Thursday, June 6, 2019

Operation Neptune

Today marks the 75th anniversary of D-Day, the name given to Operation Neptune, on 6 June 1944, for the Allied invasion of Normandy, the largest seaborne invasion in history. The invasion led to the restoration of the French Republic, and significanlty contributed to an Allied victory; indeed D-Day is considered to have been a turning point in the Second World War. The following is a random selection of diary entries written on, or close to, 6 June 1944, each one with its internet source (except for the last - ‘waiting for Winston’ in the House - which I have transcribed from Harold Nicolson’s published diaries).

Winifred Basham [Ipswich]
6 June 1944
‘Once more the balloon has gone up, only this time it’s our balloon. D-day, H-hour and all the rest of it has come at last and our troops have landed in France again after four weary years. They seem to be mainly in Normandy and are fighting in Caen. Mr Churchill says all is going well. We have done nothing but switch the wirelesses on and off all day as the news has filtered in. It all seems a bit of an anti-climax Climax in a way for we expected them to bomb us to glory as soon as we started, but so far not a plane has crossed the coast. All the same I am not looking forward to tonight which is Percy’s night on.’

WW2 People’s War

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Arthur Ward [A Battery 11th (HAC) Regt. R.H.A.]
6 June 1944
‘We heard on the wireless that the Invasion of Europe had started on the Normandy beaches and it would be called D Day, the same day we heard that Rome had fallen to the Allied 5th army. We had a lecture by the C.O. that we were to have more extensive training, then join the 5th Corps in the 8th army. 5th Corps includes 1st Armd. Division, 1st British Infantry Division and 4th Indian Division.

We saw a film at Gravina, “Keeper of the Flame” with Spencer Tracey and Katherine Hepburn, it was very good. Later we heard that on the OP shoot a shell had accidentally fallen near the OP and the C.O. Lt. Col. Goodbody was wounded and his driver killed.’

WW2 People’s War

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Andrew John Broodbank [Radar Operator (Navigator) with 488 (NZ) Squadron, RAF]
6 June 1944
’00:30
DH Mosquito XIII HK534 (A/I Mk.VIII)
Pilot: F/O Scott
Navigator (R): Self
PATROL - Line “BAKER” - OPERATION “NEPTUNE”
The first “D day” patrol covering airborne landings in Normandy. Patrolling in R/T silence, listening out on Hope Cove (Type 16). Completely uneventful - total observations: 4-6 yellow flares; the same boat twice; & slight A/A activity near Guernsey. 5 patrols completed before returning home.
3:20

14:25
NFT, CINE-GUN & AI EXERCISE III
Crossing contacts with hard evasive by target.
1:00’

Broody’s War blog

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Chick Bruns (7th Army, 3rd Division, 10th Combat Engineers)
June 6, 1944
‘We left for Rome and the Company early this morning. While in convoy a British fellow told us that France was invaded this morning. Everyone went wild. We tried cutting in on the convoy and a tank hit us. Little damage was done. When we got to Rome we didn’t care whether we saw the company or not. We went all over the city and stopped at every tavern or bar. We finally ran into one of the officers so we went out to camp. I took off after dinner and went to town. Cushman and I was all over the city. Went to see St. Peters, but it was closed. Bought quite a few presents and started home about 10 pm. We got lost in the park and wandered all night. We went to a nice hotel but it was full so we just flopped down in a chair and went to steep. We got out to the company about 7 am.’

70 Years Ago

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Alwyne Garling [Colchester]
6 June 1944
‘THE INVASION HAS STARTED. THIS IS D-DAY. Allied troops have landed on North Coast of France between Havre and Cherbourg. Big airborne forces have been launched. Churchill says operations are going in a thoroughly satisfactory manner. Our losses have been much lighter than expected. Fighting is going on in Caen 10 miles inland. We were woke up in night about 2.30 by endless planes going over. We could see them with their lights on and they kept on all night. Thought something special was on. It’s been dull and cold and windy all day, and now it’s raining hard. Does not seem very good weather for them. Listened to King broadcast. R.A.F. dropped over 5,000 tons on the coastal batteries during night.’

Heather Johnson’s blog

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William Henry Smith [Private in the North Nova Scotia Highlanders]
7 June 1944
 ‘As we approached the beaches yesterday, all I could think of was one specific line in the speech General Eisenhower wrote us before we left England, “The free men of the world are marching to victory!” I felt reassured as we left in the L.C.I.’s (Landing Craft Infantry) even though I could not hear myself think because everything was exploding around me. I knew that I would fight with all my heart for my country. I would fight with pride. But now, words are jumping out at me. I still can’t describe the horror I saw yesterday as I got out of the L.C.I. and got in the water, some guys were really scared, I could see it in their eyes. Hell, we were all scared. The water was freezing. As I approached the beach, I saw my own friends a few feet away from me, have their arms shot off or even worse die instantly in front of me. Everything has a different meaning once you live through it. Right now a third of my company, a third of us are hiding out in a pit until darkness sets in so we can start looking for the others. I don’t even know where the hell we are!’

Michael WW2 blog

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Eugen Herzog [Luftwaffe)
6 June 1944
‘When it became cooler in the evening, I went out and took a wonderful walk around the town. At home now, it must be pretty during this time of the blooming lilacs.’

WWII Diary of a German Soldier by Helga Herzog Godfrey

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Edward Francis Wightman [Royal Navy Seaman/Gunner on board HMS Ramillies]
7 June 1944
'10.15pm
Had neither the energy nor the time to write yesterday so I’ll try and give a record of the events in chronological order.

We were at our bombardment position about 5am after passing through the minefields in the Channel, swept and Dan-buoyed by the sweepers. As we approached the French coast numerous air raids were seen and we watched pretty fireworks displays for quite a while. About 5.10am, just five minutes before schedule, we opened fire with 15” on a 6” battery on a high ridge. This battery had six guns and they were in armoured casemates, so it was no walkover. After about one to two hours firing, enemy shells landed uncomfortably close without doing damage. This went on intermittently all day. About 6.30am two enemy destroyers attacked with torpedoes. Five were fired and three came perilously close. No more than 50 yards away the nearest. A pack of E-boats was observed and the 4” and 6” armament were blazing away and were very effective, causing the enemy to retire. They attacked again later on and were again driven off. By this time we had ranged the enemy battery and put four of the six guns out of action The remaining two were quite a nuisance and some of their shells landed no more than 20 yards away.

In the meantime one of the tinfish fired at us, and hit the destroyer Svenna, a Norwegian escort of ours. She sank almost immediately and I don't think any survivors were picked up. Bodies and wreckage, rafts, timber etc floated past and we observed the bow and stern of the wreck showing above water. Must be pretty shallow here. Apparently she broke her back. Poor chaps - leaves a nasty taste in the mouth.


Aircraft were now thumping the hell out of German positions ashore and at 6.30am the first wave of troops landed. Later in the day we heard they had succeeded at all points and our Royal Marine Commando battalion had taken a coastal defence battery intact! The day wore on with numerous alarms for aircraft but we saw none. One dropped a stick of bombs between a destroyer and cruiser. JU88 I believe. We carried out several bombardments in the afternoon and evening and eventually completed the obliteration of the last 6" gun of the battery. We then had orders to proceed to Portsmouth to re-ammunition. Fired 220 15” shells and goodness knows how many 6” and 4”. Not one AA gun opened fire! What a difference to 1940.

Just as we were preparing to leave, hundreds and hundreds of gliders came in, in great masses. Each one had a towing plane and they came over for an hour, solid. We estimated over a thousand, so they probably landed at least one complete division. What a sight! Just like a Wellsian dream of the future. I forgot to mention before, that as we went into battle, the captain donned the Maori skirt so how could we come to any harm? Battle ensign was flying from the gaff. Lots of fireworks displays as we left. RAF again giving Germans a bad night.

Time 6.30am: arrived Portsmouth and re-ammunitioned all day. Were we worn out! Sailed again 8.30pm and we still had our deck full of cordite to be stowed. Wonder where we are bound now.

Time 11pm: Too dark now. Write again tomorrow.’

WW2 People’s War

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J. J. McAndrews [Petty Officer 3rd Class]
6 June 1944
‘We heard the French invasion started. We missed the first wave, but are on our way to be in on the 3rd wave.’

Coast Guard Great Lakes blog

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May Hill [Lincolnshire Seaside Village]
6 June 1944
‘So, at last the long-talked of Second Front has begun. I have not even given it a new page and that seems a fitting symbol of how it appears to me. What excitement there may be in towns or elsewhere, in the country does not seem to have touched us here. It is just an ordinary day, after nearly 5 years of war it takes a lot to make us demonstrative. I went on with my ordinary work and made my first toy for sale, a white duck with green wings and yellow beak and feet. It is for Mrs Russell to give to a baby friend. I must make the rabbit for Emmie next and try to send an extra one too. Ciss cleaned her pantry and Rene washed. Jean went to school, indeed she had gone before the announcement.

