Friday, September 27, 2013
Diary briefs
Excerpts from Ferdinand Marcos’s diaries - The Inquirer
Ohio kidnap victims kept diaries - Sky News
Montana photographer’s diaries - Montana Memory Project, Independant Record
Canvey museum to put historic war diaries online - Echo-News
Stanford sues over Chiang Kai-Shek’s diaries - Bloomberg, Daily News, The China Post
Diary evidence in Rachael Slack case - Derby Telegraph
Leonardo da Vinci’s diaries on display in Venice - Art Daily, Galleria dell’Academia
Michael Jackson’s diary reveals movie ambitions - Page Six, Daily Mail
Murdered wife leaves diary detailing abuse - UPI, BBC
Robert F. Kennedy’s alleged sex diary - New York Post, Huffington Post
Guru Ramdev says UK customs seized diaries - Firstpost India
Monday, September 23, 2013
Paddy’s broken road
John Murray has just published the final part of a trilogy by Patrick (Paddy) Leigh Fermor concerning his epic journey on foot across Europe in the mid-1930s. The first two parts, thought by some to be classics of travel literature, were written from memory 40-50 years after the journey and not published until the 1970s-1980s. Leigh Fermor died in 2011 and never completed the third part, but the new book - The Broken Road - has been compiled from early pieces of his writing, including a diary he kept during the latter stages of his walk.
Paddy was born in London in 1915, the son of a distinguished geologist then working in India, and spent the first four years of his life with a family in Northamptonshire while his mother and sister stayed with his father in India. Subsequently, he had trouble with schools, being expelled from some, and being sent to one for difficult children for a while. Nevertheless, he managed some learning, including Greek.
By the summer of 1933, still only 18, Paddy had tired of education and decided to live in London and become a writer. A few months later, though, he was off on the first of his many travels: a walk across Europe from the Hook of Holland to Constantinople. The journey lasted from December 1933 to January 1935, and thereafter he travelled around Greece, settling with a Romanian noblewoman, Balasha Cantacuzène, first near Athens then in Moldavia.
Paddy served with the Irish Guards during the Second World War, and then joined the Special Operations Executive in 1941, helping to coordinate resistance in German-occupied Crete. He led the party that in 1944 captured and evacuated a German commander. Captain Bill Stanley Moss, his second in command at the time, later wrote about the events in Ill Met by Moonlight: The Abduction of General Kreipe, which was adapted into a film by Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger with Dirk Bogarde playing Paddy.
In 1950, Paddy published his first book, The Traveller’s Tree, about post-war travels in the Caribbean, and he went on to write several further books, including Mani and Roumeli, of his travels on mule and foot around remote parts of Greece. He was friendly with Lawrence Durrell, another writer on Greece (see The Diary Review - A book out of these scraps) who wrote of him in his Cyprus book, Bitter Lemons: ‘After a splendid dinner by the fire he starts singing, songs of Crete, Athens, Macedonia. When I go out to refill the ouzo bottle. . . I find the street completely filled with people listening in utter silence and darkness. Everyone seems struck dumb. “What is it?” I say, catching sight of Frangos. “Never have I heard of Englishmen singing Greek songs like this!” Their reverent amazement is touching; it is as if they want to embrace Paddy wherever he goes.’
In 1968, after many years together, Paddy married Joan Elizabeth Rayner (née Eyres Monsell), daughter of the 1st Viscount Monsell. She accompanied him on his travels (until her death 2003) and the two were based partly near Kardamyli in the southern Peloponnese and partly in Gloucestershire, England. They had no children. Paddy was knighted in 2004, and he died in 2011. Further information can be found from Wikipedia, The New Yorker, various obituaries (The Guardian, for example, The Independent, the BBC), or from reviews of a ‘magnificent’ biography by Artemis Cooper published last year by John Murray (The Telegraph, The Daily Mail).
In 1977, John Murray published Paddy’s A Time of Gifts, often considered to be a classic of travel literature. This was a memoir of the first part of his journey on foot across Europe in 1933-1934. (Much of it can be read online at Googlebooks.) Nearly a decade later, a second volume appeared, Between the Woods and the Water; and a third, covering the final part of the walk to Constantinople (Istanbul), was promised but never completed: he laboured at this third book for years but never produced a manuscript. Now, in September 2013, John Murray (part of Hodder) has brought out a third volume edited by Colin Thubron and Artemis Cooper - The Broken Road: From the Iron Gates to Mount Athos - by way of trying to complete the trilogy.
But this is a very different book to the first two since it is made up of two documents written by Paddy much earlier in his life, and not crafted by him to be the third book of the trilogy. The first, called ‘A Youthful Journey’, was inspired by a commission for a magazine on the pleasure of walking; and the second is a diary Paddy lost but, oddly, recovered in 1965.
In the book’s introduction - which can be read on the Hodder website - the editors provide a full explanation of the convoluted story behind The Broken Road, and some background on Paddy’s diaries. They also explain the genesis of the title chosen to indicate Paddy’s unfinished written journey, and the fact that the work is not the polished version he would have desired, ‘only the furthest in the end we [the editors] could go.’
‘One of the astonishing facts about A Time of Gifts and Between the Woods and the Water,’ the editors say, ‘is that they were written from memory, with no diaries or notebooks to sustain them. Paddy’s first diary was stolen in a Munich youth hostel in 1934, and those that succeeded it, along with his picaresque letters to his mother, were stored during the war in the Harrods Depository, where years later they were destroyed unclaimed. It was a loss, he used to say, that “still aches, like an old wound in wet weather”.’
However, in 1965, while researching an article on the Danube, he met up again with Balasha Cantacuzène, who he had not seen since the start of the war in 1939. She had saved his fourth and final diary, and returned it to him during this visit.
The editors continue: ‘Written in faded pencil, the Green Diary, as he called it, carries his life forward to 1935 after his walk was over, and is appended with sketches of churches, costumes, friends, vocabularies in Hungarian, Rumanian, Bulgarian and Greek, and the names and addresses of almost everyone he stayed with. But strangely, although the diary covered all his walk from the Iron Gates to Constantinople and more, he never collated it with ‘A Youthful Journey’. Perhaps its callowness jarred with the later, more studied manuscript, or their factual differences disconcerted him. The two narratives often diverge. Whatever the reason, the diary - which retained an almost talismanic significance for him - did nothing to solve his dilemma.’
Here are three partial extracts from the diary section of The Broken Road.
24 January 1935
‘I left Salonika last night; Patullo and Elphinstone came along with me to the boat, and we bought some bread, and salami and cheese by the harbour gates. I was glad they came, as it was already sunset, and it’s very lonely starting off on these journeys alone. The ship was surprisingly small; very dirty and overloaded with every kind of cargo, all of which was hauled on board in a surprisingly unworkmanlike way. The boat was a shambles inside too, with enormous banks of coal in the passages, and peasants lying in their blankets in despondent groups everywhere. We stood in the passages and smoked, and chatted, waiting for the bells to ring to announce departure, so they could get off; but the boat was nearly two hours late, and they nearly came away with me, which would have been rather serious for Patullo has to join a troopship for Hong Kong in a day or two at Port Said. [. . .]’
27 January 1935
‘I left Koutloumousiou early yesterday, and started off downhill, the road winding beside a rushing torrent, breaking over great boulders, and dashing on in a lather of white foam. The peninsula here is entirely forested with evergreens, so that it is difficult to believe it’s only January; among the ilexes and oleanders are many olives, aspens, cypresses and cedar. The higher slopes are almost entirely fir.
Coming round a corner I saw a funny little grey-haired man sitting on the edge of an old stone well, with some big brown paper parcels beside him. He wished me good day in French, and giving me a cigarette, began to tell me all about himself. He was from Kavalla, and had lived on the Holy Mountain for four years, making maps of it, and copying ikons on wood. He showed me a few of these, they were good.
The sea soon came into sight round a bend, and the large monastery of Iviron, the high walls appearing above the trees. These walls are lofty, and have the effect of being much higher than they are long, as they are divided into sort of rectangular bastions, rising sheer to quite a height without a single window, then suddenly branching out into an overhanging balcony, with undulating tiled roofs, and the plaster painted bright colours - red, blue, green, in crude designs.
Several monks were sitting on benches in the big, sunny cobbled courtyard, half asleep, stroking their beards. [. . .]’
28 January 1935
‘I left Iviron after an early lunch yesterday, the track running close along the shore, sometimes over the high rocks, sometimes over the pebbles and sand of the beach, and sometimes winding away inland, a little footpath between the trees. It was really a succession of Devonshire combes, but full of wildly growing evergreens, with now and then a squat stone hermitage standing on a ledge of the mountainside, surrounded by dark cypresses. [. . .]’
