Peter Pears centenary

Today is the centenary of Peter Pears’s birth, one of Britain’s great 20th century tenors, and the lifelong partner of the composer Benjamin Britten. Though Britten was a more committed diarist, Pears too kept a journal, when on holiday or abroad rehearsing. Over the years, these were often reproduced for fans in Aldeburgh Festival publications, but they were not published as a collection until the 1990s. They provide an engaging picture of Pears’s and Britten’s professional and private lives together.

Pears was born in Farnham a century ago today on 22 June 1910. He was schooled at Lancing College, Sussex, and then studied music at Keble College, Oxford, for a year before dropping out. He also studied voice at the Royal College of Music for two terms. His professional career began with the BBC Singers in 1934. By 1937, he had met the composer Benjamin Britten with whom he formed a lifelong partnership, both professionally and personally. During the war, they spent three years in the US, returning in 1942 when Pears began to develop his career as a soloist.

Pears made his operatic debut in The Tales of Hoffman before, in 1945, singing the title role in Britten’s famous opera Peter Grimes. Thereafter, Britten wrote many tenor roles into his operas, specifically for Pears. According to the Britten-Pears Foundation, Britten regarded Pears as the ‘greatest artist that ever was’, and dedicated several works to him, including Death in Venice, his operatic swansong, in which Pears took the role of Aschenbach.

Pears also made a name for himself singing Lieder, English song and oratorio. Otherwise, he taught, commissioned new music, and collaborated with Britten and others in the founding of the English Opera Group, the Aldeburgh Festival, and the Britten-Pears School for Advanced Musical Studies. He died in Aldeburgh in 1986. Wikipedia and the Britten-Pears Foundation have more biographical information.

Not a committed diarist like Britten (see Britten’s firecrack crits and The Diary Junction), Pears nevertheless did keep diaries when abroad. Some of these were published or partly published in various ways during his lifetime, but twelve of them were first put together as a collection in 1995 and published by The Boydell Press in conjunction with the Britten-Pears Foundation - Travels Diaries 1936-1978, edited by Philip Reed.

The first diary dates from 1936, the year before his friendship with Britten began, when he went on tour to North America with the New English Singers. Other diaries record a long tour to the Far East and encounters with the gamelan music of Bali and the Japanese Noh theatre; visits to Russia as guests of Rostropovich; and attendance at the Ansbach Bach Festival when Pears was at the height of his career. Also recorded are holidays in Armenia, the Caribbean and Italy, a concert tour through the north of England, and accounts of the rehearsals and performances of the New York premieres of Billy Budd and Death in Venice.

Here are two extracts from the Armenia journal. This first appeared in the 1966 Aldeburgh Festival Programme Book. Later the same year, Pears had a 1,000 copies of the journal printed privately, and distributed them as Christmas gifts.

18 August 1965
‘After our expedition to Pushkin’s memorial, Ben spent 24 hours in bed with tummy in extremis. Every imaginable remedy was proferred and taken, Alka-Seltzer, Enterobioform, manganese in solution and stewed pomegranate leaves. All of which, in ensemble, proved effective and Ben was OK in 48 hours. Well enough, yesterday, to go for a gentle drive down the river past Dilidjan to Idjevan, through high mountains of bare rock on the west side and craggy bristling rocky precipices all covered over with forest on the east side. Superb trees of all sorts, and willows in the rushing, clear pebbly water. Our driver has been chastened and we went seldom more than 30 mph. It was, of course, much more pleasant and we could really look at this superb and ‘horrid’ country.

Ben’s two days’ hors de combat, one in bed and one on the sofa, produced, as it so often does, intense creative energy. He has now just written his 5th Pushkin song, and Galya, who is to sing them, heard them for the first time this afternoon. She was deeply affected, as I knew she would be, and wants to get at them at once. Slava, too, was highly excited. I am pegging on at the translations.

Last night after dinner we had heard a record of Edik Mirzoyan’s Symphony for Strings and Timps on a very bad gramophone which didn’t give the work much chance, to his distress. It has some nice sounds and is felt and tense, though the last movement was played too slow and sounded ineffective. Tonight another leading residing composer is going to play a piece of his to us.’

28 August 1965
‘Saturday, the day of our departure. Our three weeks in this lovely and - now - sunny valley, where we have been spoiled by everyone, had to exact one boring duty before we left, and instead of spending our last morning with Gilbars and her puppies, or baking on the balcony, or finding a new wild-flower (I found an orchid, but not a very beautiful one, I thought), we had to listen to an endless tape of an Armenian composer, Edgar Oganessian, the director of the theatre in Erevan. Pretentious, bombastic, rhetorical, with minimal ideas and a maximal display of pseudo-energy, listening to it in a fairly comfortable chair paralysed one’s hind-quarters and made every muscle contract with bored fury. We got quickly away and solaced ourselves at an early lunch with what we call Moscow-mineral-water, i.e. vodka (water in Russian is voda, without the k). Farewell kisses to all, the chauffeur, the manager (Marcel), our superb cook, Hadjik, who had cried with indignation at the idea of a tip, our little nut brown cleaner who had not been kissed by a man for 25 years, I think, and off we had to go to Yrevan and the Britten Festival.’

And here is one extract from the diary Pears kept while in New York preparing for his debut at the Metropolitan Opera in Death in Venice. This too was first published in an Aldeburgh Festival Programme Book, of 1975.

5 October 1974
‘Ben called early, very clear to hear.

I did go to the rehearsal at 10:30 of Act I, and I started well and got most of it right. Then suddenly at about 11:45, I lost memory, courage and all, and left the rehearsal in despair. However, before doing so I made a date with Richard Voitach, the understudy for Steuart Bedford and a junior conductor on the Met staff, to work with him on D in V at 4 o’clock. We spent a MOST VALUABLE 1 3/4 hours on the opera, which restored my confidence and made me feel much BETTER. A nice helpful man. The Met’s acoustics are so good that a small voice like mine well-protected will sound perfectly clear and good! Let’s hope so. . .

Was stopped by a boy with a beard as I left Met who had heard D in V at Aldeburgh. Madly enthusiastic. Had just seen Don Giovanni matinee. ‘How was it?’ ‘Well, it was was well conducted.’

6:30. Home to a gin and my view over Central Park. The trees darken, the lights go on, the other side (East) looks like a chalk cliff, with a pale glow above. Reminded me of the olive trees below Delphi!!

Still taking ANTIBIOTICS. Back to Milton. Paradise Lost: splendid scene of Lucifer massing his forces, who move ‘in perfect phalanx to the Dorian mood of flutes and soft recorders’. Poor instruments! Do they belong the devil?’

The Highland manners

‘The family, servants and all, sat round it, and eat, the mistress looking on and waiting. She brought us a piggin of cream, and drank to me, and we drank it round. The dairy is in a building apart. This was contrived that I might see the Highland manners.’ So wrote Richard Pococke while travelling in the north of Scotland exactly 250 years ago today. Although a man of the church by profession he was far more interested in travel, being an early and scholarly explorer of the Middle East, and of the remoter parts of his own country.

Pococke was born in Southampton in 1704 and studied law at Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, before entering into the priesthood. However, his main claim to fame is that he travelled extensively, particularly in Egypt, where he was one of the first Englishmen to voyage up the Nile, and to visit the Valley of the Kings. He published a two-volume account of the journey which was celebrated at the time, and translated into other languages. He also toured widely in England, Scotland and Ireland, carefully noting what he saw.

Later in life, Pococke was appointed Bishop of Ossory and Meath in Ireland. He is said to have founded a weaving school, which became known as The Pococke College. He died in 1765. A little more biographical information online is available from Wikipedia.

The diaries of Pococke’s tours of England and Scotland were not published until more than a century after his death, in the late 19th century. First the Scottish History Society published his Tours in Scotland 1747, 1750, 1760, and then the Camden Society published The travels through England of Dr Richard Pococke in several editions. Although Hodges & Figgis published Pococke’s Tour in Ireland in 1752 around the same time, it was not until 1995 that a full edition of his Irish travels was published - by Irish Academic Press. Many of these works are freely available online at Internet Archive.

Elizabeth Baigent, in her biography of Pococke for the Oxford National Dictionary of Biography, says: ‘The publication and scholarly editing of all of these tours reveal that Pococke was not only a pioneer mountaineer and one of the earliest scholarly explorers in Egypt, but was also among the very earliest systematic explorers of the remoter parts of Britain and Ireland.’

Here are two extracts from the The Tour of Dr Richard Pococke through Sutherland and Caithness in 1760 published by The Sutherland Association, Edinburgh 1888.

21 June 1760
‘. . . We went three miles to Milcraig (mr Cuthbert’s), a fine situation at the foot of the hill, commanding a view of the river and the country below. Near it is a deep glyn in which there runs a mountain torrent. The banks of it are green and most beautifully adorned with woods. We saw three or four kerns as belonging anciently to the heads of several villages, for their burial places, but on seeing the Picts’ houses since, I doubt whether they might not be the habitations of those people. In three miles from Milcraig, going very disagreeable heathy mountains, we came to a rivulet, and continued on about two miles, passed another mountain torrent, and came into the fine country which is on the Frith of Dornock. I saw a small Druid temple with two or three stones in the middle near the rivulet, and a little further some remains of another. Here I observed grey granite in large spots of white and darker colour.
We came to Ardmore, Mr Bailey’s, near the river, where we stayed two hours, the family being at Rosehall. In these parts they find beds of shells at a little distance from the sea, but not petrified, and they are used for manure. We went westward and soon came to a large kern, the entrance to which about half-way up is visible with a large stone over it. If the entrances are not on a level with the ground I look on it as a mark that they were burial-places; if they are great ruins, that they were castles; and if covered over with green sod, that they were Picts’ houses. . .

