I hope not a ‘what it was’

Robert Charles Benchley - the early 20th century American columnist and comic actor - died 70 years ago today. He seemed to find his métier early on, while at Harvard through writing for its literary and comic magazines. But, after university, it took him some years to settle into what became a successful career as both a drama critic/humorist in New York, and a comic actor/monologuist in Hollywood. He did, at times, keep diaries, and although these have not been published, as far as I know, Benchley’s son Nathaniel drew on them extensively for his 1955 biography, as did Wes D. Gehring almost 40 years later.

Benchley was born in 1889 in Worcester, Massachusetts. His elder brother, Edmund, died in the Spanish-American war when Robert was but 9, and subsequently Edmund’s rich fiancee, helped Robert attend Phillips Exeter Academy in Exeter, and later, from 1908, Harvard. At Harvard, Benchley became involved with theatrical productions and the Harvard Advocate and the Harvard Lampoon, being elected, in his third year, to the board of the latter. In 1914, her married Gertrude Darling, who he’d met at high school, and they had two sons, Nathaniel (one of whose children, Peter, would write the famous book, Jaws) and Robert.

After Harvard, Benchley tried a variety of jobs in New York City - copy work, translation, press agent, reporting - but too often found himself not quite at ease with the work or the expectations of others. Having written freelance articles for Vanity Fair since 1916, he was taken on as managing editor in 1919, along side his Harvard Lampoon collaborator, Robert Sherwood, and Dorothy Parker, who had taken over as theatre critic from P. G Wodehouse. Although Vanity Fair suited Benchley well, allowing him to vent his humorous style, he, along with Sherwood and Parker soon fell out with the managers. When Parker was fired, Benchley resigned in sympathy, and returned to freelancing. The three friends had been meeting for lunches at the Algonquin Hotel, and, as this continued, so they became known as the Algonquin Round Table.

In 1920, Benchley joined the staff of Life magazine as the drama critic, eventually managing the whole drama section, and remained until 1929. During this time, the Round Table put on a one-night review, but Benchley’s contribution - The Treasurer’s Report - was so popular that he was asked to reprise it often. Irving Berlin, in fact, hired him for $500 a week to perform it nightly during Berlin’s Music Box Revue which ran for a year in 1921-1922. This led to work writing work for film screenplays and Broadway musicals, including, in 1928, a film version of The Treasurer’s Report. Benchley then wrote and/or starred in many more short films. On leaving Life, he was invited to be the theatre critic for the newly-established magazine The New Yorker, which would publish an average of nearly 50 Benchley pieces a year during the early 1930s.

The 1930s and early 1940s saw Benchley often in Hollywood, moving from Paramount to MGM and back again to Paramount, making 40 short films and appearing in minor roles in some 50 feature films. His How to Sleep (1935) won an Academy Award for best live-action short film. Biographers say, however, that though films brought Benchley fame, it is his writing that must be considered his lasting achievement. From 1920s on, and every few years, he published a compendium of his columns and essays, illustrated by Gluyas Williams: Pluck and Luck (1925), for example, My Ten Years in a Quandary, and How They Grew (1936), and Inside Benchley (1942). In later years, Benchley’s drinking led to him being diagnosed with cirrhosis of the liver, and he died, still in his mid-50s, on 21 November 1945. A limited amount of further information can be found at Wikipedia, The Worcester Writers Project, or Encyclopædia Britannica.

In 1955, McGraw-Hill published Nathaniel Benchley’s biography of his father - simply called, Robert Benchley - drawing on diaries Benchley had kept as a young man. More recently, in 1992, Greenwood Press published Wes D. Gehring’s “Mr B” or comforting thoughts about the bison: a critical biography of Robert Benchley, and this too culled significant details from Benchley’s diaries. Indeed, where Nathaniel’s book contains no introduction, and no acknowledgement of sources, Gehring’s book does, at least, provide some background on the diaries.

