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.’

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.’

They mix it up almost as I do

‘We have a three-hour session at the home of the Artists’ Union, a big old mansion once the home of some French family. We hear a great variety of Vietnamese music, from the Western-influenced modern compositions to ancient traditional music. They mix it up, alternating old and new almost as I do.’ This is none other than Pete Seeger, the great American folk singer who was born a century ago today. Although he rarely kept diaries throughout his long life, the above quote comes from a brief diary he did keep while travelling in Vietnam in the early 1970s.

Seeger was bon on 3 May 1919 in Manhattan, New York City. His father was a Harvard-trained composer and musicologist and his mother a concert violinist and music teacher. When Seeger was a still a toddler, his parents set out with him and his two older brothers in a homemade trailer aiming to bring music to the working people of the American South. Aged four, he was sent to a boarding school for a couple of years, and aged seven his parents divorced. Seeger attended schools in Nyack where his mother lived before being sent to Avon Old Farms School, a private boarding school in Connecticut, until 1936. It was at Avon that he first began playing the ukulele; he first heard the five string banjo when visiting music festivals with his father and stepmother, Ruth Crawford. Also, while still a teenager, he joined the Young Communist League.

Seeger followed in his father’s footsteps by going to Harvard, but, increasingly, he became more involved in music events and politics than in his courses. By 1938, he had dropped out of college, and was on the road, travelling round the country, collecting ballads, singing, and developing a remarkable ability on the banjo. In 1940, he formed the Almanac Singers, a quartet that also featured the folksinger and composer Woody Guthrie, which performed at union halls, farm meetings, and wherever their populist folk messages and songs were welcome. In 1943, he married Toshi Aline Ota, and they would have four children (although one died in infancy). When he was called up to the US Army, he trained as an airplane mechanic and served in the Pacific. However, once there, it wasn’t long before he was reassigned to entertain American troops. After the war, in 1948, Seeger formed another group, the Weavers which went around the country giving concerts, particularly to students, and it began to produce records. However, as the group achieved national fame, so public attention to Seeger’s left-wing politics led to it being blacklisted.

Thereafter, Seeger usually toured and performed on his own, sometimes with half-siblings Mike or Peggy, but he remained the focus of blacklisting by mainstream entertainment organisers. This was even more the case after he refused to answers questions by the House Committee on Un-American Activities in 1955, and a subsequent conviction for contempt of Congress in 1961 (though this was later overturned). Seeger became a fixture at folk festivals across the country, and is credited with popularising the ‘hootenanny’ i.e a gathering of performers playing and singing for each other, often with audience participation. He wrote many songs himself, and collaborated with others also. Where Have All the Flowers Gone and If I Had a Hammer are two of his most famous songs. During the 1970s and 1980s, he was often to be found protesting on environmental - particularly antinuclear - issues, as well as promoting the music of his friend Woody Guthrie who had died in 1967.

By the 1990s, the taint of accusations against him in the McCarthy period had all but died away, and somehow he had become an American institution. In 1994, he was awarded a National Medal of Arts, and in 1996 he was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. He released more successful albums, winning Grammys for Pete in 1996, At 89 in 2008, and Tomorrow’s Children (with the Rivertown Kids) in 2011. In January, 2009, at the finale of Barack Obama’s inaugural concert in Washington, D.C., Seeger (and his grandson Tao Rodríguez-Seeger) joined Bruce Springsteen, and a vast crowd in singing the Woody Guthrie song This Land Is Your Land - with several political verses having been restored to the popular sanitised version. Seeger died a few years later, in 2014. Further biographical information is available at Wikipedia, Encyclopaedia Britannica, Folkways at The Smithsonian, or from any number of obituaries (The New York Times, The Guardian, RollingStone, The Washington Post, Los Angeles Times).

It can’t be said that Seeger was much of a diarist, though a couple of brief diaries he did pen have been published - in Pete Seeger in His Own Words as selected and edited by Rob Rosenthal and Sam Rosenthal (Paradigm Publishers, 2012). Seeger’s preface explains how this book came about.

‘I was asked to write a short last chapter to this book. But Rob and Sam said it would be better as a preface. So here ’tis. Dear Reader: For 30 years or more, I had put copies of letters, unfinished diaries, and miscellaneous essays in a filing cabinet and forgot about ’em. Then four years ago, a professor asked if he could look through them, perhaps reprint some. I said “sure” in my usual unthinking way.

Behold. The professor and his son have made a book. I’m now age 93. Whatever insights I’ve had and whatever mistakes I’ve made in my long life are now displayed. The inconsistencies, the contradictions are all here. All! Well, at least a lot of ’em, thanks to Rob and Sam. Yes, thanks also to Dean Birkenkamp and the folks at Paradigm Publishers, you can now read them.

Now, I’ll waste a little time to say that I found myself wanting to rewrite almost all of the pieces in this book. But Rob and Sam thought it best not to go down that road. What was, is.
To all of you I say, stay well. Keep on, Old Pete Seeger’

In the book, there are references to two diaries. The first is Diary of a Soldier, begun in March 1943, and picked up again in April 1944, added to through 1944 and 1945, and finished in 1947. However, it barely reads like a diary, more a record or memoir. Seeger, who is in Keesler Field, Mississippi in March 1943, starts the diary as follows: ‘During this lull, while I am sitting here waiting for shipment, I thought I would take advantage of my free time to write the story of my time in the army. . .’ And he proceeds to set out what has happened to him over the last few years, and then describe in a little more detail his time since having joined the army. Later entries (very few of them) also have a substantial retrospective tone.

The second diary dates from nearly 30 years later, when Seeger was visiting Vietnam. It’s source is cited as Eastern Horizon magazine (1972), so it seems likely that Seeger was commissioned by the magazine to write it. Here are several extracts.

10 March 1972
‘We arrive in Hanoi amid palm trees and rice paddies to our right and left. Is this the land of “the Enemy”? We are greeted by 30 members of the Committee for Solidarity with the People of the U.S. Huge bouquets of flowers are put in our arms, and we are kissed and hugged, with tears of emotion in our eyes and theirs.

First impressions of Hanoi: It is a city (1,000,000) on bicycles, mostly manufactured locally with imported steel. An amiable, courteous people, small in size. They show a love of color in spite of little money - it takes two or three months wages to buy a bicycle. Trees everywhere, and so are bomb shelters. The city has not been bombed since 1968, but they think an all-out attack may yet come.

We visit a little temple-pagoda 1,000 years old. It was destroyed by the retreating French, and later rebuilt. We also visit a lovely park created by thousands of volunteers, who made a lake from a swamp! put in flowers, pavilions, goldfish tanks - wow! It shows what can be done with very little money only if you have love and perseverance. Someone has “sculptured” bushes to look like ostriches, lions and deer on the lawn. And then we see “elephants” sculpted by growing four small pines and weaving their long branches around to form legs torso, head, and trunk!