They have no miles here different from the English in measure, but the acre is five perches more than than the English. (I think the Highland miles are not above the proportion of 2 to 3 as in England.)’

22 June 1760
‘. . . We went into a Highland cabbin, in which there were five apartments, one at the entrance seemed to be for the cows, another beyond it for the sheep, and a third, to which there was only at the end of the house, for other cattle; to the left was the principal room, with a fire in the middle, and beyond that the bed-chamber, and a closet built to it for a pantry; and at the end of the bed-chamber, and of the house, a round window to let out the smoak, there being no chimney. The partitions all of hurdle-work, so one sees through the whole. A great pot of whey was over the fire, of which they were making Frau. They have a machine like that which they put into a churn, with stiff hairs round it, this they work round and up and down to raise a froth, which they eat of the pot with spoons, and it had the taste of new milk; then the family, servants and all, sat round it, and eat, the mistress looking on and waiting. She brought us a piggin of cream, and drank to me, and we drank it round. The dairy is in a building apart. This was contrived that I might see the Highland manners. They have here a great number of foxes and hares, the skins of which are very fine; the hares are of a light colour on the backs, and the bellies are quite white. I was told there are some all over white in the winter. A few swans come here every year in the hard weather; and a great number came in the year 1738, when the winter was very cold, but it is difficult to shoot them. They have plenty of red deer, and of the roe deer. Mr Monroe shot in the upper part of the Kyle of Dornock an extraordinary sea-bird, which dived very readily. It is as big as a goose, and much like it, except that the bill, about four inches long, is pointed . . .’

Diary briefs

Mussolini said to have hidden diaries secretly - The Daily Telegraph

Publication of Li Peng’s diary halted - Wall Street Journal

Henry Bowers diary of Scott expedition on show at SPRI - The Daily Mail

Evidence in case of student suicide after caning - The Times of India

Dear Diary: Secrets and Struggles from Kenya to the UK - The Independent

For the love of Marie

One of the bravest and most dashing of heroes, the very flesh and blood of 18th century adventures, died two centuries ago today. But Axel von Fersen, a high-born and well-educated Swede, was not only noble and courageous, especially with regard to his love for the Queen of France, Marie Antoinette, but he was a decent diarist too, recording his own emotions as lightly as his feats of daring-do.

Axel Fersen was born in 1755 into a rich and powerful family - his father Frederik was a leading Swedish politician - and he was well educated. At 15, he went abroad on a tour lasting four years. During this period he attended the Brunswick Military Academy and the University of Turin, and while in Paris he met Marie Antoinette, only months before her husband Louis XVI became King and she Queen. He joined the French army and went to fight with the colonists in the US during the War of Independence, distinguishing himself at the Siege of Yorktown.

On returning to Paris as a diplomat, von Fersen’s friendship with Marie Antoinette flourished - though whether they were actual lovers is still hotly debated by historians. When the Revolution broke out, he tried - but failed - to organise for the King and Queen to escape. Later, he also served in Vienna and Brussels for a European coalition against the Revolution. After Marie Antoinette’s death, he returned to Sweden.

When Sweden’s King Gustav IV was overthrown in the 1809 revolution, von Fersen supported the king’s son rather than the populist Carl August. The latter died suddenly in 1810, and it was rumoured that von Fersen had conspired in the murder, and this led to an unruly mob seeking revenge and killing him - on 20 June 1810, two hundred years ago today. A few months after his death, though, he was cleared of any suspicion connected with the death of Carl August and received a ceremonial state burial. See Wikipedia for more biographical information.

For most of his life, starting when he was still in his teens, von Fersen kept diaries - though those from 1780 to early 1791 were destroyed. A first collection was first published in English as Diary and Correspondence of Count Axel Fersen Grand-Marshal of Sweden relating to the Court of France by Hardy, Pratt & Company, Boston, in 1902. This is freely available at Internet Archive. Here is the very first diary entry found in that book.

17 October 1771
‘I find here all sorts of extraordinary customs which divert me much. For instance, the town clock is always one hour in advance of the clocks of other countries. This difference, they tell me, goes back to a remote period when the inhabitants resolved to kill their chief magistrate, who, warned of the plot, foiled the conspirators by putting on the hands of the clock. It is not permissible to dance in Basle unless the master of the house plays the violin himself; and you can drive in a carriage only up to ten o’clock at night, without servants behind, and in a plain carriage of one colour only and no gilding. It is forbidden to have silk fringes in the carriage or on the harness when you drive to church, and the ladies must wear black, not gowns but dishabilles. Diamonds, pearls, laces, and pretty things of all kinds are forbidden. It is good taste not to go out before five o’clock; at that hour visits are made to family circles.

One of my acquaintances offered to take me to the Assemblee du Printemps; he presented me first to his sister and she introduced me to this assembly, which is entirely composed of young girls. What surprised me extremely was to see these young ladies arriving alone, or with a gentleman, and no maid or man-servant. They played cards and talked with foreigners or with the young men of the town who had the honour to be admitted. They go to walk in the promenades all alone.’

More recently, in 1971, G Bell & Sons, London published Rescue the Queen: A Diary of the French Revolution 1789-1793. Here are some extracts.

From the prologue:
‘The diaries in this book describe how Fersen made the only serious attempt to save the French royal family, and of its tense tragic failure; but they make light of Fersen’s personal courage and energy. The failure seemed to break him, although he sought in vain to rally help among the emigres and from Marie Antoinette’s own brother, the Emperor Joseph in Vienna.’

From the epilogue:
‘Even these diaries have had a romantic history. For almost a hundred years they lay forgotten among the family papers in a Swedish castle. Then in 1878 they appeared in French by Fersen’s great-nephew, Baron R M Klinkowstrom; but he deliberately omitted many of the more intimate details of Fersen’s relationship with the Queen, claiming that the passages had been deleted . . . Historians waited excitedly for the chance to examine the whole correspondence; only to be cruelly deceived. Klinkowstrom was a gentleman of the old school, and a woman’s love-letters are not for public reading; so before his death he burnt the most important ones. What you read in this book is taken from the edition of 1925 by Alma Söderhjelm, who published the complete diaries and letters . . .’

18 June 1791
‘Very nice weather. With her from 2:30 to 6pm. Opera Comique. Good letter form the Emperor. The British fleet is said to have left port.’

20 June 1791
‘Both said to me that they must leave at all costs. We arranged the hour of day etc. In the event of their arrest I was to go to Brussels and try to do something for them. On taking leave of me the King said: ‘M de Fersen, whatever may happen, I shall never forget all you have done for me.’ The Queen wept a great deal. At six I left her and then she went for her customary walk with the children without any special safety precautions. I went home to get ready . . .’

21 June 1791
‘Fine, everything went well. Some delay between Maretz and Le Cateau. The Commander of the militia asked for my name; I was afraid. Drove through Le Quesnoy and crossed the frontier near Saint-Vast.’

22 June 1791
‘Fine, very cold at night. Reached Mons at six o’clock. . . In the street I was asked by a monk whether the King was safe. Left there at eleven o’clock; flat country as far as Namur, then hilly. All are happy about the King’s rescue.’

23 June 1791
‘Fine but cold. Reached Arlon at eleven pm. There found Bouillé; learnt that the King had been caught. No details were known; the troops were unreliable. The King was lacking in firmness and presence of mind. Stayed there overnight.’

24 June 1791
‘Departed at 4:30 in the morning. Everybody greatly upset about the King’s arrest. Desperately depressed. The whole of Luxembourg in despair about the King’s capture. How everything has changed!’

3 February 1792
‘Letter from her, saying that my visit is impossible because of the new regulations which make personal passports compulsory; it would mean abandoning the idea. Things look bad for me and for politics . . . The matter concerning passports is designed to prevent any possible escape by the King; quite clever of them.’

6 February 1792
‘A letter from the Queen telling me that the King would not agree to the new passport regulations; Frenchmen also write to say that they have crossed the frontier without trouble. I therefore decided to go to Paris. Wrote to inform her.’

10 February 1792
‘Prepared everything for my journey.’

11 February 1792
‘Left at 9:30 without my servant and with Reutersvard in the courier’s coach. We carried couriers’ passports for Portugal issued in fictitious names as well as letters addressed to the Queen of Portugal and the Memorandum from the King (of Sweden) to the King of France. I had put everything together with a false code key into an envelope of the Swedish Embassy in Paris and had also forged the King’s signature; a further envelope was addressed to our chargé d’affairs Bergstedt and everything was sealed with the Swedish great seal manufactured here. For the sake of safety I also carried credentials appointing me Ambassador to the Queen of Portugal. At eight o’clock we reached Tournay where we stayed overnight.’

