Dallam travels to Constantinople

‘The 11th day, being Tuesday, we carried our instrument over the water to the Grand Signor’s Court, called the Seraglio, and there in his most stately house I began to set it up.’ This is from a diary kept by Thomas Dallam, organ maker, who travelled to Constantinople in 1599 expressly at the wish of Queen Elizabeth 1, to present and deliver an organ to the Ottoman sultan. Dallam died 360 years ago today, but the diary was not published until the late 19th century.

Dallam was born in Flixton, Lancashire, and trained as an organ maker in London, where he became a member of the Worshipful Company of Blacksmiths. This guild oversaw various trades, including organ building, and Dallam eventually attained the status of liveryman within the company. 

Dallam’s first notable commission came from Queen Elizabeth I who trusted him to construct an elaborate mechanical organ as a diplomatic gift for Sultan Mehmed III of the Ottoman Empire. The organ, which played music automatically and featured moving figures, was a marvel of engineering and artistry. Dallam personally accompanied the instrument on its long and perilous journey to Constantinople. During his time there, he was tasked with assembling and demonstrating the organ at the Topkapi Palace, impressing the Sultan and his court with both the instrument and his ingenuity. See Historic UK for much more on this inc the above sketch.

Upon his return to England in April 1600, Dallam married (but his wife’s name is unknown) and fathered six children. He continued his work as an organ builder, undertaking commissions across the country - Windsor, Worcester Cathedral, St John’s College, Oxford, and Eton College among others. 

In 1626, Dallam was fined by the Blacksmiths’ Company for refusing the office of steward for the lord mayor’s feast, likely due to his professional commitments. He later negotiated to pay the fine in instalments to retain his livery status. His last major commission was the great double organ and choir organ for Bristol Cathedral in 1630, completed with his son Robert. Dallam died on 31 May 1665. The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography says, ‘his achievement was the consolidation of the two-manual ‘double organ’ with twelve to fourteen flue stops (without reeds, mixtures, or pedals) as the norm for English cathedrals and for larger collegiate churches during the pre-civil war period.’

Dallam is probably mostly remembered thanks to a diary he kept on his travels to the Ottoman Empire. His account provides a vivid and rare first-hand glimpse of Constantinople and the Ottoman court at the turn of the 17th century. The diary was first published in 1893 by the Hakluyt Society in Early Voyages and Travels in the Levant. I. The Diary of Master Thomas Dallam, 1599-1600. II. Extracts from the diaries of Dr. John Covel, 1670-1679, as edited by Theodore Bent. (See My dear Lord Harvey’s body for extracts from Covel’s diary.

Although many entries are dated, much of Dallam’s diary reads more like a memoir - the full text can be read at Internet Archive. Moreover, the language and spelling in the 1893 edition is rather old-fashioned and awkward to read. The following longish extract has been rendered more readable by Perplexity AI. 

11 September 1599

The 11th day, being Tuesday, we carried our instrument over the water to the Grand Signor’s Court, called the Seraglio, and there in his most stately house I began to set it up. This water which we crossed from Galata to Seraglio is a stream that comes from the Black Sea, and is called the Hellespont, which separates Asia and Thrace. As it comes down by Galata, a creek of that river goes up into the country about six miles, which separates the two cities of Constantinople and Galata; they may go between them by land, but it is 12 miles, and to cross the water it is only one mile.

At every gate of the Seraglio there always sits a stout Turk, about the rank or degree of a justice of the peace, who is called a chia; nevertheless, the gates are fast shut, for no one passes in or out at their own pleasure.

Having entered within the first gate, there were placed right against the gate five great pieces of brass, with Christian arms upon them. Then we passed through very delightful walks and gardens; the walks are, as it were, hedged in with stately cypress trees, planted at an equal distance from one another, between them and behind them, smaller trees that bear excellent fruit; I think there is nothing good that is missing. The gardens I will omit writing about at this time.

The way from the first gate to the second wall is somewhat rising up a hill, between walls about a quarter of a mile and more. The gates of the second wall were also shut, but when we came to the gate, my interpreter called to those who kept it within. Though they had knowledge of our coming, yet they would not open the gates until we had called and told them our business. These gates are made all of massive iron; two men, whom they call jemeglans, opened them.

Within the first walls there are no houses but one, and that is the bustanjebasha’s house, who is captain of a thousand jemeglanes, who do nothing but keep the gardens in good order; and I am persuaded that there are none so well kept in the world. Within the second walls there are no gardens, but stately buildings; many courts paved with marble and similar stone. Every odd corner has some excellent fruit tree or trees growing in them; also there is great abundance of sweet grapes, of diverse sorts; a man may gather grapes every day of the year. In November, as I sat at dinner, I saw them gather grapes from the vines, and they brought them to me to eat. For the space of a month I dined every day in the Seraglio, and we had grapes every day after our meat; but most certainly it is true that grapes grow there continually.

Coming into the house where I was appointed to set up the present or instrument; it seemed to be rather a church than a dwelling house; to tell the truth, it was not a dwelling house, but a house of pleasure, and likewise a house of slaughter; for in that house was built one little house, very curious both within and without; for carving, gilding, good colours and varnish, I have not seen the like. In this little house, that emperor who reigned when I was there, had nineteen brothers put to death in it, and it was built for no other use but for the strangling of every emperor’s brethren.

This great house itself has in it two rows of marble pillars; the pedestals of them are made of brass, and double gilt. The walls on three sides of the house are walled but halfway to the eaves; the other half is open; but if any storm or great wind should happen, they can suddenly let fall such hangings made of cotton wool for that purpose as will keep out all kinds of weather, and suddenly they can open them again. The fourth side of the house, which is closed and joined to another house, the wall is made of porphyry, or such kind of stone that when a man walks by it he may see himself in it. Upon the ground, not only in this house, but all others that I saw in the Seraglio, we tread upon rich silk carpets, one of them as much as four or six men can carry. There are in this house neither stools, tables, or forms, only one couch of state. There is one side of it a fish pond, that is full of fish that are of diverse colours.

The same day, our Ambassador sent Mr. Paul Pinder, who was then his secretary, with a present to the Sultana, she being at her garden. The present was a Coach of six hundred pounds value. At that time the Sultana took great liking to Mr. Pinder, and afterwards she sent for him to have his private company, but their meeting was prevented.’

By golly, what a day!

‘By golly, what a day! It is seldom that days which one has anticipated in imagination for weeks or months ever measure up to one’s expectations, but this one has gone far beyond.’ This is Joseph Clark Grew - a career American diplomat who died 80 years ago today - starting a long diary entry about the day he took up a posting as ambassador to Japan. He served for nearly a decade in Tokyo, up to and including Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbour, after which he was interned for some months. Once back in the US, he published his diaries under the title Ten Years in Japan.   

Grew was born in 1880, in Boston, Massachusetts, into a prominent New England family with deep roots in American history. He was raised in an environment that valued public service and international awareness, and he received his early education at the private Groton School in Massachusetts, a training ground for many future American leaders. He went on to attend Harvard University, graduating in 1902 with a degree in history.

Grew joined the US Foreign Service in 1904 and quickly proved his competence in various international postings. Early assignments included Cairo, Mexico City, and Berlin, where he gained experience in complex diplomatic environments. His career advanced steadily, and he was posted to major European capitals, including a significant tenure in Vienna. Grew served as secretary of the American delegation to the Versailles Peace Conference in 1919, an important early career milestone. In 1927, he was appointed Ambassador to Switzerland, and later, to Turkey. 

Grew married Alice Perry, the daughter of a US Navy admiral, in 1905, and they would have four children. Alice often accompanied Grew on his foreign postings and played a supportive role in his career, hosting social functions, for example, that were essential to diplomatic work.

Perhaps Grew’s most consequential role was as US Ambassador to Japan from 1932 to 1941. He witnessed firsthand the rising tensions between the US and Japan and attempted to avert the drift toward war. After the attack on Pearl Harbor in December 1941, he was interned in Japan for several months before being repatriated. He then served as Under Secretary of State and played a key role in shaping post-war U.S. policy toward Japan.

Grew retired in 1945 and spent his later years writing and reflecting on his diplomatic service. He died on 25 May 1965, just two days before his 85th birthday, leaving behind a legacy as one of America’s most experienced and thoughtful diplomats. Further information is available from Wikipedia and The New York Times.

Grew kept detailed diaries for much of his working life. In 1944, after returning from Tokyo, Hammond, Hammond & Co published a first volume of his diary entries: Ten Years in Japan - a contemporary record drawn from the Diaries and Private and Official Papers of Joseph C. Grew. This can be read freely online at Internet Archive. Subsequently, in 1952, Houghton, Mifflin published Turbulent Era: A Diplomatic Record of Forty Years, 1904-1945. This comprehensive two volume selection of Grew’s diary entries, as edited by Walter Johnson, can also be read online. The following entry, detailing his first day as American ambassador to Japan, is taken from Ten Years in Japan.