Paddy was born in London in 1915, the son of a distinguished geologist then working in India, and spent the first four years of his life with a family in Northamptonshire while his mother and sister stayed with his father in India. Subsequently, he had trouble with schools, being expelled from some, and being sent to one for difficult children for a while. Nevertheless, he managed some learning, including Greek.
By the summer of 1933, still only 18, Paddy had tired of education and decided to live in London and become a writer. A few months later, though, he was off on the first of his many travels: a walk across Europe from the Hook of Holland to Constantinople. The journey lasted from December 1933 to January 1935, and thereafter he travelled around Greece, settling with a Romanian noblewoman, Balasha Cantacuzène, first near Athens then in Moldavia.
Paddy served with the Irish Guards during the Second World War, and then joined the Special Operations Executive in 1941, helping to coordinate resistance in German-occupied Crete. He led the party that in 1944 captured and evacuated a German commander. Captain Bill Stanley Moss, his second in command at the time, later wrote about the events in Ill Met by Moonlight: The Abduction of General Kreipe, which was adapted into a film by Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger with Dirk Bogarde playing Paddy.
In 1950, Paddy published his first book, The Traveller’s Tree, about post-war travels in the Caribbean, and he went on to write several further books, including Mani and Roumeli, of his travels on mule and foot around remote parts of Greece. He was friendly with Lawrence Durrell, another writer on Greece (see The Diary Review - A book out of these scraps) who wrote of him in his Cyprus book, Bitter Lemons: ‘After a splendid dinner by the fire he starts singing, songs of Crete, Athens, Macedonia. When I go out to refill the ouzo bottle. . . I find the street completely filled with people listening in utter silence and darkness. Everyone seems struck dumb. “What is it?” I say, catching sight of Frangos. “Never have I heard of Englishmen singing Greek songs like this!” Their reverent amazement is touching; it is as if they want to embrace Paddy wherever he goes.’
In 1968, after many years together, Paddy married Joan Elizabeth Rayner (née Eyres Monsell), daughter of the 1st Viscount Monsell. She accompanied him on his travels (until her death 2003) and the two were based partly near Kardamyli in the southern Peloponnese and partly in Gloucestershire, England. They had no children. Paddy was knighted in 2004, and he died in 2011. Further information can be found from Wikipedia, The New Yorker, various obituaries (The Guardian, for example, The Independent, the BBC), or from reviews of a ‘magnificent’ biography by Artemis Cooper published last year by John Murray (The Telegraph, The Daily Mail).
In 1977, John Murray published Paddy’s A Time of Gifts, often considered to be a classic of travel literature. This was a memoir of the first part of his journey on foot across Europe in 1933-1934. (Much of it can be read online at Googlebooks.) Nearly a decade later, a second volume appeared, Between the Woods and the Water; and a third, covering the final part of the walk to Constantinople (Istanbul), was promised but never completed: he laboured at this third book for years but never produced a manuscript. Now, in September 2013, John Murray (part of Hodder) has brought out a third volume edited by Colin Thubron and Artemis Cooper - The Broken Road: From the Iron Gates to Mount Athos - by way of trying to complete the trilogy.
But this is a very different book to the first two since it is made up of two documents written by Paddy much earlier in his life, and not crafted by him to be the third book of the trilogy. The first, called ‘A Youthful Journey’, was inspired by a commission for a magazine on the pleasure of walking; and the second is a diary Paddy lost but, oddly, recovered in 1965.
In the book’s introduction - which can be read on the Hodder website - the editors provide a full explanation of the convoluted story behind The Broken Road, and some background on Paddy’s diaries. They also explain the genesis of the title chosen to indicate Paddy’s unfinished written journey, and the fact that the work is not the polished version he would have desired, ‘only the furthest in the end we [the editors] could go.’
‘One of the astonishing facts about A Time of Gifts and Between the Woods and the Water,’ the editors say, ‘is that they were written from memory, with no diaries or notebooks to sustain them. Paddy’s first diary was stolen in a Munich youth hostel in 1934, and those that succeeded it, along with his picaresque letters to his mother, were stored during the war in the Harrods Depository, where years later they were destroyed unclaimed. It was a loss, he used to say, that “still aches, like an old wound in wet weather”.’
The editors continue: ‘Written in faded pencil, the Green Diary, as he called it, carries his life forward to 1935 after his walk was over, and is appended with sketches of churches, costumes, friends, vocabularies in Hungarian, Rumanian, Bulgarian and Greek, and the names and addresses of almost everyone he stayed with. But strangely, although the diary covered all his walk from the Iron Gates to Constantinople and more, he never collated it with ‘A Youthful Journey’. Perhaps its callowness jarred with the later, more studied manuscript, or their factual differences disconcerted him. The two narratives often diverge. Whatever the reason, the diary - which retained an almost talismanic significance for him - did nothing to solve his dilemma.’
Here are three partial extracts from the diary section of The Broken Road.
24 January 1935
‘I left Salonika last night; Patullo and Elphinstone came along with me to the boat, and we bought some bread, and salami and cheese by the harbour gates. I was glad they came, as it was already sunset, and it’s very lonely starting off on these journeys alone. The ship was surprisingly small; very dirty and overloaded with every kind of cargo, all of which was hauled on board in a surprisingly unworkmanlike way. The boat was a shambles inside too, with enormous banks of coal in the passages, and peasants lying in their blankets in despondent groups everywhere. We stood in the passages and smoked, and chatted, waiting for the bells to ring to announce departure, so they could get off; but the boat was nearly two hours late, and they nearly came away with me, which would have been rather serious for Patullo has to join a troopship for Hong Kong in a day or two at Port Said. [. . .]’
27 January 1935
‘I left Koutloumousiou early yesterday, and started off downhill, the road winding beside a rushing torrent, breaking over great boulders, and dashing on in a lather of white foam. The peninsula here is entirely forested with evergreens, so that it is difficult to believe it’s only January; among the ilexes and oleanders are many olives, aspens, cypresses and cedar. The higher slopes are almost entirely fir.
Coming round a corner I saw a funny little grey-haired man sitting on the edge of an old stone well, with some big brown paper parcels beside him. He wished me good day in French, and giving me a cigarette, began to tell me all about himself. He was from Kavalla, and had lived on the Holy Mountain for four years, making maps of it, and copying ikons on wood. He showed me a few of these, they were good.
The sea soon came into sight round a bend, and the large monastery of Iviron, the high walls appearing above the trees. These walls are lofty, and have the effect of being much higher than they are long, as they are divided into sort of rectangular bastions, rising sheer to quite a height without a single window, then suddenly branching out into an overhanging balcony, with undulating tiled roofs, and the plaster painted bright colours - red, blue, green, in crude designs.
Several monks were sitting on benches in the big, sunny cobbled courtyard, half asleep, stroking their beards. [. . .]’
28 January 1935
‘I left Iviron after an early lunch yesterday, the track running close along the shore, sometimes over the high rocks, sometimes over the pebbles and sand of the beach, and sometimes winding away inland, a little footpath between the trees. It was really a succession of Devonshire combes, but full of wildly growing evergreens, with now and then a squat stone hermitage standing on a ledge of the mountainside, surrounded by dark cypresses. [. . .]’
Monday, September 16, 2013
Baudin’s voyage to Australia
The French explorer Nicolas Baudin died on this day 210 years ago. Born in humble circumstances, he rose to captain one of France’s most important scientific and geographical expeditions to Australia - rivalling a similar expedition by the British captain Matthew Flinders. Both Baudin and Flinders - who met once at Encounter Bay - are much studied by academics in Australia, and thus there is plenty of information about them on university and state library websites. In particular, the Libraries Board of South Australia published - in the 1970s and for the first time - a personal journal kept by Baudin. This latter contradicts some of the official French version of the voyage, dating from the early 19th century, which is highly critical of Baudin.
Baudin was born in 1754 at Île de Ré, a small island off the west coast of France. He joined the merchant navy aged 15, then the French East India Company, and then the French navy, as an ‘officier bleu’ (a commoner not of noble birth). He served a year in the Carribbean, before resigning and returning to merchant service, transporting emmigrants to New Orleans, and timber back to France. After a chance meeting with Franz Boos, the Austrian Emperor’s head gardener and botanist, Baudin took charge, in 1792, of a scientific expedition for Imperial Austria to the Indian Ocean. In 1796, he made a similar scientific voyage to the West Indies, where he collected material for museums in Paris.
