A nice little slot

‘I think some critics are uncomfortable with me because they have never been able to put me into a nice little slot. They haven’t been able to place me. But I’ve long since ceased to lose sleep over that. They’ve got their jobs to do, and I’ve got mine.’ This is from the diaries of the great British film director John Schlesinger who died 20 years ago today. The diaries - taped and written - have never been published but Schlesinger’s biographer, William J. Mann, refers to them repeatedly in his biography Edge of Midnight.

Schlesinger was born in 1926, in Hampstead, London, to wealthy Jewish parents - his father was a distinguished physician. He was educated at St Edmund’s School (Hindhead) and Uppingham School before enlisting in the British Army serving, during WW2, with the Royal Engineers. He became involved in making films on the front line, and he also entertained fellow troops with magic tricks. Subsequently, while at Balliol College, Oxford, he continued to make films and perform, not least with the Oxford University Dramatic Society.

In the early 1950s, Schlesinger appeared in various supporting roles for British films and television productions, but his directorial debut came in 1956 with a short documentary Sunday in the Park about London’s Hyde Park. Another followed, in 1958, about Benjamin Britten and the Aldeburgh Festival. He provided assistant directorial services on dozens of episodes for the TV series The Four Just Men, as well as a few for Danger Man. The early 1960s saw his career take off with several releases - Terminus, A Kind of Loving, Billy Liar, Darling and Far from the Madding Crowd - winning awards. In 1969, his film Midnight Cowboy won Oscars for Best Director and Best Picture. Through the 1970s and 1980s, he continued making successful films (and some not so successful), in Hollywood and Britain, as well as directing drama for television, and also sometimes in the London theatres.

Schlesinger’s final films were the intense drama Eye for an Eye (1996), about a revenge-driven mother, and The Next Best Thing (2000) starring Madonna and Rupert Everett. Schlesinger had come out as gay during the making of Midnight Cowboy, and he had a long term relationship with Michael Childers. He was appointed Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in the 1970 Birthday Honours for services to film. He died on 25 July 2003. Encyclopaedia Britannica has this brief assessment: ‘Although the films of his later career were less uniformly brilliant than those early films with which he made his reputation, Schlesinger left an enviable body of work.’ Further information is also available from Wikipedia and IMDB.

Schlesinger left behind a large volume of diary material, much of it tape-recorded rather than written. William J. Mann uses this material extensively in his biography - Edge of Midnight: The Life of John Schlesinger (Hutchinson, 2004). ‘I sorted through the tapes,’ he says in the biography, ‘they were intended for his own use, for writing his own memoir; he hadn’t expected anyone other than himself to hear them. Not for every film did John keep a detailed diary. There were gaps, but also some wonderful surprises: a rambling, intimate account of a holiday in South Africa with Michael; an on-the-set recording of rehearsals for The Believers; a tape left running after a radio interview had “officially” concluded. Not all of his diaries were tape-recorded: of his earlier work, he left mostly written records, often squeezed into the columns in his daily planners, a practice repeated again on his last film. Helpful and insightful as such written records were, however, they could not compare to the power of hearing his voice.’

Mann uses the written and taped diaries many times in the biography, but mostly by weaving very extracts phrases into his narrative rather than by providing whole and dated extracts. Nevertheless, here are few passages from Mann’s book (which can be digitally borrowed from Internet Archive) which include such excerpts from Schelsinger’s diaries.

***

‘He would learn, despite his kneejerk pessimism, to distance himself from criticism and rejection, for they would become the ever-present background chorus to his career. “I’ve often been dismissed,” he told his diary. “I think some critics are uncomfortable with me because they have never been able to put me into a nice little slot. They haven’t been able to place me. But I’ve long since ceased to lose sleep over that. They’ve got their jobs to do, and I’ve got mine.” ’ 

***

‘Gloria Swanson visited the set, courtesy of the Paramount publicity machine. “I think she didn’t really know what it was all about, what was going on around her, but she was very charming,” John recorded in his diary. “I never realized how small she was, nor that the beauty mark that has been so much her trademark was in fact a rather ugly, raised black mole, quite hideous on close inspection. I’m amazed a film star of such magnitude would have clung to it for so long, that it never registered what it really was.” ’

***

‘Camaraderie, in fact, extended from the grips and the technicians right up to the top. John liked his second American crew much better than his first: “This is not at all the Hollywood experience that I had somehow expected,” he recorded in his diary. I had expected bullshit. I had expected union problems. I had expected a kind of blaséness and I’ve found none of that. I suppose it’s the executives and the agents that sometimes turn me off the place, but I must say, working with these people has been an eye-opener.” ’

***

‘Watching Alan Bridges’ film The Hireling, with a script by Wolf Mankowitz, he also felt “homesick.” Musing to his diary, John wrote: “I felt once again a sense of terrible loss about the British cinema because when we do it well, we do it well. Much better, I think, than the average film made here.” ’ 

***

‘ “I have a very strong feeling that whatever the outcome of this picture [Yanks],” John recorded in his |diary, whether it’s commercially successful or not, I’m making the right move at this moment of my career.” Certainly, he was now enjoying being back in England, defying the odds in mounting a major film there - even if none of the money was British. “There is sheer pleasure in having won all our financial battles in getting the thing off the ground after an extremely depressing summer, when I really felt that it would never see the light of day.” ’

***

‘ “Vanessa [Redgrave] is without question one of the best actresses I’ve ever worked with,” John told his diary. “She is the consummate actress, able to take direction, really a wonderful musical instrument, so to speak, for a director to play.” ’

Descended from a bishop

Samuel Wilberforce, Bishop of Winchester and a force for Anglo-Catholocism in the mid-19th century, died 150 years ago today. His detailed diary underpins a three-part biography partly written by his son Reginald, though, unfortunately, it says nothing about his criticism of Darwin for which he is much remembered. Reginald, however, does include an anecdote about his father speaking at a British Association debate on Darwin: when he made a comment about monkeys in a zoo having no connection with his ancestors, a learned professor responded: ‘I would rather be descended from an ape than a bishop.’

Wilberforce was born in Clapham, London, the third son of William Wilberforce (also a diarist, see - God’s work against slavery). He studied mathematics and classics at Oriel College, Oxford, where he became associated with the Oxford Movement. In 1828 he married Emily Sargent, and they had five children that survived infancy, but then Emily herself died young, in 1841. The year of his marriage he was ordained and appointed curate-in-charge at Checkenden near Henley-on-Thames. Two years later he took over as rector of Brighstone, Isle of Wight.

Wilberforce published hymns and sermons as well as stories and tracts on social subjects. In the second half of the 1830s, he edited the letters and journals of Henry Martyn (see - My unprofitable life), and co-authored with his brother, Robert, a biography of his father. He rose up the church ranks quickly, becoming archdeacon of Surrey and canon of Winchester, and served as rector of Alverstoke, Hampshire, between 1840 and 1845. In 1841, he was appointed chaplain to Prince Albert, and in 1847 became Lord High Almoner to Queen Victoria, a post he held until 1869.

In the mid-1840s, Wilberforce became Dean of Westminster and Bishop of Oxford. When John Henry Newman, leader of the Oxford Movement, converted to Roman Catholicism, Wilberforce used his influence to try to keep the Movement together. He was a frequent critic of liberal bishops and is particularly remembered for attacking Darwin’s theory of evolution. In the 1850s, he founded one of the first Anglican theological colleges. In 1869, he was appointed Bishop of Winchester. He died on 19 July 1873. See Wikipedia, the Winchester Cathedral website or Anglican History for further biographical information.

For much of his life, Wilberforce kept a fairly detailed diary. This was used, and quoted, extensively for a three volume biography - Life of the Right Reverend Samuel Wilberforce - put together first by A. R. Ashwell, and then, after Ashwell’s death, by Wilberforce’s son, Reginald (John Murray, 1880-1882). All three volumes are freely available at Internet Archive.

Here are several extracts from Wilberforce’s diary, showing his politicking, his easy relations with royalty, and a good deal of self-analysis too. Only once, as far as I can tell, does Wilberforce mention Darwin in his diary. Reginald’s text, accompanying that one mention, bemoans the lack of any further reports by his father on the Darwin debate, but does include an interesting anecdote.

