Riddell and Lloyd George

George Allardice Riddell, the early 20th century press baron and key adviser to David Lloyd George during the First World War, was born 150 years ago today. He left behind several unremarkable books, but his diaries, by contrast, are interesting and considered by historians to contain rich and entertaining pickings, especially about Lloyd George.

Riddell was born in London, on 25 May 1865, the son of a photographer. He became a clerk in a solicitor’s office, and qualified as a solicitor in 1888. That same year, he married Grace Edith Williams, though they were divorced in 1900, and, thereafter, Riddell refused to acknowledge this first marriage. Soon after the divorce, he married his cousin Annie Molison Allardice.

Having acted as legal consultant to a consortium purchasing the ailing News of the World, he became interested in the media business, and began buying shares in the newspaper. By 1903, he was its managing director; and, in subsequent years, he acquired further publishing businesses, such as George Newnes Ltd and Country Life.

In 1909, Riddell was awarded a knighthood by Prime Minister Herbert Asquith. This came about thanks to Riddell’s friendship with Lloyd George (then Chancellor of the Exchequer) and the acknowledgement by Asquith that News of the World support would be valuable to the Liberals. Riddell continued to make himself indispensable to Lloyd George, providing press gossip, holidays, a golfing partner, and carefully shrewd support in his newspaper. He also took on political tasks for his friend: in 1912, he drafted the memorandum that settled the miners’ strike; and, during the First World War, Riddell liaised between government and press. As Prime Minister, Lloyd George sent Riddell to represent the British press at the peace conferences.

Riddell was raised to the peerage as baronet in 1918, but not without a fight. At first, King George V rejected Riddell’s nomination because he had been the guilty party in a divorce action (the divorce having been made public by a rival publisher during a spat with Riddell). But Lloyd George continued to lobby on behalf of Riddell; and letters from other press barons finally won the king round - thus Riddell became the first divorced peer to enter the House of Lords.

After the Paris Peace Conference, a political rift developed between Lloyd George and Riddell, which would last the rest of their lives. Thereafeter, Riddell concentrated on his business interests, charitable activities (for hospitals and the printing industry - he founded the London School of Printing). He died in 1934. There is not much further information readily available online, other than at Wikipedia or the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (which requires a log-in).

Riddell wrote a few unmemorable books, but his diaries - he published three volumes before his death - are considered ‘a valuable guide to the politics of the period generally and to the career of Lloyd George in particular’. Indeed, the ODNB goes on to say that his detailed recording of conversations ‘has provided rich and entertaining pickings for historians’ - though not until recently. Riddell deposited 14 diary manuscripts (and 22 volumes he had typed from the originals) with the British Library under instructions that they were not to be opened until long after his death (50 years).

Thus, in the last years of his life, Riddell published: Lord Riddell's War Diary, 1914-1918 (Ivor Nicholson & Watson, 1933); Intimate Diary of the Peace Conference and after, 1918-1923 (Victor Gollancz, 1933); and More Pages from my Diary (Country Life, 1934). Following derestriction of the diary manuscripts, John M. McEwen edited them anew as The Riddell Diaries 1908-1923 (The Athlone Press, 1986). McEwen says, in his introduction, it was a huge task to compare the published versions with the originals and typescripts.

22 April 1915
‘Long talk with Kitchener, who said that LG’s alleged statement as to the number of troops in France was inaccurate and that what LG had really said was that the number of troops ‘overseas’ amounted to thirty-six divisions. I referred to the speech, in which the words were ‘over there’. K said, ‘Well, if he said that he was wrong, and the speech must be put right in Hansard.’ He asked Brade to see that this done.

K commented upon what he called ‘Newspaper embroidery’ and complained of the criticisms as to the inconsistencies between his statements and those of the PM as to the efficiency of our output of munitions of war. He asked my opinion. I replied that they seemed inconsistent and that this was the general opinion. K said, ‘The Times has been the most virulent critic, I am told, but I never read it.’ He asked me to look up the speeches, which I did subsequently, and wrote to him setting out the two passages. He said that Northcliffe was acting very badly and that it was difficult to know how to deal with him.’

25 December 1918
‘Played golf in the morning with LG and then with him to mid-day Xmas dinner, he carving the turkey in great style. After dinner sat and talked for some time and listened to the pianola. LG slept for three hours. . .

We talked of the elections . . . He said that next week he proposes to take a short holiday to consider the reconstruction of the Government. The difficulty is that there are so few men available. He is very doubtful about a Minister of Labour and a Minister of Agriculture. Addison is to do the Housing. He doubts Lord Lee at the Board of Agriculture. He thinks him too unpopular with the landlords. I said, ‘Of course you will find a place for Sir Robert Horne. He is a clever fellow.’

LG: Yes, I think I shall put him in the Cabinet. He is an able man . . .
R: Winston is a difficulty.
LG: Yes, a great difficulty.
R: How about the Colonies for him?
LG: There will be nothing doing in that department. It would be like condemning a man to be head of a mausoleum. He would just have to see that it was kept clean.
R: I don’t agree. The Colonies will offer many problems. The Office wants bucking up and it would be a splendid thing if the Minister were to make a tour of the Empire.
LG: Yes, I agree about that. The Colonial office might be a good place for Winston.
R: Will Beaverbrook be in the Ministry?
LG: No, I think not. His health is bad. He is clever, but absolutely without scruple of any sort. Not a very desirable sort of politician.
Mrs LG: It is a pity that the PM accepted any assistance from Beaverbrook and Rothermere at the election. I am sure he did not need it. I don’t trust them or like their ways. The PM does best when he goes his own way and keeps clear of all these wire-pullers and people who want nothing but to grind their own axe.’

1 October 1919
‘Strange happenings. For the first time in history the printers in the newspaper offices have objected to print matter of which they disapproved - to wit, attacks on the railway men. This caused consternation amongst proprietors and editors, who held their ground with considerable firmness . . . This movement is more important than it looks, and is capable of quaint developments. One novel feature of the strike is an advertising campaign in which both the Government and the men are stating their case. . .

There can be no doubt that LG was wrong in describing the strike as a Bolshevist movement, as he did in his published message. This has been the key-note of the Government campaign run by Sir William Sutherland and others on the usual party lines of misrepresentation and deception. Use the note that is like to please and convince. Truth and accuracy are immaterial.’

Insurrection in Paris

‘Firing is heard. The houses are in turmoil. Doors and casements open and shut violently. The women-servants chat and laugh at the windows. It is said that the insurrection has spread to the Porte Saint-Martin. I go out and follow the line of the boulevards. The weather is fine; there are crowds of promenaders in their Sunday dress. Drums beat to arms.’ This is the French literary giant, Victor Hugo, who died 160 years ago today, writing in his diary about the day a riot exploded on the streets of Paris in 1839.

Victor was the third son of Joseph-Léopold-Sigisbert Hugo, a major and, later, general in Napoleon’s army. As a child, he was constantly on the move as his father travelled with the imperial army, to Elba, for example, Naples or Madrid. His parents became increasingly estranged, his father loyal to successive governments and his mother a staunch royalist. Victor, often brought back to Paris by his mother, absorbed her royalist views. He was able to study for a while at the Pension Cordier and the Lycée Louis-le-Grand, after which he entered the law faculty in Paris.

Hugo’s mother died in 1821, and the following year he published his first book of poems, Odes et poésies diverses, some of which displayed royalist sentiments and won him a pension from Louis XVIII. The new income allowed him to marry his childhood sweetheart, Adèle Foucher, with whom he went on to have five children, although the first died in infancy.

By 1824, Hugo was already associated with a group of Romantics, Cénacle, which was moving against the domination of classical literature. And, as he published further collections of poems, so these seemed to reflect a growing dispassion for his youthful royalist sentiments. He emerged, biographies say, as a true Romantic with his verse dramas Cromwell, in 1927, and Hernani in 1930. Notre-Dame de Paris (The Hunchback of Notre-Dame) brought him much wider fame and influence, and made him rich. Further poems (some glorifying Napoleon) and plays followed. In the early 1830s, he began a liaison with a young actress, Juliette Drouet, who remained his secretary and discreet companion for the rest of his life.

Hugo’s literary achievement was recognised in 1841 by his election to the Académie française, but, after the death of his daughter Léopoldine and her husband by drowning in 1843, his creative energy seemed to fade in favour of political interest (a change that affected other Romantic figures who were becoming more concerned about social issues than beautiful art). He was nominated in 1845 to the upper house of the French parliament (Chamber of Peers) but this was disbanded following the Revolution of 1848 and the creation of the Second Republic.

After Napoleon III’s coup d’état against the Second Republic in 1851, Hugo went into exile, first in Brussels briefly, then in the Channel Islands, Jersey (1852–1855) and Guernsey from 1855. During this period, he finally published, in 1862, Les Misérables, a work which had taken more than a decade to write, but which would go on to become one of the most famous of French novels, and one of the greatest 19th century novels in any language.