4000 ships and a great many smaller craft crossed the channel. Great air-liners took air-borne troops behind the German lines. Montgomery is speaking now, a message to the troops of which he is the head. Now a service. Almost 10 o’ clock. The Archbishop of Canterbury has spoken and now they are singing “Oh God, our help in ages past.” At nine o’clock the King broadcast a call to prayer, not just one day but all the days of crisis. In the news afterwards we heard that all was still going well in France. I fear the “little people” like us would not just go on with this ordinary work. However pleased they may be at the thought of deliverance, at present it means danger and hardship and war. Many will have to leave their homes and many I fear will lose their lives. The service is over, a beautiful service, ending with the hymn, “Soldiers of Christ Arise.”

We are in bed. A motor cycle has just gone by and a swiftly moving plane. Percy was with Home Guards last night. I am pleased he is at home next door tonight. God be with us all those whose sons or husbands or other dear ones have already fallen in this new front. Be with the wounded and comfort the dying and those who are afraid. We had 12 letters from Ron to-day - a record. I had 6, the others 3 each. In the most recent one, only a week since he wrote it, an air mail letter, he says his hopes of return are practically nil. I am almost pleased much as I long to see him but somehow he seems safer there at present. I must try to sleep now. The longed for D-Day has arrived. Deliverance Day, Jean says it means.’

Brian Hill’s website

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Joe Haworth [Sergeant in the Royal Engineers[
6 June 1944,
‘D-Day, it being 07.25 hours this morning. Rose and went for a walk on deck. Feeling pretty rough. Ship rolling pretty bad. Couldn’t face any food. Arrived at our location ‘somewhere in France’ 13.30hours. Began to load on to Rhinos. Assault troops broke through beach head and advancing rapidly. No Sleep.’

Daily Mail

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Sidney J. Montz [lieutenant in Co. D, 8th Regiment, of the 4th Infantry Division, US Army]
6 June 1944
‘2400 - Eating a good meal, may be the last boat team. Sea very rough. Started loading one, went down to compartment with my men about 0230, went over side, down net + it was really tough. Took off to rendezvous area, had a tough time finding it, made it o.k. Started circling, finally the other boats came in. Planes lit up the beaches, AA fire starting, flares dropping, beautiful sight but it scares the hell out of you. All hell broke loose from the beach, some boats hit by 88. We are near beach + 88 opened up on the boat on our right + almost hit us. Some boats hit land mines, lucky we landed because much more we would have sunk - water still rough. Jumped out in waist deep water, about 500 or 600 yds from seawall, the longest I have ever seen in my life. M.G., mortar, + artillery fire around us.

Finally in shallow water + able to run, had to miss all types of obstacles in + out the water. Picked up six rounds of 81mm ammo on the way, it seemed as though we would never reach the seawall. Men being blown up and hit all around me, you could hear them scream, it was horrible. Finally hit seawall, stopped to get a blow and bearing, Gen. Roosevelt walking around telling everyone to clear the beach or they would get killed. Rockets hit the third section [. . .] Time to move or they will kill us all. Gen. Roosevelt gave me lots of courage. Under small arms + artillery fire. Navy left us 1000 yds. too far left, the left outfit caught hell. Moved in very fast, every house + tree loaded with men, they fire at you from all directions, very hard to see them as they use smokeless powder. Will get on to them soon then they will catch hell.’

National WWII Museum, New Orleans

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Walter E. Marchand [Surgeon with the 4th Infantry Division, US Army]
6 June 1944
‘D day is here! - D day has begun, how will it end? We are now close to the German held coast of France - all is unbelievably quiet, but it isn’t for long. At about 1 A.M. I hear a low sounding drone - I go on deck and here I see plane upon plane flying over our ship toward the hostile shore, towing gliders - these are the Paratroopers and Airborne Infantry - I wish them God’s speed and wish them well, for as I am watching the first planes are over the Atlantic Wall I see tremendous flares go up and great quantity of anti-aircraft fire and flak. God what great numbers of planes there are, and all ours. To our right - toward the Barfleur Peninsula area our Bombers are wreaking havoc on some coastal installations, we can hear the detonations clearly. In the midst of this, the little Cavalry C.T. is preparing to debark and to take St. Marcouf island - this is at H minus 4 hours. At this time also, the C47s are returning from France - flying home after letting go of their gliders or human cargo.

Had very early breakfast - then lay on my bunk for a while - I couldn’t sleep and I can’t sleep - I keep thinking of my wife and my family - I love you my Corinne.

At 0400 the first wave of our Assault Battalion is called to stand-by to load into the boats - there is a great hum of activity throughout the ship. The Captain speaks - our LCM3’s haven’t come yet, but there is still plenty of time. We wait for 20, 40, 55 minutes. Then they come out of the dawn alongside - still enough time to make the H hour landing, for H hour has been upped because of the heavy seas. The LCM3’s are having great difficulty tieing up to the boat - they toss around like corks - but the landing nets are overside and the troops make their way down - but with great difficulty. Often large hausers, 2 inch thick, would snap like a thread and often the man climbing down would be thrown into the small boats. It was especially difficult to get the vehicles overboard into the small boats. “Man overboard” was heard once - a British sailor was knocked overboard but rescued.

First wave - Away, then the second, then the third, then it was my turn to get into my boat with 5 of my men and part of the Battalion Command section - it took long, the boat crashed against the ship time and time again, bending the ramp, and tearing loose, snapping the hausers. Finally we are all in our boat with our equipment, and the men are getting seasick, and they huddle together toward the rear of the boat. I stay near the front of the boat, getting sprayed continuously and I look about me and see hundreds upon hundreds of boats, from the little LCVP’s, LCM’s, LCT’s and LCI’s, to the huge battleships and cruisers, and smoke is billowing from their deck guns, for this is H-40 min. and the Naval barrage starts then, the fire directed against enemy shore installations. Our wave has now formed and we are heading toward shore 7 miles away through rough waters, while on the way in our Dive bombers get to work, pouring tons of bombs against the enemy fortresses.

We are getting close to shore and the boats of our wave go from a line in file to a line abreast formation and speed for shore. I can now hear cannon fire clearly as well as machine gun fire. We all pray that our boat will not strike a mine or an underwater obstacle or get hit by a shell from a coastal battery. All sounds become closer, when about 50 yds. From shore I see 2 splashes on our port bow - enemy fire. The boats streak for shore and hit the beach and we almost make a dry landing - we only have to wade knee deep thru about 20 yds. of water. As we hit, the ramp goes down and we debark - wade in the water, then on hitting dry land start to run. I see dead Americans floating in the water - a ghastly sight. I get my men together and we run up across the beach to a concrete wall, faced with barbed wire and bearing signs.

There are many wounded lying about and we start to care for them, and carry some to the Naval Beach Party Aid Station which just landed after us. I try to orient myself, but we landed at a different place than was originally planned. Enemy fire is increasing, landing just to our left, from our right there is machinegun fire. I have only 1 choice I lead the men thru a break in the barbed wire into the Mine Field and we go in about 50 yds. - enemy fire increases, we dig in hurriedly to rest - we are all exhausted from the fear which we all know as shells come whistling overhead and landing close by. But we must get out of the Mine Field! - I find a path to the right and we start along it, seeing mines all around us - and then the path disappears and we turn back to our former spot - from there we find a small path to the left and we follow it - we see wounded about us and we care for them, carrying some along with us on litters, and the small path leads us to a road and we follow it to the first right turn and we follow it.

Troops and vehicles are now storming ashore in great quantities - some vehicles are hit and burst into flames. We pass burning houses and many dead German and American soldiers. It is now noon - God the 5 hours passed like lightning. At 1300 we come to the “Old French Fort”, now we are close to where originally we were supposed to land. I scout ahead and find my Battalion just 300 yds. up the road, so I and Capt. Scott set up our Aid Station off the side of the road in a large hole and crater made by a 14 inch Naval shell - 12 feet by 5 feet and about 6 feet deep. By this time one of our Jeep ambulances has reached us and we are ready to function as an Aid station. We send out litter bearer groups into the mine fields to pick up casualties. This is ticklish work, but the boys are excellent soldiers and go bravely although they have no paths to follow.

Our ambulance Jeep works up forward and brings back casualties - some are Paratroopers that are pretty well beaten up, having been wounded shortly after landing. We work from this spot for 2 hours and then we move forward to the Command Post which is along the side of a road near Fortress 74 which is still holding out. Shortly after arriving here, machine gun fire becomes active and we have to duck low - pinned down here for 5 hours, could watch the attack on the fortress and the surrender of the Germans. Our boys are doing a splendid job and very few casualties so far. As the sun is setting we note hundreds of C47’s again - more Airborne Infantry landing - They swoop inland and let go of their gliders, to come swooping back. Liason Sgt., from Co. C shot in the leg while lying on the road beside Capt. Scott.

Toward dark a few serious casualties encountered - difficulty of evacuating great - Plasma given right in open. Difficulty in finding path thru mine field to farm house where we will stay for the night - had to cross tank traps filled with water and lined with mines - ticklish business in the dark.