4 February 1855
‘Prepared sermon for St. Mary’s, Princes Street, Lambeth a most miserable population in Lambeth, through which I passed which quickened me in my sermon. To Chapel Royal in the afternoon, and walked back with Gladstone. Lord John has ‘utterly’ failed in forming a Ministry. Thank God. Lord Palmerston now sent for. He was invited by Lord Derby to join with Gladstone and Sidney Herbert. At first he was unwilling, and at night declined. Gladstone and Sidney Herbert ready to serve. Gladstone though feeling acutely the evil of Shaftesbury’s suggested Bishops would not feel clear on that ground of refusing not a fair constitutional ground. Dined with the Bishop of London. He agrees as to Convocation course. The Archbishop came to him yesterday. Had heard from Dean Elliott, and others, as to impropriety of allowing Convocation to meet in Ministerial interregnum. Second letter by a friend from Shaftesbury who is to move about it in the House of Lords to-morrow. The Bishop (London) said he thought Lord Aberdeen’s letter settled it. That he was in till another appointed and no right to suppose there would be a change; rather insulting to Lord Aberdeen and not very civil to the Queen (whose will he expressed) now to alter. The Archbishop: ‘Quite a relief to find that your opinion; it was my first opinion, and I shall be prepared to state it to-morrow in the House.’ ’

7 February 1855
‘Off to Windsor, to Chapter (of the Garter), and saw the Queen afterwards. She was cheerful and very affable. Went after Chapter to Clewer. Long conversation with Mrs. Monsell. Things quiet in House; but Miss –– very unsettled in mind. Fear that she will ultimately Romanize. Dear –– is acted on by these women far too much, and kept from heartily and with a strong English tone putting down the sentimentalism which leads to Rome. Dear fellow! he is good, and gentle, and loving beyond praise. But I am always trying to keep him from that perilous neighbourhood.

In the evening a large party. I had a talk with Lord Aberdeen about Palmerston’s Church preferment. Suppose Montagu Villiers must be a Bishop. But Palmerston will beware of Shaftesbury, for fear of Gladstone, &c. Lord Aberdeen natural, simple, good, and honest as ever. A longish talk on politics with good Stockmar, Lord Aberdeen’s honesty, Lord Palmerston’s ambition. He agreed with me that Lord Palmerston was a great take-in, but that it was necessary that bubbles should burst. He would have much preferred seeing Gladstone and Herbert join with Lord Derby. On the Continent it is constitutional liberty which is reproached by our failure at Sebastopol. They say, If England with all her strength cannot make head against the Autocrat, who could that has a constitutional Government, &c.? As to the Royal Family, he said, ‘The Prince of Wales is the strongest of all. He can bear great fatigue. He takes most after his father’s family. The Princess Royal is a thorough Brunswick. She is very clever indeed, has great imagination and varied powers; her picture of “The New Year” full of ability, &c. Prince Albert is not a strong man; a little would throw him down. The Duke of Kent was the ablest of that family. The Duke of Cambridge and King William the Fourth the kindest but the most stupid.’

20 March 1856
‘To Windsor Castle. The Confirmation of Princess Royal interesting she devout, composed, earnest; youngest sister much affected the Queen and Prince also. The Queen spoke most kindly to me after: all very kind. On to London large Confirmation at St. James’s  felt constrained, and very unlike my own. Then to London House. Met Dr. Todd, who spoke hopefully of Bishop. Saw him, very low, very affecting state, spoke of himself as dying. I certain to succeed him, and no one to whom he could more happily entrust his Diocese, &c. About himself, his keen sight of past sins; no hope but simply in Christ’s sacrifice for him. A great struggle between conscience and faith. Pray for me. A most affecting sight in one so good. How awful to all the vision of sin in the light of God’s countenance.’

23 March 1856
‘Very low all day, blessed Easter day as it was. But felt so bitterly my desolateness: my darling Emily gone or all would be too gladsome for earth. My Herbert! Robert and Henry worse than gone. Beloved Mrs. Sargent 76; Ella married. The three boys, will they be taken as they grow up? God’s will be done.’

20 May 1860
‘Up in good time and prepared sermon on ‘All are yours.’ Preached at St. James’s, great crowd; collected 176l. Then back to my rooms and finished (Darwin review) [for the Quarterly Review]. Walked across the Park with Gladstone, he rather subdued; he said, ‘If the next twenty years alter as much the position of those who govern England, &c.’

Reginald Wilberforce’s text accompanying the above diary extract says this: ‘From June 27 to July 3 the British Association was at Oxford: it is much to be regretted that the reports of the debates are of the most meagre description. From those which we possess, it is to be gathered that the Bishop on two occasions took part in the discussions. First in the Geographical Section, when, after the reading of some of Dr. Livingstone’s recent letters, Mr. Craufurd, the President of the Ethnological Society, argued against the scheme of extending commerce and Christianity in Central Africa, on the ground of the great difficulties that had to be overcome and of the incapacity of the natives to receive such benefits. The Bishop spoke against these inferences, and, when supporting an opposite view, carried his audience by the force of his argument. Secondly, in the Zoology and Botany Section, where a discussion took place on the soundness or unsoundness of the Darwinian theory. The Bishop, who, as the last-quoted Diary entry shows, had just reviewed Mr. Darwin’s work ‘On the Origin of Species by means of Natural Selection,’ made a long and eloquent speech condemning Mr. Darwin’s theory as unphilosophical and as founded on fancy, and he denied that any one instance had been produced by Mr. Darwin which showed that the alleged change from one species to another had ever taken place. In the course of this speech, which made a great impression, the Bishop said, that whatever certain people might believe, he would not look at the monkeys in the Zoological as connected with his ancestors, a remark that drew from a certain learned professor the retort, ‘I would rather be descended from an ape than a bishop.’

14 July 1863
‘Survey my Life. What wonderful advantages - my father’s son, his favourite, and so, companion. My good mother, such surroundings. My love for my blessed one, compassing me with an atmosphere of holiness - my ordination - my married life - my ministerial. Checkendon, its bliss, arid its work opening my heart. Brighstone, Alverstoke, the Archdeaconry, the Deanery, Bishopric, friends. My stripping bare in 1841. My children. Herbert’s death-bed. How has God dealt, and what have I really done - for HIM? Miserere Domine is all my cry.

Cuddesdon Chapel. After meditation on Death, resolve:
(I) to take periodic times for renewing this meditation;
(II) to strive to live more in the sight of Death;
(III) to commend myself more entirely as dying creature into the Hand of the only Lord of Life.’

This article is a slightly revised version of one first published on 19 July 2013.

A journey to Flanders

Joshua Reynolds, one of the most important 18th century British painters and a founder of the Royal Academy of Arts, was born three centuries ago today. Although not a diarist, he did keep pocket-books - one author has called them diaries - from which he has ‘gleaned’ much about Reynold’s daily life as an artist. Also, later in life when travelling in northern Europe, he kept a diary of sorts which sheds light on his huge admiration for the Flemish painter, Peter Paul Rubens.

Reynolds was born in Plympton, Devon, on 16 July 1723, the third son of the Rev. Samuel Reynolds, master of the town’s Free Grammar School. Educated by his father, he showed an early interest in art - his first recorded portrait dates from 1735 - and was apprenticed in London in 1740 to the Devon-born painter Thomas Hudson. After his father’s death in 1745, he took a house in, what is now, Devonport with his two unmarried sisters. However, by 1747 he was spending extended periods in London, where most of his clients lived, with a studio in St Martin’s Lane. The following year, Reynolds was named, by Universal Magazine, as one of the country’s most eminent painters, indeed he was the second youngest on the magazine’s list (only Thomas Gainsborough being younger).

Between 1749 and 1752, Reynolds travelled extensively on the Continent, mostly in Italy, where he was much influenced by the Italian use of colour and shading. On his return, he went to Devon for a few months before settling permanently, and for the rest of his life, in London. He became very successful, painting portraits of many important people, and by 1760 had sufficient wealth to purchase the lease on a large house, with space to show his works and accommodate assistants, by Leicester Fields (now Leicester Square).

Reynolds met Samuel Johnson in 1756, and, a few years later, he set up The Literary Club for a small circle of Johnson’s closest friends (including among others Edmund Burke and Oliver Goldsmith). He also painted Johnson several times. Reynolds was one of the earliest members of the Royal Society of Arts; and he helped found the Society of Artists. With Gainsborough, he established the Royal Academy of Arts, and, in 1768, became its first president, a position he held until his death. During the next ten years or so Reynolds exhibited over 100 pictures at the Royal Academy, considerably more than he had exhibited at the Society of Artists.

During the 1780s Reynolds turned increasingly for inspiration to the art of Flanders and the Low Countries, an interest which led him to take a two-month tour in 1781. He also focused more on history paintings, something his followers thought provided evidence of a genuine commitment to the cause of high art. His allegiance to the Whig party had become increasingly evident by this time, and several of his closest friends assumed key government positions when the Whigs returned to power in 1782. In 1784 Reynolds was sworn in as principal painter-in-ordinary to the King. After Johnson’s death, in 1784, Reynolds became friendlier with Boswell, who later dedicated his (now famous) biography of Johnson to Reynolds. In 1789 Reynolds lost the sight of his left eye, leading to his retirement; and he died in early 1792. Further biographical information is readily available at Wikipedia, for example, National Museums Liverpool, Encyclopaedia Britannica, or Artble.

