A good state of health

To complete a trilogy of articles in December about British antiquarians, today marks the 180th anniversary of the death of the long-lived William Bray. A popular solicitor in Surrey, he also worked as a clerk for the royal household for most of his life. Not only did he transcribe the journals of John Evelyn, one of the most important early diarists, but he kept a diary of his own - full of short and sporadic entries - for more than 75 years.

Bray was born at Shere, Surrey, in 1736, the youngest of the three sons who survived their father. He was educated at Rugby, and then articled to a lawyer in Guildford. In 1761, he was appointed a Clerk of the Green Cloth, in the St James’s royal household, a post he held for nearly 50 years. He married Mary Stephens in 1758, and they had eight children, of whom only a son and two daughters lived to maturity. When both his older brothers had died without children, Bray inherited the manors of Shere and Gumshall in Surrey.

Over time, Bray became solicitor to many county families, but was also steward of Surrey manors, treasurer of charities, and an indefatigable antiquary. In 1777, he published Sketch of a Tour into Derbyshire and Yorkshire. He joined the Society of Antiquaries, and became its treasurer, and, on the death of the Rev Manning in 1801, he took over his work on compiling a history of Surrey, a work published in three volumes over the next 15 or so years. He also transcribed John Evelyn’s now famous journal, and edited his memoirs.

From 1785, Bray was a regularly contributor to the Gentleman’s Magazine, writing first literary articles and later focussing more on antiquarian discoveries and the history of Surrey. He also contributed articles to Archaeologia, the transactions of the Society of Antiquarias, and was treasurer of the society for two decades in the early 19th century. He died on 21 December 1832, aged 96. For more biographical information see Wikipedia, Sussex Archaeological Collections Vol. 92 (2005), or Exploring Surrey’s Past.

Bray’s own diaries were first published privately in 1876, and then reprinted, with some omissions, by the Surrey Archaeological Collections Vol. 46 (1938). In 2008, Bray’s diaries were in the news because a 1755 diary of his came to light - pre-dating all published diary material - which appeared to contain the very first reference to the sport of baseball, see Base ball and cricket records. Here are a few extracts from Bray’s published diary. Although the first entry is in 1756 and the last in 1832 - covering 76 years - the entries are often very brief and few and far between. For instance, the two extracts below for the year 1796 are all that were published for that year.

18 March 1767
‘It pleased God to release my child William from his sufferings, when half a year old he was seized with convulsions which never left him.’

9 June 1767
‘With Mr Hollingworth to the Downs Guildford Races. Sir John Evelyn being taken ill, went off the Downs to Wotton.’

19 June 1767
‘Jack was taken with the smallpox, and on the 28th the dear soul died. Polly was taken on the 1st of July, I sent for Mr Kerr who gave her Sutton’s powders, and she recovered.’

22 December 1767
‘With Mr. Waddington to Drury Lane; “ Suspicious Husband,” Mr. Garrick.

14 December 1796
‘My wife died about 5 in the afternoon; the most affectionate of wives, tenderest of parents, and most sincere of Christians; to her great prudence and discretion I owe the prosperity with which God has blessed me.’

24 December 1796
‘Very hard frost.’

15 November 1806
‘This day, I completed my 70th year, without having ever met with any accident of consequence and with very little interruption to my health, except in January last, when I had a very serious attack by an inflammation in my lungs, but from which I am perfectly recovered. My eyesight is so good that I can and generally do use my eyes in reading or writing from the time of getting up in the morning till 10 at night. My hearing is in no way impaired. I have not lost one front tooth and very few others. I am able to walk or ride 4 or 5 hours together, but I do not ride fast. My memory is perhaps not so good as it has been. On the whole I seem to be in a perfect good state of health, thanks be to God.’

15 November 1808
‘This day I completed my 72nd year; and thanks to God’s mercies I find myself in as perfect health as I ever enjoyed in my life, and the only perceivable difference in any of my senses that I am aware of is a little degree of deafness in my right ear, but as the other is perfect, I do pretty well. My left eye I think has not perfectly recovered the severe inflammation which I had two or three years ago, but the other being sound, I read and write as well and as much as ever. My teeth remain perfect in front and without any additional loss to those which decayed some years ago.’

15 April 1810
‘I quitted the Board of Green Cloth, after having had a place there for 49 years and a half. I was put on the superannuation list at my request, the Lord Steward having kindly procured leave for it. He also, unsolicited, gave me leave to resign my place of Clerk of the Verge to my son.’

14 November 1810
‘After dinner, I found a giddiness in my head making me unable to walk, and a kind of dumb confusion in my head. I wrote to Mr. Heaviside to come, which he did and ordered immediate cupping. The next morning my complaint was gone.’

30 May 1814
‘Received from Mr Sydenham Malthus the melancholy news of my son’s death at Exmouth, from the rupture of a blood-vessel in the lungs.’

19 September 1896
‘With Mary and Miss Davis, in a chaise, by Horsham and Henfold to the ‘Albion’ at Brighton. Dined and lay there; walked on the Chain Pier.’

24 December 1828
‘Such has been the decay in my eyesight the whole of this year that I have not been able to read either print or MS., though I have continued to write letters, as I am writing on this 24th of December. I cannot read it when written. I have also lost my hearing in one ear in a great degree; subject to this, my bodily health has been what may be called good. I have been obliged to pay more than 1,100 pounds by the treachery of a clerk, and the malice of one who had been long attempting, and at last effected a loss of long friendship with Mrs. Wigzell.’