Another thing I have never seen: bicycles each carrying loads up to 800 pounds! The device was invented during the war against the French. A man walks pushing the bicycle with one hand on a diagonal stick behind the seat, and another steering by a horizontal stick tied to the handlebars. The load is on two platforms hung low one on each side of the bicycle.’

11 March 1972
‘In the morning we visit the museum, which combines archaeology with crafts and modern painting and sculpture. It is a small museum, but one of the best we’ve ever seen. There we find a 4,000 (!) year-old bronze drum. It is four feet high and was used for signaling in naval battles. But it is still in perfect condition. Decorations covering it depict the life and times of that period.

In the afternoon we visit an exhibition of war crimes. Latest ingenious bombs and devices to carry on computerized electronic warfare from the air are on display, enough to give anyone nightmares.

Evening - we go to the circus. Performers are young, but of high quality. We see trained monkeys peddling tiny bicycles. This country is at war, but the people are not grim about it.’

12 March 1972
‘We have a three-hour session at the home of the Artists’ Union, a big old mansion once the home of some French family. We hear a great variety of Vietnamese music, from the Western-influenced modern compositions to ancient traditional music. They mix it up, alternating old and new almost as I do. Later at 8 pm we have a similar session at the radio station.

Here are some of the instruments we see: A beautiful bird-like flute (the player tells us of performing this instrument for soldiers in sections where U.S. chemical sprays had killed all birds, and the bird calls he made on the instruments were the only ones to have been heard there in years).

Banjo-like instruments have two strings over very high frets, so the player can slur the notes. There is also an instrument like a cigar-box ukulele; a bowed instrument held between the knees of the player while seated; various wood-blocks, claves, drums, from huge to small; and harps like kotos.

All the Western instruments are there. I wouldn’t be surprised if Hanoi, like Tokyo, doesn’t have a first-rate symphony orchestra some day. (Hey, it does have a symphony, which I find out later.)

But what really gets me is an instrument completely new to me, a monochord - one stringed. The Vietnamese name for it is dan ban (pronounced “don bow” - as in bow and arrow - with falling pitch. The same words, if inflected differently, could mean “bullet pinches.”) Like a dulcimer, it is a horizontal box. Perhaps it was once set on the floor, or on the lap. The one we see stood on legs, and is amplified, so as to be heard by any audience bigger than five or ten.

The one steel string is tuned by a peg at the player’s right. His left hand holds a thin curved rod. By forcing this toward the string, he can gradually lower the pitch as much as four or even seven notes. Thus the dan ban is similar to a broomstick-wash-tub bass. When moved to the left, the rod raises the pitch, but no more than three or four notes.

While plucking, the player’s right hand momentarily dampens the string in order to sound the high harmonics, a bell-like tone. Thus if the string’s basic pitch is low C, the first usable note is middle C, and the few notes below that. So most melodies will be played in the 2 1/2 octaves above C. Without the left hand bending the curved rod, one could only play bugle calls. With the rod in action, one hears a warm sensuous melody. An old folk song saying has it: “Let the player of the dan ban be enraptured, by his own music. You, being a girl, should not listen to it.” But the dan ban was never puritanically outlawed, as the fiddle was in America.

A week later we are given a two-hour lesson in the dan ban or don bow, as I shall anglicize it. No one knows exactly how old it is - perhaps several hundred years, perhaps much more.

Our instructor, Doan Auh Tuan, a young man in his twenties, is a member of the Vietnam Traditional Music Ensemble, playing on radio and TV, concert tours, as well as performances for soldiers and for children in parks. He plays often as accompaniment, or with accompaniment. He says that in the old days a good player might be invited to perform at a feudal court. But it was usually in the peasants home or in the courtyard, where a few neighbors could gather to listen. 

14 March 1972
‘We are taken on a 5-hour drive to one of the beauty spots of the world: Hon Gay Bay. which is filled with several thousand steep rocky islands, averaging 400-600 feet high with fishing junks sailing between them.’

15 March 1972
‘I am invited for a 3-hour session at the home of the Delegation to DRVN (North Vietnam) from the PRG (Provisional Revolutionary Government of South Vietnam). You see, the NLF [National Liberation Front, also known as the Vietcong] is not a bunch of guerillas in the forest, but a full-fledged government, with considerable light industry, including color printing, textile, etc. It includes communists in its leadership, but also a lot of non-communists, all united under one slogan: Drive out the Yankees and their puppets.

Their leader, a wiry, intense man a little younger than me, is a prominent writer, a man who knows literature of Europe and America well.’

18 March 1972
‘In the afternoon Toshi and I have a long interview with another writer our age, the head of the journalists’ association, Luu Quy Ky. Luu says that after the U.S. and puppets are defeated trouble is predicted in the south. And then he goes on, “There has been much corruption by the dollar. But we know that the job is to rebuild, not recriminate. Six hundred years ago, after we defeated the Mongol army of Kublai Khan, the king’s minister brought a large box into the court of the king. “This box,” he said, “contains names of all those who collaborated with the invader.” The King ordered the box to be burned, in full view of the court. So today, the NLF proposes that there be no reprisals against the puppet mercenaries.’

Leonardo da Vinci’s notebooks

Leonardo da Vinci, the great Florentine artist, scientist, inventor and designer, died half a millennium ago this very day. Celebrated the world over by historians and scholars as the ideal of the ‘Renaissance Man’, he outshines every other individual from history in terms of the range of his prodigious talent and legacy. Although he cannot be classed as a diarist, like his near Florentine contemporary Landucci Luca, who was one of the very earliest of European diarists, Leonardo was a prolific keeper of notebooks. Alas, these notebooks, sometimes called journals, contain little about his personal or private life, nor were most of the many thousands of pages that make up the notebooks ever dated. All but one of these journals are in major libraries or museums, and several of them have been fully digitised and can be viewed online.

Leonardo was born, an illegitimate child, in 1452 near the Tuscan hill-town of Vinci. His father had a flourishing legal practice in the city of Florence. Aged 14, Leonardo was apprenticed to the sculptor Andrea Verrocchio, and by 1472 he had joined the brotherhood of Florentine artists. He worked as an artist in Florence for a decade or so, but became increasingly interested in more technical uses for his drawing ability - such as for anatomy and engineering. In 1482, with permission from the ruling Sforza family, he moved to Milan, where he undertook many commissions for Ludovico Sforza, Duke of Milan (preparing floats and pageants for special occasions, for example, creating designs for a dome in Milan cathedral, and designing a model for a huge equestrian monument of his predecessor). In 1499, when the French invaded, he fled to Venice where he was employed as a military architect and engineer.

