Sourdough sandwich, caribou ribs

‘A sourdough sandwich and a sampling of caribou ribs with broth for lunch. This afternoon we would light off the fireplace for the second time since Jake came. He mentioned someone roasting steak cubes at a beach party so I diced a couple moose steaks. Smeared them with bacon grease and seasoning and prepared a couple roasting sticks. Real good, [. . .] A few bunches of swan passed and one large flock of grey geese. The weather down country looked very cold and wind blown. I sliced and trimmed more moose meat and wished that I had the remainder that lay on the beach near the head of the Chili River.’ This is from the journals of the inspiring outdoorsman, Richard Proenneke, who spent much of his adult life living in a log cabin in the Alaskan wilderness. Alaska Northwest Books is today publishing a special edition of One Man’s Wilderness - the first book based on his journals which brought him some fame - as a way of celebrating the 50th anniversary of when Proenneke ‘first broke ground and made his mark in the Alaskan wilds in 1968’.

Proenneke was born near Lee County, Iowa, one of six children, in 1916. He enlisted in the US Navy the day after the attack on Pearl Harbor, and served as a carpenter for two years in Pearl Harbor. In San Francisco, waiting for a new assignment, he was hospitalised for six months with rheumatic fever. As the war ended, he received a medical discharge. He studied to become a diesel mechanic, but, yielding to a love a nature, he went to Oregon to work on a sheep farm. In 1950, he moved to Shuyak Island, Alaska, where he was employed as a heavy equipment operator and repairman by the Naval Air Station at Kodiak. He took up salmon fishing but also continued to work as a diesel mechanic.

In 1968, Proenneke moved to live in the remote and unpopulated area of Twin Lakes. There he built a log cabin, living a relatively solitary life - self-sustained by fishing, gathering, hunting - for more than 30 years. He spent much of his time studying nature and wildlife, photographing it, and keeping a journal. After only a few years, he had become something a celebrity thanks to a book about him published by Alaska Northwest Books in 1973. It was Proenneke’s friend and fishing/hunting partner, Sam Keith that first suggested a book based on Proenneke’s journals, and it was under Keith’s name that it was published: One Man’s Wilderness: An Alaskan Odyssey by Sam Keith from the journals and photographs of Richard Proenneke. The book was hugely popular, though Proenneke subsequently claimed that Keith had ‘changed some things’.

As his fame spread in the 1980s, Proenneke took on more formal tasks, volunteering for and eventually being employed by the National Park Service while continuing to live in his cabin. He also found himself often distracted, says Hermitary in its bio ‘by filming and Park Service relations and well-meaning visitors, noisy hunters, editors seeking a writing deal, fan mail, and friends overwhelming him with gifts of processed foods’. Only in 1999, at the age of 82, did Proenneke return to civilisation, living with his brother in California until his death in 2003. A year or two earlier he had donated all his journals to Lake Clark National Park and Preserve. Further information on Proenneke can be found at Wikipedia or the Richard Proenneke Museum website.

One Man’s Wilderness has remained in print continuously - the thirty-second Alaska Northwest Books printing in 2011 can be previewed at Googlebooks and read in full at Internet Archive. Many reviews can be read at Good Reads, which gives the book a high 4.29 rating on the basis of nearly 5,000 readers. In the early 2000s, some of the book and along Proenneke’s own films were used in a documentary aired by US Public Television: Alone in the Wilderness - see IMDB, YouTube, and the Bob Swerer Productions website. A 50th anniversary edition is being published today (11 September)  by Alaska Northwest Books (see Graphic Arts Books and Amazon) with a new introduction by Nick Offerman (though the 50th anniversary is of Proenneke breaking ground for his cabin and making his mark in Alaska not of publication of the original book).

Editions of Proenneke’s unadulterated journal entries have also been published. The first - More Readings From One Man’s Wilderness: The Journals of Richard L. Proenneke 1974-1980 - was edited by John Branson and published by the National Park Service, Lake Clark National Park and Preserve, in 2005. This can be freely accessed online at Internet Archive or National Park Service. Since then, three other volumes have also been published:  The Early Years (1967-1973), A Life in Full Stride (1981-1985), and Your Life Here Is An Inspiration (1986-1991) - all edited by Branson and available from the Richard Proenneke Museum Store.

In his preface to More Readings, Branson says his intent is ‘to present a broad array of Proenneke’s daily activities’, thus readers ‘will find Proenneke during his adventuring days on the trail and battling strong winds in his canoe, they will see him on more prosaic days of cutting wood, mending his clothes, cooking, writing, feeding his “camp robbers,” and contending with an apparent limitless number of porcupines bent on chewing his cabin to dust.’ Moreover, he says, ‘his keen observations of brown-grizzly bears, great horned owls, moose, sheep, caribou, wolverines, lynx, and red foxes demonstrates just how knowledgeable Proenneke was of wildlife behavior.’

Branson also notes that he wanted to document Proenneke’s interaction with various NPS personnel as they planned and created the new Lake Clark National Monument in 1978-1979 and the national park and preserve in 1980, and to make selections demonstrating how very close Proenneke was tied to the small community of Port Alsworth on Lake Clark, and of his particularly close relationship to the pioneering Alsworth family. Proenneke might have been nearly emotionally self-sufficient, he adds, but he was tethered to the Alsworths for provisions, mail service, and friendship. ‘It is hoped,’ Branson says, ‘that this book will inspire more interest in the life of Richard Proenneke because he was truly a remarkable man who represented values of wilderness preservation and resource protection.’

In his biographical sketch, Branson goes on to look at the links between Proenneke and another diarist/naturalist, Henry D. Thoreau. ‘By the 1980s some were beginning to see parallels with Henry David Thoreau in Proenneke’s singular existence at Twin Lakes. The more one examines Proenneke’s life at Twin Lakes the more one sees Thoreau’s philosophy put into practice. Thoreau preached material simplicity and a life in balance with nature in Walden. Thoreau wrote about the costs of building his cabin at Walden Pond and Proenneke wrote about the costs of his cabin construction at Twin Lakes. Thoreau lived in his cabin two years; Proenneke lived at his cabin the better part of 30 years. Thoreau has inspired millions about the value of wilderness to human survival, of low consumption and self reliance. Proenneke inspires by example, leading a full life, both of action and of the intellect. He had more constructive energy and could concentrate more than anyone I have ever met, whether cooking, hiking, wood cutting, cleaning up after litter bugs, or writing his journals and attending to his large correspondence. Proenneke’s life at Twin Lakes runs back through some 150 years of American history to Thoreau at Walden Pond. Both men achieved great balance in their daily existence, tending both the mind and the muscles.’

Here is one extract from One Man’s Wilderness (Keith’s version of the diaries).

4 June 1968
‘A good day to start the roof skeleton.

Another critic cruised past in the lake this morning, a real chip expert and wilderness engineer, Mr. Beaver. He probably got a little jealous of all the chips he saw, and to show what he thought of the whole deal, upended and spanked his tail on the surface before he disappeared.

Shortly afterward a pair of harlequin ducks came by for a look. The drake is handsome with those white splashes against gray and rusty patches of cinnamon.

My curiosity got the better of me and I had to glass the sheep in the high pasture. It was a sight to watch the moulting ewes grazing as the lambs frolicked about, jumping from a small rock and bounding over the greenery, bumping heads. It was a happy interruption to my work.

I find I can handle the twenty-footers easily enough by just lifting one end at a time. With the corners of the cabin not yet squared off, there are some long ends sticking out on which to rest logs as I muscle them up to eave level and beyond. I also have two logs leaning on end within the cabin, and by adjusting their tilt I can use them to position a log once it is up there. The ladder comes in handy, too.

The two eave logs were notched and fastened down according to plan. I cut the openings for the big window, the two smaller ones, and the opening for the door. 1 placed the first gable log on each end, and it was time to call it a day.

The roof skeleton should get the rest of its bones tomorrow.’

And here are several extracts from More Readings (the diaries as selected by Branson).

24 December 1974
‘I did a bit of reading of magazines collected during the summer and went through half of my Dec. journal. Pretty tame reading now and I wonder how it will be in a dozen years from now. It would be interesting to reread from April 29 and estimate the miles I have covered since that date. 1,500 would be a real conservative estimate in my mind and I wonder how close I am.

