Departed on Air Force One

‘Departed on Air Force One for the northeastern part of England in the Newcastle area, Tyne and Wear County, which was coincidentally the only county that the Labour Party didn’t lose in the elections yesterday. I’m at somewhat of a disadvantage in discussing the finance matters because Callaghan, Fukuda, Giscard, and Schmidt have all been finance ministers and have economics as a background. I’ve already begun to see the need for me to travel more and learn more about other leaders and countries.’ This is from the published diary of Jimmy Carter - 100 years old today - written while serving as president of the United States, 1977-1981. 

James Earl Carter Jr. was born on 1 October 1924, in Plains, Georgia. His father, a segregationist, was a successful peanut farmer and businessman who ran a general store and invested in farmland. His son was educated locally, then at Georgia Southwestern College, the Georgia Institute of Technology, and, from 1943, the Naval Academy, graduating in 1946. Soon after he married Rosalynn Smith, a friend of his sister, with whom he would have four children. In 1948, he began officer training for submarine duty and served aboard USS Pomfret; being promoted to lieutenant junior grade in 1949. He was preparing to become an engineering officer for the submarine Seawolf in 1953 when his father died. He resigned his commission and returned to Georgia to manage the family peanut farm operations.

Carter quickly became a leader of the community, serving on county boards supervising education, the hospital authority, and the library. In 1962, he won election to the Georgia Senate, but failed in 1966 to win election as governor. In 1971, though, he successfully ran again becoming Georgia’s 76th governor. He was the Democratic National Committee campaign chairman for the 1974 congressional and gubernatorial elections. Among the new intake of young southern governors, he attracted attention by emphasising efficiency in government and the removal of racial discrimination.

When Carter announced his candidacy for president in December 1974, he was virtually unknown, but after the national disappointments of Vietnam and Watergate, Democratic voters welcomed a fresh choice. He chose Minnesota senator Walter Mondale as his running mate. In November 1976 the Carter-Mondale ticket won the election, capturing 51% of the popular vote and garnering 297 electoral votes to Gerald Ford’s 240. On his second day in office he pardoned all Vietnam War draft evaders. He went on to create a national energy policy, and to pusue the Camp David Accords, the Panama Canal Treaties, and the second round of Strategic Arms Limitation Talks. His administration established the U.S. Department of Energy and the Department of Education.

The end of Carter’s presidency was marked by a series of troubles:  the Iran hostage crisis, an energy crisis, the Three Mile Island accident, the Nicaraguan Revolution, and the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. In response to the latter, Carter ended détente, imposed a grain embargo against the Soviets, and led the multinational boycott of the 1980 Summer Olympics in Moscow.That same year he lost the 1980 presidential election in a landslide to Ronald Reagan.

Subsequently, Carter established the Carter Center to promote and expand human rights. In 2002 he received a Nobel Peace Prize. He traveled extensively to conduct peace negotiations, monitor elections, and help eradicate infectious diseases. He has written numerous books, ranging from political memoirs to poetry, while continuing to comment on global affairs, including the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. At 100 years old, he is the longest-lived former U.S. president. Further information is available from Wikipedia, The White House, Encyclopaedia Britannica, and The White House Historical Association.

During his presidency, Carter kept a diary by dictating his thoughts and observations several times each day. It was edited and annotated by Carter himself to be published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux in 2010 as White House Diary. This can be previewed online at Googlebooks. The Los Angeles Times judged the book thus: ‘It all makes for a uniquely unfiltered look at what occupying the Oval Office day to day means, as well as a bit of second thinking and score-settling.’

Here is an extract from Carter’s own preface: ‘Readers should remember that I seldom exercised any restraint on what I dictated, because I did not contemplate the more personal entries ever being made public. When my opinions of people changed, for instance, I did not go back and amend the entries. [. . .] Despite a temptation to conceal my errors, misjudgments of people, or lack of foresight, I decided when preparing this book not to revise the original transcript, but just to use the unchanged excerpts from the diaries that I consider to be most revealing and interesting. Admittedly, it was somewhat painful for me to omit about three-fourths of the diary, but for the sake of compression I concentrated on a few general themes that are still pertinent - especially Middle East peace negotiations, nuclear weaponry, US-China relations, energy policy, anti-inflation efforts, health policy, and my relationships with Congress. I also included some elements of my personal life that illustrate how it feels and what it means to be president. [. . .] Throughout this book, I wrote explanatory notes to help the reader understand the context of the entries, bring to life the duties of a president, offer insights into a number of the people I worked with, and point out how many of the important challenges remain the same. At times we presidents have reacted to similar events in much the same way; at other times we’ve responded quite differently. In presenting this annotated diary, my intention is not to defend or excuse my own actions or to criticize others, but simply to provide, based on current knowledge, an objective analysis of differences. Whenever possible, I attempt to articulate what lessons I learned and offer my own frank assessment of what I or others might have done differently.’

And here are several extracts from White House Diary.

17 February 1977
‘Mama returned from India, and I had a brief meeting with her early this morning. 1 think the trip was a superb diplomatic effort, and the State Department later said that we have the best relationship since 1960, to a large degree because of Mother’s visit there and her obvious concern about the Indian people. She got along well with Mrs. Indira Gandhi, by the way, whom she formerly had not liked or admired as a political figure.

Got my first haircut up in Rosalynn’s little beauty parlor next to the dining room. The barber is from Puerto Rico, and he and I spoke Spanish during the haircut. I think he might take over the regular barbershop in the West Wing shortly since the present barber is a strong Nixonite.

Amy and I went swimming for the first time. The temperature was freezing, and the outdoor pool had been slightly heated. We enjoyed it, though, and I’m going to try to do as many things as possible with Amy. I see her at least for supper every night, and quite often, I’d say two or three times a week after supper, we have some time together, either bowling or going to a movie or going swimming; and then the weekends we have always several hours together. She seems to like her school fine, but she still prefers Plains, which she has known all her life.’

6 May 1977
‘Departed on Air Force One for the northeastern part of England in the Newcastle area, Tyne and Wear County, which was coincidentally the only county that the Labour Party didn’t lose in the elections yesterday. I’m at somewhat of a disadvantage in discussing the finance matters because [Jim] Callaghan, [Yasuo] Fukuda [Japan], [Valéry] Giscard [D’Estaing, France], and [Helmut] Schmidt [Germany] have all been finance ministers and have economics as a background. I’ve already begun to see the need for me to travel more and learn more about other leaders and countries. There’s a great desire in the Western world for a restoration of confidence, and I believe that unless that confidence is derived from the strength of our country it won’t be coming from any other source. There doesn’t seem to be any jealousy of the strength of the United States, only an eagerness to see their own nations consulted on matters and an assurance that we won’t make peremptory decisions that might be embarrassing to them at home. Every one of the other leaders is very weak politically, and they recognize that at least for the moment I’m quite strong politically. They also see that to show a friendly relationship with me but to retain their own independence and prerogatives is a good combination for them politically. And, of course, I’m eager to accommodate that desire on their part.

I was surprised at the strength of Pierre Trudeau [prime minister of Canada], who seems to be at ease with all the others, quite uninhibited in his expressions of opinion, and they seemed to listen to him quite closely.

The Germans have some concern about our human rights position because they feel that in a quiet, unpublicized way they’ve extracted many East European citizens into the western European area. 
Callaghan showed us the room at 10 Downing Street where we will be meeting. It’s so small that only twenty-two people can get in it, but it’s been set up in a wonderful way, I think, for free discussions where there will be a disinclination to make speeches. Obviously there’s a tremendous struggle among staff members and others to get inside the room, but I think Callaghan did wisely to hold the room so there’s no way to stretch the limit.’

28 May 1977
‘We went fishing on Blackbeard Island, leaving about 6:00 a.m. and getting over there about 9:00 a.m. We fished for bluegill bream, and Charlie and I caught the largest bream I’ve ever seen. I enjoyed talking with Kirbo about the problems that I face as president, with big business, who are a greedy bunch; or the special interest groups; Congress; some of the foreign leaders. Quite often when I talk to him this in itself is helpful, but in addition he’s sometimes able to solve my problems. He has unique interrelationships both inside and outside of government, and he’s close enough to understand me well, and very discreet. He’s able to separate his law practice from his relationship with me, which is also reassuring.’

See also A boiling cauldron.

Professor of poetry

Francis Turner Palgrave, a close friend of Alfred Tennyson and a connoisseur of English poetry, was born two centuries ago today. He worked most of his life as a civil servant in the education service but in his 60s was elected Oxford University’s Professor of Poetry. Soon after Palgrave’s death, his daughter, Gwenllian, published a book about her father’s life in which she quotes extensively from diaries he kept intermittently for over 50 years.

Palgrave was born on 28 September 1824 in Great Yarmouth, the eldest son of Sir Francis Palgrave, an historian, and his wife Elizabeth Turner, daughter of a banker. He grew up in Yarmouth and also in Hampstead, London, but was largely educated at home, in an atmosphere of ‘high artistic culture’, ‘fervid anglo-catholicism’ and ‘strenuous thought’, until the age of 14, when his father could afford to sent him to Charterhouse public school as a day boy.