5 July 1832
‘Mr Linnell, a portrait painter was sent by my grandson Reginald to paint a portrait of me. I had five sittings.’

A cold clownish woman

After yesterday’s William Cole anniversary, today is the 380th anniversary of the birth of another English antiquarian - Anthony Wood. Although Wood’s diaries are dryer and more impenetrable than Cole’s, they do have some interest, and are valuable for being relatively early in historical terms.

Wood was born in Oxford, on 17 December 1632, and educated at a free grammar school and Trinity College. In 1647, he entered Merton College and was made postmaster. During subsequent years, he seems to have developed an interest in ploughing, bell-ringing and violin-playing. He published a book of sermons preached by his late brother Edward. Thereafter, he steadily investigated local antiquities, as well as researching into historical records, and this led, in 1669, to publication of Historia et Antiquitates Universitatis Oxoniensis.

In 1678, Wood was relieved of the university registers, which had been in his custody for the best part of two decades, because it was thought he might be implicated in the Popish Plot. Subsequently, to recover his position, he swore oaths of allegiance. In 1693, though, he was banished from the university for a libel in Athenae Oxoniensis against the late Edward Hyde, 1st Earl of Clarendon, but he then recanted. It is said that Wood was an uncouth man, but one who led a life of self-denial, and devoted himself entirely to antiquarian research. He died in 1695. Wikipedia has more biographical information, as does the Notable Names Database.

There would not be much to remember Wood by were it not for the scholarly five volume biography put together by Andrew Clark, Fellow of Lincoln College, Oxford. This was published by the Oxford Historical Press in the 1890s under the title The Life and Times of Anthony Wood, antiquary, at Oxford, 1632-1695, described by himself. The volumes were collected from Wood’s ‘diaries and other papers’, and, indeed, there are numerous references and quotations from the diaries in the first three volumes. However, all the diary entries are heavily annotated, with additions (in brackets) and notes, and often taken second place to the text and chronology of Wood’s daily life as constructed by Clark. Moreover, the diary entries themselves are largely rather dry records of events.

All five volumes are freely available at Internet Archive. Here are a few extracts to give a flavour of Wood’s diary (the parentheses are all by Clark).

9 May 1671
‘At 7 in the morning the King’s crowne endeavoured to be taken away by (Thomas) Blood and his son and 3 others out of the Tower of London, but 3 of them were taken. The said Bloud and his son, who call themselves by the name of Hunt, were 2 of those 6 that set upon the duke of Ormond a little before last Xtmas, and they now confess that they had a designe to sell him to the Turks, because that by his meanes they had lost their estates in Ireland while he was Lord Deputy.’

24 June 1673
‘Midsomer day. Din’d at my brother Kit’s. Cold meat, cold entertainment, cold reception, cold clownish woman. Talking of players and praising them, shee asked me to goe with her and give her a play: ‘if I had money I would, I must be forced to borrow of my brother’ - I told her. Then shee began to extoll Mr. (Edward ?) Fettiplace and Den(nis ?) Huntingdon for cloiying with curtesies, doing any thing that she desired. I told her ‘if I had it, or were in my power, I would doe it.’ She told me that shee ‘had 300li. per annum and scorne(d) to goe.’ I told her ‘I came to be merry and not be scolded at.’ Shee, angry at the word ‘scolding,’ told me ‘if I did not like it’ (the diet), ‘I should leave it.’

14 July 1673
‘M., Mr. (John) Shirley, the Terra filius, of Trinity College, appeared and spoke a speech full of obscenity and prophaneness. Among the rest that he reflected upon, was me and my book: that I made it my employment to peere upon old walls, alters, tombes &c.; that I threated to geld the translator for gelding my booke; that I should say that he had altered my book so much that I did not know whether it was French or Latin; that I perused all privy houses to furnish me with matter to write my book (i.e., meaning from the shitten papers); and when all was done, my book was but fit to returne there againe, etc. But so obscure and dull it was, that few could understand who he meant or what, and therfore had no applause: all looked upon Dr. Wallis, but none upon me who sate within two places (?) of him (one of Peers’ low drunken company). But this was my comfort, that what he had uttered to my great disgrace, the vicechancellor in his concluding speech recruited all againe for upon speaking of the eminent men that have sprung from the University, he said that he would leave it (being too long to recite) to a book that would lately come forth.’

8 July 1693
‘Musick speech, (Hugh) Smith of Univ. Coll. spoke in the Theater. Above 2000 in the Theater, as many as in the great Act 1669, or when the Morocco ambassador was here. Mr. Smith was very baudy among the women: (he had) a grand auditory, while some lecturers had none - so you may see what governs the world. In the afternoon full againe.’

Cole visits Walpole

William Cole, an English clergyman and antiquarian best remembered for his long friendship with Horace Walpole, passed away 230 years ago today. Cole was curiously reluctant to put much of his learning and research into print, though he did bequeath a large collection of historical documents and his own extensive writings - including some diaries - to the British Museum.

Cole was born in the parish of Little Abington, Cambridgeshire, in 1714. He was sent to live with his maternal grandmother in Cambridge at a very early age, and then was educated at Eton. Although an unhappy schoolboy, it was at Eton that he started, what would become, a lifelong friendship with Horace Walpole. He went on to study at Cambridge, graduating in 1737, and being awarded an MA in 1740. Having inherited money, he travelled frequently on the continent (and in Scotland, too), and several times thought about retiring abroad.