12 February 1792
‘Fine and mild. Left at 3:30 in the morning. Reutersvard visited the Commander M d’Aponcourt in the evening to obtain post horses; d’Aponcourt took him to be a Swedish courier and thought it would take fourteen days to reach Paris and that he would be stopped everywhere. . . Arrived in Gournay at 1:30 in the morning. I concealed myself as far as possible; wore a wig. Everywhere, especially in Péronne, people were very courteous, even the National Guardsmen.’

13 February 1792
‘. . . Reached Paris without any further incident at 5:30 in the evening . . . went to see her by the usual route, for fear of the National Guardsmen; she lives in magnificent surroundings; did not see the King. Stayed there.’

14 February 1792
‘Very fine and mild. Saw the King at six o’clock in the evening. He does not want to leave and because of the extremely strict guard he would be unable to do so; but the real reason is that he has scruples since he has promised so often to stay, because he is a man of honour. He has, however, agreed to go through the woods with the smugglers after the arrival of the Allied Armies, accompanied by a detachment of light troops.’

18 November 1793
‘The Queen always slept fully dressed in black because she expected to be killed or guillotined at any moment and she wanted to go to the scaffold dressed in mourning. . . I shall love the proud, unhappy princess as long as I live . . . Oh, how my life is changed - how small are the prospects for happiness - to think that once upon a time my life was among the most beautiful and enviable in the world.’

El Senor de las Lettras

Today is the centenary of the birth of Gonzalo Torrente Ballester, an icon of Spanish literature but one whose novels have never been translated into English, and who is more or less unknown in the English-speaking world. Nevertheless, the University of Albany, New York, where Torrente taught for a few years in the 1960s having been ostracised by Franco’s regime, is planning to publish his diaries.

Torrente was born on 13 June 1910, in Ferrol, Galicia, and studied at the universities of Santiago de Compostela and Oviedo. After travelling in the late 1920s and early 1930s, including a sojourn in Paris, he aligned himself with Franco’s Falange party. In 1932, he married Josephine Malvido (with whom he had four children), and in 1939 he took up a university post in Santiago. His first novel, Javier Mariño, was published in 1943. A few novels - often steeped in the myths and witchcraft lore of his native Galicia - followed but it was his talent for theatrical criticism that brought more praise.

In time, Torrente distanced himself from the Falange, leaving the party in 1942, but not directly opposing it until 1962 (by which time he had married Guisande Caamaño Fernanda Sanchez with whom he had five children) when he was expelled from teaching for having sided with striking workers in the Asturias mines. As a consequence, in 1966, he moved to the US, with his large family, to accept a specially-created chair of literature at the University of Albany, New York. From 1970, he began to revisit Spain, and by 1975 (the year of Franco’s death), he had moved back permanently - to Salamanca where he remained until his death in 1997.

This last twenty years of Torrente’s life were the most fertile in terms of novels. His fame certainly increased in the 1980s when Spanish television serialised his trilogy Los Gozos y Las Sombras (The Delights and the Shadows) which had been written 20 years earlier. Thereafter, his fame increased to the point where he was considered an icon of Spanish literature, and was known as ‘El Senor de las Lettras’. In 1985, he was awarded the Cervantes Prize, the most important literary prize in Spain. None of his novels, it seems, have been translated into English, nor is there much biographical information about him in English on the internet. Spanish Wikipedia has a much longer article than English Wikipedia, and there are useful obituaries on The Independent and New York Times websites.

Earlier this year, the University of Albany, where Torrente had taught, announced that it would publish, later this year, the first of a series of Torrente’s diaries. The author, it said, had donated the diaries in 1967 but only under the condition that the writings would not be published or even consulted until 10 years after his death. That moment was reached in January last year. The documents held by the university were written between the late 1940s and 1950s and contain ‘reflections of a political character’. They also provide a view of Torrente that, according to his son Álvaro Torrente, is ‘little known and that, without doubt, will be revelatory for many people.’

The Butcher of Beijing

A diary allegedly written by Li Peng during the Tiananmen protests in Beijing, June 1989, is about to be published in Hong Kong. Li Peng was China’s premier at the time of the massacre, thus earning himself the nickname ‘Butcher of Beijing’. Excerpts of the publication have been circulating on the internet and have led commentators to suggest the diary will do little to help Li Peng, currently very ill, shed that moniker.

When student-led protests threatened to escalate out of control in central Beijing in late May and early June 1989, the Chinese government was divided as to how to respond. The premier Li Peng favoured military force. He had taken over the premiership from Zhao Ziyang in 1987 (and continued in office until 1998). The still powerful General Secretary Zhao Ziyang, however, took a more dovish approach and showed some support for the demonstrators. Li Peng’s view prevailed, Zhao Ziyang’s political stock sank further, and upwards of 3,000 people may have been killed.

There was international outrage at the time; and a scar still remains today in the sense that many people round the world only know the name Tiananmen Square because of the massacre. (The outrage in 1989, however, did not last long enough to stop China being awarded the 2008 Olympic Games in 2001.) See Wikipedia for more on Li Peng and the Tiananmen Square protests.

The Hong Kong-based New Century Press is set to publish, later in June, a diary kept by Li Peng at the time of the protests. Excerpts of the diary, which most commentators believe is genuine, have been circulating on the internet, and were picked up by the press agency AFP (as reported by Sinchew.com). On 1 June, Li Peng writes: ‘The unrest now in Beijing is the biggest chaos since the nation was established’; and ‘The loss of control in this situation has gone beyond the Great Cultural Revolution’. While attempting to mediate a political solution to end the protests, Li Peng reveals in the diary, he is massing 25,000 troops in buildings around the square - ‘a force surrounding Tiananmen on all four sides’.

A BBC article also provides some quotes: ‘From the beginning of the turmoil, I have prepared for the worst, . . . I would rather sacrifice my own life and that of my family to prevent China from going through a tragedy like the Cultural Revolution.’

The man behind the publishing project, Bao Pu, of New Century Press, is a prominent human rights activist, and the son of Bao Tong, a senior advisor to the head of the Chinese Communist Party at the time of the Tiananmen protests. He told AFP that the diaries show ‘Li participated in the decision-making throughout the process and he was also the one who carried out these decisions. This all came out very, very clear in details that we previously did not know.’

The BBC quotes Bao Pu as saying the diary ‘provides amazing details of how decisions were made and how the order was carried out, and how the leaders reached internal consensus’; and that ‘these are the kind of things that are not in official records’.

According to the South China Morning Post, Li Peng’s diary (15 April to 24 June 1989) was ready for publication in 2004, but the move was blocked by President Hu Jintao and Premier Wen Jiabao. Originally entitled The Critical Moment, it has now been renamed Li Peng’s June 4 Diary, and will be released on 22 June.

Postscript: Three days before publication in Hong Kong the book was blocked; however, subsequently it was published in the US under the title, The Critical Moment. 

Schumann and Clara

Today is the bicentenary of the birth of Robert Schumann, a great German composer in the Romantic tradition, but one who led a much troubled life. As a young man, he seemed torn between literature and music, and then between playing and composing; and, as he grew older, he was often troubled by mental problems. Also, his life was inextricably bound up with that of Clara Wieck, a young concert pianist, whose father bitterly opposed their union. Schumann left behind many journals, but only those he wrote with Clara in the first years of their marriage have been translated into English.

Schumann was born in Zwickau, Saxony, two hundred years ago today on 8 June 1810. His father, a bookseller and writer, encouraged him to pursue both music and literary interests, but he died when his son was only 16. Schumann moved to Leipzig, and then Heidleberg to study law. However, by the end of 1830 he had returned to music and was training under the renowned teacher Friedrich Wieck to become a concert pianist. Before long, though, a weakness in the fingers of one hand led him towards composing, and to studying music theory with Heinrich Dorn.

Many of Schumann’s most famous works - considered alongside the best of German Romantic music - were composed in the mid-late 1830s. They are noted for their originality and daring, as much as for their links to literature. Carnaval, one of his most genial and characteristic piano works, contains various musical cryptograms; Kinderszenen depicts the innocence and playfulness of childhood; and Kreisleriana, one of Schumann’s best works, is a dramatic piece for solo piano composed to represent a famous character from the German fiction of E T A Hoffmann.

Schumann was also a working journalist who founded Die Neue Zeitschrift für Musik, and influential music magazine, in 1835, and remained its editor until 1844. In 1840, he married Clara Wieck despite a bitter struggle with her father who tried to block the marriage. Schumann had known Clara since when as a young girl she had performed many of his early compositions. Their affair almost certainly began when she was still in her teens. They had eight children, although one of them died in infancy. Clara would go on to outlive Schumann by four decades, and her own career as a concert pianist would straddle six decades.

Having written mostly for the piano hitherto, Schumann widened his repertoire in the 1940s with song cycles, symphonies, one opera, and settings of Goethe’s Faust. He was well acquainted with other composers of the age - Mendelssohn, Liszt, Wagner, and the younger Brahms (with whom Clara would become romantically involved later). He also travelled often, including a long tour of Russia with Clara in 1844, but his health was unreliable and declining. In 1950, he was appointed municipal director of music in Düsseldorf, but resigned in 1853. The following year, he attempted suicide by throwing himself into the Rhine, and was then confined to an asylum where he remained until his death in 1856. Classical Net and Wikipedia have more biographical information.