Although Napoleon III proclaimed a general amnesty in 1859, and Hugo could have returned to France, he stayed in exile, only returning when Napoleon III was forced from power in 1870. He lived again in Guernsey from 1872 to 1873, before finally returning to France. His last years, with Juliette in Paris, were rather sad, partly because of illness and the loss of two sons. He died on 22 May 1855, and was given a hero’s funeral. Further information is available online at Wikipedia, Famous People, CliffsNotes, Notable Biographies, etc.

Excerpts from Hugo’s diaries were first issued along with other essays and random jottings in two series (1887 and 1900) in the original French under the title Choses vues, and soon translated into English as Things Seen. Further editions followed, including a fresh translation by David Kimber in a 1964 Oxford University Press edition. Some extracts from Things Seen can be found at Victor Hugo Central, but the full text of an English version, by The Colonial Press Co., can also be read at Internet Archive.

Joanna Richardson concludes her introduction to Oxford University Press’s edition as follows: ‘But perhaps Things Seen is best considered as a web into which Hugo has drawn ‘all the gilded and glittering flies’ [a quote from Hugo himself] of contemporary history. It is a far slighter work than the Goncourt Journal [see The Diary Review]; it lacks the Goncourts’ malice and wit, and it cannot for a moment compete with the Journal as a record of the social and intellectual scene. But for all its limitations, and whether or not it opens a window on to infinity, Things Seen remains one of the few examples in French literature of sporadic observations that are literary works in their own right. These random jottings have become a classic.’

The following is most of the text from one chapter in Things Seen, entitled Diary of a Passer-by During the Riot of Twelfth of May.

12 May 1839
‘At three o’clock I return to my study.

My little daughter, in a state of excitement, opens my door and says, “Papa, do you know what is going on? There is fighting at the Pont Saint-Michel.”

I do not believe a word of it. Fresh details. A cook in our house and a neighbouring wine-shop keeper have seen the occurrence. I ask the cook to come up. It is true; while passing along the Quai des Orfèvres he saw a throng of young men firing musket-shots at the Prefecture of Police. A bullet struck the parapet near him. From there the assailants ran to the Place du Châtelet and to the Hôtel de Ville, still firing. They set out from the Morgue, which the good fellow calls the Morne.

Poor young fools! In less than twenty-four hours a large number of those who set out from there will have returned there.

Firing is heard. The houses are in turmoil. Doors and casements open and shut violently. The women-servants chat and laugh at the windows. It is said that the insurrection has spread to the Porte Saint-Martin. I go out and follow the line of the boulevards. The weather is fine; there are crowds of promenaders in their Sunday dress. Drums beat to arms.

At the beginning of the Hue du Pont-aux-Choux are some groups of people looking in the direction of the Rue de l’Oseille. There are a great crowd and a great uproar close to an old fountain which can be seen from the boulevard, and which forms the angle of an open space in the old Rue du Temple. [. . .]

Upon the Boulevard du Temple the cafés are closing. The Cirque Olympique is also closing. The Gaîté holds out, and will give a performance.

The crowd of promenaders becomes greater at each step. Many women and children. Three drummers of the National Guard - old soldiers, with solemn mien - pass by, beating to arms. The fountain of the Château d’Eau suddenly throws up its grand holiday streams. At the back, in the low-lying street, the great railings and doorway of the Town Hall of the 5th Arrondissement are closed one inside the other. I notice in the door little loop-holes for muskets.

Nothing at the Porte Saint-Martin, but a large crowd peacefully moving about across regiments of infantry and cavalry stationed between the two gate-ways. The Porte Saint-Martin Theatre closes its box-office. The bills are being taken down, on which I see the words Marie Tudor. The omnibuses are running.

Throughout this journey I have not heard any firing, but the crowd and vehicles make a great noise.

I return to the Marais. In the old Rue du Temple the women, in a state of excitement, gossip at the doorways. Here are the details. The riot spread throughout the neighbourhood. Towards three o’clock two or three hundred young men, poorly armed, suddenly broke into the Town Hall of the 7th Arrondissement, disarmed the guard, and took the muskets. Thence they ran to the Hôtel de Ville and performed the same freak. As they entered the guard-room they gaily embraced the officer. When they had the Hôtel de Ville, what was to be done with it? They went away and left it. If they had France, would they be less embarrassed with it than they were with the Hôtel de Ville? There are among them many boys, fourteen or fifteen years old. Some do not know how to load their muskets; others cannot carry them. One of those who fired in the Rue de Paradis fell upon his hind-quarters after the shot. Two drummers killed at the head of their columns, are placed in the Royal Printing Establishment, of which the principal doorway is shut. At this moment barricades are being made in the Rue des Quatre Fils, at the corner of all the little Rues de Bretagne, de Poitou, de Touraine, and there are groups of persons listening. A grenadier of the National Guard passes by in uniform, his musket upon his back, looking about him with an uneasy look. It is seven o’clock; from my balcony in the Place Royale platoon-firing is heard.’

12 May 1839, 8 pm
‘I follow the boulevards as far as the Madeleine. They are covered with troops. National Guards march at the head of all the patrols. The Sunday promenaders intermingle with all this infantry, all this cavalry. At intervals a cordon of soldiers quietly empty the crowd from one side of the boulevard to the other. There is a performance at the Vaudeville.’

13 May 1839, 1 am
‘The boulevards are deserted. There remain only the regiments, who bivouac at short distances apart. Coming back, I passed through the little streets of the Marais. All is quiet and gloomy. The old Rue du Temple is as black as a furnace. The lanterns there have been smashed.

The Place Royale is a camp. There are four great fires before the Town Hall, round which the soldiers chat and laugh, seated upon their knapsacks. The flames carve a black silhouette of some, and cast a glow upon the faces of the others. The green, fresh leaves of the spring trees rustle merrily above the braziers.

I had a letter to post. I took some precautions in the matter, for everything looks suspicious in the eyes of these worthy National Guards. I recollect that at the period of the riots of April, 1834, I passed by a guard-house of the National Guard with a volume of the works of the Duke de Saint-Simon. I was pointed out as a Saint-Simonian, and narrowly escaped being murdered.

Just as I was going in-doors again, a squadron of hussars, held in reserve all day in the courtyard of the Town Hall, suddenly issued forth and filed past me at a gallop, going in the direction of the Rue Saint-Antoine. As I went upstairs I heard the horses’ foot-falls retreating in the distance.’

13 May 1839, 8 am
‘Several companies of the National Guard have come and joined the Line regiments encamped in the Place Royale.

A number of men in blouses walk about among the National Guard, observed and observing with an anxious look. An omnibus comes out upon the Rue du Pas-de-la-Mule. It is made to go back. Just now my floor-polisher, leaning upon his broom, said, “Whose side shall I be on?” He added a moment afterwards, “What a filthy government this is! I have thirty francs owing to me, and cannot get anything out of the people!”

The drums beat to arms.

I breakfast as I read the papers. M. Duflot arrives. He was yesterday at the Tuileries. It was at the Sunday reception: the king appeared fatigued, the queen was low-spirited. Then he went for a walk about Paris. He saw in the Rue du Grand-Hurleur a man who had been killed - a workman - stretched upon the ground in his Sunday clothing, his forehead pierced by a bullet. It was evening. By his side was a lighted candle. The dead man had rings on his fingers and his watch in his fob-pocket, from which issued a great bunch of trinkets.

Yesterday, at half-past three o’clock, at the first musket-shots, the king sent for Marshal Soult, and said to him, “Marshal, the waters become troubled. Some ministers must be fished up.”

An hour afterwards the marshal came to the king, and said, as he rubbed his hands, in his Southern accent, “This time, Sire, I think we shall manage the business.”

There is, in fact, a ministry this morning in the “Moniteur.” ’

13 May 1839, 12 midday
‘I go out. Firing can be heard in the Rue Saint-Louis. The men in blouses have been turned out of the Place Royale, and now only those persons who live there are allowed to enter the street The rioting is in the Rue Saint-Louis. It is feared that the insurgents will penetrate one by one to the Place Royale, and fire upon the troops from behind the pillars of the arcades.

Two hundred and twelve years, two months and two days ago to-day, Beuvron, Bussy d’Amboise, and Buquet, on the one hand, and Boutteville, Deschapelles, and Laberthe, on the other, fought to the death with swords and daggers, in broad daylight, at this same time and in this same Place Royale. [. . .]

The approaches to the Place Royale are deserted. The firing continues, very sustained, and very close at hand.

In the Rue Saint-Gilles, before the door of the house occupied in 1784 by the famous Countess Lamothe-Valois, of the Diamond Necklace affair, a Municipal Guard bars my passage.

I reach the Rue Saint-Louis by the Rue des Douze-Portes. The Rue Saint-Louis has a singular appearance. At one of the ends can be seen a company of soldiers, who block up the whole street and advance slowly, pointing their muskets. I am hemmed in by people running away in every direction. A young man has just been killed at the corner of the Rue des Douze-Portes.