In 1745, he was ordained as a priest, and took a living at Hornsey in 1749. However, he was unhappy there, and not able to leave until 1751. A little later, in 1753, he became a rector of Bletchley and remained so until 1767. After leaving Bletchley he moved to Waterbeach, near Cambridge, and then to Milton. Throughout his life, Cole indulged his passion for antiquities, becoming one of the most learned men of his generation; he bequeathed 114 folio volumes to the British Museum. He died on 16 December 1782. There is more information available at Wikipedia and the out-of-copyright Dictionary of National Biography.

Cole was curiously shy of publishing, and much of his reputation today stems from correspondence with Walpole which was preserved and published. However, Cole did also keep a diary for some years, and it was publication of this, in 1931, which enhanced Cole’s reputation, and brought him a wider public. Cole’s dary was edited by Francis Griffin Stokes and published by Constable in two volumes: The Blecheley Diary of the Rev. William Cole, 1765-67 and A Journal of my Journey to Paris in the year 1765.

The following two extracts are not taken from either of the above volumes but from the Yale Edition of Horace Walpole’s Correspondence with the Rev. William Cole II, edited by W S Lewis. (Quotes from which can be found in Horace Walpole: The Critical Heritage and English Historical Documents.) The original diary accounts are in the 114 volumes Cole bequeathed to the British Museum.

30 October 1762
‘Sir William Stanhope, brother to the Earl of Chesterfield, now lives in Mr Pope’s house on the banks of the Thames; you pass over his grotto, immediately under the common highway, as you come from the town of Twickenham to Mr Walpole’s house of Strawberry Hill. Next to it is the house belonging to the late Earl of Radnor, which is the last house on the Thames bank next to Strawberry Hill, a road going by the Thames-side to Kingston Bridge, being between the river and Mr Walpole’s garden, which, however, is within a furlong or two of the river, and his own meadows go quite down to the banks of it, and nothing to obstruct the view of that most beautifying fluid, which makes everything handsome that is within its influence. From the garden you discover the elegant Chinese Temple, being the last building on the bank of the Thames, and close to my Lord Radnor’s house or garden wall - though the house belonging to it is on the other side of the road, and is the last house on that side next to Strawberry Hill, and is an handsome new square building - I say, from this garden of Mr Walpole you discover the Chinese summer house in which, about last August, Mr Isaac Fernandez Nunez, a Jew, shot himself through the head, on the loss of the Hermione, a rich French ship which he had insured, and by that means ruined his fortune and family. His house and furniture were sold by auction while I was at Strawberry Hill, and I was at the sale for a few minutes.

From Mr Walpole’s garden and house you have the most beautiful and charming prospect of Richmond, with variety of fine villas and gardens on the banks of the Thames, which river alone would sufficiently recommend any situation; though when I was there last, viz., in October and the beginning of November, 1762, the excessive rains which had lately fell had so swelled the river that it caused such inundations as were never known in the memory of man; insomuch that during my stay there, two islands just before the garden were totally covered by the waters and could not be seen. The floods did infinite mischief all over England, and particularly in Essex. At Cambridge it was within six inches of the highest flood ever known or recorded there, of which a mark is cut in the wall of King’s College Senior Fellows Garden, on the river’s bank; and the waters came into the cellars of Queens’ College in such a torrent that the butler had not time to go in to stop up the vessels, they having just newly filled their cellars for the year; by which means the water got in, and spoiled all their beer.’

29 October 1774
‘Very rainy day. I set out after breakfast, and went at the back of the town, through Padington, and through Hyde Park, and got to Twickenham by noon. Before dinner Mr Walpole walked with me into the garden to show me his newly erected Chapel, as he calls it, with the shrine in it from the Church of Santa Maria Maggiore at Rome, where it was erected in 1256, [. . .] It is a very curious monument of white marble, standing on twisted pillars, and inlaid with other rich marbles; [. . .] It is also mended and completed by the ingenious artist who erected the beautiful marble chimney-piece in the circular drawing room at the end of the gallery. This occupies the whole end of the chapel, the great and only window to which is filled with painted glass from Bexhill in Sussex. There are besides a strange jumble of crucifixes and profane ornaments. It is so small that half a dozen people will fill it. The front is exquisitely performed in the truest Gothic taste. [. . .]

What country this is, I was not curious to inquire. But I guess it to be Sussex, and near Chichester, where Mr Trevigar was beneficed, and as she seemed to be acquainted with the Guilford Road, whither I was going, about which she gave me instructions, as I was unacquainted with the way. He called her by the name of Mrs Day, which was, probably, her mother’s name. On her coming to town, and being informed of the story, she was instructed to apply to the Bishop, who was not disposed to lend a favourable ear to it; upon which, he drew up a letter for her, and omitted no circumstance to alarm the Bishop, who was well aware, as Mr Walpole said to me, that a bishop in his hands would meet with but little quarter; when, therefore, she was directed to add, by way of postscript, to direct his answer to her at Mr Horace Walpole’s in Arlington Street, it had its effect. And the Bishop proposed to give her the £600 or interest for that sum; and, accordingly, he contrived meanly, as Mr Walpole expressed it, to send her the interest the very day before quarter day, and by that means defrauded her of about £5, as well as I remember. This, Mr Walpole said, he was glad of, as the Bishop by so doing either cheated her, or owes her that sum to this day. Now I have related the story, as well as I can recollect it, I must needs add this caution about it. Mr Walpole is one of the most sanguine friends or enemies that I know. He has had a long pique, I well know, against the Bishop; and indeed his being a bishop is a sufficient reason for his spleen and satire. I love to hear both sides of the question. No doubt Bishop Keene had his reasons, right or wrong, for his acting in the manner he did. Mr Walpole added that he often met the Bishop, now his house is building in Dover Street, but that he always avoided looking at him and constantly held down his head. Mr Walpole best knows what occasions of goodness or shyness there may be between them. The Bishop, I allow, is as much puffed up with his dignities and fortune as any on the bench; and I believe Mr Walpole to be as likely to throw out contemptuous behaviour occasionally on those whom he supposes not to acknowledge his merit, or deserve his disregard, as any person living. They are both my friends, and I can see the blemishes in each. The Bishop was ever esteemed a most cheerful, generous, and good-tempered man. Great fortune with a wife and great dignity in the church often make the wisest men forget themselves. Mr Walpole is one of the best writers, an admirable poet, one of the most lively, ingenious, and witty persons of the age; but a great share of vanity, eagerness of adulation, as Mr Gray observed to me, a violence and warmth in party matters, and lately even to enthusiasm, abates, and take off from, many of his shining qualities. I have given the story as it was related to me, without reserves or caution whatever. I mean to take notice of it to no one; though I make no doubt but Mr Walpole, as he told it to me, has done the same to others. His zeal against churchmen and the church carries him to such lengths as is scarcely consistent with a wise and ingenuous heart.