In 1800, Baudin was selected to lead, what became known as, the Baudin expedition to map the coast of Australia (then still called New Holland) with two ships, Géographe and Naturaliste, and a company of scientists. He reached Australia in May the following year, and was the first to explore and map the western coast and part of the southern coast. In 1802, he stopped in Sydney, sent home the Naturaliste with all the scientific specimens he had acquired, and bought a new ship - Casuarina. He made for Tasmania, then Timor, before heading back to Europe; but, having stopped at Mauritius, Baudin died there of tuberculosis on 16 September 1803. See Wikipedia, the ABC’s Navigators website, or the Australian Dictionary of National Biography for more information.
The official account of the Baudin expedition - written partly by François Péron and completed by Louis de Freycinet - appeared in two volumes (1807 and 1816) of the series Voyage de découvertes aux Terres Australes exécuté par ordre de Sa Majesté l’Empereur et Roi, sur les corvettes le Géographe, le Naturaliste, et la goélette le Casuarina, pendant les années 1800, 1801, 1802, 1803, et 1804. Péron was particularly hostile towards his former commander, Baudin, and this shows through his account of the expedition.
However, a personal journal kept by Baudin during the voyage, from October 1800 to August 1803, gives a very different impression to that of Péron’s account. This was first translated from the French by Christine Cornell and published in 1974 by Libraries Board of South Australia as The Journal of Post Captain Nicolas Baudin, Commander-in-Chief of the Corvettes Géographe and Naturaliste, assigned by order of the government to a voyage of discovery. A lot more about the project to translate the journal can be found in The Baudin Legacy newsletter. A revisionist analysis of Baudin and his expedition to Australia can be found in The Baudin Expedition in Review: Old Quarrels and New Approaches (Australian Journal of French Studies, 2004), available on the University of Sydney website.
Further information about Baudin’s journal is also available in Ill-Starred Captains: Flinders and Baudin by Anthony J. Brown, partly available to read on Googlebooks, which focuses on Baudin and the captain of a rival British expedition, Matthew Flinders. The two - famously - met at Encounter Bay on 8 April 1802. A website celebrating this encounter and both expeditions was set up by the State Library of South Australia in 2002; and this includes many extracts from Baudin’s journal. Here are three.
9 April 1802
‘There was little wind for the rest of the day. Sometimes we were even becalmed and at the mercy of the current, which carried us towards the coast, then only a league off. After sighting our points of the previous day, we sailed along the high land that we had seen a little before sunset. The coast in this part, if not extremely pleasant. was at least preferable to the region of sand-hills that we had just left.
At midday the latitude observed was 35° 36' but this was very uncertain. At three o’clock we sighted the island and islets spoken of by Mr. Flinders. I proceeded so as to run in for the channel separating them from the mainland, but since the slight wind blowing did not allow me to do this before dark, I went about at five o'clock to stand out to sea.
Coasting the mainland during the day, we sighted three islets or rocks lying such a short way out, that to see them. it was necessary to be as close in as we were. If becalmed, one could anchor there in 24 or 21 fathoms, for the bottom is sandy and good - a rather rare thing between here and the Promontory. At sunset we could still see Mr. Flinders’ ship running on the South-westerly leg.
Until midnight the winds were South to South- South-East and rather fresh, but then they moderated, and shortly after, we went on the landward leg.’
19 April 1802
‘I was expecting the weather to turn fine again and to be able, during the day, to explore the part of the coast that we had seen the previous day. But instead of that, the sky (which had been fairly fine throughout the night) grew damp and misty, with a very threatening appearance for the rest of the day.
At seven o’clock land was sighted from the mast-heads. It stretched from East-North-East to North North-West, proving only too plainly that we were in a gulf, as I had always thought we were, judging from the general shallowness of the water and the progressive decrease in its depth as we headed either West or East towards one coast or the other.
Since the weather promised too badly for us to think of reconnoitring the western part of this gulf, I sought to bear South as much as possible in order to be in a more advantageous position. During the morning the winds varied from North-West to West-South-West and were frequently accompanied by squalls and strong gusts. [. . .]
At one in the afternoon, with the wind still increasing and accompanied by sharp gusts, we wore ship and headed West of North-West to stand off the coast for greater safety during the night, for it looked as if it would be rather exhausting for us. At two o’clock the wind was still rising and the sea was growing steadily rougher, so we had to furl the mizzen-topsail and, shortly after, the fore-topsail. Although we were carrying no more than the foresail, main-topsail, close-reefed, and mizzen-staysail, the ship had on quite as much as she could manage in the squalls. We continued to tack West of North-West until eight in the evening. At that stage, being in 23 fathoms, we took our point of departure for the night’s tacking. The weather throughout it was very bad and the gusts were even stronger than during the day. We were several times obliged to lower our main-topsail, despite its small amount of canvas left. We went about every four hours and managed to maintain ourselves between 20 and 24 fathoms, tacking in a depth that never exceeded 30 and that diminished to East and West once one had reached there.
The night was very tiring for the crew and me in that we spent it constantly on deck. Except for those who changed watch, all the officers passed it just as peacefully in their beds as if the ship had been absolutely secure. As it was not the first time that they had done this, even in more critical situations than we were then in, I was not in the least surprised by it and left them in complete peace. This was what I had decided to do whenever such an occasion should arise. The stay of our fore-topmast staysail and its halyard went twice during the night, but the sail was only slightly damaged. The rain-bearing squalls were very cold and sometimes the water was like half-melted snow. We concluded from this that the winter cannot be very agreeable in this climate. The scientists, however, are of a contrary opinion because they saw parakeets in D’Entrecasteaux Channel.’
7 February 1803
‘As soon as our sails were furled, two boats were immediately dispatched to go sounding all around the ship and in various directions. On their return, I was informed that the depth of this bay was not sufficient for even a small vessel. At about a mile from the ship there were no more than 5 fathoms of water; half a mile further on, 4, and almost straightaway, 3 and 2. Nearer to the shore there was nothing but shallows and a continuous succession of sand-banks partly visible at low tide.
The boat which had had orders to head North-West gave us a moment of joy and satisfaction when it told us that it had discovered a fine port into which four rivers flowed, and that in the one it had entered, there were 4 fathoms of water and 3 inside. As a matter of fact the water in it was salty, but it would probably finish by becoming fresh as one went further up it. This was particularly pleasant, as it compensated for our regret at having found nothing on this coast so far that could repay us for our efforts and be of use to navigators.
The little boat had been sent off likewise to the island opposite which we were at anchor, and Citizen Guichenot, our gardener, had gone in it to reconnoitre the territory and discover what it produced. The boat did not return until during the night, having been stranded at low tide more than 2 miles off shore.
According to the gardener’s report, this island consists merely of sand, in which various low, shrubby trees grow. He only brought back some plants that were gone to seed, having been unable to find any in flower. Amongst them, there is one that has absolutely the bearing of an olive-tree. Its fruit resembles the olive in miniature, although the seed inside is very different. A big fire was lit on this island to serve as a beacon for the Casuarina, should she happen to enter this region.
As there was a very strong breeze all day and we had only 30 fathoms of cable down, we paid out 20 more, and in spite of the heavy South-South-easterly gusts, held firm on our anchor - proof that the bottom was not foul and that the holding was good.’
Baudin was born in 1754 at Île de Ré, a small island off the west coast of France. He joined the merchant navy aged 15, then the French East India Company, and then the French navy, as an ‘officier bleu’ (a commoner not of noble birth). He served a year in the Carribbean, before resigning and returning to merchant service, transporting emmigrants to New Orleans, and timber back to France. After a chance meeting with Franz Boos, the Austrian Emperor’s head gardener and botanist, Baudin took charge, in 1792, of a scientific expedition for Imperial Austria to the Indian Ocean. In 1796, he made a similar scientific voyage to the West Indies, where he collected material for museums in Paris.
In 1800, Baudin was selected to lead, what became known as, the Baudin expedition to map the coast of Australia (then still called New Holland) with two ships, Géographe and Naturaliste, and a company of scientists. He reached Australia in May the following year, and was the first to explore and map the western coast and part of the southern coast. In 1802, he stopped in Sydney, sent home the Naturaliste with all the scientific specimens he had acquired, and bought a new ship - Casuarina. He made for Tasmania, then Timor, before heading back to Europe; but, having stopped at Mauritius, Baudin died there of tuberculosis on 16 September 1803. See Wikipedia, the ABC’s Navigators website, or the Australian Dictionary of National Biography for more information.