It is impossible to go any farther. I return in the direction of the boulevard.

At the corner of the Rue du Harlay there is a cordon of National Guards. One of them, who wears the blue ribbon of July, stops me suddenly. “You cannot pass!” And then his voice suddenly became milder: “Really, I do not advise you to go that way, sir.” I raise my eyes; it is my floor-polisher.

I proceed farther.

I arrive in the Rue Saint-Claude. I have only gone forward a few steps when I see all the foot-passengers hurrying. A company of infantry has just appeared at the end of the street, near the church. Two old women, one of whom carries a mattress, utter exclamations of terror. I continue to make my way towards the soldiers, who bar the end of the street. Some young scamps in blouses are bolting in every direction near me. Suddenly the soldiers bring down their muskets and present them. I have only just time to jump behind a street-post, which protects, at all events, my legs. I am fired upon. No one falls in the streets. I make towards the soldiers, waving my hat, that they may not fire again. As I come close up to them they open their ranks for me, I pass, and not a word is exchanged between us.

The Rue Saint-Louis is deserted. It has the appearance which it presents at four o’clock in the morning in summer: shops shut, windows shut, no one about, broad daylight. In the Rue du Roi-Doré the neighbours chat at their doorways. Two horses, unharnessed from some cart, of which a barricade has been made, pass up the Rue Saint-Jean-Saint-François, followed by a bewildered carter. A large body of National Guards and troops of the Line appear to be in ambush at the end of the Rue Saint-Anastase. I make inquiries. About half an hour ago seven or eight young workmen came there, dragging muskets, which they hardly knew how to load. They were youths of fourteen or fifteen years of age. They silently prepared their arms in the midst of the people of the neighbourhood and the passers-by, who looked on as they did so, then they broke into a house where there were only an old woman and a little child. There they sustained a siege of a few moments. The firing in my direction was aimed at some of them who were running away up the Rue Saint-Claude.

All the shops are closed, except the wine-shop where the insurgents drank, and where the National Guard are drinking.’

13 May 1839, 3 pm
‘I have just explored the boulevards. They are covered with people and soldiers. Platoon-firing is heard in the Rue Saint-Martin. Before the windows of Fieschi I saw a lieutenant-general, in full uniform, pass by, surrounded by officers and followed by a squadron of very fine dragoons, sabre in hand. There is a sort of camp at the Chateau d’Eau; the actresses of the Ambigu are on the balcony of their greenroom, looking on. No theatre on the boulevards will give a performance this evening.

All signs of disorder have disappeared in the Rue Saint-Louis. The rioting is concentrated in the great central markets. A National Guard said to me just now, “There are in the barricades over there more than four thousand of them.” I said nothing in reply to the worthy fellow. In moments like this all eyes are overflowing vessels.

[. . .] A man has just been killed in the Rue de la Perle. In the Rue des Trois-Pavillons I see some little girls playing at battledore and shuttlecock. In the Rue de l’Echarpe there is a laundryman in a fright, who says he has seen cannon go by. He counted eight.’

13 May 1839, 8 pm
‘The Marais remains tolerably quiet. I am informed that there are cannon in the Place de la Bastille. I proceed there, but cannot make out anything; the twilight is too deep. Several regiments stand in silent readiness, infantry and cavalry. A crowd assembles at the sight of the wagons from which supplies are distributed to the men. The soldiers make ready to bivouac. The unloading of the wood for the night-fires is heard.’

13 May 1839, 12 midnight
‘Complete battalions go the rounds upon the boulevards. The bivouacs are lighted up in all directions, and throw reflections as of a conflagration on the fronts of the houses. A man dressed as a woman has just passed rapidly by me, with a white hat and a very thick black veil, which completely hides his face. As the church clocks were striking twelve, I distinctly heard, amid the silence of the city, two very long and sustained reports of platoon-firing.

I listen as a long file of carts, making a heavy iron clatter, pass in the direction of the Rue du Temple. Are these cannon?’

14 May 1839, 9 am
‘I return home. I notice from a distance that the great bivouac fire lighted at the corner of the Rue Saint-Louis and the Rue de l’Echarpe has disappeared. As I approach I see a man stooping before the fountain and holding something under the water of the spout. I look. The man looks uneasy. I see that he is extinguishing at the fountain some half-burned logs of wood; then he loads them upon his shoulders and makes off. They are the last brands which the soldiers have left on the pavement on quitting their bivouacs. In fact, there is nothing left now but a few heaps of red ashes. The soldiers have returned to their barracks. The riot is at an end. It will at least have served to give warmth to a poor wretch in winter-time.’

Tears instead of ink

Sir John Oglander, an aristocrat and politician associated with the Isle of White, died all of 430 years ago today. He is as much remembered for his diaries as he is for the relatively minor administrative and political appointments he held, not least because, having started as account books, they became more personal over time. For example on the death of his beloved son, George, he wrote: ‘With my tears instead of ink I write these last lines.’

Oglander was born at Nunwell, on the eastern side of the Isle of Wight, on 12 May 1585. He was schooled at Winchester, and entered Balliol College, Oxford, for three years but left without a degree. Thereafter, he entered the Middle Temple, though was not called to the bar. He married Frances, the youngest daughter of Sir George More of Losely, and sister to the wife of the poet John Donne. They had four sons and three daughters.

After residing for a while in Winchester with his father, Oglander moved to take up residence at the old family home in Nunwell, aiming to live a life, he wrote, of ‘ardent and unbroken devotion to the public service’. Little is known of that life, however, until around 1620 (though he was knighted in 1615 by James I). From 1620 to 1624, he acted as deputy governor of Portsmouth, before selling the position and returning to the Isle of Wight to be deputy governor there instead.

In 1625, Oglander was elected to Parliament as member for Yarmouth. He held other appointments, such as High Sheriff of Hampshire in the late 1630s. With the outbreak of the Civil War in 1642, Oglander - a true Royalist - found himself imprisoned, firstly for a short time, and then for three years. Later, he helped Charles I while on the Isle of Wight, but, as the king became confined at Carisbrooke Castle so it became dangerous for his friends, such as Oglander, to continue their support for him. Oglander was arrested one more time, in 1651, but was released within weeks. He died in 1655, a man broken by the war, his estate having been diminished and having lost his wife and a son. Further biographical information can be found at Wikipedia, the History of Parliament website, or The Gentry.

For much of his life Oglander kept ‘Bookes of Accoumpts’ in which he wrote down his business affairs. However, over time they became more diary-like with entries of a personal nature. The diaries are considered valuable, particularly with regard to the history of the Isle of the White. Indeed, during Oglander’s lifetime he copied out some parts for use by his friend Sir Richard Worsley, who was then compiling what would be published in 1781 as The History of the Isle of Wight. Later, in 1888, the notebooks were also used by W. H. Long for his book The Oglander Memoirs.

It was not until 1936, however, that Oglander’s diary was published in its own right as A Royalist’s Notebook - The Commonplace Book of Sir John Oglander Kt of Nunwell, transcribed and edited by Francis Bamford (Constable, 1936). Cecil Faber Aspinall-Oglander says in his introduction: ‘The numerous tattered volumes of faded manuscripts from which this book has been compiled have lain for three hundred years in the house where Sir John Oglander wrote them in the days of James I and Charles I, their slumber only disturbed by the reverent fingers of his descendants in search of information. And here indeed their slumber might have continued had it not been for Mr. Bamford asking my wife’s permission to look through the Nunwell papers in search of local colour for a historical novel on which he was then engaged.’

Bamford’s book divides Oglander’s writings into various chapters, viz: His observations 1622-1639; His observations 1642-1652; His neighbours; His rules for husbandry; Some of his recipes; Some of his accounts; His advice to his descendants. Here are a few samples from the first chapter (the language has been modernised by Bamford).

‘The 20th February, 1626, I put into the pond by Whitefield House 200 young carp.’

‘May the 30th, 1627. On Wednesday in the afternoon on Granger, captain of a small man-of-war belonging to Mr. James of Portsmouth, being on the south side of the Island, spied a fleet of Hollanders of 22 sail, whereof Sir Lawrence Reoll was Admiral. He presently took them for Spaniards and came into the Island, sent intelligence to Sir Edward Dennys that he had espied a fleet of Spaniards at sea, the copy of which letter is in my box. Whereupon Sir Edward sent the very letter to Portsmouth, whither when it came, a Wednesday by 4 of the clock, the town rose all in arms and apprehended as much fear as if an enemy had been at the gates. Higham, Master Gunner, hasted away post with this intelligence to my Lord Steward, which came to the Council and my Lord Duke’s knowledge by 2 the same night. He presently commanded down all the colonels to their charges: hither came Brett and Spry by Friday morning. The Duke himself posted to the Downs, vowing he would not stay but would fight them with those ships that were then ready.’