On a secretaire, as it is called, or upright writing-stand or desk, in the breakfasting room, which commands a delicious prospect across the Thames up to Richmond Hill, is a most delicate and elegant small statue of Cupid sitting, winged, and holding up one hand, in the Seve or St Cloud manufacture, in white; and on a cartouche in front is this inscription. Cupid sits on a bank or hillock ornamented with roses.’

The crimes of war

‘I want to write a poem about the crimes of war, the crimes that have strangled to death millions of pure and bright loves, strangled to death the happiness of millions of people, but I cannot write it.’ This is one of many heartfelt entries in the diary of Dr Dang Thuy Tram, a Vietnamese doctor, who might have turned 70 today had she not been killed by US forces. More or less forgotten, Dr Tram only came to national prominence with the publication of her diaries in 2005 which turned her into a national hero - a Vietnamese Anne Frank.

Tram was born on 26 November 1942 into a prosperous family of doctors, and trained as a doctor herself. She volunteered for duty in a military hospital in Quang Ngai province during the Vietnam War, and died in 1970, shot by US troops. For the last two years of her life, she kept a diary, and it is the story of this diary that takes up most of Tram’s Wikipedia entry, indeed there is far more information about the diary available across the internet than about Tram herself (except in the published diary’s introduction available to read at Amazon - see below).

One of Tram’s diary books was captured by US forces in 1969, and another was found by an American lawyer. Fred Whitehurst, serving with the military intelligence unit, after her death. Whitehurst defied an order to burn the diary - the story goes that an interpreter alerted him by saying, ‘Don’t burn this one, Fred. It has fire in it already.’ Later, Whitehurst, recovered the other diary also, and hoped to return them to Tram’s family. Not until 2005, was a family member traced, and the diaries were published soon after - in July that year - becoming a Vietnamese bestseller. Tram was subsequently dubbed Vietnam’s answer to Anne Frank. The diaries were then translated by Andrew Pham and published in English by Random House - Last Night I Dreamed of Peace, the Diary of Dang Thuy Tram - and since then in many other languages too.

The introduction to Last Night I Dreamed of Peace and several pages of extracts can be read online at Amazon, and further extracts can be read at the California Literary Review.

31 May 1968
‘Today we had a major base evacuation to evade the enemy’s mopping-up operation. The whole clinic was moved, an infinitely exhausting undertaking. It’s heart-wrenching to see the wounded patients with beads of sweat running on their pale faces, struggling to walk step by step across narrow passes and up steep slopes. If someday we find ourselves living in the fragrant flowers of socialism, we should remember this scene forever, remember the sacrifice of the people who shed blood for the common cause. Who has brought this suffering upon us, comrades? They are the devils [US military] robbing our country.’

4 June 1968
‘Rain falls without respite. Rain deepens my sadness, its chill making me yearn for the warmth of a family reunion. If only I had wings to fly back to our beautiful house on Lo Duc Street, to eat with Dad, Mom, and my siblings, one simple meal with watercress and one night’s sleep under the old cotton blanket. Last night I dreamed that Peace was established, I came back and saw everybody. Oh, the dream of Peace and Independence has burned in the hearts of thirty million people for so long. For Peace and Independence, we have sacrificed everything. So many people have volunteered to sacrifice their whole lives for two words: Independence and Liberty. I, too, have sacrificed my life for that grandiose fulfillment.’

20 July 1968
‘The days are hectic with so much work piling up, critical injuries, lack of staff personnel; everybody in the clinic works very hard. My responsibilities are heavier than ever; each day I work from dawn till late at night. The volume of work is huge, but there are not enough people. I alone am responsible for managing the clinic, treating the injured, teaching the class. More than ever, I feel I am giving all my strength and skills to the revolution. The wounded soldier whose eyes I thought could not be saved is now recovering. The soldier whose arm was severely inflamed has healed. Many broken arms have also healed. . . All these successes are due mainly to the nurses and me working day and night at the patient’s bedside.’