Recently I have been thinking of a good hike on snowshoes and only one thing holds me back and that is perishables freezing in my cabin while I am away. Pack my Eddie Bauer sleeping bag, a tarp, axe and some grub and head for Port Alsworth. I could make it in two days easy enough. Go through Low Pass and down the Kijik to Lachbuna Lake and from the lower end take a sharp left and through a pass to the head of Portage Creek. Down the creek to the lake and travel the lake to Tanalian point and Babe’s bay [Hardenburg Bay]. It would be a good exercise and to return over a broken trail would be a breeze. It would be done after mid Feb. when the days are longer and less chance of things freezing here.’

5 October 1975
‘Overcast, Breeze up & 27°. The kettle of caribou to cook and the cabin to restock from the cache. Rain jacket to mend and heavy socks to darn. Jake took a tour with his 35 mm. A good cover of snow but we needed sunshine to go with it. The breeze had been light early but as the day progressed it picked up to a good blow. The lake very rough and the Cub resting easy on its rack behind the high breakwater. A real safe tie down with the lake level low.

A sourdough sandwich and a sampling of caribou ribs with broth for lunch. This afternoon we would light off the fireplace for the second time since Jake came. He mentioned someone roasting steak cubes at a beach party so I diced a couple moose steaks. Smeared them with bacon grease and seasoning and prepared a couple roasting sticks. Real good, but I think roasting them through the open door of the stove would do better but lack the open fire effect.

A few bunches of swan passed and one large flock of grey geese. The weather down country looked very cold and wind blown. I sliced and trimmed more moose meat and wished that I had the remainder that lay on the beach near the head of the Chili River. If it is a bad day tomorrow I just might spend the day hiking down and back with the light load. See how N70039 is doing as I pass.

The sky was pink above a huge roll of grey clouds at sunset. The wind strong and cold. I put the thermometer in my potato box in the woodshed. When I went for it, 30° and I brought them in. It went into my cooler box for there is green stuff there. 36° when I went to check - good for a few days at least.

A good supper with boiled spuds and gravy. Moose steaks, tender and juicy. A big green salad and beans. Our old standby for dessert. Two gallons and a qt. of blueberries in the bank. The picking season is over. Now at 7:50, the surf is noisy on the beach, a few flakes of snow in the air, temp. 27°.’

3 August 1978
‘Partly Cloudy, Calm & 45°. Very few clouds but enough that I couldn’t call it clear. The lake is rising because of so much warm weather. With so much calm weather I should he seeing sign of red salmon but as yet, none.

Today I would go to the far corner and get a good sunburn in the process. Go up the right hand fork of Camp Creek. Climb to the high ridge looking down on the head of Beatrice Creek. Sheep country in the summer time. Sheep leaving the lick climb to the high ridges and keg up on the ledges just under the crest of the ridges. It’s a long haul, almost like going to the lick as far as travel time is concerned.

I was a long time making up my mind - too many far away places that I would like to visit. This one had priority because of the satellite or space station that had burned on re-entry to the atmosphere of earth. Some garbage separated from it as it passed over head. I felt sure that it was to high for any space parts to land this side of Turquoise Lake but I would keep it in mind as I trudged along.

I crossed at the mouth of Camp Creek and I thought of Roy Allen. He and I had come down Camp Ridge to the creek crossing after an unsuccessful sheep hunt. I had worn boots and offered to pack him across. He disappeared in the brush up the creek and after what seemed an unreasonable length of time he came back with a stout willow pole that he had cut and limbed with his hunting knife. “I didn't take pole vaulting in college for nothing” he said after pole vaulting across the narrow stream. Camp Ridge is a good place from which to check Emerson Creek for bear. A lush green patch far up at the eroded rocks waterfall and a sow with triplets spent some time there one year.

I was sitting down glassing the country and just got to my feet to move. Here came a nice ewe and lamb around that point of loose rock. No more than fifty feet away and she stopped to check me out. I stood still and she and her lamb passed me at twenty five feet headed on up the ridge. Here came another pair, a nice looking ewe molted clean and starting a new coat. The wind in my favor so she wouldn’t wind me. She came a few steps and stopped to watch me. Closer still until she was no more than fifteen feet away. The lamb as close and off to the side. Me with the Exakta hanging around my neck and I didn't dare move. Those little sheep flies of the high country were biting me on the legs and still I didn’t move. Could I move slow enough to get the camera up without spooking them. I would give it a try. Very slowly I moved my hand and they watched. The ewe moved back to twenty feet as I raised the camera. Ewe and lamb came together and I got them. The click of the shutter was too much and they moved back the way they had come. Another pair came and caught me moving and trotted away.

I stayed up there as long as I dared. 2:45 and it would take me at least three and one half hours to get home. It had been building heavy clouds and so I would have shade
for the descent. One last look around and I headed down the loose rock mt. Forty minutes that took an hour to climb. Two hours fifteen to Emerson Creek flats below the falls. A nice breeze up the lake and I wouldn’t use the kicker. 50 minutes from Emerson Creek to my beach. The wind was calming while I had supper and now as I finish my writing it is near glassy smooth. The circles of a strong rise out front and it may have been the first of the red salmon. At 9:30 nearly clear again and the temperature 55°.’

Diaries and literary biography

Until now there has been no significant analysis of the use of diaries in the development of literary biography. A new survey, however, finds important links between the two genres and draws attention to several key features: how diary material has been more fundamental for major developments in literary biography than is generally acknowledged; how published diaries flourished while biography languished in the nineteenth century; and how some biographers - even of the most famous diarists - have relegated their subject’s diaries to little more than a resource to tap into when convenient, while others perceive the persona of the diarist as crucial to a writer’s ‘life.’

These are the main conclusions of one chapter in Wiley-Blackwell’s important new work published today: A Companion to Literary Biography. The book contains 33 essays, written mostly by academic scholars, and an introduction by the editor Richard Bradford, an esteemed literary biographer and noted expert in the field. According to the publisher: ‘The Companion brings a new perspective on how literary biography enables the reader to deal with the relationship between the writer and their work. Literary biography is the most popular form of writing about writing, yet it has been largely neglected in the academic community. This volume bridges the gap between literary biography as a popular genre and its relevance for the academic study of literature.’ Some pages are available to preview at Googlebooks, and the book can be purchased (for £120!) from Amazon.

I, myself, contributed Chapter 10 - The Role of Diaries in the Development of Literary Biography. Here are the conclusions to that chapter (much of which can be read, at the time of writing, in the e-book version available at Googlebooks).

‘The history of literary biography has been much studied and written about, but not from the standpoint of how it might have been affected and influenced by diaries and diarists. Here, I have tried to redress that imbalance by touching, albeit lightly, on some features in both genres, features that show, among other things, how significant changes in the development of biography may well have been driven or fueled by diary writers. It is an impossible leap to see the origins of literary biography in Japan 1,000 years ago (since they were not published in English until the twentieth century), but, on the other hand, it should not be ignored that so long ago there was an artistic culture in which life writing - diaries, biographies, travel journals - not only existed but reached heights of literary excellence still much admired today.

Some 500 years later comes the first evidence in England of individuals, from various different strata in society, recording their lives in diary form - biographical writing. For the Boy King, Edward VI, inspired by his tutor, Cheke, to give more significance to his reflections by writing them down, we have a document of immense historical importance, but one that gives us, at the very least, a feeling of the boy’s life. For Henslowe, his simple account notes are an invaluable first-hand source about the literary world in which he and Shakespeare worked. Most intriguing of all is Anne Clifford, whose diary is one of the very first to document feelings and thoughts, as well as a remarkable story that resonated strongly with one of the twentieth century’s literary figures, Vita Sackville-West. 

Pepys and Evelyn were diarists of the highest order, but in very different ways, not least because their diary habit emerged long before such feats of life writing were commonplace. And it is worth emphasizing that their diaries remained hidden, unpublished until the early part of the nineteenth century. Modern biographers of Pepys, notably Tomalin, have rightfully placed his diary center stage in their ‘life’; but the same cannot be said of Evelyn, for his most recent biographer, Darley, has ignored the diaries as a literary work - this despite Evelyn having kept his diary for 80 years. Other modern biographers have also been dismissive of the persona of the diarist, or diaries as a work to be discussed in relation to a subject’s life - Sutherland does much the same with Scott, O’Keeffe with Haydon, and Briggs with Woolf.

