in one of our atomic energy establishments and has become radio-active. Apparently he shines in the dark. If this is so, it is difficult to see why there should be so much secrecy - in fact I cannot imagine how the Press have not already got on to this extraordinary case, since it is clearly a matter that cannot be kept in the dark!’

19 September 1952
‘Bacteriological trials have been going on from Stornoway, to ascertain whether or not bubonic plague germs could or could not be used in wartime. The experiment involved the release of a number of these germs - I imagine over some vessel containing a number of unfortunate animals. At the critical moment, when the cloud had passed over, a fishing trawler from Iceland was bearing down on the scene of the experiment. It disregarded the signals to keep away, and it was calculated that it might have been on the outer fringe of the cloud. The question then arose as to what action should be taken. High level conferences went on, when the rather courageous decision was made to limit the precautions to informing the medical officer at Fleetwood, and also the skipper of the ship, that if during the course of the next three weeks any member of the crew, or anybody in Fleetwood developed boils, isolation precautions should be taken immediately. The alternative would have been to innoculate all members of the crew and all the rats on board with strepto-myoscin, or some other drug, thus making the nature of the experiment quite clear with all the resulting publicity and criticisms.’

I bought her a jet plane

‘I bought Elizabeth the jet plane we flew in yesterday. It costs, brand new, $960,000. She was not displeased.’ This is the actor Richard Burton writing in his diary in 1967, at the height of his fame and in the early years of his first marriage to Elizabeth Taylor. The diaries, which span more than four decades though written rather sporadically, have just been published by Yale University Press.

Burton was born Richard Walter Jenkins into a large family in Pontrhydyfen, Wales, in 1925, but his mother died two years later, and he was brought up by a sister. He left school at 16, and soon joined the Air Training Corps as a cadet. There he met Philip Burton a former teacher of his who subsequently adopted him, helped him through further education, and encouraged his theatrical skills. The young Burton served two years in the RAF, between 1944 and 1947. Prior to his military service, though, he had already begun to work as an actor, and after his discharge he moved to London to further his career. He met his first wife, Sybil Williams, working on a film set. They had two daughters.

Burton found work easily enough, in films and narrating for the BBC, but a major turning point came in 1951 when he starred in two Shakespeare productions for Anthony Quayle at Stratford-upon-Avon and received excellent reviews. Several films in Hollywood followed (Desert Rat and The Robe), and then a major Shakespeare season at the Old Vic. When his fellow-Welshman and friend Dylan Thomas died, Burton performed the lead role in Dylan’s Under Milk Wood (to benefit Dylan’s family), which today remains one of the most celebrated radio drama productions of all time. Further Hollywood films followed, and with them the wealth that would lead him to relocate to tax-friendly Switzerland in 1957.

After performing on Broadway, Burton was brought in to star in Twentieth Century Fox’s troubled production, Cleopatra, a film which would become the most expensive ever made at the time, and which would usher in Burton’s most successful Hollywood period. On set, famously, he met Elizabeth Taylor who, like him, was married at the time. The affair was widely reported in the media, but the couple were not free to marry until their divorces in 1964. Together, they produced a number of memorable films, not least Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?. The fiery marriage lasted 10 years, but once they had divorced they soon remarried. Burton adopted Taylor’s daughter by a previous marriage (whose father had died); and together Burton and Taylor adopted a German child.

Burton’s output in later years was more prolific than admired as he often took mediocre work for financial reasons. He did have some success, though, with Equus (which he had played on stage to great acclaim) and The Wild Geese. From 1976 to 1982, he was married to Susan Hunt, and from 1983 to his death in 1984 to Sally Hay. He was only 58 when he died, but he had been a heavy smoker and drinker all his life. Further information is available from Wikipedia, the Richard Burton website, or IMDB.

Burton seems to have kept a diary intermittently through most of his life, and extracts from these were first used by Melvyn Bragg in his biography Rich: The Life of Richard Burton published by Hodder and Stoughton in 1988. In 2005, Burton’s widow, Sally, handed over the diaries - written between 1939 and 1983 - and other personal papers, known as the Richard Burton Collection, to Swansea University; and in 2010 the university formally opened its Richard Burton Archives facility. Now - in October 2012 - Yale University Press has published The Richard Burton Diaries, edited by Chris Williams. A generous number of pages can be read freely at Amazon.

The publisher claims: ‘In his personal diaries Richard Burton is a man quite different from the one we familiarly “know” as acclaimed actor, international film star, and jet-set celebrity. From his private, handwritten pages there emerges a different person - a family man, a father, a husband, a man often troubled and always keenly observing. Understood through his own words, day to day and year to year, Burton becomes a fully rounded human being who, with a wealth of talent and a surprising burden of insecurity, confronts the peculiar challenges of a life lived largely in the spotlight.’

‘At times,’ the promotional material continues, ‘Burton struggles to come to terms with the unfulfilled potential of his life and talent. In other entries, he crows over achievements and hungers for greater challenges. He may be watching his weight, watching his drinking, or watching other men watch his Elizabeth. Always he is articulate, opinionated, and fascinating. His diaries offer a rare and fresh perspective on his own life and career, Elizabeth Taylor's, and the glamorous world of film, theatre, and celebrity that they inhabited.’

The reviews of Burton’s diaries have generally been favourable. The Daily Express says: ‘These diaries are basically his autobiography and, luckily for us, the poetry-loving boyo from the Afan Valley was an articulate, insightful, and introspective man who wrote with much more style and wit than a diary requires.’ The Washington Times says the book makes ‘for utterly involving, fascinating reading, giving a rare insight into a complicated, gifted individual.’ Writing in the Camden New Journal, Gerald Isaaman, who edited the Ham & High for many years, charts Burton’s long association with Hampstead. ‘Professor Williams,’ he says, ‘puts the diaries in context, providing a biography of the boy wonder that gives an understanding of his madcap, star-dusted life of angst and contradiction, too much booze and too much beauty. He includes endless footnotes and references to ensure his intimate analysis is accurate and fair amid a saga of scandal and sensation, and gives us an understanding of restless Burton’s true value.’ This is South Wales has an article by the editor, Williams, on his experience of editing the diaries.

Here are a few extracts culled from the sources mentioned above.

30 September 1967
‘At about 12 noon this same day I did something beyond outrage. I bought Elizabeth the jet plane we flew in yesterday. It costs, brand new, $960,000. She was not displeased.’

19 November 1968
‘Famed as we are, rich as we are, courted and insulted as we are, overpaid as we are, centre of a great deal of attention as we are, [we] are not bored or blasé. We are not envious. We are merely lucky. I have been inordinately lucky all my life but the greatest luck of all has been Elizabeth. She has turned me into a moral man but not a prig, she is a wildly exciting lover-mistress, she is shy and witty, she is nobody’s fool, she is a brilliant actress, she is beautiful beyond the dreams of pornography, she can be arrogant and wilful, she is clement and loving, Dulcis Imperatrix, she is Sunday’s child, she can tolerate my impossibilities and my drunkenness, she is an ache in the stomach when I am away from her, and she loves me!’

10 January 1969
‘The more I read about man and his maniacal ruthlessness and his murdering envious scatological soul, the more I realise that he will never change. Our stupidity is immortal, nothing will change it. The same mistakes, the same prejudices, the same injustice, the same lusts wheel endlessly around the parade-ground of the centuries. Immutable and ineluctable. I wish I could believe in a God of some kind but I simply cannot. My intelligence is too muscular and my imagination stops at the horizon. And I have an idea that the last sound to be heard on this lovely planet will be a man screaming. In fear and terror. It might be more.’

20 March 1969
‘The last six months have been a nightmare. I created one half and Elizabeth the other. We grated on each other to the point of separation. I had thought of going to live lone in some remote shack in a rainy place and E had thought of going to stay with Howard in Hawaii. It is of course quite impossible. We are bound together. Hoop-steeled. Whither thou goest. He said hopefully.’