25 July 1968
‘I came to sit by Lam’s bedside today. A mortar had severed the nerves in his spine, the shrapnel killing half of his body. Lam was totally paralyzed. His body was ulcerated from the chest down. He was in excruciating pain. Lam is twenty-four this year, an excellent nurse from Pho Van. Less than a month ago, he was assigned as supplement to the District Civil Medical Department. The enemy came upon Lam while he was on the road during his recent assignment; Lam tried to get into a secret shelter, but the Americans were already upon him when he opened the cover; the small shrapnel painfully destroyed his life. Lam lay there waiting for death. In the North, a severed spinal cord is already a hopeless case, let alone here. Lam knows the severity of his injury and is deep in misery and depression.

This afternoon as I was sitting next to him, Lam handed me a letter from Hanh (Lam’s young wife), then said in a low voice, “Big Sister, you and the other sisters here - you are my family - you have dedicated yourselves to nurturing me. What for? I will die sooner or later; if I live, I will only bring more hardships for you and the family.” A single tear rolled down Lam’s gaunt cheek.

My heart was breaking for him, but I didn’t know what to say. If I were Lam, I certainly would have said the same. But I couldn’t stop encouraging him. . . Oh! War! How I hate it, and I hate the belligerent American devils. Why do they enjoy massacring kind, simple folks like us? Why do they heartlessly kill life-loving young men like Lam, like Ly, like Hung and the thousand others, who are only defending their motherland with so many dreams?’

29 July 1969
‘The war is extremely cruel. This morning, they bring me a wounded soldier. A phosphorus bomb has burned his entire body. An hour after being hit, he is still burning, smoke rising from his body. This is Khanh, a twenty-year-old man, the son of a sister cadre in the hamlet where I’m staying. An unfortunate accident caused the bomb to explode and severely burned the man. Nobody recognizes him as the cheerful, handsome man he once was. Today his smiling, joyful black eyes have been reduced to two little holes - the yellowish eyelids are cooked. The reeking burn of phosphorus smoke still rises from his body. He looks as if he has been roasted in an oven.’

I stand frozen before this heartbreaking tableau.

His mother weeps. Her trembling hands touch her son’s body; pieces of his skin fall off, curled up like crumbling sheets of rice cracker. His younger and older sisters are attending him, their eyes full of tears.

A girl sits by his side, her gentle eyes glassy with worry. Clumps of hair wet with sweat cling to her cheeks, reddened by exhaustion and sorrow. Tu (that’s her name) is Khanh’s lover. She carried Khanh here. Hearing that he needed serum for a transfusion, Tu crossed the river to buy it. The river was rising, and Tu didn’t know how to swim, but she braved the crossing. Love gave her strength.

The pain is imprinted on the innocent forehead of that beautiful girl. Looking at her, I want to write a poem about the crimes of war, the crimes that have strangled to death millions of pure and bright loves, strangled to death the happiness of millions of people, but I cannot write it. My pen cannot describe it all, even though this is one case I feel with all my senses and emotions.’

5 August 1969
‘I’m on a night emergency-aid mission, going through many dangerous parts of the national highway on which enemy vehicles frequently commute, and passing through the hills filled with American posts. Lights from the bases shine brightly; I go through the middle of the fields of Pho Thuan. Bright lights shine from three directions around me: Chop Mountain, Cactus Mountain, and the flares hanging in midair in front of me. The light sources cast my shadows in different directions, and I feel like an actor on stage, as in the days when I was still a medical student performing in a choir. Now I am also an actor on the stage of life; I am taking the role of a girl in the liberated area, wearing black pajamas, who night after night, follows the guerrillas to work between our areas and those of the enemy.

Perhaps I will meet the enemy, and perhaps I will fall, but I hold my medical bag firmly regardless, and people will feel sorry for this girl who was sacrificed for the revolution when she was still young and full of verdant dreams.’

20 June 1970 [the final entry published in Last Night I Dreamed of Peace - two days later she was shot.]
‘Still no one comes. It has been almost ten days since the second bombardment. People left with a promise to come back quickly and get us out of this dangerous area. We suspect that spies pointed out our location. [ . . .]

No I am no longer a child. I have grown up. I have passed trials of peril, but, somehow, at this moment, I yearn deeply for Mom’s caring hand. Even the hand of a dear one or that of an acquaintance would be enough. Come to me, squeeze my hand, know my loneliness, and give me the love, the strength to prevail on the perilous road before me.’

The Schindler of China

‘I saw a Japanese soldier lying completely naked on a young girl, who was crying hysterically. I yelled at this swine, in any language it would be understood, ‘Happy New Year! and he fled from there, naked and with his pants in his hand.’ This is John Rabe - who was born 130 years ago today - writing in his diary on 1 January 1938, during the weeks of the Rape of Nanking. The diary was only discovered some 60 years later, and inspired an American historian to dub Rabe the Oskar Schindler of China for his heroic efforts to protect Nanking’s residents from Japanese atrocities.

Rabe was born in Hamburg, Germany, on 23 November 1882. His father was a sailor. Rabe was apprenticed to a merchant, and in time assigned to a post in Africa. In his mid-20s, he went to China and then, from 1910, was employed by Siemens in its Beijing office. When the Second Sino-Japanese War broke out in 1937, the foreign community and much of the Chinese population, including the government, were evacuated from Nanking, where Rabe was living. Although Siemens ordered him to leave too, he declined (although his family did leave).

With other foreign nationals, Rabe established a temporary safety zone for Chinese refugees. Subsequently, he was made head of an international committee to administer the zone. During what became known as the Rape of Nanking, the efforts of this committee managed to save many lives, possibly hundreds of thousands. In 1938, Rabe travelled to Germany, where he undertook a series of lectures, using photos and an amateur film, to publicise the extent of Japanese violence in China. At one point he was arrested by the Gestapo, and only released (under censorship) after an intervention by Siemens. He was posted to Afghanistan briefly.