After travelling on the Continent, Palgrave won a scholarship to Balliol College, Oxford; but, in 1846, he interrupted his studies for a year or so to serve as assistant private secretary to William Gladstone. From 1847 to 1862, he was fellow of Exeter College. In 1849, he took up a civil service post in the education department, which led him, from 1850 to 1855, to be vice-principal at Kneller Hall, a government training college for elementary teachers at Twickenham. There, he met Alfred Tennyson. When the training college was abandoned, Palgrave returned to Whitehall in 1855, becoming examiner in the education department, and eventually assistant secretary.

Palgrave married Cecil Grenville Milnes in 1862, and they had one son and four daughters. Apart from Tennyson and Gladstone, Palgrave was friends with other notables of the time, including Robert Browning and Matthew Arnold. He wrote and published poetry, in volumes such as Visons of England. However, his principal claim to fame was to publish the Golden Treasury of English Songs and Lyrics (1861), a comprehensive and carefully chosen (in consultation with Tennyson) anthology of the best poetry in the language. This tome is considered to have helped popularise the poetry of William Wordsworth, and to have had a significant influence on poetic taste for several generations.

In 1884, Palgrave resigned his civil service position, and, the following year, was elected Professor of Poetry at Oxford. By then, his life was mostly divided between London and Lyme Regis where he had bought a holiday home in 1872, with almost annual visits to Italy. He died in London in 1897. Further information can be found at Wikipedia, Dictionary of National Biography (source of the quotes above) or The Twickenham Museum website.

Palgrave kept a journal for much of his life, and although this has not been published separately, Palgrave’s daughter, Gwenllian, included many extracts in her biography: Francis Turner Palgrave - His Journals and Memories of his Life. This was published by Longmans, Green and Co. in 1899. It is freely available at Internet Archive. According to Gwenllian, her father started keeping a journal, intermittently, as early as 1834, in the form of letters to his mother. His last journal entry was in 1890. Here are a few extracts from Palgrave’s diary, as culled from Gwenllian’s biography,

31 March 1849 [Palgrave’s first meeting with Tennyson]
‘In the evening to Mr. Brookfield’s. Found there Lingen, A. Tennyson; afterwards Thackeray and H. Hallam came. Walked towards Hampstead with A. Tennyson. Conversed on Universities, the ‘Princess,’ his plans, &c.; he very open and friendly: a noble, solid mind, bearing the look of one who had suffered greatly: - strength and sensitiveness blended.’

2 April 1849
‘In the afternoon to A. Tennyson’s in the Hampstead Road. Long conversation with him; he read me songs to be inserted in the ‘Princess,’ and poems on A. Hallam, some exquisite.’

July 1870
‘On the 14th of July we welcomed another little boy. After eight or nine days this little darling began to pine, and my dear Cis wishing to have him baptised, he received the names Arthur Frederick, the second after Freddy Cavendish, who promised to be godfather. The baby looked at us with deep violet eyes, as if asking to live. I could not realise fear, though his dear mother had begun to realise she must resign her treasure. But in the afternoon of the 31st, as this sweet patient little Arthur lay on Cecil’s lap, every hope was clearly over. . . . We buried him in the quiet country ground at Barnes, where Cecil’s Aunt Sidney lies.’

23 November 1870
‘The war still, but with more than one difference. In so great and complex an action and where so much human feeling is mixed, a cause cannot remain true to itself: initial right and justice are insufficient to leaven the vast mass of after events. It seems clear that the French will die as a nation, sooner than make a surrender of defeat.’

29 May 1871
‘All to Stokesay Castle, a singularly perfect specimen of domestic residence temp. Edward I. The site of this small ancient relic, lovely amid green wooded hills and mountainesque horizon - indebted much to the haze of an exquisite summer day. Thence to Ludlow: the castle here of all dates, is as fine as that uncomfortable thing, a ruin, ever can be.’

21 July 1871
‘Came to Lyme. In the evenings I am reading to Cis the ‘Bride of Lammermoor’: this seems to me to stand above all other novels, like a play by Shakespeare above all other plays. Indeed, in astonishing truthfulness and variety in creation of character, in power and pathos, I cannot see how this, at least, is inferior to Shakespeare . . . We have spent four agreeable days at the Palace at Exeter: I had one long walk with the Bishop, and a really good discussion on Darwin and cognate topics. He was at his best on such points: large and wise and liberal . . . After that a brief visit to Whitestaunton, a charming house of early Elizabethan date; we much regretted the brevity of our visit, having greatly liked our hosts.’

20 October 1871
‘We came to Lyme, and Cis and I went carefully over our little intended purchase, Little Park. It is a pretty little old place, with its many little rooms and pretty garden and lovely views. May it be a true haunt of peace to us and our dear ones! . . . Returned home to a warm welcome from our dear, dear lively little ones.’

4 July 1874
‘We went to Chichester, taking little Cecy and Frank. A year has much shaken the good old Dean, but when pretty well there was all his old charm and life. He is about the best type of a former age that I know, or, rather, he has the best of the last age joined with our modern movement.’

23 July 1879
‘Cis and I took the two eldest children to ‘Hamlet.’ I had not seen any serious acting for years, and went expecting to find my greatest pleasure in the dear children’s; but I returned very deeply impressed with the frequent admirable renderings of Irving as ‘Hamlet’ and Miss Terry as ‘Ophelia.’ . . . Above all, the amazing difficulty of the art impressed me; as with painting, I doubt how far the spectator can pretend to point out the way in which parts might be improved, though he may lawfully feel not satisfied. What was good also, both in these and in the other actors, is to me so much clearly gained. Also if ‘Hamlet’ acted unequally, how unequally, a vrai dire, is ‘Hamlet’ written!’

17 July 1883
‘We took the children to ‘The Merchant of Venice’ for the second time. Irving’s Shylock seemed to me a fine and true rendering of Shakespeare’s intention - viz. the mediaeval Jew a little raised in dignity and humanity. The Terry Portia was generally admirable. This play gains, certainly, immensely by representation . . , the sort of tradition which gives Shylock the protagonist, if not the hero part, is amply justified. . . I certainly think that those who cannot see that Irving gave a very powerful, and Miss Terry a very beautiful, interpretation, and that the piece as a whole was a thoroughly ‘adequate’ representation of what Shakespeare meant, must never expect to be satisfied by human art.’

7 April 1885 [Naples]
‘The Pompeian frescoes and mosaics are much beyond what I expected in quality of Art: the invention is so copious, the handling so absolutely assured, that I fully felt the sad lesson how Art (despite a few reactions) has had one long downward career for two thousand years.’

2 October 1886 [Dorchester]
‘Walked with Frank through twilight to Winterbourne Came: a pretty little thatched house among trees. I was allowed to go up to the great aged poet in the bedroom which - at eighty-four and with now failing bodily strength - he is not likely to quit. Mr. [William] Barnes had invited me when Frank visited him last Christmas, and truly glad was I, and honoured did I feel, to accomplish it. A very finely cut face, expressive blue eyes, a long white beard, hands fine like a girl’s - all was the absolute ideal of a true poet. Few in our time equal him in variety and novelty of motive: in quantity of true sweet inspiration and musical verse. None have surpassed him in exquisite wholeness and unity of execution. He was dressed in red with white fur of some sort, and a darker red cap: Titian or Tintoret had no nobler, no more high born looking sitter among the doges of Venice. His welcome was equally cordial and simple; and, despite his bodily weakness, the soul, bright and energetic, seemed equally ready for death or for life. He talked of his visit to Tennyson; of his own work, saying he had taken Homer, and him only, as his model in aiming at choosing the one proper epithet when describing: also his love for the old pure English. I shall remember this most interesting half-hour all my life, and my dear Frank, I trust, will remember it many years beyond me.’

26 November 1885
‘Ince telegraphed that, I was elected Professor of Poetry by a majority of sixty. The pleasure this gave at home, and the many kind letters called forth from friends, have been the really agreeable elements in this success. It will be difficult to satisfy expectations - to face the illustrious images of ancestors in the Chair. But I am glad of a chance to be a little useful before the night cometh, if I may be so allowed.’

3 February 1887
‘A very pleasant visit to Browning. He was very affectionate and open, and told much of his earlier days. I was sorry to hear that he had lately been clearing his papers, and had burnt letters which, while his parents lived, he had written to them by way of minute daily journal from Russia, Italy, and England.’

10 February 1887
‘My dear eldest girl was married to James Duncan. Amongst the many friends who came to the house were Browning and Matt Arnold, who were among those signing the marriage register. . .’

27 February 1890
‘With dearest Cis to Oxford. Saw Jowett and Lyttelton Gell, and were received by the Rector of Exeter with his usual friendliness.’

‘My father’s journal,’ Gwenllian writes, ‘now breaks off with a pathetic abruptness; the last entry (February 27, 1890) being exactly a month before my mother’s death. From that time he altogether discontinued keeping a Journal. It is impossible to write of the effect which so near and sacred a sorrow had upon him. Such was the depth and the intensity of his feeling and reverence towards her, that even in her lifetime he only spoke of her - or of her opinions and judgment - with a kind of bated breath, as though she were too far above him to be mentioned in an ordinary way. During the remaining years of his life, few days passed without his recalling to his children some memory of her unselfishness, her humility, or her beautiful simplicity. For the first few months after her death this sorrow absolutely crushed him, and his friends, seeing him, feared that he would never recover any interest or happiness in life. But his own perfect selflessness - for with him it was always something more than unselfishness - enabled him to gather up the threads of life again for the sake of his children with a courage and loving tenderness which were inexpressibly touching. Many observed that his devotion to his children, strong and intense as it had always been, grew as these years passed, not only deeper, but also in many senses like that of a mother’s. He never conceived a plan, nor undertook anything, even for his own comfort or pleasure, without first thinking whether it would be for their happiness.’