6 June 1932

‘Tokyo. By golly, what a day! It is seldom that days which one has anticipated in imagination for weeks or months ever measure up to one’s expectations, but this one has gone far beyond. I was up at the absurd hour of 4:45 a.m., hating to miss a trick. Thick fog and only the shadowy form of other ships to be seen. We had skirted along the coast of Japan last evening and had anchored in the roads of Yokohama sometime during the night after the foghorn had wailed drearily for an hour or more. Then, at 5:30, pandemonium: the stewards banging with full force at every cabin door and shouting in raucous voices for us to get up and meet the quarantine officer, and five minutes later repeating the performance. Those stewards certainly know how to carry out their orders with the utmost thoroughness, but I wonder if others don’t get the same results without making you want to punch them on the nose for the way they do it.

Anyway, we did meet the quarantine officer at 6 a.m., although it was quite unnecessary for Alice and our daughter Elsie (who had slept for only two hours) to have dressed so early, as a special Japanese officer had been deputed to look after us and he went through our passports with Parsons without seeing us at all. Another Japanese officer examined our police dog, Kim, and issued a special health certificate, while still a third man took charge of our baggage. It was all done with quiet efficiency and the least possible bother.

Then, even before we docked at 7, the reception began. Yesterday there had been a flight of welcoming radiograms. This morning one deputation after another came on board and to our cabins. These visitors included half a dozen Japanese newspaper correspondents and photographers, and finally the good Edwin Neville, Counsellor of the Embassy, and his wife. We posed for photographs and were asked questions by the press; naturally I refused to say a word about politics, but my answers to their innocent questions were later adroitly manipulated into a quoted interview, the Japan Times bearing headlines, MR. GREW GIVES AN INTERVIEW, which began out of a clear sky: ‘I have written a book called Sport and Travel in the Far East but I know hardly anything about the present Japan. I hope to get down to serious study when I’m settled in my new post. Mrs. Grew’s mother, who was a daughter of Commodore Perry . . .’ etc., etc. Some mother-in-law!

Well, we took leave of Captain Ahlin of the President Coolidge and motored to Tokyo in a drizzling rain, but the ugliness of the route was lost on me as Neville and I, who drove together, had too many interesting things to talk about. Then the Embassy. Big bushes, smooth green lawns, flowers, fountains, tessellated pools, and the buildings themselves, four of them, white with black ironwork trimmings, already framed in luxuriant trees - a real oasis in the more or less ugly surroundings of the new-grown city. The residence is on the crest of a hill looking down on the chancery and the dormitories, to which one descends on little stepping-stones through a thick grove of leafy woods. As for the interior of the residence, when we had explored it with the Nevilles, examined the furniture and curtains and the thick luxurious carpets in the big salon and the little salon and the still littler salon, the smoking-room with its wonderful wainscoting, its many bookshelves and abundant deep cupboards (where at least I shall have space enough to file and store, separate and catalogue, to my heart’s content), the loggia, the banquet hall, the private dining-room, the cloakroom, and the seven bedrooms and the four bathrooms, the ironing-room, sewing-room, and storerooms - while Elsie emitted little shrieks of delight and Kim wagged his entire acceptance of the new situation - I asked Alice how many cons she found, and she answered: ‘Not a single con; they’re all pros.’

We all went to the chancery, passing the swimming pool on the way. I met all the staff and then received the principal American correspondents: Babb, of the Associated Press; Byas, of the New York Times; Vaughn, of the United Press; Fleisher, of the Japan Advertiser. We chatted, and I spoke of my hope for the closest cooperation which would be of mutual benefit and urged them to drop in often. Colonel McIlroy and Captain Johnson, the Military and Naval Attachés, told Neville that their regulations required them to call on me in full uniform, but I sent back word I hoped they would forget their regulations, as we could have a much pleasanter and more satisfactory chat if they would cut out the gold lace, which would undoubtedly leave me tongue-tied.

Maya Lindsley Poole and Parsons came to lunch. I didn’t know Maya until she introduced herself at table. It was amusing to remember that when she was pointed out to me at the Copley Hall dance in January, 1904, as the girl who had just returned from Japan, and later when I asked to be introduced to ‘the girl who had just returned from Japan,’ I was led up to Alice instead.

At 3, Neville came to take me to the Diet to call on Viscount Saito, who could not leave the session to receive me at the Gaimusho, or Foreign Office. He is old - over seventy, I believe - and looks old and tired. Conversation was halting, and he seemed to have too much on his mind to concentrate, but he is decidedly distinguished; he was formerly an admiral in the Navy and Governor-General of Korea, and has now stepped into the breach as Prime Minister and Minister for Foreign Affairs to tide over, with his personal prestige, and probably temporarily, a difficult cabinet situation. I stayed a very short time, knowing that he was busy in the session and that we could talk only platitudes; left with him notes asking for audiences with the Emperor and Empress, copies of my letters of credence and the letters of recall of Cameron Forbes, my predecessor, and a copy of my proposed speech to the Emperor. As Neville liked it, we sent it in. Afterwards I called on Baron de Bassompierre, the Belgian Ambassador and Dean of the Diplomatic Corps - very pleasant.

Then, at 5, Alice had the entire staff with wives and daughters to tea - sixty-five people. What a staff! And what a situation that enabled us to give a reception, with buffet, for sixty-five people on the very day of our arrival! Cam Forbes’ Japanese servants are all on the job and functioning like clockwork; I suppose we shall keep them all.

Bingham and Parsons came to dinner. The latter is to stay with us until he can get his apartment in one of the dormitories into shape. I have written up the day while the initial impressions are still fresh, and now, thank heaven, I shall hit the hay at 10:30 and hit it hard.’

I was rather incredulous

‘He explained his call to my astonishment that Beadle, Tatum, and I were to be the co-recipients of the Nobel prize in medicine this year. I was rather incredulous: he insisted the AP was quoting the rumors and he was quite sure it would be announced Thursday.’ This is part of Joshua Lederberg’s diary entry on the day he heard he had been awarded the Nobel Prize. Lederberg, who was born a century ago today, was an American scientist who pioneered work in bacterial genetics but who also advanced the influence of science and scientists in public policy development.

Lederberg was born 23 May 1925 in Montclair, New Jersey, the oldest of three sons. His father, a rabbi, and mother had emigrated from Palestine the year before. The family moved to Manhattan when Lederberg was still an infant. He attended Stuyvesant High School, which specialised in science and technology, and went on to Columbia University, where he studied zoology. There he came under the influence of biochemist Francis J. Ryan, who nurtured his passion to ‘bring the power of chemical analysis to the secrets of life’. In 1943, he enrolled in the Navy’s V-12 training program, which combined an accelerated premedical and medical curriculum, and was able to work at the clinical pathology laboratory at St. Albans Naval Hospital, gaining first-hand experience with parasites.

Lederberg returned to Columbia, finished his degree, and began training as a medical student, also continuing research under Ryan. He was soon much inspired by Oswald Avery’s DNA discoveries, and took a leave of absence to work with Edward L. Tatum, at Yale, an expert in bacteriology and the genetics of micro-organisms. At Yale, he made significant discoveries, including a new understanding of how bacteria evolve and acquire new properties, such as antibiotic resistance.

Lederberg then began mapping the E. coli chromosome, to show the exact locations of its genes. With Tatum’s support, he submitted research on genetic recombination in bacteria as his doctoral thesis, receiving a PhD degree from Yale in 1947. A year earlier he married a fellow scientist, Esther M. Zimmer. Instead of returning to finish a medical degree, he accepted a position as Assistant Professor of Genetics at the University of Wisconsin. There, he was soon making breakthroughs, discovering, with Norton Zinder, how genetic material could be transferred from one strain of the bacterium Salmonella typhimurium to another using viral material. In 1954, he was promoted to Professor.

Two years later, the Society of Illinois Bacteriologists simultaneously awarded Joshua Lederberg and Esther Lederberg the Pasteur Medal, for ’their outstanding contributions to the fields of microbiology and genetics’. And in 1958, Lederberg, shared the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine with George Wells Beadle and Edward Lawrie Tatum. Lederberg’s prize was cited ‘for his discoveries concerning genetic recombination and the organization of the genetic material of bacteria’; and his colleagues were cited for ‘their discovery that genes act by regulating definite chemical events’.

Just days before receiving news of the Nobel Prize, Lederberg accepted an offer to become the first chairman of the newly-established Department of Genetics at Stanford University’s School of Medicine where he continued to lead research in bacterial genetics. But his interests also widened, relating genetics to the wider context of human health and biology, winning a place for biologists within the burgeoning US space programme. Beyond biological research, he became involved in expanding the role of computers in scientific research, bringing science into matters of public policy, and advising government on such issues. From 1966 to 1971, he wrote a weekly column - Science and Man - for the Washington Post.