‘King Charles came into our Island the 20th of June 1627, being Wednesday. He came ashore at Ryde, where only myself was to attend him: he was landed by 9 in the morning, sooner than the gentlemen expected. We had notice of it but the night before, yet I took such order of it that my coach was there, and some 40 horses. I waited on him from Ryde to Arreton Down and was his guide. On the Down, he saw Sir Alexander Brett’s regiment train, which was the motive that brought him over. I had the honour to kiss His Majesty’s hand, being presented unto him by the Lord Chamberlain, and at his going away again, which was about 3: all the gentlemen with myself had the like honour. [. . .]

His Majesty neither ate nor drank in our Island. On our complaint unto him, he promised we should have Sandham Castle repaired (which I showed afar off unto him, together with the consequences thereof), a fort of St Helens, munitions for our country, and 10 or 20 ships of his to be still resident in Portsmouth Harbour. So much, and so happy we, if performed.’

‘On the 8th of December, 1631, my shepherd’s wife, Good Greenwood, going to my windmill with a gust coming from thence, she went so near to the vanes of the mill that one of them took her in the head and beat out her brains. She was a very good woman and had been nurse to my son William, and dry nurse to most of my other children.’

‘Here is set down the most sorrowful story that was ever written by the hand of a distressed father. On the 21st of July, 1632, being at Newport [. . .] the Mayor, Sir Richard Dillington and Sir Edward Dennys came unto me and told me of a flying report, brought by a bark off Weymouth lately come from Caen, that my eldest son George, that was then at Caen, was very sick - if not dead.

Let those judge, who have had a hopeful young son aged 22 years, well brought up and learned in all the arts, dutiful, wise, sober, discreet and given to no vice, but tall, handsome, judicious and understanding - yea, far above the capacity of his young years, what a case I was in and how deeply stricken, insomuch as I had much ado to get home.

With my tears instead of ink I write these last lines. O George, my beloved George, is dead and with him most of my terrestrial comforts, although I acknowledge I have good and dutiful sons left. He died of the smallpox at Caen in Normandy, the 11th of July, 1632. Only with my tears and a foul pen was this written.’

The Diary Junction

He loves me so much

Seventy years ago today, Adolf and Eva Hitler - married just 40 hours earlier - committed suicide in the so-called Führerbunker, Berlin - Adolf by shooting himself and Eva by biting into a cyanide capsule. Hitler, himself, left behind no diaries, although 60 volumes, purportedly by Hitler but later established as fakes, emerged in 1983, creating a huge media furore - see The Diary Review. Eva, maiden name Braun, though, did leave behind some diary material - 22 pages of a journal kept in 1935. Although the authenticity of this document has been questioned, Braun’s biographers have generally used it as a key source.

Eva Braun was born in Munich in 1912, the middle daughter of three, to a school teacher and his seamstress wife. She was educated at a Catholic lyceum, and then, for a year, at a business school in a convent. Aged 17, she was employed by Heinrich Hoffmann, the official photographer for the Nazi Party, working as a shop assistant and sales clerk. In October 1929, Hitler visited Hoffman’s shop, and was introduced to the young Eva. Thereafter, a furtive love affair developed between the two.

However, Eva eventually came to find the liaison so difficult and frustrating that she attempted suicide (by gunshot) in the autumn of 1932. Heike B. Görtemaker, author of Eva Braun: Life with Hitler (Allen Lane, 2011, translated from the German original by Damion Searls), says ‘although precise details remain unknown, witnesses and historians agree that Eva Braun felt abandoned and calculatedly acted to make the perpetually absent Hitler notice her, and to tie him more closely to her.’ Görtemaker notes that Hitler’s step niece, Geli Raubal, with whom he was living at the time, had committed suicide just a year earlier. Braun undertook a further suicide attempt, this time with pills, in 1935, again because she felt Hitler was not paying her enough attention.

Although her relationship with Hitler remained secret beyond his inner circle, Braun continued to advance her status, in that Hitler provided various residences for her: an apartment, then a villa, in Munich, where Eva lived with her sisters, an apartment at the Reich Chancellery in Berlin, and accommodation at Berghof, near Berchtesgaden, whenever Hitler was there. She attended the Nuremburg rally for the first time in 1935; and, increasingly, she took photographs and films of the inner circle which she was able to sell to Hoffman. In time, Braun was given the nominal role of Hitler’s private secretary which allowed her to visit the Chancellery without comment.

In early April 1945, Braun journeyed from Munich to Berlin, to join Hitler in the Führerbunker, an air-raid shelter and bunker complex near the Chancellery. By this time, the Soviet army was already making major advances on the city. On 22 April Hitler declared the war lost, and announced he would stay in Berlin until the end, and then kill himself. During the night of 28-29 April, he and Eva were married, as witnessed by Joseph Goebbels and Martin Bormann. During the morning of 30 April, Hitler was advised that their situation in Berlin was now hopeless - ammunition was running out, and the Soviets were closing in. At 3:30pm, witnesses heard a gunshot, and within a few minutes Mr and Mrs Hitler were found dead. Adolf had shot himself in the head, and Eva had bitten into a cyanide capsule. The bodies were burned, and, a few days later, the charred remains were found by the Russians and buried secretly in Magdeburg, along with the bodies of Goebbels and his wife and children.

Further information on Eva can be found at Wikipedia, a Danish fan site run by Louis Bülow, or in reviews of Görtemaker’s biography (at The New York Times, Der Speigel, or The Guardian). However, as Görtemaker notes, it is very difficult to reconstruct a full and accurate picture of Eva’s life and of her relationship with Hitler. This is partly because of the obsessive way Hitler kept the affair hidden, and partly because so few original sources - letters in particular - have survived. Görtemaker goes to some lengths, indeed, to describe the efforts that have been made to find letters that may or may not have been hidden/destroyed by Eva or her sister. In any case, Görtemaker explains that, in the context of so little information, ‘only’ a 22-page diary fragment in Eva Braun’s papers, written in old-style German handwriting, ‘sheds light on the character of their relationship’. Although she acknowledges that the document’s authorship remains controversial, she trusts it sufficiently to analyse and interpret its contents thoroughly.

The 22-page diary fragment is held by the National Archives, Washington D. C., with other Braun papers. I am not sure when it first appeared in English, though Nerin E. Gun includes it in his Eva Braun: Hitler’s Mistress, published in German in 1968, then in English in 1969 (Leslie Frewin). Several extracts can be found online at Bülow’s Eva Braun website (from where the following extracts have been taken).

18 February 1935
‘Yesterday he came quite unexpectedly, and we had a delightful evening.

The nicest thing is that he is thinking of taking me from the shop and - but I had better not get excited about it yet - he may give me a little house. I simply must not let myself think about it. It would be marvelous. I wouldn’t have to open the door to our “beloved customers,” and go on being a shopgirl. Dear God, grant that this may really happen not in some far-off time, but soon. [. . .]

I am so infinitely happy that he loves me so much, and I pray that it will always be like this. It won’t be my fault if he ever stops loving me.

I am so terribly unhappy that I cannot write to him. These notes must serve as the receptacle of my lamentations.

He came on Saturday. Saturday evening there was the Town Ball. Frau Schwarz gave me a box, so I absolutely had to go after I had accepted. Well, I spent a few wonderfully delightful hours with him until 12 o’clock and then with his permission I spent two hours at the ball.

On Sunday he promised I could see him. I telephoned to the Osteria and left a message with Werlin to say that I was waiting to hear from him. He simply went off to Feldafing, and refused Hoffmann’s invitation to coffee and dinner. I suppose there are two sides to every question. Perhaps he wanted to be alone with Dr. G., who was here, but he should have let me know. At Hoffmann’s I felt I was sitting on hot coals, expecting him to arrive every moment.

In the end we went to the railroad station, as he suddenly decided he would have to go. We were just in time to see the last lights of the train disappearing. Once again Hoffmann left the house too late, and so I couldn’t even say good-bye to him. Perhaps I am taking too dark a view, I hope I am, but he is not coming again for another two weeks. Until then I’ll be miserable and restless. I don’t know why he should be angry with me. Perhaps it is because of the ball, but he did give his permission.

I am racking my brains to find out why he left without saying good-bye to me.

The Hoffmanns have given me a ticket for the Venetian Night this evening, but I am not going. I am much too miserable.’

28 May 1935
‘I have just sent him the crucial letter. Question: will he attach any importance to it?

We’ll see. If I don’t get an answer before this evening, I’ll take 25 pills and gently fall asleep into another world.

He has so often told me he is madly in love with me, but what does that mean when I haven’t had a good word from him in three months?

So he has had a head full of politics all this time, but surely it is time he relaxed a little. What happened last year? Didn’t Roehm and Italy give him a lot of problems, but in spite of all that he found time for me.

Maybe the present situation is incomparably more difficult for him, nevertheless a few kind words conveyed through the Hoffmanns would not have greatly distracted him.