This article is a slightly revised version of one first published on 28 September 2024.

Autobiographical items

Dannie Abse, the Welsh doctor, poet and occasional diarist, died ten years ago today, just two days before I got married (though I’d known my new wife, Hat, for seven years, and we have two children together). I never met Abse, but there are one or two rather amazing links between him, Hat and I. He was best mates with my father, Frederic, in the 1950s, before Frederic abandoned me and my mother to emigrate to the US. Decades later, long before I met Hat, Abse was friends with her father, Giles Gordon. Indeed, both our fathers, (Hat’s and mine) are mentioned in Abse’s first published book of ‘journals’ - journals, for him, being a collection of ‘autobiographical items’. In later life, Abse lived in the same road as my mother, and they would walk their dogs in Childs Hill Park, and nod ‘hello’, in some faint acknowledgement of their social connection half a century earlier.

Abse was born in Cardiff, youngest of four children in a Jewish family. His father part-owned and ran cinemas. He studied medicine, briefly at the University of Wales, and then, in London, at Westminster Hospital and King’s College, becoming a specialist chest physician. During the latter part of the war he volunteered with other medical students to help, but was not sent abroad. He published his first book of poetry in the late 1940s, and in 1951, he was called up for National Service. That same year, he married Joan Mercer, a librarian at the time for the Financial Times, and an art historian. They moved to live in Hodford Road, Golder’s Green, north London, and had three children.

By this time, Abse was part of the London poetry scene, giving poetry readings, and being likened to his fellow Welsh poet, Dylan Thomas, though he soon brushed off the latter’s overwrought style. A second collection of poems followed, and then his first autobiographical novel Ash on a Young Man’s Sleeve (1954) brought him some early literary success. Many other poems, readings, books followed, as he managed to live life as a celebrated poet at the same time as pursuing a medical career.

In 2005, Joan was killed in a car accident, and Abse himself suffered injuries. He continued to write, and, in 2012, he accepted a CBE for services to poetry and literature, saying, at the time, that many people more left-wing than he had taken the award. He died on 28 September 2014. Wikipedia has a short biography, but there are also several detailed obituaries online, at The Telegraph, for example, The Guardian, the BBC. There are several older articles by Gerald Isaaman, ex editor of the Ham and High, for Camden New Journal.

My mother, Barbara, who died in 2007, also lived on Hodford Road, and would often see Abse in Childs Hill Park as they walked their dogs. I don’t think they ever talked, but they would nod a greeting as they passed, in some vague way acknowledging that they had known each other in the 1950s. Indeed, according to my father, Frederic Goldsmith, Dannie was one of his best friends in those days. They were both part of a group of musicians, artists, writers, German refugees (Frederic had arrived in London as a child in the 30s, his family escaping from Hitler’s Nazi Germany) that would meet in The Cosmo, on Finchley Road. Also part of that group was Peter the Girl, who was a friend of my parents; Uncle Bondy, who took us on holiday to his primitive villa in Bandol, France, at least once; and Peter Vansittart who married my aunt, Johnnie.

Around the time Abse was getting married, Frederic met my mother, and I was born the following year. The marriage between my parents didn’t last long - in contrast to Abse’s which lasted a lifetime and very happily so, according to all reports. Frederic, the cad, ran off to the US, not to return for 20 years. And when he did return to London, he thought it would be funny, in an ‘old times’ sort of way, to show up at Abse’s house in the middle of the night. But Abse didn’t find it funny, and, effectively, rejected his old friend. Peter the Girl, out of loyalty to Frederic, never forgave Abse for that - indeed she called me the day after he died to remind me of the story. Ironically, I was out of the country when Frederic made that visit to London - ironic because every year through my childhood he had written to me saying he would come visit soon!

Fast forwarding, to the year 2007, Frederic long since dead, and my mother just gone too, I met and fell in love with Harriet Gordon (often known as Hat). Her parents, too, had died in recent years: Giles Gordon, literary agent, and Margaret Gordon, children’s book illustrator. It turned out that her father had been Dannie Abse’s agent, and friend, for many years. Hat and I moved in together, and have two children now. Along the way, we wrote to Abse, thinking he might be intrigued by the coincidence. He wrote back, saying that is one ‘helluva coincidence’, or rather ‘a heaven of a coincidence.’

I feel justified in contributing a piece on Abse here, to The Diary Review, because he published several books which were either compilations of diary extracts and/or were given the title ‘journals’. In fact, in his first collection of ‘journal’ pieces - Journals from the Ant-Heap (1986) - Abse mentions both my father and Hat’s father, but in very different contexts. The so-called journal entries, though, had been written to order, on Gerald Isaaman’s suggestion for a column in the Ham and High (see below), and are only dated by month. Similar kinds of later autobiographical notes were put together with Journals from the Ant-Heap in a single volume called Intermittent Journals.

Here is Abse’s explanation of how he came to publish Journals from the Ant-Heap.

‘Gerald Isaaman, the editor of a local newspaper in London, the Hampstead and Highgate Express, affectionately known as the Ham and High, is a great admirer of George Orwell. In December 1983, recalling Orwell’s once lively column for Tribune entitled ‘As I Please’, he decided that, during 1984, he would like a similar series to grace the pages of the Ham and High.

George Orwell, alas, was not available. So he cast around other writers, shortlisting a number of them, no doubt alphabetically, for soon he telephoned me. I could not mimic Orwell. I could only write my own kind of prose. Gerald did not seem to mind and I agreed to offer him a fortnightly autobiographical column for one year only. He was to call my non-Orwellian ‘As I Please’ ‘ABSE’s 1984’. He proved to be an ideal editor. He only occasionally made suggestions and never changed my copy.

In March 1985 it was suggested to me that I protract my journal so that it could be published in book form. I could continue writing it, of course, as I pleased, and more importantly, when I pleased. I cannot pretend that I have not enjoyed conjugating occasional autobiographical items while I have been based in London or in South Wales. And I hope they will amuse like-minded readers. They are not private diary entries but were written, as all journalism is, as a public secret.’

Abse dedicated Journals from the Ant-Heap ‘To Margaret and Giles Gordon’ (Hat’s parents); and here is one extract from the book, in which Abse reflects on the Cosmo days, and mentions Frederic/Fred, my father - approximately 20 years before Hat and I were to meet.

March-April 1986
‘We decided to dine out to celebrate the arrival of an advance copy of my new book of poems, As the Bloody Horse. We chose to eat at The Cosmo in Swiss Cottage. Joan and I had not visited that Viennese café for years but suddenly, in nostalgic mood, we wanted to make a return journey to 1949. In the post-war years, when I was a medical student, instead of studying in my ‘digs’ in Aberdare Gardens, NW6, [. . .] I often spent an evening gossiping and arguing with other Cosmo habitués.

Because of the refugees who had come to live in small rooms scattered across Swiss Cottage, this area had become a corner of Vienna with a distinct café life. Soon, young British writers, artists, musicians and burglars, joined the refugees and found the party-going, cigarette-smoking laden atmosphere of The Cosmo congenial. Generally Joan - then Joan Mercer - and I sat in the annexe over one cup of coffee all night but there were occasions when the annexe was too full and its occupants overflowed into the large main restaurant where they had laid white linen table-cloths over the tables in order to encourage their clientele to eat something!

It was to the main restaurant that we now repaired. It had hardly changed. There was something old-fashioned about the place, something outmoded, as if the clock had stopped not so much in 1949 but in pre-war Vienna. [. . .] It was odd to gaze around the restaurant and observe not one person known to us. Where were the novelists, youthful once more, Peter Brent, Bernice Rubens, Peter Vansittart? Where the sculptor, Bill Turnbull? Would not Emanuel Litvonoff, Cherry Marshall and Rudi Nassauer come in at any minute? Was Ivor M in jail again? Were Keith Sawbridge, Fred Goldsmith and Old Bondy next door in the annexe arguing the toss? I recalled Jack Ashman, somewhat manic, and Theodore Bikel with his guitar - and the prettier faces of Penny, Noa, Betty, Jacky, Peter the Girl, Nina Shelley. I looked out of the window. Across the road where once had stood the elegant facades of fire-blitzed houses reigned instead W. H. Smith and MacDonalds.

Soon Joan and I were talking about the most remarkable ghost of The Cosmo, Elias Canetti. Canetti, some twenty years older than us, used to insist we called him Canetti, not Elias, since he did not care for his first name.  [. . .] Canetti would sit in The Cosmo regularly, often with pen in hand. When questioned on what he was writing he made it clear that it was a masterpiece. He had been working, he told us, on a book about Crowds and Power for more than a decade. When asked when he would publish it he quite seriously commented that there was plenty of time, that he did not wish to make the mistake Freud had done - contradict himself. ‘I have to be sure,’ he would say passionately. If ever a man believed he would one day receive the Nobel Prize for Literature that man was Elias Canetti. And he was right.’