The official account of the Baudin expedition - written partly by François Péron and completed by Louis de Freycinet - appeared in two volumes (1807 and 1816) of the series Voyage de découvertes aux Terres Australes exécuté par ordre de Sa Majesté l’Empereur et Roi, sur les corvettes le Géographe, le Naturaliste, et la goélette le Casuarina, pendant les années 1800, 1801, 1802, 1803, et 1804. Péron was particularly hostile towards his former commander, Baudin, and this shows through his account of the expedition.
However, a personal journal kept by Baudin during the voyage, from October 1800 to August 1803, gives a very different impression to that of Péron’s account. This was first translated from the French by Christine Cornell and published in 1974 by Libraries Board of South Australia as The Journal of Post Captain Nicolas Baudin, Commander-in-Chief of the Corvettes Géographe and Naturaliste, assigned by order of the government to a voyage of discovery. A lot more about the project to translate the journal can be found in The Baudin Legacy newsletter. A revisionist analysis of Baudin and his expedition to Australia can be found in The Baudin Expedition in Review: Old Quarrels and New Approaches (Australian Journal of French Studies, 2004), available on the University of Sydney website.
Further information about Baudin’s journal is also available in Ill-Starred Captains: Flinders and Baudin by Anthony J. Brown, partly available to read on Googlebooks, which focuses on Baudin and the captain of a rival British expedition, Matthew Flinders. The two - famously - met at Encounter Bay on 8 April 1802. A website celebrating this encounter and both expeditions was set up by the State Library of South Australia in 2002; and this includes many extracts from Baudin’s journal. Here are three.
9 April 1802
‘There was little wind for the rest of the day. Sometimes we were even becalmed and at the mercy of the current, which carried us towards the coast, then only a league off. After sighting our points of the previous day, we sailed along the high land that we had seen a little before sunset. The coast in this part, if not extremely pleasant. was at least preferable to the region of sand-hills that we had just left.
At midday the latitude observed was 35° 36' but this was very uncertain. At three o’clock we sighted the island and islets spoken of by Mr. Flinders. I proceeded so as to run in for the channel separating them from the mainland, but since the slight wind blowing did not allow me to do this before dark, I went about at five o'clock to stand out to sea.
Coasting the mainland during the day, we sighted three islets or rocks lying such a short way out, that to see them. it was necessary to be as close in as we were. If becalmed, one could anchor there in 24 or 21 fathoms, for the bottom is sandy and good - a rather rare thing between here and the Promontory. At sunset we could still see Mr. Flinders’ ship running on the South-westerly leg.
Until midnight the winds were South to South- South-East and rather fresh, but then they moderated, and shortly after, we went on the landward leg.’
19 April 1802
‘I was expecting the weather to turn fine again and to be able, during the day, to explore the part of the coast that we had seen the previous day. But instead of that, the sky (which had been fairly fine throughout the night) grew damp and misty, with a very threatening appearance for the rest of the day.
At seven o’clock land was sighted from the mast-heads. It stretched from East-North-East to North North-West, proving only too plainly that we were in a gulf, as I had always thought we were, judging from the general shallowness of the water and the progressive decrease in its depth as we headed either West or East towards one coast or the other.
Since the weather promised too badly for us to think of reconnoitring the western part of this gulf, I sought to bear South as much as possible in order to be in a more advantageous position. During the morning the winds varied from North-West to West-South-West and were frequently accompanied by squalls and strong gusts. [. . .]
At one in the afternoon, with the wind still increasing and accompanied by sharp gusts, we wore ship and headed West of North-West to stand off the coast for greater safety during the night, for it looked as if it would be rather exhausting for us. At two o’clock the wind was still rising and the sea was growing steadily rougher, so we had to furl the mizzen-topsail and, shortly after, the fore-topsail. Although we were carrying no more than the foresail, main-topsail, close-reefed, and mizzen-staysail, the ship had on quite as much as she could manage in the squalls. We continued to tack West of North-West until eight in the evening. At that stage, being in 23 fathoms, we took our point of departure for the night’s tacking. The weather throughout it was very bad and the gusts were even stronger than during the day. We were several times obliged to lower our main-topsail, despite its small amount of canvas left. We went about every four hours and managed to maintain ourselves between 20 and 24 fathoms, tacking in a depth that never exceeded 30 and that diminished to East and West once one had reached there.
The night was very tiring for the crew and me in that we spent it constantly on deck. Except for those who changed watch, all the officers passed it just as peacefully in their beds as if the ship had been absolutely secure. As it was not the first time that they had done this, even in more critical situations than we were then in, I was not in the least surprised by it and left them in complete peace. This was what I had decided to do whenever such an occasion should arise. The stay of our fore-topmast staysail and its halyard went twice during the night, but the sail was only slightly damaged. The rain-bearing squalls were very cold and sometimes the water was like half-melted snow. We concluded from this that the winter cannot be very agreeable in this climate. The scientists, however, are of a contrary opinion because they saw parakeets in D’Entrecasteaux Channel.’
7 February 1803
‘As soon as our sails were furled, two boats were immediately dispatched to go sounding all around the ship and in various directions. On their return, I was informed that the depth of this bay was not sufficient for even a small vessel. At about a mile from the ship there were no more than 5 fathoms of water; half a mile further on, 4, and almost straightaway, 3 and 2. Nearer to the shore there was nothing but shallows and a continuous succession of sand-banks partly visible at low tide.
Tuesday, September 10, 2013
13 Lincoln’s Inn Field
Sir John Soane, an architect best remembered for his house in Lincoln’s Inn Field, now a famous museum, and for rebuilding the Bank of England, was born 260 years ago today. Though not known as a diarist, he did keep a notebook during the rebuilding of 13 Lincoln’s Inn Field. To celebrate the building’s 200th anniversary last year, the Soane museum scanned and transcribed the notebook so as to make it publicly available on its website.
Soane was born in Goring-on-Thames on 10 September 1753. His father, a bricklayer, died in 1768, after which he went to live with his much older brother. Aged 15, he began training as an architect under George Dance the Younger, and in 1771 he was admitted to the Royal Academy Schools. He did well there, gaining a silver medal the following year, and a gold medal in 1776 for designing a triumphal arch. He spent three years in Italy studying the ancient remains, and making original designs for public buildings. On returning to England in 1780, Soane struggled at first to find commissions to design country houses, but by the mid 1780s his services were in constant demand.
Soane married Elizabeth Smith, niece to the successful builder George Wyatt, in 1784. They had two sons that survived infancy. On the death of Wyatt in 1790, the couple inherited money and property, leading Soane to purchase 12 Lincoln’s Inn Fields. He demolished the existing house, and rebuilt it to his own design. In 1788, he won the coveted post of architect to the Bank of England, a lucrative position that kept him busy for many years, and involved rebuilding most of the existing bank and doubling its size. Between 1789 and 1994, he also designed a new prison at Norwich Castle. He was noted, generally, for an original and personal interpretation of the Neoclassical style.
Among other appointments, Soane became professor of architecture at the Royal Academy, and architect for the Office of Works. His success enabled him, over the years, to buy and rebuild 13 and 14 Lincoln’s Inn Fields. Number 13 is today the world famous Sir John Soane’s Museum. Soane was knighted in 1832, and the following year obtained an Act of Parliament through which his house became a national architecture museum. He died in 1837. Further information is available at Wikipedia, Royal Berkshire History or HistOracle.
Soane is not known as a diarist - indeed he is not listed in the extensive Annotated Bibliography of Diaries Printed in English, compiled by Christopher Handley. However, during the rebuilding of 13 Lincoln’s Inn Field - between July and October 1812 - he did keep a notebook. This is held by Sir John Soane’s Museum, and, in celebration of the building’s 200 anniversary last year (2012), it published the diary on its website. For each day, there is a scan of the original, a transcript, and a commentary. Here are some sample extracts and commentaries.
13 July 1812
‘Mr Tyndale gave up the possession of No. 13 this evening’
14 July 1812
‘Mr Tyndale compl. the removing his goods, wine etc.’
17 July 1812
‘Began pulling down’
1 August 1812
‘Completed pulling down and removing the old Mat. except a small part of the front wall and the back front wall’
28 August 1812
‘The floor was put on the floor of the Study and the walls of the Court raised several feet above the Ground floor of the House
Between the fascia over the Kitchen window and the paving of the Area are four course of stones in Height, the whole of the third and part of the fourth was completed this 29th Aug.’