Writing the entry on Reynolds for the Oxford National Dictionary of Biography (log-in required), Martin Postle sums him up thus: ‘Reynolds dominated the British art world in the second half of the eighteenth century, and any cultural history of the period would not be complete without some recognition of his central role. Many qualities contributed to his success. First and foremost, Reynolds was the most innovative portrait painter of his generation. Despite technical shortcomings and a tendency to sacrifice quality for quantity, his best portraits retain an unrivalled power and physical presence. His professional skills were underpinned by an unswerving personal ambition, tempered with an awareness of what could be realistically achieved in the current artistic climate, and within the bounds of his own particular gifts. Reynolds appreciated the value of patronage and social networks, and despite his own political preferences (he was a thorough whig), established a wide circle of acquaintance. He was a loyal and generous friend and loved company.’

Given Reynolds prominence in 18th century society, references to him can be found in many diaries of the time, and, such was his influence, for long after his death too. His name has occurred in several different Diary Review articles. He is mentioned often in the diary of Joseph Farington, a later painter - see Farington on Dance; John Churton Collins, a writer and literary critic, wrote a book on Reynolds - see I thought I was out of the woods; and the poet and teacher William Johnson, later called Cory, was distantly related to Reynolds - see A peculiar pleasure.

Reynolds himself was not a regular diarist. That said, he did keep pocket books that are referred to as diaries, which were extensively mined by William Cotton for Sir Joshua Reynolds and his works, gleanings from his diary, unpublished manuscripts, and from other sources (Longman, Brown, Green, Longmans, and Roberts; London, 1856). This can be read online at Googlebooks. The preface states: ‘The extracts from Sir Joshua’s private Diary contain much that is interesting and amusing, besides giving proof of the astonishing amount of work accomplished by him; for we there learn that he was often in his studio from nine o’clock in the morning till four in the afternoon, and received as many as seven or eight sitters in as many consecutive hours. But when absent from home, he appears to have enjoyed the sports of the field, and on one occasion, in September 1770, we find him hunting and shooting every day during a week’s visit at Saltram.’

In a chapter of the book entitled Reynold’s diary, from 1755 to 1790, Cotton ‘gleans’ ‘a more complete list of his works than has hitherto been published’. Indeed, the vast majority of extracts are simply names of those who have come to sit for portraits. Here is one extract as found in Cotton’s book:

‘Extracts from the Diary
April. The Lady Northumberland’s portrait to be finished.
June. The Duke of Portland.
Frame for the little picture of Master Pelham.
August. To send Mrs. Fortescue’s and Mr. Shirley’s portraits to be copied.’

For a short period in July 1781, during a trip to Flanders and Holland, Reynolds wrote down something akin to a diary, more like notes really. Postle in the ONDB says ‘Reynolds’s detailed journal entries, which were intended ultimately for publication, reveal that the tour was organized around major private collections in the Low Countries and the great altarpieces of Flanders’. In any case, Reynold’s narrative of the journey was first published in 1798 by Cadell & Davies as part of the second volume of The Works of Sir Joshua Reynolds by Edmond Malone. This is freely available online at Internet Archive.

The text of A Journey to Flanders and Holland is almost exclusively taken up with descriptions of paintings, though the final section is more of a treatise on the genius of Rubens. Here are the first three paragraphs.

‘At Ostend, where we landed, July 27, 1781, there are no pictures, and even Bruges affords but a scanty entertainment to a Painter: however, there are a few, which, though not of the first rank, may be worth the attention of a traveller who has time to spare.

In the Cathedral. The high altar; the Adoration of the Magi, by Segers. This picture is justly considered as one of the best of that painter’s works. The part which first obtrudes itself on your attention is one of the kings, who is  placed in the front : this figure, not withstanding its great fame, and its acknowledged excellence in many respects, has one great defect; it appears to have nothing to do with the rest of  the composition, and has too much the air of a whole-length portrait. What gives it so much this appearance is, the eyes looking out of the picture; that is, he is looking at the person who looks at the picture. This always has a bad effect, and ought never to be practised in a grave historical composition, however successfully it may be admitted in ludicrous subjects,  where no business of any kind, that requires eagerness oEf attention, is going forward.

The second altar on the right from the door is the Nativity, by Otho Venius. Many parts of this picture bring to mind the manner of Rubens, particularly the colouring of the arm of one of the shepherds : but in comparison of Rubens it is but a lame performance,  and would not be worth mentioning here, but from its being the work of a man who had the honour to be the master of Rubens.’

And here is the last paragraph of A Journey to Flanders and Holland.

‘To conclude; I will venture to repeat in favour of Rubens, what I have before said in regard to the Dutch school, that those who cannot see the extraordinary merit of this great painter, either have a narrow conception of the variety of art, or are led away by the affectation of approving nothing but what comes from the Italian school.’

This article is a slightly revised version of one first published on 16 July 2013.

I also love Kenya

It is 30 years since Dan Eldon - a bright young star of photojournalism - was killed aged only 22 covering events in Somalia that presaged the so-called Battle of Mogadishu later that year. Eldon’s memory has been kept alive by his family through various initiatives, one of which is a website - Dan Eldon: artist, activist, adventurer - which has a lot of information about, and many extracts from, Eldon’s extraordinary, collage-based, journals.

Dan Eldon was born in London in 1970, the son of a British father and American mother. Aged seven, he and his younger sister moved to live in Kenya with their parents. During the 1982 attempted coup and the aftermath, Eldon joined his mother, a journalist at the time, on local assignments, and was soon taking photographs for local newspapers. Aged still only 14, he launched a fund-raising campaign to help save the life of a young Kenyan girl, and a year or so later began supporting a Maasai family by buying their handmade jewellery, to sell on to students and friends.

In 1988, Eldon graduated from the International School of Kenya, winning various awards and being voted the most outstanding student. That same year he went to New York to work on a magazine, but a few months later moved to study in California. Thereafter, and for the next few years, he kept switching his place of study, while regularly dreaming up schemes to get back to Africa, usually by undertaking somewhat wild but charitable adventures. One of these involved the donation of a Land Rover and money to a refugee camp in Malawi, while others involved the purchase of goods in Morocco to resell in the US to fund a charity he had set up.

In April 1992, Eldon joined a film crew in Kenya; then, with the Somali famine raging, he flew to the Somali town of Baidoa, where he shot some of the first dramatic photographs seen in the West. Reuters spotted them, and engaged his services, thus giving his photographs (of the increasingly desperate situation) much wider coverage. During the spring of 1993, he stayed in Mogadishu, and in June one of his photographs made a double-page spread in Newsweek magazine, as well as the covers of newspapers worldwide. By this time he had also published a first book of his photographs, and had set up various businesses - selling t-shirts and postcards, for example - to raise money.

A few weeks later, on 12 July, he raced, with three colleagues, across the city to cover a raid to arrest the warlord General Aidid. Many innocent people were killed in that UN raid, and in the subsequent confusion Eldon and his colleagues, trying to take photographs, were stoned and beaten to death by an angry mob. Further biographical information is available from the Dan Eldon website, and from Wikipedia.

After Eldon’s death and to honour his legacy, his mother Kathy Eldon and sister Amy Eldon Turtletaub founded, in 1998, the Creative Visions Foundation (CVF) to help others like Dan ‘use media and the arts to create meaningful change in the world around them’. To date CVF ‘has incubated more than 100 projects and productions on 5 continents, by providing fiscal sponsorship, mentorship, inspiration, fundraising, connectivity, and step-by-step toolkits for launching projects’. It claims that creative activists under its umbrella ‘have touched more than 90 million people and raised more than $11.2 million to fund their projects’.

One of projects organised by the family has been to set up the website - Dan Eldon: artist, activist, adventurer - and another has been to promote Eldon’s extraordinary journals and notebooks. The website says this: ‘Dan left behind seventeen bound leather journals filled with drawings, writings and photographs which constructed vivid collages of the world he saw. These journals chronicle a child’s journey into manhood, visual editorials on society, and homages to strangers and loved ones. Dan’s images represent his enduring belief that every individual has a creative spark within that can transform their environment for the better. His journals are a celebration of adventure and a testament to live life to its fullest.’

The diaries were first published as The Journey is the Destination: The Journals of Dan Eldon in 1997 by Chronicle Books in San Francisco and Booth-Clibborn Editions in London. The publisher’s blurb stated: ‘This is no ordinary diary; it is an astonishing collage of photographs, drawings, words, maps, clippings, paints, scraps, shards, and trash that reveals his strange and vivid life. The wild trips and weird places, the lovers and late nights, the danger and fun are captured in pages that seem to shiver with passion, opinion, and dark humor. Eldon’s journal holds up a pure mirror to both the sickness of the modern world and the fragile happiness of the human condition, and ultimately, reveals the accidental beauty that only a young artist can truly capture.’