Finally we got all of Aid station together - we were all exhausted - and were so tired that we just fell down and fell asleep - with artillery, mainly enemy, going overhead, most of it, fortunately for us being directed toward the beach.

This is the end of D day - it was hectic from the start - but we had few casualties, and those mainly from mines, which were numerous. Heavy machinegun fire heard all night.’

To War with the 4th


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Anne Frank [Amsterdam]
6 June 1944
‘The invasion has begun! According to the German news, British parachute troops have landed on the French coast. British landing craft are in battle with the German Navy, says the BBC. Great commotion in the Secret Annexe! Would the long-awaited liberation that has been talked of so much but which still seems too wonderful, too much like a fairy-tale, ever come true? Could we be granted victory this year, 1944? We don't know yet, but hope is revived within us; it gives us fresh courage, and makes us strong again.’

Spartacus Educational

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Harold Nicolson [London, Sissinghurst]
6 June 1944
‘I can now say (having passed through the censorship ban) that at Hatston aerodrome yesterday, about an hour before I left, a tremor passed through ward-room. ‘Panic stations order’, was the word passed around. A sense of imminence affected the whole place.

I typed this diary in my sleeper and then went to bed. I did not sleep well as I was cold. The train arrived at 7.35 and I drove straight to [King’s Bench Walk, his chambers in the Temple], missing the 8am news owing to a sudden short-circuit of the light. This was at once put right. I then turned on the 9am news in the General Forces Programme, and heard to my excitement the following announcement: ‘The German Overseas News has just put out the following flash: “Early this morning, the expected Anglo-American invasion began when airborne forces were landed in the Seine estuary.” ’ I then wait till a later flash which says, ‘The combined landing operations comprised the whole area between Havre and Cherbourg, the main centre of attack being the Caen area.’ [. . .]

I go down to the House, arriving there about ten to twelve. When I enter the Chamber, I find a buzz of conversation going on. Questions has ended unexpectedly early and people were just sitting there chatting, waiting for Winston. It was an unusual scene. He entered the Chamber at three minutes to twelve. He looked as white as a sheet. The House notice this at once, and we feared that he was about to announce some terrible disaster. He is called immediately, and places two separate fids of typescript on the table. He begins with the first, [. . .] He then picks up the other fid of notes and begins, ‘I have also to announce to the House that during the night and early hours of this morning, the first of a series of landings in force upon the Continent of Europe has taken place . . .’ The House listens in hushed awe. He speaks for only seven minutes. [. . .]

I lunch at the Beefsteak and then go down to Sissinghurst. There is a an elaborate B.B.C. news programme and Howard Marshall gives a good account of the landings on the coast. The general  impression is the ferrying across the Channel was marvellously successful; that the beach obstacles were not as severe as foreseen and that the Germans were not as numerous; that we have played the first trick better than could have been hoped. But people know very well that the hard test is still to come and that no jubilation of any kind can be permitted for several days.

During the night aeroplanes roar over the house carrying lights. They never stop. Neither Viti nor Mrs Staples nor Jo sleep a wink.’

Transcribed from Diaries and Letters 1939-45 by Harold Nicolson, edited by Nigel Nicolson (Collins, 1967)

***
This collection of diary entries was first published in The Diary Review on 6 June 2014.

Saturday, May 25, 2019

Diary briefs

Diary of a ‘Monuments Man’ - National Archives (press release, blog)

Kafka papers to be released - The Guardian, The Telegraph

A. K. Ramanujan’s diaries - Scroll.in, The Weekend Leader

Diary of Livingstone’s attendant digitised - Livingstone Online, Smithsonian, The Guardian

Maid planned murder of employer - The Independent Singapore, Today Online

Diary of Dutch founding father - Museum Flehite, The Guardian

The diaries of Esther Lilly Hundley - Gales Creek Journal

Piccolo player’s tour of China - The Inquirer

Israeli defence chief’s diary released - The Jerusalem Post

Monday, May 20, 2019

Wondering how I should live

‘I went on reading novels, poetry and biography as voraciously as ever but I also devoured the floods of pamphlets and booklets the feminist presses turned out, devoting many pages of my diary to reflecting on all these new ideas, to wondering how I should live. Sometimes rather pompously and priggishly, I am afraid.’ This is from a memoir by the British feminist writer Michèle Roberts, 70 years old today. Happy Birthday. In the memoir - Paper Houses - Roberts occasionally writes about her diaries, and how she used them (as in this extract); but she also quotes from them now and then.

Roberts was born on 20 May 1949, minutes after her twin sister Marguerite, to a French mother and an English father. She grew up in a suburb of northwest London, attending convent schools and spending summer holidays in Normandy with grandparents. She read English at Somerville, Oxford, and then studied to become a librarian. She spent a year working for the British Council in Southeast Asia. Back in London, she became very involved in the Women’s Liberation Movement, and was poetry editor for Spare Rib, and then for City Limits. Her first novel, A Piece of the Night, was published in 1978. Further novels followed every year or two, but she continued to do various part-time jobs to earn money. Only after 1992, when her novel Daughters of the House was shortlisted for the Booker Prize, was she able to focus exclusively on writing.

Roberts has married twice, and has two step-sons. She has lived in Italy and North America, but bought her first house in France. She now alternates between France (Mayenne) and London, and spends time at the University of East Anglia where she is Emeritus Professor of Creative Writing. Apart from novels, she has also published collections of short stories and poetry. She is a Chevalier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres, awarded by the French government, but has turned down an OBE because of her republican views. Further biographical information is available at Roberts’ own website, Wikipedia, the British Council, or Aesthetica.

In 2007, Virago published Roberts’ Paper Houses: A memoir of the ’70s and beyond. The publisher states: ‘Michèle Roberts, one of Britain’s most talented and highly acclaimed novelists, now considers her own life, in this vibrant, powerful portrait of a time and place: alternative London of the 1970s and beyond. A fledgling writer taking a leap into radical politics, Roberts finds alternative homes, new families and lifelong friendships in the streets and houses of Holloway, Peckham, Regent’s Park and Notting Hill Gate. From Spare Rib to publishing her first book, Paper Houses is Roberts’ story of finding a space in which to live, love and write – and learning to share it.’ A few pages can be sampled at Amazon or Googlelooks, and a review can be found at The Guardian.

Here is Roberts concluding her introduction to the memoir: ‘This memoir draws on the diaries I kept, on those written records scrawled in notebooks specially bought for the purpose, each notebook different and distinctive. When I spread them out on the floor of the room where I write they look like the multicoloured pavement of a piazza. This memoir is like fiction, in as much as I have shaped and edited it, but it is as truthful as I can make it, honouring both facts and the way I saw them at the time. On the other hand I know that memory, under pressure from the unconscious mind, is unreliable; and I have forgotten a lot. Out of consideration for others’ privacy, I’ve been obliged to censor some episodes. I have left out some characters, some lovers and love affairs, and I have changed some names. I don’t want to bore you, and I don’t want to hurt people, either. I have tried to be honest.’

And here are several extracts from the book in which she mentions or quotes from her diaries (the first is from the very start of chapter one).

‘I prepared for my new life, post university, in London, by buying a new notebook, a midi-skirt (after years of minis it felt daring to conceal one’s legs) and a fake-snakeskin nightdress, and by borrowing from the library a clutch of books chosen “for the first time in ages purely for pleasure” as I noted in my diary, novels by Mauriac, Gide, Sartre and Lawrence. Having chosen the medieval option for my degree, I had stopped at Shakespeare. I had some catching up to do but could do it at my own pace, my own speed. Bliss.’

***

‘On Sunday 13 September, 1970, I moved into my attic bedsit in a house on the northern edge of Regent’s Park, a classy, genteel district just east of Lord’s Cricket Ground and just south of St John’s Wood, the latter synonymous with discreetly shaded villas in which Victorian gents, in Victorian novels at least, kept their mistresses. The week before I had had lunch with Ernestine, my prospective landlady, whom I had met through her godson Joss, one of my Oxford acquaintances. I had first seen the house, all understated Regency elegance, the previous February, when Ernestine threw a party for Joss’s twenty-first. “A tall thin slice of wedding-cake” I called it in my diary: “on different tiers one drank champagne, ate salmon, danced, and right at the top, talked to a sexy 60-year-old Frenchman who eventually introduced me to his wife and sat and laughed as we talked about Simone de Beauvoir.” ’

***

‘Who was that ‘I’, that young woman of twenty-one? I reconstruct her. I invent a new ‘me’ composed of the girl I was, according to my diaries, my memories (and the gaps between them), and the self remembering her. She stands in between the two. A third term. She’s a character in my story and she tells it too. She’s like a daughter. Looking back at her, thinking about her, I mother myself. I listen hard to her silences, the gaps between her words, the cries battened down underneath the surface of her sentences. I sympathise with her ardour, her desperation to read, to learn how to think, to contribute something to the world. How tender, amused and exasperated I feel towards her snobbery, shyness, self-consciousness, priggishness, guilt. She writes her diary so self-critically, suffers so much, berates herself so harshly for suffering and then for writing about it. When she’s not rhapsodising about books and nature she’s fierce, intolerant of adults’ intolerance of youth, enraged when she feels patronised. She wants adventures. She has come to London, in the time-honoured way, to have them. Not to make her fortune, though. She scorns that. She intends to become a writer, is determined to publish a novel before she is thirty, and she expects to be poor.’