The next few years saw Leonardo back in Florence (though he spent some time in Cesena in the service of Cesare Borgia, the son of Pope Alexander VI, creating military maps). He rejoined the Guild of Saint Luke and spent two years designing and painting a mural of The Battle of Anghiari, with Michelangelo designing a companion piece. By 1508, he was back in Milan where he bought his own house. From 1513 to 1516, under Pope Leo X, he spent much of his time living in the Belvedere in the Vatican in Rome, where Raphael and Michelangelo were also employed. In 1516, he entered the service of King Francis I of France. He was given the use of the manor house Clos Lucé (now a public museum) in the Loire Valley close to the king’s residence, where he lived with his friend Count Francesco Melzi. Here, Leonardo died on 2 May 1519.

As one of the world’s most famous individuals in all of history, there is a wealth of information about Leonardo, his life and his work, available on the internet: Wikipedia, Encyclopaedia Britannica, The National Gallery, a Leonardo dedicated site, The Art Story. And here is a random selection of some of the many articles/events celebrating the 500th anniversary of Leonardo’s death: The Telegraph, CNN, Royal Collection Trust, Fox News, i.Italy, National Geographic, The Guardian, The Getty Museum, Bodleian Libraries, Indian Express, The Louvre.

Astonishingly, only 15 artworks attributable to Leonardo have survived. However, he left behind a vast quantity of extraordinary notes and sketches (some 7,000 pages are extant). Over the centuries, these have been collated, and are now formally called his codices, but they are also referred to as his notebooks or journals. Although the world’s oldest diaries can be traced to Japan a millennium ago, the earliest diaries in Europe extant today started to appear in Florence, in fact, during the 15th century - particularly those kept by Landucci Luca and Nicolo Barbara. Leonardo’s notebooks cannot be considered diaries in the sense of comprising dated entries about his daily life, and yet the coincidence of Leonardo’s output coinciding with the first diaries is notable, as is their sheer volume (not to even mention their, literally, marvellous content).

According to Wikipedia, ‘Leonardo’s notes and drawings display an enormous range of interests and preoccupations, some as mundane as lists of groceries and people who owed him money and some as intriguing as designs for wings and shoes for walking on water. There are compositions for paintings, studies of details and drapery, studies of faces and emotions, of animals, babies, dissections, plant studies, rock formations, whirlpools, war machines, flying machines and architecture.’ According to the British Library (see below), its notebook features many topics ‘including mechanics, the flow of rivers, astronomy, optics, architecture and the flight of birds’. More specifically, it includes a study for an underwater breathing apparatus, studies of reflections from concave mirrors, and drawings for the design of a mechanical organ.

Almost all the codices are held by major collections such as the Royal Library at Windsor Castle, the Louvre, the Biblioteca Nacional de España, the Victoria and Albert Museum, the Biblioteca Ambrosiana in Milan and the British Library. Bill Gates owns the only codex in private hands, and it is, apparently, displayed once a year in different cities around the world. Universal Leonardo is an excellent source for information about the codices, with a summary of their contents, their location, sample images etc. The initiative was launched back in 2006 by the Council of Europe and supported by Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design. Led by Leonardo scholar Professor Martin Kemp from Oxford University and Professor Marina Wallace from Central Saint Martins it has aimed to be the most comprehensive set of exhibitions and website ever devoted to the Italian genius.

Most of Leonardo’s writings are in, what’s called, mirror-image cursive, making it very difficult to read; he also used a variety of shorthand and symbols. Conveniently, though, topics are covered with text and diagrams on single sheets - thus, as it happened, latter collation of the sheets was independent of missing pages or disorder. But that said, many of the single pages are confused in themselves. According to Dr Richter (see below): ‘A page, for instance, will begin with some principles of astronomy, or the motion of the earth; then come the laws of sound, and finally some precepts as to colour. Another page will begin with his investigations on the structure of the intestines, and end with philosophical remarks as to the relations of poetry to painting; and so forth.’ 

Content from Leonardo’s notebooks first appeared in English in 1883, when the publisher Samson Low et al brought out The Literary Works of Leonardo da Vinci by Dr Jean Paul Richter. Both volumes, 500-600 pages long, can be read freely at Internet Archive (vol. 1, vol. 2). Two decades later came Leonardo da Vinci’s Note-books - Arranged and rendered into English with Introductions by Edward McCurdy (sic) (Duckworth, 1906). And 30 years after that, the author revised his book, quadrupling its pages from 300 to over 1200 (in two volumes) and this time calling it The Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci - Arranged, Rendered into English and Introduced by Edward MacCurdy (sic) (Jonathan Cape, 1938). The two volumes (vol. 1 and vol. 2) are also available at Internet Archive. Both Richter and McCurdy opted to arrange Leonardo’s writings in sections by topic (i.e. without relation to their codex source). In his first attempt, McCurdy chose to compile Leonardo’s writing in four main subject areas: life, nature, art, fantasy; 30 years later he opted for 50 topics and subjects. More recently, Oxford University Press has published Notebooks edited by Thereza Wells and Martin Kemp.

The Guardian, The Journaling Habit and Owlcation all have useful articles on Leonardo’s notebooks. Otherwise, several of the codices can be examined online in all their glorious detail: the British Library, for example, has digitised its holding, the Codex Arundel (Turning the Pages, full manuscript); and the Victoria & Albert Museum has done the same with its holding, the Codex Forster.

Cough, spitting, and fever

‘Mrs. Evans was displeas’d with some of my Maid Servants for employing one to Hang her Dog which was found & brought to her dead; Though they all vehemently deny’d it. My Wife was so Ill with a Cough, Spitting, & a Fever, she kept Chamber.’ Just another day in the life of a 17th-18th century physician. This is from the diary of Dr Claver Morris, who was baptised 360 years ago today. The diary is surprisingly interesting, as Dr Claver goes about his work (smallpox was rife), seeing to his estates (making hedges and ditches), pressing lemons for mixing with French brandy, making snuff, and showing pride in his son’s progress at school.

Morris was baptised on 1 May 1659 at Bishop’s Caundle in Dorset, the youngest of several children born to William Morris, rector of Manston, and his wife. Not much is known of his childhood, but he studied for several degrees at New Inn Hall, Oxford, and, in 1683, he became an extra licentiate of the Royal College of Physicians. He set up practice in the city of Wells, where he also developed remedies for use with his own patients and for distributing through local apothecaries.