I am afraid there is something behind it all. I am not to blame. Absolutely not.

Maybe it is another woman, not the Valkyrie - that would be hard to believe. But there are so many other women.

Is there any other explanation? I can’t find it.

God, I am afraid he won’t give me his answer today. If only somebody would help me - it is all so terribly depressing.

Perhaps my letter reached him at an inopportune moment. Perhaps I should not have written. Anyway, the uncertainty is more terrible than a sudden ending of it all.

I have made up my mind to take 35 pills this time, and it will be “dead certain.” If only he would let someone call.” ’

It is worth noting that as far back as 1949 a book appeared entitled The Diary of Eva Braun. This was edited by Alan F. Bartlett, and published by Aldus (republished by Spectrum in 2000). It was based on a typed manuscript, covering the years 1937-1944, that was given, apparently, by Eva Braun to Luis Trenker, a film-maker. Some discussion of this book can be found at the Axis History Forum. However, whereas biographers appear to take the 1935 diary fragment seriously, they rarely - if ever - mention the Bartlett book.

Finally, there is another - and major - diary source for information about Eva Braun - the published diaries of Joseph Goebbels. He committed suicide, with his wife, (after killing all six of his children), a day after the Hitlers, on 1 May 1945. Extracts from Goebbels’s diaries have already appeared in The Diary Review - see The Reichstag on fire - but more will follow tomorrow, on the 70th anniversary of his death.

How bloody corrupt

In commemoration of the 30th anniversary of the end of the 1984-1985 miners’ strike in the UK, the Mirror, a daily newspaper, recently published extracts from the diary of John Lowe, a miner who spent his entire working life in the industry, but who only became politicised during that famous coal industry dispute.

Lowe was born in Whiston, Yorkshire, in 1931, spending his early childhood year there, and then in Danesmoor, Derbyshire. He left school at 14, and went to work at the Clay Cross Companies coking plant and then at the Parkhouse Colliery. In 1953, he married Elsie, and they would have two sons and three daughters.

In the early 1960s, Lowe moved to work at the Rufford Colliery in Nottinghamshire, and a few years later moved to Clipstone Colliery. After 40 years a miner, 30 years of which were at the coalface, he was made redundant in 1987. Thereafter, he suffered from various physical ailments which restricted his mobility in retirement. He died in 2005.

In 2011, Wharncliffe Books (part of Pen & Sword Books) published the diary of John Lowe as If Spirit Alone Won Battles: The 1984-1985 Miners’ Strike in Nottinghamshire. It was edited by Jonathan Symcox, Lowe’s grandson, with a foreword by Dennis Skinner, a well-known and outspoken left-wing Member of Parliament. Son of a miner himself, Skinner was a strong supporter of the National Union of Mineworkers strike, in 1984, against Prime Minister Thatcher’s plan to close coal mines. The stand-off between the Conservative government and the miners came to be dubbed as ‘the most bitter industrial dispute in British history’ - see Wikipedia.

Last month, on 2 March, the Mirror published a series of extracts from the diary to commemorate the 30th anniversary of the end of the 1984-1985 miner’s strike (on 3 March 1985) that had so divided the country. The Mirror noted: ‘Despite never having been a political activist, the Clipstone picket manager kept a detailed diary throughout the dispute. It captures the moments of frustration, pride, desperation and drudgery of that critical time. It details the booking of buses to transport pickets, instructions to them if they were arrested or stopped by police and the coded lists for the flying pickets which were changed every day to stay one step ahead.’

The following extracts are taken from the Mirror article, but further extracts from Lowe’s book can be found at the Miner’s Advice website.

2 January 1985
‘Back to the grind with the alarm set for 4.15am. We must be bloody crackers. Seven of us turned up for the first picket and we were disappointed to find only one policeman on duty, the idle swines.’

3 January 1985
‘Tried this afternoon to talk to some of the afternoon shift – as distasteful as it feels, it’s the only fresh tack left open to us. One of the lads talked for fifteen minutes and was really sick of it – he would only promise to think about rejoining us and to talk to his wife. If we could get two or three out again, it would really boost the lads; unfortunately it would take a bloody miracle.

Board and media campaign getting into gear now, with figures of six hundred returns given for the last two days. F***** liars!’

21 January 1985
‘Nationally, men are returning to work and this is very sad. They are not going back because the cause is wrong; after all this time the poor buggers are being forced back by all sorts of reasons: debt, a lack of money, food and fuel, and domestic and personal problems. Two of ours lost this week.

The case of the Transits in Mansfield: our initial findings were a ‘scab van’ picking up in Pleasley and going on towards Clowne, and police patrol cars patrolling the supposedly closed office block near the dole office, which showed signs of activity with many lights on inside and three wire-mesh Transits still in the closed-off yard. We then found that the vans were certainly driving into Yorkshire and taking part in the ‘scab runs’ there, with police escorts all the way – but that Notts men were not taking part.

What surprised us was that the drivers were Yorkshiremen, some of them from the pit villages they were driving to: I was very saddened to think that such treachery could be enacted by working class people against what were, perhaps, members of their own families.’

23 February 1985
‘Used the last of our coal today. We’ve been lucky right through, managing to get the odd bag given and burning it sparingly with logs; our good neighbour has helped out us and others and we owe him gratitude.

The kids on holiday in Belgium are due home this evening; another set are due to go to France shortly and at Easter yet another lot go to Amsterdam. We must never forget our brothers over the Channel.

The Board are offering an immediate advance of £100 to those returning now. How bloody corrupt are they prepared to be.’

Although few and far between, there are other published diaries by miners. Pen & Sword have published, for example, The Miners’ Strike Day by Day, the diary of Arthur Wakefield, and Yorkshire’s Flying Pickets based on the diary of Bruce Wilson, both edited by Brian Elliott.

Black, dead, inhuman

‘I have been ill now and in bed for over two weeks. That is why I have written nothing. And the new doctor gave me M. & B. tablets which, I suppose, made me feel even worse - black, dead, inhuman as a boulder - telescoped into myself till nothing could come forward.’ This is from the diary of Denton Welch, a British artist and writer born 100 years ago today. He struggled to keep on writing, despite severe health problems, but died tragically young.

Welch was born in Shanghai, China, on 29 March 1915, into a rich privileged family, but his mother (an American by birth) died when he was only 11. In his teens, he was educated at Repton, but he so hated the school he tried running away once. On deciding to become a painter, he enrolled at the Goldsmith School of Art, London. In 1935, when riding his bike, he was involved in a traffic accident. His spine was fractured, and he remained paralysed for several months. During his convalescence, he shook off the Christian Science religion that had been a feature of his childhood; and, eventually, he learned to walk again.

Welch never fully recovered his health, and he suffered repeated infections and headaches, but he continued to paint and draw. In 1941, Leicester Galleries, London, exhibited some of his paintings. Also, some of his poems were well received; and then his autobiographical, Maiden Voyage, for which Dame Edith Sitwell wrote a foreword, sold out. For the next few years, Welch moved home several times, first in south London, then to near Tonbridge, and finally to the village of Crouch near Sevenoaks. In late 1943, he had met Eric Oliver who moved in with Welch, becoming his lover and, increasingly, his carer.

Despite his failing health, these years with Oliver proved fruitful for Welch: most of his published works, such as In Youth Is Pleasure and the autobiographical A Voice Through a Cloud, date from this time. Welch died in December 1948. Further biographical information can be found at Wikipedia, or from James Methuen-Campbell’s biography, Denton Welch: Writer and Artist. Web pages with further details on A Voice Through a Cloud (Wikipedia and The Paris Review) also have more details on Welch. Alan Bennett’s article on Welch for The Guardian is also informative.

Between 1942 and his death, Welch wrote a personal diary, in thin paper-covered school exercise books; he left behind 19 of these. They were first edited by Jocelyn Brooke, and then published by Hamish Hamilton in 1952 as The Denton Welch Journals. In his introduction, Brooke explains that Welch’s handwriting was ‘scrawling and rather school boyish’, that he wrote at great speed with little regard for punctuation, and that his spelling was not very good. The published book contains only about half the original manuscript material, Brooke adds, partly because of concerns at the time about libel, partly because he edited out passages where Welch interrupted his diary to embark on a short story, and partly to avoid repetition.

Here are a few extracts from the Journals.

11 February 1944
‘This evening I bicycled to Penshurst. I climbed up the hill easily because I was with a man who worked at the railway and he talked all the time about the last war.

At the top, he said good-bye and I went on, on, down the hill past a soldier and the old neurotic home, ‘Swaylands’, which is now a military hospital. Two idle loosely hanging soldiers stood at the lodge waiting for something to be brought to them. They looked at me lazily and curiously as I sped past . . .

Nothing can make up for the fact that my very early youth was so clouded with illness and unhappiness. I feel cheated as if I never had that fiercely thrilling time when the fears of childhood have left one and no other thing has swamped one. The cheek is plump and smooth, the eye and the teeth are bright and one feels that one would lie down and die if these first essentials were ever taken away . . .