***

‘My early writing experiments contained many caricatures. Mocking a left-wing family let me stay away from involvement. Yet that overnight stay in Stoke Newington, after Joss’s party, had given me rapturous glimpses of a London I did not yet know and longed to explore. I sketched it in my diary: “We went to the Rodin exhibition at the Hayward. Driving through London on Sunday morning - empty streets, an old man comes out of a corner shop with a bottle of Corona, a line of hoardings gives way to a fence made of brightly painted blue wooden doors, mountains of earth have been dumped until Monday, drizzle over the Thames from the top of all the concrete at the Festival Hall. Beautiful place in this weather: lucky people who can wander there in the empty silence every Sunday, pass across the far horizon in Hyde Park, look at paintings as far as Notting Hill, walk round the deserted City, find a cafe for lunch.”

***

‘I met Alison, my sexual mentor, at the second Women’s Liberation Conference at Ruskin, Oxford, on 9 January 1971. [. . .] After a morning of workshops on different topics, over lunch we talked collectively, vociferously, about our demands for equal pay and opportunities and good childcare. I wondered about the women canteen workers: serving us, they were not able to take part in the conference. I wrote “four grim Maoists, so narrow and ultra-serious and closed-off they made one despair”. We had discussed the forthcoming first-ever women’s liberation demonstration; its form, its tactics.’

***

‘So ultra-idealistic had I become, politically, that Spare Rib seemed quite tame and middle-of-the-road to me. One of its editors, Rosie Parker, was actually married. Heavens above! My disapproval masked envy: I imagined she had a man to help her, whereas I struggled alone and was very hard up. But Spare Rib sold well and was popular, reaching women who wouldn’t have dreamed of reading Red Rag, let alone all the small magazines rolled off duplicating machines (a long-winded, messy procedure) and distributed at meetings and in pubs. For my part I refused to read the Morning Star, the Communist paper, because I thought it merely reformist, and I wouldn’t touch the Socialist Worker newspaper because Tony Cliff had refused to allow women in his party to organise independently. I went on reading novels, poetry and biography as voraciously as ever but I also devoured the floods of pamphlets and booklets the feminist presses turned out, devoting many pages of my diary to reflecting on all these new ideas, to wondering how I should live. Sometimes rather pompously and priggishly, I am afraid. That seems to have been my way of smoothing over the contradictions between theory and practice. They were supposed to be dialectically related. I didn’t always see how that worked. I would fall back on idealism, and when that failed me, on earnestness. I squirm, now, reading some of those diary entries, and I smile, too. Good for me! At least I was committing myself to something and having a go.’ 

Sunday, May 19, 2019

The Czech Kindertransport man

Sir Nicholas Winton, famous for organising the so-called Czech Kindertransport which evacuated over 600 children from Czechoslovakia on the eve of the Second World War, was born 110 years ago today. He died recently - aged 106! - and only a year earlier, his daughter had published a biography of her father, partly based on some youthful diaries of his.

Winton was born in Hampstead on 19 May 1909 to a German couple who had recently immigrated to London. In doing so they had also changed their name from Wertheim and converted from the Jewish faith to Christianity to help with their assimilation into British life. Aged 14, he started at Stowe School, which had just opened, excelling in maths, rugby and fencing. He was apprenticed to a London bank, but then worked at different banks in Hamburg, Berlin and Paris before returning to London in 1931, fluent in French and German. There, he joined the London Stock Exchange as a broker. Despite his profession, he was a committed socialist, and became close to various members of the Labour Party, and to those on the Left concerned about Nazism and opposed to appeasement.  

Shortly before the end of 1938, Winton journeyed to Prague where his friend Martin Blake was working with the British Committee for Refugees from Czechoslovakia, helping refugees to flee from German occupation. Winton immediately established a Children’s Section of the committee, initially without authorisation, and began taking applications from parents, first at his hotel in Prague, and than at an office he opened. Thousands of parents lined up seeking a safe haven for their children. In London, Winton lobbied the Home Office for entry visas, but it responded slowly so he resorted to faking them. He raised money to fund transport and for the financial guarantee demanded by the British government (£50 per child). He also had to persuade The Netherlands to allow the children to transit, and to find British families willing to care for them on arrival. By day, Winton worked at his regular job, but devoted late afternoons and evenings to his rescue efforts. He is credited with saving 669 children, though he claimed many more could have been saved if other countries had followed the UK’s example.

After the outbreak of the Second World War, Winton applied successfully for registration as a conscientious objector, and later he served with the Red Cross. In 1940, he rescinded his objections and joined the Royal Air Force, at the lowest level, rising to the rank of war substantive flying officer by early 1945. After the war, Winton worked for the International Refugee Organization and then for the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development in Paris. There he met Grete Gjelstrup, a Danish secretary who he married in 1948. The couple settled in Maidenhead, where they brought up three children (though one died very young). In the 1983 Queen’s Birthday Honours, Winton was awarded an MBE for his work in establishing the Abbeyfield homes for the elderly in Britain.

Winton’s war rescue efforts went unnoticed for 40 years, until 1988, in fact, when Grete found a detailed scrapbook with lists of the children he’d saved. She gave the scrapbook to Elisabeth Maxwell, a Holocaust researcher (wife of media magnate Robert Maxwell), who then contacted some of the rescued children. Radio and TV exposure followed. In 2003, he was knighted in recognition of his work on the Czech Kindertransport. Winton lived until the age 106, and died in 2015. Further information is available at Wikipedia, BBC, Biography.com, the National Holocaust Centre, The New York Times or The Guardian.

In the year before Winton’s death, Matador published a biography written by his daughter, Barbara Winton: If it’s Not Impossible - The Life of Sir Nicholas Winton  (a few pages can be previewed at Amazon.) Winton, himself, provided a short preface: ‘I have discovered things from reading this book that I never knew about my own family, as well as rediscovering episodes long forgotten. I had questions myself about certain incidents in my past and I have found the answers here. It’s strange to realise that Barbara knows more about my life now than I do. Having a daughter write my biography may mean that it is not unbiased, but you would have to read it to find out!’

One of Barbara Winton’s sources was a diary her father kept while at school and for a short time after. It provides, she says, ‘a fascinating glimpse’ of his school life. She refers to the diaries intermittently in the early chapters, and occasionally quotes from them. The diaries provide information, she says, on his interest in rugby and fencing, but his dislike for cricket. At the back of the diaries, he made lists of letters he had received and sent, and of books he had read. He recorded his position in class on an almost weekly basis (maths was his best subject). All the boys
, Barbara states, had to attend Officer Training Corps with a lot of marching about in uniform. Her father recorded before he started: ‘I don’t know what it will be like, I am dreading it.’ Later on, though, he described a tank demonstration as ‘ripping’ and commented, ‘I don’t think camp is so bad as I thought.’

Further diary snippets occur in Barbara Winton’s text as follows:

March 1929
‘We all went to a talkie film with the Hetheringtons. It has wonderful possibilities but I am not at all sure if it will catch on. The Americans are however making a large market by only producing these films and ceasing to produce a great number of the ordinary kind!’

***


Winton was involved with the setting up of the Stowe Club for Boys, also nicknamed the Pineapple Club after the pub, then defunct, where it was housed. On 28 January 1929, he noted: ‘Went to the Pineapple Club which is getting on very well. They have just had a boxing ring erected which they hope will stimulate interest in this sport! . . . At the club all went as usual. In other words both Leon and I went there with good intentions but found very little we could do especially as we have no experience of how a club should be run.’

***


Aged 19, Winton formed a relationship with a girl called Elizabeth. ‘Went to lunch and tea at Mr Sala’s. I danced with Elizabeth to their gramophone & Miss Anderson (her governess) did a few spiritualistic stunts in which she seems to believe.’

‘Out for tea with Eliz - I think she is pretty & certainly interesting.’

‘I went to Eliz for supper after which we went to the Empire to see one of the new talkie films. I shall be sorry to leave E as we have got very friendly in a very short time & 3 years of correspondence well - perhaps I can?’

***


Winton started work in a bank on 1 February 1927, and wrote in his diary, ‘BUSINESS!!’ The next day, ‘I worked very hard and feel that I am getting on well. I am beginning to understand the work. It is tedious sitting in a chair for 8 hours but work is work. Father explains all I do not understand in the evening.’

***


‘I had a 1/3½ lunch at Lyons. It is a cheap but dirty place and although you get served fast, one is uncomfortable.’

***


It is safe to say, Barbara Winton writes, looking at his diaries of 1929 and 1930 (the latter only filled in until May, and no further diaries written), ‘that he threw himself into life in Hamburg, mixing with a wide group of friends rather than a particular one or two’.