Many, if not most of those, who study the history of English literature agree that Johnson and Boswell can be found at the well-spring of literary biography, the former for his Lives of the Poets, and the latter for his biography of the former. It is clear that around Johnson, and partly because of him, there was a culture of keeping a diary, one that infected not only Boswell, but Fanny Burney and Hester Thrale. And out of this cauldron of life-writing activity came Boswell’s great biography, and another of Johnson by Thrale. It is well understood today that Boswell’s Life of Johnson was heavily dependent on his diaries, but it is my contention that his pivotal place in the development of literary biography came about largely because of his diaries, because he was a diarist. All four writers remain of much interest to modern biographers, their diaries (only travel diaries in Johnson’s case) providing plenty of material to interpret and reinterpret. 

Forward in time from Boswell come two important literary biographies, Moore’s life of Byron and Lockhart’s impressive work on Scott. Both these, in fact, were derived in part from much admired diaries. Indeed, it was Byron’s youthful travel diaries that inspired a middle-aged Scott to begin a journal that would be judged as one of his greatest works. Byron was not a diary keeper by nature, nor were others in the Romantic circle. Shelley tried, but it was his wife, Mary, who kept their joint journal up to date and maintained it beyond her husband’s death, much to the interest of modern biographers. And Dorothy Wordsworth’s diary, a plum source for her husband’s biographers, has over time come to be highly regarded and has raised her own status to that of a literary figure.

While literary biography is considered to have been stagnating for most of the nineteenth century, it was a boom period for diaries - everyone was at it, and many producing works of literary and historical excellence. In Britain, there were writers as different as George Elliot, Lewis Carroll, and Beatrix Potter, whose diaries would shed much light on their lives and their writing; and there were those from the theater world, such as the actress Fanny Kemble (whose later diaries were a bold voice against slavery in the United States). The same pattern was developing overseas. In the United States, there were writers like Emerson, who left behind voluminous diaries, as well as Louisa Alcott, providing unparalleled biographical insights. The author Stendhal, the painter Delacroix, and the Goncourt brothers were all producing diaries that would become French classics of the genre; and in Russia diary writing was becoming a way of life for all the Tolstoys.

With so many writers monitoring their lives by this time, it was inevitable that some would wish to descend further into the depths of their minds and consciousness, looking for explanations of their own behavior and actions, to understand their relationships with other people and the world around, or because they were simply curious to record what they found. For this chapter, I have chosen the very different painters, Benjamin Haydon and Marie Bashkirtseff, the English don Arthur Benson, and the Swiss philosopher Henri-Frédéric Amiel to demonstrate how diarists were beginning to exploring their inner selves, and thus leave behind more enlightening information than biographers had generally had access to beforehand. And by the end of the nineteenth century, two writers - Alice James and W.N.P. Barbellion - stand out for the hyper-consciousness and care with which they wrote their diaries, aware of public interest in the inner life, and aiming for literary success.

If the genre of literary biography had been stagnating for much of the nineteenth century, it was about to explode with ideas - first with Lytton Strachey, then with Virginia Woolf. My aim has been to show that wherever one looks in the genre’s history, there are diaries and diarists, and this is no less true of its reinvention with Strachey and Woolf. My main argument is that by the time of this literary revolution there was a plentiful supply of new, fresh, and invigorating diary material not only feeding into what information was available to biographers but challenging them to find new ways of writing the ‘life.’ It is interesting - I claim no more - that Strachey chose four subjects, for his Eminent Victorians, all of whom were diarists, but diarists with this newly widespread predilection for self examination. Interesting, too, how steeped Woolf was in the diary genre. She was extremely well-read in other people’s diaries, and was reading the newly published diaries of Anne Clifford, edited by her friend Vita Sackville-West, while writing Orlando, a fictional biography of Sackville-West. This turned out to be her most innovative contribution to literary biography. She was also a brilliant diarist herself, and almost every one of her biographers acknowledges how central diary writing was to all her other writing. Thus, it also my contention that the very act of writing a diary has been instrumental in allowing writers to break through into new biography forms, as with Boswell, but so too with Woolf.’

I whipped the first boy

‘In the afternoon I whipped the first boy I have had occasion to. It was a bad business, perfectly disgusting to me, but I found it was absolutely necessary.’ This is from the youthful diary of Edward Everett Hale, a celebrated American writer and minister, born two centuries ago today. Although Hale’s diaries have not been published, his son published a ‘life and letters’ biography which includes some extracts from them. 

Hale was born on 3 April 1822 in Boston, Massachusetts, son of the proprietor and editor of the Boston Daily Advertiser. He was also a nephew of Edward Everett, the orator and statesman, and grand-nephew of Nathan Hale, the Revolutionary War hero. Hale was considered a child prodigy, studying at Boston Latin School, and entering Harvard College aged 13, where he excelled, before moving on to Harvard Divinity School. 

Having become licensed as a Unitarian minister, Hale became, in 1846, pastor of the Church of the Unity in Worcester. The following year, he was elected a member of the American Antiquarian Society, and he would remain involved with the society for the rest of his life. In 1852 he married Emily Baldwin Perkins, the niece of Connecticut Governor and U.S. Senator Roger Sherman Baldwin. They had nine children. From 1856 until 1899, he was pastor of Boston’s South Congregational Church.

Having long written for his father’s publication, it was not until 1859 that his literary work attracted wider attention, this was thanks to a short story - My Double and How He Undid Me - in the Atlantic Monthly. Many other stories followed - often marked by a style dubbed realistic fantasy - for a variety of other publications. His best known work, however, was The Man Without a Country, published in the Atlantic in 1863, which rallied support for the Union cause in the North. Another of his stories - Hands Off in Harper’s New Monthly Magazine (1881) - is considered to have been influential in the emerging genre of science fiction.

Hale was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1865 and of the American Philosophical Society in 1870. He helped found two social reform magazines - the Christian Examiner, Old and New (1870-1875) and Lend a Hand (1886-1897), and he was generally regarded an important leader of the Social Gospel movement being a forceful advocate of emigrant aid, African American education, worker's housing, and world peace. In 1903 he became chaplain of the U.S. Senate in Washington and did not return to Boston until shortly before his death there in 1909. Further information is readily available from Wikipedia, Encyclopaedia Britannica, Dictionary of Unitarian & Universalist Biography, and Harvard Square Library.

Hale kept diaries through much of his life, and wrote many letters. When he was still alive, he had it mind to publish some of the letters with the help of a friend, but this project felt through. However, one of Hale’s sons, Edward E. Hale, Jr., decided to edit and publish his fathers letters and diaries. The amount of material placed in his hand, he says in a preface to the published work, ‘was very great’. ‘There were thousands of letters, many diaries and day-books covering almost the whole of my father’s life.’ Two volumes of The Life and Letters of Edward Everett Hale - including a significant number of diary extracts - were published by Little, Brown, and Company in 1917 - they are both freely available online through Internet Archive. Here are several sample extracts from his diaries - though it’s hard to tell he was only 15-17 years old! 

9 January 1837
‘Met Meyer at Farwell’s, and he agreed to join the German section, which Sam. Guild and I were attempting to raise. Spoke to Longfellow at dinner about the German, and he said that he thought perhaps his brother, who had just returned from Europe, would take it, so he agreed to say nothing to Bokum till that was settled. After French wrote Latin exercise. In the evening went into Williams’ rooms and got the Oedipus. This lesson finished Oedipus Tyrannus. Came home, finished exercise, got Horace and went to bed.’

10 January 1837
‘Longfellow told me this morning that he had not seen his brother, but the President had told him that his election for the Prof’ship must be confirmed by the Senate as a part of the board of overseers. They will meet on Thursday and I suppose will settle it then. If Longfellow will take the section, we had rather recite to him than to Bokum.’

16 January 1837
‘After reciting to Channing today walked down to the bridge with Donaldson, talking about the I. O. H., the interests of which he has a good deal at heart. Came home and read some in Rev. Mr. Emerson’s ‘Nature.’ It is an odd sort of book, but I like it better than most everyone else seems to, though to be sure there is a good deal in it that I can’t understand. In the evening Nathan undertook to Animal Magnetize me. I got horribly sleepy but I believe it was the natural effect of sitting still five minutes without speaking, and feeling his hands stroking me down so.’