The heart is musical

Marina Tsvetaeva was born 120 years ago today. She struggled through much poverty in her life - indeed a daughter died of starvation - and political turmoil, but today she is considered a major 20th century Russian literary figure. One of her most important poems - The Encampment of the Swans -  was written about the civil war in the style of a diary; and, recently, a collection of her diary notes has been published in English.

Tsvetaeva was born in Moscow on 8 October 1892. Her father was a professor of art history, while her mother was both literary and musical. She had one sister and two half-siblings, the children of her father’s first wife (who had died). In 1902, Tsvetaeva’s mother contracted TB, and this led the family to seek a healthier climate. They lived abroad - near Genoa, for a while, where there were many Russian emigre revolutionaries - until shortly before her mother’s death in 1906.

While still in her teens, Tsvetaeva studied at Lausanne and at the Sorbonne; and around 1911, she self-published a first collection of her poems. This attracted the attention of the poet and critic Maximilian Voloshin who then befriended her. It was at Voloshin’s home, in the Black Sea resort of Koktebel, that she met a cadet in the Officers’ Academy, Sergei Efron. They married in 1912 and lived in the Crimea, and had two daughters, Ariadna (Ayla) and Irina. After the 1917 Revolution Marina returned to Moscow where she became trapped during a famine. Hoping to save her daughters, she placed them in a state orphanage, but Ayla became ill and Irina died.

In 1922, Tsvetaeva and Alya left the Soviet Union and were reunited with Efron in Berlin. They also moved to Prague and its environs, where they had a son, Georgy, before finally settling in Paris. Tsvetaeva’s writing, during this period, in praise of the Tsarist forces, was not published in Russia until much later. In 1939, still a patriot, she returned to Stalin’s Russia, but Efron and Alya were arrested for espionage. Efron was shot in 1941, and Alya served eight years in prison (though both were exonerated after Stalin’s death). When the German army invaded, Tsvetaeva and Georgy were evacuated to Tatarstan where Tsvetaeva committed suicide in 1941. Further biographical information is available from Wikipedia, Carcanet Press or The Poetry Foundation.

According to the latter source, critics and translators of Tsvetaeva’s work often comment on ‘the passion in her poems, their swift shifts and unusual syntax, and the influence of folk songs’. She is also known for her portrayal of a woman’s experiences during the so-called terrible years. She wrote several plays as well as narrative verse. One cycle of poems in the style of a diary - The Encampment of the Swans - begins on the day of Tsar Nicholas II’s abdication in 1917, and ends in 1920, when the anti-communist White Army was finally defeated.

In 2011, Yale University Press published Earthly Signs - Moscow Diaries, 1917–1922, Marina Tsvetaeva, edited, translated and introduced by Jamey Gambrell. ‘This volume,’ the publishers say, ‘presents for the first time in English a collection of essays published in the Russian emigre press after Tsvetaeva left Moscow in 1922. Based on diaries she kept from 1917 to 1920, Earthly Signs describes the broad social, economic, and cultural chaos provoked by the Bolshevik Revolution. Events and individuals are seen through the lens of her personal experience - that of a destitute young woman of upper-class background with two small children (one of whom died of starvation), a missing husband, and no means of support other than her poetry. These autobiographical writings, rich sources of information on Tsvetaeva and her literary contemporaries, are also significant for the insights they provide into the sources and methodology of her difficult poetic language. In addition, they supply a unique eyewitness account of a dramatic period in Russian history, told by a gifted and outspoken poet.’

Much of the book is available to read at Googlebooks; and below are a few (undated) extracts.

October on the Train
Notes from Those Days
‘Two and a half days - not a bite, not a swallow. (Throat tight.) Soldiers bring newspapers - printed on rose-colored paper. The Kremlin and all the monuments have been blown up. The 56th Regiment. The buildings where the Cadets and officers refused to surrender have been blown up. 16,000 killed. By the next station it’s up to 25,000. I don’t speak. I smoke. One after another, travelers get on trains heading back.

Dream (November 2, 1917, nighttime). We are escaping. A man with a rifle comes up from the cellar. I take aim with my empty hand. He lowers the rifle. A sunny day. We are climbing on some debris. S. is talking about Vladivostok. We are riding in a carriage through ruins. A man with sulfuric acid.’

On Love - From a Diary
‘The complete concurrence of souls requires the concurrence of the breath, for what is the breath, if not the rhythm of the soul?

And thus, for people to understand one another, they must walk or lie side by side.

The nobility of the heart - of the organ. Unremitting caution. It is always first to sound the alarm. I could say: it is not love that makes my heart pound, but my pounding heart - that makes love.

The heart: it is musical, rather than a physical organ.

The heart; sounding line, plummet, log, dynamometer, Reaumur - everything, but the timepiece of love. [. . .]

Old men and old women. A shaved, slender old man is always a little bit antique, always a little bit the marquis. And his attention is more flattering to me, stirs me more than the love of any twenty-year-old. To exaggerate: there’s the feeling that an entire century loves me. There’s nostalgia for his twenties, and joy for one’s own, and the opportunity of being generous - and the utter inopportuneness of it. Béranger has a little song: . . . Your glance is keen, But you’re twelve, And I’m twice eighteen.

Sixteen and sixty is not monstrous, and most important - it’s not at all ridiculous. At any rate, it’s less ridiculous than most so-called “equal” marriages. The possibility of a genuine pathos.

But an old woman in love with a young man is, at best - touching. The exception: actresses. An old actress - is the mummy of a rose.’

Travels in Upper Canada

Elizabeth Simcoe was born 250 years ago today (or thereabouts!). She spent most of her life in Devon, but for five years lived in British colonial Canada, where her husband, James Simcoe, had been appointed the first Lieutenant Governor of Upper Canada, then a frontier land. While there, she kept a detailed diary, with many sketches, which is now considered an historically valuable record of the time.

The date and place of the birth of Elizabeth Posthuma Gwillim are both matters of some dispute. Her father had died many months earlier, and her mother then also died giving birth to Elizabeth. A biographical note published in 1911 (part of the introduction to her diary - see below) says she was born in 1766 at Whitchurch, Herefordshire. But other sources available online agree she was born in 1762. And, although many of those sources state this happened in Aldwincle on 22 September, others suggest this was the date of her baptism. Mary Beacock Fryer, in her 1989 biography (Elizabeth Postuma Simcoe, 1762-1850, partly available online at Googlebooks), draws on recent research, and doubts not that she was born in Aldwincle; however, she declines to give any exact date, other than to say her mother was buried on 23 September.

Elizabeth was brought up by her mother’s younger sister, Margaret, who later married Admiral Samuel Graves. While living with them near Honiton, Devon, Elizabeth met the admiral’s godson, John Graves Simcoe, a soldier, in the spring of 1782, and they were married the same year. The newly-weds lived in Exeter, where they had three children, before moving to a large estate at Wolford near Honiton bought with Elizabeth’s inheritance. They had 11 children altogether, although only eight survived into adulthood.

In 1791, Simcoe was appointed Lieutenant Governor of Upper Canada, a new province established that year by the British Empire to govern the central third of the lands in British North America (in present-day southern Ontario), partly to accommodate loyalist refugees from the US after the American Revolution. The couple left several of their children in England, and crossed the Atlantic to Quebec. The following spring they undertook the arduous journey into the interior, to Newark, where they were based initially. Later, they moved to York, Toronto, a new town established by Simcoe, and to Quebec. In 1796, the family returned to the UK.

In 1806, Simcoe was named commander-in-chief in India, but, unexpectedly, he died before taking up the post. Subsequently, Elizabeth remained at Wolford, becoming an enthusiastic evangelical within the Church of England, focusing on her large estates, and enjoying society in places like Bath and Cheltenham. She died in 1850. Further biographical information is available from the Dictionary of Canadian Biography or Wikipedia.

One of Elizabeth’s daughters, Eliza, preserved her mother’s diaries and drawings and letters, and they were then passed down through the family. It is thanks to the diaries in particular that Elizabeth is remembered today, more in Canada than in the UK, for they concern her travels in the Canadian interior, and are full of delightful sketches. They were first published by William Biggs in Toronto in 1911 as The Diary of Mrs John Graves Simcoe (edited by John Ross Robertson). This version is available online at Internet Archive.