We are not so far from apes

‘I wish we all dressed like Japanese, and fashions were stationary. I loathe these yearly changes and silly light skirts and gruelling hats. We are not so far from apes as Mr Darwin would have us believe.’ This is from the diaries of the Viscountess Astor, born 140 years ago today, and famous for being the first ever woman Member of Parliament in the UK. Although she professed no interest in suffragette issues before being elected - as a temporary substitute for her husband - she did go on to become an active supporter of women’s issues. She left behind some diary material, which is held by Reading University, but only a few sparse extracts have been published.

Nancy Witcher Langhorne was born on 19 May 1879 into a large wealthy family in Virginia, US. In her teens, the family moved to an estate known as Mirador in Albemarle County. She attended finishing school in New York City, where she met the socialite Robert Gould Shaw II. They wed in 1897 (Nancy was only 18), however, even from the start, the marriage was troubled. They had one son, but divorced after four years. When her mother died, she returned to Mirador. She planned to take over the running of her father’s household, but after a visit to England, she decided, with her father’s blessing, to emigrate there with her son and her sister Phylis. She was witty, clever, beautiful and glamorous and soon became a favourite among the aristocracy.

In 1906, Nancy married Waldorf Astor, also a rich American ex-pat, and, coincidentally, born on the same day as Nancy. They moved to Cliveden, a lavish estate in Buckinghamshire on the River Thames, a wedding gift from Astor’s father; they also owned a large London house on St James’s Square. They had five children together. In 1910, Waldorf Astor became Conservative MP for Plymouth, and Nancy helped organise his campaign. In 1919, though, Astor’s father died, and Waldorf inherited his title, Viscount Astor. This required him to step down from the House of Commons to take his place in the House of Lords. He intended to divest himself of the title and return to the Commons. In the meantime, though, he promoted his wife for the seat. She campaigned for herself as a loyal wife, uninterested in a political career, and certainly showed no concern for the suffragette movement. She was elected, that same year, and became the first woman to sit in the House of Commons.

It never became possible for Waldorf to renounce his peerage, and so Nancy, in fact, remained an MP (representing Plymouth) for a quarter of a century. In Parliament, she spent two years as the only woman MP, but quickly made a name for herself with outspoken views, increasingly on women’s rights (she advocated lowering the voting age for women from 30 to 21), restricting alcohol drinking hours, the employment of women in the civil service, and the provision of nursery care. In 1931, Bobby, her son from her first marriage, was arrested for homosexual offences. In the later 1930s, she supported Chamberlain’s policy of appeasement, and, with her husband, was at the centre of the so-called Cliveden set favourable to the rise of Nazism. When war came, however, she admitted she had made mistakes, and voted against Chamberlain.

During the war, Astor increasingly became a liability for the Conservative party, and, eventually, she was encouraged (not least by her husband) to stand down in 1945, which she did reluctantly, and without acknowledging that she had lost public support. She struggled in retirement, separating from her husband and became estranged from some of her children; friends, too, were passing away (such as Bernard Shaw). She was reconciled with her husband before his death in 1952. In 1959, she was awarded the Freedom of the City of Plymouth. She died in 1964. Further biographical details are readily available at Wikipedia, The History Press, The New York Times, the UK Parliament, and The British Academy.

Lady Astor’s archive is largely held by the University of Reading Special Collections Services which, according to the Archives Hub, includes ‘political diaries and other diaries’. The university’s own collections website lists an item titled ‘Extracts from Lady Astor’s diary (typescript)’ without any further information. Otherwise, the only information on her diaries that seem to be in the public domain can be found in Nancy: The Story of Lady Astor by Adrian Fort (Jonathan Cape, 2012). Fort quotes from the diaries only occasionally, and almost always within his own narrative. Here are those parts of that narrative which include extracts (I have italicised the quotations from Astor’s diary).

‘They set off from Richmond on 20 January 1898. “Last goodbyes to dear ones,” Nancy wrote, “with heavy heart.” Before they could experience the delights of Europe, however, they had to cross the sea, a new and trying experience for Nancy, as she confided, somewhat briefly, to her diary:
23 January: Nice looking passengers.
24 January: Desperate.
25 January: All of us have been desperately ill. I hate the beautiful sea. Oh my.

As they drew near the Italian coast, her spirits revived a little: “We have made such nice friends,” she wrote. “Funny time learning the currency. It is fine on the steamer now, rather monotonous . . . these last days on the water are as beautiful as a dream.” ’


***


‘Early in the New Year, however, Nancy’s happiness faded. Her diary shows that at the beginning of January her chronic but undiagnosed illness returned to smother her with lassitude and depression. As 1907 unfolded she was forced to spend a great amount of time in bed, frequently at least all morning, often until the early evening, very tired and sometimes unable to get up at all. “If all the days of the year are to be as this one,” she wrote on 1 January, “may 1907 pass like lightning - bed all day.” “Have done no good to anyone,” she wrote the next evening, “a selfish, useless day.” ’

***


‘On 8 May, Waldorf, who seemed to have accumulated a number of ailments, went off for another cure. They had been married only a year, and Nancy was greatly upset whenever he had to leave. “I wept as I so hate his going,” she wrote in her diary, “. . . we dine alone, very sadly.” He went first to Marienbad, before returning to England to stay in a spa in Folkestone. Nancy dreaded being left alone, “helpless at Cliveden with a butler, groom of the chambers and three footmen to manage”.’

***


‘A few days after her dinner party, Nancy combined a remedy for her exhaustion with her longing to see Waldorf - ‘my darling Wal’ as she called him - by arranging to join him in Folkestone. [Diary:] “I took the 3.18 train to Folkestone - was met by a fat man whom I hardly recognised. He tells me his name is Waldorf Astor - Hurrah, for his 10 lbs of Germany and health . . . Rest, rest, rest; I slept well and rested, rested, rested . . . Went to beach, luncheon, sleep, walk, dined in our room and so to bed - a restful place . . . only golf croquet - such a good game but Waldorf always wins - howling wind and coolish - how I hate the sea, except to look at . . .” ’

***


‘The Astors’ first son was born on Tuesday 13 August 1907; he was given the Astor family name of William, but would usually be called Bill. “Frightened to death,” she wrote in her diary, as the moment drew near. “Can’t say I am enjoying it.” ’

***


‘Ever since her arrival in England she had dressed well and expensively, although she occasionally wondered why: “I wish I had character enough,’ she wrote in her diary, “to dress in a uniform. I wish we all dressed like Japanese, and fashions were stationary. I loathe these yearly changes and silly light skirts and gruelling hats. We are not so far from apes as Mr Darwin would have us believe.” ’

***


‘After the election, Nancy and Waldorf when off to the Switzerland for a well-earned rest - Nancy said that she slept ten hours for the first time in her life - and were soon restored by the mountain air, and happy days of skating, curling and sleighing. They returned to Cliveden early in February, with Lent almost upon them, and Nancy dutifully made her resolutions [Diary 9 February 1919]: “I have made many vows,” she wrote. “I shall try my utmost to keep them. Gossip is barred, Now kiss and intercourse. No cigarettes . . . all this is but little to fear when I think of manifold blessings.” ’

Thursday, May 16, 2019

State of mental anguish

‘We are all in a state of mental anguish. We feel we are forgotten by everyone, abandoned to our own resources and at the mercy of this man. Is it possible that no one will raise a finger to save the Imperial family? Where are those who have remained loyal to the Czar? Why do they delay?’ This is from the diary of Pierre Gilliard, born 140 years ago today, who was tutor to the children of the last Russian emperor, Nicholas II. Nicholas, his wife, and their children would all be murdered a couple of months later. Gilliard’s diary is considered by some to be the ‘best, first-hand account of the life of the last Imperial family’.

Gilliard was born on 16 May 1879 in Fiez, Switzerland, near the border with France. Little seems to be known of his early life, but he became a teacher and tutor of the French language. In 1904, he travelled to Russia to work for the family of Duke George of Leuchtenberg, who was related to the royal family. By the following year, he had been engaged as tutor for the elder children of Tsar Nicholas II - the Grand Duchesses Olga and Tatiana Nikolaevna. Having grown fond of the family, he stayed with them after the revolution in 1917 during their exile to Siberia. However, he was prevented from continuing to do so when they were again moved, to Ekaterinburg, in May that year. After the infamous murders, he remained in Siberia until the White Army arrived, and for a further three years, assisting Nikolai Sokolov with his investigations of the murders.

In 1919, Gilliard married Aleksandra Tegleva who had served as nanny to the Tsar’s youngest daughter, Grand Duchess Anastasia. In 1920, he returned to Switzerland where he became a French professor at the University of Lausanne. In the mid-1920s, he and his wife became involved in assessing - and ultimately rejecting - a claim by Anna Anderson that she was the Grand Duchess Anastasia (her burial place having remained unknown during the Communist era). Gilliard was awarded the French Legion of Honor. He suffered a severe car accident in 1958, from which he never fully recovered, and he died in 1962. A little further information is available Wikipedia, Alexander Palace, or History of Royal Women.