According to Gehring, Benchley’s diaries are contained in five bound volumes, for the years 1911-1914 and 1916, and these are held by the Mugar Memorial Library, Boston University. There were also, he says, childhood diaries, and possibly adult diaries (the library holds travel diary fragments, from 1922 and 1930), but these were most likely destroyed by his wife. Gehring believes she might have done this to carry out Benchley’s wishes. And, in support of this idea, he quotes Benchley as having said once, ‘no one else is ever going to get a look at these diaries so long as I have a bullet in my rifle.’

Gehring quotes extensively from Benchley’s diaries, but in a very bitty way, weaving phrases and sentences into his own text. (He does, though, scrupulously provide a date for each one.) Here’s an example from Gehring: ‘Besides his wedding, 1914 was also memorable as Benchley received his first check for a story (the amount was forty dollars). The September 28 timing could not have been more opportune, because as Benchley noted in his diaries: “our bank account was nil, it lacking two days of pay-day.” He would later describe their first married New Year’s Eve together, “sitting up in bed going over the bills to be paid tomorrow.” (From the notes: the first quote is dated 28 September 1914, the second 31 December 1914.)

The following, more complete, extracts from Robert Benchley’s diaries can be found in Nicholas Benchley’s 1955 biography.

23 July 1907
‘Then Lucy, Miss Jean, Jessie, Miss Ida and I went on the river in the moonlight in the two canoes. Sang and drifted. Took my mandolin. Slick.’

22 November 1907
‘Played football in the moonlight until nearly 11 o’clock. Came back to the room and fooled around.’

10 December 1907
‘Had a peach of a rough-house up in John’s room trying to put Fat on one bed.’

25 February 1908
‘Fat and I went to the Town Hall and hear Jacob Riis lecture on “The Battle with the Slums.” Illustrated. Very interesting.

1911 [on being elected to the board of Harvard Lampoon - undated in Nathaniel’s book]
‘It will mean a lot of work and a lot of worry and responsibility for it is a responsible position, yet I am very happy to be given it - not least of all because Mother will be so proud - and Gertrude too - and maybe my course will seem a little more worth while to Lillian. I never dreamed when I was a struggling freshman toiling over bum jokes that I would some day be the dreaded censor of the jokes of others - I trust I remember enough of how I felt, to be as nice as Hallowell was to me then. It is the biggest thing so far in my college course, but it doesn’t seem so big now that I’ve got it - I can see lots of bigger things that I ought to do, a “cum laude,” for instance.’

30 July 1914
‘Europe seems tottering on the brink of a general war over the Austria-Servia affair, but I can’t make it seem possible that they really will fall back so far into the middle ages after having come so far.’

31 July 1914
‘The stock markets are closed, and Germany is on the point of declaring war on Russia. Still, I can’t help feeling that things will be straightened out without a general European war.’

3 August 1914
‘A depression seems hanging over everything that is ominous - reflected from Europe where all the progress of 100 years is going to smash. H. G. Wells wrote better than he knew. But if any one is to lose, I hope that it is Germany and Austria, on whose aggressive brutality rests the blame.’

4 August 1914
‘Germany has declared war on England and Turkey on Servia. It is almost ludicrous in its immensity, yet frightful.’

16 August 1914
‘Japan has jumped in now and given Germany till August 20 to get out of Kaeow Chow. It is something of the “kick-him-in-the-teeth-he-ain’t-got-no-friends” attitude, and “come-on-in-and-get-a-piece-while-the-getting-is-good.”

13 November 1915
’12:27 - GAME CALLED. Nurse (a new one) comes in and asks my name. “Benchley.” Well, Miss Erbstadt just telephoned down & said the baby has just arrived and they are both all right. She said she didn’t know whether it was a boy “or what it was.” I hope not a “what it was.” “Both all right” is more to the point.

12:32 - Another nurse says she thinks she said a boy, but not sure. It ought to be fairly easy to ascertain before long.