In 1966, Lederberg divorced his wife, with whom he had had no children; two years later he married psychiatrist Marguerite Stein Kirsch. They had one daughter. Lederberg became University Professor Emeritus at Rockefeller University in 1990. There, he resumed his own research, continued to advise government and to lecture widely about science issues as they relate to public policies, such as those concerned with bioterrorism and infectious diseases. He died in 2008, Further information is available online from Wikipedia, Nasa, DNA from the beginning, a New York Times obituary, or the National Library of Medicine’s Profiles in science website.

The National Library of Medicine holds an archive of Lederberg’s papers, some of which it has made freely available online. Among these files are images of, and extracts from, Lederberg’s diaries (which range from 1948 to 1963).

20 January 1945
‘I had the evening all to myself, and particularly the excruciating pleasure of reading Avery ’43 on the deoxyribose nucleic acid responsible for type transformation in Pneumococcus. Terrific and unlimited in its implications. Viruses are gene-type compounds, but they cannot grow on synthetic or even dead media, and their capacity for production is limited to reproduction. The TF of Pneumococcus has every characteristic of a mutation. The obvious questions still to be considered are the fraction of serum that is involved in the reaction system; the induction of mutation in the TF by use of x-ray and more controllable methods; the problems of its antigenic specificity and relations to the specific polysaccharide whose manufacture it regulates or initiates. Also the possibility of activity of TF in vitro or in killed systems must be investigated, although the presence of phosphatases and desoxyribonucleases present a difficult problem. I can see real cause for excitement in this stuff though.’

Lederberg wrote a note on the transcript of the following diary entry as follows: ‘I was not keeping a diary at those days but this particular event led me to make notes on it just at the time.’

26 October 1958
‘[. . .] I was to work at the lab until about 12:30, then pick up Phyllis and Margaret for lunch and then see Phyllis off to her plane: --> Columbus->Denver->SFO->Sydney. At 11:30 + or - there was a call from a Mr. Lindquist of the “Tijding...” newspaper in Stockholm - the New York correspondent. He explained his call to my astonishment that Beadle, Tatum, and I were to be the co-recipients of the Nobel prize in medicine this year. I was rather incredulous: he insisted the AP was quoting the rumors and he was quite sure it would be announced Thursday. It’s no surprise, of course, that Beadle should be honored this way and it is a perceptive courtesy for Tatum but I am still quite astonished (as I was for the NAS last year) to be added on. I just had the impression that this kind of dignification in biology should go to the venerables and veterans and it is a bit of a shock to be classed that way. Of course in physics quite young men, e.g. Willis Lamb have been marked this way too. But I’m worried enough at keeping up a lab career that this kind of stigma has some dreadful connotations: I guess I just don’t believe in memorializing the live and kicking. On the whole I’m a little afraid the fuss and bother more than outweigh the egotistic satisfactions, the cash and the prestige factors that might help in getting my lab going. Perhaps I’m exaggerating the fuss; I was glad enough to be off the cover of Time, however! Anyhow I should have guessed sooner: several clues make some more sense now! - George Klein’s enigmatic correspondence (saying earlier he’d see me this year, then denying he was coming to the U.S.); Leo Goldberg’s request for a photograph; a telephone interview yesterday or Friday by Dag Nystadter reporter; George’s request for a bibliography last spring ( I suppose it did occur to me that George did have something of the sort in his mind then, but hardly this year.) Anyhow the trouble is it is by no means certain and there must be some possibility it is a mistake; I am rather nervously awaiting the AP bulletin to be picked up locally as I’m sure I’ll have no peace after that! I do feel as much as ever that the nonsense ought to be abolished but I don’t have the courage to meet it head on and I’m afraid it would raise even more fuss and perhaps affront Ed and Beadle in a rather nasty way. The best I can do is to be as inconspicuous about it as possible and make some reference to the obsolescence of personal distinction in scientific life.’

This article is a slightly revised version of one first published on 23 May 2015.

Young Boswell in London

‘It is very curious to think that I have now been in London several weeks without ever enjoying the delightful sex, although I am surrounded with numbers of free-hearted ladies of all kinds.’ This is a young James Boswell - who died 230 years ago today - having just arrived in the capital city writing rather candidly in his diary. Indeed, he kept diaries for most of his life. Two of his travel diaries - one about Corsica and another, with Samuel Johnson, about the Hebrides - were published in his lifetime, and very much helped develop his literary career, which was to culminate with a biography of Johnson. However, most of Boswell’s diaries - including his so-called London Journal - were considered lost for more than a hundred years, and not published until the second half of the 20th century.

Boswell was born in Edinburgh in 1740 into a strict family, his father, Lord Auchinleck, being a lawyer and eventually a senior judge, and his mother a Calvinist. He studied at Edinburgh and Glasgow universities before escaping to London, where he discovered much about society, women, and himself. When his father arrived to fetch him back, he was suffering with gonorrhoea, the first of many bouts he was to contract in his life.

Having come of age, Boswell returned to London in 1762 determined to secure a commission in the foot guards. There he fell in with Andrew Erskine, an army officer, and George Dempster, a young, wealthy, and newly-elected MP from Scotland. Among many others, he met Oliver Goldsmith and the radical politician John Wilkes. Towards the end of his sojourn in the capital, he became firm friends with Samuel Johnson, 30 years his senior. They would meet and spend significant amounts of time together until the end of Johnson’s life in 1784.

Having given up the idea of an army commission, Boswell moved to Utrecht in 1763 to continue studying law, but then embarked on a Grand Tour around Europe. On his way he became more friendly with Wilkes, he was exiled in Italy, and he met Jean-Jacques Rousseau, who persuaded him of Corsica’s right to liberty from Genoa. This idea underpinned his first successful book - published in 1768 - that gave an account of his experiences on the island, and of his friendship with the independence leader Pasquale Paoli: An Account of Corsica, The Journal of a Tour to That Island, and Memoirs of Pascal Paoli.

Boswell moved back to Edinburgh, where he completed his law studies, and where he went on to practise as an advocate for the best part of two decades. He married his cousin, Margaret Montgomerie, with whom he had two sons and three daughters who survived into adulthood. He also had at least two extramarital children. A couple of years after inheriting the Auchinleck title on the death of his father in 1782, Boswell moved his family to London. He was called to the English bar from the Inner Temple, but rarely practised, preferring to focus on his writing.

For several years after the first book on Corsica, Boswell’s only published writings were essays in a periodical called London Journal, under the title The Hypochondriack. However, a year after Johnson’s death, he edited a diary he had kept of a tour he took with Johnson in the Highlands and Western islands of Scotland. Johnson, himself, had already published an account of that tour - Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland - ten years earlier. Whereas Johnson’s writing was generalised and philosophical, Boswell’s diary - The Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides - proved to be more entertaining, both anecdotal and gossipy, as well as rich in observant detail.

The Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides was a commercial success, foreshadowing Boswell’s future, and now famous, biography - The Life of Samuel Johnson - first published by Charles Dilly in 1791. Gordon Turnbull’s entry for Boswell in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography says The Life ‘remains the most famous biography in any language, one of Western literature’s most germinal achievements: unprecedented in its time in its depth of research and its extensive use of private correspondence and recorded conversation, it sought to dramatize its subject in his authorial greatness and formidable social presence, and at the same time treat him with a profound sympathy and inhabit his inner life.’ (Many editions of this are freely available online at Internet Archive.)

Boswell’s last years are known to have been rather unhappy ones. His wife died in 1789, and though his children loved him dearly, he was unsatisfied with his achievements. He drank excessively and continued to indulge in other vices. Moreover, his eccentricities became increasingly self-indulgent making him a difficult guest. He lived to see a second edition of The Life of Samuel Johnson in 1793, but died on 19 May 1795. Further information is readily available at Wikipedia, NNDB, or Thomas Frandzen’s Boswell website.

Both Boswell’s early published diaries - The Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides and An Account of Corsica - can be found online at Internet Archive. It was not until the 20th century that any more diaries came to light. After Boswell’s death, his executors, and then his heirs, considered it prudent to keep his papers secret (because they contained details of intimacy). They were then kept in the archives at the Auchinleck estate for many years, until they passed from one great grand-daughter to another who, having married Lord Talbot de Malahide, lived at Malahide Castle, north of Dublin. There, in the 1920s, a large stash of Boswell’s private papers was discovered, including diaries. They were bought by the American collector Ralph H. Isham, and are now mostly archived at Yale University’s Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library. The story of how Isham acquired Boswell’s papers and how they were brought to publication is the subject of more than one book.

Boswell’s London Journal, 1762-1763 - the first of many Boswell publications by Yale - was edited by the Boswell scholar, Frederick A. Pottle, and came out in 1950. The publishers (Yale in the US and Heinemann in the UK) did not hold back in their admiration: ‘The Boswell Papers are the largest and most important find of English literary manuscripts ever made;’ and, ‘The incredible fact about Boswell’s London Journal is that it is an entirely new book.’ Today, this is the most famous and popular of Boswell’s published journals. Perhaps because it is the only one that survived expurgation by family members - and is a racy read. Boswell’s comings and goings as a young man (he was only 22) in London are interesting enough, but it is the way he examines his own psyche, and records the dilemmas he finds there, particularly those of a sexual nature, that makes this book so extraordinary for its time. Indeed, this constant self-examination by Boswell of Boswell feels very modern.