Schumann kept journals for much of his life, though most of them have not been translated into English. According to Peter Ostwald, a Schumann biographer, this is because of their incredible bulk, the overabundance of routine facts, and Schumann’s use of a telegraphic style without any explanatory narrative. However, Ostwald considers there are two ‘remarkable exceptions’ to this pattern: the diaries of Schumann’s youth when he was thinking of himself as a literary writer, and the marriage diaries written with his wife Clara. These latter were first edited by Gerd Nauhaus and published in German in 1987. The book was then translated by Ostwald and published in English by Robson Books in 1994 - The Marriage Diaries of Robert & Clara Schumann.

The author Janice Galloway who has fictionalised Clara’s life in her book, (cleverly!) titled, Clara, wrote about it in The Guardian, and, in doing so, referred to these marriage diaries: ‘Famously, she also kept a diary of her relationship in tandem with her husband for the first four years of their marriage. Lots of ink, lots of detail - and not really very much at all. Even reading her written words, the silences are unavoidable, the white, unspoken space between the lines seeming to grow wider with each passing year, each hellish domestic crisis. Discover Robert’s ‘corrections’ to her entries scribbled like teachers’ comments in their shared diary, discover her ruthless cheerfulness in praising his work when he is at his least healthy, his least confident, discover her relief when a suspected fresh pregnancy proves false, and it’s not hard to see why.’

Here are some extracts from The Marriage Diaries of Robert & Clara Schumann:

June 1841
‘This month seems to want to be a beautiful one as well; only one day, the 1st, allowed the sun to be pushed aside, but now it asserts its full privilege.

Robert is composing constantly, has already finished 3 movements and I hope he will be ready in time for his birthday. In my opinion, he can look back on the past year and himself with joy! - so often they say it might kill the spirit, rob it of youthful freshness! but my Robert certainly demonstrates the clearest evidence to the contrary!

On the 2nd the singer Schmidt visited me with the music director Seydelmann from Breslau. He is a dried-up, insignificant man, Schmidt the same, although he thinks of himself as a great genius and displays this often enough, with the greatest arrogance.

My piano playing again falls completely by the wayside, as is always the case when Robert composes. Not a single little hour can be found for me the entire day! if only I don’t regress too much! The score reading has also stopped again for now, but I hope not for too long!

The composing doesn’t want to go at all right now - sometimes I want to beat myself over the stupid head!-’

June 1841
‘On the 3rd Mendelssohn visited us. He is reluctant to leave here, and it is really to be hoped that he will return, since he spoke much about the establishment of a music conservatory here, which seems a good idea to me.

This week I sat down a lot to compose, and finally succeeded with four poems by Rückert for my dear Robert. May they satisfy him just a little, then my wish will be fulfilled.

It has been over 3 weeks that I have been waiting for news from my mother, and I suspect that she was not satisfied with our birthday presents - who knows! perhaps she counted on a significant sum of money. But I believe she cannot expect more than we have done - it was beyond our means. As soon as one is married it is a different story in terms of giving money, then one has himself to worry about, and there are so many things that burden a poor father of the family, which soon is what my Robert will ultimately end up being!!!!-’

June 1841
‘The weather was horrible on June 8, but our souls lived in the most magnificent sunshine, and thus all went well. Oh, we were very blissful that day, and I devoutly thank God for letting us live so happily through this first June 8 of our marriage, and above all that he created such a dear, excellent human being for me and the world. Don’t laugh at me, dear Robert - that would mean pouring cold water on my heart filled with love! - There was little I could give my Robert, but he always kept smiling so amicably because he knew so well how affectionately they were given. Four lieder by Rückert gave him much pleasure, and he also treated them so tolerantly that he will even publish them together with several of his own, which makes me very happy.’

June 1842
‘Our little one gives us indescribable pleasure; she grows daily and shows a good-natured personality with great vitality. Now the first tooth is in place. Clara’s happiness about this and about the whole child is mine as well. The entire June was a kind month except for some days and nights of revelry.

Yet I was also industrious, in a new sort of way, and have almost completely finished making and also writing down two quartets for violins, etc. in A minor and F major. Also working a great deal on my journal.

Clara is playing little, except from quartets by Haydn and Mozart that we took up consecutively at the piano, and has also composed two lieder for my birthday, the most successful she has ever written up to now. On this day, the 8th of June, she gave me as always a large number of beautiful things, and above all [gave] the little one a wreath. But I was melancholy and unwell on that day. In the evening, we cheered ourselves up; several acquaintances were there, and much wine flowed into grateful throats. Yet the best thing after that was music, which Clara gave us as yet.’

Happy birthday Chantal

Happy birthday Chantal Akerman - 60 today. Having been much influenced from an early age by Jean-Luc Godard, she’s been a maker of films, often experimental, for most of her life. In the mid-1990s, though, she began creating installations for art galleries as well. One of her more recent works, one that has been installed in galleries round the world, is called To Walk Next to One’s Shoelaces in an Empty Fridge, and was developed around a diary Akerman found in her house - the diary of her grandmother who had died at Auschwitz - and a conversation she had about it with her mother.

Akerman was born on 6 June 1950 in Brussels, Belgium, to Jewish parents from Poland. Her grandparents and her mother had been sent to Auschwitz, but only her mother survived. Akerman says that she decided to be a film maker aged 15 after viewing Jean-Luc Godard’s Pierrot le fou. At 18 she started to study at a Belgian film school, but soon left choosing to focus on making her first (short) film, Saute ma ville (Blow up my town), which premiered at a film festival in 1971. That same year she moved to New York, where she stayed until 1973, and in 1974 her feature film Je tu il elle, starring herself, received critical recognition.

Akerman has made over 40 works - from 35mm features to video essays to experimental documentaries - many of them considered to be ‘hyperrealist’, the most famous of which is Jeanne Dielman, 23 Quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles. According to the European Graduate School, where she is professor of film, Akerman began experimenting with video installations in 1995 and exhibiting her work in museums and galleries as well as in art-house cinemas. These installations, it says, ‘display an intensive personal gaze’. There is a biography of Akerman on the EGS website, but it’s mostly about her films, as is Wikipedia’s article. A community Facebook page also has some information.

One of Akerman’s more recent and widely toured installations - To Walk Next to One’s Shoelaces in an Empty Fridge - was focused on a diary written by her maternal grandmother who died at Auschwitz. It was developed in 2004, and installed at the Galerie Marian Goodman in Paris before being shown in, among other places, the Marian Goodman Gallery in New York, the Tel Aviv Museum of Art, the Camden Arts Centre in London, and the Jewish Museum in Berlin. The website of the latter has two photographs of the installation.

Scott Macaulay described the work as it appeared in New York for the FilmMaker blog. At its heart, he said, this is a ‘tremendously moving and unexpectedly funny piece in which Akerman uses her artmaking tools to journey back through her family history to trace the desires and ambitions of three generations of women’. One main part of the installation is a film in which Akerman and her mother, Nelly, discuss the contents of a diary found in their house - her grandmother’s diary. ‘I am a woman!’ the diary begins. ‘Therefore I can’t express all my feelings, my sorrows and my thoughts . . . dear diary, onto your sheets I will write them. And you will be my only confidante.’

The conversation then leads to a discussion of the Second World War, Nelly’s experience in the concentration camps, her feeling thereafter that she never regained her life, and her support of Chantal’s early career as an artist.

Saul Austerlitz, writing for the Jewish daily, Forward, described the installation in Tel Aviv as follows: ‘The exhibit includes a spiral wrapped in tulle, covered with quotes from Akerman about her work as a filmmaker, and a short film of her mother reading from her grandmother’s Holocaust-era diary and talking about her own wartime experiences - a conversation, Akerman says in the show’s catalog, that brought a sense of closure to her work for the past 30 years.’

Adrian Searle wrote about the work as it appeared at the Camden Arts Centre for The Guardian as follows: ‘In a large space, a text in French, by Akerman, is projected on two large arcs of white material. We wander through while a mournful violin plays. The text is an autobiographical gloss on the footage projected in a second room, a conversation between Akerman and her mother, who she presents with the diary of her maternal grandmother: along with the rest of the Akerman family, she perished in Auschwitz. Nelly Akerman struggles with her mother’s precise handwriting, and with the Polish, which she fears she can no longer read. Together, she and Chantal go through the diary entries of a young girl who proclaims on the first page ‘I am a woman!’, and who writes for a diary she imagines no one shall read. She writes that she cannot tell her secrets and her hopes aloud; they would otherwise have died with her. Sometime after the war, finding the journal in a drawer, Nelly added a few words to the mother she had lost; later, Chantal wrote in the diary, too.’

Windham’s love of Johnson

It’s two centuries to the day since the death of William Windham, a British statesman. He was a good friend of Edmund Burke, one of the 18th century’s leading political thinkers, and of Dr Samuel Johnson, who was probably responsible for Windham keeping a diary. Indeed, his diary entries at the time of Johnson’s death show a great affection for the man - and a love of ice skating!

Windham was born in 1750 at Felbrigg, near Cromer in Norfolk, an estate owned by his family for centuries, and he was educated at Eton and University College, Oxford. During the 1770s, he made several tours of European countries. In the first half of the 1780s, he went to Ireland as chief secretary to Lord Northington, and entered Parliament as MP for Norwich. He stood for the Whigs, and was one of those involved (along with his friend Edmund Burke) in the impeachment of Warren Hastings, a Governor of India. On the outbreak of the French Revolution, Windham sided with William Pitt.