After the Second World War, Rabe, a member of the Nazi party, was obliged to go through denazification procedures. He appears to have left Siemens employ in 1945, and, thereafter, lived in poverty until his death in 1950. There is plenty of biographical information about Rabe online, thanks to, among others, Wikipedia, a New York Times article and Emily Paras’s Can a Nazi be a Hero?. There are also many websites with details about the Rape of Nanking, such as The Pacific War Historical Society website.

It was Iris Chang, an American historian researching the Nanking events, who discovered John Rabe’s diaries. In her famous book The Rape of Nanking: The Forgotten Holocaust Of World War II published in 1998, she wrote: ‘In 1996 I began an investigation into the life of John Rabe and eventually unearthed thousands of pages of diaries that he and other Nazis kept during the Rape. These diaries led me to conclude that John Rabe was “the Oskar Schindler of China”. The diaries were translated by John E. Woods, edited by Erwin Wickert and published in the late 1990s as The Good German of Nanking: The Diaries of John Rabe by Little Brown in London (and The Good Man of Nanking by A. A. Knopf in New York).

Chang also discovered diaries written by Minnie Vautrin, an American missionary who was in Nanking at the time - see more on her diaries in the 2010 Diary Review article - In darkness and fear.

A few extracts from Rabe’s diaries can be found online at Wikipedia, and in Chang’s book (at Googlebooks).

13 December 1937
‘It is not until we tour the city that we learn the extent of destruction. We come across corpses every 100 to 200 yards. The bodies of civilians that I examined had bullet holes in their backs. These people had been presumably fleeing and were shot from behind. The Japanese march through the city in groups of ten to twenty soldiers and loot the shops [. . .] I watched with my own eyes as they looted the café of our German baker Herr Kiessling. Hempel’s hotel was broken into as well, as almost every shop on Chung Shang and Taiping Road.’

15 December 1937
‘No sooner am I back in my office at Committee Headquarters, than my boy arrives with bad news - the Japanese have returned and now have 1,300 refugees tied up. Along with Smythe and Mills I try to get these people released, but to no avail. They are surrounded by about 100 Japanese soldiers and, still tied up, are led off to be shot. [. . .] It’s hard to see people driven off like animals. But they say that Chinese shot 2,000 Japanese prisoners in Tsinanfu, too. We hear by way of the Japanese Navy that the gunboat U.S.S. Pany, on which the officials of the American embassy had sought safety, has been accidentally bombed and sunk by the Japanese.’

17 December 1937
‘Two Japanese soldiers have climbed over the garden wall and are about to break into our house. When I appear they give the excuse that they saw two Chinese soldiers climb over the wall. When I show them my party badge, they return the same way. In one of the houses in the narrow street behind my garden wall, a woman was raped, and then wounded in the neck with a bayonet. I managed to get an ambulance so we can take her to Kulou Hospital. [. . .] Last night up to 1,000 women and girls are said to have been raped, about 100 girls at Ginling Girls’ College alone. You hear nothing but rape. If husbands or brothers intervene, they’re shot. What you hear and see on all sides is the brutality and bestiality of the Japanese soldiers.’

24 December 1937
‘I have had to look at so many corpses over the last few weeks that I can keep my nerves in check even when viewing these horrible cases. It really doesn’t leave you in a “Christmas” mood; but I wanted to see these atrocities with my own eyes, so that I can speak as an eyewitness later. A man cannot be silent about this kind of cruelty!’

28 December 1937
‘He [Fukui Kiyoshi of the Japanese embassy] also informs me that our Zone has now been surrounded by Japanese guards, who will see to it that no prowling soldiers are allowed into the Zone. I’ve now had a better look at these guards and discovered that they did not stop and interrogate a single Japanese soldier. I even saw soldiers carrying looted items out of the Zone, and with absolutely no questions asked by the guards. What sort of protection is that?’

1 January 1938
‘The mother of a young attractive girl called out to me, and throwing herself on her knees, crying, said I should help her. Upon entering [. . .], I saw a Japanese soldier lying completely naked on a young girl, who was crying hysterically. I yelled at this swine, in any language it would be understood, ‘Happy New Year!’ and he fled from there, naked and with his pants in his hand.’

10 February 1938
‘Fukui, whom I tried to find at the Japanese embassy to no avail all day yesterday, paid a call on me last night. He actually managed to threaten me: “If the newspapers in Shanghai report bad things, you will have the Japanese army against you”, he said. [. . .] In reply to my question as to what I then could say in Shanghai, Fukui said “We leave that to your discretion.” My response: “It looks as if you expect me to say something like this to the reporters: The situation in Nanking is improving everyday. Please don’t print any more atrocities stories about the vile behavior of Japanese soldiers, because then you’ll only be pouring oil on fire of disagreement that already exists between the Japanese and Europeans.” “Yes”, he said simply beaming, “that would be splendid!” ’

My only anxiety

Mary Berry, a celebrated literary figure in 19th century London, died 160 years ago today, a few months after the death of Agnes, her sister, lifelong companion and ‘only anxiety’. Mary never married, though she was courted by Horace Walpole, 50 years her senior, and was for a time engaged to a general. Her diaries, published shortly after her death, provide an engaging social record of the times, but also show she led a busy life, and had a lively self-analytical mind.