Mary Lu MacDonald’s biographical entry about Elizabeth for the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (log in required) says her diaries are attractive because of their ‘infectious enthusiasm’: ‘Where other women in the colony complained of hardship, Elizabeth saw only adventure. Despite her involvement in her husband’s activities she rarely mentioned politics. The people who appear in her diaries tended to be social contacts of her own class: the governor’s military colleagues, visiting dignitaries, and women who maintained rounds of visits as if still in England. Her enjoyment of her role as the governor’s wife no doubt added to her delight in all that she saw and did. In addition to the diaries Elizabeth, a talented artist, made many sketches, later turned into watercolours, which are frequently reproduced today as the most accurate records of a time and place. On their return to England, a set of thirty-two watercolours was presented to George III.’

According to Robertson, Elizabeth began keeping a diary on 17 September 1791, a few days before the family’s departure from Weymouth to Quebec, and the last entries are on 16 October 1796 when they arrived back in London. As a general rule, he says, she wrote day by day, and mailed her diary entries once a week to Mrs Hunt who was looking after four of her daughters at Wolford. According to Fryer, there are at least three versions of the diary: the short notes on which she based the other two; the versions she mailed to Mrs Hunt; and a third version, embellished with detail on flora and fauna, mailed to a friend. And, she says, the edition of the diaries published by Robertson was a combination of the latter two versions.

The following extracts are taken from Robertson’s 1911 version of Elizabeth Simcoe’s diary.

11 July 1792
‘The Indians came to dance before the Governor, highly painted and in their war costume, with little clothing. They were near enough to the house for me to hear their singing, which sounded like a repetition in different dismal tones of he, he, he, and at intervals a savage whoop. They had a skin stretched on sticks imitating a drum, which they beat with sticks. Having drank more than usual, they continued singing the greatest part of the night. They never quarrel with white people unless insulted by them, but are very quarrelsome amongst themselves. Therefore, when the women see them drunk they take away their knives, and hide them until they become sober.

This evening I walked through a pretty part of the wood and gathered capillaire and a very pretty, small flower, five white petals of an exceeding firm texture, the purple short chives which support the anther of the flower proceeding from a purple rim that surrounds a very prominent green seed-vessel, on long foot stalks; from the top of the stalk the leaves spear shaped, sawed, polished, of the darkest green, and almost as firm as holly; numerous. It grows in very shady places, an evergreen. I was driven home by the bite of a mosquito through a leather glove. My arm inflamed so much that after supper I fainted with the pain while playing at chess with Capt. Littlehales.’

14 July 1792
‘Mr Scadding caught a beautiful green grass snake, which was harmless. After keeping it a day or two he let it go. The way of clearing land in this country is cutting down all the small wood, pile it and set it on fire. The heavier timber is cut through the bark five feet above the ground. This kills the tree, which in time the wind blows down. The stumps decay in the ground in the course of years, but appear very ugly for a long time, though the very large, leafless white trees have a singular and sometimes a picturesque effect among the living trees. The settler first builds a log hut covered with bark, and after two or three years raises a neat house by the side of it. This progress of industry is pleasant to observe.’

19 July 1792
‘The Governor went to-day to see Carleton Island, nearly opposite the shore from Kingston, where there were extensive fortifications, now dismantled. The island was afterwards discovered to be within American territory. Returned at six with wild raspberries, which were exceedingly fine. Carleton Island abounds with them and strawberries and plums, while the air is esteemed so healthy that the people go there to get rid of the ague, a complaint which is very prevalent in this province. The flowering raspberry grows wild here, and bears a very insipid, flat fruit. Mr Fisher, of the Engineers, is here on his way to Quebec from Niagara. He showed us some beautiful sketches he has taken of the Falls of Niagara.’

21 July 1792
‘There are no rides about Kingston, or any pleasant walks that we have met with. Sailing is, therefore, our only amusement. To-day we were prevented by rain from going to the mills on the Cataraqui. It is in the interest of the people here to have this place considered as the seat of Government. Therefore they all dissuade the Governor from going to Niagara, and represent the want of provisions, houses, etc., at that place, as well as the certainty of having the ague. However, he has determined to sail for Niagara to-morrow.’

26 July 1792
‘At nine this morning we anchored at Navy Hall, opposite the garrison of Niagara, which commands the mouth of the river. Navy Hall is a house built by the Naval Commanders on this lake for their reception when here. It is now undergoing a thorough repair for our occupation, but is still so unfinished that the Governor has ordered three marquees to be pitched for us on the hill above the house, which is very dry ground and rises beautifully, in parts covered with oak bushes.

A fine turf leads on to woods, through which runs a very good road leading to the Falls. The side of our hill is terminated by a very steep bank covered with wood, a hundred feet in height in some places, at the bottom of which runs the Niagara River. Our marquees command a beautiful view of the river and the garrison on the opposite side, which, from its being situated on the point, has a fine effect, and the poorness of the building is not remarked at this distance, from whence a fine picture might be made.

The Queen’s Rangers are encamped within half a mile behind us. In clear weather the north shore of Lake Ontario may be discerned. The trees which abound here are oak, chestnut, ash, maple, hickory, black walnut.’

Moravians in North Carolina

Died 220 years ago did August Gottlieb Spangenberg, one of the stalwarts of the Moravian Church in the 18th century, and a key figure in the church’s expansion into North America. Although there do not appear to be any published editions of his diaries, at least in English, some extracts are available on websites hosted by the University of North Carolina.

Spangenberg was born in 1704 in Klettenberg, now a part of Hohenstein, Thuringia, where his father, Georg Spangenberg, was the pastor and ecclesiastical inspector. Left an orphan at thirteen, Spangenberg attended local school before studying law at the University of Jena. In 1722, he was converted to Pietism, a religious movement emphasising biblical study, morality and Christian living. Thereafter, he switched to studying theology, and took his degree in 1726. From 1728, he was drawn into the circle of Nicolaus Zinzendorf, a bishop of the Moravian Church and an influential social reformer. This led Spangenberg into an acrimonious split with the Pietists, and to a lifelong allegiance to the Moravian creed.

The Moravian Church, or what would become the Moravian Church, had been started by Jan Hus in the late 14th century. He had objected to some Roman Catholic ways and wished to return the church in Bohemia and Moravia to more common practices such as those embraced earlier in time by the Eastern Orthodox church. In particular, Moravians had rejected the idea of indulgences, preferring a doctrine of justification by grace through faith alone; and, in doing so, they had become the first or one of the first forerunners of the Protestant church.

With Zinzendorf, Spangenberg went to America, first to Georgia and then Pennsylvania, to supervise Moravian missionary work. Intending to make Philadelphia the centre of Moravian activity, he founded the North American branch of the church there in 1740, and at Bethlehem, he established a community in which work was done and goods were held communally. He also organised another branch in England, worked again in Germany, and, having been ordained a bishop, returned to North America in 1744. After a further sojourn in Europe, he extended Moravian missionary work to North Carolina.

Following Zinzendorf’s death in 1760, Spangenberg returned to Germany in 1762 to become a member of its governing body. There he stayed, and he devoted the rest of his life to the church. In addition to missionary work, he also drafted what became the accepted statement of Moravian beliefs; he moderated various internal differences; and he maintained friendly relations with the Lutheran Church. He wrote many hymns, as well as a biography of Zinzendorf. He died on 18 September 1792. A little further information is available from Wikipedia and a William Carey University web page.

Some of Spangenberg’s diaries are held by the Archives of the Moravian Church at Winston-Salem, North Carolina, but its website provides little information on any holdings. More of his diaries may be in the Moravian archives at Hernhut, Germany. A published text of his diary can be found in Records of the Moravians in North Carolina edited by Adelaide L. Fries (volume one, 1752-1771) and in The Colonial Records of North Carolina as collected and edited by William L. Saunders (volume five, 1752-1759). Furthermore, a few extracts (including those below) - relating to Spangenberg’s activities in North America - have been translated into English and published on Documenting the American South website (hosted by the University of North Carolina).