12:35 - A Boy! and love from the Wife! Yea! Nurse tried to tell me “twins,” but I was a sly dog and didn’t bite.’

The 33rd Vice President

‘Hoover is apparently on his way toward becoming a kind of American Himmler.’ This is Henry Agard Wallace, the 33rd Vice President of the United States, who died 50 years ago today. A clever and successful farmer, he played an important political role in Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal policies, and was a whisker away from becoming President, but, after the war, he found himself opposing the US’s growing antipathy towards the USSR. Wallace kept a daily diary during the latter years of WW2, and it contains much of interest about his own politics, and about the Roosevelt and Truman administrations.

Wallace was born in 1888 on the family livestock farm near the town of Orient, Iowa. In 1892, the family moved to Ames, where his father, having given up farming, became professor of agriculture at the Iowa State Agricultural College. Soon after, the family took in a student, George Washington Carver, the African-American later to become a well-known botanist and inventor, who took the young Wallace on nature walks. Carver left when Wallace was still only 8, but is said to have left a deep and lasting influence on the boy. While a student at West High School, he attended lectures at Iowa State University given by the vice-dean Perry G. Holden who believed the quality of corn yield could be predicted by how good it looked. Wallace, using five acres of land behind his home, proved there was no relationship between yield and appearance.

Wallace moved on to study at Iowa State Agricultural College, and to write for his family’s successful magazine, Wallaces’ Farmer. He married Llo Brown in 1914, and went to live on a 40 acre farm near Johnson County. They would have three children. He taught himself statistics, and introduced econometrics into the field of agriculture. When his grandfather died, he became joint editor, with his father, of Wallaces’ Farmer, and then, after the end of WWI, he took over as sole editor, offering solutions to the agricultural depression - often at odds with Herbert Hoover, who had been in charge of the Office of Food Administration during the war. In particular, Wallace believed that farm surpluses were the cause of much misery in rural areas, and sought to find ways to limit production.

In 1923, Wallace developed a strain of hybrid corn - disease resistant and with higher yields - so commercially successful that a few years later he was able to launch Hi-Bred Corn Company. Increasingly, Wallace was drawn into politics - not as a Republican like the Wallaces before him - and in 1933, Franklin Roosevelt appointed him Secretary of Agriculture. He soon established and began to administer the Agricultural Adjustment Act, to control production, raise and stabilise farm prices, conserve soil, and store reserves. Widely regarded as a champion of human welfare, detractors saw his approach as too wasteful. In 1940, he was chosen to be Vice President to Roosevelt, a role he expanded beyond its normal remit, travelling to Latin America and the Far East. During WWII, he took on additional duties, especially in national economic affairs, though was stripped of these after publicly feuding with Secretary of Commerce Jesse H. Jones.

In 1944, however, Democratic Party conservatives - especially Southerners - opposed Wallace’s renomination as Vice President, and Harry S. Truman was chosen instead, succeeding to the post in January 1945. So it was Truman that became President less than three months later, when Roosevelt died. A few weeks before then, though, Roosevelt had named Wallace as Secretary of Commerce, a post he was to hold onto for little more than a year - being the last of Roosevelt appointees to be fired by Truman. Subsequently, Wallace became the editor of The New Republic magazine, a platform he used to oppose Truman’s tough cold war foreign policies; and then he set  himself up as a presidential candidate, with a newly-formed Progressive Party, standing in the 1948 presidential election. His stance on closer relations with the USSR, and his soft approach towards communism in the US, were against the political current, and seriously undermined his support.

Wallace resumed his farming interests, and, among things, developed a hugely successful breed of chicken. In 1950, when North Korea invaded South Korea, he left the Progressive Party and supported the US effort in the Korean War. In 1952, he published an article Where I Was Wrong trying to explain his once trusting stance toward the Soviet Union, and declaring that he now considered himself an anti-Communist. He died on 18 November 1965. Further information can be found at Wikipedia, US Senate, Spartacus Educational, The New Yorker, American University, or New Deal Network.