Mary Berry was born in 1763 at Stanwick, Yorkshire. The birth of her sister and lifelong companion, Agnes, followed a year later. Their mother died in childbirth along with a third daughter in 1767. Thereafter, the two sisters lived with their grandmother, first in Yorkshire then on the Thames riverside in Chiswick. In 1783, Mary and Agnes went with their father on an extended tour of the Continent - the first of many they would take.

In 1788, the family took a house at Twickenham Common and made the acquaintance of Horace Walpole, who - famously - described the daughters as ‘the best informed and the most perfect creatures I ever saw at their age’. He also wrote that they were ‘entirely natural and unaffected, frank, and, being qualified to talk on any subject, nothing is so easy and agreeable as their conversation’. By then, Walpole was in his 70s, and the Berrys were still only in their early 20s, but nevertheless a strong, almost intimate, attachment developed between him and both women.

In 1791, the sisters and their father went to live near Walpole, at his Little Strawberry Hill property. They also had a house in London, in North Audley Street. After a long courtship Mary became engaged to General Charles O’Hara, but the relationship soon broke down. After Walpole’s death, the Berrys inherited Little Strawberry Hill, and Mr Berry was assigned to prepare some of Walpole’s writings for publication. However, it was Mary who edited the five volumes of Walpole’s work published in 1798. Thereafter, her literary reputation grew, and she worked on several more biographical works and social histories. Much of the time, though, she was to be found travelling in Europe.

In 1824 the sisters took up residence in Curzon Street, where they established a salon frequented by many prominent society figures, including William Makepeace Thackeray. Agnes died early in 1852, and Mary on 21 November, just months after having been presented to Queen Victoria. There is more biographical information about Mary Berry at Wikipedia and the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (login recquired, free with a UK library card).

Berry’s diary was first edited by Lady Theresa Lewis and published by Longmans & Co in 1865 in three volumes as Extracts from the journals and correspondence of Miss Berry, from the year 1783 to 1852. All three volumes are freely available at Internet Archive. The introduction to the first volume, by Lewis, explains Berry’s prominence in society: ‘Miss Berry has more than ordinary claims to live in the memory of those to whom she was personally known. For an unusually lengthened period of years she formed a centre round which beauty, rank, wealth, power, fashion, learning, and science were gathered; merit and distinction of every degree were blended by her hospitality in social ease and familiar intercourse, encouraged by her kindness, and enlivened by her presence. She was not only the friend of literature and of literary people, but she assiduously cultivated the acquaintance of intellectual excellence in whatever form it might appear, and to the close of her existence she maintained her interest in all the important affairs in life, whether social, literary, or political. Without any remarkable talent for conversation herself, she promoted conversation amongst others, and shed an air of home-like ease over the society which met under her roof, that will long be remembered by those who had the opportunity of witnessing it, and who saw the consequent readiness and frequency with which the guests of her unpremeditated parties availed themselves of her general invitation.’

Volume one is mostly letters, with the journal entries written during her Continental travels - here are the first entries from her first trip overseas.

26 May 1783.
‘Set out from Charles Street at four o’clock; slept at the Blue Posts at Witham.’

27 May 1783
‘Arrived at Harwich at four o’clock; sailed on board the Prince of Wales packet-boat, Capt. Nasson, at eight at night.’

28 May 1783
‘All day at sea with a very brisk gale; monstrously sick; came to an anchor at the mouth of the harbour at Helveot at ten o’clock at night.’

29 May 1783
‘Came on shore to the Golden Lion at Helveot between three and four in the morning; breakfasted at six with some of our fellow-travellers; at eight, went on board a yacht sent by Mr Crauford to convey us to Rotterdam. These yachts are elegantly fitted up with every convenience for eating, drinking, and sleeping, and are often hired by Dutch families for several weeks together on parties of pleasure. The passage from Helveot to Rotterdam is commonly made in four or five hours, but there being little or no wind, and the tide being against us, we were from eight in the morning till nine at night in the yacht, and were at last obliged to get into a little rowing boat, in which we arrived at Mr Crauford’s house at Rotterdam between ten and eleven o’clock, not a little delighted to find ourselves again on terra firma and in company of our friends.’

30 May 1783
‘Spent the day in visiting the principal buildings and streets of Rotterdam, which must strike all strangers with its appearance of great bustle, cheerfulness, and most remarkable cleanliness. The canals are broad with rows of trees on each side, and generally full of vessels of all sizes, which are enabled to come up to the very doors of the merchants’ and traders’ houses. The canals are crossed by drawbridges, of which there are commonly more than one in every street, and which gives them such a look of similarity that it was with difficulty I could distinguish one street from another.’

The second and third volumes are more taken up with journal entries, at home and abroad.

23 November 1807
‘A dismal, rainy, and to me melancholy day, for I was out of humour with myself. A number of little circumstances lately have served to convince me that my manner is often tranchante, my voice often too loud, and my way of meeting opposition unconciliating. All these circumstances are exactly the contrary from what they ought to be, to make me what I wish, and what alone I can be, at my time of life. It is odd that I, who have been always thinking of growing old, and have such clear ideas of what alone can make a woman loved and amiable after her youth is past, what her views and manners should be, and what can ensure her any degree of consideration - it is odd, I say, that I should fall into the very faults I am the most aware of, and put myself into the situation I have always deprecated; but it is not too late, and at least I am not too old to mend.

In Madame Neckar’s ridiculous Remains, published by her husband, are some of the very best rules and advice for the manners and conduct of a woman no longer young in society. I will read them again. They always strike me as most justly conceived.’