Morris seems to have been very successful, and ultimately became a wealthy man. This was partly because he invested wisely, and partly because he married well, three times in fact (his first two wives dying young). He had a daughter with his first wife Grace, though wife and child died within a year of each other. He had a daughter by his second wife (the widow Elizabeth Jeans) - this was his beloved Betty, who later disappointed him sorely by marrying clandestinely and under age. Nevertheless, she had a happy marriage with numerous descendants. Morris also had a daughter and son with his third wife, Molly Bragge (though the daughter died in infancy, and the son died in his 30th year).

Morris’s interests ranged widely from science to music; and he held several local offices at various times in his life, such as commissioner for land tax, commissioner for sewers, and commissioner for the enclosure of two commons near Glastonbury. He was made a burgess of the city. He died in 1727, and was buried in Wells Cathedral. Wikipedia and The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (log-in required) have some further biographical details.

Morris Claver would barely be remembered today but for the notebooks and diaries he left behind. He kept detailed accounts between 1684 and 1726, themselves very informative, and then a diary in 1709-1710 and from 1718 to 1726. According to the ODNB, these manuscripts ‘provide a unique glimpse into the life of a successful provincial professional man in late Stuart and early Hanoverian England’. The diaries and accounts were first edited by Edmund Hobhouse and published by Simpkin Marshall in 1934 as The Diary of a West Country Physician A.D. 1684-1726. A brief review can be read in The Canadian Medical Association Journal, but otherwise there is very little information online about the book. Here, though, is a selection of extracts as edited by Hobhouse.

19 November 1720
‘I got up before 6, & lighted my Candle by the help of my Tinder-Box in my Saddle-Baggs.’

21 November 1720
‘I was at Close-Hall at our Practice of the Cecilia Song for tomorrow. Mr. Dingleton came in with us I having sent for him to Bristow to assist our Consort with his Basson, Trumpet, or Hautboy.’

22 November 1720
‘I went to the Cathedral, & join’d in the Practice of the Anthem, it being St. Cecilia’s-day. I return’d to the Church, & play’d the Anthem. I had a new Hand made of Deal, by Thomas Parfit, put into the Time-Beater. . . I went to our Cecilia-Meeting at Close-Hall where we had very good Musick, & we perform’d every Piece exactly. We had but 33 who pay’d 2s a piece for Tickets: I pay’d for my Wife, Son, Daughter, Her Husband, Mrs. Evans, & my self 12s. When all the Expenses were discharg’d, 9s-5d were lay’d out more than we had receiv’d.’

24 November 1720
‘Mr. Hillard the Apothecary came to desire me to go to that vicious Woman Mrs. Franklin dangerously Ill of the Small-Pox; But I refus’d to have anything to do with her.’

6 December 1720
‘Thomas Parfit, Charles Taylor, & I went to West-Bradley, to meet Mr. Gardener the Church-warden there, at the Church, whose Timber (the Lead of one side being sometime since taken off to be new wrought,) was found to be utterly decayd, & rotted. We all concluded there must be a Roof entirely new: But did not come to a settled agreement with Thomas Parfit, for how much Money to have it done. We afterwards went down into Baltonsbury North-wood, & measur’d my new made Hedge & Ditch (which were 5350 Chains; & also measur’d that which Astin or Bower were to make against my Enclosure which to mine own expense, & loss of Ground. Having to do with a couple of Rogues, I order’d my Hedgers to Dike & plant with Quick-Sets like the rest, being 6s, 43 Chains. The Water rose so high in the Brook by Cowards that the Horses were driven over it & just like to swim, & I went over the Bridge on Foot, & came through Gardeners Grounds to Mr. James Slade’s in West-Pennard. I had Thomas Parfit, & Charles Taylor after their supping with me to our Musick-Meeting, when Miss Catherine Layng, & a Young Woman who was a Singer in Hereford-shire who had an extraordinary fine Voice, & a very good manner. Sung.’

18 January 1721
‘I made some Lemon-Butter for my Perukes. Henry Coxe Sold me his Estate at West-Bradley for 400L, & I gave him 5 Guineas in Earnest, & we afterwards Executed a Covenant of this Bargain, at the Crown-Inn.’

21 January 1721
‘Eve Stacy came, & for her Husband (he being afraid of the Small-Pox) Agreed to Rent Puridge another Year. Mary Gould my Cook-Maid was so Ill in Convulsive Cough that all concluded she was Dieing.’

9 March 1721
‘Mrs. Evans was displeas’d with some of my Maid Servants for employing one to Hang her Dog which was found & brought to her dead; Though they all vehemently deny’d it. My Wife was so Ill with a Cough, Spitting, & a Fever, she kept Chamber.’

27 March 1721
‘I went to Mr. Hill’s to take the Wager of a Bottle of Wine he lost to me about the time of William the Conquerer’s Reigne. Mr. Lucas, Mr. Burland, & Mr. G. Mattocks, were there. We stay’d ’till 11.’

30 March 1721
‘I was at the Grammar-School, & heard the Orations, Declamations, & Verses, spoken by the Boys, My Son Speaking a Copy of Verses.’

10 April 1721
‘I went to Baltonsbury, (it being Easter Monday,) & carried the Deed of Allotment of the several Shares of the Proprietors in Baltonsbury North-Wood; Which I deliverd (in the Presence of Henry Bull,) to Mr. John Cowper; And he promis’d me he would take care it should be put in, & kept in the Church-Coffer.’

4 January 1725
‘I went (being last night desir’d) before 11 to Mr Keen’s whither Mr Baron of New-Street came to me. He being pitch’d on as a Referee by Captain Gendrault; as I was by Mr Keen to adjust their Claims to the Goods Mrs Keen died possessed of. . . . We after much contrasting this matter, concluded to have Sergeant Earl’s Advice, after Mr Keen & Captain Gendrault had enter’d into Bonds of Award: And if Mr Baron & I could not come to agree in our Determination, we should choose a Third Person whose appointment should be final.’

6 January 1725
‘I heard my Son Construe in the Greek Testament. . . I went to Mr Cupper’s Shop, & his Wife gave me 2 Glasses of her Clove-Wine.’

9 January 1725
‘My young Elms were brought from Bristow. James Whitehead came & offer’d to pay the 5L I yielded to take for the great Mischief he did in Topping 39 Maiden Oaks. I order’d him to Pay Mr Goldfinch the Charge of the Law I commenced against him; Before his doing of which I told him I would not Receive this Money: Which he said he would do.’

15 January 1725
‘I pressed out the Juice of 60 Limons which I had from Bristow, & after it was strain’d through a Flannel Bag I mix’d with each Pint of it a Pottle of French Brandy and Bottled it.’