Wallace kept a diary at various times in his life: in 1935 during the controversy within the Department of Agriculture; in 1939-1940, preceding, during and following his nomination for Vice President; and from early 1942 to September 1946. Generally, he dictated his diary daily to a secretary, but also would keep pocket journals when on travels. Some of this diary material was published by Houghton Mifflin Company in 1973 in The Price of Vision - The Diary of Henry A. Wallace 1942-1945, as edited by John Morton Blum. Blum notes that ’as his temperament dictated, Wallace was a frank but never an intimate diarist.’ The book does not appear to have been reprinted or reissued since the 1970s, and, indeed, Wallace himself is little remembered these days. One review can be found online in the Annals of Iowa, which concludes: ‘Because he was so often involved in decision-making at the highest levels, Wallace’s diary illuminates one of the most critical periods in American history.’

14 April 1944
‘. . . Major General Leslie Groves [commanding officer of the Manhattan Project, developing the atomic bomb] presented me with a report on a governmental secret project which is the most interesting report I have ever seen. This is a project about which I have talked with Vannevar Bush for the last two years. This is a project which should result in definitely ending the war within another 18 months at the outside . . .’

20 May 1944, Edmonton, Canada
‘Gen. Gaffney, born in Massachusetts, raised in Texas, strong for the North. Prefers it to the tropics. Likes to hunt. Tells of unpreparedness in Alaska. Japs could have taken Seward. We had no cruisers up there. Army high command was convinced Japs would not strike at Alaska. Thinks there are great mineral and agricultural possibilities in northwest territory. Prof. Blackfoot of University of Alberta thinks there are enormous possibilities for dairying and hog possibilities. Soil marvelous, deep, black . . .’

29 August 1944
‘. . . At lunch with the President. The President seemed to be looking quite well, in good spirits and very cordial. He complimented me on the work I had been doing in New England and said they would want me to do a lot of work of this kind during the campaign. He then started to skate over the ice at once as fast as he could, saying that I was four or six years ahead of my time, that what I stood for would inevitably come. I told him I was very happy about what had been demonstrated at the convention and following the convention because I now knew that the people were for me. [. . .] I went on to say that I knew just exactly what happened at the convention but that the reason I had come out for him was because his name was a symbol of liberalism not only in this country but in the whole world. He then hastened to say how much he appreciated that and said if everything went well on November 7 [when President Roosevelt would be elected to a fourth term] I could have anything I wanted in the government with one exception. The exception was the State Department. [. . .]

The President said he thought the election was going to be very close but in case we won, one of the first things we would do would be to sit down with me and make a list of folks we were going to get rid of, said the first on the list would be Jesus H. Jones. I said, “Well, if you are going to get rid of Jesse, why not let me have Secretary of Commerce with RFC and FEA thrown in? There would be poetic justice in that.” The President said, “Yes, that’s right.” ’

19 December 1944
‘I got it on very good authority yesterday that Edgar Hoover continually has Drew Pearson [a journalist and diarist - see Salty and Petulant] shadowed. Hoover specializes on building up a file against the various public figures and especially against the columnists. He has not yet built up much of a file against Walter Winchell. Winchell has so far been too smart for Hoover. Hoover is apparently on his way toward becoming a kind of American Himmler.’

14 January 1945
‘. . . Ernst asked what the President was going to do with Jesse Jones? I said, “Why should he do anything with Jesse Jones?” Ernst replied, “Well if he takes care of Jesse in some way, it will reduce the amount of discord.” I said, “Well, it seems to me it would be better for the President to fight on this issue and get licked than to give Jesse something.” In other words, what I was really saying to Ernst was that I would rather not to be confirmed by the Senate than to have Jesse Jones still in government.’

[This was the last entry Wallace made as Vice President, and he only took up the diary again the following April. In the meantime, his nomination as Secretary of Commerce was almost not confirmed, Blum explains in a footnote, as Jones and others fought to block him in the Senate.]