When I passed the ‘Fleur de Lys’ at Leigh, again I thought of Eric, for he told me that he used often to get tight there.

Curious to think that all this time while Eric worked on the farm, hated it, was utterly lonely, got tight as often as possible just for something to do, I was only a few minutes away in Tonbridge, walking the streets in my restlessness, trying to make myself iller and iller by any foolishness, wanting to die.

And we never met and all the years in between, seven, eight, we knew nothing of each other, they all melted away and wasted.’

21 April 1944
‘This morning I had a book, Planet and Glow-worm, from Edith Sitwell and a letter with her love. Then I went out in the sun and, feeling so much better, I lay on the top of a haystack and sunned myself and ate and actually fell asleep, and I forgot unhappiness and trouble and only felt in a daze with hot sun and cool wind on my face.

Edith mentioned my Horizon story which appeared on Wednesday. Cyril Connolly sent me fourteen guineas and said Hamish Hamilton wanted to know if I had a book of them in mind, because if so he’d like to publish it.

Lately I have a poem in the Spectator and two in Life and Letters and a story in New Writing and one in English Story.

Also I have sold two little pictures to a Mrs. Serocold

It is happiness to have things liked, but when I’m ill as I was on Wednesday and other days lately everything pales to nothing and I want to die more than anything on earth.

I think all I can do is to keep my work going as long as I can. And if I can no longer, then I will die . . .’

8 May 1944
‘When you long with all your heart for someone to love you, a madness grows there that shakes all sense from the trees and the water and the earth. And nothing lives for you, except the long deep bitter want. And this is what everyone feels from birth to death.’

9 April 1945
‘I have said nothing about In Youth is Pleasure, and it has been out since February 22nd (I think). So far everything is so much better than I thought it might be - good reviews, except for Kate O’Brien in the Spectator, and quite long ones and lots. It was all sold out before publication, so now they are bringing it out again.’

30 May 1945
‘When I read about William Blake, I know what I am for. I must never be afraid of my foolishness, or of any pretension. And whatever I have I must use, painting, poetry, prose - not proudly thinking it is not good enough and so lock it inside for fear or laughing, sneering.’

26 August 1945
‘I have been ill now and in bed for over two weeks. That is why I have written nothing. And the new doctor gave me M. & B. tablets which, I suppose, made me feel even worse - black, dead, inhuman as a boulder - telescoped into myself till nothing could come forward. Now I am better, and so the other state seems unbelievable, but it is waiting for me again.’

29 January 1947
‘There were frost flowers thick all over the panes this morning and the milk was frozen. The pipes were frozen too, and the snow thicker than ever. I have not got out of bed, and will not till I hear the pipes thawing. I have been writing here, then eating chocolate as a reward. The panes are all dripping and splashing in the sunshine now. Eric has gone for a walk in the snow, and I wish I could go too. It is the most snow I think I have known in England.’

The Diary Junction

Cramming preserves into a jar

The intriguing Polish writer Leopold Tyrmand died 30 years ago today. His youthful adult life was marked by the turmoil of the Second World War, after which he struggled, in his early writing career, through the years of Stalinism. Escaping to the US, he found some success, before again falling foul of the prevailing cultural and political climate. For three short months, after Stalin’s death and while still in Warsaw, he kept a very detailed diary. This was not published in English until 2014, but reveals Tyrmand had much to say about his own life - his politics, his relationships - as well about the very process of keeping a diary, which he likened to cramming preserves into a jar.

Tyrmand was born in Warsaw in 1920, the only child of a small-scale leather wholesaler and a mother known for her beauty. After leaving school in 1938, he travelled to Paris to enrol in the École des Beaux-Arts to study architecture. He was back in Warsaw, on a break from his studies, when Hitler invaded Poland in September 1939. Tyrmand fled east, like other Jews, ending up in Vilnius, where he joined the staff of a Polish-language newspaper published by the Soviets. His parents, meanwhile, were sent to the Majdanek Concentration Camp, where his father was murdered. His mother survived, and subsequently emigrated to Israel.

During the war, Tyrmand began to cooperate with the Polish resistance, but was arrested in spring 1941 by the NKVD secret police. On being transported to a Gulag corrective labour camp, his transport was bombed by the Nazis, and he managed to escape. With false papers, he returned to Germany where he worked in a series of menial jobs. In 1944, he secured a kitchen job on a German transport ship, intending to escape through a Norwegian port to neutral Sweden. He was captured, and spent the rest of the war in a camp near Oslo. He was back in Warsaw by mid-1946, and, later, made good use of his wartime experiences in his autobiographical novel, Filip, and several short stories. He also took a regular job as a journalist writing for Cut, a current events weekly.

During the years of Stalin’s growing influence in Poland, Tyrmand found his writing stifled, and work opportunities limited. It was not until after Stalin’s death, in fact, that he found some renewed success with Zły (published in English as The Man With White Eyes). He married a young art student, was responsible for organising jazz concerts, moved into a better apartment, and began to travel abroad. But, the relaxed cultural and political atmosphere did not last long, and again Tyrmand found himself at odds with the authorities, his activities repressed and his works censored. He got married again in 1959, to Barbara Hoff, an up-and-coming fashion designer. In the mid-1960s, though, he finally managed to get an export visa, first visiting Israel, and then the US, where he stayed.

Tyrmand struggled at first in the US, but, as a writer from behind the Iron Curtain, he was soon taken up by the New York Intelligentsia, and his writing was in demand from periodicals such as The New Yorker, The New York Times, and The American Scholar. But once again, with his insistent anti-communist stance and constant criticism of US political and cultural life, he began to find himself drifting out of favour. In 1971, he got married for the third time, to Mary Ellen Fox, and they had twins, a boy and girl. In the mid-1970s, he was invited to work with the Conservative Rockford Institute, editing the Chronicles of Culture magazine, and taking over as the institute’s director from its founder, John Howard. Tyrmand died on 19 March 1985. Further information is available from Wikipedia, New Eastern Europe website, or a paper at Academia.edu.

One of Tyrmand’s most significant literary legacies is a diary he kept for just three months at the start of 1954. This was first published in Polish in 1980 by the London-based Polonia Book Fund under the title Dziennik 1954. In keeping a diary at the time, full of political content as it was, Tyrmand was taking a considerable risk - Stalin was dead, but the official launch of a de-Stalinization policy was still a year or two away. 

The diary breaks off abruptly - in mid-sentence - on 2 April 1954, because, as Tyrmand explains in an afterword, he was about to sign a contract for a novel. The published diary also includes a preface written by Tyrmand. In this, he explains the genesis and subsequent history of the diary, and, to some extent, analyses its contents. The work was finally translated into English in 2014, by Anita Shelton and A. J. Wrobel, and published by Northwestern University Press as Diary 1954. Some pages can be read freely online at Googlebooks.

From the start of Tyrmand’s preface:
‘The facts are as follows:
- I wrote the diary over the first three months of 1954.
- For twelve years, the handwritten notebooks lay at the bottoms of rarely opened drawers.
- In 1956 (it’s obvious at what moment) the Universal Weekly published an excerpt from the diary - the only one that has appeared in print in Poland.
- In 1965, after years of futile applications for a passport, I was finally going to the West in an oldish Opel. I hadn’t decided to emigrate, but I took the manuscript of the diary with me, hiding it, with the help of a trusted mechanic, near the differential. It was an unnecessary precaution; what the customs officials at the border crossing wanted to know was whether my novel Zły was going to be reprinted. After that, their attention was drawn to an antique candlestick on top in the first suitcase they opened. They kept the candlestick and wished me a good journey.
- A few months later the notebooks were deposited at the editorial offices of the Parisian Culture, in Maisons-Lafitte, where they gathered dust for another four years.
- In 1968, when I chose freedom, the diary crossed the Atlantic and traveled with me from place to place for five years. Having settled down in New Canaan, Connecticut, I typed up the manuscript and prepared it for publication as a book.
- In 1974, the London-based Wiadomości (an émigré weekly) began to publish the diary in instalments; the last one came out in 1978. Around half of the full text saw the light of day in emigration in this way.
- The present book represents the entire diary, unchanged for editorial reasons, moral quandaries, political requirements, or concessions to friends and acquaintances.’

Right at the end of his preface, Tyrmand says this: ‘This diary, written in the prime of manhood, and reread at the twilight of middle age, brings me a feeling of fidelity to my own self - which has always seemed to me something desirable and worthy of sacrifice.’

Finally, here are a couple of extracts from the diary itself. Most of the entries are long, running to several pages of small typescript, but Tyrmand is always interesting, whether writing about his relationships, his city, politics or the act of keeping of diary.

5 January 1954
‘I thought that the notebook in which I am keeping this diary would last me for a few months, but now I doubt I’ll fit in all of January. And it devours energy and time. But it draws me in. [. . .]