In 1794, Windham was appointed Secretary-at-War, and a privy councillor. In 1798, he married Cecelia Forest, but they had no children. The same year, he resigned with Pitt when the King prevented Catholic emancipation, and, in 1802, he lost his seat because of his opposition to peace with France. He was again returned to Parliament as member for St Mawes, Cornwall, in 1804, and again served as Secretary of State for War and the Colonies between 1806 and 1807. He died on 4 June 1810, two hundred years ago today. More biographical information is available from Wikipedia or History Home.

Windham wrote a diary for much of his adult life. It was passed down through the generations to another William Windham, who, shortly before his death, gave the manuscript to his sister Cecilia Anne Baring, nee Windham, the second wife of the founder of Barings Bank. She edited the manuscript and it was published in 1866 by Longmans, Green and Co as The Diary of the Right Hon. William Windham, 1784 to 1810. There have been many editions since then (see Amazon for recent prints), but the original is freely available at Internet Archive.

Mrs Henry Baring (the editor’s name as given on the book) writes in the preface that the diary ‘is in truth chiefly a record of Mr Windham’s health and feelings, made for himself alone, which can hardly be supposed to possess much general interest; but there are many passages interspersed in it, strongly indicative of his character, which I trust I shall be forgiven for wishing to rescue from oblivion. . . If therefore, after much consideration, I determine to submit these pages to the press, it is not with a view to enhance the fame of the writer, but to preserve some portions of a relic consigned to me, before time shall have obliterated all names and traces of the former possessors of Felbrigg [family home, now a National Trust property], and whilst there are still living those who cling with fondness to its memories. . . [Moreover,] it is possible that, by a comparison with other memoirs of the time, these papers may contribute to elucidate some of the important transactions of the age in which Mr Windham lived.’

She also quotes Earl Grey speaking about Windham in the House of Lords after his death: ‘He was a man of a great, original, and commanding genius, with a mind cultivated with the richest stores of intellectual wealth, and a fancy winged to the highest flights of a most captivating imagery, of sound and spotless integrity, with a warm spirit but a generous heart, and of a courage and determination so characteristic as to hold him forward as the strong example of what the old English heart could effect and endure. He had, indeed, his faults, but they seemed, like the skilful disposition of shade in works of art, to make the impression of his virtues more striking, and gave additional grandeur to the outline of his character.’

The book contains a second preface, one written much earlier by George Ellis who never finished a biography of Windham. In this preface, Ellis writes about how he believes Windham was encouraged to write a diary by his friend Samuel Johnson. The great thing to be recorded (said Johnson, according to Ellis) is ‘the state of your own mind, and you should write down everything that you remember; for you cannot judge at first what is good or bad: and write immediately, while the impression is fresh, for it will not be the same a week afterwards.’ He further quotes (from Boswell’s Life of Johnson) a conversation between Windham and Johnson, which concluded with Johnson’s advice: ‘Every day will improve another. Dies diem docet, by observing at night where you failed in the day and by resolving to fail so no more!’ This conversation took place in June 1783, and Windham began keeping his diary in July that year.

Moreover, Ellis argues, the diary itself is exactly conformable to Dr Johnson’s advice in being devoted to the purpose of self-examination: ‘the employment of time is punctually brought to account, and severely scrutinised; and many pages are filled with expressions of regret for the valuable hours unprofitably wasted; with lamentations over those habits of indolence from which neither the bustle of business nor the tranquillity of solitude was found to be a sufficient preservative; and with resolutions of future amendment; resolutions, however, which, when recorded, only served to awaken new remorse, because they were constantly succeeded by fresh avowals of repeated negligence.’

Here are several extracts from the diary, the first few largely concerning the death of Samuel Johnson, and the last two being the final entries in the diary before Windham’s own death.

7 December 1784
‘Ten minutes past two PM. After waiting some short time in the adjoining room, I was admitted to Dr Johnson in his bedchamber, where, after placing me next him on the chair, he sitting in his usual place on the east side of the room (and I on his right hand), he put into my hands two small volumes (an edition of the New Testament), as he afterwards told me, saying, ‘Extremum hoc munus morientis habeto.’ He then proceeded to observe that I was entering upon a life which would lead me deeply into all the business of the world; that he did not condemn civil employment, but that it was a state of great danger; and that he had therefore one piece of advice earnestly to impress upon me that I would set apart every seventh day for the care, of my soul; that one day, the seventh, should be employed in repenting what was amiss in the six preceding, and for fortifying my virtue for the six to come; that such a portion of time was surely little enough for the meditation of eternity. . . I then took occasion to say how much I felt, what I had long foreseen that I should feel, regret at having spent so little of my life in his company. I stated this as an instance where resolutions are deferred till the occasions are past. For some time past I had determined that such an occasion of self-reproach should no longer subsist, and had built upon the hope of passing in his society the chief part of my time, at the moment when it was to be apprehended we were about to lose him for ever! I had no difficulty of speaking to him thus of my apprehensions; I could not help, on the other hand, entertaining hopes; but with these I did not like to trouble him, lest he should conceive that I thought it necessary to flatter him. He answered hastily that he was sure I would not; and proceeded to make a compliment to the manliness of my mind, which, whether deserved or not, ought to be remembered that it may be deserved. . .’

11 December 1784
‘First day of skating; ice fine. Find I have lost nothing since last year. Between nine and ten went to Sir Joshua, whom I took up by the way to see Dr Johnson - Strachan and Langton there; no hopes, though a great discharge had taken place from the legs.’

13 December 1784
‘. . . While I was writing . . , received the fatal account, so long dreaded, that Dr Johnson was no more! May those prayers which he incessantly poured from a heart fraught with the deepest devotion, find that acceptance with Him to whom they were addressed, which piety so humble and so fervent may seem to promise!’

15 December 1784
‘The two days passed . . . afford a strong example how much more is sometimes done on supposed occasions of idleness than in times professedly devoted to study. Stopping at shop and looking into some things in Simson’s Algebra, I felt at that moment what an amazing difference would take place in my mind had I employed the years of leisure which had lapsed through my life in making myself master of the subjects then before me. To these reflections my practice so far conformed, that, after going home about eleven o’clock, I sat up till past two employed very diligently in reducing the formula which I had given in the morning. The work since that time has never been resumed; neither that nor any other kind of work has been done. I cannot, indeed, say that all the time has been misspent; much of it has been employed in performing the last duties of respect and affection to the great man [Johnson] that is gone. But two entire mornings have been taken up, I fear, with little utility of any sort, certainly with none to myself, in attendance on Indian business, and much the greater part of the time dissipated in such avocations as I fear will be for ever incident to a life in London.’

7 November 1790
‘On Thursday I conceive it was, that a material incident happened the arrival of Mr Burke’s pamphlet [Considerations on the French Revolution]. Never was there, I suppose, a work so valuable in its kind, or that displayed powers of so extraordinary a nature. It is a work that may seem capable of overturning the National Assembly, and turning the stream of opinion throughout Europe. One would think, that the author of such a work, would be called to the government of his country, by the combined voice of every man in it. What shall be said of the state of things when it is remembered that the writer is a man decried, persecuted and proscribed; not being much valued, even by his own party, and by half the nation considered as little better than an ingenious madman!’

12 May 1810
‘Walked out. Omitted foolishly to enquire at St James’s Church, otherwise should have learnt that there was to be an administration of the Sacrament at seven, which would just have suited me, as besides the privacy, I could have gone then before I took any physic.’

13 May 1810
‘Sorry that, for want of earlier enquiry, I had missed the Sacrament at St James’s at seven o’clock. Remedied the loss by writing to Fisher, and afterwards going, when I received it in his room in company only with Mrs Fisher. Blane in evening, and Wilson; which last dissuaded me the operation; Elliot afterwards. Not convinced by Wilson, as he has no hopes to give of evil stopping or being removed.’

A violent longing

Tonight (Monday 31 May), the UK’s BBC 2 television channel is broadcasting a ‘bold and passionate drama’ about Anne Lister. She was a landowner in the early 1800s, and a diarist; but what makes her story special is that she was also a lesbian who confided intimate details of her sexuality - albeit in code - to her diaries.
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Lister was born in Halifax, West Yorkshire, in 1791, into a wealthy family. She seems to have discovered her homosexuality while a teenager at boarding school. Between 1809 and 1814, she was in a relationship with the wealthy heiress Isabella Norcliffe, but then she fell in love with Mariana Belcombe and continued an affair despite Mariana’s marriage to Charles Lawton. By this time, Lister’s mother had died, and Lister herself had inherited the family wealth. In 1824, she went to Paris to master French and to find a cure for venereal infection.

Thereafter, Lister took an active interest in developing schools in the Halifax area, managed her estates, and even opened coal mines on her land. In 1832, she began an affair with Ann Walker, another rich heiress, who became her companion, and with whom she travelled widely. Lister died in July 1840 in the foothills of the Caucasus Mountains, Georgia, and Walker spent seven months bringing her body back to England to be buried in the local churchyard. Further information is available from Calderdale Council, Wikipedia, or HerStoria magazine on the Leeds Metropolitan University website.