Here are several extracts from Boswell’s London Journal (which can be freely borrowed digitally at Internet Archive.)

26 November 1762
‘I was much difficulted about lodgings. A variety I am sure I saw, I dare say fifty. I was amused in this way. At last I fixed in Downing Street, Westminster. I took a lodging up two pair of stairs with the use of a handsome parlour all the forenoon, for which I agreed to pay forty guineas a year [later bargained down to £22], but I took it for a fortnight first, by way of a trial. I also made bargain that I should dine with the family whenever I pleased, at a shilling a time. [. . .] The street was a genteel street, within a few steps of the Parade; near the House of Commons, and very healthful.’

14 December 1762
‘It is very curious to think that I have now been in London several weeks without ever enjoying the delightful sex, although I am surrounded with numbers of free-hearted ladies of all kinds: from the splendid Madam at fifty guineas a night, down to the civil nymph with white-thread stockings who tramps along the Strand and will resign her engaging person to your honour for a pint of wine and a shilling. Manifold are the reasons for this my present wonderful continence. I am upon a plan of economy, and therefore cannot be at the expense of first-rate dames. I have suffered severely from loathsome distemper, and therefore shudder at the thoughts of running any risk of having it again. Besides, the surgeons’ fees in this city come very high. But the greatest reason of all is that fortune, or rather benignant Venus, has smiled upon me and favoured me so far that I have had the most delicious intrigues with women of beauty, sentiment, and spirit, perfectly suited to my romantic genius.’

15 December 1762
‘The enemies of the people of England who would have them considered in the worst light represent them as selfish, beef-eaters, and cruel. In this view I resolved today to be a true-born Old Englishman. I went into the City to Dolly’s Steak-house in Paternoster Row and swallowed my dinner by myself to fulfill [sic] the charge of selfishness; I had a large fat beefsteak to fulfil the charge of beef-eating; and I went at five o’clock to the Royal Cockpit in St James’s Park and saw cock-fighting for about five hours to fulfill [sic] the charge of cruelty.

A beefsteak-house is a most excellent place to dine at. You come in there to a warm, comfortable, large room, where a number of people are sitting at table. You take whatever place you find empty; call for what you like, which you get well and cleverly dressed. You may either chat or not as you like. Nobody minds you, and you pay very reasonably. My dinner (beef, bread and beer and waiter) was only a shilling. The waiters make a great deal of money by these pennies. Indeed, I admire the English for attending to small sums, as many smalls make a great, according to the proverb.

At five I filled my pockets with gingerbread and apples (quite the method), put on my old clothes and laced hat, laid by my watch, purse and pocket-book, and with oaken stick in my hand sallied to the pit. I was too soon there. So I went into a low inn, sat down amongst a parcel of arrant blackguards, and drank some beer. [. . .] I then went to the cockpit, which is a circular room in the middle of which the cocks fight. It is seated round with rows gradually rising. The pit and the seats are all covered with mat. The cocks, nicely cut and dressed and armed with silver heels, are set down and fight with amazing bitterness and resolution. Some of them were quickly dispatched. One pair fought three-quarters of an hour. The uproar and noise of betting is prodigious. A great deal of money made a quick circulation from hand to hand. There was a number of professed gamblers there. An old cunning dog whose face I had seen at Newmarket sat by me a while. I told him I knew nothing of the matter. “Sir,” said he, “you have as good a chance as anybody.” [. . .] I was shocked to see the distraction and anxiety of the betters. I was sorry for the poor cocks. I looked around to see if any of the spectators pitied them when mangled and torn in a most cruel manner, but I could not observe the smallest relenting sign in any countenance. I was therefore not ill pleased to see them endure mental torment. Thus did I complete my true English day, and came home pretty much fatigued and pretty much confounded at the strange turn of this people.’

17 December 1762
‘I mentioned to Sheridan [Thomas Sheridan, actor, and father of Richard Brinsley Sheridan] how difficult it was to be acquainted with people of fashion in London: that they have a reserve and a forbidding shyness to strangers. He accounted for it thus: “The strangers that come here are idle and unemployed; they don’t know what to do, and they are anxious to get acquaintances. Whereas the genteel people, who have lived long in town, have got acquaintances enough; their time is all filled up. And till they find a man particularly worth knowing, they are very backward. But when you once get their friendship, you have them firm to you.” ’

19 January 1763
‘This was a day eagerly expected by [George] Dempster [a young and wealthy, newly-elected MP from Scotland], [Andrew] Erskine [a lieutenant], and I, as it was fixed as the period of our gratifying a whim proposed by me: which was that on the first day of the new tragedy called Elvira’s being acted, we three should walk from the one end of London to the other, dine at Dolly’s, and be in the theatre at night; and as the play would probably be bad, and as Mr David Malloch, the author, who has changed his name to David Mallet, Esq. was an arrant puppy, we determined to exert ourselves in damning it.

I this morning felt the stronger symptoms of the sad distemper, yet I was unwilling to imagine such a thing. However, the severe exercise of today, joined with hearty eating and drinking, I was sure would confirm or remove my suspicions.

We walked up to Hyde Park Corner, from whence we set out at ten. Our spirits were high with the notion of the adventure, and the variety that we met with as we went is amazing. As the Spectator observes, one end of London is like a different country from the other in look and in manners. We eat an excellent breakfast at the Somerset Coffee-house. We turned down Gracechurch Street and went up on the top of London Bridge, from whence we viewed with a pleasing horror the rude and terrible appearance of the river, partly froze up, partly covered with enormous shoals of floating ice which often crashed against each other. [. . .] We went half a mile beyond the turnpike at Whitechapel, which completed our course, and went into a little public house and drank some warm white wine with aromatic spices, pepper and cinnamon. We were pleased with the neat houses upon the road. [. . .] We had some port, and drank damnation to the play and eternal remorse to the author. We then went to the Bedford Coffee-house and had coffee and tea; and just as the doors opened at four o’clock, we sallied into the house, planted ourselves in the middle of the pit, and with oaken cudgels in our hands and shrill-sounding catcalls in our pockets, sat ready prepared, with a generous resentment in our breasts against dullness and impudence, to be the swift ministers of vengeance. [. . .] [The three of them went on to write a highly critical pamphlet about Elvira.]

The evening was passed most cheerfully. When I got home, though, then came sorrow. Too, too plain was Signor Gonorrhoea.’

25 March 1763
‘As I was coming home this night, I felt carnal inclinations raging through my frame. I determined to gratify them. I went to St James’s Park, and, like Sir John Brute [a character from John Vanbrugh’s The Provoked Wife], picked up a whore. For the first time did I engage in armour, which I found but a dull satisfaction. She who submitted to my lusty embraces was a young Shropshire girl, only seventeen, very well-looked, her name Elizabeth Parker. Poor thing, she has a sad time of it!’

3 May 1763
‘I walked up to the Tower in order see Mr Wilkes come out. [Wilkes, a radical journalist and MP, who had been arrested on a general warrant that soon proved inadequate to keep him in prison]. But he was gone. I then thought I should see prisoners of one kind or another, so went to Newgate. I stepped into a sort of court before the cells. They are surely most dismal places. There are three rows of ‘em, four in a row, all above each other. They have double iron windows, and within these, strong iron rails; and in these dark mansions are the unhappy criminals confined. I did not go in, but stood in the court, where were a number of strange blackguard beings with sad countenances, most of them being friends and acquaintances of those under sentence of death. [. . .]

Erskine and I dined at the renowned Donaldon’s, where we were heartily entertained. All this afternoon I felt myself still more melancholy, Newgate being upon my mind like a black cloud.’

4 May 1763
‘My curiosity to see the melancholy spectacle of the executions was so strong that I could not resist it, although I was sensible that I would suffer much from it. In my younger years I had read in the Lives of the Convicts so much about Tyburn that I had a sort of horrid eagerness to be there. [. . .] I got upon a scaffold very near the fatal tree, so that [I] could clearly see all the dismal scene. There was a most prodigious crowd of spectators. I was most terribly shocked, and thrown into a very deep melancholy.’

19 July 1763
‘At eleven I went to St Paul’s Church; walked up to the whispering gallery, which is a most curious thing. I had here the mortification to observe the noble paintings in the ceiling of the Cupola area a good deal damaged by the moisture of winter, I then went up to the roof of the Cupola, and went out upon the leads, and walked around it. I went up to the highest storey of roof. Here I had the immense prospect of London and its environs. London gave me no great idea. I just saw a prodigious group of tiled roofs and narrow lanes opening here and there, for the streets and beauty of the buildings cannot be observed on account of the distance. The Thames and the country around, the beautiful hills of Hampstead and of Highgate looked very fine. And yet I did not feel the same enthusiasm that I have felt some time ago at viewing these rich prospects.’