Gilliard is remembered today because of his involvement in refuting Anderson’s claim but also because he kept a diary of the hugely eventful time he spent with the Russian royal family. Initially published in French, it was translated into English (F. Appleby Holt) and published in 1921 by Hutchinson & Co as Thirteen Years at the Russian Court - A Personal Record of the Last Years and Death of the Car Nicholas II and his Family. This is freely available online at Internet Archive and at the Alexander Palace website. The Tsar and the Tsarina both also kept diaries, right up until their last days, which have also been published - see Hope remains above all and Death of the Romanovs respectively.

Bob Atchison on the Alexander Palace website says this: ‘The best, first-hand account of the life of the last Imperial family of Russia was written by Pierre Gilliard, French tutor to the Tsar’s children. He wrote “Thirteen Years at the Russian Court” to refute the the misleading and false books he discovered upon his return to Western Europe. He criticized the “absurdities and falsehoods” he found that were accepted as truths and endeavored to put things right by publishing this book. His goal was to “to bring Nicholas II and his family back to life.” Since this book was written the opening of Soviet archives has expanded our understanding of the facts surrounding [the] murder of the Romanovs in Ekaterinburg. For example, Pierre[’s] secret and heroic efforts in smuggling messages, money and jewels in and out on behalf of the family at great risk to his own safety has been revealed.’ Here are several extracts from Gilliard’s diary.

25 January 1918
‘Tatiana Nicolaievna’s birthday. Te Deum in the house. Fine winter’s day; sunshine; 15° Réaumur. Went on building the snow mountain as usual. The soldiers of the guard came to help us.’

2 February 1918
‘23° R. below zero. Prince Dolgorouky and I watered the snow mountain. We carried thirty buckets of water. It was so cold that the water froze on the way from the kitchen tap to the mountain. Our buckets and the snow mountain “steamed.” To-morrow the children can begin tobogganing.’

4 February 1918
‘The thermometer is said to have dropped last night below 30° Reaumur (37° Centigrade). Terrible wind. The Grand-Duchesses’ bedroom is a real ice-house.’

8 February 1918
‘The soldiers’ committee has to-day decided to replace Pankratof by a Bolshevik commissary from Moscow. Things are going from bad to worse. It appears that there is no longer a state of war between Soviet Russia and Germany, Austria, and Bulgaria. The army is to be disbanded, but Lenin and Trotsky have not yet signed the peace.’

13 February 1918
‘The Czar tells me that the demobilisation of the army has begun, several classes having already been disbanded. All the old soldiers (the most friendly) are to leave us. The Czar seems very depressed at this prospect; the change may have disastrous results for us.’

25 February 1918
‘Colonel Kobylinsky has received a telegram informing him that, from March 1st, “Nicholas Romanoff and his family must be put on soldiers’ rations and that each member of the family will receive 600 roubles per month drawn from the interest of their personal estate.” Hitherto their expenses have been paid by the state. As the family consists of seven persons, the whole household will have to be run on 4,200 roubles a month.’

5 March 1918
‘Yesterday the soldiers, with a hang-dog look (for they felt it was a mean task), began to destroy the snow mountain with picks. The children are disconsolate.’

15 March 1918
‘The townspeople, hearing of our situation, find various ways of sending us eggs, sweetmeats, and delicacies.’

17 March 1918
‘To-day is Carnival Sunday. Everyone is merry. The sledges pass to and fro under our windows; sound of bells, mouth-organs, and singing. . . The children wistfully watch the fun. They have begun to grow bored and find their captivity irksome. They walk round the courtyard, fenced in by its high paling through which they can see nothing. Since the destruction of their snow mountain their only distraction is sawing and cutting wood.

The arrogance of the soldiers is inconceivable; those who have left have been replaced by a pack of blackguardly-looking young men.

In spite of the daily increase of their sufferings, Their Majesties still cherish hope that among their loyal friends some may be found to attempt their release. Never was the situation more favourable for escape, for there is as yet no representative of the Bolshevik Government at Tobolsk. With the complicity of Colonel Kobylinsky, already on our side, it would be easy to trick the insolent but careless vigilance of our guards. All that is required is the organised and resolute efforts of a few bold spirits outside. We have repeatedly urged upon the Czar the necessity of being prepared for any turn of events. He insists on two conditions which greatly complicate matters: he will not hear of the family being separated or leaving Russian territory.

One day the Czarina said to me in this connection: “I wouldn’t leave Russia on any consideration, for it seems to me that to go abroad would be to break our last link with the past, which would then be dead for ever.” ’

10 April 1918
A “full sitting” of our guard, at which the Bolshevik commissary reveals the extent of his powers. He has the right to have anyone opposing his orders shot within twenty-four hours and without trial. The soldiers let him enter the house.’

15 April 1918
‘Alexis Nicolaivitch in great pain yesterday and to-day. It is one of his severe attacks of haemophilia.’

24 April 1918
‘We are all in a state of mental anguish. We feel we are forgotten by everyone, abandoned to our own resources and at the mercy of this man. Is it possible that no one will raise a finger to save the Imperial family? Where are those who have remained loyal to the Czar? Why do they delay?’

25 April 1918
‘Shortly before three o’clock, as I was going along the passage, I met two servants sobbing. They told me that Yakovlef has come to tell the Czar that he is taking him away. What can be happening? I dare not go up without being summoned, and went back to my room. Almost immediately Tatiana Nicolaievna knocked at my door. She was in tears, and told me Her Majesty was asking for me. I followed her. The Czarina was alone, greatly upset. She confirmed what I had heard, that Yakovlef has been sent from Moscow to take the Czar away and is to leave to-night.

29 April 1918
‘The children have received a letter from the Czarina from Tioumen The journey has been very trying. Horses up to their chests in water crossing the rivers. Wheels broken several times.’

3 May 1918
‘Colonel Kobylinsky has received a telegram saying that the travellers have been detained at Ekaterinburg. What has happened?’

Tuesday, May 14, 2019

Caught in the mustard mill

‘George McNally was caught in the belts of the mustard mill at 6 p.m. and all his clothes were ripped from his back, and yet not much hurt. God be praised for Mercy.’ This is from the diary of Henry J. Heinz, he of the 57 varieties, who died 100 years ago today. He started out by selling horseradish in glass jars so buyers could see the purity of his product, and, over time, he became a powerful industrial pioneer, one who cared about his employees, about their welfare and safety, as well about the quality of the food he produced and sold across the United States and in the UK. Extensive extracts from his diaries can be found in a 1970s biography.

Heinz was born in Pittsburgh in 1844, the oldest child of German immigrants. While still young, he helped around the house and in the garden; by the age of 14 he was managing his own plot, and supplying customers. After high school, he attended Duff’s Mercantile College. Aged 25, he and his friend L. Clarence Noble founded Heinz Noble & Company which marketed horseradish, packaged in glass jars so as to reveal its purity. That same year, in 1869, he married Sarah Sloan Young, and they would have five children. He was a highly religious man, having been brought up as a Lutheran, but Sarah was a Presbyterian, and it was in the Presbyterian faith that they raised their children.

In 1875, a glut in the horseradish market along with other factors led to Heinz Noble falling bankrupt. Undaunted, Heinz vowed to repay every debt, which he did; and the following year, he and two relatives launched a new company. This grew rapidly, not least selling a new product, tomato ketchup. Heinz eventually bought out his partners and renamed the firm H. J. Heinz Company. To expand his market, he established a relationship with retailers in England; and he built a state-of-the-art factory on the Allegheny River. The company was incorporated in 1905, with Heinz himself as its first president, a position he retained through his life.

Heinz was noted for his benevolent management style as well for fair treatment of workers and pioneering safe and clean food preparation. Indeed, he led a successful lobbying effort, against much of the rest of the food industry, in favour of the first major consumer protection legislation in the US, the Pure Food and Drug Act of 1906. During World War I, he worked with the US Food Administration. He died soon after the war ended, on 14 May 1919. One of his grandsons, John Heinz, would become a US senator; and one of the grandsons of a second cousin would become president - Donald Trump. Further information is available from Wikipedia, John Heinz: A Western Pennsylvania Legacy, Astrum People, Encyclopedia of World Biography, National Geographic, or American Heritage.

Heinz was a keen diarist, documenting his daily life with brief entries for many years. Some 18 or 19 volumes are extant today, covering the years 1875-1894; some diaries mostly from before 1875 are known to have been lost. Although these diaries have not been published in their own right, there are voluminous extracts from them to be found in The Good Provider H. J. Heinz and his 57 varieties by Robert C. Alberts, as published by Arthur Barker (Weidenfeld) in 1973. A digital copy can be borrowed online at Internet Archive.