A detailed introduction to the journals by Jennifer New can be found on the Eldon website, as can a generous collection of extracts and images from the diaries themselves. The earliest diaries do contain some text and diary writing, but most of the pages in all the journals are filled to bursting with collages rather than text - but here is one short extract from one of the earliest journals.

22 August 1982
‘I have decided that I am happier this year than any other. I am enjoying life and the people in our class. I have a lighter class load this year. Last year I took French and German and I have dropped German for a year. I also love Kenya (I always have but I still do). I like it less when the weather is bad. We have bought land at the coast where we will build a house which I am looking forward to.’

This article is a slightly revised version of one first published on 12 July 2013.

Edward VI, the Boy King

‘The lordes of the counsel sat at Gildhaul in London, where in the presence of a thousand peple they declared to the maire and bretherne their slouthfulnes in suffering unreasonable prices of thinges, and to craftesmen their wilfulnes etc, telling them that if apon this admonition they did not amende, I was holly determined to call in their liberties as confiscat, and to appoint officers that shold loke to them.’ This entry about a cost-of-living crisis comes from the remarkable diary of Edward VI, dubbed the Boy King, who died 470 years ago today aged only 15.

Edward, born in October 1537, was the only legitimate son of Henry VIII. His mother Jane Seymour died 12 days after his birth. On the death of his father nine years later, Edward became king. The realm, however, was governed by a Regency Council, which, initially, was led by Edward’s uncle Edward Seymour, 1st Duke of Somerset. Towards the end of 1549, Somerset was arrested for mismanaging the government - the year had seen widespread social unrest across England - and eventually beheaded in January 1552.

Thereafter, the Regency Council was led by John Dudley, 1st Earl of Warwick, and, from 1551, by Duke of Northumberland. But, as Edward fell ill in early 1553, so a succession crisis loomed. Edward himself named Lady Jane Grey, a great-granddaughter of Henry VIII and a Protestant married to one of Northumberland’s sons, as his heir presumptive. A few days after Edward’s death on 6 July, Jane was indeed proclaimed queen, though there is academic debate over whether she was ever a legitimate monarch. A further nine days on, the Privy Council changed its mind and named Edward VI’s Catholic half-sister Mary as queen. Jane was executed the following year, aged 16.

Edward, himself, probably died of tuberculosis, though some have claimed he was poisoned. He was a precocious child, and his short reign is considered to have made a lasting contribution to the English Reformation, and to have seen radical changes in how the church operated. The pace of change stalled then with Edward’s successor, Mary, until Elizabeth took the crown in 1558. Further biographical information is readily available from Wikipedia or English History for example.

Remarkably, while king, Edward kept a diary - its 68 leaves are held by the British Library. He may have been prompted to do so by one of his tutors. In order to make a complete chronicle of his reign, he started with a description of his childhood until 1547, followed it with a list of past events (mostly referring to himself in the third person), and then from March 1550 he kept daily entries until November 1552. It was first published in Gilbert Burnet’s The History of the Reformation of the Church of England (volume 4), and later, in 1857, as part of the Literary Remains of King Edward the Sixth by John Gough Nichols (from which the following extracts are taken). Nichols says the diary’s value does not lie in its completeness, nor in its minute accuracy, but rather in ‘its incidental disclosures of state policy, and in its continual reflection of the character and pursuits of the young monarch himself’. So dense are the historically important references, that Nichols’s footnotes often take up far more of the page than Edward’s diary itself.

In his 1966 study, England’s Boy King: The Diary of Edward VI, Wilbur Kitchener Jordan sums up the diary’s importance: ‘Surely in English history, and very possibly in European history, there is no historical source quite of the nature of the Chronicle of Edward VI. It is in part private diary, in part an educational exercise, and in part considered notes on policy and administration. The document stands as one of the major sources for our knowledge of the entire reign and not infrequently constitutes our only source of information for events of considerable significance.’ The full text of the diary - in the Literary Remains and in The History of the Reformation - is available online at Internet Archive and Googlebooks respectively.

24 May 1550
‘The embassadours came to me, presenting the ligier, and also delivering lettres of credaunce from the French king.’

25 May 1550
‘The embassadours came to the court, where thei saw me take the oth for th’acceptation of the treaty, and afterward dined with me; and after diner saw a pastime of tenne against tenne at the ring, wherof on th’on(e) sid(e) were the duke of Sowthfolk, the vice-dam, the lord Lisle, and seven other gentlemen, appareled in yelow; on the other, the lord Stra(nge), mons. Henadoy, and yeight other, in blew.’

26 May 1550
‘The embassadours saw the baiting of the bearis and bullis.’

27 May 1550
‘The embassadours, after thei had hunted, sat with me at souper.’

28 May 1550
‘The same went to see Hampton court, where thei did hunt, and the same night retourne to Durasme place.’

29 May 1550
‘The embassadours had a fair souper made them by the duke of Somerset, and afterward went into the tems (on the Thames) and saw both the beare hunted in the river, and also wilfier cast out of botis, and many prety conceites.’

30 May 1550
‘The embassadours toke ther leve, and the next day departid.’

15 April 1551
‘A conspiracy opened of the Essex men, who within three dayes after minded to declare the comming of straungers, and so to bring peple together to Chemsford, and then to spoile the riche men’s houses if they could.’

16 April 1551
‘Also of Londoners, who thought to rise on May day against the straungers of the cité; and both the parties committed to warde.’

24 May 1551
‘An earthquake was at Croidon and Blechingliee, and in the most part of Surrey, but no harme was donne.’

10 July 1551
‘At this time cam the sweat into London, wich was more vehement then the old sweat. Por if one toke cold he died mthin 3 houres, and if he skaped it held him but 9 houres, or 10 at the most. Also if he slept the first 6 houres, as he should be very desirous to doe, then he raved, and should die raving.’

11 July 1551
‘It grue so much, for in London the 10 day ther died 70 in the liberties, and this day 120, and also one of my gentlemen, another of my gromes, fell sike and died, that I removed to Ampton court with very few with me. [The epidemic called the sweating sickness, which remains a mystery today, had visited England before but this was the last major outbreak to occur, and thereafter vanished.]’

1 December 1551
‘The duke of Somerset cam to his triall at Westmyster halle. [The record mentions three indictments: 1) that he had designed to have seized the King’s person, and to have governed all affairs; 2) that he, with one hundred others, intended to have imprisoned the earl of Warwick, afterwards duke of Northumberland; and 3) that he had designed to have raised an insurrection in the city of London.]

He answerid he did not entend to raise London, [. . .] His assembling of men was but for his owne defence. He did not determin to kill the duke of Northumberland, the marquis, etc., but spake of it and determined after the contrary; and yet seamid to confess he went about there death. The lordis went togither. The duke of Northumberland wold not agree that any searching of his death shuld bee treason. So the lordis acquited him of high treason, and condemned him of treason feloniouse, and so he was adjuged to be hangid. He gave thankis to the lordis for there open trial, and cried mercy of the duke of Northumberland, the marquis of Northampton, and th’erle of Penbroke for his ill meaning against them, and made suet for his life, wife and children, servauntes and dettes, and so departed without the ax of the Toure. The peple, knowing not the matter, shouted hauf a douzen times, so loud that frome the halle dore it was hard at Chairing crosse plainly, and rumours went that he was quitte of all.’

22 January 1552
‘The duke of Somerset had his head cat of apon Towre hill betwene eight and nine a cloke in the morning.’

8 June 1552
‘The lordes of the counsel sat at Gildhaul in London, where in the presence of a thousand peple they declared to the maire and bretherne their slouthfulnes in suffering unreasonable prices of thinges, and to craftesmen their wilfulnes etc, telling them that if apon this admonition they did not amende, I was holly determined to call in their liberties as confiscat, and to appoint officers that shold loke to them.’

This article is a slightly revised version of one first published on 6 July 2013.

Irreversibly into the abyss

’The Germans play their game cleverly: treason on all sides. Why is it that in no other people drawn into the war is there so much treason as among the Russians? [. . .] The Germans have been able to take good advantage of this characteristic of the “Russian swine.’’ Revolutionary Russia faces the task of either changing its ways or flying irreversibly into the abyss!’ This is from a ‘remarkable’ diary left by Iurii Vladimirovich Got’e, a Russian intellectual and historian, born 150 years ago today.’ 