Commentary: ‘Work has progressed rapidly at the back of the house. By this date the basement on the west side of the central courtyard was complete enabling the floor to be laid in the ‘Study’ (the Breakfast Room today). [. . .]’
6 October 1812
‘The two statues were brought here this morning punctually to Mr Sealy’s promise between 10 and 11 and in the course of the afternoon they were raised into their proper places and the workmen began to remove the upper part of the Scaffolding’
Commentary: ‘The two statues are the Coade Stone female figures after those on the Erechtheion in Athens, visible on the facade of No. 13. On November 6th Soane paid for them, noting in his accounts ‘Coade & Sealey £40’.’
13 October 1812.
‘The whole of the building covered in completely’
Commentary: ‘The final entry in Soane’s notebook marks the end of the project to build No.13, at least for this phase. Soane would continue to make additions and alterations for the rest of his life, as his collection grew. [. . .]’
Soane was born in Goring-on-Thames on 10 September 1753. His father, a bricklayer, died in 1768, after which he went to live with his much older brother. Aged 15, he began training as an architect under George Dance the Younger, and in 1771 he was admitted to the Royal Academy Schools. He did well there, gaining a silver medal the following year, and a gold medal in 1776 for designing a triumphal arch. He spent three years in Italy studying the ancient remains, and making original designs for public buildings. On returning to England in 1780, Soane struggled at first to find commissions to design country houses, but by the mid 1780s his services were in constant demand.
Soane married Elizabeth Smith, niece to the successful builder George Wyatt, in 1784. They had two sons that survived infancy. On the death of Wyatt in 1790, the couple inherited money and property, leading Soane to purchase 12 Lincoln’s Inn Fields. He demolished the existing house, and rebuilt it to his own design. In 1788, he won the coveted post of architect to the Bank of England, a lucrative position that kept him busy for many years, and involved rebuilding most of the existing bank and doubling its size. Between 1789 and 1994, he also designed a new prison at Norwich Castle. He was noted, generally, for an original and personal interpretation of the Neoclassical style.
Among other appointments, Soane became professor of architecture at the Royal Academy, and architect for the Office of Works. His success enabled him, over the years, to buy and rebuild 13 and 14 Lincoln’s Inn Fields. Number 13 is today the world famous Sir John Soane’s Museum. Soane was knighted in 1832, and the following year obtained an Act of Parliament through which his house became a national architecture museum. He died in 1837. Further information is available at Wikipedia, Royal Berkshire History or HistOracle.
Soane is not known as a diarist - indeed he is not listed in the extensive Annotated Bibliography of Diaries Printed in English, compiled by Christopher Handley. However, during the rebuilding of 13 Lincoln’s Inn Field - between July and October 1812 - he did keep a notebook. This is held by Sir John Soane’s Museum, and, in celebration of the building’s 200 anniversary last year (2012), it published the diary on its website. For each day, there is a scan of the original, a transcript, and a commentary. Here are some sample extracts and commentaries.
13 July 1812
‘Mr Tyndale gave up the possession of No. 13 this evening’
14 July 1812
‘Mr Tyndale compl. the removing his goods, wine etc.’
17 July 1812
‘Began pulling down’
1 August 1812
‘Completed pulling down and removing the old Mat. except a small part of the front wall and the back front wall’
28 August 1812
‘The floor was put on the floor of the Study and the walls of the Court raised several feet above the Ground floor of the House
Between the fascia over the Kitchen window and the paving of the Area are four course of stones in Height, the whole of the third and part of the fourth was completed this 29th Aug.’
Commentary: ‘Work has progressed rapidly at the back of the house. By this date the basement on the west side of the central courtyard was complete enabling the floor to be laid in the ‘Study’ (the Breakfast Room today). [. . .]’
6 October 1812
‘The two statues were brought here this morning punctually to Mr Sealy’s promise between 10 and 11 and in the course of the afternoon they were raised into their proper places and the workmen began to remove the upper part of the Scaffolding’
Commentary: ‘The two statues are the Coade Stone female figures after those on the Erechtheion in Athens, visible on the facade of No. 13. On November 6th Soane paid for them, noting in his accounts ‘Coade & Sealey £40’.’
13 October 1812.
‘The whole of the building covered in completely’
Commentary: ‘The final entry in Soane’s notebook marks the end of the project to build No.13, at least for this phase. Soane would continue to make additions and alterations for the rest of his life, as his collection grew. [. . .]’
Saturday, September 7, 2013
Longing after damsens
Samuel Ward, a sixteenth century religious scholar who spent all his working life at Sydney Sussex College, Cambridge, died 370 years ago today. As with Margaret Hoby who was born one year before Ward and died 10 years earlier - see previous article - much of what we know about Ward today comes from a diary he left behind. This, like Hoby’s, is largely concerned with Ward’s religious life, but whereas Hoby’s simply provides a record of her actions, Ward’s is much richer in terms of psychology since he writes so much about his own sins, many of them very trivial, such as ‘longing after damsens’!
Ward was born at Bishop’s Middleham, Durham, in 1572. He studied and then taught at Cambridge University, rising to become Master of Sidney Sussex College. He married a widow with one child in the early 1620s. As a Puritan, he wrote widely on doctrinal issues, such as baptism. He was one of the scholars involved with the translation and preparation of the King James version of the Bible. He served as part of the English Calvinist delegation to the Synod of Dort.
When the First English Civil War broke out he fell out with the Presbyterian majority, and, in 1643, along with others, was imprisoned in St. John’s College. When his health gave way, he was permitted to retire to his own college. He died on 7 September later that same year. Further information is available from Wikipedia, the 1895-1900 edition of Dictionary of National Biography, a website dedicated to translators of the King James Bible, or Wilderness-Cry.net.
Intermittently, Ward kept a confessional diary, and this has survived down the centuries, and is held by Sidney Sussex College. It was published in 1933 by The American Society of Church History as part of Two Elizabethan Puritan Diaries by Richard Rogers and Samuel Ward, edited by M. M. Knappen. Since then it has been reprinted, and reissued in different guises. There is very little information about the diary freely available online but the King James Bible Translators website does include a few extracts. The following quotes are taken from a 1966 reprint from Peter Smith of Two Elizabethan Puritan Diaries. (As usual with Diary Review articles, any trailing dots within the extracts come from the original source unless I have put them in square brackets, in which case they indicate text that I have omitted from the printed source.)
13 May 1595
‘My little pity of the boy who was whipt in the hall. My desire of preferment over much. My adulterous dream. Think thow how that this is not our home in this world, in which we are straungers, one not knowing anotheres speach and language. Think how bad a thing it is to goo to bed without prayer, and remember to call on God at goyng to our prayers in the Chappell.’
8 August 1596
‘. . . Also my longing after damsens when I made my vow not to eat in the orchard. Oh, that I could so long after Godes graces . . .’
25 August 1596
‘. . . My extreme anger the day before att John Mourton for taking the axeltree out of my glob . . .’
27 August 1596
‘. . . Also my pride in thinking of the new colledg, wheras it is not licky I should have any place ther. Also my stomaching of Cuthbert and Holland agayne, and my grudging att ther remembrance my disease. . .’
3 September 1596
‘My complayning to Mr. Pott and Mr. Glover of Mr. Hutchinson, and my proud thoughtes with Mr. Montague when he said we should go se the crocodile. Also my proud and wild thoughtes in that I had so many places offrd, as one by Sir Hornby. Truly when God is favorable and merciful to me I begin to be proud and to attribute to myne oven desert sathanically. My unthankfulness for Godes benefits. My immoderate desire of the meat left for the sizer.’
5 September 1569
‘. . . My goying to the taverne with such lewd fellowes, albeyt I knew them not. How little greived was I att their swearing and othes and wyld talk. O Lord, thou knowest that I wished often to be ridd of their company. My little care of my health notwithstanding my disease grew upon me. . .’
6 August 1597
‘How little I was affected with hearing of the ill success of our Navy . . .’
25 December 1597
‘My lasines in not rising early inough to prepare myself to the worthy receit of the communion.’
5 November 1599
‘The like the Archbishop now hath performed in the choosing of this new - to be vicechancellor against the will of many in the University. Lord, turn all their plots and devices to thine own glory, and the good of thy church etc.’
Ward was born at Bishop’s Middleham, Durham, in 1572. He studied and then taught at Cambridge University, rising to become Master of Sidney Sussex College. He married a widow with one child in the early 1620s. As a Puritan, he wrote widely on doctrinal issues, such as baptism. He was one of the scholars involved with the translation and preparation of the King James version of the Bible. He served as part of the English Calvinist delegation to the Synod of Dort.