30 July 1763
‘Mr [Samuel] Johnson and I took a boat and sailed down the silver Thames. I asked him if a knowledge of the Greek and Roman languages was necessary. He said, “By all means; for they who know them have a very great advantage over those who do not. Nay, it is surprising what a difference it makes upon people in the intercourse of life which does not appear to be much connected with it.’

“And yet,” said I “people will go through the world very well and do their business very well without them.”

“Why,” said he, “that may be true where they could not possibly be of any use; for instance, this boy rows us as well without literature as if he could sing the song which Orpheus sung to the Argonauts, who were the first sailors in the world.” He then said to the boy, “What would you give, Sir, to know about the Argonauts?”

“Sir,” he said, “I would give what I have.” The reply pleased Mr Johnson much, and we gave him a double fare.

“Sir,” he said, “a desire of knowledge is the natural feeling of mankind; and every man who is not debauched would give all that he has to get knowledge.”

We landed at the Old Swan and walked to Billingsgate, where we took oars and moved smoothly along the river. We were entertained with the immense number and variety of ships that were lying at anchor. It was a pleasant day, and when we got clear out into the country, we were charmed with the beautiful fields on each side of the river. [. . .]

When we got to Greenwich, I felt great pleasure in being at the place which Mr Johnson celebrates in his London: a Poem. I had the poem in my pocket, and read the passage on the banks of the Thames, and literally “kissed the consecrated earth.” ’

4 August 1763
‘This is now my last day in London before I set out upon my travels, and makes a very important period in my journal. Let me recollect my life since this journal began. Has it not passed like a dream? Yes, but I have been attaining a knowledge of the world. I came to town to go into the Guards. How different is my scheme now! I am upon a less pleasurable but a more rational and lasting plan. Let me pursue it with steadiness and I may be a man of dignity. My mind is strangely agitated. I am happy to think of going upon my travels and seeing the diversity of foreign parts; and yet my feeble mind shrinks somewhat at the idea of leaving Britain in so very short a time from the moment in which I now make this remark. How strange must I feel myself in foreign parts. My mind too is gloomy and dejected at the thoughts of leaving London, where I am so comfortably situated and where I have enjoyed most happiness. However, I shall be the happier for being abroad, as long as I live. Let me be manly. Let me commit myself to the care of my merciful creator.’

This article is a slightly revised version of one first published on 19 May 2015.

Weeds don’t spoil

‘My [90th] birthday. [. . .] It is unusual, I believe, for persons of this age to retain possession of their faculties, or so much of them as I do. The Germans have an uncomplimentary saying: “Weeds don’t spoil” ’. This is Henry Crabb Robinson, one of the most interesting and entertaining of 19th century diarists, who was born a quarter of a millenium ago today. He trained as a lawyer, but an inheritance left him wealthy enough to pursue a life of cultured leisure. He was a great theatre-goer, knew a lot of literary types - was on very good terms with William Wordsworth, for example, with whom he travelled often - and was one of the first to recognise William’s Blake’s genius.

Robinson was born in Bury St Edmunds on 13 May 1775, the son of a tanner. He attended private schools, and was articled to a lawyer in Colchester when 15, and subsequently to another in London. In 1796, he was left an inheritance which allowed him to travel to the Continent frequently. Between 1800 and 1805 he studied in Germany, meeting, among others, Goethe and Schiller. He operated as a war correspondent for The Times for a short while during the Peninsular War, and, on his return to London, finished his legal training and was called to the bar.

Through an old friend, Catherine, who had married the writer and abolitionist Thomas Clarkson, Robinson was introduced into London literary society; and, in time, his own breakfast parties became famous. After retiring in 1828, he continued to take part in public affairs and to travel often. In 1828 he was one of the founding members of London University; and, in 1837, he revisited Italy on a tour with Wordsworth. He never married, but lived to an old age, dying in 1867. Further biographical information is available from Wikipedia, Encyclopaedia Britannica, or Peter Landry’s Bluepete website. The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography has a good short biography (but requires a login).

Robinson left behind a large amount of papers including the following: brief journals covering the period to 1810, a much fuller home diary (begun in 1811, and continued to within five days of his death - 35 volumes), and a collection of 30 tour journals. The papers were edited by Thomas Sadler and published by Macmillan in 1869 in three volumes as Diary, Reminiscences and Correspondence of Henry Crabb Robinson. And it is thanks largely to these volumes that Robsinson is remembered today, for his diaries are full of important detail about the central figures of the English romantic movement, not only Wordsworth, but Coleridge, Charles Lamb and William Blake. Of the latter, he was an early admirer, writing in his diary: ‘Shall I call Blake artist, genius, mystic or madman? Probably he is all’. Moreover, his diaries are also prized for their information about the London theatre in the first half of the 19th century (see the Society for Theatre Research’s 1966 volume: The London theatre 1811-1866: Selections from the diary of Henry Crabb Robinson.)

All three volumes of Diary, Reminiscences and Correspondence can be read at Internet Archive (Vol 1, Vol 2, Vol 3). Here are a few extracts.

7 December 1831
‘Brighton. Accompanied [John James] Masquerier [a British painter] to a concert, which afforded me really a great pleasure. I heard Paganini [Niccolò Paganini, an Italian musician and composer]. Having scarcely any sensibility to music, I could not expect great enjoyment from any music, however fine; and, after all, I felt more surprise at the performance than enjoyment. The professional men, I understand, universally think more highly of Paganini than the public do. He is really an object of wonder. His appearance announces something extraordinary. His figure and face amount to caricature. He is a tall slim figure, with limbs which remind one of a spider; his face very thin, his forehead broad, his eyes grey and piercing, with bushy eyebrows; his nose thin and long, his cheeks hollow, and his chin sharp and narrow. His face forms a sort of triangle. His hands the oddest imaginable, fingers of enormous length, and thumbs bending backwards.

It is, perhaps, in a great measure from the length of finger and thumb that his fiddle is also a sort of lute. He came forward and played, from notes, his own compositions. Of the music, as such, I know nothing. The sounds were wonderful. He produced high notes very faint, which resembled the chirruping of birds, and then in an instant, with a startling change, rich and melodious notes, approaching those of the bass viol. It was difficult to believe that this great variety of sounds proceeded from one instrument. The effect was heightened by his extravagant gesticulation and whimsical attitudes. He sometimes played with his fingers, as on a harp, and sometimes struck the cords with his bow, as if it were a drum-stick, sometimes sticking his elbow into his chest, and sometimes flourishing his bow. Oftentimes the sounds were sharp, like those of musical glasses, and only now and then really delicious to my vulgar ear, which is gratified merely by the flute and other melodious instruments, and has little sense of harmony.’

9 June 1833
‘Liverpool. At twelve I got upon an omnibus, and was driven up a steep hill to the place where the steam-carriages start. We travelled in the second class of carriages. There were five carriages linked together, in each of which were placed open seats for the traveller, four and four facing each other; but not all were full; and, besides, there was a close carriage, and also a machine for luggage. The fare was four shillings for the thirty-one miles. Everything went on so rapidly, that I had scarcely the power of observation. The road begins at an excavation through rock, and is to a certain extent insulated from the adjacent country. It is occasionally placed on bridges, and frequently intersected by ordinary roads. Not quite a perfect level is preserved. On setting off there is a slight jolt, arising from the chain catching each carriage, but, once in motion, we proceeded as smoothly as possible. For a minute or two the pace is gentle, and is constantly varying. The machine produces little smoke or steam. First in order is the tall chimney; then the boiler, a barrel-like vessel; then an oblong reservoir of water; then a vehicle for coals; and then comes, of a length infinitely extendible, the train of carriages. If all the seats had been filled, our train would have carried about 150 passengers; but a gentleman assured me at Chester that he went with a thousand persons to Newton fair. There must have been two engines then. I have heard since that two thousand persons and more went to and from the fair that day. But two thousand only, at three shillings each way, would have produced £600! But, after all, the expense is so great, that it is considered uncertain whether the establishment will ultimately remunerate the proprietors. Yet I have heard that it already yields the shareholders a dividend of nine per cent. And Bills have passed for making railroads between London and Birmingham, and Birmingham and Liverpool. What a change will it produce in the intercourse! One conveyance will take between 100 and 200 passengers, and the journey will be made in a forenoon! Of the rapidity of the journey I had better experience on my return; but I may say now, that, stoppages included, it may certainly be made at the rate of twenty miles an hour!

I should have observed before that the most remarkable movements of the journey are those in which trains pass one another. The rapidity is such that there is no recognizing the features of a traveller. On several occasions, the noise of the passing engine was like the whizzing of a rocket. Guards are stationed in the road, holding flags, to give notice to the drivers when to stop. Near Newton, I noticed an inscription recording the memorable death of Huskisson.’

26 December 1836
‘Brighton. This was a remarkable day. So much snow fell, that not a coach either set out for or arrived from London - an incident almost unheard of in this place. Parties were put off and engagements broken without complaint. The Masqueriers, with whom I am staying, expected friends to dinner, but they could not come. Nevertheless, we had here Mr Edmonds, the worthy Scotch schoolmaster, Mr and Mrs Dill, and a Miss Robinson; and, with the assistance of whist, the afternoon went off comfortably enough. Of course, during a part of the day, I was occupied in reading.’