23 February 1837
‘All day Nathan was making experiments in sound, which I inspected and assisted in. In the afternoon finished woodcut, upon which I put so much time that I did not get the lesson in Mechanics in time to recite, and so had to say ‘not prepared’ which vexed me horribly, particularly as it was my own fault. In the evening went to Dawes’ room to meet the rest of the Library committee [of the I. O. H.]. We decided on buying Pope’s Homer, Ion, Clarence, Cooper’s Sketches of Switzerland 2 Part, Abercrombie’s Intellectual faculties, &c. &c.’

3 March 1837
‘Slept over prayers this morning and did not get up till nearly breakfast time. First time I have missed for a long time. Found at breakfast that we had a miss in Greek, so that my absence did not hurt me or anybody else, in respect to that. The cause of the miss seems to be that Felton went in to the theatre last night with Profs. Pierce and Longfellow, so that he could not get up in time to give the 1st section an exercise, and we had none in consequence.’

20 November 1838
‘After (evening) prayers I went to Morison’s room where the astronomical forces were to collect, previously to an attack on Mr. Lovering. We did not get ready for a start till 5 o’clock. Mr. Lovering explained to us his fancy, as he modestly called it very intelligibly. In the evening went to a lecture at the Warren St. Chapel by Uncle Edward on the Northmen. It was a short abstract of the history of their discovery of this country with a good deal about Dighton rock which Uncle supposed to have been sculptured by the natives, for various reasons, the principal of which was the fact, which Mr. Catlin told him, that he had seen thousands of such inscriptions in the Indian countries, in tribes which had not, as well as those which had, the use of instruments of steel.’

25 November 1838
‘The President requested “the members of the seminary” to remain after prayers and he then announced that two of the commons waiters had been found insensible, having imprudently slept last night with charcoal in the room. At breakfast some one came from the kitchen to get some of the Davy Club to go down stairs and see the doctors about making oxygen for these men. I went down and they said they wished to try the effect of oxygen. With two or three others I came into the Davy Club room and went to work. I was there most all day, we made as much oxygen as we could, getting the furnace going and using an iron retort. The men were insensible all day.’

20 October 1839
‘I staid to the Sunday School and took a class; not that I have any more faith than ever as to my qualifications as a teacher, or in the beneficial effects of a Sunday School in such a parish as ours, but because in the introduction of the new system there is a dearth of men teachers and as I think it ought to be tried I was willing to give my hand.’

24 October 1839
‘In the afternoon I whipped the first boy I have had occasion to. It was a bad business, perfectly disgusting to me, but I found it was absolutely necessary. The boy was decidedly the worst boy in the room, and utterly regardless of the ordinary machinery of marks, etc. and having run up to ten marks in the first three days in the week, I told him that for the next offence he should be ‘punished’ as the phrase is. And so he was.’

Never to be forgotten

Sidney George Fisher, described by Wikipedia as a Philadelphia gentleman, lawyer, farmer, plantation owner, political essayist and occasional poet, died 150 years ago today. But he was also a diarist of some distinction as can be noted from this extract concerning the death of his brother: ‘It seems like a horrible dream. I cannot describe the scenes of those dreadful days & nights, the shocking contortions of his face, the ravings, the stream of words, of articulate sounds which were not words, poured forth in torrents by the hour, with such terrible expression of voice & countenance that it seemed to me a wonderful exhibition of the power of both. A new view of human nature was opened to me, impressive, solemn, fearful, never to be forgotten.’

Fisher was born in 1809 in Philadelphia, US, the eldest of three sons. His father died when he was five and his mother when he was 12. The three boys moved to live with their aunt in Wakefield, Germantown. Fisher went on to study law at Dickinson College in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, and prospered as a lawyer. In 1951, he married Elizabeth Ingersoll, and they had one son. Soon after, they moved to a country residence owned by the Ingersolls called Forest Hill, located some four miles north of Philadelphia, which remained Fisher’s home for the rest of his life. Increasingly, he only practiced law when it suited him, preferring to indulge other interests, writing books and giving talks.

Fisher inherited a plantation, Mount Harmon, on the Sassafras River in Cecil County, Maryland, from his maternal grandfather and namesake, Sidney George. He leased the land to farmers who lived there with their families and paid him rent. Although he was a gentleman farmer, Fisher advised his fellow farmers to diversify beyond grain. He was a fervent lifelong anti-Democrat, and prior to the Civil War he was a slavery apologist, agreeing with abolitionists that slavery was evil, but arguing that it was necessary as a form of welfare. His most influential achievement was his book, The Trial of the Constitution, published in 1862. He died on 25 July 1871. Further information is available at Wikipedia. The American Antiquarian Society has a more detailed biography.

Apart from The Trial of the Constitution, Fisher is best remembered for a lively and informative diary he kept for much of his life. The original manuscripts were edited by Nicholas Wainwright and published in 1967 by the Philadelphia Historical Society as A Philadelphia Perspective: The Diary of Sidney George Fisher Covering the Years 1834-1871. Subsequently, the diaries were edited by W. Emerson Wilson and published by The Historical Society of Delaware as Mount Harmon Diaries of Sidney George Fisher, 1837-1850. In 2007, came yet another edition, this one edited by Jonathan White and focused on the civil war: A Philadelphia Perspective: The Civil War Diary of Sidney George Fisher (some pages can be previewed at Amazon).

The following extracts however come from The Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography which published parts of the diary in July 1964 (Vol. 88, No. 3).

18 February 1862
‘Every branch & twig of the trees was this morning encased in ice, producing a beautiful effect of silver arabesque. They glittered in the sun like so many gigantic chandeliers of cut glass. The news is that Fort Donelson is ours. It is a most important position and was defended with great obstinacy. The courage displayed in the attack, however, was greater than in the defence, as the enemy fought behind entrenchments, whilst our troops marched up hill to armed batteries, exposed to a deadly fire from an unseen foe, and this too after exposure without tents to rain & storms.

Mrs. Kemble came in. She was as usual exuberant & animated, a little theatrical, very clever & somewhat dictatorial, tho in a good- natured way. She is very enthusiastic about the war & predicts from it the destruction of slavery. She expressed profound regret at the hostile opinions exhibited by England, but said that we have much more to dread from France & that her English letters informed her that, but for the remonstrances & advice of the English government, the Emperor would ere this have recognized the South & opened the blockade.’

10 March 1862
‘At 3 o’clock this morning I saw my brother die.’

14 March 1862
‘I wish to make now merely a simple record of the facts of this the greatest calamity that has yet befallen me. On Thursday evening, as before mentioned, Henry was so much better that the doctors thought there was no reason whatever why anyone should remain with him all night. As I had been away three nights, I therefore came home. On Friday morning, I found that I had taken cold from my long drive to Frankford the previous day and, the weather being still damp & raw, I feared to increase it by going up morning & evening to Brookwood and, feeling no anxiety about Henry, I remained at home till three o'clock. On my way up I met Harry Ingersoll in Green Lane, who told me that Henry was much worse & had had a bad night. When I reached the house, I was informed that during the night the fits had returned with great violence, that he had been quite out of his mind, had got out of bed, tried to jump out of the window, & could only be controlled by the coachman, the only man in the house. In the morning, he had a few hours sleep, the effect of opiates. George Smith & I sat up with him, Wister & Gerhard there in the evening. He continued to grow worse thro Saturday & Sunday and at 10 minutes past 3 on Monday morning he died.

It seems like a horrible dream. I cannot describe the scenes of those dreadful days & nights, the shocking contortions of his face, the ravings, the stream of words, of articulate sounds which were not words, poured forth in torrents by the hour, with such terrible expression of voice & countenance that it seemed to me a wonderful exhibition of the power of both. A new view of human nature was opened to me, impressive, solemn, fearful, never to be forgotten. Grief at times was overcome by amazement not unmixed with admiration at the spectacle, whose various horrors were governed by an order and harmony of their own, which passed in rapid succession &, when over, left on the mind, like a storm, the impression of sublime power & terrible beauty. George Smith & Stewardson were with him nearly all the time, Wister came twice a day & staid all Sunday night, Gerhard staid two nights. All that skill could do was tried in vain. The disease was meningitis or inflammation of the brain, which caused the convulsions & the astonishing effects of countenance & voice, and his great vital power made the struggle long & severe. At 12 o’clock on Sunday, Wister announced to Leidy that he was sinking. The convulsions, the ravings, the distortions had ceased & he laid panting but quiet. We all assembled around the bed, Leidy, Ellen, Jim, Mrs. Atherton, Mrs. Purviance & myself, and there we all remained until three o’clock on Monday morning, 15 hours, during which he was dying. Leidy had been in constant attendance on him night & day, ever since he was attacked, with rare intervals of sleep, the others were more or less exhausted. Human nature could endure no more. Before he died they were all asleep. Half an hour before he died, the loud hoarse panting subsided into a soft, gentle, regular moan, which grew fainter until at length the last breath was expired and he was gone. We got the ladies & children to their rooms & soon after went to bed ourselves.’