When the First English Civil War broke out he fell out with the Presbyterian majority, and, in 1643, along with others, was imprisoned in St. John’s College. When his health gave way, he was permitted to retire to his own college. He died on 7 September later that same year. Further information is available from Wikipedia, the 1895-1900 edition of Dictionary of National Biography, a website dedicated to translators of the King James Bible, or Wilderness-Cry.net.
Intermittently, Ward kept a confessional diary, and this has survived down the centuries, and is held by Sidney Sussex College. It was published in 1933 by The American Society of Church History as part of Two Elizabethan Puritan Diaries by Richard Rogers and Samuel Ward, edited by M. M. Knappen. Since then it has been reprinted, and reissued in different guises. There is very little information about the diary freely available online but the King James Bible Translators website does include a few extracts. The following quotes are taken from a 1966 reprint from Peter Smith of Two Elizabethan Puritan Diaries. (As usual with Diary Review articles, any trailing dots within the extracts come from the original source unless I have put them in square brackets, in which case they indicate text that I have omitted from the printed source.)
13 May 1595
‘My little pity of the boy who was whipt in the hall. My desire of preferment over much. My adulterous dream. Think thow how that this is not our home in this world, in which we are straungers, one not knowing anotheres speach and language. Think how bad a thing it is to goo to bed without prayer, and remember to call on God at goyng to our prayers in the Chappell.’
8 August 1596
‘. . . Also my longing after damsens when I made my vow not to eat in the orchard. Oh, that I could so long after Godes graces . . .’
25 August 1596
‘. . . My extreme anger the day before att John Mourton for taking the axeltree out of my glob . . .’
27 August 1596
‘. . . Also my pride in thinking of the new colledg, wheras it is not licky I should have any place ther. Also my stomaching of Cuthbert and Holland agayne, and my grudging att ther remembrance my disease. . .’
3 September 1596
‘My complayning to Mr. Pott and Mr. Glover of Mr. Hutchinson, and my proud thoughtes with Mr. Montague when he said we should go se the crocodile. Also my proud and wild thoughtes in that I had so many places offrd, as one by Sir Hornby. Truly when God is favorable and merciful to me I begin to be proud and to attribute to myne oven desert sathanically. My unthankfulness for Godes benefits. My immoderate desire of the meat left for the sizer.’
5 September 1569
‘. . . My goying to the taverne with such lewd fellowes, albeyt I knew them not. How little greived was I att their swearing and othes and wyld talk. O Lord, thou knowest that I wished often to be ridd of their company. My little care of my health notwithstanding my disease grew upon me. . .’
6 August 1597
‘How little I was affected with hearing of the ill success of our Navy . . .’
25 December 1597
‘My lasines in not rising early inough to prepare myself to the worthy receit of the communion.’
5 November 1599
‘The like the Archbishop now hath performed in the choosing of this new - to be vicechancellor against the will of many in the University. Lord, turn all their plots and devices to thine own glory, and the good of thy church etc.’
Thursday, September 5, 2013
Diary briefs
The 1963 march on Washington - San Francisco Chronicle
Mikhail Bulgakov: Diaries and Selected Letters - New Statesman
Embargoed diaries may give clue to Jean McConville murder - RTE News, BBC
Diary inspires Pakistani girls yearning for education - The Guardian
Slaughter on the Somme - Pen and Sword Books, Chichester Observer
Kiwi soldiers’ diaries go online - The Dominion Post
Diaries from the Turnbull Library - National Library of New Zealand
Wednesday, September 4, 2013
After private prayers
Margaret Hoby died all of 380 years ago today. She married three times, kept a rich household, and was a very religious person. There is nothing remarkable about her life except for the fact that she kept a diary, and that this is the oldest known extant diary - written over four centuries ago - by any English woman. Unfortunately, it is more a record of her private prayers than her private thoughts.
Margaret was born in 1571, the only child of a landed gentleman, Arthur Dakins of Linton, East Riding, and his wife Thomasine Gye. Margaret was educated at a school for young gentlewomen in a Puritan household. She married Walter Devereux, the younger son of Essex, and a court favorite of Queen Elizabeth I. The manor and parsonage of Hackness near Scarborough were purchased for the couple, and remained Margaret’s property after Devereux died at the siege of Rouen in 1591. She married Sir Thomas Sidney, but he died in 1595, and she then married Sir Thomas Posthumous Hoby, son of the translator and English ambassador to France, in 1596. They lived at Hackness, but had no children. Margaret spent much of her time tending the sick and infirm in her own community, as well as running her household. She died on 4 September 1633.
A little further biographical information about Hoby can be found at Wikipedia, in A Historical Dictionary of British Women by Cathy Hartley, or in Early Modern English Lives: Autobiography and Self-representation, 1500-1660 (several authors).
Between 1599 and 1603, Margaret kept a diary fairly regularly. According to Arthur Ponsonby, editor of More English Diaries (1927), ‘she was no doubt instructed to keep a diary for the sake of religious discipline.’ He continues: ‘Her piety is very pronounced. Not only does she go to church frequently and listen to many sermons, but she has private prayers, writes out sermons, writes notes in her Testament, sings psalms, listens to lectures and nurses the sick. [. . .] But the diary is not exclusively confined to her religious exercises. We learn much of her daily occupations. How she gathers “apples”, exercises her “body at bowles a while of which I found good”; is busy “preserving quinces” and damsons, busy in the kitchen, busy dyeing woold, “stilling”, “working some fringe”, “dressing sores”, taking “the aire in my cocsh”, out fishing or relining “a sute of blake satan for Mr. Hoby”.
Ponsonby concludes the chapter in his book on Hoby by explaining that her manuscript is in the British Museum (now the British Library), but that he was able to read a transcript with full notes in the possession of the Librarian of the House of Lords. He, Ponsonby, recommends the diary ‘should be published in full’. In fact, it was edited a few years later by Dorothy M. Meads and published as Diary of Lady Margaret Hoby 1599-1605 by George Routledge & Sons in 1930. Meads, however, can’t help but give vent to her own frustration that Hoby did not write more extensively on issues other than her religious devotions.
In her introduction Meads writes: ‘This daily record is of great value as a contemporary document, though it is not nearly so full as we would have it. The religious element is prominent, to the exclusion of much else, for the record seems to have been kept largely as a means of assisting in the religious exercise of self-examination, and only partly because it was useful in other ways. [. . .] Her daily personal record is very introspective, yet she shows no real capacity for self-knowledge or ability in self-analysis, for she sets down more or less conventional religious expressions of self-disparagement. A perusal of the contents of the diary gives one to think that she may have written with an eye on a possible reader, for we are rarely allowed a glimpse of the living woman. In spite of this barrier which she herself has raised, every detail of the record increases our acquaintance with her and our sympathy for her. She is interesting because she matters so much to herself.’
More recently, in 1998, Sutton Publishing brought out a new edition, The Private Life of an Elizabethan Lady: The Diary of Lady Margaret Hoby, 1599-1605 by Joanna Moody. The following extracts, though, come from Meads’ edition, which includes over 600 annotations (for 150 pages of diary text). In one of these notes - linked to the first extract below - Meads cannot help but repeat the frustrations voiced in her introduction: ‘If only Lady Hoby had committed more of her feelings, impressions, and offences to paper, her diary would have increased greatly in interest’.
18 July 1600
‘After priuatt praers I went about the house and deliuered some directions to Iurden: after, I talked with my Cosine Isons and about his goinge to yorke, and then I went to diner: after, I was busie pouidinge some thinge to be carried to York: afte, I wrought and, lastly, I went to priuate examenation and praier: after, I went to supper, then I walked abroad: after, I Came in to publeck praers and, after, to priuate, wher I pleased the lord to touch my hart with such sorrow, for some offence Cometted, that I hope the lord, for his sonne sake, hath pardoned it accordinge to his promise, which is ever Iust: after, I reed apaper that wrought farther humiliation in me, I thanke god.’
17 October 1600
‘from thence I tooke my Iurnie to London wher, in the way, I was tould that order was giuen to fetch all the stuffe from york, and and to giue ouer house ther, vpon which and about we had laied forth 18li, which newes did much touch me, so that I procured Contrarie directions forth with: after I Came to london I praied, and was viseted with all my Cosines Cookes: then I praied after supper and went to bed, wher I was more meanly lodged, with so great Cost, then to my remembrance I was euer in my Life: and yet I was Glad of my brothers house’ [Meads believes this house was in The Strand or nearby].