28 December 1836
‘The papers to-day are full of the snow-storm. The ordinary mails were stopped in every part of the country.’

3 May 1850
‘I read early a speech by [Frederick William] Robertson [a charismatic preacher] to the Brighton Working Class Association, in which infidelity of a very dangerous kind had sprung up. His speech shows great practical ability. He managed a difficult subject very ably, but it will not be satisfactory either to the orthodox or the ultra-liberal.

I went to Mr Cookson, who is one of the executors of Mr Wordsworth, and with whom I had an interesting conversation about Wordsworth’s arrangements for the publication of his poems. He has commissioned Dr Christopher Wordsworth to write his Life, a brief Memoir merely illustrative of his poems. And in a paper given to the Doctor, he wrote that his sons, son-in-law, his dear friend Miss Fenwick, Mr Carter, and Mr Robinson, who had travelled with him, “would gladly contribute their aid by communicating any facts within their knowledge.” ’

18 February 1851
‘At Masquerier’s, Brighton. We had calls soon after breakfast. The one to be mentioned was that of [Michael] Faraday, one of the most remarkable men of the day, the very greatest of our discoverers in chemistry, a perfect lecturer in the unaffected simplicity and intelligent clearness of his statement; so that the learned are instructed and the ignorant charmed. His personal character is admirable. When he was young, poor, and altogether unknown, Masquerier was kind to him; and now that he is a great man he does not forget his old friend.’

29 November 1852
‘I went to Robertson’s, and had two hours of interesting chat with him on his position here in the pulpit; also about Lady Byron. He speaks of her as the noblest woman he ever knew.’

17 August 1853
‘Dr King wrote to me, informing me of the death of Robertson, of Brighton. Take him for all in all, the best preacher I ever saw in a pulpit; that is, uniting the greatest number of excellences, originality, piety, freedom of thought, and warmth of love. His style colloquial and very scriptural. He combined light of the intellect with warmth of the affections in a pre-eminent degree.’

13 September 1853
‘Brighton. Dr King called, and in the evening I called by desire on Lady Byron - a call which I enjoyed, and which may have consequences. Recollecting her history, as the widow of the most famous, though not the greatest, poet of England in our day, I felt an interest in going to her; and that interest was greatly heightened when I left her. From all I have heard of her, I consider her one of the best women of the day. Her means and her good will both great. “She lives to do good,” says Dr. King, and I believe this to be true. She wanted my opinion as to the mode of doing justice to Robertson’s memory. She spoke of him as having a better head on matters of business than any one else she ever knew. She said, “I have consulted lawyers on matters of difficulty, but Robertson seemed better able to give me advice. He unravelled everything and explained everything at once as no one else did.” ’

13 May 1865
‘My birthday. To-day I complete my ninetieth year. When people hear of my age, they affect to doubt my veracity, and call me a wonder. It is unusual, I believe, for persons of this age to retain possession of their faculties, or so much of them as I do. The Germans have an uncomplimentary saying : “Weeds don’t spoil.” ’

This article is a slightly revised version of one first published on 13 May 2015.

We can conquer the world

‘Beginning with Lublin, the Jews in the General Government [Poland] are now being evacuated eastward. The procedure is a pretty barbaric one and not to be described here more definitely. Not much will remain of the Jews. On the whole it can be said that about 60 per cent of them will have to be liquidated whereas only about 40 per cent can be used for forced labor.’ This is Joseph Goebbels writing in his diary in 1942, not long after the Nazis had formulated their Final Solution policy. Goebbels committed suicide 80 years ago today, the day after Hitler and his wife (see He loves me so much); but, unlike Hitler, Goebbels went to some lengths to preserve an historical record of his life - 75,000 pages of his diaries.

Goebbels was born in 1897 into a Catholic family at Rheydt, an industrial town in the Ruhr district. From early childhood he suffered a deformation in his right leg and wore a brace and special shoe, which left him with a limp. At the start of World War I he volunteered for military service, but was rejected. He studied at universities in Bonn, Berlin and Heidelberg (where he was awarded a PhD), and then worked as a journalist, and tried to write novels and plays.

Goebbels joined the Nazi party in 1924, and became allied with Gregor Strasser, Nazi organiser in northern Germany. He came to the attention of Hitler, who gave him a private audience in April 1926, and then appointed him a party leader for the region of Berlin. He soon discovered his talent for propaganda, writing tracts such as The Second Revolution and Lenin or Hitler, and launching the Nazi newspaper Der Angriff (The Attack). In 1928, he was elected to the Reichstag (one of only 10 Nazis), and the following year he became the Nazi party propaganda chief. In 1931, he marred Magda Ritschel, and they would have six children. However, Goebbels was an inveterate womaniser, and was known to have had many affairs.

Goebbels played a key role in successive election campaigns, and was instrumental in seeing Hitler elected leader in 1933. Goebbels, himself, was made minister for propaganda and national enlightenment, a position he then held until his death. He worked assiduously to centralise and control all aspects of German and cultural life, not only the press, but the media, the performing arts, literature, etc, purging them of Jews, socialists, homosexuals and liberals. At the same time, he ensured a development of high culture, such as Wagner’s operas, and plenty of light entertainment for the masses. Once war began in September 1939, his influence over domestic policy strengthened, and, increasingly, with Hitler appearing in public less, he became the face and the voice of the Nazi regime. As a dedicated anti-Semite, Goebbels was strongly linked to the Nazi Final Solution policy, and, especially, the deportation of Jews from Berlin.

In the final stages of the war, Hitler, before killing himself, appointed Goebbels Chancellor of Germany, but it was empty gesture, since a day later - on 1 May - Goebbels and his wife killed themselves, having already murdered their six children. Further biographical information on Goebbels can be freely obtained online at Wikipedia, the Jewish Virtual Library, or from the pages of Doctor Goebbels: His Life and Death by Roger Manvell and Heinrich Fraenkel available at Googlebooks.

Goebbels began to keep a diary in 1923, shortly before his 27th birthday, while unemployed. Most of his early entries were about a young woman with whom he was having a turbulent relationship (and whom, in fact, had given him the diary). According to biographers, the diary quickly became a kind of therapy for the troubled young man. Apparently, these early diary entries show little interest in politics, and there is no mention of Hitler or the Nazi movement until the following year. i.e. after Goebbels first met Hitler in July 1925.

In 1934, the year after Hitler had become Chancellor and appointed Goebbels a minister, Goebbels published an edited version of his diaries for propaganda purposes: Vom Kaiserhof zur Reichskanzlei. Eine historische Darstellung in Tagebuchblättern (From the Kaiserhof to the Reich Chancellery: A Historical Account from the Pages of a Diary). This was translated into English in 1938 and published by Hurst and Blackett as My Part in Germany’s Fight.

Wikipedia has a full entry on Goebbels’ diaries, and their history. Goebbels filled 20 hand-written volumes until 1941, and then - fully aware of their historical value - had them stored in underground vaults at the Reichsbank in Berlin. Thereafter, he dictated his entries to a stenographer, who typed up corrected versions. In 1944, he ordered all his diaries to be copied for safekeeping, and a special darkroom was created at his apartment for the diaries to be transferred to microfilm, a recent invention. The boxes of glass plates containing the microfilmed diaries were buried at Potsdam; and the original handwritten/ typed diaries were stored in the Reich Chancellery. Goebbels made his last entry on 10 April 1945.

Some of the original diaries survived the aftermath of the war - a complicated story involving ex-President Herbert Hoover and Pulitzer Prize-winning foreign correspondent Louis P. Lochner. (For more on this see Andrew Hamilton’s excellent article in Counter-Currents Publishing). These diaries were edited and translated by Lochner and first published in English in 1948 by Doubleday (New York) and Hamish Hamilton (London) in 1948 as The Goebbels Diaries, 1942-1943. Hamilton notes: ‘An instant bestseller upon its release, the book was serialized in newspapers and magazines and became a Book-of-the-Month Club selection. The Hoover faction and Doubleday, however, were forced to surrender most of their profits to the Office of Alien Property and destroy 30,000 copies of the book still in stock. The original sheaf of 7,000 transcribed pages was, however, deposited at the Hoover Library at Stanford, where it remains today.’

Further extracts appeared in print over the years. In 1962, came The Early Goebbels Diaries: the journals of Joseph Goebbels from 1923-1926 (edited by Helmut Heiber, translated by Oliver Watson, published by Praeger, New York; Weidenfeld & Nicolson, London). In 1978, came The Goebbels Diaries: the last days as edited Hugh Trevor-Roper (one of the central characters in the Hitler diary debacle - see Dacre’s non-fake diaries) and translated by Richard Barry (published by Putnam, New York; Secker and Warburg, London).