Got’e was born in Moscow on 30 June 1873 (new style). His father was an upmarket bookseller whose grandfather had founded the family bookshop in 1799, and Got’e was the first eldest son not to take over the business. Instead, he chose to go to Moscow University and pursue a scholarly career in history and philology. Following graduation, he undertook a year of military service, then he taught in schools and from 1903 at the university. In parallel, he worked first for the Archive of the Ministry of Justice before being employed in the library at Rumiantsev Museum, eventually becoming head librarian.

In 1913, Got’e published his doctoral dissertation on the history of local administration. Two years later, he was appointed professor at Moscow University. Over time, he also spent several years teaching at the Geodesic Institute and at the municipal Shaniavski University. From 1919, he switched to teach archaeology, and he participated in numerous excavations in Eastern Europe. His lectures on the region’s pre-history were published in 1925 and 1930. Between 1934 and 1941, he was associated with the Moscow Institute of Philosophy, Literature, and History. Between 1898 and 1930 he was first academic secretary and then assistant director of the Lenin All-Union Library. He died in 1943. There is very little further information about his life freely available online, but see The Free Encylclopedia.

However Got’e did leave behind a set of diaries kept through five years (1917-1922) of revolution, civil war, family tragedy, hunger, and progressively deteriorating living conditions. These were translated and edited by Terence Emmons for publication by Princetown University Press in 1988 as Time of Troubles: The Diary of Iurii Vladimirovich Got’e - see Amazon or Googlebooks to preview a few pages. According to Emmons, Got’e wrote the diary entries on a stool in the doorway of the room in communal quarters where he and his family took refuge after their own apartment had been sequestered in 1919.’ Toward the end, Emmons continues, ‘the entries become noticeably less frequent, mainly because by this time Got’e was afraid to keep the diary at home, but also because of his exhaustion, which was no doubt mingled with awareness that the new regime, having survived the Civil War, the Polish war, and the internal rebellions of 1921, was there to stay: the great uncertainty about the immediate future of the country that had sustained the chronicle for nearly five years had begun to fade.’ 

According to the publisher: ‘Among the few diaries available from inside early Soviet Russia none approaches Iurii V. Got’e’s in sustained length of coverage and depth of vivid detail. Got’e was a member of the Moscow intellectual elite - a complex and unusually observant man, who was a professor at Moscow University and one of the most prominent historians of Russia at the time the revolution broke out. Beginning his first entry with the words Finis Russiae, he describes his life in revolution-torn Moscow from July 8, 1917 through July 23, 1922 - nearly the entire period of the Russian Revolution and Civil War up to the advent of the New Economic Policy. 

This remarkable chronicle, published here for the first time, describes the hardships undergone by Got’e’s family and friends and the gradual takeover of the academic and professional sectors of Russia by the new regime. Got’e was in his mid-forties when he wrote the diary. At first he felt that Bolshevism meant complete doom for Russia, but eventually his ardent patriotism led him to accept the Bolsheviks’ role in preserving the integrity of the Russian state. The diary was discovered in 1982 in the Hoover Institution Archives, in the papers of Frank Golder, to whom Got’e himself had entrusted it in 1922.’

Here are several extracts.

17 July 1917
‘The newspapers are a little better. The hope has been kindled since July 15 that at the cost of yielding all of Galicia and complication of the already disgusting Ukrainian question (since, after all, the whole of the Ukraine lying beyond our borders is again in the power of the Germans), at the cost of hundreds of thousands of lives, the idiots will get smarter. Kerenskii’s efforts to create a genuine coalition government, with the exception of the adventurist Chernov and similar adventurists, ideologue-fools, and maybe charlatans, deserves every sympathy, but isn’t it already too late? Haven’t they been screaming and yelling and confusing the unfortunate Russian - stupid, ignorant, and unprepared for any kind of Rospublic (as Ivan Pavlov from Pochep says) - for too long? The Germans play their game cleverly: treason on all sides. Why is it that in no other people drawn into the war is there so much treason as among the Russians? (1) From ignorance; (2) from the complete absence of a feeling of solidarity and fatherland; (3) from the fact that the leftist ideologues have been courting the minority nationalities for a good hundred years now; (4) from the benighted and anticultural deceitfulness that was remarked already by the foreigners’ narratives of the seventeenth century. The Germans have been able to take good advantage of this characteristic of the “Russian swine.’’ Revolutionary Russia faces the task of either changing its ways or flying irreversibly into the abyss!’

18 July 1917
‘[My] mind turns always to the same (subject). A quiet day without mail. A feeling of complete indifference on the one hand; (on the other] a feeling of regret that a people that could have made something of itself is committing suicide. What will we be - Muscovy, China, or Turkey? Will we have the energy to get on our feet? Although Kerenskii evoked the heavy hammer in the Soviet of Workers’ Deputies, we may be only the glass that splinters. In any case, of all the combatant peoples, we have turned out to be the weakest in nerve, and thus Hindenburg’s thought is true - those with strong nerves will win. So everybody but us will win and logically should make peace at our expense: we will answer for all, and especially for our own stupidity, ignorance, and dishonesty. How often we all think: it’s good to no longer be tied to mama’s apron strings! In any case we are not a match for the Germans: they are unquestionably higher than we are in every respect, and most of all in personal endurance and courage; one can hate them, but it is impossible not to respect them.’

15 January 1918
‘A day without newspapers and with a small quantity of rumors; an extremely oppressive frame of mind, all the same. I saw V. F. Kokoshkin; that ebullient man is completely downtrodden and dispirited, and, in truth, he has cause to be. I His impressions from Petrograd: there everyone is even more dispirited than here. The blacks, led by A. A. Vyrubova, are playing some kind of role, but what kind is not clear to him. I have received information in the last few days from other sources as well that these forces are doing something. But to what degree are all these forces, those and others, organized? Isn’t it simpler to think that everything is happening spontaneously, without plan and with a complete absence of any kind of organization, like everything in Russia?’

20 July 1918
‘At the post office I read one of the bolshevik Pravdas - it seems that all is well in the West; if the Kadets are not adopting a German orientation, they are at least gravitating toward an understanding with them; the Czechoslovaks are squeezing the bolsheviks in various places. Everything else remains unchanged. A letter from Malfi - it seems they are leaving for France today. The good and gentle ideologue - but we will still do something. Work in the meadow all day; we all get dog-tired.’

8 April 1919
‘They have taken Odessa, probably because no one wanted to defend it. All the same, the policy of the Allies seems to me completely incomprehensible; now they start something, now they give it up. In regard to the Russian south, however, I do not see things as hopeless. Yesterday I had to undertake a journey to Iaroslavl’ station and to Mashkov Pereulok, whence I brought home twenty-three pounds of bread, four and one-half pounds of salt, and eighteen and one-half pounds of rye; I had an Alpine sack on my back, and two other sacks in my hands; thus the professor strolls around Moscow. The university question is progressively turning into a big mush. The bolsheviks, that is, Pokrovski! and co., have eliminated both of our history departments and replaced them with some kind of fantastic ones; some kind of further meeting is being proposed, but it all comes down to the fact that whatever straightforward appointment they may think up is better than the fiction of cooperation that was offered earlier. Something completely unimaginable is occurring on the streets of Moscow - one great puddle, which is traversed only by those who absolutely must go out.’

Audience with the King

‘Audience of the King [Edward VII], . . [He] kept me for about twenty minutes, talking about Japan, the Garter mission, and gardens, such as Batsford, La Mortola & Miss Alice Rothschild’s at Grasse. I told him that Okuma had said that if Russia did not evacuate N. Manchuria, Japan would ask for an explanation. He also spoke of the troubles in Russia, and comparing those with the [French] revolution of 1789 I hazarded the opinion that the Russian Emperor’s ministers were better prepared than those of Louis XVI to put down rebellion. He spoke of my not returning to China, but that at present there was no post which could be given me. My services must not be lost. I replied that I had no desire to retire if I could be of use, and he said I must consider myself en disponibilité.’ This is from the diaries of Sir Ernest Mason Satow, a British scholar and diplomat born 180 years ago today, particularly remembered for his role in developing Anglo-Japanese relations.

Satow was born on 30 June 1843 to an ethnically German father and an English mother in Clapton, North London. He was educated at Mill Hill School and University College London, studying languages, and then joined the British Legation as a student interpreter. After training in Beijing, he was posted to Japan, to assist the British Minister Harry Smith Parkes. Satow published an article on the country’s political structure in the Japan Times’ British Policy section, and, once translated into Japanese, proved unusually influential. He became a secretary of the British legation in Japan in 1868.