5 May 1601
‘After praers I went to the church, wher I hard a sermon: after, I Came home and hard Mr Rhodes read: after diner I went abroad, and when I was come home I dressed some sore: after, I went to see a calfe at Munckmans, which had: 2: great heades, 4 eares, and had to ether head a throte pipe besides: the heades had long heares like brisels about the mouths, such as n’other Cowe hath: the hinder legges had no parting from the rumpe, but grewe backward, and were no longer but from the first Ioynte: also the backe bone was parted about the midest bicke, and a rowne howle was in the midest into the bodie of the Calfe: but one would haue thought that haue comed of strocke it might gett in the Cowes bely: after this I Came in to priuat medetation and praier.’
13 May 1603
‘his Majestie remoued from the Tower to Grennige’ [Greenwich]
7 June 1603
‘this day Mr Hoby and my selfe remoued from London in kent, to Mr Bettnames house, wher, I praise god, I had my health very well’ [those not with a need to remain at court had been ordered to leave London because of the plague, Meads explains, because James was alarmed at the multitudes besieging the court]
20 June 1603
‘this day we removed from thence towards Yorkshere, and the first night lay at Barnett’
21 June 1603
‘this day we lay at Noth hamton’
22 June 1603
‘at Ashbye, wher I kissed the Queens hand’
23 June 1603
‘we lay at Notingame’
24 June 1603
‘we lay at Dankester’
25 June 1600
‘at Yorke, wher we staied all the Lordes day’
27 June 1603
‘we lay at Linton wt my Cosine Dakins’
28 June 1603
‘we Came safe, I praise god, to Hacknis’
27 September 1603
‘thes day we hard from Hacknes that all there was well, But that the sicknes was freared to be at Roben Hood bay, not farr off: I Continewe my accostomed exercises but my increasinges in goodes waies is not as I thirst for’
The Diary Junction
Margaret was born in 1571, the only child of a landed gentleman, Arthur Dakins of Linton, East Riding, and his wife Thomasine Gye. Margaret was educated at a school for young gentlewomen in a Puritan household. She married Walter Devereux, the younger son of Essex, and a court favorite of Queen Elizabeth I. The manor and parsonage of Hackness near Scarborough were purchased for the couple, and remained Margaret’s property after Devereux died at the siege of Rouen in 1591. She married Sir Thomas Sidney, but he died in 1595, and she then married Sir Thomas Posthumous Hoby, son of the translator and English ambassador to France, in 1596. They lived at Hackness, but had no children. Margaret spent much of her time tending the sick and infirm in her own community, as well as running her household. She died on 4 September 1633.
A little further biographical information about Hoby can be found at Wikipedia, in A Historical Dictionary of British Women by Cathy Hartley, or in Early Modern English Lives: Autobiography and Self-representation, 1500-1660 (several authors).
Between 1599 and 1603, Margaret kept a diary fairly regularly. According to Arthur Ponsonby, editor of More English Diaries (1927), ‘she was no doubt instructed to keep a diary for the sake of religious discipline.’ He continues: ‘Her piety is very pronounced. Not only does she go to church frequently and listen to many sermons, but she has private prayers, writes out sermons, writes notes in her Testament, sings psalms, listens to lectures and nurses the sick. [. . .] But the diary is not exclusively confined to her religious exercises. We learn much of her daily occupations. How she gathers “apples”, exercises her “body at bowles a while of which I found good”; is busy “preserving quinces” and damsons, busy in the kitchen, busy dyeing woold, “stilling”, “working some fringe”, “dressing sores”, taking “the aire in my cocsh”, out fishing or relining “a sute of blake satan for Mr. Hoby”.
Ponsonby concludes the chapter in his book on Hoby by explaining that her manuscript is in the British Museum (now the British Library), but that he was able to read a transcript with full notes in the possession of the Librarian of the House of Lords. He, Ponsonby, recommends the diary ‘should be published in full’. In fact, it was edited a few years later by Dorothy M. Meads and published as Diary of Lady Margaret Hoby 1599-1605 by George Routledge & Sons in 1930. Meads, however, can’t help but give vent to her own frustration that Hoby did not write more extensively on issues other than her religious devotions.
In her introduction Meads writes: ‘This daily record is of great value as a contemporary document, though it is not nearly so full as we would have it. The religious element is prominent, to the exclusion of much else, for the record seems to have been kept largely as a means of assisting in the religious exercise of self-examination, and only partly because it was useful in other ways. [. . .] Her daily personal record is very introspective, yet she shows no real capacity for self-knowledge or ability in self-analysis, for she sets down more or less conventional religious expressions of self-disparagement. A perusal of the contents of the diary gives one to think that she may have written with an eye on a possible reader, for we are rarely allowed a glimpse of the living woman. In spite of this barrier which she herself has raised, every detail of the record increases our acquaintance with her and our sympathy for her. She is interesting because she matters so much to herself.’
More recently, in 1998, Sutton Publishing brought out a new edition, The Private Life of an Elizabethan Lady: The Diary of Lady Margaret Hoby, 1599-1605 by Joanna Moody. The following extracts, though, come from Meads’ edition, which includes over 600 annotations (for 150 pages of diary text). In one of these notes - linked to the first extract below - Meads cannot help but repeat the frustrations voiced in her introduction: ‘If only Lady Hoby had committed more of her feelings, impressions, and offences to paper, her diary would have increased greatly in interest’.
18 July 1600
‘After priuatt praers I went about the house and deliuered some directions to Iurden: after, I talked with my Cosine Isons and about his goinge to yorke, and then I went to diner: after, I was busie pouidinge some thinge to be carried to York: afte, I wrought and, lastly, I went to priuate examenation and praier: after, I went to supper, then I walked abroad: after, I Came in to publeck praers and, after, to priuate, wher I pleased the lord to touch my hart with such sorrow, for some offence Cometted, that I hope the lord, for his sonne sake, hath pardoned it accordinge to his promise, which is ever Iust: after, I reed apaper that wrought farther humiliation in me, I thanke god.’
17 October 1600
‘from thence I tooke my Iurnie to London wher, in the way, I was tould that order was giuen to fetch all the stuffe from york, and and to giue ouer house ther, vpon which and about we had laied forth 18li, which newes did much touch me, so that I procured Contrarie directions forth with: after I Came to london I praied, and was viseted with all my Cosines Cookes: then I praied after supper and went to bed, wher I was more meanly lodged, with so great Cost, then to my remembrance I was euer in my Life: and yet I was Glad of my brothers house’ [Meads believes this house was in The Strand or nearby].
5 May 1601
‘After praers I went to the church, wher I hard a sermon: after, I Came home and hard Mr Rhodes read: after diner I went abroad, and when I was come home I dressed some sore: after, I went to see a calfe at Munckmans, which had: 2: great heades, 4 eares, and had to ether head a throte pipe besides: the heades had long heares like brisels about the mouths, such as n’other Cowe hath: the hinder legges had no parting from the rumpe, but grewe backward, and were no longer but from the first Ioynte: also the backe bone was parted about the midest bicke, and a rowne howle was in the midest into the bodie of the Calfe: but one would haue thought that haue comed of strocke it might gett in the Cowes bely: after this I Came in to priuat medetation and praier.’
13 May 1603
‘his Majestie remoued from the Tower to Grennige’ [Greenwich]
7 June 1603
‘this day Mr Hoby and my selfe remoued from London in kent, to Mr Bettnames house, wher, I praise god, I had my health very well’ [those not with a need to remain at court had been ordered to leave London because of the plague, Meads explains, because James was alarmed at the multitudes besieging the court]
20 June 1603
‘this day we removed from thence towards Yorkshere, and the first night lay at Barnett’
21 June 1603
‘this day we lay at Noth hamton’
22 June 1603
‘at Ashbye, wher I kissed the Queens hand’
23 June 1603
‘we lay at Notingame’
24 June 1603
‘we lay at Dankester’
25 June 1600
‘at Yorke, wher we staied all the Lordes day’
27 June 1603
‘we lay at Linton wt my Cosine Dakins’
28 June 1603
‘we Came safe, I praise god, to Hacknis’
27 September 1603
‘thes day we hard from Hacknes that all there was well, But that the sicknes was freared to be at Roben Hood bay, not farr off: I Continewe my accostomed exercises but my increasinges in goodes waies is not as I thirst for’
Monday, September 2, 2013
Written in Elvish
Forty years ago today died the English fantasy writer, John Ronald Reuel Tolkien, best known for his novel, The Lord of the Rings. An archive of his papers is kept at the Bodleian Library, Oxford, and includes diaries. These have not, however, been published. Biographer Humphrey Carpenter has said that Tolkien used the diaries ‘chiefly as a record of sorrow and distress’, but also that they were written in Elvish.