24 February 1725
‘I made me a Pound of each sort of my Snuff.’

17 March 1725
‘I went to Dulcot, Mr Pain Senr having appointed a Meeting betwixt us at 3 a clock, about cutting the River by Alderley’s Close, streight. I went according to the Time fixt; & stay’d in Alderley’s Close above an hour: Then Mr. Pain came, And as I supposed before he was for Securing his own Ground from the washing of the River, but not mine: So we did not come to an Agreement in the Affair. I had Will Clark with me, with my Perambulator, & Measured the Way. From my Gate to the Gate over-right the Old Lime-Kiln on Tor-Hill, it was Half a Mile; & to the Middle of Dulcot Bridge it was 1 Mile & 31 Pearches.’

1 April 1725
‘My Wife being very like to Die, I sate up with her till 2.’

3 April 1725
‘I made a Decoction & Gargle for my Wife. I sate up with my poor Dying Wife. My Daughter, Mrs Drew, Rachel Teek, & Mrs Evans also sate up.’

4 April 1725
‘I made Decoctions for my Wife’s Drink. . . . My (Wife) who seem’d better in the Morning would be taken up, & sitting up 7 hours too long was very ill & light-Headed. Mr Keen came to talk about his going to Mrs Morgan to make his Addresses to her. I sate up again with my poor Wife all night, She labouring her last for Life, & Breathing with the most deplorable difficulty.’

5 April 1725
‘At 2 a clock in [the] morning my Servant Mary Rogers (who with Mrs Batty (my Butcher’s Wife) & Rachel Tike watch’d with my Wife, Mrs Evans also sitting up with them,) sent to call up my Daughter Bettey Burland, according to her earnest desire, & Mrs Anne Drew. Bettey immediately came, & being in the utmost Passion of Grief was like to faint at her coming into the kitchin: But she ran up the Stairs; when she came where my Wife lay, she was in a great Agonie & cry’d out, Oh! my dear Mother I shall lose my best Friend! then she fell into a Swoon; & recovering from it, she said, Oh my Dear Brother! My poor Wife hearing it, in great concernment started up & ask’d, Is Willey Dead? (He being just recovering out of the Small Pox). I told her he was very well. But she was so affected with the distrust of it, that to satisfie her Fear I was fain to make him get on his Clothes, & come to her; And the sight of him seemd (even though delirious) to please her, & she looking upon him, being orderd by me to turn himself advantagiously to the Light of the Candle that she perfectly see his Face, said she never saw him look better in her Life. Then he kiss’d her, & return’d to his Bed. Mrs Anne Drew (being call’d by Mr Burlands Man-Servant,) came shortly after my Daughter; And both continued with my Dear Wife who from a Death Sweat grew in her Hands & Arms very cold, left speaking in two or 3 hours, & half an hour after Ten in the Forenoon she Breath[ed] her last.

I sent to have Rings, Escutcheons, &c, made. In the Evening I sent for my Daughter & she came, Mr Lucas came, & then Mr Burland, & they Eat Bread & Cheese.’

18 May 1725
’I made an end Writing my Will.’

The Diary Junction

So sinful as a man

‘A fierce struggle in my breast between love and my artistic dreams is about to be proclaimed. Should I stay permanently in New York with Edyth and become an American? If so, when will I able to visit Paris, for which I have longed all these months and years? Recalling the sadness of Tannhäuser who, sated with the love of a voluptuous goddess, attempted to escape from her grotto, I despondently looked at her as she slept. Ah, nothing is so sinful as a man!’ This is from a youthful diary kept by Nagai Kafū, one of Japan’s great early 20th century writers. He was living in the United States at the time, where he fell in love with Edyth, a prostitute. Later on, back in Tokyo, he would marry a geisha, albeit for a brief period. He died 60 years ago today, and is largely remembered for novels which, while often telling of the painful transition from traditional to modern cultures, often feature characters from the city’s entertainment districts.

Nagai Sokichi, who later took on the pen name of Kafū, was born into a wealthy family in Tokyo in 1879. His father was a scholar, poet and businessman, and his mother was a musician. As a child, Kafū was sent to live with his mother’s family for several years, but he returned home in 1886 when starting elementary school. From 1891, he attended an English-language school. In 1897 he failed to pass the university entrance exams, and went with his mother and brothers to join his father in Shanghai. On returning to Tokyo, he began writing short stories, studied with a Kabuki playwright, and worked briefly as a newspaper reporter. In 1902-1903, he published three novels which brought him some success.

However, in 1903 Kafū’s father insisted he travel to the United States to study banking. He started in Tacoma, Washington, enrolled for a while in Michigan’s Kalamazoo College and then worked for a Japanese bank in New York City and in Lyon, France. He visited Paris and London before returning to Tokyo in 1908. Once there, he soon began publishing prolifically, plays and stories, some about his travels (such as in Amerika Monogatari) and some about traditional Japanese culture. During the 1910s, he served as professor of French literature at Keio University; he also launched various literary journals.

During this period, Kafū’s was briefly married twice - to Yone, the daughter of a wealthy merchant, and to Yaeji, a geisha - though each marriage faltered quickly because of Kafū’s infidelity. He resigned his academic position in 1916 to focus exclusively on his literary work. Udekurabe, published in 1918 and translated as Geisha in Rivalry, was notable for its unromantic descriptions of a geisha’s life. Thereafter, he published little. Bokuto kidan, from 1937 (translated as A Strange Tale from East of the River), is considered his late masterpiece and tells of a writer who has an affair with a prostitute. Having refused to help the war effort, he was prohibited from publishing during the years of the Second World War, but continued once it was over. He died on 30 April 1959.

Encyclopedia.com has this assessment: ‘Kafū’s writing brings an unusual blend of Western and traditional concerns to the Japanese literary tradition; the individualistic spirit of America, for example, informs his books even as traditional Japanese culture acts as their protagonist. His work thus tells the story of the painful transition from traditional cultures, when the beautiful old arts are lost and no invigorating spirit is won.’ Further information is also available at Wikipedia and The Japan Times (which said in 2009, ‘among the major Japanese writers of the early 20th century, [Kafū] scarcely ranks as a survivor.’

Kafū kept diaries throughout his life, starting when he was abroad in the United States - indeed he is often referred to as a ‘diarist’. Several tomes of these diaries have been published, but they haven’t, as far as I know, been translated into English. However, Donald Keene’s 1999 work, Modern Japanese Diaries (Columbia University Press) contains a chapter on Kafū including translated extracts. According to Keene, there are three published works of Kafū’s diaries: Seiyū Nisshi Shō  (Selections from the Diary of a Journey to the West); Kafū’s Shinkichōsha Nikki (Diary of One Recently Returned to His Country), published in 1909; and Danchōtei Nichijō (selections from his diaries between 1917 and 1959). 