Controversy surrounded the publication in 1982 of The Goebbels Diaries: 1939–1941, as translated and edited by Fred Taylor (Hamish Hamilton, 1982; Putnam, New York). According to New York Magazine, the diary material was bought ‘from an unidentified German source in a shadowy deal in London’, and, ‘while no one is claiming the book is a forgery its story is one of publishing practices that seem, at the very least, sloppy and misleading to readers.’ The article goes on to explain how the diary pages may well have been doctored in an effort to tailor history from a Russian perspective.

Meanwhile, the 1,600 glass plates of microfilm buried at Potsdam had been discovered by the Soviets and shipped to Moscow, where they sat unopened for decades - until discovered by a German historian, Elke Fröhlich, in 1992. Then, over 15 years (1993-2008), Fröhlich and others edited the entire collection on behalf of the Institut für Zeitgeschichte, with the support of the National Archives Service of Russia. They were published in a definitive edition of 29 volumes (each one about 500 pages) by K. G. Saur Verlag as Die Tagebücher von Joseph Goebbels, Teil I Aufzeichnungen 1923-1941. It has been estimated that despite the various English editions of the Goebbels diaries, only about 10% of the total, now published in German, has actually appeared in English.

A few extracts in English from Goebbels’ diaries can be found online. Most of the following were found on PBS’s website The Man Behind Hitler, but a couple (those from 1942) came from The Nizkor Project website (which has filtered out only those entries concerned with the fate of the Jews.)

4 July 1924
‘We need a firm hand in Germany. Let’s put an end to all the experiments and empty words, and start getting down to serious work. Throw out the Jews, who refuse to become real Germans. Give them a good beating too. Germany is yearning for an individual, a man - as the earth yearns for rain in the summer.’

17 July 1924
‘I’m so despondent about everything. Everything I try goes totally wrong. There’s no escape from this hole here. I feel drained. So far, I still haven’t found a real purpose in life. Sometimes, I’m afraid to get out of bed in the morning. There’s nothing to get up for.’

13 April 1926
‘. . . I learned that Hitler had phoned. He wanted to welcome us, and in fifteen minutes he was there. Tall, healthy and vigorous. I like him. He puts us to shame with his kindness. We met. We asked questions. He gave brilliant replies. I love him. . . I can accept this firebrand as my leader. I bow to his superiority, I acknowledge his political genius!’

16 June 1926
‘Hitler is still the same dear comrade. You can’t help liking him as a person. And he has a stupendous mind. As a speaker he has constructed a wonderful harmony of gesture, facial expression and spoken word. The born motivator! With him, we can conquer the world. Give him his head, and he will shake the corrupt Republic to its foundations.’

26 October 1928
‘I have no friends and no wife. I seem to be going through a major spiritual crisis. I still have the same old problems with my foot, which gives me incessant pain and discomfort. And then there are the rumours, to the effect that I am homosexual. Agitators are trying to break up our movement, and I’m constantly tied up in minor squabbles. It’s enough to make you weep!’

15 September 1930
‘I am shaking with excitement. The first election results. Fantastic. Jubilation everywhere, an incredible success. It’s stunning. The bourgeois parties have been smashed. So far we have 103 seats. That’s a tenfold increase. I would never have expected it. The mood of enthusiasm reminds me of 1914, when war broke out. Things will get pretty hot in the months ahead. The Communists did well, but we are the second-largest party.’

31 January 1933
‘We’ve made it. We’ve set up shop in Wilhelmstrasse. Hitler is chancellor. It’s like a fairy tale come true! He deserved it. Wonderful euphoria. People were going mad below. . . A new beginning! An explosion of popular energy. Bigger and bigger crowds. I spoke on the radio, to every German station. “We are immensely happy,” I said.’

11 May 1933
‘Worked until late at home. In the evening, I gave a speech outside the opera house, in front of the bonfire while the filthy, trashy books were being burned by the students. I was at the top of my form. Huge crowds. Superb summer weather began today.’

20 June 1936
‘Yesterday: Schwanenwerder. We were waiting for Max Schmeling’s fight with Joe Louis. We were on tenterhooks the whole evening with Schmeling’s wife. We told each other stories, laughed and cheered. . . In round twelve, Schmeling knocked out the Negro. Fantastic, a dramatic, thrilling fight. Schmeling fought for Germany and won. The white man prevailed over the black, and the white man was German. I didn’t get to bed until five.’

23 October 1940
‘Churchill has issued an appeal to the people of France: impudent, offensive and bristling with hypocrisy. A revolting, fat beast. I drafted a speech with a sharp, withering response. If we don’t answer them, the English will continue to draw strength from their illusions.’

10 December 1940
‘Yesterday: A glorious day in Berlin. We are two hours late. Very heavy air raid on London. Some 600,000 kilograms. Entire districts of the city engulfed in flames. Only one aircraft lost. A really fine show. London is playing things down, but the American reports are strong and vivid. Nice to hear. The previous day they were talking about a decline in our offensive capability.’

24 June 1941
‘Sixteen hundred feet of newsreel from the start of our Russian campaign. Some of our new weapons are shown - huge monstrosities that smash to pieces everything in their way. The divine judgement of history is being passed on the Soviet Union.’

27 March 1942
‘Beginning with Lublin, the Jews in the General Government [Poland] are now being evacuated eastward. The procedure is a pretty barbaric one and not to be described here more definitely. Not much will remain of the Jews. On the whole it can be said that about 60 per cent of them will have to be liquidated whereas only about 40 per cent can be used for forced labor. The former Gauleiter of Vienna, who is to carry this measure through, is doing it with considerable circumspection and according to a method that does not attract too much attention. A judgment is being visited upon the Jews that, while barbaric, is fully deserved by them. The prophesy which the Fuehrer made about them for having brought on a new world war is beginning to come true in a most terrible manner. One must not be sentimental in these matters. If we did not fight the Jews, they would destroy us. It’s a life-and-death struggle between the Aryan race and the Jewish bacillus. No other government and no other regime would have the strength for such a global solution of this question. Here, too, the Fuehrer is the undismayed champion of a radical solution necessitated by conditions and therefore inexorable. Fortunately a whole series of possibilities presents itself for us in wartime that would be denied us in peacetime. We shall have to profit by this.

The ghettoes that will be emptied in the cities of the General Government now will be refilled with Jews thrown out of the Reich. This process is to be repeated from time to time. There is nothing funny in it for the Jews, and the fact that Jewry’s representatives in England and America are today organizing and sponsoring the war against Germany must be paid for dearly by its representatives in Europe - and that’s only right.’

13 December 1942
‘The question of Jewish persecution in Europe is being given top news priority by the English and the Americans. . . At bottom, however, I believe both the English and the Americans are happy that we are exterminating the Jewish riff-raff. But the Jews will go on and on and turn the heat on the British-American press. We won’t even discuss this theme publicly, but instead I give orders to start an atrocity campaign against the English on their treatment of Colonials. Efforts are under way to declare Rome an open city, so that it won’t be bombarded. The Pope is studying the question of air raids on Italian cities and seems to be exerting pressure on the English to spare at least certain districts. The declarations issued by the Vatican on this question are extremely clever and cannot but win favor for the Pope, at least in Italy. But the Italians are willing to accept any help offered them in this painful situation. The Italians are extremely lax in the treatment of Jews. They protect the Italian Jews both in Tunis and in occupied France and won’t permit their being drafted for work or compelled to wear the Star of David. This shows once again that Fascism does not really dare to get down to fundamentals, but is very superficial regarding most important problems. The Jewish question is causing us a lot of trouble. Everywhere, even among our allies, the Jews have friends to help them, which is a proof that they are still playing an important role even in the Axis camp. All the more are they shorn of power within Germany itself.’

3 April 1945
‘At the daily briefing conferences the Luftwaffe comes in for the sharpest criticism from the Führer. Day after day Göring has to listen without being in the position to demur at all. Colonel-General Stumpff, for instance, refused to subordinate himself to Kesselring for the new operations planned in the West. The Führer called him sharply to order saying that the relative positions of Kesselring and Stumpff were similar to those of him and Schaub. In the West, of course, it is now and for the immediate future a continuous process of muddling through. We are in the most critical and dangerous phase of this war and one sometimes has the impression that the German people, fighting at the height of the war crisis, has broken out in a sweat impossible for the non-expert to distinguish as the precursor of death or recovery.’

This article is a slightly revised version of one first published on 1 May 2015.

Folly, ignorance, idleness

‘Early in life, at the age of fifteen, I had commenced the dangerous habit of keeping a journal and this I maintained for ten years. The volumes remained in my possession unregarded - never looked at - till 1870, when I examined them, and, with many blushes, destroyed them.’ Alas, the great British novelist Anthony Trollope - born 210 years ago today - did not leave behind any diaries, only an autobiography with tantalising snippets about the journals he used to keep.

Trollope was born on 24 April 1815, in London, England, into a family of declining fortunes. His father, Thomas Anthony Trollope, was a barrister who struggled with financial management, while his mother, Frances Trollope, later became a successful writer. The family’s unstable income and eventual move to Belgium after financial ruin affected Anthony’s early years. He attended several schools, including Harrow and Winchester, but his time there was marked by unhappiness and bullying.