I took a tram today across Leszno Street and Iron Street to the East-West Route. There, you can still see a good bit of old Warsaw from before the cataclysm. The ugly tenement houses from the turn of the century, so despised by the prewar aesthetes and social do-gooders dreaming of glass houses, have been burnished with a patina of charm by the passing years, sentiment, and ill fortune. They evoke the shoddiness of yesteryear which nostalgia has already ennobled. Especially since they are neighbours to the socrealism of the new Muranow housing estate, which looks like a group of cakes from a street peddler’s basket: small stucco tympanums stuck on as if by a confectioner over oblong windows straight out of primitive functionalism. Facades like dirty icing on a stale cake.

Supper at the Writers’ Club among the same faces, all reflecting the dullness of the choice they made. That’s what it seems like to me, but I may be wrong. Maybe they have sleepless nights, only I don’t know it. The atmosphere at the Club is like that of a prewar Jewish boarding house in Otwock, except that it’s more expensive here, and the food is worse. Everyone knows and dislikes everyone else.

In the afternoon my liver was aching. What’s that about? Hardly a drop of vodka passes my lips; I drink herbal infusions. Could it be that my health, which until now I have boasted about, and which has carried me so reliably through the war, camps, prisons, and private passions, has now been knocked out by infectious hepatitis? But no matter. I already have thirty-three years clocked. For my generation, that’s a ripe old age.

In the evening Bogna showed up, in a foul mood. I also wasn’t exactly in the pink, so there was tension in the air from the start. Getting undressed, she turned out the light, which she usually doesn’t do, and then in the dark she knocked over the humidifier hanging on the radiator, spilling water all over the freshly waxed parquet floor. Nothing sets me off quite like an attack on the shine of my floor, but we were already kind of down to fundamentals, and a fight about spilled water would have been farcical. Instead, when it was all over I just said, “Listen Bogna, I know that your sixteen years and my loathsome pedantry put together are pure surrealism. Isn’t it better to end it?” To that, Bogna, sated, calmly replied, “Uh-huh. You always talk like that when you’ve gotten off.” ’

8 January 1954
‘ “To thine own self be true. To thine own self be true - this above all!” cries Hamlet, as everyone knows. This is an apt bidding. Today it’s tormenting me more than usual. Because I am not myself. But who, then? The devil knows. I have been so determined to be seen as stifled and bypassed by the revolution, the historical moment, my society, and even my own self that I don’t recognise myself. Now I’ll probably never sort it out.

This diary is a substitute for creativity. It’s my justification of myself to myself, and not an independent construction, in and of itself legitimate and fully formed. And is this at all what I am? I always believed and judged that a man must express himself through action, I looked for the call to action, to do my duty - everything else is masturbation, and sooner or later it disgusts. I have been denied creation and action. By whom? It’s embarrassing to keep repeating it.

A diary somehow cannot accommodate what is to be told, what can be told only through creative work, epitome, and metaphor, which are literary devices. There’s always something in this text that doesn’t make it for me, doesn’t satisfy me. What? The right, or privilege to detach myself from the concrete, to cobble together my own law, in harmony with a wider law one must seek with one’s imagination. To be permitted, unrestrained by anything, my own composition of the detail. When I take the bus across Warsaw, my city, which I know better than most people, I can’t note everything faithfully and adequately or I’d fall into idiotic nominalism that would force me to fill up several dozen pages a day. Yet every morning I read my notes from the preceding days and something is missing, something it seems to me I failed to grasp: here, the period, there, insights, yet elsewhere, myself, and instead of them, there are trivialities and cliches, which I’ve already completely forgotten. What I wrote yesterday about McCarthy strikes me today as awkward and shallow. But is this diary supposed to serve as an outlet for someone whom communism has denied the right to have his say about America, who doesn’t have the right to publish what is of immediate value and should be read from day to day? [. . .]

While eating, conversing, touching Bogna, I think impatiently about what I must not lose, what must be captured and recorded. Cramming preserves into a jar, which may never be consumed. This raises the question: were Pepys, Chłędowski, and Gide also crushed by the elephantiasis of the writer’s imperative, or did they know how to confine their diary writing to the margins of their mental and manual effort, endowing it rather with the charm of an evening spent pleasantly jotting memoirs in one’s bathrobe?’

The day came at last

‘The day came at last as all days must come if one waits long enough. The day that ended my old & commenced my new life - a change for the better I have not the smallest shadow of a doubt - the day that ends this daily journal, having living tablet to write upon instead.’ This is Barclay Fox, part of a prosperous and important Quaker family in 19th century Cornwall, writing in his diary about his wedding day. Interestingly, he predicts - accurately - that he will no longer be interested in keeping a diary. He died 160 years ago today, leaving five children, not yet 40.

Barclay Fox was born in Cornwall in 1817 into a rich Quaker family that had many business and industrial interests in and around Falmouth. His father, Robert Were Fox, was a well known physicist and geologist, and was very involved with the family’s iron foundries. Barclay Fox married Jane Backhouse in 1844, and they had four sons and a daughter. Although Fox took part in the family business - he was made partner of the shipping brokers, G. C. Fox, and was general manager of the iron foundry at Perranarworthal, he also travelled abroad. Indeed, he was in Egypt when he died, on 10 March 1855, from tuberculosis. There is very little further biographical detail readily available online, but Wikipedia does have an entry for him, as does The Peerage.

Fox appears to have kept a diary for most of his life, starting when he was a teenager, but with far fewer entries after his marriage. Unlike the diary of his sister, Caroline, (see below), it was not published until 1979, when Bell and Hyman brought out Barclay Fox’s Journal as edited by R. L. Brett (including entries from 1832 to 1845). Thirty years later, in 2008, Cornwall Editions brought out a new edition of the 1979 book with a fresh introduction by Charles Fox, a preface by Bert Biscoe, and additional journal entries from 1845 to 1854. Some pages of this latter edition can be browsed at Amazon.

Here are a few extracts, including several from around the time of Barclay’s wedding.

1 January 1832
‘Breakfasted at Grove Hill. A cold day, got a cough, stayed at home from the afternoon Meeting. Papa gave me this book.’

9 January 1832
‘Commenced schooling today by myself in the new schoolroom and made an address to it in 6 Latin verses. I knocked out a pane of glass with my whipping top. A very wet day. I have begun to go to bed at 9 instead of 10.’

10 January 1832
‘2 Aunts came to breakfast, we all read our poems to them. After breakfast, I went with Papa to Perran to try the intensity of the magnet [Barclay’s father experimented with magnetism] with William Henwood, first in the valley and then on the top of the hill. We found the needle varied half a degree. In the evening, we 3 went to the Bank and read our poems again to Grandmamma and Aunts. Rather wet day.’

27 March 1832
‘J Richards, Cavendish & I went on board the Alchymist with Uncle Lewis. Explored the cavern at Pennance with Cavendish in the afternoon. John Wall went back to Bridgenorth this morning to his sister’s marriage. Fine day.’

4 April 1832
‘The marriage-day of Cavendish’s sister - a holiday of course. In the morning rowed with Cavendish to the Aurora frigate. In the afternoon some of the Classical School boys came to a game of cricket & tea, after which Papa showed us some experiments on galvanism etc. Very fine day.’

22 March 1840
‘Had the long anticipated pleasure of meeting John Mill, the exquisite writer in the London & Westminster. His voice, face & manner betoken delicacy of feeling, mildness, clearness and correctness of view, with that entire absence of assumption & affectation which distinguishes the really great from the really little.’

24 March 1840
‘Walked with Mill and Sterling after dinner. Mill sketched simply and beautifully the opposite habit of mind of himself & Carlyle; he being a generalizer, Carlyle an individualizer. His own turn was abstraction, Carlyle’s realization; the former is characteristic of the moral philosopher, the latter of the poet. He had only once or twice actually realized scenes of which he read and from that experience could easily understand the fancied inspiration of poets. For historic events to come home to him with the reality of actual presence would be more than his nerves could bear. When he first saw the great Truth 12 years since, that the earnestness of a writer is the only thing about him worth attempting to imitate, and the inevitable inconsistency of a copied style makes it more than vain, it seemed to him like a Revelation. There is sincerity of depth of assent in his emphatic Yes which is very peculiar. He is the most candid, genuine and clear-reasoning man I ever met with.’

29 November 1841
‘The deluge of 1841. The rain poured down in streams instead of drops, the low lands are inundated, walls & hedges are washed away. The water in some of the houses at Penryn is 4 or 5 feet deep & the inhabitants with their pigs are taking refuge in the top storey according to my father’s report, who went to Carlew this morning. The road about Stewart’s bone mill is converted into a rapid river 3 or 4 feet deep in some places. The like has not been known in this county within the memory of man. It is a happy thing for the old ladies that they can read of the covenant made with our forefathers that the world should never be drowned again, for certainly this looks somewhat suspicious. With Sterling for about an hour in the evening, to my usual edification.’