15 August 1862
‘Went to town, driving Bet, Sidney, & Bridget in the big wagon with Delly. As we were going along Broad St. we met a Dummy engine [the name given by Philadelphians to streetcars propelled by small vertical steam engines] lately put on that road. The mare was very much frightened, shied first to one side & then to the other, & if they had not stopped the engine & the conductor had not come to my assistance, we would have been upset. When I saw the probability of this & thought of Bet & Sidney, my feelings are not to be described, nor my relief & thankfulness when the danger was over. These Dummy cars always frighten horses. They move without any apparent motive power, tho why that should have the effect I cannot imagine, unless horses are capable of being astonished at an effect of which they cannot see the cause. It is an outrage to permit the use of such engines in the streets, but the passenger railroad companies seem to have seized on the highways of the city as their property. They control councils & the legislature.’ 

11 November 1862
‘On the way to Wilmington [en route to Mount Harmon] fell into conversation with a young soldier who was wounded at the battle of Antietam in the foot. He was an intelligent, manly fellow, full of enthusiasm for the war. He gave me an account of the battle & of the dreadful scenes that accompanied it, by which he seemed much impressed. He saw 1,100 men buried at once, in a long trench, but so hastily was the work done that hands, feet, & heads stuck out above ground. Another man joined in the conversation, who said he was a farmer in Maryland & lived not far from the battlefield, which he visited immediately after the fight. He could not find words to describe the frightful sufferings he witnessed. He saw many of the rebel prisoners. He said they were a horrible-looking set of men, ferocious, filthy, in rags, many without shoes or hats, & with trousers made of old guano bags.’

29 November 1862
‘My note in the paper. It is longer than I expected, occupying 5 1/2 columns. It is preceded by an announcement that it is a note appended to a volume entitled The Trial of the Constitution by Sidney G. Fisher, soon to be published by J. B. Lippincott & Co. This is the first time I ever published anything, except speeches, &c., with my name, altho it has always been mentioned in newspaper notices of other works. I have now left the shelter of privacy & come before the public as an author & of a book that contains many opinions on important & exciting topics likely to provoke attack & unfriendly criticism. I must take the consequences, some of which may be unpleasant. I believe the principles I have advanced to be true & have expressed them because I am convinced of their truth & from no selfish motives.’

The slurs of vessel owners

‘The trial comes on this week. I am to defend the mate; and that I can do with a clear conscience, for I believe him innocent even of an unjustifiable assault; but to stand by in silence and see a guilty man escape, when the weapon to convict him is in my own hand, is hard indeed.’ This is the American lawyer Richard Henry Dana Jr, born 200 years ago today, writing in his diary about the case of a ‘poor negro’ who had died from flogging on board a ship. Although the ship’s mate, being defended by Dana, had told him who was guilty he refused to testify to this in court. The diaries are said to provide one of the fullest portrayals available of the social life of a well-connected Boston family of the time.

Dana was born on 1 August 1815 at Cambridge, Massachusetts, into a distinguished New England family. His father - also Richard Henry - was a lawyer and a pioneer of American literature. Dana Jr was first schooled in Cambridgeport, then in a private school overseen by Ralph Waldo Emerson. In 1831, he enrolled at Harvard College, where he was given a six-month suspension for taking part in a protest. He contracted measles, followed by ophthalmia. Thinking it would help his failing vision to go to sea, he enlisted as a merchant seaman, on a brig called Pilgrim leaving Boston and bound for Alta California, then part of Mexico. On witnessing floggings, he vowed to try to help improve conditions for seamen. For much of the time in California, he was curing hides and loading them onto ships. He returned two years later on another vessel, the Alert, experiencing terrifying weather conditions.

Dana then enrolled in Dane (now Harvard) Law School, and was admitted to the bar in 1840. That same year he succeeded, after various attempts, to publish a book - Two Years Before the Mist - based on diaries he had kept during his experience as a merchant seaman. The book (available at Internet Archive) has become a classic of American literature. Essayist Morris Wright wrote, in a 1960s edition of the book, that it was ‘conceived as a protest and written to improve the lot of the common sailor’; and he also claims it influenced Herman Melville (who was born on the same day as Dana but four years later, and who would write Moby Dick a decade after Dana’s book). In 1841, Dana published The Seaman’s Friend, an authoritative guide to the legal rights and duties of sailors. The same year he married Sarah Watson; they had four daughters and one son.

Dana went on to specialise in maritime law, but also to become involved in the abolition movement, helping to found the anti-slavery Free Soil Party in 1848, and to offer free legal aid to black people captured under the Fugitive Slave Law. In 1859, he travelled to Cuba, while the US was trying to decide whether to annex it or not, and subsequently published To Cuba and Back. During the Civil War, he served as a US Attorney, and successfully argued before the Supreme Court that the US government could rightfully blockade Confederate ports. In the late 1860s, he was a member of the Massachusetts legislature; and he also acted as a US counsel in the trial of Confederate President Jefferson Davis. In 1976, President Ulysses S. Grant named him ambassador to Great Britain, but the Senate refused to confirm the appointment, partly because of a lawsuit for plagiarism brought against him concerning a legal textbook he had edited.

Dana retired from his law practice in 1878, and spent much of the rest of his life travelling. In 1881, he moved with his family to Rome, where he died the following year. Further biographical information can be found at Wikipedia, The Maritime Heritage Project, Mark Winthrop’s web pages, and Tom Tylers web pages.

Dana kept a diary for much of his life, extracts of which are liberally sprinkled through a two volume biography, edited by Charles Francis Adams and published, in two volumes in 1890, by Houghton, Mifflin. These are freely available at Internet Archive. In the 1960s, though, Harvard University Press (HUP) published a three volume edition of Dana’s journals, annotated by Robert F. Lucid. These contain, according to HUP, Dana’s diaries, begun in 1841 and continued through to 1860, in their ‘entirety’. (However, Dana clearly kept diaries before this date, since it is well known he used those he kept during his 1934-1936 seaman days to write Two Years Before the Mist.) According to HUP: ‘the Journal provides graphic descriptions of Dana’s important legal cases, political and social activities and, in the process, one of the fullest portrayals available of the social life of a well-connected Boston family of the time.’

Here are a few extracts from Dana’s diaries taken from the first volume of Adams’ 1890 biography.

18 January 1842
‘Nothing talked of but Dickens’ arrival. The town is mad. All calling on him. I shan’t go unless sent for. I can’t submit to sink the equality of a gentleman by crowding after a man of note.’

26 January 1842
‘Letter from T. Colley Grattan (“High-ways and By-ways”) saying that Dickens wishes to see me, and is surprised that I have not called before, and fixing two P. M. for a call. At two P. M. call at Tremont House and am told that he is engaged. Send up name and am shown up. Kept disengaged on purpose to see Longfellow and myself. Talk a few minutes when Longfellow comes in with Sumner. Disappointed in D.’s appearance. We have heard him called “the handsomest man in London,” etc. He is of the middle height (under if anything), with a large, expressive eye, regular nose, matted, curling, wet-looking black hair, a dissipated looking mouth with a vulgar draw to it, a muddy olive complexion, stubby fingers, and a hand by no means patrician, a hearty, off-hand manner far from well-bred, and a rapid, dashing way of talking. He looks “wide awake,” “ up to everything,” full of cleverness, with quick feelings and great ardor. You admire him, and there is a fascination about him which keeps your eyes on him, yet you cannot get over the impression that he is a low-bred man. Tom Appleton says, “Take the genius out of his face, and there are a thousand young London shop-keepers about the theatres and eating-houses who look exactly like him. He has what I suppose to be true Cockney cut.