Tolkien was born in 1892 in Bloemfontein in the Orange Free State (now Free State Province in South Africa) to an English bank manager and his wife, Mabel. Mabel took Tolkien, then aged three, and his younger brother, back to England; their father died before he could join them. The family then lived in Birmingham, and the boys were educated by Mabel, but she too died young. Thereafter, they were raised as Catholics by Mabel’s friend Fr. Francis Xavier Morgan of the Birmingham Oratory. Tolkien was sent to King Edward’s School, Birmingham, and then he studied at Exeter College, Oxford, switching after a while from classics to English. He married his teenage sweetheart, Edith, in 1916. They would have four children.
During the First World War, Tolkien served as a second lieutenant in the Lancashire Fusiliers, fighting in the Somme offensive. He contracted trench fever and was treated at a hospital in Birmingham. After the armistice in 1918, he worked briefly on the New English Dictionary project (later to become the Oxford English Dictionary), before becoming a reader in English Language at the University of Leeds, and then, from 1925, Professor of Anglo-Saxon at Pembroke College, Oxford University. From 1945 to 1959 he was Professor of English Language and Literature at Merton College, Oxford. It was at Oxford that he became a close friend of C. S. Lewis, author of the Narnia stories, and together they formed part of an informal literary discussion group known as the Inklings.
During his time at Pembroke, Tolkien wrote and published (1937) his first novel, The Hobbit. Unexpectedly popular with adults and children, the publisher (Allen and Unwin) asked for a sequel, which was eventually published in three volumes, in the mid-1950s, as The Lord of the Rings. This latter work became phenomenally successfully, and has remained so ever since. Academically, Tolkien published works on Chaucer, and on the old English heroic epic Beowulf; and biographers are at pains to point out the links between the fantasy epic content of his novels and his scholarly work.
After retirement, Tolkien became increasingly discomforted by the attention of fans. He and Edith relocated to Bournemouth, then an upper middle class seaside resort; but, after Edith’s death in 1971, he moved back to rooms at Merton College until his own death on 2 September 1973. The internet is awash with Tolkien information, try, for example, The Tolkien Society, the Tolkien Library, the Leadership University, the BBC or Wikipedia.
Before his death, Tolkien negotiated the sale of some of his papers, related to the then-published works, to Marquette University’s Raynor Library in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. However, after his death many other papers were donated to Oxford University’s Bodleian Library. Within this latter archive are a number of unpublished diaries kept by Tolkien. Although not publicly available, some researchers/biographers have been allowed access, and their books on Tolkien contain a few quotes and references to the diaries. Notably, Humphrey Carpenter, who wrote the authorised biography, says Tolkien used the diaries ‘chiefly as a record of sorrow and distress, and when . . . his gloom dissipated he ceased to keep up the diary entries’. Some of the diaries were written in code, Carpenter explains at the end of biography, in the acknowledgements, and he thanks his wife for help in ‘de-coding’ them. Carpenter has also said elsewhere - see The One Ring - that Tolkien kept his diaries in ‘elvish’.
The few quotations from Tolkien’s diaries that do exist in the public domain, mostly undated, have been collated by the Tolkien Gateway. Here are three.
1 January 2010
‘Depressed and as much in dark as ever, [...] God help me. Feel weak and weary.’
1933 [on visiting Birmingham]
‘I pass over the pangs to me of passing through Hall Green - become a huge tram-ridden meaningless suburb, where I actually lost my way - and eventually down what is left of beloved lanes of childhood, and past the very gate of our cottage, now in the midst of a sea of new red-brick. The old mill still stands, and Mrs Hunt’s still sticks out into the road as it turns uphill; but the crossing beyond the now fenced-in pool, where the bluebell lane ran down into the mill lane, is now a dangerous crossing alive with motors and red lights. The White Ogre’s house (which the children were excited to see) is become a petrol station, and most of Short Avenue and the elms between it and the crossing have gone. How I envy those whose precious early scenery has not been exposed to such violent and peculiarly hideous change.’
August 1955
‘Venice seemed incredibly, elvishly lovely’; ‘contrary to legend and my belief, Italians . . . dislike exaggeration, superlatives, and adjectives of excessive praise. But they seem to answer to colour and poetic expression, if justified.’
Tolkien was born in 1892 in Bloemfontein in the Orange Free State (now Free State Province in South Africa) to an English bank manager and his wife, Mabel. Mabel took Tolkien, then aged three, and his younger brother, back to England; their father died before he could join them. The family then lived in Birmingham, and the boys were educated by Mabel, but she too died young. Thereafter, they were raised as Catholics by Mabel’s friend Fr. Francis Xavier Morgan of the Birmingham Oratory. Tolkien was sent to King Edward’s School, Birmingham, and then he studied at Exeter College, Oxford, switching after a while from classics to English. He married his teenage sweetheart, Edith, in 1916. They would have four children.
During the First World War, Tolkien served as a second lieutenant in the Lancashire Fusiliers, fighting in the Somme offensive. He contracted trench fever and was treated at a hospital in Birmingham. After the armistice in 1918, he worked briefly on the New English Dictionary project (later to become the Oxford English Dictionary), before becoming a reader in English Language at the University of Leeds, and then, from 1925, Professor of Anglo-Saxon at Pembroke College, Oxford University. From 1945 to 1959 he was Professor of English Language and Literature at Merton College, Oxford. It was at Oxford that he became a close friend of C. S. Lewis, author of the Narnia stories, and together they formed part of an informal literary discussion group known as the Inklings.
During his time at Pembroke, Tolkien wrote and published (1937) his first novel, The Hobbit. Unexpectedly popular with adults and children, the publisher (Allen and Unwin) asked for a sequel, which was eventually published in three volumes, in the mid-1950s, as The Lord of the Rings. This latter work became phenomenally successfully, and has remained so ever since. Academically, Tolkien published works on Chaucer, and on the old English heroic epic Beowulf; and biographers are at pains to point out the links between the fantasy epic content of his novels and his scholarly work.
After retirement, Tolkien became increasingly discomforted by the attention of fans. He and Edith relocated to Bournemouth, then an upper middle class seaside resort; but, after Edith’s death in 1971, he moved back to rooms at Merton College until his own death on 2 September 1973. The internet is awash with Tolkien information, try, for example, The Tolkien Society, the Tolkien Library, the Leadership University, the BBC or Wikipedia.
Before his death, Tolkien negotiated the sale of some of his papers, related to the then-published works, to Marquette University’s Raynor Library in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. However, after his death many other papers were donated to Oxford University’s Bodleian Library. Within this latter archive are a number of unpublished diaries kept by Tolkien. Although not publicly available, some researchers/biographers have been allowed access, and their books on Tolkien contain a few quotes and references to the diaries. Notably, Humphrey Carpenter, who wrote the authorised biography, says Tolkien used the diaries ‘chiefly as a record of sorrow and distress, and when . . . his gloom dissipated he ceased to keep up the diary entries’. Some of the diaries were written in code, Carpenter explains at the end of biography, in the acknowledgements, and he thanks his wife for help in ‘de-coding’ them. Carpenter has also said elsewhere - see The One Ring - that Tolkien kept his diaries in ‘elvish’.
The few quotations from Tolkien’s diaries that do exist in the public domain, mostly undated, have been collated by the Tolkien Gateway. Here are three.
1 January 2010
‘Depressed and as much in dark as ever, [...] God help me. Feel weak and weary.’
1933 [on visiting Birmingham]
‘I pass over the pangs to me of passing through Hall Green - become a huge tram-ridden meaningless suburb, where I actually lost my way - and eventually down what is left of beloved lanes of childhood, and past the very gate of our cottage, now in the midst of a sea of new red-brick. The old mill still stands, and Mrs Hunt’s still sticks out into the road as it turns uphill; but the crossing beyond the now fenced-in pool, where the bluebell lane ran down into the mill lane, is now a dangerous crossing alive with motors and red lights. The White Ogre’s house (which the children were excited to see) is become a petrol station, and most of Short Avenue and the elms between it and the crossing have gone. How I envy those whose precious early scenery has not been exposed to such violent and peculiarly hideous change.’
August 1955
‘Venice seemed incredibly, elvishly lovely’; ‘contrary to legend and my belief, Italians . . . dislike exaggeration, superlatives, and adjectives of excessive praise. But they seem to answer to colour and poetic expression, if justified.’
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