12 September 1752
‘Land matters in North Carolina are also in unbelievable confusion, and I do not see how endless law-suits are to be avoided. A man settles on a piece of land and does a good deal of work on it (from the Carolina standpoint), then another comes and drives him out, and who is to definitely settle the matter? There surely should have been a general surveyor from the beginning of the Colony, who should have had a map of the whole territory, and as from time to time land was surveyed, and the special surveyor made his returns, it should have been entered on the map, which would then have shown what land was vacant and what had been taken up. Unfortunately we can neither find nor hear of such a map.

The Patents from the Lords Proprietors should also from the beginning have been registered before passing into other hands, but either that was not done or the records have been lost. This much is sure, My Lord’s Agent cannot now give a Patent without fearing that when the tract is settled another man will come and say “That is my land.” The General Assembly has made an effort to remedy this confusion, and in 1748 passed an Act requiring property owners to bring in their Patents for registration, under £5 penalty for neglect to do this. It was further provided that whoever did not register his Patent within one year from the date of the Act should lose his rights founded upon it. A man who had lost his Patent, through fire or other accident, was permitted to prove undisputed possession for twenty years. Orphans were permitted to register their Patents within one year after attaining their majority; and owners dwelling beyond the sea were allowed five years from the date of the Act to file their claims. When I asked Mr Francis Corbin about a map he told me that he had been doing his best to have one made, and had given orders to the surveyor in each County to make a chart showing the land that had been taken up in his County. The line between Virginia and North Carolina has been run to the Blue Mountains; and the line between the Crown lands and the Granville District in North Carolina is now in hand, and will be run as soon as necessary information is received, though only by the one party, as the Crown commissioners are not assisting. When that is done there will probably be a map of the Granville District, from which one can see where the vacant land lies. Meanwhile there is neither a general surveyor’s map of the Granville District nor of the individual Counties. Therefore we do not know what land is vacant, and can only take for granted the word of the surveyor who says that such and such a piece has already been taken up. Mr Francis Corbin himself does not know, and is still “in the dark.”

His suggestion is that we go to the “Back of the Colony,” that is west to the Blue Mountains, taking a surveyor, and that perhaps there we can find a suitable tract of land that has not hitherto been surveyed. We will see.’

13 September 1752
‘If, as I hope, we settle in North Carolina, it will be very important that from the beginning we have some one who will pay particular attention to the laws of the land, for from the law book I see that there are many rules and laws of which our Brethren would not think. For example: If any one living within three miles of a public ferry takes a man, horse, or cow across the stream, receiving payment therefor, he must pay £5 for each man or animal so set across.

A man must have his marriage, or the birth of a child, or the burial of a member of his family registered by the Recorder, if there is no Clerk of the Church in the County; and he is fined one shilling, to be paid to the Recorder, for each month that he delays registration.

A man is fined £10 if he gives permission to a non-resident of Carolina to pasture cattle, horses or hogs on his land.

Any man who buys land from the Indians, without special permission from the Governor and Council, loses the land, and is fined £20.

Every third year a land-owner must have a certain person follow the bounds of his property, renew the marks, and register the same.

There is a penalty of £5 for killing deer between Feb. 15th and July 15th.

All marriages must be performed by a minister of the Church of England, or by a Justice of the Peace. If there is a minister of the Church of England in the Parish a Justice of the Peace cannot marry a couple without paying a fine of £5. To marry without a License, or without the Publication of the Bans three times, entails a penalty of £50.

A man wishing to marry must go to the Clerk of the County in which the woman lives and give a bond of £50 that there is nothing to prevent the marriage; then he takes the Clerk’s certificate to a Justice of the Peace, and he issues the License. The fees are 20sh. for the Governor, 5sh. for the Clerk, 5sh. for the Justice, and 10sh. for the Minister. If the Bans are published there is no charge for a License. If the marriage is not performed by the minister in the Parish where the woman lives he must still be offered the fee.

A man marrying a negress, indian, mulatto, or any one of mixed blood, is fined £50; the minister or justice performing the ceremony must also pay £50.

When the County Court appoints a man as Constable he must qualify within 10 days or pay a fine of 50 shillings.

If a man finds strange cattle in his cow-pen he must advertise their marks on the Church door or at the Court House of the County in which his cow-pen lies, or pay a fine of 20sh.

A man using weights and measures in business must have them marked and sealed according to the standard of the Court. Failure to do this entails a fine of £10, even though they are correct.

The man using a steelyard in trade must have it tested every year, and get a certificate, or pay a fine of 20s.

No Christian, brought into this land, can be a bond-servant, even though he has made a written agreement to that effect with some one.

Who buys from or sells to a slave, without permission of the slave’s master, shall lose three times the value of the article bought or sold, and pay a fine of £6.

Whoever gives assistance to a slave who is trying to run away shall serve the slave’s master five years as penalty.

A man who owns no land but hunts in the woods and shoots a deer shall forfeit his gun and pay £5, unless he can show a certificate from two Justices that the preceding year he had planted and cultivated at least 5,000 hills of corn in the County where he is hunting.

Each house-holder, overseer, etc., whether summoned or not, must appear before a Justice each year before the 1st of May and give in an accurate list of the names and ages of all persons subject to tax, white or black, free or slave. Failure to do this entails a fine of 40s. with 20s. additional for each month’s delay.

There are other similar laws, not unreasonable, but if they are not known they might easily be broken. Here, as in all English countries, there are good laws that are not kept, but the Brethren can not act in that way.’

Pioneering in Pennsylvania

George Croghan - an 18th century pioneer land speculator and Indian negotiator in Pennsylvania and New York states - died 230 years ago today. It is claimed that a history of his life is ‘an epitome of Indian relations with the whites’. He kept journals on various of his exploratory and border dispute tours, and these are considered to be one of the most important sources for the history of the frontier in the period before the War of Independence.

Croghan was born in Dublin around 1718, but in his early 20s emigrated to colonial America, where he became a fur trader in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. By the mid-1740s, having mastered the customs and language of the local Indians, he was appointed Indian agent for Pennsylvania. He successfully wrested the allegiance of the area’s Indians from the French and negotiated important treaties of friendship. (He is mentioned, it is worth noting, in the diary of Conrad Weiser - see Weiser goes to Ohio - a German immigrant who was an Indian interpreter.)

As a result of the French and Indian War, which started in 1754, Croghan’s trading business collapsed, and he accepted an appointment as chief deputy to Sir William Johnson, British superintendent of northern Indian affairs. For more than a decade, he conducted extensive negotiations with the Indians, was instrumental in negotiating a settlement of Pontiac’s War (during which several tribes rebelled against British authority), and opened up Illinois to the British. All the while, he was again amassing his own land, often through complex speculations with business partners. He negotiated, for example, a 2.5 million acre grant from a consortium of tribes as restitution for his own losses during the Anglo-Indian War.

Croghan resigned as Indian agent in 1771 intent on establishing a new British colony called Vandalia (including parts of present day West Virginia and Kentucky) but his efforts got bogged down, especially after a land dispute with George Washington, and an accusation of treason. That and the outbreak of the war with Britain in 1775 left Croghan an impoverished man on his death in 1782. His estate went to his daughter Susannah, and when she died a few years later, in 1790, several of her children continued to pursue Croghan’s claims in the courts for decades but all to no avail. Further biographical information is available from Wikipedia or an article in The Quarterly Journal of the New York State Historical Association.

Croghan’s journals and correspondence, considered one of the most important sources for the history of the frontier in the mid-1700s, can be read online at Internet Archive. An introductory note starts as follows: ‘Next to Sir William Johnson, George Croghan was the most prominent figure among British Indian agents during the period of the later French wars, and the conspiracy of Pontiac. A history of his life is therefore an epitome of Indian relations with the whites, especially on the borders of Virginia and Pennsylvania and in the Ohio Valley. A pioneer trader and traveller, and a government agent, no other man of his time better knew the West and the counter currents that went to make up its history.’ Here are a few extracts from the journals themselves. [NB: See the Weiser article, as mentioned above, for a note on Wampum.]