After Joan’s death, Abse’s output was, understandably, focused on his grief. Apart from poems, he also published a diary - The Presence (Hutchinson, 2007) - he had kept in the year after the tragedy, and this turned out to be more of a bona-fide kind of diary, kept day-by-day, than anything he had published hitherto. The blurb describes it as ‘both a record of present grief and a portrait of a marriage that lasted more than fifty years’. ‘It is an extraordinary document,’ the publisher says, ‘painful but celebratory, funny yet often tragic, bursting with joy as well as sorrow and full of a deep understanding of what it means to be human.’ Here are a few lines from the first extract.

22 September 2005
‘The past survives however much one tries to drive it down and away from one’s consciousness. It rears up provoked by something overheard or a scene, a place, an object, a tune, a scent even. It is inescapable. But I think how I must count my blessings, though it would have been better if Joan not I had been the one who had crawled out of that capsized car. She would have been much more self-sufficient. Count your blessings, son, my mother used to say. A cliché. At times of stress, clichés, family sayings, proverbs, are drawn to the mind like a magnet. I do count my blessings: at night, though I don’t sleep well, I am unable to lie on my right side now that the stress-fractures of the right thoracic cage have healed; the scar on my chin and neck are hardly visible; my left thumb, though oddly angled, is less troublesome and it is no bad thing that I’ve lost a stone in weight. Presumably the latter is due as much to my increased metabolic rate as it is to the lack of Joan’s tempting and nutritious cooking. At least I hope I haven’t developed an over-active thyroid. I take my pulse and note it is raised though not alarmingly so. Do I write all this down as an aide-mémoire for my future self?’

Finally, I turn to my own diaries and find but one significant mention of Abse - yet another synchronous connection.

30 May 1977
‘Who is Dannie Abse? Yesterday evening my mother showed me a book of his poems, an old friend  of Frederic, I was told, before I was born. A poem ‘Epithalamium’ was pointed out - ‘Today I married my white lady in a barley field’. This evening I walk in to Pentameters because I have nothing else to do. Astonishingly, the man himself is reading tonight. I am anxious to meet him.’

This article is a slightly revised version of one first published on 28 September 2014.

Lafcadio Hearn in Japan

‘Then came the tug-of-war. A magnificent tug-of-war, too, one hundred students at one end of a rope, and another hundred at the other. But the most wonderful spectacles of the day were the dumb-bell exercises. Six thousand boys and girls, massed in ranks about five hundred deep.’ This is Lafcadio Hearn, a Greek-born Anglo-Irish writer, who died 120 years ago today, writing in a diary he kept while working as a teacher in Japan. Indeed, having emigrated from the US, he became very well-known for writing many books about Japan. Even in his diary entries, he seems fascinated by the traditions and culture of the Japanese people, and in the Oriental minds of his young pupils.

Hearn was born on the island of Lefkada (after which he was named), Greece, in 1850, the son of an Anglo-Irish surgeon-major in the British army and a Greek mother. His parents had a troubled relationship, which soon led to divorce. Neither parent was interested in Lafcadio, and he was brought up by another disinterested relative in Dublin. Nevertheless, he received a decent education, partly in France, partly in Durham, until his guardians went bankrupt. Aged 16, he suffered an injury to his left eye which left him partially blind and shy about his appearance.

In 1869, when his guardians had recovered some financial stability, they paid for Hearn to travel to the US, to Cincinnati, Ohio, to stay with relatives. However, these relatives gave him little assistance, and, for a while, he took menial jobs to survive. With a talent for writing, he gained a reporter’s job on the Cincinnati Daily Enquirer in 1872, and soon developed a reputation for his journalistic audacity and for sensational articles about murders. In 1874, he and a friend set up a weekly journal of culture and satire, Ye Giglampz. That same year he married Alethea (Mattie) Foley, an African-American woman, but the marriage violated Ohio law, and, in response to religious lobbying, he was fired from his job. He went to work for the rival newspaper The Cincinnati Commercial.

Tired of the city, and divorced from Foley, Hearn moved to New Orleans in 1877, where he lived for a decade, writing for, and editing city newspapers. He wrote many articles for national magazines (such as Harper’s Weekly), and books about the city, and is credited with helping create the popular reputation of New Orleans as a place with a distinct culture more akin to that of Europe and the Caribbean than to the rest of North America. He also translated French authors into English.

In 1887, Hearn accepted an invitation from Harper’s to become a West Indies correspondent, and he lived in Martinique for two years. After that, though, he decided to go to Japan. Upon his arrival in Yokohama in the spring of 1890, he was befriended by Basil Hall Chamberlain of Tokyo Imperial University, and officials at the Ministry of Education. At their encouragement, he moved to Matsue, to teach English at Shimane Prefectural Common Middle School and Normal School. There he moved in distinguished circles, and later married Setsu Koizumi, the daughter of a local samurai family. He had the Japanese name Koizumi Yakumo.

Hearn stayed over a year in Matsue, moving on to another teaching position in Kumamoto, Kyushu, for a further three years. In 1894, he secured a journalism position with the English-language Kobe Chronicle, and in 1896, with some assistance from Chamberlain, he began teaching English literature at Tokyo (Imperial) University, a post he held until 1903, and at Waseda University. He died on 26 September 1904, having written and published many books on Japan - a full bibliography can be found on Steve Tussel’s Lafcadio Hearn site. Further biographical information on Hearn can be found at Wikipedia, the magazine Humanities, or The Japan Times.

Among his many different kinds of books, Hearn left behind a couple of diaries, neither covering more than a short period: one written in Florida in 1887, and the other written just after taking up his first teaching post in Japan. Both these are freely available at Internet Archive. The first published was From the Diary of an English Teacher included in Glimpses of Unfamiliar Japan (Volume II) published by Houghton Mifflin and Company (Boston and New York) in 1894. Later the diary was re-published in other Lafcadio Hearn volumes, such as Diaries and Letters, in English and Japanese, translated and annotated by R. Tanabe. Posthumously, in 1911, Houghton Mifflin published Hearn’s Leaves from the Diary of an Impressionist, which includes a diary called Floridian Reveries.

Here are several extracts from Hearn’s Japanese diary.

15 October 1890
‘To-day I witnessed the annual athletic contests of all the schools in Shimane Ken. These games were celebrated in the broad castle grounds of Ninomaru. Yesterday a circular race-track had been staked off, hurdles erected for leaping, thousands of wooden seats prepared for invited or privileged spectators, and a grand lodge built for the Governor, all before sunset. The place looked like a vast circus, with its tiers of plank seats rising one above the other, and the Governor’s lodge magnificent with wreaths and flags. School children from all the villages and towns within twenty-five miles had arrived in surprising multitude. Nearly six thousand boys and girls were entered to take part in the contests. Their parents and relatives and teachers made an imposing assembly upon the benches and within the gates. And on the ramparts over-looking the huge enclosure a much larger crowd had gathered, representing perhaps one third of the population of the city.

The signal to begin or to end a contest was a pistol-shot. Four different kinds of games were performed in different parts of the grounds at the same time, as there was room enough for an army; and prizes were awarded for the winners of each contest by the hand of the Governor himself.

There were races between the best runners in each class of the different schools; and the best runner of all proved to be Sakane, of our own fifth class, who came in first by nearly forty yards without seeming even to make an effort. He is our champion athlete, and as good as he is strong, so that it made me very happy to see him with his arm full of prize books. He won also a fencing contest decided by the breaking of a little earthenware saucer tied to the left arm of each combatant. And he also won a leaping match between our older boys.

But many hundreds of other winners there were too, and many hundreds of prizes were given away. There were races in which the runners were tied together in pairs, the left leg of one to the right leg of the other. There were equally funny races, the winning of which depended on the runner’s ability not only to run, but to crawl, to climb, to vault, and to jump alternately. There were races also for the little girls, pretty as butterflies they seemed in their sky-blue hakama and many-coloured robes, races in which the contestants had each to pick up as they ran three balls of three different colours out of a number scattered over the turf. Besides this, the little girls had what is called a flag-race, and a contest with battledores and shuttlecocks.

Then came the tug-of-war. A magnificent tug-of-war, too, one hundred students at one end of a rope, and another hundred at the other. But the most wonderful spectacles of the day were the dumb-bell exercises. Six thousand boys and girls, massed in ranks about five hundred deep; six thousand pairs of arms rising and falling exactly together; six thousand pairs of sandalled feet advancing or retreating together, at the signal of the masters of gymnastics, directing all from the tops of various little wooden towers; six thousand voices chanting at once the “one, two, three,” of the dumb-bell drill: “Ichi, ni, - san, shi, - go roku, - shichi, hachi.”

Last came the curious game called “Taking the Castle.” Two models of Japanese towers, about fifteen feet high, made with paper stretched over a framework of bamboo, were set up, one at each end of the field. Inside the castles an inflammable liquid had been placed in open vessels, so that if the vessels were overturned the whole fabric would take fire. The boys, divided into two parties, bombarded the castles with wooden balls, which passed easily through the paper walls; and in a short time both models were making a glorious blaze. Of course the party whose castle was the first to blaze lost the game.

The games began at eight o’clock in the morning, and at five in the evening came to an end. Then at a signal fully ten thousand voices pealed out the superb national anthem “Kimi ga yo,” and concluded it with three cheers for their Imperial Majesties, the Emperor and Empress of Japan.

The Japanese do not shout or roar as we do when we cheer. They chant. Each long cry is like the opening tone of an immense musical chorus: A-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a!’