In the 1980s, Helena Whitbread, a historian, discovered (or rediscovered) the store of diaries (now held by Calderdale Archives part of the West Yorkshire Archives) written by Lister between 1791 and 1840, and, in particular, deciphered the substantial parts written in code. The coded parts reveal much about Lister’s active lesbian sex life, thus providing a unique record from this historical period. A first edition of the diaries - I Know my own Heart: The Diaries of Anne Lister - was published by Virago in 1988, and by New York University Press in 1992. A follow-up collection of extracts - No Priest but Love: The Journals of of Anne Lister - was published in 1993, also by New York University Press.

Tonight, 31 May 2010, BBC 2 is screening a much-anticipated drama - The Secret Diaries of Miss Anne Lister - starring Maxine Peake. The BBC says it is a ‘bold and passionate drama’ about Lister, who, despite needing to keep her orientation secret from society at large, in private defied the conventions of her times by living with her female lover. It also claims she has been called ‘Britain’s first modern lesbian’. To accompany the drama, the BBC is also screening tonight a documentary, presented by Sue Perkins, called Revealing Anne Lister.

Substantial extracts from Lister’s diary can be found online in I Know My Own Heart: The Diaries of Anne Lister, 1791-1840 at Googlebooks. Here are two. The first and longer one comes from 1822 when Lister had travelled to Wales to visit the so-called Ladies of Llangollen, Eleanor Butler and Sarah Ponsonby, who lived together and may also have been lesbians. Eleanor Butler was also a diarist (see The Diary Junction), but unlike Lister, left no clear evidence of having lived the life of a ‘modern lesbian’.

13 July 1822
‘Two kisses last night, one almost immediately after the other, before we went to sleep . . . Felt better, but was so shockingly low last night I cried bitterly but smothered it so that M- scarcely knew of it. At any rate, she took no notice, wisely enough . . . M- told me of the gentlemanliness & agreeableness of Mr Powis who, it seems, might interest M more than duly had her heart no object but C-, with whom she has had no connection these four months. Not down to breakfast till 11 . . . then, perhaps luckily for us, all in a bustle & M-off at 21. We were off in 1/2 hour.

Got here, the King’s Head, New Hotel, Llangollen, patronised by Lady Eleanor Butler & Miss Ponsonby, in 44 hours . . . Beautiful drive from Chester to Wrexham. It was market day & the town seemed very busy. Beautiful drive, also, from Wrexham here but I was perhaps disappointed with the first couple of miles of the vale of Llangollen The hills naked of wood & the white limestone quarries on our left certainly not picturesque. About 3 miles from Llangollen, when Castle Dinas Bran came in sight, we were satisfiede of the beauties of the valley but the sun was setting on the castle & so dazzled our eyes we could scarce look that way. The inn, kept by Elizabeth Davies, is close to the bridge & washed by the river Dee. We are much taken with our hostess & with the place. Have had an excellent roast leg of mutton, & trout, & very fine port wine, with every possible attention . . . We sat down to dinner at 8-1/2, having previously strolled thro’ the town to Lady Eleanor Butler’s & Miss Ponsonby’s place. There is a public road close to the house, thro’ the grounds, & along this we passed & repassed standing to look at the house, cottage, which is really very pretty. A great many of the people touched their hats to us on passing & we are much struck with their universal civility. A little [girl], seeing us apparently standing to consider our way, shewed us the road to Plas Newys (Lady Eleanor Butler’s & Miss Ponsonby’s), followed & answered our several questions very civilly. A little boy then came & we gave each of them all our halfpence, 2d. each.

After dinner (the people of the house took it at 10), wrote the following note, ’To the Right Honourable Lady Eleanor Butler & Miss Ponsonby, Plasnewyd. Mrs & Miss Lister take the liberty of presenting their compliments to Lady Eleanor Butler & Miss Ponsonby, & of asking permission to see their grounds at Plas Newyd in the course of tomorrow morning. Miss Lister, at the suggestion of Mr Banks, had intended herself the honour of calling on her ladyship & Miss Ponsonby, & hopes she may be allowed to express her very great regret at hearing of her ladyship’s indisposition. King’s Head Hotel. Saturday evening. 13 July.’

The message returned was that we should see the grounds at 12 tomorrow. This will prevent our going to church, which begins at 11 & will not be over till after 1. The service is principally in Welsh except the lesson & sermon every 2nd Sunday & tomorrow is the English day. Lady Eleanor Butler has been couched. She ventured out too soon & caught cold. Her medical man . . . positively refuses her seeing anyone. Her cousin, Lady Mary Ponsonby, passed thro’ not long ago & did not see her.’

12 July 1823
‘Could not sleep last night. Dozing, hot & disturbed . . . a violent longing for a female companion came over me. Never remember feeling it so painfully before . . . It was absolute pain to me.’

A lack of boats

‘I can hardly believe that I have succeeded in pulling the 4 divisions out of the mess we were in, with allies giving way on all flanks.’ This is Alan Brooke, one of Britain’s foremost military commanders and strategists, writing in his diary 70 years ago today in the midst of the famous May-June 1940 Dunkirk evacuation.

Alan Brooke, was born in France in 1883 into a wealthy Anglo-Irish family with a strong military background. He studied at the Royal Military Academy at Woolwich and then joined the British Army. He served in Ireland, India and then on the Western Front during the First World War, during which he was promoted to Lieutenant-Colonel.

Brooke married twice, each marriage producing one son and one daughter. His first wife, Jane Richardson who he married in 1914, died in 1925 in a car accident. He married Benita Lees in 1929. Between the wars, Brooke lectured at Camberley Military College and the Imperial Defense College. In 1937 he was given the command of Britain’s first Mobile Division and the following year he was promoted to the rank of Lieutenant-General and became head of the Territorial Anti-Aircraft Corps.

In August 1939, Brooke was appointed head of Southern Command; and, on the outbreak of the war, he went to France as a member of the British Expeditionary Force (commander of II Corps, which included the 3rd Division led by the then Major-General Bernard Montgomery) under the overall command of General John Gort.

When the German offensive began, Wikipedia explains, Brooke distinguished himself in the handling of the British forces in the retreat to Dunkirk: ‘In late May 1940 the Corps held the major German attack on the Ypres-Comine Canal but then found its left flank exposed by the capitulation of the Belgian army. Brooke swiftly ordered 3rd Division to switch from the Corps’ right flank to cover the gap. This was accomplished in a complicated night-time manoeuvre. Pushing more troops north to counter the threat to the embarking troops at Dunkirk from German units advancing along the coast, II Corps retreated to Dunkirk where on 29 May Brooke was ordered to return to England, leaving the Corps in Montgomery’s hands.’

Brooke returned to Britain and in July 1940 was appointed commander of the Home Forces, and then, despite disagreements with Winston Churchill about military strategy, to Chief of Imperial Staff in December 1941, effectively making him the head of the army. As the war progressed, Brooke gradually became Churchill’s most important military adviser. Indeed, when offered command of the British troops in the Middle East, in 1942, he turned the posting down because he believed it necessary to stay close to Churchill to stop him making any major military mistakes.

Later in the war, when he no longer felt the need to stay by Churchill’s side, Brooke expected to be made head of the Allied invasion of Western Europe, but the job went to the American Dwight D Eisenhower, leaving Brooke bitterly disappointed. Brooke was promoted to Field Marshal in 1944 and was created Baron Alanbrooke of Brookeborough in 1945. After retiring from the British Army he became a director of several companies, President of the Zoological Society, and Vice-President of the RSPB. He died in 1963.

Throughout the war, Brooke kept a detailed diary. Although not intended for publication, he changed his mind about this, apparently, because he felt he (and other chiefs of staff) had been given too little credit in Churchill’s memoirs. Brooke’s diaries were first edited by Arthur Bryant as a history of the war in two volumes: The Turn of the Tide published by Doubleday in 1957, and Triumph in the West by Collins in 1959. An uncensored version - War Diaries 1939-1945 - appeared in 2001 published by Weidenfeld & Nicolson (edited by Alex Danchev and Daniel Todman). Much of this latter book is available for view at Googlebooks, and a few pages can be read at Amazon.

Here is part of one entry (taken from War Diaries 1939-1945) dated 70 years ago today, in the middle of the Dunkirk Evacuation.

30 May 1940
‘. . . I can hardly believe that I have succeeded in pulling the 4 divisions out of the mess we were in, with allies giving way on all flanks. Now remains the task of embarking which will be a difficult one. Went to see how embarkation was proceeding and found the whole thing at a standstill owing to a lack of boats!! Went to see Gort and got little satisfaction. Then found Sykes telephone to sec of 1st Sea Lord, returned to Gort to get him to telephone to 1st Sea Lord to press for marines, more ships and boats. Arranged for Monty to take over Corps, Anderson to replace him [3rd Division], and Horrocks to replace Anderson [11 Infantry Brigade]. Visited all Div Commanders to say goodbye. . .

Went down to beach at 7:15pm, was carried out to open boat, and with Ronnie Stanyforth and Barney Charlesworth we paddled out to the destroyer and got aboard. There I found Adam, to my great joy. We have been waiting till 10pm before starting, rather nerve wracking as the Germans are continually flying round and being shot at, and after seeing the ease with which a few bombs can sink a destroyer, it is an unpleasant feeling.