Subsequently, Satow was agent, and then minister, to Siam (1884 to 1888), minister to Uruguay (1888 to 1893) and envoy to Morocco (1893 to 1895), Japan (1895 to 1900) and China (1900 to 1906) where he handled the Boxer Rebellion. In 1906, having been knighted in 1902, he returned to the UK where he was made a Privy Councillor. He left the Foreign Office, and moved to the village of Ottery St. Mary in Devon, but continued to act as British member of the permanent court of arbitration (1906 to 1912) and as one of the British plenipotentiaries at the second peace conference (1907), both at The Hague. Although unmarried, he had three children with his common law wife, Takeda Kané, in Japan, though one died in infancy and the other died aged 4. Satow, himself, died in 1929. Further biographical information is available at Wikipedia, The Gale Review and the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (log-in required).

Apart from publishing several books on diplomacy and foreign policy, Satow kept diaries all his life - from 1861 to 1926. Some 47 handwritten volumes are held at the Public Record Office at Kew, West London, in accordance with his wishes. (Many of his rare Japanese books are now part of the Oriental collection of the Cambridge University Library and his collection of Japanese prints are in the British Museum.) A selection of Satow’s diaries were first edited by Ian Ruxton and published in 1998 by Edwin Mellen Press as The Diaries and Letters of Sir Ernest Mason Satow (1843-1929): a Scholar-Diplomat in East Asia. According to the publisher: ‘Sir Ernest Satow was the doyen of the British scholar-diplomats of the Meiji era in Japan. Satow’s genius made him a colossal figure of his time, deeply respected by the Japanese who knew of his profound scholarship and knowledge of their country, and the desired representative of Britain in Tokyo where he was appointed Minister in 1895-1900. His presence in Tokyo assisted the process of coming to an agreement in the negotiations of Anglo-Japan Alliance of 1902.’

More recently, Ruxton has taken it upon himself to edit, annotate and publish the diaries in a series of more comprehensive editions, most of which can be previewed at Googlebooks. These include: The Diaries of Sir Ernest Mason Satow, 1883-1888: A Diplomat in Siam, Japan, Britain and Elsewhere; The Diaries of Sir Ernest Satow 1889-1895: Uruguay and Morocco; The Diaries of Sir Ernest Satow British Minister in Tokyo (1895-1900); and The Diaries of Sir Ernest Satow British Envoy in Peking in Tokyo (1900-03). 

Here are several extracts (stripped of many footnote numbers).

24 October 1895
‘Telegram from Lord Salisbury instructing me to inquire of the Japse Govt, what explanation they have to give of “Thales” [a steamer that had been detained by the Japanese government]. Wrote a private note to Itō to say I shld. speak to F. M [foreign Minister Saionji] this afternoon, and hoping that he wld. be prepared to undertake that full satisfaction wld. be given by the Japse. Govt.

Münter [representative of Armstrong-Mitchell Co. Ltd.] came to call. Gave me the following information about Japse. plans. 4 1st class battle-ships of 15,000 tons; 3 1st class cruisers of 7000, 4 2nd class of 4500 like the Yoshino besides smaller craft. The cost to be 180,000,000 well, the Diet wld. be asked to vote, 50,000,000 being for armaments. He wants my good word. Perhaps the American people, consisting of Dun, Denison and Williams might be placated by giving them orders for the armour plates needed for the battleship wch. is to be constructed in Japan (1 cruiser of each class here also) The Japanese are guided by sentiment of gratitude for protection to Japse. interests during the war, and to [Henry Willard] Denison for his services in negotiating the Treaty of Shimonoseki. Williams has gone back to America to get plans.

Replied to him that I could not tout, as that wld not be worthy of a great Power like England, but wld. drop a hint that the performances of the Yoshino at the Yalu fight had pleased English people very much, and that if the Japanese being of the same opinion as to the superior qualities of English-built ships, go to England for their new vessels, English nation will be gratified at this mark of appreciation of what they can do. So as to let Itō understand that I am not merely proudly indifferent.

Münter said that as far as he could learn the Manne Dept, are all in favour of English ships. The French are quite out of it 1st the Unebi capsized and another built in France could never do her proper speed, in fact the unfortunate Chishima. She was left for a whole year on the hands of the builders, who finally had to make a sacrifice of part of the contract price

(What I said to Münter I said also to Thomson the other day.)

I added to Münter that I could not promise to speak at any precise time, but must watch my opportunity.

Dined with [British railway engineer Charles A. W.] Pownalls.’

25 July 1906
‘Audience of the King, to which I was introduced by Lord Ed[ward]. Pelham Clinton, whom I reminded that several years ago at Windsor he lent me a pair of knee breeches, Saburō having forgotten to put them in my portmanteau.

The King kept me for about twenty minutes, talking about Japan, the Garter mission, and gardens, such as Batsford, La Mortola & Miss Alice Rothschild’s at Grasse. I told him that Okuma had said that if Russia did not evacuate N. Manchuria, Japan would ask for an explanation. He also spoke of the troubles in Russia, and comparing those with the [French] revolution of 1789 I hazarded the opinion that the Russian Emperor’s ministers were better prepared than those of Louis XVI to put down rebellion.

He spoke of my not returning to China, but that at present there was no post which could be given me. My services must not be lost. I replied that I had no desire to retire if I could be of use, and he said I must consider myself en disponibilité. He asked about MacDonald, whether he was still as thin as he was. I said he was fairly well, except sometimes a little stomach trouble. If I might say so, I thought he was the right man in the right place. The Japanese liked his straightforward manners, and a soldier was well-suited to be Ambassador of a country where the military element was so powerful. He then talked of the staff, Geo[rge]. Barclay, who I said was an excellent worker, Francis Lindley & his wife. Then I praised Carnegie & the King remembered that he had a pretty wife. He asked about Jordan, who I said had a good knowledge of Chinese affairs, having been long at Peking before he went to Seoul. He asked me about China, & I was proceeding to say something about her waking up, when he interrupted me by saying that he had read my private letters. Then he mentioned Sir Edward Grey as an excellent Foreign Minister, in which I concurred, adding Lord Lansdowne’s name. So he asked me whether I had seen him, to which I said No, as I thought he was out of town. No, said H.M. he was here last night & spoke in the debate on the Army in the House of Lords, which shows that he is well-informed, for that part of the debate was not reported in the “Times” of this morning. On my going away he said that my services would receive recognition.

Later in the day, while Bliss was with me, came an official notice from the Clerk of the Council & a private letter also (Almeric Fitzroy) that I am to be sworn of the Privy Council on the 28th which was what H[is].M[ajesty]. meant.

Went on to Emma Sturges, who kept me to lunch: and told her what the King had said about my future. (However it turns out I shall be contented.) Then to Gould, the dentist, to have my teeth cleaned or scaled as they call it: found a young assistant named Sergeant in his absence. Then back to Jermyn Street, where Bliss came & talked in his interesting manner, and then to call on Mrs. Ker at 11 Pelham Place near Thurloe Square. Returning left a card on Count Mutsu at the Japanese Embassy and met Milne Cheetham at the door, and we had half an hour’s talk. He believes he will be sent to Buenos Aires at the end of the year. While he was with me came a note from Mr. John Morley, asking me to name a choice of days in the first part of next week. I wrote back that I was entirely free and would leave it to him to fix the day & hour. Mme. Vieugué has been writing & telegraphing to me to go to tea or dinner, but I am engaged every day.’

2 August 1906
‘Capt. W.F. O’Connor, the trade agent at Gyantse [Tibet], called by appointment. He wanted me to tell him about the Dalai Lama being allowed to return to Lhasa with an escort of Russian Buriats, and the payment of the Tibetan indemnity by China, both of which he considered were valuable cards in the Chinese game. I replied that these were topics on which the India Office could inform him if they wished to, and that as he did not come to me accredited by his own official superiors, I did not consider myself authorized to say anything. He lamented the refusal of H.M.G. to allow an agent to be stationed at Lhasa, and thought we had sacrificed 3000 men for nothing. I disagreed with him, and told him that when the adhesion agreement was published he would see how good our position is. As to the suzerainty question, as it had been omitted from the adhesion agreement, the argument might be used that it did not exist, as was argued by the Boers in relation to the South African Convention of 1884. We could not always expect to get our own ideas adopted by our official superiors, and I had often experienced that myself. He is a tall, thin, sandy haired youngish man of say 30 or 35, very opiniative and given to argufying; was evidently much dissatisfied that I did not at once tell him all I knew and sympathize with his ideas.

To lunch with Sam [Satow]; he has an old attendant who was apprenticed many years ago to old Frederick Toulmin’s dispenser, and knew all the Upper Clapton families of 50 years ago: they kept their carriages and considered themselves aristocratic!

Dropped into St. Paul’s [Cathedral] to have a glance at the decorations. St. George’s Chapel for the order of St. Michael & George did not impress me much, and the banners of the Knights look too new, as they cannot help doing. It seems a useless expense.