Keene explains that the second of these ‘is unquestionably a work of fiction cast in the diary form’ even if ‘the opinions expressed by the diarist so closely reflect Kafū’s at this time that the work can be read as a diary, at least in the sense that we read the diaries of the Heian court ladies or Bashō’s Narrow Road of Oku.’ Of the third diary, Keene says it is extremely detailed: Kafū ‘traces, day-by-day, the changes in the world around him’ - but often giving the impression of bitterness.

The following extracts (all undated) are from Kafū’s first published diary (written while in the US) as found in Keene’s book.

‘Perhaps it is because I am now living abroad that of late I have somehow found it hard to stop thinking about the special flavor of the old writings, so rich in artistic effect. I take from my suitcase such works as The Tale of the Heike and A Tale of Flowering Fortunes and read them at night by the fire.’

‘The newspapers and magazines I have been sent from Japan all report the death of Saitō Ryokuu. As I read the accounts I felt a sadness that was definitely not that of a total stranger - sadness that Ryokuu’s life had been a tragedy created by his own character. Ah, I thought, the last man to delight in the Edo pleasure quarters as a connoisseur of their charms had in the end been unable to survive the struggle for existence of twentieth-century society.’
 
‘I have always loved southern ways, and that is why I wanted to go south, following the flow of the Mississippi River. I planned to enter Louisiana University. When I heard that even now there are many French people living there, and that they use the French language in their daily conversations, I was extremely eager to go, but people warned me not to. saying the climate was unhealthy. I had no choice but to head north instead.’

‘The dream of a beautiful, fragrant, fan-shaped city [Kalamazoo, Michigan], has at last faded from my heart, and I have come to enjoy instead a snowbound life of absolute tranquillity.’

‘Ah, nothing can be agreed on between my father and myself. Why should I, who have grown accustomed to failure and disappointment, be surprised or lament at this late date? Sooner or later I shall leave Washington and hide myself in some alley in New York, never to return to Japan again.’

‘I suggested we [he and Edyth] go into the park. As we walked along a deserted path, the moonlight filtering through treetops that had begun to lose their leaves was misted over. There was no wind that night, and the strong fragrance of the cosmetics she wore made me think I was in a garden where roses bloomed on a spring night. When presently I informed her that I would be leaving the city and going to New York, she said nothing tor a while, but merely kicked angrily and noisily with the point of her narrow shoes at the leaves that had fallen and accumulated. Suddenly she threw her arms around me and, embracing me tightly, said in a voice clouded with tears, “Then you must come to my place every night from tonight on. I probably won’t be able to follow you, much as I’d like to, but please come to see me every day without fail until the day we must part.” So saying, she pressed her face closely against my chest.’

‘I feel as if I have become exactly like a character in a French novel. I all but weep out of happiness and gratitude, but at the same time, when I think of how much sadder the second parting will be when, inevitably, it presently comes, it seems that the best thing would be to make a clean break now. Mulling over such thoughts keeps me from sleeping. A fierce struggle in my breast between love and my artistic dreams is about to be proclaimed. Should I stay permanently in New York with Edyth and become an American? If so, when will I able to visit Paris, for which I have longed all these months and years? Recalling the sadness of Tannhäuser who, sated with the love of a voluptuous goddess, attempted to escape from her grotto, I despondently looked at her as she slept. Ah, nothing is so sinful as a man!’

‘On the way she kissed me again and again, inside the carriage, then on the ferryboat. As the time for the train to depart approached, she threw from the train window the rose she wore at her throat, as a keepsake until we should meet again. I suddenly felt that I could not abandon her, no matter what sacrifices this might involve.’

In church, at the alehouse

‘Jane Wright, Mr. Sorrowcold’s maid, came to towne and we ware very merry togather. I accomodated her with Ale, and so we parted. I was att this time in a very fair way for pleaseing my carnell selfe, for I knew my selfe exceptable with Emm Potter, notwithstanding my love was entire to Mary Naylor in respect of my vow to her, and I was in hopes that her father countenanced me in the thinge.’ This is from the diary of Roger Lowe, a shopkeeper in the Midlands, who died all of 340 years ago this month. Experts say the diary is a ‘rare survival’ from the 17th century and records a great variety of social interaction, ‘centred on the alehouse as much as upon the religious meeting.’

Roger Lowe was born in 1642 in Leigh, Lancashire. He attended the local grammar school, and worked for the vicar of Great Budworth, Cheshire in 1657 and 1658. Subsequently, though, he was apprenticed to Hammond, a Leigh mercer, for whom he kept a general shop at Ashton-in-Makerfield, near Wigan. He became a busy member of Ashton society, dealing in a wide variety of commodities, with only occasional visits from his master for whom he made regular profits. He also acted as a scribe and notary, being paid in ale as often as in cash. From late 1665, Lowe took over charge of the shop, but found trading on his own account difficult. Before too long, he had moved to Warrington, Lancashire, where he worked for Thomas Peake for three years. In 1668, after a succession of sweethearts, he married Emma Potter, and returned to live in Ashton. There is no recorded death date for him, but it must have been in April 1679 as a post-mortem inventory of his goods was taken on 22 April that year. A brief bio can be found at the National Archives, and a slightly less brief one at the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (log-in required).

Lowe is only remembered today because of a diary he kept for some years, and which survived though the centuries to be first published in the latter half of the 1800s. It is considered ‘a rare survival’, the testament of a common man in the mid 17th century, providing a primary source for information on the history of social attitudes and popular presbyterianism. ‘Its wealth of incidental detail,’ the ONDB says, ‘records a great variety of social interaction, centred on the alehouse as much as upon the religious meeting’.

The diary, which is held by Wigan Archives and Local Studies, first appeared in the Local Gleanings columns of The Manchester Courier, in 1876, and then in the antiquarian columns of The Leigh Chronicle. The following year, it was printed as a stand-alone volume, with a brief introduction and notes. More than half a century later, in 1938, it was edited by William L. Sachse and published by Longmans & Co as The Diary of Roger Lowe of Ashton-in-Makerfield, Lancashire 1663-1674. This is freely available online, at the HathiTrust digital library, and which is the source of the following extracts.

10 September 1663
‘I was sent for to Banferlonge to Anne Greinsworth to write, and it was a very Rany day. This day Hamblett Ashton was att Warrington buryd, being Munday before hangd att Chester for murder. The Lord preserve us from such practices and such end. Amen.’

13 September 1663
‘Lord’s day. I went to Leigh and att noone John Bradshaw and I went into Vicars Feild and talked of former things. I was att this time very sad in spirit by reason of my selfe and seeing my father’s and mother’s grave and pondering of other deaths, for I went round about church to looke att graves of such as I knew.’