9 October 1844
‘Wedding-eve! My father & mother arrived at 9; the girls, with my Grandmother & Aunt C, in the afternoon. C has not lost her cough, but both give a clean bill of themselves & bright reports of their northern experiences. We dined at Southend with a large party, including 9 of the bridesmaids. At 7 William appeared seemingly well-strung-up to the occasion. We had much pleasant & interesting chat over the breakfast-room fire till the arrival of Uncle C & the lawyers put an end to it. He & William in conjunction with J Hodgkin & Edmund are our Trustees. This second legal visitation gave me the opportunity of a few last words with Jane who is all herself  - free from frights & fancies, considerate of all, calm & self-possessed. No perturbation at the thought of tomorrow.’

10 October 1844
‘The day came at last as all days must come if one waits long enough. The day that ended my old & commenced my new life - a change for the better I have not the smallest shadow of a doubt - the day that ends this daily journal, having living tablet to write upon instead, “The soul’s living home” as Coleridge calls it most truly.’

31 December 1844
‘Here ends the best & most blessed year of my life. It is as tho’ I had reached the goal of my boy-existence & found it but the starting post of a new one. The mountain tops before me show higher then ever & life is becoming a more earnest business with a larger sphere & higher pleasures & deeper responsibilities - no longer alone but blest with the companionship of a noble & pure spirit, with the possession of a deeply-loving heart; how abundantly grateful ought mine to be!’

Barclay’s sister, Caroline, has long been considered a diarist of note. Memories of Old Friends: being extracts from the journals and letters of Caroline Fox, 1835-1871 was first published in two volumes in 1882 by Smith, Elder & Co., and contains many references to her brother. Her diaries are freely available online at Internet Archive.

The Diary Junction

I did the right thing

‘Every ten minutes or so a constable enters my cell, looks curiously at my scribblings and asks me what I am writing. I say, “A children’s story” and carry on writing. I prefer not to think about what will happen to me if anyone reads these lines.’ This is Hans Fallada, the highly-regarded German novelist, who famously or infamously chose to remain in Germany under Hitler and during the Second World War. The quote comes from Fallada’s so-called prison diary, newly published in English by Polity, as A Stranger in My Own Country. However, the ‘diary’ is not a record of his daily life but rather an extended memoir about his life under the Nazi regime, written frenetically over the course of just two weeks.

Rudolf Ditzen (later to call himself Hans Fallada) was born in Greifswald, Germany, in 1893, the child of middle-class parents, both of whom shared an enthusiasm for music and literature. They moved to Berlin in 1899, and to Leipzig in 1909 when his father, a judge, was appointed to the Imperial Supreme Court. That same year Fallada was severely injured by a horse-drawn cart, and the following year he contracted typhoid. Biographers suggest that his life-long drug problems and various suicide attempts can be traced back to these traumas. In 1911, a suicide pact with a friend - by way of a duel - went wrong, and led only to the friend dying. Fallada was labelled insane and incarcerated in a sanatorium.

Fallada used his time in sanatoriums to work on translations and poetry; and, when not confined, he took up agricultural work to support himself and to pay for his growing morphine addiction. In 1920, he published his first (autobiographical) novel, Der junge Goedeschal (Young Goedeschal). Over the next few years, though, he was imprisoned twice, serving sentences for stealing to support his drug habit. Having joined a temperance society, he emerged from prison in 1928 free of his drug habit. He soon found regular work as a journalist, married Anna Issel, and moved to Holstein.

Then, after moving back to Berlin, Fallada worked for Rowohlt Verlag, a publishing company, which also published his books: Bauern, Bonzen und Bomben in 1931, and Kleiner Mann, was nun? (Little Man, What Now?) in 1932. The latter - now considered a modern classic - was praised by the likes of Thomas Mann and Graham Greene, and, eventually, filmed twice. Shortly after Hitler seized power in 1933, Fallada was falsely accused of being an anti-Nazi conspirator, and arrested. Subsequently, he moved into the country, to Carwitz, near Feldberg.

While other authors emigrated to escape the Nazi regime, Fallada decided to stay, and for a while turned his attention to children’s books. At times, Hitler’s regime seemed to warm to Fallada, and to embrace his adult writing; but, with the Second World War, his life began to fall apart. He started drinking, having affairs, and, eventually, he became divorced from his wife. He was also in dispute with neighbours, who threatened to tell the authorities about his past psychological troubles. In September 1944, he was committed to a psychiatric institution for having fired a gunshot and threatened to kill his ex-wife. He was released three months later, in December.

The following February, Fallada married a widow, Ulla Losch. She was wealthy but she was also an alcoholic and morphine addict. With the war over, Fallada was appointed mayor of Feldberg. He soon resigned, and together with Ulla moved back to East Berlin. He died of a morphine overdose in 1947. Further information is available from Wikipedia or Authors Calendar.

During his three month incarceration in 1944, Fallada wrote prolifically. He asked for pen and paper and was given 92 sheets of lined paper, ostensibly to fulfil a propaganda assignment for Joseph Goebbels. Instead, however, he wrote several short stories and a novel, one that was highly critical of life under the Nazis. This latter was written in diary form, but in such a dense complicated script that it was effectively unreadable until deciphered later. 

When, after a couple of weeks, the contentious content of his writing had remained undetected, he felt emboldened to set down some direct (as opposed to fictionalised) reminiscences of the Nazi period. He wanted to do this, to bear witness, as it were, and to justify the painful compromises and concessions he had made as a writer living under the Third Reich. He wrote frenetically, using the same pieces of paper as for the novel, but turning them upside down and writing in the spaces between lines, using miniscule writing, Latin, and many abbreviations. He was allowed a day release on 8 October 1944 (having begun to write his reminiscences on 23 September) and took the opportunity to smuggle every page out of the prison.

The novel - Der Trinker - was not deciphered and published in German until 1950. This was translated into English by Charlotte and A. L. Lloyd and published by Putnam & Co. in 1952 as The Drinker. Much of the text can be previewed at Amazon. By contrast, Fallada’s secret reminiscences, written interspacially between the lines of The Drinker and other stories, remained forgotten or lost for half a century. In 2009, Aufbau Verlag, once the largest publisher in GDR, finally published the text as edited by Jenny Williams and Sabine Lange under the title In meinem fremden Land: Gefängnistagebuch 1944. Allan Blunden has now translated it into English for Polity, a Cambridge-based publisher specialising in social sciences and humanities, which issued the book as A Stranger in My Own Country - The 1944 Prison Diary. Reviews can be found online at The Independent and the South China Morning Post.

However, it is worth pointing out that Fallada’s diary is no such thing. Yes, there are around 15 dated entries, averaging 15 pages per entry. But the whole reads like a continuous memoir of his life under the Nazi regime, starting in 1933, with almost no references to the present or to his daily life in prison - a sentence or two of the following extract being a notable exception. 

24 September 1944
‘ “If I ask myself today whether I did the right thing or the wrong thing by remaining in Germany, then I’d still have to say today: “I did the right thing.” I truthfully did not stay, as some have claimed, because I didn’t want to lose my home and possessions or because I was coward. If I’d gone abroad I could have earned more money, more easily and would have lived a safer life. Here I have suffered all manner of trials and tribulations. I’ve spent many hours in the air-raid shelter in Berlin, watching the windows turn red, and often enough, to put it plainly, I’ve been scared witless. My property had been constantly at risk, for a year now they have refused to allocate paper for my books - and I am writing these lines in the shadow of the hangman’s noose in the asylum at Strelitz, where the chief prosecutor has kindly placed me as a ‘dangerous lunatic’, in September 1944. Every ten minutes or so a constable enters my cell, looks curiously at my scribblings and asks me what I am writing. I say, “A children’s story” and carry on writing. I prefer not to think about what will happen to me if anyone reads these lines. But I have to write them. I sense that the war is coming to an end soon, and I want to write down my experiences before that happens: hundreds of others will be doing the same after the war. Better to do it now - even at the risk of my life. I’m living here with eighty-four men, most of them quite deranged, and nearly all of them convicted murderers, thieves or sex offenders. But even under these conditions I still say: “I was right to stay in Germany. I am a German, and I would rather perish with this unfortunate but blessed nation than enjoy a false happiness in some other country.!”

[. . .]

But if we happened to be in Berlin and came across formations of brownshirts or stormtroopers marching through the streets with their standards, singing their brutish songs - one line of which I still remember clearly: “. . . the blade must run with Jewish blood!” - then my wide and I would start to run and we would turn off at the next corner. An edict had been issued, stating that everyone on the street had to raise their arm and salute the standards when these parades went past. We were by no means the only ones who ran away rather than give a salute under duress. Little did we know at the time that our then four-year-old son would one day be wearing a brown shirt too, and in my own house to boot, and that one day I too would have to buy a Nazi flat and fly it on ‘festive days’. If we had had any notion of the suffering that lay ahead, perhaps we would have changed our minds after all and packed our bags.’