3 November 1890
‘To-day is the birthday of His Majesty the Emperor. It is a public holiday throughout Japan; and there will be no teaching this morning. But at eight o’clock all the students and instructors enter the great assembly hall of the Jinjo Chugakko to honour the anniversary of His Majesty’s august birth.

On the platform of the assembly hall a table, covered with dark silk, has been placed and upon this table the portraits of Their Imperial Majesties, the Emperor and the Empress of Japan, stand side by side upright, framed in gold. The alcove above the platform has been decorated with flags and wreaths.

Presently the Governor enters, looking like a French general in his gold-embroidered uniform of office, and followed by the Mayor of the city, the Chief Military Officer, the Chief of Police, and all the officials of the provincial government. These take their places in silence to left and right of the platform. Then the school organ suddenly rolls out the slow, solemn, beautiful national anthem; and all present chant those ancient syllables, made sacred by the reverential love of a century of generations [. . .]

The anthem ceases. The Governor advances with a slow dignified step from the right side of the apartment to the centre of the open space before the platform and the portraits of Their Majesties, turns his face to them, and bows profoundly. Then he takes three steps forward toward the platform, and halts, and bows again. Then he takes three more steps forward, and bows still more profoundly. Then he retires, walking backward six steps, and bows once more. Then he returns to his place.

After this the teachers, by parties of six, perform the same beautiful ceremony. When all have saluted the portrait of His Imperial Majesty, the Governor ascends the platform and makes a few eloquent remarks to the students about their duty to their Emperor, to their country, and to their teachers. Then the anthem is sung again; and all disperse to amuse themselves for the rest of the day.’

4 April 1891
‘The Students of the third, fourth, and fifth year classes write for me once a week brief English compositions upon easy themes which I select for them. As a rule the themes are Japanese. Considering the immense difficulty of the English language to Japanese students, the ability of some of my boys to express their thoughts in it is astonishing. Their compositions have also another interest for me as revelations, not of individual character, but of national sentiment, or of aggregate sentiment of some sort or other. What seems to me most surprising in the compositions of the average Japanese student is that they have no personal cachet at all. Even the handwriting of twenty English compositions will be found to have a curious family resemblance; and striking exceptions are too few to affect the rule. Here is one of the best compositions on my table, by a student at the head of his class. Only a few idiomatic errors have been corrected:

“THE MOON

The Moon appears melancholy to those who are sad, and joyous to those who are happy. The Moon makes memories of home come to those who travel, and creates home-sickness. So when the Emperor Godaigo, having been banished to Oki by the traitor Hojo, beheld the moonlight upon the seashore, he cried out, ‘The Moon is heartless!’

The sight of the Moon makes an immeasurable feeling in our hearts when we look up at it through the clear air of a beauteous night.

Our hearts ought to be pure and calm like the light of the Moon.

Poets often compare the Moon to a Japanese mirror and indeed its shape is the same when it is full.

The refined man amuses himself with the Moon. He seeks some house looking out upon water, to watch the Moon, and to make verses about it.

The best places from which to see the Moon are Tsukigashi, and the mountain Obasute.

The light of the Moon shines alike upon foul and pure, upon high and low. That beautiful Lamp is neither yours nor mine, but everybody’s.

When we look at the Moon we should remember that its waxing and its waning are the signs of the truth that the culmination of all things is likewise the beginning of their decline.”

Any person totally unfamiliar with Japanese educational methods might presume that the foregoing composition shows some original power of thought and imagination. But this is not the case. I found the same thoughts and comparisons in thirty other compositions upon the same subject. Indeed, the compositions of any number of middle-school students upon the same subject are certain to be very much alike in idea and sentiment - though they are none the less charming for that. As a rule the Japanese student shows little originality in the line of imagination. His imagination was made for him long centuries ago - partly in China, partly in his native land. From his childhood he is trained to see and to feel Nature exactly in the manner of those wondrous artists who, with a few swift brush-strokes, fling down upon a sheet of paper the colour-sensation of a chilly dawn, a fervid noon, an autumn evening.

Through all his boyhood he is taught to commit to memory the most beautiful thoughts and comparisons to be found in his ancient native literature. Every boy has thus learned that the vision of Fuji against the blue resembles a white half-opened fan, hanging inverted in the sky. Every boy knows that cherry-trees in full blossom look as if the most delicate of flushed summer clouds were caught in their branches. Every boy knows the comparison between the falling of certain leaves on snow and the casting down of texts upon a sheet of white paper with a brush. Every boy and girl knows the verses comparing the print of cat’s-feet on snow to plum-flowers, and that comparing the impression of bokkuri on snow to the Japanese character for the number “two,” These were thoughts of old, old poets; and it would be very hard to invent prettier ones. Artistic power in composition is chiefly shown by the correct memorising and clever combination of these old thoughts.

And the students have been equally well trained to discover a moral in almost everything, animate or inanimate.’

This article is a slightly revised version of one first published on 26 September 2014.

His eye became dull

‘This day cut short all our hopes and fears about our only remaining boy. At an early hour this morning his eye became dull, Anna tried repeatedly to make him take nourishing drink, but without effect.’ This is from the diary of John Allen Giles, an historian primarily known as a scholar of Anglo-Saxon language and history, who died 140 years ago. Though his long diary is full of relatively short and mundane entries (even about his own wedding), he does occasionally write more emotionally and at length, as in the entry about the death of his son.

Giles was born in 1808 at Southwick House, in Mark, Somerset. He was educated at Charterhouse and Corpus Christi College, Oxford, successfully completing his degree and MA before becoming a fellow at the same college. Though planning to become a barrister, his parents persuaded him to go into the church. He was ordained deacon in 1832 and priest in 1835. He held the curacy of Cossington, Somerset, jointly with the headship of Bridgwater School. In 1833, he married Anna Sarah Dickinson, with whom he had four children; that same year vacating his fellowship. 

Having published Scriptores Græci Minores in 1831, and a Latin Grammar in 1833, he was appointed to the headmastership of Camberwell College School, and two years later, headmaster of the City of London School. However, after losing the confidence of staff and pupils he was asked to leave in 1840. He retired to Windlesham Hall, Surrey, a house he had built, and there engaged in literary work, as well as teaching private pupils. In 1846, Giles became curate of Bampton, Oxfordshire, where he continued taking in students, and where he wrote many books, at least two of which were suppressed by Samuel Wilberforce, bishop of Oxford. He produced, among others, editions of most of the major English medieval chroniclers, including The British History of Geoffrey of Monmouth (1842), Bede’s Ecclesiastical History (1847), and The Whole Works of King Alfred the Great (1858),

In 1855, Giles was imprisoned for falsifying details of a wedding ceremony (which had been an act of kindness for one of his employees), serving three months of a year-long sentence. He moved to Notting Hill, and in 1857 took the curacy, with sole charge, of Perivale in Middlesex. In 1861 he became curate of Harmondsworth, but resigned after a year and went to live at Cranford, where he again took on pupils, subsequently moving to Ealing. In 1867 he bought the living of Sutton in Surrey, which he held for 17 years. He died at the rectory there on 24 September 1884. Further information is available at Wikipedia and the Oxford National Dictionary of Biography (log-in required).

Giles kept a diary for most of his adult life. He left behind six manuscript volumes written up, mostly in 1878, as a fair copy from rough contemporaneous notes. The manuscripts were passed down through the family, and eventually gifted to the Bodleian Library. They were edited by David Bromwich for the Somerset Record Society and published in 2000 as The Diary and Memoirs of John Allen Giles. Here are several extracts as found in the published edition.

17 December 1833
‘I was married this morning in Bridgewater parish church and went back to a collation at the house of Mr Dailey at the end of West Street, to which he had lately removed from Huntworth. After the usual ceremonies, Anna and I started in a post chaise towards Bristol on our way to Oxford; but, owing to various delays we did not get beyond Crosse, and stopped for the night at the last inn on the road towards Shut-shelf, at the angle formed by the road over the hill and the road to Axbridge.’

18 December 1833
‘We started this morning rather late by a coach which went in the direction which we intended to take; but before we had gone far, I was seized with pain similar to what I had felt some few months before, and we were obliged to stop at Whitechurch, where I passed the night very ill at ease. The people at the Inn did all they could to relieve me.’

19 December 1833
‘I was able to continue the journey to Cheltenham, where we again slept, at the Plough Inn.’

20 December 1833
‘Went on to Oxford and took apartments at a house nearly opposite All Saints church in the High Street. Douglas Giles was residing in St Mary Hall Lane.’

21 December 1833
‘We went to breakfast this morning in Corpus, at the rooms of Crouch, who was next to me in the college list, and by my removal would succeed to a fellowship. After breakfast he went off to Christ Church cathedral to be ordained, but seemed much puzzled to know whether it was necessary for him to wear a white neck-tie or not.’

6 February 1934
‘We went to a large evening party or conversazione at Mr Cantwell’s , No25 Wimpole street. Old Mr Wood, for some time an itinerant lecturer on ancient history, was present. He once spent an evening at my father’s house, and somewhat astonished me both in history and etymology. He said Stonehenge was an antediluvian structure destroyed by the deluge, and derived “righteous’’ not from “right,” but as a corruption from “rightwise.” He however made himself very agreeable this evening, and showed that he was in general very well informed.’