In 1834, Trollope began working as a junior clerk at the General Post Office, enduring several years of poverty before being transferred to Ireland in 1841, which improved his circumstances. During his postal career, he helped introduce the pillar box system, first in the Channel Islands, later spreading to Britain and Ireland. He wrote in the early morning hours before work, maintaining a disciplined schedule that allowed him to produce a vast body of literature. His first novel, The Macdermots of Ballycloran (1847), gained little attention, but he achieved fame with The Warden (1855), the first of what became known as the Barsetshire series.

Trollope married Rose Heseltine in 1844, and the couple had two sons, Henry and Frederick. He enjoyed a stable family life and often drew on domestic and clerical settings in his fiction. His works are known for their realism, detailed characterisations, and exploration of Victorian society’s moral and political issues. He remained prolific throughout his life, producing over 45 novels, numerous short stories, travel books, and essays. His political ambitions, including a failed run for Parliament in 1868, were less successful.

Trollope retired from the Post Office in 1867 to focus on writing full-time. He continued to publish steadily until his death in 1882. Though his popularity waned in the decades after his death, the 20th century saw a revival of interest in his work. Today, Trollope is considered one of the great chroniclers of Victorian England, admired for his insight into human behaviour and the intricacies of social life. His Barsetshire and Palliser novels remain widely read and studied. More information is readily available online at Wikipedia, Encyclopaedia Britannica and the Trollope Society.

An Autobiography by Trollope was first published in 1883 by William Blackwood and Sons, Edinburgh and London. Trollope completed the manuscript in 1879 and, after his death in 1882, his son Henry M. Trollope edited and arranged for its publication in 1883. This is freely available to read at Internet Archive.

On page 38, Trollope confesses: ‘Early in life, at the age of fifteen, I had commenced the dangerous habit of keeping a journal and this I maintained for ten years. The volumes remained in my possession unregarded - never looked at - till 1870, when I examined them, and, with many blushes, destroyed them. They convicted mo of folly, ignorance, indiscretion, idleness, extravagance, and conceit. But they had habituated me to the rapid use of pen and ink, and taught me how to express myself with facility.’

There is one other references to these journals later in the autobiography, and a further passage about ‘a little diary, with its dates and ruled spaces’ in which he seems to have set himself deadlines and recorded progress in writing the novels.

p48

‘I had often told myself since I left school that the only career in life within my reach was that of an author, and the only mode of authorship open to me that of a writer of novels. In the journal which I read and destroyed a few years since, I found the matter argued out before I had been in the Post Office two years. Parliament was out of the question. I had not means to go to the Bar. In official life, such as that to which I had been introduced, there did not seem to be any opening for real success. Pens and paper I could command. Poetry I did not believe to be within my grasp. The drama, too, which I would fain have chosen, I believed to be above me. For history, biography, or essay writing I had not sufficient erudition. But I thought it possible that I might write a novel. I had resolved very early that in that shape must the attempt be made. But the months and years ran on, and no attempt was made. And yet no day was passed without thoughts of attempting, and a mental acknowledgement of the disgrace of postponing it.’

p110

‘I have known authors whose lives have always been troublesome and painful because their tasks have never been done in time. They have ever been as boys struggling to learn their lesson as they entered the school gates. Publishers have distrusted them, and they have failed to write their best because they have seldom written at ease. I have done double their work, - though burdened with another profession, - and have done it almost without an effort. I have not once, through all my literary career, felt myself even in danger of being late with my task. I have known no anxiety as to ‘copy’. The needed pages far ahead - very far ahead - have almost always been in the drawer beside me. And that little diary, with its dates and ruled spaces, its record that must be seen, its daily, weekly demand upon my industry, has done all that for me.

There are those who would be ashamed to subject themselves to such a taskmaster, and who think that the man who works with his imagination should allow himself to wait till inspiration moves him. When I have heard such doctrine preached, I have hardly been able to repress my scorn. To me it would not be more absurd if the shoemaker were to wait for inspiration, or the tallow-chandler for the divine moment of melting, if the man whose business it is to write has eaten too many good things, or has drunk too much, or smoked too many cigars, as men who write sometimes will do,- then his condition may be unfavourable for work; but so will be the condition of a shoemaker who has been similarly imprudent. I have sometimes thought that the inspiration wanted has been the remedy which time will give to the evil results of such imprudence. - Mens sana in corpora sano. The author wants that as does every other workman, - that and a habit of industry. I was once told that the surest aid to the writing of a book was a piece of cobbler’s wax on my chair. I certainly believe in the cobbler’s wax much more than the inspiration.’

My heart beats faster

Eighty years ago today Kim Malthe-Bruun, a brave young Dane, only 21 years of age, was executed by the Nazis for being involved with the Danish resistance movement. Soon after his death, his mother published some of Kim’s writings, including letters and diary material written during his incarceration. In one moving piece, written just a month before his death, he writes about feeling no fear while his heart beats faster every time someone stops outside his door.

Kim Malthe-Bruun was born in Fort Saskatchewan, near Edmonton, Canada, in 1923. His mother, Vibeke, originally from Denmark, decided to move back home with Kim, then nine years old, and his younger sister. When still young he signed up with the merchant navy, and then, after the German occupation of Denmark, he joined the Danish resistance. In 1944, he was arrested by the Germans for being involved in the shipping of weapons from Sweden to Denmark. He was tortured, and then, on 6 April 1945, he was executed. A little further information is available from Wikipedia.

After the war, Vibeke edited a selection of her son’s diary-like letters, some written when he was still a seaman and some written from prison, as well as diary material found hidden in the Copenhagen prison. These were published by Thaning & Appel soon after Kim’s death. They received a wider audience when, in 1955, Random House published a translation (by Gerry Bothmer) into English titled Heroic Heart: The diary and letters of Kim Malthe-Bruun 1941-1945. More recently, in 1996, substantial excerpts from Kim’s diary appeared in Children in the Holocaust and World War II: Their Secret Diaries by Laurel Holliday (Simon and Schuster). Much of this latter - which was reissued in 2014 - is available to read online at Googlebooks (and is the source of the extract below).

In general, Kim’s published letters are diary-like, factual, about his daily life, trials and tribulations, but the following text (3 March 1945) was found, after the German capitulation, in Vestre prison. It was written in microscopic writing on the back of a letter Kim had received toward the end of February 1945. Around this period, it is known that Kim was being tortured and, at least once, was sent back to his cell in an unconscious state.

3 March 1945
‘Yesterday I was sitting at the table. I looked at my hands in amazement. They were trembling. I thought about it for a moment. There are some things which produce a purely physical reaction. Suddenly, as I was sitting here, I was possessed by the desire to draw something. I got up and started to sketch on the wall. I was fascinated and became more and more absorbed. Under my hand suddenly appeared a farmer, standing by a barbed-wire fence. I sat down, got up and made some changes, sat down again and felt much better. All day I worked on it. There were so many things which I couldn’t make come out the way I wanted them to. I studied it, stretched my imagination to the utmost and was suddenly completely exhausted. I erased all of it and since then even the idea of drawing makes me sick.

I’ve been thinking about this strange experience a good deal. Right afterwards I had such a wonderful feeling of relief, a sense of having won a victory and such intense happiness that I felt quite numb. It seemed as if body and soul became separated, one in a wild and soaring freedom beyond the reach of the world, and the other doubled up in a horrible cramp which held it to the earth. I suddenly realized how terrifically strong I am (but perhaps I only tried to talk myself into this). When the body and soul rejoined forces, it was as if all the joys of the world were right there for me. But it was as with so many stimulants; when the effect wore off the reaction set in. I saw that my hands were shaking, something had given inside. It was as if there had been a short circuit in the roots of my heart which drained it of all strength. I was like a man hungry for pleasure and consumed by desire. But still I was calm and in better spirits than ever before.

Although I feel no fear, my heart beats faster every time someone stops outside my door. It’s a physical reaction.

Strange, but I don’t feel any resentment or hatred at all. Something happened to my body, which is only the body of an adolescent, and it reacted as such, but my mind was elsewhere. It was aware of the small creatures who were busying themselves with my body, but it was in a world of its own and too engrossed to pay much attention to them.

I’ve learned something by being alone. It is as if I’d reached rock bottom in myself, which usually can’t be seen for all the layers of egotism, conceit, love, and all the ups and downs of daily life. It is this which makes me feel as if I’d had a short circuit within me. When I’m with the other people, their interests, their conversation, act as a balm, covering the rock bottom in myself with a warm compress. When I’m alone, it is as if layers of skin were being scraped away. Your mind is not at ease, you can’t concentrate on reading, the spirit as well as the body must keep pacing up and down. I suddenly understood what insanity must be, but I knew that this was like everything else which has happened to me, and in a couple of days I’ll be myself again.’

This article is a slightly revised version of one first published on 6 April 2015.