12 September 1946
‘At the meeting with the President I went over page by page with him my Madison Square Garden speech to be given on September 12. Again and again he said, “That’s right”; “Yes, that is what I believe.” He didn’t have a single change to suggest. He twice said how deeply he appreciated my courtesy in showing him my speech before I gave it.

The President said that Secretary Byrnes’ speech of September 6 had been cleared with him over the telephone and then it had been sent back to Washington for minor checking. He said also that he thought it must be a pretty good speech because neither the British, the French, nor the Russians liked it.

The President apparently saw no inconsistency between my speech and what Byrnes was doing - if he did he didn’t indicate it in any way. He spoke very hopefully about the future, saying that he thought the situation between the United States and Russia was much more peaceful than the newspapers would have us believe. He said the dark cloud on the horizon was the state of Stalin’s heath; that Stalin was now an old man. He said also it was almost impossible to do business with Molotov . . .’

Diary briefs

Gangster diary names crime network - Hindustan Times

Lawrence Ferlinghetti travel journals - Liveright, The Paris Review

Childhood diaries from Maoist cult - The Telegraph

Mid-19th century diaries of Perth bishop - The West Australian

Hillary diaries added to Unesco Memory - Radio New Zealand

Diary of WWII medic uncovered - Simcoe.com

Samuel Pepys: Plague, Fire, Revolution - National Maritime Museum, The Guardian

Diary entry delays murder trial - Cleveland.com

NZ war diaries kept by Leeds university - New Zealand Herald

Baseball reporter’s drinking diary - Daily News

WWI diaries of Irish hero - Irish Mirror

Orville Wright’s diaries online - Library of Congress

Canada’s rebel hero

Louis David Riel - one of the most divisive and controversial figures in Canadian history - was executed 130 years ago today. While many revere him as a heroic rebel who helped the French-speaking peoples across Canada stand up to the Anglophone domination of Canadian territories, others see him as no more than a half-insane religious fanatic. During the last year or so of his life, Riel kept diaries, and these - at least the later entries when he was on death row - reveal his religious zeal.

Riel was born in 1844, within the Métis community, an ethnic group of mixed Native American and European descent, in the Red River Settlement, near what is now Winnipeg, Manitoba. The eldest of 11 children in a respected, religious family, he was educated by Roman Catholic priests at St. Boniface and then at the Séminaire of the Collège de Montréal. However, he left college on hearing of the death of his father, and took work as a law clerk. He became engaged to a young woman, but her family objected to her marrying a Métis. He moved for a while to Chicago, mixing with literary types, before returning, in 1868, to Red River Settlement, then nominally administered by the Hudson Bay Company.

Anxiety among the Métis, about an ongoing influx of Anglophone Protestant settlers, escalated in 1869 during negotiations designed to transfer territorial rights in parts of Western Canada from the Hudson Bay Company to the newly-formed Dominion of Canada - the Métis not having English-style title to their land. Riel assumed leadership to counter these moves. He and his supporters intervened to stop a government survey of the area, and to bar William McDougall, the governor-designate, from entering Red River. They also seized Fort Garry, the headquarters of the Hudson Bay Company. A few weeks later the Métis National Committee declared a provisional government with Riel its president.

While the provisional government established a legislative assembly and published its own newspaper, discussions continued with the Canadian government, leading to a draft agreement, the Manitoba Act. Implementation, however, was stalled by the provisional government executing Thomas Scott, an English-speaking surveyor. He had been imprisoned in Fort Garry, had tried to escape, and was considered an agitator. The act led to outrage across English-speaking Canada. Part of the agreement had been an amnesty for the insurgents, and this was now withdrawn. Forces were sent to the region, and recaptured Fort Garry; Riel fled across the border to St. Joseph’s mission in the Dakota Territory.