1 March 1765
‘Six Senecas Indians came here, from one of the Shawanese Towns & inform’d me, as follows - That the deputation from the Shawanese & Delawares, which were sent last Summer, to the Ilinois to Councel with the French & Indians in that Country, were returned, that they had been well recd by the French, who, on their arrival, clothed them & told them, they would supply them, with every necessary they wanted, to carry on the War agst the English; & would send Traders with them, to their Towns, when they shou’d set out. That they had held a Council with nine Indian Nations, settled on the Ouabache & in the Ilinois Country, who all Engaged to support them, with their whole Force, should they continue the War against the English. That on those Deputys return to the plains of Siota & being informed of the Terms, of accommodation agreed on by their Nations (during their absence) with Colonel Boquet, they then in Council with the Sandusky & Seneca Indians, agreed to abide by their People’s Engagements, & perform the whole in their part, provided the English wou’d open a free Trade & intercourse with them, & supply them with Ammunition, Goods, & Rum, as usual & not prohibit the Sale of Powder & Liquors, as they had done before the late difference happened. These Indians farther said, the Shawanese had sent a Message to the French Traders, who were then following them to their Towns, to return home - (I much doubted the Truth of this) & that they had sent a Message, likewise, to the Nine Nations in that Country acquainting them, that they were about accommodating matters with the English, & desiring them to sit still, ‘till they heard farther from them in the Spring.’

2 March 1765
‘I dispatched a Messenger to the Shawanese & Senecas, & another to the Delaware & Sandusky Indians, to acquaint them of my arrival here, in Company with Lieutenant Frazer, with Messages from the Kings Commander in Chief, & Sir Wm Johnson, to their Nations, & desired their several Chiefs, would immediately come here to meet me. I likewise sent a Message to Pondiac who I heard was among the Twightwees, to meet me at the mouth of Siota, on my way down the River.’

4 March 1765
‘Two Senecas came here from Venango (where a hundred of their people were hunting) to know, if a Trade was opened here, for the Indians, as they had heard from the Seneca Country, all differences being settled between their Nation & the English, last fall, by Sir Wm Johnson. Deliver’d a string of Wampum.’

5 March 1765
‘Major Murray & I acquainted them there was no Trade opened yet, nor could there be any, till the Shawanese & Delawares had come in, to perform their Engagements with Colonel Bouquet. That we did send for them & Expected them here, before the last of this month. Gave them a Belt of Wampum, desiring them to rest satisfy’d, till that time, & likewise desired some of their Chiefs, to come down and hear, what should pass between us & those Nations.’

8 June 1765
‘At Day Break we were attacked by a Party of Indians consisting of Eighty Warriors of the Kacapers and Musquatimes who Killed two of my men & three Indians wounded myselfe and all the rest of my party Except two White Men and one Indian then made myselfe and all the White men Prisoners plundering us of every Thing we had. A Deputy of the Shawnesse who was Shot thro the Thigh having concealed himself in the Woods for a few Minuets after he was Wounded not then Knowing but they were Southern Indians who are always at war with the Northward Indians: after discovering what Nation they were he came up to them and made a very bold speech telling them that the Whole Northward Indians would join in taking Revenge for the Insult and murder of their People this alarmed these Indians very much they began excusing themselves saying their Fathers the French had spirited them up telling them the Inglish were coming with a body of Southern Indians to take their Country from them and inslave them. that it was this that induced them to commit this Outrage after having divided the plunder they left great Part of the heaviest Effects Behind not being able to carry them they sett of with us to their Village at Cautonan in a great Hurry being in dread of a Pursuit from a large Party of Indians they suspected were coming after me; Our Course was thro a thick Woody Country crossing a great many Swamps Morasses and Beaver Ponds. we traveled this Day about 42 Miles.’

I got the truth out

William Booth, the inspiration and founder of The Salvation Army, died a century ago today. His impassioned faith, great energy and enormous appetite for saving souls, led to his extending the Army’s reach into over 50 countries during the latter years of his life. Though he kept diaries, all but a few were lost during the Blitz, However, early biographies - now freely available online - include many (largely undated) extracts.

William Booth was born in Nottingham, England, in 1829, one of five children of Samuel Booth, a builder, and his second wife Mary Moss. His father died when he was 13, and William was taken out of school to become an apprentice pawnbroker. At 15, he became a Christian, and two years later a local preacher. He was influenced by visiting revivalists, including Isaac Marsden and the American evangelist, James Caughey.

In 1849. Booth moved to London, working as a pawnbroker until 1852, when he became a preacher at a Methodist Reform Chapel in Clapham. Later that year, though, he was appointed to Spalding, Lincolnshire, but returned to London, to the Methodist New Connexion, serving as an assistant minister, and then as an evangelist. He married Catherine Mumford in 1855, and they had nine children.

In 1857, Booth was appointed to Brighouse, Yorkshire, and then served in Gateshead for several years. Subsequently, in the mid-1860s, he conducted mission meetings as an independent evangelist, leading revivals in various parts of England and Wales. A series of tent meetings in East London in summer 1865 led to the development of the East London Christian Mission, which became the Christian Mission in 1869 and The Salvation Army in 1878.

By the early 1880s, Booth was extending The Salvation Army cause into the US, and other European and Commonwealth countries. It is said that during his lifetime he established Army work in 58 countries, travelling extensively and holding ‘salvation meetings’ everywhere he went. He wrote several books, including In Darkest England and the Way Out (1890) which set the foundation for the Army’s modern social welfare schemes.

In his later years, Booth became much revered, a favourite of national rulers and the media. In 1902, he was invited to attend the coronation of King Edward VII, and in 1906 he was made a Freeman of the City of London. After his death on 20 August 1912, 150,000 people filed passed his casket during a three day lying in state at Clapton Congress Hall; and 40,000 people (including Queen Mary) attended his funeral service at London’s Olympia. Further information is available from Wikipedia, The Salvation Army website and the BBC.

Although William Booth did keep diaries, there is no evidence that they have ever been published. According to The Salvation Army’s listing of its William Booth archive, most volumes of his diaries were lost in the bombing of the Army’s International Headquarters in May 1941. However, three volumes - between September 1910 and May 1912 - were found ‘among the rubble and slush’. These pages were repaired and rebound in 1982.

A good feel for Booth’s diaries, though, can be found in early biographies which drew on them extensively. Life of William Booth, Founder and First General of the Salvation Army by Harold Begbie, published by Hodder & Stoughton in two volumes in 1920 contains many extracts (mostly undated). Here is one which is dated, from 10 days after the death of his wife Catherine. Her body had lain in state, and large crowds had flocked to pay their last tribute. There was then a procession through the City of London to the cemetery with Booth following alone in an open carriage, standing and bowing his acknowledgments to the crowds.

14 October 1890
‘I was weary myself. I had stood, balancing myself with the jerking of the carriage in its stops and starts, 4 hours. I couldn’t see the people craning their necks trying to see me without endeavouring to gratify them. Some may find fault with me, and say I made an exhibition of myself. That is what I have been doing with myself for my Master’s sake all my life, and what I shall continue to do as long as it lasts, and what I shall do through eternity for my Master’s sake and the people’s sake. And now I am restarted on the same path, the same work. A large part of my company has gone before, and I must travel the journey, in a sense that only those can understand who have been through it, alone.’

The following extracts - all written during a trip to the Netherlands in 1908 - are taken from The Authoritative Life of General William Booth by George Scott Railton (Hodder & Stoughton, 1912) - available at Internet Archive. The same book was also published under the simpler title General Booth.

14 March 1908
‘Soldiers’ and ex-Soldiers’ Meeting fine - three-fourths men. A great improvement on anything I have seen in the way of Soldiers’ Meetings in this place. I got the truth out, and thirty-seven of them fell at the Penitent-Form [the bench at which salvation seekers kneel] to seek power to walk in its light.’

15 March 1908
‘The Doelen Hall (one of the largest auditoriums in the city) full in the morning, and crowds shut out afternoon and night. People hard at first; but twenty-two came to the Penitent-Form in the morning, and fifty-eight at night. Never saw men weep more freely.’