Later: We never started until 12:15am, at 3am we were brought up short with a crash. I felt certain that we had hit a mine or been torpedoed. But she remained on an even keel and after some shuffling about proceeded on slowly. I heard later from the commander that he had 3 routes to select from, one was under gun fire from the coast, one had had a submarine and mines reported in it, and the other was very shallow at low water. He chose the latter and hit the bottom, damaging a propeller slightly. Finally arrived at Dover at 7:15am. Wonderful feeling of peace after the last 3 weeks!’

Liddell, Tyler and internment

Seventy years ago today, and barely two weeks after the formation of a coalition war government by the Liberal Party leader Winston Churchill, one of the country’s cleverest intelligence officers and an important diarist, Guy Liddell, was appealing to Churchill’s Labour Party allies in the War Cabinet for a policy of internment. According to Liddell’s diaries, Churchill was strongly in support of such a policy, largely because of the Tyler Kent case, which Liddell himself had helped resolve only days earlier.

Liddell, born in 1892, was studying music in Germany when World War I began. He returned to England and served with the Royal Field Artillery (and was awarded the Military Cross). After the war, Liddell joined Scotland Yard, and then, working as a liaison with Special Branch and the Foreign Office, he helped expose the spying activities of the All Russian Cooperative Society. In 1927, he joined MI5 where he became an expert on Soviet subversive activities within the UK; he also recruited agents, including Maxwell Knight, who became head of the unit monitoring of political subversion.

With the outbreak of World War II and the resignation of Neville Chamberlain, Winston Churchill became Prime Minister of a Liberal-Labour coalition on 10 May 1940, with Clement Attlee effectively as his deputy. Very quickly Vernon Kell, Director-General of MI5, was sacked, and replaced by David Petrie. In Petrie’s reorganisation, Liddell was promoted to director in charge of counter-espionage.

Within days Liddell was informed by Knight of an investigation into a spy ring, active through the Right Club, which met at Anna Wolkoff’s Russian Tea Room in South Kensington. Of particular interest was a US embassy cypher clerk, Tyler Kent, who was visiting the Tea Room regularly and who was suspected of passing secret documents to Right Club members - documents that showed the American government in favour of the US joining the war in Europe. On 18 May, Liddell negotiated with the Americans for Kent’s diplomatic immunity to be waived, and two days later Special Branch raided his flat where they found nearly 2,000 classified documents. Subsequently, Kent, and his handler Wolkoff, were successfully prosecuted.

Liddell’s career was subsequently hampered by several factors. When one of his agents, Duško Popov, came up with information suggesting the Japanese might be planning an attack on Pearl Harbor, he was sent to FBI Director J Edgar Hoover, who did not take the information seriously. Later, Liddell was criticised for not having informed the US’s Office of Naval Intelligence.

Some time later, he was expected to succeed David Petrie as chief of MI5, but rumours that he might be a double-agent had reached the Home Office, and he was given the job of Deputy Director-General instead. Subsequently, he was demoted as a result of his previous close association with Guy Burgess (who defected in 1951). Liddell died in 1958. Wikipedia and Spartacus both have a little more biographical information. Two decades later, the journalist and writer, Goronwy Rees gave a deathbed confession that he was a spy, and also that Liddell was a traitor and part of the Burgess/Philby spy ring. Documents released for public inspection since have appeared to clear Liddell of anything but naivety in choosing friends.

Guy Liddell was a pedantic diarist. He filled twelve volumes during the years of World War II, each with a separate index, and these give an extraordinary insight into the workings of the security service. They were not released for public inspection until quite recently, and they were then edited by Nigel West (pen name of Rupert Allason) and published by Routledge in 2005 in two volumes: The Guy Liddell Diaries Vol I: 1939-1942; The Guy Liddell Diaries Vol II: 1942-1945.

West says this in his introduction: ‘From amusing anecdotes to deadly serious issues of life and execution, Liddell takes us through the matters that preoccupied him while he fulfilled one of the most demanding roles in Britain’s most secret wartime world. In short, until now there has never been any authoritative insider’s account of what it was like to work in the wartime Security Service, nor any candid commentary on the counter-intelligence conflict fought by MI5 against both the Axis and the Soviets.’

The diaries are available online at the National Archives, which charges a fee. However, a large number of extracts are also available for free thanks to the controversial historian David Irving. (Wikipedia, which has a very long article on the man, notes that he is described as ‘the most skilful preacher of Holocaust denial in the world today’.) While researching Liddell’s diaries for his own books, Irvings also transcribed what, he says, seemed ‘the most important threads of information in them - i.e. those that interested me at the Cabinet level, while keeping an eye open on their ‘Himmler’ and ‘Schellenberg’ content as well. I make no apologies for omissions.’

Here is Liddell’s entry from 70 years ago today, in which he explains how he was summoned to see Atlee to discuss internment.

25 May 1940
‘The Director-General told me this morning that he had an interview with Neville Chamberlain who had questioned him on Fifth Columnists here. The Director-General told him that he was worried about Czechs and also about aliens. He then went on to see the Prime Minister. The latter was not available owing to a meeting, but Desmond Morton was there. It seems that the Prime Minister takes a strong view about the internment of all Fifth Columnists at this moment and that he has left the Home Secretary in no doubt about his views. What seems to have moved him more than anything was the Tyler Kent case.

At about 6 o’clock Stephens had a telephone message asking that he and I should go up to the Privy Council to see Clement Atlee and Arthur Greenwood. I could not understand how they had got hold of my name. Before going I rang up the Director-General to ask his permission. I told him that I proposed, if I were questioned about internment, to tell them exactly what I thought, and he agreed. Atlee and Greenwood gave me the impression that they thought there was some political intrigue or graft in the Home Office which was holding things up. I told them quite frankly that I did not think this was the case. I went over the whole ground, explained how enemy aliens had been let into this country free for a period of five years, how the War Book contained directions for their probably internment in categories immediately after the outbreak of the war and how Sir Samuel Hoare had reversed this policy early in September and substituted the tribunal system.

This has meant that the organisation of MI5 had been swamped and for the last six months had been engaged on work of relatively small importance which had largely been abortive. I said that in my view the reluctance of the Home Secretary to act came from an old-fashioned liberalism which seemed to prevail in all sections. The liberty of the subject, freedom of speech etc. were all very well in peace-time but were no use in fighting the Nazis. There seemed to be a complete failure to realise the power of the totalitarian state and the energy with which the Germans were fighting a total war. Both Greenwood and Atlee were in agreement with our views. They said that they had been charged by the Prime Minister to enquire into this matter.’

Red Lacquer Days

‘Myself, the architect, duffle-coated, sharp-nosed, straggly-haired.’ Thus did Hugh Casson, the influential British architect and writer, describe himself in a diary written during a cultural tour behind the ‘iron curtain’, to China in the 1950s. That diary - Red Lacquer Days - was published in a limited edition of 200, but Casson returned to the diary form 25 years later when President of the Royal Academy. Today, his centenary, is the time to remember that duffle-coated, sharp-nosed architect.

Casson was born on 23 May 1910 and spent some time in Burma, where his father worked for the Indian Civil Service, before being sent home, because of the impending war, to his maternal grandparents in Kent. His uncle was the actor Sir Lewis Casson (married to Sybil Thorndyke). Hugh was sent to boarding school at Eastbourne, East Sussex, and later studied at St John’s College, Cambridge, and the Bartlett School of Architecture, London. Thereafter he taught at the Cambridge School of Architecture and practised in the firm run by his Cambridge tutor Christopher Nicholson.

During the Second World War, he served with the Air Ministry working on camouflage, and after he worked as director of architecture for the Festival of Britain, and he went into partnership with Neville Conder. Together their firm designed many projects, including university campuses, the Elephant House at London Zoo, and Cambridge University’s Sidgwick Avenue arts faculty. Casson was knighted in 1952.

Apart from his talents as an architect, Casson was considered to be an outstanding writer and speaker. He also designed sets for the theatre and opera. During his later life, he held various high-level appointments, such as provost of the Royal College of Art and President of the Royal Academy. As a friend of the British royal family, he designed the interior of the royal yacht Britannia. For a while in the 1980s, he became a television presenter, with his own show Personal Pleasures with Sir Hugh Casson. He died in 1999; and his wife, the photographer Margaret Macdonald, died three months later. A little more biographical information is available at Wikipedia, or the Sir Hugh Casson official website, or from various obituaries (The Independent, The New York Times).

Casson is not known as a diarist, but two of his short-lived diary writing episodes, a quarter of a century apart, have been published. The first in 1956 by Lion and Unicorn Press in a limited edition of 200 had silk covered boards and was called Red Lacquer Days: an illustrated journal describing a recent visit to Peking. Copies are available on Abebooks for as little as £20. The second - Hugh Casson Diary - was published by Macmillan in 1981 and described Casson’s fourth year as President of the Royal Academy. Like Red Lacquer Days, it too is liberally illustrated with line drawings and watercolours.

Here are a few extracts from Red Lacquer Days, including the start of the first and the end of the last.

14 September 1954
‘Are you the cultural delegation?’ The flight clerk at London Airport looks up from his papers. ‘Mind you, I am only guessing.’ What else indeed could we be? Culture is written all over us. . .’