26 November 1807
‘Walked about the garden at Little Strawberry Hill. My greenhouse looks well. Read Madame du Deffand’s letters in the evening.’ [Berry edited four volumes of Deffand’s letters to Walpole.]

27 November 1807
‘Spent a part of the morning at Little Strawberry Hill in my greenhouse. Read Madame du Deffand in the evening.’

1 December 1807
‘Left Strawberry Hill, after spending five weeks there very comfortably and quietly. North Audley Street for the first time felt cold after the great logs and extreme warmth of Strawberry.’

15 November 1810
‘Accepted Mr Hope’s proposal of going with him to Brighton.’

17 November 1810
‘Mr Hope came soon after eleven. It was a fine sunny day, well calculated to raise one’s spirits when travelling comfortably in a chaise and four. But I was out of spirits with myself. My companion, always acute and intelligent in a tete-a-tete, was another circumstance in my favour; but all did not do. We arrived at Brighton in the dark and the rain at half-past five.’

20 November 1810
‘We drove to the West Cliff. The extent of Brighton along the cliff to the Crescent, the furthest houses on the East Cliff, cannot be much less than two miles. Went to the play (‘The Rivals,’ and the ‘Agreeable Surprise’), which had been bespoken. The house was more than three parts empty; and the company in the Prince’s box, which is always given to the lady who bespeaks the play, talked so loud by way of being so very genteel, that one could hardly hear the players.’

23 November 1810
‘Walked with Mr Ward; his observations are always acute, often droll. But there is nil grande in that man; and with a keen and too accurate observation of the littlenesses and vanities of others, he is, if I am not much mistaken, overcharged with both himself.’

25 November 1810
‘In the evening had some conversation with Mr Grattan. His manner is singular, with much action, and his pronunciation, without being Irish, so very foreign that nobody at first could possibly take him for a native of these islands; his language is good, however, and his choice of words figurative, and out of the common way; but his manner upon the whole in society is much more odd than pleasant.’

26 November 1810
‘Went with Mrs Hope to the church on the hill above the town. It is crowded with tablets and monuments within, and tombstones without; in short, the town and its inhabitants have fairly outgrown their church, for there is but one here.’

13 December 1811
‘Went with Lady Charlotte to hear the military band in the Prince’s Pavilion. Luckily, we only heard two pieces, for the noise of so many loud instruments in a room (the dining-room) which could hardly hold them, was not a remedy for my headache. After the music, having an order, we saw the apartments of the Pavilion. All is Chinese, quite overloaded with china of all sorts and of all possible forms, many beautiful in themselves, but so overloaded one upon another, that the effect is more like a china shop baroquement arranged, than the abode of a Prince. All is gaudy, without looking gay; and all is crowded with ornaments, without being magnificent. The interior of the stables is imposing, though badly arranged for the comfort of the horses, and will only accommodate sixty beneath this large building. The riding house, which is attached to it, perfectly suits its purpose, and is, I think, likely not to be finished, though it is the only part of the habitation of the Prince which deserves preservation. He ought to have a tennis court of the same size, making a pendant to the riding house.’

31 March 1814
‘Went, in the Duke of Devonshire’s box, to see Kean in ‘Hamlet’. I must confess I am disappointed in his talent. To my mind he is without grace and without elevation of mind, because he never seems to rise with the poet in those sublime passages which abound in ‘Hamlet’, and for what is called recitation of verse he understands nothing.’

20 April 1814
‘I went this evening to see Lady H. Leveson, to arrange our going to her sister’s empty house to see the entry of the King of France [Louis XVIII had taken over as de facto ruler of France on 11 April after Napoleon’s defeat]. The streets and the park were, before twelve o’clock, filled with people and carriages; the latter were not allowed to enter the park. At five o’clock we saw seven carriages of the Prince Regent’s pass, drawn by six horses, in dress livery, preceded by several hundreds of gentlemen on horseback, and accompanied and followed by a detachment of Light Horse and the Blues; but that was all we saw, because from Park Street the distance was too great to see well into the carriages, and, if we could have seen so far, the people on foot, and the crowd on the rails and walls of the park, would have prevented our doing so. The people took off their hats and saluted the carriages as they passed with much goodwill, but without the least enthusiasm.’

21 April 1814
‘Everybody who wished to see the King of France went to Grillon’s, in Albemarle Street, where he lodged. I was not amongst the number, but during all the day one could hardly pass through the streets, there were so many carriages and people on foot. He went to see the Prince, and in the evening there were a great many people at Carlton House. All who were not there went to Lady Jersey’s, where there was a very agreeable, and not too numerous a society.’

23 April 1814
‘The King of France left London at nine o’clock this morning. If about the same interval elapses between the visits of the Kings of France to London, we shall not see another for 500 years.’

12 December 1843
‘I have an internal sentiment that I cannot count on myself for a single day. I am therefore most anxious - indeed it is the only thing about which I am anxious - to have all ready, to give as little trouble and hurry at the last as possible. I am very anxious our intimate friends should support poor Agnes, if I leave her behind me. Jane, I hope, will do much for her. I swore her, before she went to Scotland, if I dropped off during her absence, to come immediately up to Agnes. I knew nobody else that could fill her place on that occasion for dear Agnes.’

27 December 1843
‘I have had a severe fit of illness in the form of influenza. Repose, solitude, and a book are all I can attempt. I still make an effort to gather together some sparks of life for my sister’s sake. My only anxiety! my only one! is thinking what I can do to secure her some comfort of society after I am gone. I think of this without ceasing.’