17 September 1663
‘I went to bowleing Alley and lost 12d., att which I was sore greeved, came home, and this evening I went with James Naylor to Neawton awooing Ann Barrowe. She had sent for me to come speake with her. I went to Mr. Collier’s to fetch her to us into widow Heapy’s, for there we resided. I put of my one hatt and put on another, and made also my[selfe] as if I ware John Naylor’s man and was sent to towne upon an occasion, and so had something to speake to Anne from her sister. Get her out, and she, with much requesting, promisd to come to us after supper, which shee did; desird me to meete her att Winwick, Lord’s day after.’

16 October 1663
‘I was sent for to Thomas Heyes’. I went. When I came thither it was but upon shop effaires. I sett forward to Banfer longe; there I stayd and dranke Botle Ale and Common Ale and was very merry. Set forward for home; when I was about Roger Naylor’s I went in, and Mary was angry with me [that] I had beene out of shop, for folkes had beene there enquireing for me, which angred her very sore, soe shee was troubled att me.’

13 November 1663
‘Jane Wright, Mr. Sorrowcold’s maid, came to towne and we ware very merry togather. I accomodated her with Ale, and so we parted. I was att this time in a very fair way for pleaseing my carnell selfe, for I knew my selfe exceptable with Emm Potter, notwithstanding my love was entire to Mary Naylor in respect of my vow to her, and I was in hopes that her father countenanced me in the thinge.’

15 November 1663
‘Lord’s day. It was a very rainy day day [sic] and Mr. Blakebume came not to chappell, but sent Mr. Barker to read, and I was som what troubled. Old Roger Naylor came and sate with me all aftemoone. This day was not well spent, I must confesse. The Lord humble me for it.’

23 Jun 1664
‘I went to Leigh and gave my Dame 9 li. in monys. She would have the Taylor take measure on me for a paire of Breeches, dublett, and coate, and she and I went into shop to looke out cloth, and she made me take my choice, soe we tooke two Remlents into house and she kept them in her custodie. This newes sent me joyfullie towards Ashton. It was the Lord that movd her; nay, she was so forward as she would have had the tailor left others’ worke for to have done my clothes against Sabbath day.’

12 March 1674
‘I went to Coz Robert Rosbothome to Rixham faire to seeke his mare that was stolne over night, and we mett with Mathew Cooke, who we conjecturd to be the theefe, and upon our wordes he fled and left a stolne mare, which we securd in town and was after ownd ownd [sic].’

The Diary Junction

All change in the Balkans

‘Today Montenegro ceased to exist, [. . .] It is however a sad thing that a country should lose its independence of 300 years by the cancelling of an exsequatur to 4 or 5 consuls scattered over the world.’ This is from the diary of the eminent historian Harold William Vazeille Temperley, born 130 years ago today. As a specialist in the Balkans, he served as an adviser to the government during the First World War and its aftermath. His detailed and historically important diary of the period lay ‘slumbering’ in his family’s possession until recently when it was finally edited and published as An Historian in Peace and War.

Temperley was born on 20 April 1879 in Cambridge, the son of Ernest Temperley, a Fellow and Bursar of Queens’ College. He was educated at Sherborne School, and then at King’s College, Cambridge, where he graduated in history. In 1903, he was appointed lecturer at the University of Leeds, and two years later took up a fellowship at Peterhouse, Cambridge. The same year he published his first book, Life of Canning, which had emerged out of his early interest in 18th and 19th century British constitutional history. He married Gladys Bradford, also a historian, in 1913 (though she died tragically young in 1923) and they had one son.

By the start of the Great War, Temperley’s interests had switched to Europe and Britain’s foreign policy, and by then he had travelled extensively in Austria-Hungary and the Balkans. He volunteered for the Fife and Forfar Yeomanry, but missed the Gallipoli landings because of typhoid fever. Thereafter, he served in the War Office, researching policy in the Balkans. In 1917, he published History of Serbia; and in 1919 he acted as an adviser for the British delegation to the Paris peace conference. He was also the British representative on the Albanian boundary commission, and an advisor in 1921 to Arthur Balfour at the League of Nations.

During the first half of the 1920s, Temperley edited six volumes of A History of the Peace Conference of Paris; and, in 1923, he founded The Cambridge Historical Journal. For a decade or so and with George Peabody Gooch, he worked on the long-term project to publish British Documents on the Origins of the War, 1898-1914. In 1927, he published the best-selling textbook, co-authored with A. J. Grant, Europe in the Nineteenth Century, 1789-1914. In 1929, he married his cousin Dorothy Vazeille Temperley; and in 1930 the University of Cambridge appointed him professor of modern history.

The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (log-in required) has this assessment of the man: ‘Temperley was a gregarious - often anarchic - figure who delighted in a keen sense of paradox in history. He was capable of great personal generosity, as well as sentimental outbursts. He was also unpredictable and prone to long abstruse feuds with libraries, archives, ministries, pupils, and colleagues. It may well be that the tense exchanges with the Foreign Office over the edition of documents deprived him of a knighthood.’ He died in 1939. Further information is also available at Wikipedia, Cambridge University, and from John D. Fair’s biography, Harold Temperley: A Scholar and Romantic in the Public Realm (available for preview at Googlebooks).

Temperley began keeping a near-daily diary in the autumn of 1916 and continued for the rest of his life. Although the manuscript documents remain in the possession of the family, Thomas Otte, professor of diplomatic history at the University of East Anglia, edited them for publication by Ashgate (now Routledge) in 2014 as An Historian in Peace and War: The Diaries of Harold Temperley. The publisher says: ‘As a professional historian he appreciated the significance of eyewitness accounts, and if Temperley was not at the very heart of Allied decision-making during those years, he certainly had a ringside seat. Trained to observe accurately, he recorded the concerns and confusions of wartime, conscious always of the historical significance of what he observed. As a result there are few sources that match Temperley’s diary, which presents a fascinating and unique perspective upon the politics and diplomacy of the First World War and its aftermath.’ A review of the work can be found in the Journal of Military History.

According to Otte, Temperley was in the habit of writing up impressions in diary form as early as 1900, usually in the form of travel journals while on summer visits to continental destinations, but it was only in 1916, once firmly established in the War Office that he began to keep a ‘more or less daily’ record of his activities and observations. ‘As a professional historian,’ Otte says, ‘he naturally appreciated the significance of eyewitness accounts, and it seems clear from the nature of the source that he meant eventually to publish at least parts of his diary.’ However, his early death prevented this, and later attempts by his widow, apparently, led nowhere. The diaries, in fact, lay ‘slumbering’ in a tin trunk in Temperley’s Somerset home. As a historical source, Otte concludes, the value of the diaries is ‘immense’, and ‘now take their place alongside those of J. W. Headlam-Morley and Harold Nicolson as essential sources for anyone wishing to understand the development of British foreign policy and diplomacy’ in the period.