Alberts describes the diaries as follows: ‘They are peopled by a cross section of the human species of that day: a numerous family, small-town neighbors, stable hands, office clerks, salesmen, executives, disgruntled creditors, competitors, the girls on the food processing lines - 1000 of them in the Pittsburgh factory in 1900. In its homespun prose, the diary gives a picture of life in that time: the way people worked, played, traveled, worshiped, and died; their illnesses and their education; the wages they got and the prices they paid; the way a company was run; the reception of such marvels as electric power, natural gas, the telephone, the automobile. It provides material for a look into a subject not often explored in American biography: the mind, character, and rise to command of an industrial pioneer.’ Here are several of those extracts.

2 November 1875
‘L. C. writes again today that he checked for $300 and will check for $500 tomorrow. This caused me to write and say, for God’s sake quit this promiscuous checking, it is killing me.’

22 November 1875
‘Hardest day on finances we ever had I mean we were as near going to protest as ever we were. E. J. thought we would have to let two notes go to protest, but I managed just seven minutes before three to check on Sharpsburg through Peoples and got a certified check for $1,200.’

28 November 1876
‘John Heinz had a lawsuit about an old horse today and had to pay costs. He is learning that courts don’t always give justice.’

10 December 1876
‘Zero through the day. We all remained home. It is very inconvenient to attend church when living in the country.’

5 August 1877
‘Pittsburgh. Arrived at 9 a.m. and saw all the ruins caused by the mob during the Great Rail Road Strike. It is the awfullest looking sight I ever saw. Millions of property burned down.’

2 November 1877
‘Mr. J. Wilson of Chicago is in our city and spends all day until midnight with us. Had quite a confidential talk with him on our past trouble. After all of our conversation he even gave me a check to help me out of a tight place, which we mailed him one week later, which was today. He also changed our terms from cash to 30 days.’

8 February 1878
‘John and I had a few words because he misses the first train in the morning.’

19 February 1878
‘There was a meeting of creditors today of H. N. & Co. There were only about 15 creditors present. They decided to pay 11% of a dividend and then close up and declare a final one again.’

17 May 1878
‘George McNally was caught in the belts of the mustard mill at 6 p.m. and all his clothes were ripped from his back, and yet not much hurt. God be praised for Mercy.’

10 November 1878
‘I enjoyed this day very much. Sunday School at 9:15. Met my class. All well. Then to Christ Church to hear Dr Morgan and to Mission Sunday School at 2 p.m. Then to hear Reverend E. M. Wood at 7:30 p.m. at Christ M. E. Church. To class at 6:15. So on the whole, my day was all taken up except about two hours which I enjoyed with my family.’

16 November 1878
‘Maggie Keil called at office for donation of pickles for Grace Church Festival. We supplied her with all they wanted and the church has our best wishes. Bought Clarence a suit for $6.50 and suits for the children and just wonder how some people who have a large family get along on small salary.’

2 December 1878
‘Had to speak plainly to the bill clerk, as he delayed some invoices last night and insisted it must not happen again. Also called all the girls together upstairs. Told them we would not allow talking during working hours except such as was necessary to do their work, etc. All was kindly received. Good feeling throughout the house.’

16 December 1878
‘Watkins, the jelly man, called and was under the influence of liquor. I told him to call when his head would be clear. Mrs. Jacob Covode called today to dine with us. I loaned her $75.’

4 February 1879
‘Irene and Clarence begin going to Public School this a.m. for the first time in their lives. Irene is just 7 years, 7 months old this day and Clarence will be 6 years old on the 7th of April 1879. They express themselves as delighted and prefer it to the kindergarten. We buy them each a five cent slate and pencil at close of the first day’s school and they go and pick it themselves. Neither know their letters. We have kept them from it on purpose and desire to see if they won’t learn all the better.’

3 December 1880
‘Brother Peter leaves for Cincinnati tonight to commence canvassing that city for the first time on bulk goods by wagon, in Peter’s peculiar style but a very successful one. He surpasses all of our agents in this agency plan of introducing goods. We shipped him $1,200 worth of goods to Cincinnati and a span of spotted horses, new covered wagons, and harness by boat.’

8 December 1880
‘Brother John went up to Scott, the dentist, with Atorney John W. Hague to rescue a girl in our employ, as the dentist acted like a crazy man. An article in the city papers gave a statement saying Mr. H., which people took for me, as I am called the pickle man. This is very annoying to me, as `Brother John so often gets into lawsuits, etc., but he is learning that it does not pay.’

23 April 1885
‘Fire in Sharpsburg at 12:15 this early morning. The town fire bell rang. We saw quite a fire, we supposed in Etna. We retired and this morning found eleven houses, the entire block from Main to Clay Street and from Church Alley and Tenth. We hope this will stimulate the old bogies to vote for a water works, which they have opposed.’

29 April 1887
‘Am reading up on roses and flowers and pleasure in cultivating them. Spent over $250 on trees and flowers this year.’

17 February 1888
‘Orlando. Most people are anxious to sell. They ask from $1000 to $3000 per acre for groves from six to twenty years old and [indecipherable word] within one-half to three miles of the post office. The town is partially surrounded by lakes and they are beauties. Have not allowed myself to be persuaded to invest.’

15 December 1888
‘New York. Very busy but took time to purchase Irene a bracelet at Tiffanys.’

24 December  1888
‘I purchased the most extravagant Christmas gift of my life at W. W. Wattles today, a diamond pin (three stones), fine in plain figures, $710, but concluded a woman so modest and kind was deserving of something while I could pay cash and had no debts.’

Wednesday, May 8, 2019

Forwood valiant and brave

‘Day of triumph! F. walks round Serpentine with strength and a stick and enjoys the air, the Brent geese, and the snowdrops in the Dell.’ This is from a diary kept by Dirk Bogarde, the English matinee idol and memoir writer, during the period when his partner, Anthony Forwood, had been hospitalised and was recuperating. A week or so later, when the two of them were returning to France, Bogarde writes in the same diary, ’Wheelchair, stick and the rest of the paraphernalia. Forwood valiant and brave.’ These are rare diary extracts from Bogarde in the public domain. Although Bogarde, who died 20 years go today, kept diaries for much of his life, he destroyed a good part of his personal archive, wanting his autobiographical legacy to be limited as much as possible to his published memoirs.

Derek Jules Gaspard Ulric Niven van den Bogaerde was born in 1921 in West Hampstead, London. His father, of Flemish ancestry, was the art editor for The Times and his mother was a former actress. As a teenager, he was sent to live with his mother’s family in Glasgow, but returned to London in 1937 where he enrolled at the Chelsea School of Art. By 1939, however, he had dropped art studies in favour of drama, making his stage debut that year, and taking a small part in a George Formby film. During the war, he joined the Royal Corps of Signals first and then, in 1943, was commissioned into the Queen’s Royal Regiment (West Surrey). Mostly, he seems to have served as an intelligence officer, working with the Air Photographic Intelligence Unit, and eventually achieving the rank of major. In April 1945, he was one of the first Allied officers to reach the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp in Germany.

After being demobilised, he returned to acting, and his agent re-christened him Dirk Bogarde. In 1947, a London stage appearance led to both praise from Noel Coward and a contract from the Rank Organisation. Having been included in the cast list for Sin of Esther Waters, due to star Stewart Granger, Bogarde was given the lead when Granger dropped out. But it was only in 1950, when he starred as a young villain in The Blue Lamp, that he really made his name as a matinee idol. And the 1954 film Doctor in the House turned him into one of the most popular British stars of the 1950s. After leaving Rank in the early 1960s, he undertook more challenging roles, in art house productions, for example, and in films tackling homosexuality which was still a taboo subject at the time - indeed, he only acknowledged his own homosexuality much later. In 1963, he won the first of two best actor BAFTAs for his lead role in Joseph Losey’s The Servant; the second came two years later for his role in Darling.

In 1968, Bogarde moved to France with his manager Anthony Forwood with whom he had been living for many years; and in the early 1970s they bought a property near Grasse. He continued to star in memorable films, such as Death in Venice and The Night Porter, but he also started writing autobiographical memoirs which were critically acclaimed, as well as novels. In 1983, the couple returned to live in London so that Forwood could undergo treatment for cancer. Forwood died in 1988, and Bogarde retired from acting after his last film in 1990. He was knighted in 1992. He himself died on 8 May 1999. Further information is available from The official Dirk Bogarde website (built as a tribute to his uncle by Brock van den Bogaerde), Wikipedia, Bloomsbury, Readers Digest, and IMDB.

Bogarde was a keen recorder of his own life, so much so that, in his own lifetime, he published seven memoirs and a collection of letters. He certainly kept diaries; however little is known about them. This is because late on in life he destroyed much of his personal archive - clearly wanting to control his autobiographical legacy. However, John Coldstream in Dirk Bogarde: The authorised biography (which can be previewed at Googlebooks) also makes significant use of what he calls ‘the diary’. He explains this in his introduction as follows.