17 March 1908 ‘A tired, restless night for some reason or other. Sleep flew. Occupied with many matters, but not very anxious. Still, did not get much refreshment or invigoration for the day’s work, and felt accordingly. On the whole, the three Meetings were interesting, and, I think, useful to the Officers present, although nothing remarkable.’

18 March 1908
‘What I said of the Councils yesterday may be repeated to-day. I had a great deal more material than I could possibly introduce into two days, and on leaving out some topics, on the spur of the moment, some were left out that might have been of great benefit. However, everybody was pleased, and, I think, profited. The only question in my mind, similar to the one that haunts me in every Officers’ Council, is whether I am making the most of the opportunity.

There is no doubt that we have here a powerful body of men and women, good, devoted, and loyal to the principles of The Army, proud to be connected with it, and ready to receive instructions, and to carry them out. The great lack appears to be a want of energy, enterprise, and daring, the being content with a little success instead of reaching out to all that is possible and promising. However, they are wonderfully improved, and I hope the present Commissioner’s health will allow of his carrying them a long way farther in the direction of enthusiasm than they have reached before.’

19 March 1908
‘Fair night’s sleep, but feeling rather tired, which must be expected. We are away to Den Helder at 9.42 a.m., so must be stirring. Den Helder is a naval port, the headquarters of the Dutch navy. We were billetted with Rear-Admiral van den Bosch, who is in command of the port, fleet, dockyards, and many other things. We were received at the station in a formal but hearty manner by the leading people of the town, in the large waiting-room (decorated for the occasion), by the minister of the State Church, who made a really eloquent address. The great point of his speech was the work of the Holy Spirit - God working through us to the benefit of mankind. As he stood there talking in that circle of sixty or seventy of the leading inhabitants of the place, including naval officers of rank, professionals of various classes, and prominent people, I could not help feeling, as I often feel now, what a change has come over the people, not only with respect to The Army, but towards myself.

I answered in a few words that I trust were useful and beneficial to all present. The whole thing, from the moment of my being received at the door of my railway carriage, until I left next morning, had been prearranged through the instrumentality of one of our Local Officers, to his great credit, to the credit of his town, and to the satisfaction of his General.

The mail brought me a request to take over a certain county council’s lodging-house for poor men, on which they are losing a large sum, also another to take over an inebriates’ home, which cost £40,000 and is an utter failure. In such exploits people will not have The Salvation Army at the onset, otherwise they might save a good deal of expense, etc.’

20 March 1908
‘Arriving at Amsterdam, the mail brought confirmation of my agreement of yesterday to postpone my South African visit to September, and to begin my Motor Tour at Dundee, and finish at the Crystal Palace. In all these things the maxim is ever present to my mind, ‘Man proposes, but God disposes.’ Closed the night at the desk, which is becoming more and more a difficult task from the failure of my eyes.’

21 March 1908
‘Good night’s sleep. That is for me, anyway, a great improvement on recent nights. So now for a good day’s work, of which there is plenty lying before me.

7.30 p.m., Soldiers’ Meeting. We have always been crowded out before, so this time the Palace Theatre was taken, as an experiment, and it justified my reckonings for several years gone by, namely, that we could fill any reasonable place on Saturday night here, and yet keep the Meeting select; that is, confine it to Soldiers and ex-Soldiers, adherents, and those concerned about religion. We were more than full, and the place holds 1,500. I had much liberty in speaking, the After Meeting went with a swing seldom known on the Continent or elsewhere, and we had eighty-four at the Penitent-Form, some of them remarkable cases.’

22 March 1908
‘The theatre again in the morning at ten. An excellent plan. Oh, that it could be adopted the world over! The senseless system of beginning at eleven makes you feel it is time to close almost before you have had time to get well started. We were crowded, large numbers outside clamouring for admission, so much so that the police called out their reserves, and fifty men guarded the entrance. We had an excellent service inside, and forty at the Mercy-Seat. It was a beautiful Meeting, and made a mark for ever on my heart, and on the hearts of many more.

Afternoon. The large Hall of the People’s Palace had been arranged for this as well as the Night Meeting. We were full, and many were turned away. I lectured on ‘The Duty of the Community.’ Great satisfaction among my own people, and a good impression made upon the minds of a good many of the leading people of the city.

Night, 7.30. Again full. It is a building erected for an Exhibition, and made suitable for a Meeting only by putting up a great screen across the centre. I suppose we could have filled the entire space; but whether my interpreter could then have been heard, I am not sure. I preached with point and power - more breathless attention I never had in my life. I reckoned on an easy conquest, but we had one of the hardest fights I ever remember before we got a soul out. I left at 10.30, completely played out. A wall of policemen on either side kept the people back while I got into the carriage, the crowd having waited a long time to catch a glimpse of me. Had long, restless, and sleepless spells during the night; but still I have not done amiss on the whole. I must now prepare myself for the coming Berlin Staff Congress.’

Golden Boy in New Guinea

The Australian war correspondent and novelist, George H Johnston, was born a century ago today. He came to public notice for the first time as a young man with his reporting from Asia during the Second World War. During this period he also published books about the war, including a diary written in New Guinea. Later, having lived in Greece for many years, he returned to Australia and made a name for himself again with a series of autobiographical novels, one of which is now considered an Australian classic.

George Henry Johnston was born on 20 July 1912 in Melbourne, Australia, and then educated in local schools before becoming apprenticed as a lithographer. As a child he liked drawing and reading about ships, and aged only 16 an article of his on local shipwrecks was published by the Melbourne Argus. In 1933, the same newspaper took him on as a cadet reporter. He married Elsie Esme Taylor in 1938 and they had one daughter.

During the Second World War, Johnston was an accredited war correspondent, reporting from New Guinea in 1942, the UK and US in 1943, and from central Asia and Italy in 1944. He witnessed the Japanese surrender on board USS Missouri in Tokyo Bay in 1945. Also during this period, he used his experience to write several books, such as Battle of the Seaways and Australia at War. On returning to Australia in 1945, he found himself relatively famous, nicknamed ‘Golden Boy’ by his managing director, and appointed editor of the Australasian Post. Soon after, he met Charmian Clift, also on the paper, and their relationship caused a scandal which led to them both to moving to Sydney. They married in 1947, and had three children.

In Sydney, they embarked on a new career of fiction writing, and jointly won the Sydney Morning Herald prize for High Valley (1949). By then, however, Johnston was also working as a feature writer for The Sun. In 1951, Associated Newspapers Services appointed Johnston to head its London office, though he continued to write novels with his wife. In 1954, he abandoned journalism, and the couple moved to Greece, first to Kálimnos, and a year later to Hydra. They spent nearly a decade there, during which time Johnston wrote more novels (including five detective books) and many short stories.

Most significantly, with his life falling apart (money and relationship problems, and illness) Johnston embarked, in 1962, on an autobiographical novel. This was published in London in 1964 as My Brother Jack, and has proved enduringly popular. Johnston returned to Australia in 1964, once again popular, and his family followed a year later. My Brother Jack was produced for television; and a further autobiographical novel was published in 1969 - Clean Straw for Nothing. Clift, however, committed suicide just weeks before publication of the second book, apparently fearful of how she would be portrayed. Johnston worked on, but did not complete, a third autobiographical novel - A Cartload of Clay - before dying in 1970. Further information is available at the Australian Dictionary of Biography website.

During his time in New Guinea in the Second World War, Johnston kept a diary. This was published in Australia (Angus & Robertson) and the UK (Victor Gollancz) in 1943 as New Guinea Diary. Copies of this can be bought for under £10 at Abebooks, but there are no substantial extracts to be found on the internet. There are two, though, quoted in Eyewitness: Australians Write from the Front-Line by Garrie Hutchinson, some of which can read freely at Googlebooks.

According to Hutchinson, Johnston was one of the first two correspondents appointed in New Guinea in 1942 - the other was Osmar White. White, however, had little time for Johnston the journalist. He said in a 1990 interview for the Australian War Memorial that, ‘Johnston of course rewrote MacArthur communiques. I didn’t respect him as a war correspondent. He’s a very nice bloke personally, but I didn’t hold him as a war correspondent. He never tried to beat the propaganda gate.’ (Douglas MacArthur was commander of the US Army forces in the Far East.)