He inquires for father, and wonders he has not been to see him. Offers to call on him if he is unwell.’

27 January 1842
‘Dine with Dickens at F. C. Gray’s. [. . .] Like Dickens here very much. The gentlemen are talking their best, but Dickens is perfectly natural and unpretending. He could not have behaved better. He did not say a single thing for display. I should think he had resolved to talk as he would at home, and let his reputation take care of itself. He gave a capital description of Abbotsford [the mansion built by Walter Scott]. It was enough to make you cry. He described the hat Scott wore in his last illness, and the dents and bruises there were in it from his head falling against his chair when he lost the power of his muscles. It was heart-sickening. “And to think of a man’s killing himself for such a miserable place as Abbotsford is,” adds Dickens.

C. P. Curtis asks him if there were any such magistrates in London as Fang in “Oliver Twist.” Dickens says, “One just such, and many more like him,” and tells us that his Fang is a portrait of a magistrate named Tang, who was sitting when the book appeared, and that he was removed by the Home Department in ten weeks after the publication, upon a thorough inquiry. . .’

5 February 1842
‘Called on Dickens at 10.30 A. M. by appointment, as he leaves at one. He was at breakfast. Sat down with him. He was very agreeable and full of life. He is the cleverest man I ever met. I mean he impresses you more with the alertness of his various powers. His forces are all light infantry and light cavalry, and always in marching order. There are not many heavy pieces, but few sappers and miners, the scientific corps is deficient, and I fear there is no chaplain in the garrison.

Mrs. Dickens appears to be an excellent woman. She is natural in her manners, seems not at all elated by her new position, but rests upon a foundation of good sense and good feeling.’

14 December 1842
‘I had sued Captain Perkins and his brother the mate of the bark Clarissa Perkins for assaulting two seamen named Singleton and Parsons. Singleton is likely to die of his wounds, so I made complaint, and had the captain bound over criminally. I was obliged to do this because the district attorney declined acting. I can conceive of no reason except that in arguing against Bryant he got his feelings settled in favor of the officers. Dehon, who defended Perkins, alluded to my forwardness in urging the complaint against the master as an interference. I took him to task for this, and we had a long talk which resulted in my feeling more affection and respect for Dehon than before. He is a good fellow and has honorable feelings.

I often have a good deal to contend with in the slurs or open opposition of masters and owners of vessels whose seamen I undertake to defend or look after. It is more unpleasant when this is retailed by the counsel. Young lawyers are apt to take up the excitement and prejudice of the clients, which they ought to allay and keep free from. I never have trouble with the upper class of merchants, but only with the small grinding machines and petty traders who save by small medicine chests and poor provisions.’

3 April 1843
‘Spent the forenoon in court hearing Choate and Dexter in United States v. Le Crow, indicted for withholding provisions from his crew. Choate made a good argument, but flowery, overstrained and extravagant. Dexter was admirable. That man always seeks to come down upon his case. He seems to be a gentleman practising law, and not a mere lawyer. Calm, courteous, liberal and high-minded man.

A very troublesome case of professional difficulty has been harassing me for a week or two. A captain and mate of a merchant vessel were complained of for causing the death of the steward, a poor negro. The facts, as testified to by the men at the preliminary examination, were these: That the master and mate flogged the steward badly about four P. M. for insolence, etc. That the steward then went about his business for an hour or two. That he was again, about eight P. M., flogged, kicked and beaten badly by the master alone, so badly as would have caused the death of many men, as the crew believed. That after this last beating the captain ordered the mate to assist in taking the steward into the cabin. The mate did so. They lifted him in, he groaning like a dying man. After this the crew saw no more. There were no passengers, and no one in the cabin but the master and officers. The second mate was in his state-room, and swore that he knew nothing of the matter. The next morning, when the cook went to call the steward, he found him dead. The cook told the master and officers, and they went to his berth, and there found a glass stopple. They then went to the medicine chest, and the laudanum bottle was missing. They then said that the steward poisoned himself. The crew doubted this story.

The preliminary examination took place, and the master and mate were bound over to appear before the Grand Jury. In the interval the mate came to me and told me that he wished to ask my advice and to retain me as his counsel. He said he had a distinct defence from his captain, and must have separate advice and defence. He then told me confidentially, as his counsel, the whole story. When he had assisted the master in taking the steward into the cabin, they set him in a chair and found him dead. The captain then said, “Then I am in difficulty. You must assist me.” They then took the steward, laid him in his berth, the captain got the laudanum bottle from the medicine chest, poured out the laudanum, and placed the empty bottle and stopple by the side of the berth, and then they went to bed.

This was the case. All the facts testified to by the crew sustained its probability. It was stated solemnly, and was somewhat unfavorable to the communicator of it. Here then was, as I could not doubt, a case of manslaughter, if not of murder. Yet my knowledge of the facts came to me in the sacred character of a professional communication. I could not use them against my client. The law, as well as my own sense of justice and of the reason grounded in the policy of the profession, would forbid my divulging it. Unless a man can be safe in making a communication to his counsel, there would be an end of defences against every charge. I had received it, too, from a man who had a right and was able to keep his own secret under the implied, if not express, promise of secrecy. On the other hand, unless some use was made of the mate’s testimony, the master would go unpunished. I did all in my power to persuade the mate to go to the prosecuting officer and divulge the story, and promised him my assistance, and assured him that he would be safe; but he would not become state’s evidence, and he said it would ruin him with his employers, who were connected with the master, and being a foreigner he had nowhere else to look for support.

In this state I had to stand by and see the case changed from a charge of homicide to one of mere assault and battery for want of sufficient evidence. I did, several times, in conversation, express a strong opinion to a prosecuting officer, grounded on the evidence in court alone, however, that an indictment for manslaughter would be sustained against the master. But he would not risk it.

The trial comes on this week. I am to defend the mate; and that I can do with a clear conscience, for I believe him innocent even of an unjustifiable assault; but to stand by in silence and see a guilty man escape, when the weapon to convict him is in my own hand, is hard indeed. I have struggled against a desire to divulge, in some secret manner, the truth and the means of getting at it to the prosecuting officer. But I feel it would be wrong. I am merely unfortunate in possessing this painful knowledge.’

Finally, it is worth noting that Dana’s only son, also called Richard Henry, kept a diary. He married the daughter of poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, and made a name for himself as a lawyer and civil service reformer. Part of his diary was published in 1921 by Houghton Mifflin as Hospitable England in the Seventies: A Diary of a Young American 1875-1876, and can be read online at Internet Archive.

I flied the highest

‘I ran in the wind and played be a horse, and had a lovely time in the woods with Anna and Lizzie. We were fairies, and made gowns and paper wings. I “flied” the highest of all.’ This is Louisa Alcott - famous for being the author of the American classic Little Women - born 190 years ago today. She was writing in the diary then as a young girl, aged 11, but would go on to keep a diary for  much of her life. This diary, apart from documenting her own life, says much about the New England Transcendentalist movement her father was involved with.

Alcott was born in Germantown, Pennsylvania, on 29 November 1832. She spent her childhood in Boston and in Concord, Massachusetts, being schooled, with three sisters, at home by her father, a New England Transcendentalist. For three years, they were part of the Utopian Fruitlands community. When this failed, they were helped out by her father’s friend, Ralph Waldo Emerson; money problems, though, were never far away. Louisa started writing early, mostly poetry and short stories. Flower Fables, her first book, was published when she was just 22.

In 1862, Alcott, an avowed abolitionist, went to Washington to work as a nurse during the Civil War, but her service lasted only a few weeks, as she nearly died from typhoid. She never recovered full health again. A book of her letters at the time, called Hospital Letters, brought her a first taste of literary fame. She began writing stories for Atlantic Monthly. Her most famous work, Little Women, written in 1868, and set at Orchard House, is still popular today. Alcott continued writing children’s books - though she yearned to do more serious fiction - because the family needed the income. In all, she published over 30 books and collections of stories.

Alcott died, aged 55, in 1888, just two days after her father. Further information is available from Wikipedia, the website for Louisa May Alcott’s Orchard House (‘one of the oldest, most authentically-preserved historic house museums in America’) or The Dictionary of Unitarian and Universalist Biography.