16 February 1934
‘Our man servant John went to Mr Pickering’s in Chancery Lane and brought home the works of Matthew Paris. The same morning Mr Charles Grant, who had taken the pencil drawing (coloured) of me several years before at Oxford, took a sitting of Anna and me for the oil paintings which we still have.’

18 February 1934
‘Anna and 1 dined with Mr Melhuish, a most wealthy and respectable merchant, living at Peckham. His son, who attended the Camberwell Collegiate School, was a very genteel and well-behaved boy, but backward in his learning, from ill health. He had some complaint in his knee, and had a stump fixed to it, on which he walked, the leg sticking out behind him caused him much embarrassment in moving about among the school-boys.’

21 February 1934
‘I spent the afternoon at the British Museum, copying out some Latin poems of George Herbert, which I was preparing to edit for Mr Pickering.’

3 March 1934
‘Anna and I dined at Mr Webb’s, where we met Dr Laing and his two daughters Nancy and Jemima. Mr Walsh also, who held a good appointment in the Custom House, an antiquary, a virtuoso, and a dandy, was present; also another gentleman who knew Bp Heber and W. H. Ireland who forged the Shakespear Manuscripts. Dr Laing kept a school of verv respectable boys, and Anna knew him from her childhood.’

24 May 1837
‘This day cut short all our hopes and fears about our only remaining boy. At an early hour this morning his eye became dull, Anna tried repeatedly to make him take nourishing drink, but without effect. At a quarter before 7 o’clock she offered him some, but he said “No, no!”. She said to him “Arté, Arté, where’s papa?” Upon which he threw back his right arm over, as I lay beside him in the bed. At 7 o’clock his breathing for a minute or two became thick: the dreadful cough was coming on, but want of strength prevented it; one or two long gasps for breath succeeded, and my poor child was gone. The room was still covered with his playthings, the box of tools which Smith the baker had given him only a week before, and the box of bricks which had so often furnished him amusement. His third birthday, if he had lived so long, would have been the 10th of September. He had endeared himself to all the family in a thousand ways: no doubt the case is the same with other persons in the case of their first two or three children, and we now felt that our house was left desolate. The little fellow used to sit with me every day in my little library at Camberwell, whilst I was writing, and would play for hours with an old knife, wooden spoon, steel pencil-case, ivory paper-knife, piece of sealing-wax and many other such articles, which I kept in the cabinet, and took out occasionally to amuse him. It was not 2 months ago that I found him in the long passage of the City of London School running up and down among 300 of the boys, all of whom seemed as delighted as he was. He was a general favourite with all our friends both at Camberwell and elsewhere. He was an especial favourite with my father and all at Frome. His second visit to Frome in last December & January had particularly endeared him to my father, who seldom came into the room without taking him on his knee and singing the old song “Arthur O’Bradley.” That which gave me the greatest pleasure was the readiness with which he acquired the names of my books. Those which he knew the best were - The Byzantine Historians - Dr Johnson’s Works - Dr Lardner’s Works - Sir Philip Sydney - The Cruquian Scholiast - Gregorius Corinthius - and the Forty Commentators. Thus, by his death our house was desolate. In the afternoon we received the visits of several friends, all of whom were grieved but not surprized to hear what had happened.’

25 May 1837
‘Mrs Thurlby, of Camberwell Grove, called and sate more than two hours with us. She was deeply grieved at the loss of our poor boy, whom, next to her only child Ann, she loved better than any body in the world. The last time she had called before this, about a week ago, Arthur no sooner saw her than he asked for a watch which she used to give him to play with, when he was at her house, which was next to our own at Camberwell. The last visit he paid her was about 5 weeks ago: I carried him part of the way, and he walked the rest, until we reached Mr Thurlby’s house. As we passed our old residence in Chatham Place, No 17, in Camberwell Grove, he said pointing to it “Der is de old house, papa!” As Mr Coleman, who occupied it, was my undertenant until my own tenancy expired, we went in to call, and Arthur went at once to the folding doors which separated the dining room from the library behind it, and said “Is dat papa’s liblaly?

3 February 1862
‘Date of a letter to me from my college friend Dr Bloxam about the Chichele professorship of History at Oxford, for which I meant to become a candidate. But my connection with Oxford was now so slight that I had little chance, and indeed cared little about it. I am naturally disinclined to discharge public duties, and above all things hate committees, whereas in these days almost every thing is done by a committee.’

13 February 1862
‘I was agreeably surprized at receiving a letter from the Rev. Evan Davies, formerly master of the Grammar School at Dorchester, of whom I had heard nothing for 40 years - Also an almost illegible letter from a stranger Mr Upton of Cashel in Ireland.

23 April 1862
‘This morning, as I was in Bosworth’s shop in Regent Street, Mr Herbert Watkin, who occupied the rooms upstairs, ran down and begged me to go up and sit for a photograph. I went by invitation to a conversazione at the Marybone Institution, where the first thing I saw was my own photograph in a frame over the fire-place.

Mr Herbert Watkin no doubt knew that I had delivered a lecture at the rooms of that institution and therefore was likely to be known to the members.

About this time I got many letters from my friends hoping I should obtain the professorship at Oxford, and from others who tried to assist me.’

24 May 1862
‘This afternoon as my servant was driving me home from W. Drayton in my dog-cart some pleasure vans came furiously along the road and struck against us, breaking the carriage in such a way that, although the owner of the vans professed to mend it, the cart was fit for nothing afterwards.’

5 July 1862
‘A garden party at Fulham Palace.’

18 August 1862
‘A letter dated this day reached me at Frank’s house, Stourbridge, but I was so pressed for time that I was obliged to return home without going to see William and Anna Louisa as I could have wished.

About this time I began to enquire about an advowson of some living which I might buy, so as to present Herbert to it hereafter. Also at this very time Mr DeBurgh, instigated by his wife, who hated me as a liberal churchman, and afterwards became a Roman Catholic, tried to eject me from the vicarage house at Harmondsworth. I of course resisted, and compelled him to consent to my remaining up to a certain time, when I promised to give up the Vicarage House.’

16 September 1862
‘Date of a letter from Sophy de Vere with a polite invitation from Mrs O’Brien to pay them a visit. Mrs O’Brien told Sophy that she could not put down my life of Thomas à Becket, so thoroughly did she agree with me about him.

Gustavus von Holst

Today marks the 150th anniversary of the birth of Gustavus Theodore von Holst, British composer of The Planets, one of the Western world’s most famous and popular pieces of music. He was a consummate man of music, not only a composer, but a conductor, a concert trombone player, and a pioneering teacher. From his early 30s, he began to keep appointment diaries which, from the end of World War I, according to one biographer, ‘become true diaries’. The title of the biography promises ‘Diary Excerpts’, unfortunately there are so few quoted extracts, and none of any length, it is impossible to get a sense of Holst the diarist.

Holst was born in Cheltenham, England, on 21 September 1874. His father, a professional musician, was of mixed European ancestry with many musicians among his forefathers. His mother, too, was talented musically. When she died in 1882, his father remarried. Gustav was educated at Cheltenham Grammar School, where he learned various instruments and began composing. On leaving school, he studied counterpoint in Oxford for a short time with George Frederick Sims, before taking his first job as an organist and choirmaster. In late 1891, he gave a first public piano recital (by when he was using the shortened name Gustav), with his father, in Cheltenham. And, the following year, music he had written for a Gilbert and Sullivan-style operetta was performed in the town.

Holst moved to London in 1893, to study at the Royal College of Music, winning a scholarship in his third year, and supporting himself by playing trombone in London theatres, and at seaside resorts during the summers. At the College, he studied, in particular, composition under Charles Villiers Stanford. Richard Wagner’s music soon became an important influence on his emerging style; but, it was Ralph Vaughan Williams, who he met in 1895, and who become a lifelong friend, who would have more influence on his music than anyone else.

Although he had had some compositions performed and published, Holst needed to earn money, and he wanted to work as a performer. He took posts as organist in various London churches, and, on leaving the College in 1898, he played the trombone in the Carl Rosa Opera Company and he toured with Scottish Opera. He married Isobel Harrison in 1901, and they had one child, Imogen. (Imogen, who died in 1984, was a successful composer and teacher in her own right, and also kept a diary for a while when she was working with Benjamin Britten.)

By 1903, Holst had decided he wanted to focus on composing, but, as money was still tight, he took up various teaching posts, at girls’ schools in Dulwich and Hammersmith, at Morley College, and at Passmore Edwards Settlement (now the Mary Ward Centre). His teaching would come to be seen as pioneering new ways in musical education. In composing, Holst was often inspired by literary texts - Thomas Hardy, Walt Whitman, the Ramayana (having studied Sanskrit, he made his own translations). He also drew on national folk music (although his friend Williams became a more passionate exponent of folk song) and on new European music, such as that by Stravinsky. According to Encyclopaedia Britannica, ‘the cosmopolitanism of Holst’s style, rare in English music of his period, lends him a special historical significance’.

Holst tried to enlist at the outbreak of the First World War, but was rejected as unfit for military service. He continued teaching, and it was during this period (1914-1916) that he composed what would become his most famous piece of music - The Planets. In 1918, he was taken on by the YMCA to be a volunteer musical organiser for troops, based in Thessaloniki, Greece. His teaching employers gave him a leave of absence, but the YMCA were worried about his German-sounding name, von Holst, so he changed it by deed pole to Holst. On returning to Britain, he took up additional teaching posts, at Reading university, and, with Williams, at the Royal College of Music.