Left a card for Sir Edward Seymour at Queen Anne’s mansions, and went down to Chislehurst to dine with Arthur & Agneta [Allen]. A violent thunderstorm broke out just before I left.’

The Golding condition

It is 30 years since the death of William Golding, the great British writer, author of Lord of the Flies. A large literary archive containing two decades’ worth of daily diary entries remains privately held by his family, and only snippets have been made public thanks to a biography by John Carey. However, Carey has claimed that Golding’s diary is unique ‘as an author’s systematic exploration of his unconscious and examination of his conscious life’. What a shame, then, that none of Golding’s diaries have yet been edited for publication, not only for what he has to say about the human condition, but what they have to say about the Golding condition.

Golding was born in Cornwall in 1911, but grew up at his family home in Marlborough, Wiltshire. He studied at Marlborough Grammar School, where his father was a science teacher, and at Oxford University, transferring, after two years, from natural sciences to English literature. He published a first book of poems in 1934, the same year he graduated; and he married Ann Brookfield in 1939 with whom he had two children. He served with the Royal Navy during the war, and, after it, he returned to teaching at Bishop Wordsworth’s School in Salisbury, and to writing.

In 1953, Golding sent a manuscript to Faber & Faber of London, which was reportedly rescued from the trash by a new editor, Charles Monteith. Lord of the Flies was published the following year, and was soon followed by other novels, including The Inheritors, Pincher Martin and Free Fall. In 1958, he and Ann moved to live in Bowerchalke, Wiltshire, where they would remain for nearly 30 years. In 1961-1962, he went to the US as a writer-in residence. The trip brought him some fame and wealth, prompting him to give up teaching on his return. His next novel The Spire was published in 1964, and The Pyramid in 1967, but these books were followed by a fallow and difficult writing period, one which would last until the second half of the 1970s.

From the late 1970s, though, Golding’s literary reputation began to sore, first with Darkness Visible, which won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize, then with Rites of Passage which won the booker, and then with the Nobel Literary Prize in 1983. In 1985, the Goldings moved to a house called Tullimaar in Cornwall. Also that year, Faber & Faber published Golding’s An Egyptian Journal, and thereafter it published two sequels to Rites of Passage. Golding died on 19 June 1993, and was buried in Bowerchalke. A little further biographical information is available at Wikipedia, the Nobel Prize website, and at a Golding website run by his family.

In 2009, there was a resurgence of media interest in Golding when Faber & Faber published a first biography of the writer, by John Carey, professor of literature at Oxford University. Initial publicity for the book focused on a revelation, found in the archive, that Golding considered he had attempted, as an undergraduate, to rape a 15-year-old girlfriend - see The Guardian, or The Independent. The biography, though, has been much acclaimed. William Boyd, reviewing the book for The New York Times says: ‘Carey [. . .] writes with great wit and lucidity as well as authority and compassionate insight. Perhaps because he has had the opportunity of reading the mass of Golding’s unpublished intimate journals, he brings unusual understanding to the complex and deeply troubled man who lies behind the intriguing but undeniably idiosyncratic novels.’ He concludes by calling the biography ‘superb’. Much of it can be previewed at Googlebooks.

Golding’s diaries - 5,000 pages of them written every day for over 20 years - are part of the Golding archive, which is still kept privately by the family. Carey was the first researcher to be given access to this archive. Of the diaries, he says this: ‘Besides being an intimate account of his private life, and a treasure-house of memories of his childhood and youth, the journal is a behind-the-scenes revelation of the writer’s craft, reporting each day on the progress of whatever novel he is at work on, tracing its origins, trying out alternative plot-lines, and criticizing, often violently, what he has written so far. Further, he began the journal as a dream diary, and though his waking life gradually came to dominate, he continued to record dreams almost to the end, together with his interpretations and identification of the incidents they recalled. As an author’s systematic exploration of his unconscious and examination of his conscious life, Golding’s journal is, I think, unique.’ Carey’s other main source was the correspondence between Golding and his editor at Faber & Faber, Charles Monteith.

Although the biography relies so heavily on Golding’s diaries (and there is a long list of diary dates at the back of the book provided as information sources), Carey rarely uses significant verbatim extracts: here and there, one can find phrases quoted to illustrate a point, but there are less than a handful of longer extracts. There are, however, further insights into the journal. From 1971, Carey says, when Golding found himself unable to work on a new book, he occupied himself with various displacement activities, and one of these was keeping a journal, ‘which he wrote up every day, usually before 10am, recording everything from metaphysical speculations to the weekly trip to Salisbury for Ann to get her hair done’.

Carey continues: ‘He realized that the journal was “little but an effort to relieve the sorrow, the grief, the pain” of not being able to write a book, and its pointlessness often dismayed him. “I don’t seem to do anything else”, he fretted. He invented comic nicknames (“Pewter” and “Bolonius”) for the “ridiculous and wearisome” everyday self who filled its pages with reams of mundane detail. But at least his daily stint made him feel he was still, in some some sense, a writer. At the present rate, he worked out in April 1972, he would clock up 182,500 words in just half a year, “the equivalent, more or less, of all the books I’ve written”. Eventually, the journal stretched to two and a half million words.’

Golding published one so-called journal in his lifetime - An Egyptian Journal - but as Carey notes this was not actually a diary text at all: ‘It is natural to imagine that An Egyptian Journal is the journal he kept while in Egypt. But that is not so. The journal he kept day by day on the Hani is cursory, consisting of disjointed notes with occasional outbursts of impatience (“One feels really more and more like giving up”; “My God. The silly sods have run out of fuel.”) An Egyptian Journal was commotion recollected in tranquility. Turning his notes into a book took months. He talked it over with Ann, and decided that what was needed was “a sort of complex sewing-job”, amplifying his jottings, and interspersing new material to “make it vivid”.’

A very few extracts from the journals are available online at the William Golding website and at Faber & Faber. Here, though, are two extracts from Golding’s diary taken from Carey’s biography. The first, dated 10 April 1972 I think, consists of some recollections about the poet and Faber man, T. S. Eliot; and the second is an extract included by Carey in his postscript, though I cannot work out its date.

‘Eliot was fairly impressive in a Donnish sort of way, but not excessively so. Charles [Monreith] led Ann and me to see him as to a god. We sat fairly mum while he talked of umbrellas and rubber trees. Later he informed me that Simon in Lord of the Flies must be cut to the bone. ‘We cannot portray a saint, Mr Ah. But for evil we need only to look into our own hearts’. The silly old twit. As if I hadn’t known that. Another time at a Faber cocktail party Frazer [G. S. Fraser] the Anthologist cannoned into my back so that I bowed forward and spilt champagne down Mr Eliot’s trousers while he was saying, “No, no, no” to Arthur Koestler. Thus I not only worshipped at the god’s shrine but poured a libation, not to say an anointment. He leapt back with an agility startling in one so mummified, striking out at his salt and pepper Edwardian trousers. I cannot say that we were intimate friends.’

‘One day, if my literary reputation holds up, people will examine my life, and they will come to the conclusion that I am a monster and possibly they will finally say tout comprendre and all that. They will think they know all but they won’t. No matter how deep they dig they won’t reach the root that has made me a monster in deed, word and thought. No one but I knows that, or suffers it. This is not guilt, it is self knowledge.’

In the postscript to his biography, Carey asks, ‘What would [Golding] have thought about his private journals being made public, as it is in this book?’ He answers his own question by suggesting that Golding knew at the deepest level that he was writing for an audience, and that he knew some parts would cause pain and embarrassment. Carey also tries to give a sense of the Golding he found in the diary: ‘How, then, would I characterize him as he comes across in the journal? The emotion he felt most vividly and often behind his disguise was, I think, fear, on a scale varying from mild anxiety to terror. He had been a sensitive, frightened child, and he grew into a sensitive, frightened man.’

But, all we really have in the public domain of Golding’s vast diary is the information and sparse quotes as filtered through Carey. And these few actual snippets only serve to whet one’s appetite for more. It seems a shame, a great loss indeed, that there is no project - as far as I am aware of - to edit or publish his diaries. While I can understand the family’s wish for privacy, and, perhaps, to control the world’s image of Golding, there are several excellent reasons, surely, why his diaries ought to be published. Firstly, and foremostly, he was an acknowledged, world class, great writer and so in all likelihood there is a lot of great writing in them.

Secondly, the diaries contain far more of Golding’s thoughts about the world and the human condition than he polished and crafted for the novels. Thirdly, there must be many an insight about literary creativity in general, and, more specifically, about the creativity behind his novels (though, admittedly, Carey has mined this vein fairly thoroughly).