[Casson then describes the other members of the delegation naming them by their profession, a geologist, a poet, a painter, a philosopher.]

‘Myself, the architect, duffle-coated, sharp-nosed, straggly-haired.’

‘None of us, I’m sure, is certain of any motive for going except that of curiosity. We are all aware that a guest - even at the house of his dearest friend - is always a prisoner and that beyond the Iron Curtain there are no bystanders - only players, and that even a decision not to play is a commitment in itself. Yet none of us hesitated to accept the invitation - who indeed would have?’

25 September - 27 September 1954
‘In lovely weather - warm sun, cold breeze, clear blue days and Mediterranean nights - the week passes crammed with sightseeing. At our request we eschew factories and clinics, mines and blast-furnaces. For us, day after day, are spread out the delights of temples and gardens, of palaces and lakes, of secret courtyards and absurd pavilions with delicious elegant names: ‘The Palace of Pleasant Sounds’, ‘The Studio of Pure Fragrance’, ‘The Hall of Last Virtue’, ‘The Pavilion for Watching the Spring’. All are beautifully kept, affectionately restored, crowded with visitors - soldiers strolling with linked fingers, old ladies tottering on misshapen feet, pale-faced Europeans hung with light-meters and scribbling in notebooks, parties of school-children in scarlet scarves.

There can be few more visually exciting experiences than to wander through the courts of the Forbidden City as though through the rooms of some vast roofless mansion. First the great approach, paved and straight, that even within living memory was lined every day at dawn by kneeling elephants who guarded the approach of Court officials and mandarins. . . Then through the Great Gateway with the court yards set about with halls of state designed for splendid ceremonials. Each hall is surrounded with smaller halls and pavilions, with terraces, bridges, staircases and ramps all in marching, rhythmic perspective. Every column, every roof, every silhouette and every colour is the same - yet all are different because each time they are viewed from a slightly different aspect or different level. Courts give way to temples, to stairways, to courts again. Everywhere roofs are golden, ceilings blue, green and gold, walls and columns blood-red. The floors inside and out are carefully paved, great marble slabs, diagonally tooled along the main pathways - elsewhere grey rectangular bricks or stones. Balustrades are of white marble, richly carved. Great bronze vessels as high as your hat stand sentinel beneath trees every branch of which has been studied and, if necessary, twisted in growth to create the required effect. Within the State rooms are set out the furniture, the silks, the bronzes and porcelains that once belonged to the Imperial Court - some beautiful, some strangely hideous - carved monkeys made out of what looks like chocolate spaghetti; cranes in coloured cloisonné; clocks let into the bellies of elephants. Owing to the risk of fire, buildings are not fitted with electric lighting, and in the scarlet twilight of these great halls the atmosphere is sinister and smells of tyranny.

But once outside in the gardens and grottoes of the surrounding parks the magic returns . . .’

‘Day after delightful day we stroll along beautifully patterned pathways past the agonised rocks and twisted cypresses of the Winter Palace where an old man, white-masked against the dust, sits silently appraising the goldfish. We descend through a dark twisted cave in the Peilhai Park to reach a canopied ferry in which we are carried across a lake to the Emperor’s fishing pavilion. We drink tea in the shade of the Temple of Heaven, eat a picnic lunch among the yet unrestored ruins of the Summer Palace, doze in the sun beside the hulk of the old iron steam yacht (a present from the Emperor of Japan to the Dowager Empress of China) that lies mildewing and desolate upon a marble quay. We watch butterflies by silent pools, and listen to magpies in the bamboo groves. We are taken to see Mr Ching Chin-yi, who, in the shade of a little pavilion, is busy engraving the Stockholm Peace Appeal upon a grain of rice. . .’

16 October
‘. . . we drop through sopping clouds into London Airport. No reception committee, no brass bands, no blandly smiling hosts, not even grudging respect for having got there and back. Great distances, strange passport stamps, exotic labels mean nothing here. The journey is over, the delegation vowing constant friendship to be cemented by regular meetings - (I’m in the [telephone] book’) - disintegrates instantly into individuality, each with his own private English life, and vanishes into London.’

All literary discussions

The French literary writer Jules Renard died 100 years ago today. He was not well known in the English-speaking world, nor is he today, though a bitterly ironic novel based on his own childhood, Poil de Carotte, was filmed several times. His diaries have been published often in France, and were first translated into English in the 1960s, though in a much reduced form. They are full of epigrams (‘Style is to forget all styles’) and opinions about his fellow writers and artists, such as Rodin, Daudet, Goncourt.

Renard was born in Châlons-du-Mayenne, France, in 1864, but grew up mostly in Chitry-les-Mines, near Chaumont, central France. He was educated in Nevers and Paris, and served for a short time in the military. He married Marie Morneau in 1888 and they had two children. They lived mostly in Paris (although Renard retained close links with Chitry-les-Mines) where he devoted his life to literature. Although not part of the avant-garde movement, he did become a member of the Académie Goncourt, a French literary organisation founded in opposition to the traditional Académie française.

In France, Renard’s early story, L'Écornifleur, is considered to one of great novels of the 19th century. But his best known works include Poil de Carotte (Carrot Hair), a fictionalised, but bitterly ironic, account of his own childhood, and Histoires Naturelles (Natural Histories/Stories). He died, aged only 46, on 22 May 1910 - a century ago today.

Other than Wikipedia’s short entry, there is not much biographical information in English about Renard available on the internet. His chief fame in English-speaking countries has come through Poil de Carotte which was turned into a silent film in 1925 and a talkie in 1932 by Julien Duvivier, both of which are considered far better than a 1973 remake by Henri Graziani.

Renard, however, is probably remembered as much for his journals as for his novels. They were first published in several volumes by François Bernouard, Paris, starting in 1926; then by Gallimard in 1937; and then, in the 1960s, as part of the prestigious Bibliothèque de la Pléiade series. This latter edition contains nearly 1,300 pages. The French literary critic, Albert Thibaudet, named Renard’s journal alongside that of André Gide’s Si le grain ne meurt as the two autobiographical masterpieces of the 20th century.

Renard’s diary did not appear in English until 1964. The Journal of Jules Renard was edited and translated by Louise Bogan and Elizabeth Roget, and published by George Brazilier, New York. It only only contains about 250 pages. Bogan says, in her introduction, that Renard’s journal ‘abounds in mockery of the false, the half-observed, and the grandiose’. She concludes: ‘The final impression received from the Journal is one of delicacy backed up by power - power of character and power of intellect. Again and again those moments of insight appear which can only stem from absolute honesty of perception added to complete largeness of spirit.’

Renard’s journals can be read online in French at ABU: la Bibliothèque Universelle. And a few pages from a modern edition in English are available for viewing at Amazon.com. Here, though, are a few extracts from the original 1964 edition of The Journal of Jules Renard. The extracts are only identified by month and year (not by day); moreover it is never clear when the paragraphs in the book are continuous in the original or are not. (The quotations below are as they appear in the book, inclusive of trailing dots.)

March 1891
‘Yesterday at Daudet’s. . . Why did I leave disgusted? No doubt I had imagined Goncourt was not a man. Must the old be possessed of all the pettinesses of the young? How they worked over that poor Zola . . .

Goncourt looks like a fat, retired army man. I saw no wit in him: that will have to wait for another time. Until that second impression, all he has is the repetitiousness I find so intolerable in the works of the Goncourts . . .

A bad day, yesterday. At L’Echo de Paris they found my story Le Navet Sculpté (The Carved Turnip) too subtle; and I found our great men too coarse.

Today, went to Daudet’s, then we went to see Rodin, then Goncourt. Very unluckily, I seem to have made Goncourt dislike me. Why didn’t I blindly compliment him on his books, which I haven’t read! Cold greeting, the barest civilities, no sort of invitation, not a word from his wife concerning my wife and child. My boy, you must have properly put your foot in it. Ah, the way life steps on one’s toes! . . .

At Rodin’s, a revelation, an enchantment: The Door of Hell, and that little thing, no bigger than my hand, that is called The Eternal Idol; a man, vanquished, his arms behind his back, kisses a woman under the breasts, his lips against her skin, and the woman seems overcome with sadness. I cannot easily detach myself from that . . .

In the court, blocks of marble wait to be given life; they are strange, in their shapes, and, it would seem, in their desire to live. It is funny: I play the man who has discovered Rodin.’

March 1891
‘In Rodin’s atelier, it seemed as though my eyes suddenly burst open. Until now sculpture interested me like work done on turnips.

To write in the manner that Rodin sculpts.’

March 1891
‘Discussion between Raynaud and myself on the subject of Mallarmé. I say: ‘It is stupid.’ He says: ‘It is marvellous.’ And that resembles all literary discussions.’

March 1891
‘Balzac is perhaps the only one who had the right to write badly.’

April 1891
‘Style is to forget all styles.

Daudet in fine fettle, tells us of the embarkations of Gauguin, who would like to go to Tahiti in order to find nobody there, and who never goes. So that his best friends are finally saying to him: ‘You must leave, my dear fellow, you must leave.’

The critic is a botanist. I am a gardener.’

April 1891
‘A clean-shaven gent speaks to me interminably about my book. How insufferable I should find him if he talked about anything else!’