From an early age through to the end of her life, Alcott kept a diary which she never intended for publication. Parts of it first appeared a year after her death in Louisa May Alcott Her Life, Letters and Journals edited by Ednah D. Cheney and published by Roberts Brothers in Boston. This book was continually reprinted before and after the publisher was taken over by Little, Brown in 1898. A first unabridged edition of Alcott’s diaries appeared a century later in 1989 when University of Georgia Press brought out The Journals of Louisa May Alcott edited by Madeleine B. Stern. Her Life, Letters and Journals is freely available at Internet Archive, and some of the more recent publication can be previewed at Googlebooks and Amazon.

1 September 1843
‘I rose at five and had my bath. I love cold water! Then we had our singing-lesson with Mr Lane. After breakfast I washed dishes, and ran on the hill till nine, and had some thoughts, it was so beautiful up there. Did my lessons, wrote and spelt and did sums; and Mr Lane read a story, “The Judicious Father”: How a rich girl told a poor girl not to look over the fence at the flowers, and was cross to her because she was unhappy. The father heard her do it, and made the girls change clothes. The poor one was glad to do it, and he told her to keep them. But the rich one was very sad; for she had to wear the old ones a week, and after that she was good to shabby girls. I liked it very much, and I shall be kind to poor people.

Father asked us what was God’s noblest work. Anna said men, but I said babies. Men are often bad; babies never are. We had a long talk, and I felt better after it, and cleared up.

We had bread and fruit for dinner. I read and walked and played till supper-time. We sung in the evening. As I went to bed the moon came up very brightly and looked at me. I felt sad because I have been cross to day, and did not mind Mother. I cried, and then I felt better, and said that piece from Mrs Sigourney, “I must not tease my mother.” I get to sleep saying poetry, I know a great deal.’

14 September 1843
‘Mr Parker Pillsbury came, and we talked about the poor slaves. I had a music lesson with Miss F. I hate her, she is so fussy. I ran in the wind and played be a horse, and had a lovely time in the woods with Anna and Lizzie. We were fairies, and made gowns and paper wings. I “flied” the highest of all. In the evening they talked about travelling. I thought about Father going to England, [. . .]

It rained when I went to bed, and made a pretty noise on the roof.’

8 October 1843
‘When I woke up, the first thought I got was, “It’s Mother s birthday: I must be very good.” I ran and wished her a happy birthday, and gave her my kiss. After breakfast we gave her our presents. I had a moss cross and a piece of poetry for her.

We did not have any school, and played in the woods and got red leaves. In the evening we danced and sung, and I read a story about “Contentment.” I wish I was rich, I was good, and we were all a happy family this day.’

4 January 1863
‘I shall record the events of a day as a sample of the days I spend:

Up at six, dress by gaslight, run through my ward and throw up the windows, though the men grumble and shiver; but the air is bad enough to breed a pestilence; and as no notice is taken of our frequent appeals for better ventilation, I must do what I can. Poke up the fire, add blankets, joke, coax, and command; but continue to open doors and windows as if life depended upon it. Mine does, and doubtless many another, for a more perfect pestilence-box than this house I never saw, cold, damp, dirty, full of vile odors from wounds, kitchens, wash-rooms, and stables. No competent head, male or female, to right matters, and a jumble of good, bad, and indifferent nurses, surgeons, and attendants, to complicate the chaos still more.

After this unwelcome progress through my stifling ward, I go to breakfast with what appetite I may; find the uninvitable fried beef, salt butter, husky bread, and washy coffee; listen to the clack of eight women and a dozen men, the first silly, stupid, or possessed of one idea; the last absorbed with their breakfast and themselves to a degree that is both ludicrous and provoking, for all the dishes are ordered down the table full and returned empty; the conversation is entirely among themselves, and each announces his opinion with an air of importance that frequently causes me to choke in my cup, or bolt my meals with undignified speed lest a laugh betray to these famous beings that a “chiel’s amang them takin’ notes.”

Till noon I trot, trot, giving out rations, cutting up food for helpless “boys,” washing faces, teaching my attendants how beds are made or floors are swept, dressing wounds, taking Dr F. P.’s orders (privately wishing all the time that he would be more gentle with my big babies), dusting tables, sewing bandages, keeping my tray tidy, rushing up and down after pillows, bed-linen, sponges, books, and directions, till it seems as if I would joyfully pay down all I possess for fifteen minutes’ rest. At twelve the big bell rings, and up comes dinner for the boys, who are always ready for it and never entirely satisfied. Soup, meat, potatoes, and bread is the bill of fare. Charley Thayer, the attendant, travels up and down the room serving out the rations, saving little for himself, yet always thoughtful of his mates, and patient as a woman with their helplessness. When dinner is over, some sleep, many read, and others want letters written. This I like to do, for they put in such odd things, and express their ideas so comically, I have great fun interiorally, while as grave as possible exteriorally. A few of the men word their paragraphs well and make excellent letters. John’s was the best of all I wrote. The answering of letters from friends after some one had died is the saddest and hardest duty a nurse has to do.

Supper at five sets every one to running that can run; and when that flurry is over, all settle down for the evening amusements, which consist of newspapers, gossip, the doctor’s last round, and, for such as need them, the final doses for the night. At nine the bell rings, gas is turned down, and day nurses go to bed. Night nurses go on duty, and sleep and death have the house to themselves.

My work is changed to night watching, or half night and half day, from twelve to twelve. I like it, as it leaves me time for a morning run, which is what I need to keep well; for bad air, food, and water, work and watching, are getting to be too much for me. I trot up and down the streets in all directions, sometimes to the Heights, then half way to Washington, again to the hill, over which the long trains of army wagons are constantly vanishing and ambulances appearing. That way the fighting lies, and I long to follow.

Ordered to keep my room, being threatened with pneumonia. Sharp pain in the side, cough, fever, and dizziness. A pleasant prospect for a lonely soul five hundred miles from home! Sit and sew on the boys’ clothes, write letters, sleep, and read; try to talk and keep merry, but fail decidedly, as day after day goes, and I feel no better. Dream awfully, and wake unrefreshed, think of home, and wonder if I am to die here, as Mrs R., the matron, is likely to do. Feel too miserable to care much what becomes of me. Dr S. creaks up twice a day to feel my pulse, give me doses, and ask if I am at all consumptive, or some other cheering question. Dr O. examines my lungs and looks sober. Dr J. haunts the room, coming by day and night with wood, cologne, books, and messes, like a motherly little man as he is. Nurses fussy and anxious, matron dying, and everything very gloomy. They want me to go home, but I won t yet.’

27 April 1872
‘Mr Emerson died at 9 P.M. suddenly. Our best and greatest American gone. The nearest and dearest friend Father has ever had, and the man who has helped me most by his life, his books, his society. I can never tell all he has been to me, from the time I sang Mignon’s song under his window (a little girl) and wrote letters a la Bettine to him, my Goethe, at fifteen, up through my hard years, when his essays on Self-Reliance, Character, Compensation, Love, and Friendship helped me to understand myself and life, and God and Nature. Illustrious and beloved friend, good-by!’

This article is a slightly revised version of one first published on 29 November 2012.

Campaigning for women’s rights

Barbara Leigh Smith Bodichon, born 190 years ago today, was an early English campaigner for women’s suffrage and education. Indeed, she formed the first Women’s Suffrage Committee and was instrumental in setting up Girton College, the first Cambridge college for women only. Though not a diarist, she did keep a kind of diary during a formative trip to the United States, and this was, eventually, published in the early 1970s.

Bodichon was born 8 April 1827, the first of several illegitimate child born to politician Benjamin Leigh Smith and his young mistress, Anne Longden, a milliner. They lived openly together at a farm in Sussex, despite the scandal of not being married. But Anne died when Barbara was still only seven. Leigh Smith then brought up the children on his own, later moving them to his London home in Marylebone, where they came into contact with his radical and philanthropic friends. Unusual for the time, Leigh Smith sent his daughters to local (working class) schools.

Having been endowed with £300 a year by her father, Bodichon studied art at the Ladies College in Bedford Square; and then, in 1852, with Elizabeth Whitehall, she opened Portman Hall School in Paddington. She and a group of like-minded friends, who became known The Ladies of Langham Place, met regularly to discuss women’s rights. In 1854, she published a pamphlet, A Brief Summary in Plain Language of the Most Important Laws Concerning Women, Together with a Few Observations Thereon. Despite her doubts about marriage, she wed Dr. Eugène Bodichon, a French physician, in 1957; and they traveled to the American South later that year. They had a house built in Robertsbridge, Sussex.