Civil government was eventually established in the settlement later that same year (1870), with many of Riel’s former supporters having been elected into power. Riel returned to Manitoba quietly, and was even tacitly accepted by the lieutenant-governor Adams George Archibald in thanks for the supportive role Riel had played in helping repel raids from across the border by Irish revolutionaries (Fenians). Nevertheless, such a de facto amnesty for Riel was not accepted in Ottawa, and he was obliged to go into exile again. He continued to play a part in the politics of the region, even being elected member of parliament several times. He was, though, still fugitive, unable to take his seat because of a large government reward posted for his capture. Instead, he spent time with priests of the Oblate order in Plattsburgh, New York. Eventually the Liberal leader Alexander Mackenzie secured a deal from Parliament allowing Riel an amnesty but only after five years of exile.

Riel became rather unstable, started to believe he had been divinely chosen to lead the Métis, and ended up in mental asylums for a year or so, possibly suffering from megalomania. He returned home briefly, but moved on west, to Montana Territory, where he became a trader and interpreter. In 1881, he married Marguerite Monet dit Bellehumeur, a young Métis, and they had three children. (Tragically, all were to die before long: his youngest son on the day of his birth, another son in his teens, and, later, his wife and then his other child would both die in their mid-20s.) Riel turned to teaching to support his family, and got involved in Montana politics, campaigning for the Republican Party, and taking on US citizenship. In 1884, the Métis in Saskatchewan appealed to Riel to take up their land claims with the Canadian government. Riel arrived in Batoche in July that year, and set about preparing a manifesto detailing grievances and settlers’ objectives. Although, initially, many found his approach reasonable, Riel began alienating different groups - his megalomania having returned - notably the church with his heretical speeches, and, before long, many of the Métis too.

When the government appeared to prevaricate over its response to the manifesto, and ordered more armed troops to the region, Riel and a band of remaining supporters seized arms, took hostages, cut the telegraph lines and declared, on 19 March 1885, a Provisional Government of Saskatchewan. Confrontation came to a head in May at the Battle of Batoche, the outcome of which was never in doubt. Riel surrendered on the 15th. He was found guilty of treason, and hanged on 16 November, an outcome which led to fierce outbreaks of racialism in Quebec and Ontario, and marked the beginning of the nationalist movement. Indeed, Wikipedia notes that ‘historians have debated the Riel case so often and so passionately that he is the most written-about person in all of Canadian history’. Further information is also available at the Dictionary of Canadian Biography, University of Missouri-Kansas’s Famous Trials website, the Manitoba government website, or Library and Archives Canada.

Four diaries kept by Riel in the year before his death have survived. One of these - covering just a week prior to the Battle of Baroche - was lost for a century and only came to light in 1970. Soon after, it became the object of a famous literary sale, and was bought by private investors for $26,500. All four diaries were translated into English and edited by Thomas Flanagan for publication by Hurtig (Edmonton) in 1976 as The Diaries of Louis Riel. The full text is available at Our Roots - Canada’s Local History Online; and the short text of the Batoche diary is also available at the University of Saskatchewan’s Northwest Resistance website.

4 May 1885
‘The Spirit of God made me see two fighting men; they were walking down from Prince Albert. There was something big in front of them. I don’t know what it is. But I can tell you that it’s nothing good. The two men are not together. One is coming behind the other. They are not going very fast. The purpose of their mission is evil. They are trying to cause a great deal of trouble and confusion. But they are not achieving the goal they have in mind.

Evening of May 4
I see the troops coming, they are on foot. I see them in the aspens on the slope this side of Baptiste Vandale’s farm.

I see a pure white horse bearing a rider. The white colour of the horse flashes in the sun. The rider is leaving the road, he wants to get into the open.

I saw a big grass snake striking at the stake.’

5 May 1885
‘My wife encompasses my life. My nation encompasses my way of life. My army, the army which God has given me, encompasses the life I lead. My family has no other life than mine. The Church follows my example and is good to the same extent that I am good.