Fourthly - most fascinating of all - is that, like the most interesting of all diaries, Golding’s are personal, intimate, and self-analytical, not written (at least directly) for publication, which means they are likely to give a fascinating and deeper insight into the man. They may not give us all of the root that made him ‘a monster in deed, word and thought’, indeed the reverse is likely to be true, but they will tell us far more than we already know about the Golding condition.

This article is a slightly revised version of one first published on 19 June 2013.

People murdered in martyrdom

‘The tombs and graves of people murdered in martyrdom are ever increasing all over the country. Every village and town, every forest abounds with graves looming from a distance as a historical lesson and a warning. Once the living witnesses are gone, then those graves will speak volumes. They will accuse the whole world with an eloquence a hundredfold mightier, of having committed or having failed to act against the crudest of crimes.’ This is from a short prison diary kept by Samuel Golfard, a Polish Jew, before being shot - 80 years ago this month - by the Germans and then buried by a friend in the forest. A fully comprehensive and annotated edition of Golfard’s diary was published in 2015 and is considered to be an important addition to the Holocaust literature, 

Golfard was born circa 1910, and grew up in the Radom district of Poland with three younger sisters. He fled, with one sister Mania, to Volhynia in late 1939 where he found refuge, at least until the German attack on the Soviet Union starting in June 1941. He travelled to Peremyshliany in July where he found shelter with the family of Dr. Jacob Katz (where he met Jacob Litman). Litman described him as social, well-spoken, urbane, suave, and witty, with a lean figure, high forehead, copper-blond hair, moustache, and left-liberal convictions.

Golfard was sent to the Iaktoriv (Jaktorow) labor camp some time in late spring or summer 1942. Mania was able to bribe the Jewish Council to release him from the camp, perhaps by exchanging him with another Jew from the ghetto. Golfard then secured a job as a scrap collector in the early months of 1943 (perhaps for the German Equipment Works). This “privileged” position gave him the opportunity to secretly write a diary. 

After the Peremyshliany ghetto was liquidated in May 1943, Samuel hid at the Nebenlager (labour camp) for three weeks. He secured a gun, and planned to escape to the forests in Czupernosow with Litman. On the eve of their escape, in June 1943, the camp was surrounded by SS and police, and prisoners were forced to line up outside. Golfard pulled out his pistol, and aimed it at the German commander, but the Germans responded with a hail of bullets, killing him and several prisoners nearby. Litman buried Golfard in a nearby forest.

Almost nothing else is known about Golfard other than that revealed through a prison diary that he kept between January and April 1943, and which survived the war. A first English translation of the diary from its original Polish was completed by Litman in 1983. A second translation was completed by Magdalena Norton in 2006. The Diary of Samuel Golfard and the Holocaust in Galicia by Wendy Lower was first published by Alta Mira Press in 2011, largely following the Litman translation, and then reissued in paperback by Rowman & Littlefield in 2015.

In her introduction to the book, Lower states: ‘Through the pages of Golfard’s diary, we can glimpse how a Jew marked for annihilation viewed the outside world and its failure to affect the course of the Holocaust. By expressing his “contempt for the worlds cowardice and heartlessness,” he spoke for other Jews who were just as outraged that the Allies did not intervene to stop the Holocaust. Perhaps Golfard assumed that the Allies should have known better or were morally superior and prepared to act. His view of a post-Holocaust world was not one of reconciliation, but one plagued by vengeance and haunted by the landscape of mass graves. In his diary he wrote on 11 April 1943, “The tombs and graves of people murdered in martyrdom are ever increasing all over the country. Every village and town, every forest abounds with graves looming from a distance as a historical lesson and a warning. Once the living witnesses are gone, then those graves will speak volumes. They will accuse the whole world with an eloquence a hundredfold mightier, of having committed or having failed to act against the crudest of crimes.” ’

‘Golfard’s diary is remarkable’, concludes Alexandra Garbarini, Professor of History and Jewish Studies at Williams College. ‘It is searing, moving, emotional, yet also analytically sophisticated. [It] will make a substantial contribution to several fields of study, including the history of Jewish responses during the Shoah, the perpetration of genocide, and Holocaust literature. Lower has done a beautiful job of framing the diary entries so that the reader gains a broader perspective of the unfolding history. This book is a most welcome contribution to the existing body of published source materials, illuminating a lesser-known dimension of the Holocaust that is at the forefront of recent research being conducted in the field.’ Some pages can be previewed at both Amazon and Googlebooks.

Here are two further extracts.

25 January 1943
‘I am not composing these words for myself. They are intended for those who will survive and who might quickly forget what they had lived through not so long ago. Let these words refresh in their memory the moments of horror, the bloody scenes that took place before their eyes, the black night of savagery. Let it [open?] wounds already healed.

In embarking upon this notebook, I am not motivated by a writer’s ambition. I am subjected to an unspeakable burden by every word; every reminiscence hurts cruelly; contemplating present-day events fills me with despair. I realize that these words will not alleviate my own suffering, but since I do not want to spare others, it is fair to have no regard for myself.

Outside the window there is a shroud of sparkling snow. A dazzling whiteness strikes the eyes. Total stillness reigns, but in my heart a storm is raging. I see beloved faces with a mute reproach in their eye, The image of thousands of murdered - children, boys, and girls - appears before me. Among them I see the tormented face of my dearest sister. With her hand m the sling, she sat cowering in the square among hundreds of other victims. I did not manage to give her a sign. She noticed me briefly, she looked startled and frightened as I was being brutally driven away and was denied the chance to exchange another glance with her.

What did she think of me? Did she know that I ran to save her. In vain. I distinguished her screams among the cries of others, swollen with despair, and coming from the truck as I, dazed and unaware of what was really going on, desperately begged for help. I reacted with a fierce shriek, which did not seem to come from my mouth. And the cry of my little sister amid that of others faded away into the darkness. But I still hear it. What did she think about on the way! Perhaps the pain in her hand, recently operated on, dulled her fear for her life. Did she know that she was on her way to Zloczów to die a horrible, tortuous death? Could she believe this until the very last moment? My dearest Maniusia [Mania]! Forgive your brother for leaving you on your own, that he did not share your fate. Perhaps if you were with me, it would have been easier for you to die. Mania, I was paralyzed with despair. Even now I am shaken by sobs at the thought that terror robbed me of my will, the will to die together with you.

You had enough time to draw up the balance sheet of your young life. They seized you, leaving your brother in a camp from which there was seemingly no way out, your beloved parents having apparently been murdered in faraway R., your siblings seized and most probably put to death as well. And with all that the terrible pain in your finger.

What had your life been? Full of devotion to our parents, to me. Your patience and angelic goodness did not make life easier for you. After a day’s hard labor you walked barefoot many kilometers to the camp in Jaktorow, bringing me greetings from the world of the living with a forced timid smile. You witnessed how they beat me and tormented me. You lived through hell before you could see me at home. And you underwent all this alone, surrounded by indifference and hostility. When you were no more, people told me that during my stay in the camp you regarded even those who wished me well as foes. You thought that no one should laugh, eat, or walk while your brother suffered.

When they snatched you away from me, you wore a brown silk blouse, the gray jacket that I myself had bought for your birthday before the war, and on your feet - summer clogs. Oh, how cold you must have been.

I must stop writing now. My hand is trembling, and sobs are ripping through my chest. Before me I see only you and the gray pavement. My ears are filled with the sound of your cry for life fading in the misty night.’

2 April 1943
‘Now there is no longer a universal date of good fortune, each day brings us a new tragedy. Yesterday’s “prima aprilis” [April Fools’ Day] passed by under the sign of terrible news.

200 girls from the Szwartz military factory in Lwow were shipped away. The girls wore the “W” emblem, which was supposed to protect them from being killed. The number of victims has been estimated at 1,500.

On Thursday in Zolkiew, 600 Jews were carried off during the so-called Überprüfung (reexamination) administered these days. After a few days, an action was set in motion in which the remaining people were rounded up and murdered in the ghetto.

It seems that the last moment is drawing near. The insanity has again assumed blood thirsty forms. We just received word that a mass murder began in the ghetto of Zloczów and that the executioners may drop in here any minute.

I no longer despair. Despite the fact that from a certain point a new feeling has bloomed in my heart, I abhor life. I no longer mourn for my sisters and parents. I no longer weep over them, just as I no longer lament a friend whom I have lost recently. He luckily died in convulsions, having not regained consciousness. Died a rare civilian death - sick with typhus - at the age of 30.

It was pining for Mania that induced me to write these notes. Now I have in front of me your one and only photograph, the last trace of your existence, since all your things have been stolen. I do not believe in life beyond the grave, but if there is such a thing as an immortal soul that manifests itself in man, your, your soul must be blessed beyond words. You appear to me every day as a moving and acting who substitutes for you and to whom I become attached ever more strongly so.’