In 1858, Bodichon, with others, established the English Woman’s Journal which promoted a political and social agenda, but also provided reviews on the arts. It lasted until the mid-1860s, when she helped launch a successor periodical with a feminist agenda, Englishwomen’s Review. In 1866, she formed the Women’s Suffrage Committee, the first of its kind. A petition, organised by the committee, was presented to the House of Commons by John Stuart Mill. Bodichon toured the country, speaking every where she went, and publishing pamphlets to further the cause of women’s sufferance and education. Famously, in 1873, she joined with Emily Davies to raise funds for a women-only college in Cambridge - Girton College - though it would be more than 70 years before the college was admitted to Cambridge University.

Throughout her life, Bodichon continued to paint, and even studied under William Henry Hunt. She knew many literary and artistic celebrities of the day, and was one of George Eliot’s closest friends. She fell ill in 1877, after which she was no longer able to campaign so actively. Her husband died in 1885, and shortly after she suffered a stroke, leaving her paralysed. She died in Robertsbridge in 1891. For further information see Wikipedia, Spartacus, Hastings Press, or Thoughtco.

There seems to be no evidence that Bodichon was a diarist, but, during her travels in the United States, she did keep a diary or sorts, in the form of letters to her father. These letters are held by the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library at Yale University which provides a short description of them: ‘These letters cover the period 6 Dec 1857 to 11 Jun 1858, and describe in detail the tour of America made by Barbara Bodichon and her husband Eugène Bodichon. Their itinerary included the Mississippi River, New Orleans, Mobile, Montgomery, Savannah, Wilmington, Washington, Philadelphia, Boston, and parts of Canada. In her letters Bodichon discusses the condition and education of slaves and the rights of freed slaves; women's rights in America, and other aspects of life, conditions, and customs. Also described are visits to Lucretia Mott and Ralph Waldo Emerson.’

The letters were first edited by Joseph W. Reed and published in 1972 as An American Diary, 1857-8 by Routledge & Kegan Paul. As far as I can tell, it has never been re-issued or reprinted. A few extracts can be found at the website of Women and Social Movements in the United States 1600-2000, and a couple can also be read in Pam Hirsch’s biography Barbara Leigh Smith Bodichon: Feminist, Artist and Rebel available at Googlebooks.

11 December 1857
‘Last night I sat finishing up my sketches at the public table. Company: the pretty little Mrs H. and her fair Scotch-looking husband, Mr C. the intellectual-looking Californian gentleman and Mrs B. who has a very beautiful expression and is the most refined woman on the boat. Mr C. is reading a paper and read out loud the announcement of the marriage of a mulatto and a white girl; it excites from all expressions of the utmost disgust and horror. I say, ‘It is very uncommon?’ Mr C. ‘Yes! thank God. Only permitted in Massachusetts and a few states.’ ‘There seems to be nothing disgusting in it. My brothers went to school with a mulatto and I with a mulatto girl, and I have seen mulattoes in England who were not unlikely to many with white.’ All: ‘At school! At school with niggers! ‘Yes.’ All: ‘Horrid idea, how could you?’ BLS: ‘Why, your little children all feel it possible to come in close contact with negroes, and they seem to like it; there is no natural antipathy.’ Some: ‘Yes, there is an inborn disgust which prevents amalgamation.’ (Mark this: only one-half the negroes in the United States are full-blooded Africans - the rest [the] produce of white men and black women.) Some. ‘No it is only the effect of education.’ Mr C: ‘There is no school or college in the U S. where negroes could be educated with whites.’ BLS: ‘You are wrong. Sir. At Oberlin men women and negroes are educated together.’ Mrs B: ‘Yes, I know that, because Lucy Stone was educated there with people of colour.’ Mr C: ‘Lucy Stone - she is a Woman’s Rights woman, and an atheist.’

20 April 1858
‘A cold, pelting rain and as dreary a day as ever I saw. At half past eight we set out to walk to the N. Pennsylvania Rail Station to go to City Lane to see Lucretia Mott. At the Station we saw a ‘Rockaway’ standing in the pelting rain, a fat little horse and well-to-do-looking old ‘friend.’ We had no doubt been expected in spite of the detestable weather and this was Friend Mott, no doubt come for us. Yes. So in we got and drove through what must be a very pretty park which encloses the villas of Friend Thomas Mott and some of his relations. Arrived at a pleasant-looking country house, we are received at the door by one of the four daughters of the house and led into a pretty, bright-looking room, and Lucretia Mott greets us as cordially as if we were really ‘Friend Barbara’ and ‘Friend Bodichon.’ She looks just like a picture. I never saw such a dress, like a pearl. I fell in love with her immediately. She looks ‘full of grace’ in every sense of the word. I do not wonder her preaching has stirred so many souls, her aspect is eloquent, her smile full of good things. She seems to be full of vigour and looks in perfect health, though I believe she is seventy years old. She asked me about Lord Byron, Friend Elizabeth Reid and Julia Smith spoke of them, all three with great regard, especially Friend Elizabeth Reid. She put her hands on my shoulders and said how happy it made her to see that the young women of England were thinking about their rights and trying to do something for justice and freedom. She asked me about Eliza Ton and Bessie Parkes and Mrs. J. Shill especially and I told her as well as I could the number of women and the principle powers on the side of Women’s Rights in England. When she was in England (1840?), she says, the idea was scouted and no women she met in England dared to advocate the rights of women. She seemed absolutely to chuckle with glee to hear that we hold all that she and ‘the Friends’ advocate and only wait to claim the suffrage because it would be useless to try for it now. Massachusetts must make that move - and will, I believe - before many years are passed. So at least the women think.

It is a pleasure to see thouroughgoing reformers who are not poor - it is so rare to see rich people really given to reform ideas. When I see a rich woman like Lucretia Mott advocating a cause which is yet in the rotten-egg stage (I mean its advocates are apt to have rotten eggs and dirtier words thrown at them), I think there is some hope of the rich getting through the eye of the needle into heaven.

Lucretia Mott asked me many questions about the South and slavery, and I told her what I have told you of the wonderful eloquence of the black preachers, of the sales at N. Orleans, the general well-being of the coloured population (compared to white) in Louisiana, of the secret schools, and of the widespread knowledge among the slaves of the efforts made to emancipate.

Lucretia Mott showed me a mass of Woman’s Right literature and I made my pick for the benefit of B.R.P. and M.H., and she showed me her books of notes for lectures with extracts and little quotations so nicely put together, and as we looked them over she gave me little accounts of the occasions on which they were used. She says all the Women’s Rights conventions have been quiet, orderly and dignified and that the rumours of their vulgarity are absolutely unfounded. This Mr. Mott confirmed and said they were more orderly than conventions held by men.

Of course we had a nice dinner and no wine but delicious tea. Bessie remembers Miss Pugh. She was there and her sister, and I was charmed with them. Fanny Priestly is coming to stay with them.

I was very happy that they had remarked one of my drawings - the ‘sunset over corn and willow land’ which was exhibited here in the English Ex: and now gone to Boston.

Please let Mrs. Reid know that I have seen her friends and how pleasant it was to me to feel a link between such good people.

My Doctor was delighted with the whole family as much as I was, and we drove away with good Friend Mott in the rockaway to the station in a most satisfied state of mind and soaking rain. Mrs. Howitt’s niece Miss Harrison is going to marry into this society and I think she could not do better; Lucretia Mott is a heart. I wish we had in England ten thousand good as she.

Tomorrow we go to an anti-slavery meeting with Mrs. Mott and you shall hear what else we do. But I shall post this when we are in town.’

10 June 1858
‘Wendell Phillips came in the evening. He was enchanting. He told me that the W. R. Movement had made immense progress since 1850. He knows twenty women at least who can gain their living by lecturing in Lyceums. He says Lyceums in debt very often get women to come and lecture on W.R. even when they do not agree with her, because they know she will attract a paying audience. Gentlemen who were dead set against the W.R. now advocate it. A Governor of Ohio was obliged to apologize to the ladies of Ohio and recant because he refused to hear female delegates to some Society, etc. etc.

Wendell Phillips himself says when Lyceums come to him he says, “Yes, I will lecture for you: 50 dollars for Literature or Abolition, or WR for nothing.” ’