Otte’s edition of Temperley’s diaries can be previewed at Googlebooks - the source of the following extracts. (I have reproduced the extracts more or less as published, including the editor’s many square brackets - with one exception: I have removed several instances of ‘[Lloyd George]’ leaving Temperley’s ‘LG’ as sufficient identification.)

25 January 1918
‘I heard today from Sir George Arthur, the last story of LG and Asquith. Recently, feeling his insecurity, as witness his lunch to D[avid] D[avies], [Lloyd George] asked Squith to come to 10 Downing St. ‘I’ll be damned if I do’, said Squith to the intermediary. So LG Cavendish Square. There he posed as humble almost servile. ‘I should be ready to serve under you’, said LG. ‘Neither under you, nor over, nor with you,’ said Squith. (Later this story appeared in the Bystander on the 26th.)

The conversation drifted on to Northcliffe and his hatred of the King, due largely to the fact that the King disliked and hardly ever received him. It is well-known at Court that Northcliffe is anti-King, and it is believed that LG is a Republican in principle.

The Queen told a friend of mine that she had left her emeralds not to the P[rince] of W[ales] as future King but personally. She thought thus that he might inherit them.’

22 February 1921
‘Today Montenegro ceased to exist, on receiving a report communicated by me that Gjonovic[,] the Montenegrin Republican Delegate on the Con[stitutiona]l Committee had proclaimed his adhesion to the Yugoslav union idea, despite his Republicanism, and it was also reported that all the Montenegrin (deputies), including the Communists, had taken the oath on the Constitution. France had already discontinued (30 Dec[ember]) diplomatic representation. Our rep[resentati]ve had left on 24th August.

It is however a sad thing that a country should lose its independence of 300 years by the cancelling of an exsequatur to 4 or 5 consuls scattered over the world.

This night there was a debate on the policy of the Internat[iona]l Inst[itute]. It was of no importance, but in ref[eren]ce to ‘policy’ we had some revelations of the past. Sir M[aurice] de Bunsen, who rep[resent]ed us at Vienna till the war - he contributed some senile reflections: ‘we are always told we sh[oul]d have a policy, but I am not certain that it was an advantage and that our advantage has not lain in not having one. When I went to Vienna in [1913] I don’t remember that I heard that a great war was likely. I heard a great deal about the disputes of the C[anadian] P[acific] Railway] with Austria, but nothing about the imminence of a European crisis. This was the old order, each dipl[omatlc] representative left free to his own devices - and to find out things for himself. I am not certain it was a bad one’. I am.’

15 August 1928
‘[Oslo] At the reception, King Haakon VII spoke to me - he has a gentle laugh, displaying his teeth, amiable and mild.

He talked of our publication and said that there were indiscretions in Sidney Lee’s life of Edward. I did not remind him [Haakon VII] that I had seen his indiscretion. He had tried to make his Cabinet join the with England at the beginning of the war, and this fact we omitted in vol. XI. It was not vital to the understanding of the outbreak of the war.

He said on Edward’s death he had asked that the private letters should be destroyed. He did not know whether this was done. I said I thought so, as much had certainly been destroyed.

Koht said he was going leave. I said ‘Can you, before the King?’ He said ‘Yes, if he does not see me’. Just at this point the King came up as he was leaving. He saw us and took Koht by the hand & walked out with him.

The King is said not to speak Norwegian. He has at any rate a Danish accent. He is very democratic and goes up to Holmkoben [sic] to ski in a tram.’

12 December 1916
‘Peace - in the words of the German Emperor - scraps of paper to be binding and swords to beaten into spades. A peace-offer by wireless by 4 despotic monarchs in the world, while we still fumble on the backstairs of secret diplomacy. Now I understand why several days ago LG’s private secretary [Philip Kerr] wanted me to write an article on ‘What Peace Means’. That, according to LG, is the greatest danger.’

10 September 1917
‘Returned after my second visit to Porlock and Exmoor. Applied my military knowledge to the problem of the Doones. The existence of these freebooters cannot be denied today because parish-registers (which some of the critics do not know) mention persons as having been killed by the Doones. Critics of another sort point out that the Doone valley is not a natural fortress, but is actually defenceless, because it is relatively low, and there is no true Doone gate or waterslide as in Blackmoore’s story. But this is a shallow view - a far better defence than choosing a natural fortress was to choose a secluded valley remote from roads. Now, if examined carefully the position of the Doone valley on Exmoor is unique. The modern roads may not have existed but their prototypes in track and by path did. Now Doone valley is the centre of an area of which the four corners are Brendon, Simon’s bath [sic], Exford and Porlock common, roughly about 5 miles square. In this area there is neither road nor track at all making a through-traverse from side to side of the square. There is no other such trackless waste in all Exmoor - no other place 2 miles square in which tracks do not meet. This therefore was a perfectly ideal centre for a robber band to live. Their valley could not be seen or approached from any important road or track. It was, therefore, ideal for their purposes, because they could sally out straight across country, in any direction, and the distance of 5 miles each way gave them opportunity for detecting any advance.’

13 November 1917
‘Jews. The upshot of an inquiry into Bolshevik activities seems to show that many of them are Jewish, that some of them are paid by Germany, that Lenin, though not a Jew, is so paid. But there the matter would seem to stop. The clearest case of anti-Entente Jewish interference is the Rumcherod, and Jewish agents in Roumania, who sought to corrupt Roumanian Jews, soldiers and peasants and outrageously interfered with the rights of Jews.

It is probable that the majority of Jews are anti-Entente mainly on Socialistic grounds perhaps, but certainly also because of previous maltreatment. The Jews is Entente countries, other than Russia & Roumania, have decidedly come out in favour of the Entente. Even in Poland the Jews are now anti-German instead of anti-Russian. Zionism will probably put the finishing touch to the process of winning the Jewish majority.

Italy. We certainly took away our guns from Cadorna with a curtness that was discouraging, when he declined to renew the offensive on the Isonzo. His calculations were wrong but so also were ours.’

Diary briefs

Diary evidence in Israeli corruption claim - The Times of Israel

Jan Morris’s ‘charming’ diary - Faber & Faber, Vox

Kiwi potter’s diaries  - Stuff

Great Escape hero diary sold - Hansons, BBC

Salt in My Soul: An Unfinished Life - Penguin Random House, Amazon

Nazi diary reveals treasure hauls - Daily Mail, Curiosmos

Diary of Hae Min Lee - Heavy

A.K. Ramanujan’s diaries - Penguin India, The Hans India

Ettie’s Diary: 1910 - 1912 - Amazon