‘Perhaps this is a bit unfair,’ suggests Hutchinson in his book, since an entry in Johnston’s diary shows he was well aware of the problem; and a subsequent entry even provides a possible reason for White’s feelings.

16 October 1942
‘Up here everybody is incensed at new censorship bans including MacArthur’s personal censorship of Stone’s [articles] on his visit here which have been slashed to ribbons to convey the impression (a) that he went right up to the front line (which he certainly did NOT), and (b) that this was NOT his first visit to New Guinea. Everybody is furious and Harold Gaund [U.P] has cabled a demand that he be recalled or that his resignation be accepted. Censorship now is just plain Gestapo stuff.’

17 October 1942
‘Barney Darnton is going to Wanigela for the Buna show and I have been asked to go as the Australian representative. At first I decided to go and then I decided against it. Too many other things are in the air and it’s the wrong time to be cut off from all other news sources.’

‘While Johnston did go to the north-coast battles at Buna and Gona later in the year,’ Hutchinson explains, ‘it indicates a different kind of reporting to White’s - White walked in and was there with the soldiers, observing and telling their stories. Johnston, for the most part, was back at headquarters getting stories by talking to blokes who had been there.’

For a Japanese soldier’s experience of the war in New Guinea written in diary form see the diary of Tamura Yoshikazu, as discussed in an essay on the Australia-Japan Research Project website.

Powell’s diaries auctioned

Bids over half a million dollars have been invited for the diaries of Dawn Powell, an American writer, who never quite achieved mainstream success, but who Gore Vidal once called the US’s ‘best comic novelist’. The successful bidder will take possession of Powell’s 43 diary books, though not the copyright for the material therein. Tim Page, who currently owns the diaries and edited them for publication in 1995, is also making a condition of the sale that copies be made fully accessible to the public.

[Addendum - 20 July 2102: The deadline for sale of the diaries passed without any sale. Subsequently, Page was quoted in The New York Times as saying ‘I consider this a pretty complete failure’. The Powell diary website link mentioned below may thus thus become redundant shortly.]

Powell was born in Mount Gilead, Ohio, in 1896. Her mother died when she was just seven, and, after her father remarried, she ran away from an abusive stepmother to live with an aunt. She studied at Lake Erie College, and then moved to New York City where she took up freelance writing opportunities. In 1920, she marred Joseph Gousha, an aspiring poet, and the couple had one child, and settled in Greenwich Village.

By the mid-1920s, Powell was publishing the first of her many novels, such as She Walks in Beauty, writing plays, and contributing book reviews to the Evening Post. During the 1930s, she worked occasionally as a screenwriter in Hollywood, but always returned to New York, and her novel writing. It was not until 1942, with A Time to be Born, that she achieved any critical success. She was said to be ‘a playful satirist, and an unsentimental observer of failed hopes and misguided longings’ and the chronicler of ‘two very different worlds: the small-town Ohio of her childhood and the sophisticated Manhattan to which she gravitated’.

However, Powell could never make a living from writing fiction. She was constantly dogged by her son’s mental problems, by her own and her husband’s drinking, and by financial shortages. She was also overcome at times with illness and depression. She died in 1965. A biography of Powell, and a selection of essays about her by other writers can be found at the Library of America website.

According to Powell’s Wikipedia entry, virtually all of her novels were out of print at the time of her death, but her ‘posthumous champions’ included Matthew Josephson, Gore Vidal (with whom she had been friends since the mid-1950s) and Tim Page. And it was Page who joined forces with Powell’s family to extricate her manuscripts, diaries, and copyrights from her original executrix; and this, eventually, led, in the 1990s, to a revival of interest in her writing. Most significantly, Powell’s diaries were edited by Page and published in 1995 (The Diaries of Dawn Powell, 1931-1965, Steerforth Press). These were praised by The New York Times as ‘one of the outstanding literary finds of the last quarter century.’ For links to some extracts see The Diary Junction.

Now, Tim Page has decided to sell the original diary manuscripts, ‘with the blessing of Powell’s family and her Estate’. He says that many readers consider the diaries as Powell’s masterpiece, that most of their content is unknown, and that ‘unquestionably’ this is ‘the largest trove of Powell material that will ever be made available for sale’. Extraordinarily, Page has chosen to try and auction the Powell archive, not through an auction company, but directly through a specially-devised Dawn Powell diaries website.

The website provides a large amount of information about the diaries - 43 in total and currently held by the Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Columbia University - and detailed instructions on how to bid. Not only has Page set $500,000 as a minimum bid price, but he is also requiring any prospective owners of the diaries to irrevocably donate a full set of copies for public use, and to accept that full copyright for all the material will remain with the Dawn Powell Estate. A deadline for bids has been set as 15 July.

Here are few extracts from Powell’s diary found on the Washington Post website.

26 February 1930
‘Joe tight so much and mentally blurred so it’s impossible to talk with him. Makes me sick at heart and so tired emotionally to see him blah-blah drunk all the time with nights of horror that make me sorry for him yet worry so.’

4 March 1930
‘Offered $500 a week to go to Hollywood at once for three months. We need money but that stuff is not in my direction and life is too short to go on unpleasant byroads.’

8 MArch 1930
‘Worked. Dinner with Dwight at Jungle Club and then to his apartment. This luxury constantly before me would send me either to Hollywood at once or to the ghetto. Met Helen Carlisle (Mother’s Cry) who writes very good novels in six weeks.’

10 March 1930
‘Hate novel as if it were a personal foe - it’s so damned hard and moves so slow. I want to write plays that go fast. Can’t conceive of having energy ever to attack a novel again. They’re so damned huge and unwieldy.’

And here are some on the Library of America website.

1 March 1939
‘Wits are never happy people. The anguish that has scraped their nerves and left them raw to every flicker of life is the base of wit - for the raw nerve reacts at once without any agent, the reaction is direct, with no integumentary obstacles. Wit is the cry of pain, the true word that pierces the heart. If it does not pierce, then it is not true wit. True wit should break a good man’s heart.’

14 March 1939
‘A woman should attempt to be as sympathetic, amused, and understanding of a man’s vices as his favorite bar is.’

2 January 1941
‘In the last century, Thackery, Dickens, Edith Wharton, James, all wrote of their own times and we have reliable records. Now we have only the escapists, who write of happenings a hundred or three hundred years ago, false to history, false to human nature. Among contemporary writers, only John O’Hara writes of one very small section of 52nd Street or Broadway. We have Hemingway, who writes of a fictional movie hero in Spain with the language neither Spanish nor English. When someone wishes to write of this age - as I do and have done - critics shy off, the public shies off. “Where’s our Story Book?” they cry. “Where are our Story Book People?” This is obviously an age that Can’t Take It.’

23 March 1944
‘For a writer or artist there is nothing to equal the elation of escaping into solitude. The excited feeling of stolen rapture I feel on closing the door of this little room up here, knowing no one can find me, no one will speak to me. I look over rooftops into sky and far-off towers. This is exactly like my sensation of sheer exhilaration as a child when I got up into the attic or in the treetop or under a tree way off by the road where I was alone with a sharp pencil and notebook.’

8 March 1963
‘Was told yesterday I had not won the National Book Award. I felt some relief as I have no equipment for prize-winning - no small talk, no time for idle graciousness and required public show, no clothes either or desire for front. I realize I have no yen for any experience (even a triumph) that blocks observation, when I am the observed instead of the observer. Time is too short to miss so many sights. Also chloroforms, removes the weapons - de-fanging, claws cut, scorpion tail removed, leaves helpless fat cat with no defenses and maybe exposing not a sweet, harmless pet but a bad case of mange.’

On the look out for Boers

Arthur Hamilton Baynes, a Church of England priest who served as Bishop of Natal in South Africa during the second Anglo-Boer War, died 70 years ago today. He is barely remembered, though he did leave behind two books, one of which was a diary documenting his war days in Natal.