‘There was also the Diary. It exists only from 1955, seven years after Anthony Forwood moved in with Dirk, and it was in the main kept by the former. Yet if Tony lopped off the tip of a finger in a gardening accident, or was confined in hospital, Dirk would take over. There are some prolonged periods when no entries are made by either - for example, in the watershed year of 1961 and towards the end of Tony’s life; the volume for 1956 is missing. The Diary is at its fullest from the mid-sixties to the early eighties, and it has proved of incalculable worth in the preparation of this book. Apart from providing a record of the ‘who, what, when and where’, it gives indications of the ‘how’ and the ‘why’. Every now and then, too, like a lighthouse beam momentarily picking out a white sail, it reveals the strength of the bond which united these two men in a relationship that was admired by their friends and by the most casual of acquaintances as more secure than many a marriage.’

At least one of Bogarde’s memoirs (I haven’t been through them all) contains a significant section of extracts from a diary (this might, of course, be the same diary referred to by Coldstream): Backcloth: A memoir (Viking, 1986, and more recently Bloomsbury, 2013). The book can be previewed at both Google and Amazon. The Publisher’s blurb states: ‘Filling the gaps left between his previous memoirs, as well as highlighting new episodes, Backcloth explores the patterns of pleasure and pain that have made up Bogarde’s extraordinary life. Based on personal letters, notebooks and diaries and covering many aspects of a celebrated life, we share experiences from his family home in Hampstead through to his farmhouse retreat in Provence. This memoir highlights the people, emotions and experiences that made him into the man loved by so many. Written with all the honesty, wit and intelligence that made Bogarde such a popular writer, Backcloth is both eloquent and touching.’

The last chapter (10) of the memoir is largely concerned with the period in Bogarde’s life when his partner, Forwood, fell ill and was hospitalised. The chapter begins with the single word ‘Diary’, and, without any other preamble, Bogarde then provides many dated diary extracts (unlike in any other part of the book). Here are several of those extracts.

13 February 1983
‘Walk to Edward VII in bitter cold. Buy champagne-splits, toothbrush, soap. F. wants a bath. No soap provided, apparently.

Back to Connaught: interview with rather smooth young man, pleasant, and possibly friendly, but won’t know, as usual, until I see his piece printed. Many a slip between Interview and Article. Take the risk because it is for The Times.’

F. asked for a print or picture to have on wall of his rather spartan room. Wants a ‘Country scene: fields and things, summery: something I can tell myself stories about while I’m lying here. You understand?’ I do. But where to go? Probably Medici tomorrow.

National Film Theatre Lecture. Theo Cowan collects me early at four-thirty. Show sold out with no advertising, which pleases me, but am still terrified. Good audience, clever, alert, good reception as far as I can make out, on stage for two and a quarter hours, which seems quite long, but as always am far too nervous to register anything.

Norah there, John Charlton and wife Susan, Olga (my French agent) comes from Paris, Margaret Hinxman, Gareth F. and many others. All have drinks in gloomy black Refreshment Room, but feel happy all went well. Olga Horstig Primuz amazed, and moved, by the long clip shown from Neal Story which closed show. She can’t imagine why it has never been shown as a film; it looks fantastic on Big Screen.

I can’t imagine why either. Ho hum.’

19 February 1983
‘Dull. Bitter. Walk to hospital. F. stronger, more alert. Buy enormous tin of candies for the nurses, all of whom are incredibly kind and caring. Nurses should get two thousand pounds a day. Not one. Cold starting, I think. Bugger.

Lunch Elizabeth and Sarah at very noisy restaurant (their choice not mine) at end of Kings Road. Ear-splitting noise, plates crashing on tiled floor, food fairly oily, masses of Sloane Rangers, ‘Hooray Henrys’ plus ‘Hooray Henriettas’, with too many children, all shouting and eating pasta. Proof they’ve all ‘done’ Italy at some time, I suppose. Rupert [nephew] and pretty girl, Portia, arrive for coffee. Three bottles of wine. Elizabeth insists on paying with her Barclaycard. Never had one in her life before . . . showing off! Cost a bomb too, silly girl.

Rupert drives me back to Connaught in clapped-out car, very fast, very expert, a really super chap, at least six foot four. Where does he get the height in our family of ‘ordinary measure’?

F.’s room massed with flowers like a mobster’s funeral parlour. Remove most into the corridor, he’ll suffocate. Stay longer than normal: a good sign.

Boaty Boatwright, Diana Hammond, Kathleen Tynan call from N. Y. A lot of love flying around.

Meet Kathleen Sutherland in Hall. Sad, growing old. She was so vivid and glamorous when she taught me fashion design at Chelsea Poly in ’37-38. Misses Graham terribly and says she is just waiting to join him. Why did he have to go first?

No answer to that.’ 

2 March 1983
‘Hounded practically all day by Press who want statement on David Niven (ill in the Wellington). I don’t know David Niven, and wouldn’t speak to Press anyway even if I did. Strange race, journalists, strange country; hounding a dying man to the grave.’

3 March 1983
‘Walk with F. very, very slowly ‘round the block’ (Grosvenor Square). But he’s stronger. I walk all afternoon round the Serpentine. Brisk, sunny day. Masses of people about, not one English voice among them. It’s like Central Park.’

5 March 1983.
‘Day of triumph! F. walks round Serpentine with strength and a stick and enjoys the air, the Brent geese, and the snowdrops in the Dell.’

14 March 1983.
‘Elizabeth and George arrive to accompany us to airport and home. She will do the housekeeping, George the land which has been neglected for so long. I'll need help. Wheelchair, stick and the rest of the paraphernalia. Forwood valiant and brave; anyway, it’s better than walking at terrible Heathrow. I push him and no Press near because we are flying Air France. So that’s a relief. Flight on time, easy, specified seats (booked in advance . . . why can’t you on ‘The World’s Favourite Airline’, BA?) and land at Nice about four. Fine spring rain, car waiting, arranged by Arnold (my ex stand-in for many years) and we drive home with anxious, and not very good, driver who is terrified of the narrow lanes, sounding horn at every bend.

Marie-Christine [guardian] has meal ready for evening, house spotless, flowers in Long Room. All smells of strong ‘shag’ (her husband rolls his own cigs) but all serene. Bendo slightly hysterical. Settle F. and then discover that I have left his suitcase down at the airport. Typical. I’m so bloody capable. But we are back at home.

For the time being, at least.’

5 July 1985.
‘It’s 3.35 a.m. and I can sleep no longer. They say that as one grows older one needs less sleep. Perhaps it’s true?

I’m writing this at the oval table in the bow window of my opulent suite in Rusacks Hotel overlooking the 18th hole of the oldest golf course in the world. It is already quite light. I had forgotten how short the nights are here.

I’ve got two fat armchairs, settee, coffee table with a wobbly leg, a vitrine full of tarnished silver cups for long-forgotten matches played on that course below, a vase of dried leaves and grasses on the mantelpiece, the colour of mashed turnips, a large, dark print of anemones in a bowl, parchment lampshades hanging high on the ceiling.

There is a thick sea-mist and I cannot see the waves, only hear them sighing lazily along the beach, and only then when I open the windows. Close them because it is bitterly cold.

Last night was fun. Graduation Dinner with tables at herring-bone angles, a piper to play us in. Me at top table with silver candelabra, apricot roses, crystal and silver. Very elegant, rich apparently, established. Scowling scholastic faces in heavy gilt frames on the panelled walls, stained glass, speeches, a loving cup passed from one to another. Altogether moving, ancient and perfect. Kindness has overwhelmed me all day. 

Later the Graduation Ball, in a giant chiffon-draped marquee on the lawns. A Tissot painting. Girls in long dresses and tartan sashes, some of the men in the kilt, the rest in tails with white buttonholes. Everyone young and gay, and alive, and I an unbelieving part of it all.

Walked home to Rusacks with Rosalind through a silent St Andrew’s. I suppose, after so many centuries, the town takes all this in its stride? I can’t, quite, yet.

This morning - or was it yesterday morning? - a television man said: ‘Doctor van den Bogarde, would you move a wee bittie to your right... you’re too far apart for the camera.’

I turned in surprise to see which of my relatives it could have been.

I am a mutt. I’ll get used to it.

Perhaps back to bed: it’s so damned cold my fingers are white.

Across the brilliant green of the 18th sacred hole, coming wanly through the mist, a young couple, she in a long dress trailing a negligent scarf, he in crumpled tails. They are wandering slowly; her head on his shoulder, through the meandering spume and fine rain, arms around each other.

In no hurry. Life before them. Or is it only breakfast? Which they are serving at four o’clock.

No matter: a new day has begun and it is as beautiful a way to see it start as any I can imagine.

A billow of mist rolls in from the ocean, drowning the ancient Club House, swirling across the pampered green below, dimming the light about me.

The tarnished cups in the vitrine look like lead; the chairs, the settee, the wobbly-legged coffee table become dark looming shapes, like fat scattered cushions; and the dried grasses on the mantelpiece are ghostly, still, spiky as sticks of incense; the lamps above me hang in shadow, shrouded in the gloom.

It’s very cold; back, I think, now to bed. The maid is bringing tea at eight o’clock.’