In the early 1920s, Holst found himself immensely popular, not only because of The Planets, which had found success across the Atlantic, but with The Hymn of Jesus and The Perfect Fool. He undertook a lecturing and conducting tour in the US, but then the strain of being in demand for conducting, teaching, and working on his compositions, led to a kind of breakdown. On the instructions of his doctor, he cancelled all professional engagements in 1924, after which he only resumed teaching at St Paul’s Girls’ School in Hammersmith. Some later works, such as the First Choral Symphony and Egdon Heath, were not so well received by critics and audiences as his earlier works. In 1927, Cheltenham organised a Holst Festival.

In his final years, Holst continued to make gruelling conducting and lecturing tours to the US (including at Yale in 1929 and at Harvard in 1932) and to compose (A Choral Fantasia, for example, and, for the pupils at St Paul’s, Brook Green Suite). After his 1932 trip, however, he fell ill; and he died in early 1934. Further biographical information can be found at Wikipedia, Kenric Taylor’s Holst website, or Music Sales Classical,

Holst left behind a large volume of letters which were employed by Jon Ceander Mitchell (professor at University of Massachusetts Boston) to construct a biography. This was published in 2001 by the New York-based Edwin Mellen Press (which describes itself as a non-subsidy academic publisher). In this book - A Comprehensive Biography of Composer Gustav Holst with Correspondence and Diary Excerpts - Mitchell states: ‘In addition to the letters, Holst left a plethora of other primary sources of information. Extant diaries begin in 1912. At first Holst used these simply as appointment books but, beginning with his eight-month stint with the British YMCA at the end of World War I, they become true diaries which give us details about daily events in the composer’s life. Closely related to the Diaries are Holst’s surviving Notebooks, which begin in 1913. These contain Holst’s “laundry lists,” often referring to plans for international travel, but sometimes containing some of the composer’s innermost thoughts.’

However, in apparent contradiction to his title, Mitchell rarely includes any diary excerpts in the book. He does use the diaries extensively to source facts about Holst’s movements and activities, and, very occasionally, includes a quoted phrase. As for actual excerpts, a sentence or more long, I could find only one! Here is that one diary excerpt, and a couple of extracts from Mitchell’s book where he mentions Holst’s diary.

16 November 1915 [waiting for a boat from southern Italy to Corfu]
‘Visit officials and buy food for boat in morning. Get on board 2PM via small boat.
Boat supposed to start at 5 PM
Passage [supposed to] last 15 hours
Boat does not start at all. Hung up all night.’

1932
Mitchell says Holst took his teaching at Harvard seriously: ‘He followed through, keeping tabs not only with the progress of the individuals, but also with the progress of the classes as a whole. Diary entries confirm this, from “small class and little work” [23 February] to “good class with lots of work.” [25 February] Holst’s concerns for and frustrations incurred from his students affected him more and more as the term progressed. His diary entry for Wednesday, March 2 confirms this: “evening concert of my pupils’ music with subsequent bad nights.” ’

1933
Mitchell says: ‘The classical symphonic cycle had always interested Holst, yet it had always befuddled him. To this point he had made four attempts [. . .] His fifth and final attempt was to have been an orchestral symphony. In late 1932, possibly at Durham Cathedral, he had written sketches for an Allegro, an Adagio, and a Finale. Preliminary sketches for the Scherzo came later, on March 22, 1933, when he was bedridden at Elm Crescent. According to his Diary entries, Holst began actual work on the rough draft on Sunday, July 30th and finished it on Friday, August 18th. One month later, on September 16th, he finished the two-piano version of the Scherzo. [. . .] In spite of a rather abrupt ending, the Scherzo, at just over five minutes, is long enough to stand on its own as an independent composition. As such, it is Holst’s last completed work.’

This article is a slightly revised version of one first published on 21 September 2014.

Scenery fantastic - like home

A few days ago, it was Reinhold Messner’s 90th birthday, and today it is the centenary of the birth of Messner’s hero, Hermann Buhl - both climbers marked, in particular, by their experiences on Nanba Parbat, the ninth highest mountain in the world. Some of the content of Buhl’s expedition diaries - including entries written in the days prior to his famous ascent of Nanba Parbart - has been made public thanks to a book co-authored by Messner.

Buhl was born in Innsbruck, the youngest of four children, on 21 September 1924. After the death of his mother, he spent years in an orphanage. He appears to have been a sensitive and sickly teenager, but took up climbing, and, in 1939, joined the Innsbruck chapter of the Deutscher Alpenverein (the German Alpine association). He was soon mastering the most difficult climbs, and became a member of the local mountain rescue team. World War II interrupted his studies, and he did service with the Alpine troops, seeing action in Italy before being taken prisoner by the US. After the war, he returned to Innsbruck where he trained as a mountain guide, and made many spectacular climbs in the Alps, often solo.

In 1951, Buhl married Eugenie Högerle and they would have three daughters. In late 1952, he was invited to participate in the Austro-German “Willy Merkl Memorial” Expedition to Nanga Parbat (Merkl had led a fatal expedition to the mountain in 1934). Up to this time, no one had yet reached the peak, and 31 people had died trying. The expedition was organised by Merkl’s half-brother, Karl Herrligkoffer from Munich, but the expedition leader was Peter Aschenbrenner, from Innsbruck. Buhl made mountaineering history when, on 3 July, having seen his companions turn back, he reached the summit, solo, and without oxygen. It was 40 hours before he managed to return to camp, having bivouacked during darkness, standing upright on a narrow ledge.

In 1957, Buhl became the first man to top two eight-thousander peaks, when he reached the summit of Broad Peak with an Austrian team led by Marcus Schmuck. This was accomplished in the so-called Alpine style, without the aid of supplemental oxygen, high altitude porters or even base camp support. Two weeks later, Buhl fell to his death when he and another of the team attempted to climb nearby Chogolisa Peak. Further information is available from Wikipedia and The Alpinist. 

Buhl’s book, Nanga Parbat Pilgrimage, published in English by Hodder and Stoughton in 1981, has become a classic of the genre. This can be read freely online at Internet Archive as can a more staid book - Nanga Parbat, incorporating the Official Report of the Expedition of 1953 by Herrligkoffer - which includes Buhl’s own account of his ascent.

Buhl kept expedition diaries during most of his climbs, including the famous Nanga Parbat ascent. Although these have not been published separately, they have been used, and quoted from extensively, in Hermann Buhl - Climbing without Compromise by Reinhold Messner and Horst Hofler, published by The Mountaineers in 2000. (See also the recent Diary Review article, Death on Nanga Parbat, for more on Messner who was much influenced by Buhl.)

The book, Climbing without Compromise, starts with various essays about Buhl, including homages by Messner and Hofler, but the substance of the book consists of original texts written by Buhl himself, essays and reports on his climbs, and some diaries: three early ones (1941, 1942-43 and 1944-50) and two expedition diaries from the 1953 ascent of Nanga Parbat. The book, which is lavishly illustrated with photographs, and includes an appendix of Buhl’s route climbs, can be digitally borrowed at Internet Archive.

Part of the authors’ commentary with regard to the 1953 Austro-German expedition to Nanga Parbat is as follows: ‘Although Buhl is superior by far to all the members of the expedition team, he must first fit into the group. If anyone is capable of conquering Nanga Parbat, it is he. Buhl’s diary entries, written in the tent at the high camps and down at base camp, contain the true essence of the man and give us an insight like no other document into the daily expedition routine - at times very wearing - and even into the subsequent division of the team. We discover quite a lot about the lack of organization on the part of the leadership, and about the bigotry of the few dilettantes, who first try to stop the brilliant Buhl at base camp and who then want to monopolize him after his success. The narrow-minded way in which they try to force Buhl into the yoke of their group mentality is material for psychologists. It is a good thing that Buhl is not a man who would let himself be forced into anything.’

Here are a few extracts from Buhl’s expedition diary as quoted in the Messner/Hofler book.

12 May 1953
‘Wonderful path through pine woods, completely, wildly romantic, reminds me of Karwendel. First view of Nanga. Fairy-tale meadows, really fantastically beautiful. Temporary camp in a moraine hollow at the edge of the woods.

At 12 o’clock the dispatching of the coolies begins. Wild chaos, wild shouting. A large tent and two normal tents are pitched. Approximate height 3700 meters. Scenery fantastic, just like home.’

31 May 1953
‘Base camp.
. . . Peter, who is out hunting, comes back in the afternoon, asks about Kuno and then lays into me because everyone is doing exactly as he pleases. If we don’t want to obey the orders we should go on our own . . .

As Peter says nothing to me about going up, I ask him again. As my altimeter is broken and we only have one between four, as opposed to Base Camp where there are four altimeters, I would like to swap mine, also on the wishes of the others. After asking several times and being told we could manage with one, I eventually get Albert’s. I don’t even want to mention the map - although there are five of those at Base Camp.

As I set off Peter tells me not to be such an egoist. I don’t really understand and ask why. He finally says it’s because of the altimeter. It’s all too much for me so I give it back to him and leave. Peter calls me and then comes after me. Gives me the altimeter back and tells me not to be so childish, he had put himself out for me, and after all they were not dependent on me, and could manage without me, whereupon I leave. It takes me 50 minutes to get to Camp 1, it is snowing heavily again. Walter is waiting for me up there.’