There is very little readily-available biographical information about Baynes. He was born in Lewisham, Kent, in 1854, and was ordained in 1882. He served as vicar of St James Church, Nottingham, between 1884 and 1888, and than was appointed domestic chaplain to the Archbishop of Canterbury (Edward Benson) for four years, before becoming of vicar of Christ Church, Greenwich, for two years.

Most significantly, from 1893 to 1901, i.e. partly during the second Anglo-Boer War, Baynes was Bishop of Natal, a diocese which covered the western part of the South African province of KwaZulu-Natal, west and south of the Tugela and Buffalo rivers. During his time there, he helped reconcile opposing Anglican groups, and left behind a diocese of eighteen parishes, six Zulu missions, two Indian missions, three schools and one mission hospital.

On his return to England in 1910, Baynes went back to Nottingham and was vicar of St Mary’s Church until 1913. He was canon of Southwell Minster, and then of Birmingham Cathedral where subsequently he was made provost (1931-1937). He died on 30 June 1942. There is very little additional information online about Baynes, though two of his books have survived: South Africa, published in 1908 by A. R. Mowbray & Co. which Baynes himself called ‘a slight sketch of South African Church expansion’; and his South African diary.

This latter was published in 1900 by George Bell and Sons as My diocese during the war, extracts from the diary of the Right Rev. Arthur Hamilton Baynes, D.D. Bishop of Natal. This is freely available at Internet Archive and at Project Canterbury (documenting Anglican history online). The book was prepared for publication by Baynes’ sister, Helen, who notes at the beginning: ‘The Diary does not pretend to any literary merit; it is simply a hastily written record, for home reading, of days of intense interest and of stirring events.’

In his own preface to the diary, Baynes says this: ‘This diary is written in odd moments, in the early morning or late at night after a tiring day; and I take no special pains as to its form, but write down a bare record of facts. Comments, reflections, emotions of a higher or deeper kind, if committed to writing at all, are reserved for the more personal medium of letters. Rough in form, however, as my diary is, and bare and unedifying in matter, the Publishers have thought that it may contain enough of general interest during these last interesting months to be worth printing, and in response to their request my sister has undertaken the selection of extracts.

The roughest sketch which gives the local colouring sometimes conveys a truer impression than the most accurate photograph, and possibly this diary, written on the spot, may have this small merit. My own experience has been that there are some things one only gets a proper view of on the spot. For instance, before I came to South Africa I had a settled impression that Cape Town was at the extreme southern point of the Continent, and that Table Mountain looked out over it straight towards the South Pole. It was only when I got there that I found Table Mountain facing almost due north, staring at me as I approached from England. It is just possible that my diary may serve to correct a few such a priori and erroneous impressions.

But there is one respect in which even we who lived on the spot were quite at fault. Some of us, indeed, were at fault on two points. We never believed, till just before the event, that there would be war, and we never dreamed that if there were it would be anything very big.’

And here are three extracts from the diary during the first few months of the war.

15 October 1899
‘As no one had asked me to preach to-day, I thought I might have a day off, especially as I know there are plenty of clergy about from the Transvaal and Newcastle. However, when I went to the early service at the Garrison Church, Twemlow asked me if I would preach to the men at 11, as he was asked to preach to the Imperial Light Horse at a special parade at St Saviour’s at 9.30. I felt rather guilty in doing nothing, so I said “Yes,” though it was rather short notice. The Rifles were there - the 2nd Battalion, which has just come out. I preached to them from the words in the second lesson, “With singleness of heart, fearing the Lord.” Things are very quiet to-day. I suppose the Boers would not choose Sunday for operations unless they were obliged. After luncheon I went in for a little chat with the Governor.

We live in a state of feverish excitement, waiting for each scrap of news and surrounded by startling rumours which turn out as a rule to be pure inventions. We rush for the morning paper and hail everyone we meet for news. There are rumours to-day of various kinds, but all untrue as it turns out. We cannot tell, and probably shall not know for some days, what is happening on the western border, about Mafeking and Kimberley. There are rumours of fighting, and we know that they are more or less isolated.’

14 January 1900
‘Holy Communion at 5.45, in our little mess-tent. Only a few officers. Then after a cup of tea, church parade at 7. As we are two chaplains, we agreed to take two battalions each, so that all could hear. I had the 60th Rifles and the Scottish Rifles, and the Navals, and a few odds and ends; and Hill had the Rifle Brigade and the Durham Light Infantry. General Buller and some of his staff and General Lyttelton came to my service, and it was a charming spot with a little crescent of rocky hill, so that the men were in tiers above me, and during the sermon they could sit on the rocks. I preached from the second lesson, “Follow me, and let the dead bury their dead,” and showed them that a chaplain was not simply to console the dying and to bury the dead. After service I took my books and went up the hill. The two big naval guns have been brought up here from Chieveley (the Boers don’t know it yet, but they soon will). It is odd that the most useful guns were only improvised on the spur of the moment. Captain Scott, of the “Terrible,” designed and made the huge carriages to move these ship-guns on, and now they can take them with spans of oxen quite long journeys and up steep hills. They are enormous things, with great long muzzles.

I asked the naval sentry to let me look through their big telescope. I could see the Boers at 8,000 yards, quite plainly - could see which had blue shirt sleeves and which had white - as they worked in the trenches. But only a few were working to-day; a fair number were sitting on the top of Spion Kop, looking at us. But the two guns are just enough below the ridge to be out of sight. Then I went over the ridge and down into the bush, on the other side, where there was more shade. I got a very comfortable seat under a tree. If the Boers had taken a shot at our naval guns I should have been too near to be pleasant; but this was not likely, especially on a Sunday. While I sat and read a partridge came out of the long grass to within three yards of my foot. Back to write and read, and then lunch and some English papers. But nothing for me. I have not had a letter or a paper since I left Maritzburg, last Friday week. It is awful to think what I may be neglecting. At 6 we had a voluntary service as last week. Hill read, and I preached from the first lesson, “I dwell with him that is of a humble and contrite heart” (“Lest we forget”).’

15 January 1900
‘English letters for next Saturday’s mail had to be despatched this morning! You would think we were in the remote parts of the Transvaal, instead of being little more than twenty-five miles from the railway at Frere. But I suppose with the roads blocked by transport, and the stoppages at the different camps en route, they have to take time by the forelock.

Colonel Byng of the South African Light Infantry went out with two guns of the artillery, with a view to catching Boers on the road between Colenso and this; we heard later on that though he did not succeed in intercepting wagons, etc., he arrived in the nick of time to extricate a patrol of Thorneycroft’s Mounted Infantry from a perilous position. . .

Meanwhile General Lyttelton and his staff made an expedition to the two hills called Zwartzkop, and I went with them. We started about 11, with two guides. We had to ride round the top of the ridge before descending into the intervening valley, then crossed the plain and began the ascent of the opposite hill. It is lovely country. The hills are covered with thick brush, of semi-tropical character, to be found on our own river valleys as distinguished from the higher hillsides.

About halfway up we left our horses with the orderlies, and climbed the rest, which was steep, on foot. Then we took elaborate surveys of the position as it appeared from there. First to the east, towards the part of the river where Byng was on the look out for the Boers. Of course we could not see him, as he would keep under cover, and might be a good way off. At that part the hills come nearer to the river, and are steep, so that the road is forced nearer to the bank. There is a drift there, with a road leading to it; it is just possible that we might make an attempt there. Then we looked out to the north, and searched the hills for Boer intrenchments with glasses. There is less need of them there, however, for on the right the hills are steep and rocky. Then we looked towards the hills to the north-west, where the road from Potgieter’s Drift crosses the hills, to see if the guns on the hills commanded the back of some small kopjes just across the river; seeing them in profile here, we could judge better than from our camp. A spice of excitement was added here, as we saw just below us, at the foot of the hill, on our side of the river, a lot of cattle herded together, with some ponies, and our guides said that these must be Boers; and if they were, they might have a try to cut off our return to camp. However, we saw nothing of them when we descended the hill. We called at the Kaffir kraal at the foot and bought some chickens, and then returned by another road. Colonel Byng was to have come to dinner, but had not returned from his expedition.’