21 June 1953
‘Camp 4
High winds during the night. Entrance under a meter of windblown snow, tent no longer visible at all. Set off at 8:30 with a 100 m rope up the Rakhiot ice wall. Stretched it out with other bits of gear at the bottom, but still 30 m short of the bergschrund. Traverse behind the Rakhiot Shoulder prepared: smooth ice . . . Cut many steps, weather good but windy.

Then a diagonal traverse up brittle snow to Rakhiot Peak. Strong wind and cold. Climbed the last needle, IV, without gloves; just like being at home. First seven thousander, 7070 m. Otto stayed down below.

Over the summit, down the other side without rope. Wonderful view to Silbersattel and Nanga, particularly the South Face above the fog.

Climbed down to Moor’s Head, left snow shovel behind. Mist whipping up the ridge. Traverse back to Rakhiot Face. Send Otto back to cook something while I cut a ladder of steps down the Face. Three porters, Hermann and Kuno are at the Camp. I arrive at 7 o’clock but no food is ready yet. There are two tents in the hollow.

Tomorrow we are supposed to go to Camp 5. I’m already looking forward to it.’

1 July 1953
‘Camp 4
Set off for Camp 4 at 6 a.m., Walter, Hans and I with three porters. Otto stays at Camp 3 for another day. He does not feel very well and wants to rest up for another day and follow on with Madi the next day. Wonderful weather, no clouds as far as you can see, haze in the valley, best indication of a lasting period of good weather. Minus 20 degrees in the morning, deep snow, difficult to break trail.

Three walkie-talkie calls with Base Camp. Order to retreat; we should rest and then follow new orders for attack. Do not say what those orders are. We don’t even consider climbing down, we’ve never been in such good shape.

Aschenbrenner still at Base Camp. He’s still officially the mountaineering leader, although he handed the task over to Walter days ago. Conversations with a very agitated Ertl end with the message “kiss my arse,” and we continue. Ertl makes us aware that they will have cause to thank us one day . . . Midday at Camp 4. Totally snowed up, first have to dig everything out, very arduous. Then Hans and I each take a 100 m rope and climb up the Rakhiot Face with them, fix them on the traverse to the Moor’s Head and climb down again, while Walter busies himself with the porters, fitting crampons, etc. Back at Camp 4 again at 7 p.m. Slept well all night.’

There is a further entry quoted, for 2 July, and then Messner/Hofler say: ‘Hermann Buhl recorded the summit approach in his diary as far as the Bazhin Gap. The entries end abruptly with the words “Enormous cornice, really hard, steep rock ridge.” ’ They then include one (of several) essays written subsequently by Buhl about his ascent on 3 July.

This article is a slightly revised version of one first published on 21 September 2014.

Death on Nanga Parbat

Happy birthday Reinhold Messner, 80 years old today. An Italian mountaineer, dubbed by some as the greatest climber in history, he was the first to make a solo ascent of Mount Everest without additional oxygen, and he was the first to climb all 14 peaks in the world over 8,000 metres. The first of these was Nanga Parbat, in the western Himalayas, in 1970. During that expedition, his brother, Günther, died. Messner has published many books, but none, as far as I know, could be classed as diaries. Nevertheless, a diary, and the evidence therein, has been at the centre of a controversy blighting his fame since the early 2000s, when several colleagues on the Nanga Parbat climb broke a long silence to claim that, contrary to Messner’s account, he had, in fact, been responsible for his brother’s death.

Messner was born in Brixen, in the very north of Italy, on 17 September 1944, and grew up, fluent in Italian and German, in nearby Villnöß. He was part of a large family, with many brothers; and his father was a teacher. From the age of 13, he began climbing with his younger brother Günther, and by their early 20s, it is said, they were already among the best climbers in Europe. Inspired by the Austrian mountaineer, Hermann Buhl (the first man to climb Nanga Parbat), Messner embraced the so-called alpine style of climbing, with light equipment and a minimum of external help.

In 1970, Messner undertook his first major climb, an ascent of Nanga Parbat. Alhough he and Günther succeeded in ascending the unclimbed Rupal face, Günther lost his life on the descent. (Messner himself lost several toes to frostbite, which meant he could not climb on rock as well, so, thereafter, he focused on higher mountains where the climbing was mostly on ice.) At the time, he was attacked by others for having persisted on the climb even though his brother was less experienced, and these accusations led to various disputes and lawsuits. In 1971, he returned to the mountain to look for his brother.

In the next few years, Messner succeeded in climbing two further eight-thousanders, before ascending Everest in 1978 without supplemental oxygen. Two years later, he made a second Everest ascent, this time solo and without oxygen. He continued climbing the eight-thousanders through to 1986 by when he had become the first man to climb all fourteen of them without supplemental oxygen. After that, Messner eschewed climbing high mountains, preferring to undertake more unusual expeditions, such as skiing across the Antartic (1989-1990), and, more recently (2004), walking across the Gobi Desert.

Messner has written over 80 books, many translated into other languages, including English, with titles such as Free Spirit: A Climber’s Life; The Crystal Horizon: Everest - The First Solo Ascent; All Fourteen 8,000ers; My Quest for the Yeti: Confronting the Himalayas’ Deepest Mystery; and The Big Walls: From the North Face of the Eiger to the South Face of Dhaulagiri. He served as an MEP for the Italian Green Party between 1999 and 2004; he helped found the international NGO, Mountain Wilderness; and he now devotes most of his time to the Messner Mountain Museum, which is located at five different sites in Northern Italy.

There is some biographical material about Messner available in English on the internet, at Wikipedia, for example, at Badass of the Week, and at Youtube (interview in English), but there are also plenty of published books about his life, not least Reinhold Messner: My Life at the Limit.

Although Messner has written many books about his climbing life, none, as far as I can tell, contain actual diary material. However, 30 years after his successful but tragic climb on Nanga Parbat, the controversy over his role in Günther’s death resurfaced. In 2002, Messner published The Naked Mountain, a retelling of the 1970 Nanga Parbat expedition. Even before its publication, though, several of the team’s members had publicly announced they disputed many of the details in Messner’s account. Two of his fellow team members (including Max von Kienlin) published their own books, in Germany, claiming that Messner held far more responsibility for his brother’s death than he had admitted. Messner reacted furiously, and the charges and counter-charges were played out in the European press.

Good summaries of the dispute can be found in 2004 articles in The Guardian, a 2005 article in Men’s Journal, a 2006 article in Outside. and another in Vanity Fair. The details are fairly intricate, but in summary are as National Geographic explained at the time: ‘While Messner claims he led his flagging brother down the Diamir Face as a last resort, some teammates charge that he had planned a solo ascent and traverse of the mountain from early on in the expedition. He had even talked openly about it to his teammates (though not, of course, to expedition leader Herrligkoffer). Americans Willi Unsoeld and Tom Hornbein had become instant legends with their traverse of Everest in 1963. To complete a comparable traverse of Nanga Parbat - solo - would make Messner a mountaineering celebrity on a par with his hero Hermann Buhl. Messner’s critics believe he was so focused on that goal that he placed it ahead of caring for his flagging brother.’

The evidence against Messner depends largely on von Kienlin’s diary, which he reproduces at length in a book, the title of which translates from German as The Traverse: Günther Messner’s Death on Nanga Parbat). Messner, though, claims von Kienen faked the diary pages and added them at a later stage. Messner has also made much play of the locations at which gruesome remains of his brother (first a leg bone, then a boot, then a headless corpse) were found to bolster his own account. Here is a good explanation of the role von Kienlin’s diary has played in the controversy, again from a 2004 National Geographic article:

‘Messner says he’s convinced that two crucial pages of von Kienlin’s diary are fake - written in 2002 or 2003 on “old paper” and stitched into the journal as if penned in 1970. Charlie Buffet, one of Europe’s leading mountaineering journalists, asked Messner about the diary during an interview for Le Monde in late January 2004. (Buffet also assisted in reporting this article.) Messner’s response was blistering: “Yesterday, I was on television in Berlin, and I said publicly that this liar has falsified his journal. If that’s not true, he can sue me. And show his journal, so that I can prove he falsified it and he will go to prison.”

The most devastating charge in von Kienlin’s book, however, concerns the conversations he says he had with Messner himself. The diary describes an anguished talk the two friends had, soon after being reunited in Gilgit, in which the distraught Messner says: “I’ve lost Günther! I called for him. I don’t know why he couldn’t hear me. Maybe he was in bad shape. Maybe he didn’t manage [to climb down]. Maybe he even fell. My God, I didn’t want that!”

The diary depicts Messner as having been overcome with doubts and regret, wailing, “Perhaps I should have gone with him, because alone, he wasn’t capable of it. Why did he follow me? Why?" He hides his face in his hands.

Then von Kienlin’s account adds a stunning twist: Since the tortured Messner is almost incapable of talking, von Kienlin writes, “I feel obligated to guide him.” Messner doesn’t know what to say to their leader, Karl Herrligkoffer, so von Kienlin proposes a face-saving fabrication: “You must not tell K that you intended to make the traverse.”

According to von Kienlin, he himself proffered the fiction that Günther was lost in an avalanche low on the Diamir Face - and understood that he must keep an eternal silence about the ruse.

Messner’s response, as recorded in the diary: “R pulls himself together. ‘You’re right.’ He looks at me with clear eyes.” ’

This article is a slightly revised version of one first published on 17 September 2014.