Be careful, watch out. The white man and the Orangeman want to trick you. The trap is wide open. It is set, do not rush into it.

For from another side, I see something stupendous coming: a great blow. Stay back, keep together. Let us be ready.’

6 May 1885
‘I see the white man with his battle helmet. The white man is tall. He sees far enough, but his steps do not take him very far, they lead him behind. The white man stumbles; his two feet slowly slide to the wrong side. He cannot stand up; he is effaced little by little; he gradually disappears; he vanishes - because his heart only has room for evil. To be more precise, he has no heart. When I speak of white men. I do not mean brown men.

Here I am, squarely arrived at the time God has marked in the order of things to come. With my own eyes, I saw all the signs of the times which were shown us before now. I did not want to believe that they were really signs of the times. But finally I had to recognize what they were. Yes, before me lies the time identified in many ways, the time announced with all the signs that are supposed to accompany it, as we are told in the Scriptures.

Boue-Chaire-Vile, previously such a fine place, is abandoned! The once fair city of Boue-Chaire-Vile now has no one to protect it. I am calling for help. I would like to wake those who sleep in the profound slumber of sin. They do not hear me, they do not listen to me, they do not obey me. The enemy is coming up the river, he is arriving, he is going to bombard the city. How is it going to resist? No one takes its interests to heart. It is going to fall into the hands of the conqueror. For, having first abandoned God, it is now abandoned by God. It is done. Oh, how many times will you come true, O prophecy? Oh, how many times each century! Oh, how many times each generation?

The Spirit of God has made me see that my prayers and obeisances are good, that they are pleasing to Him. But the government is harming me; the government’s army is waging war upon me. And yet, however harmful that obstacle may have been to me, I am surprised at how easily I have removed it from my path. Anyone who wanted to stop me from praying has been put in his place. When you have confidence in God and Jesus Christ, nothing is difficult any more.
The Spirit of God made me realize the extent of the rights which the Indian possesses to the land of the North-West. Yes, the extent of the Indian rights, the importance of the Indian cause are far above all other interests. People say the native stands on the edge of a chasm. It is not he who stands on the edge of a chasm; his claims are not false. They are just. The land question will soon be resolved, as it must, to his complete satisfaction. Every step the Indian takes is based upon a profound sense of fairness.’

20 May 1885
‘Why do we have comfortable houses? Our home is not here. O Mary conceived without sin, pray for us.’

21 May 1885
‘At my table, I will only have what is strictly necessary - water or milk to drink, no dessert, no syrup.

I do not even want to sit comfortably. I want to punish myself, mortify myself in everything.’

23 May 1885
‘Down with beautiful hair and vain hair styles! Pretty heads are full of impure thoughts, they speak them aloud, they commit impure acts in great number.

No more useless words! I want to speak meekly. My thoughts must be charitable.’

[From the beginning of August, Riel wrote at length in his diary, but his entries were mostly prayers and meditations on death.]

22 August 1885
‘Death destroys the trees around me. She takes her victims from among my livestock. Even if I sacrifice one of the animals from my flocks, I become an instrument of death.

The language of death is eloquent. It is a language expressed in facts, not figures of speech. The birds of the air are subject to the laws of mortality. The fish hiding in the fathomless depths of the oceans are not concealed from death.

Man, whom God has placed at the head of creation, will obey death because he has disobeyed his Creator. Death! It is sin which has invited you into the world. You did not keep us waiting; it was not long after the invitation that you made your appearance. You are our guest. You deserve a kind and warm reception, for you only come to us after being summoned. Man has made a deliberate choice between immortality and mortality; and in exercising his freedom, he has consented to be your servant. Death, you have power over him because he has chosen you to be his mistress; it is fair that you should be obeyed. I am getting ready to receive you whenever it pleases God to send you to me. For imperious as you are, Death, you are subject to a power which must be acknowledged and obeyed - the absolute power of the One who, being life itself, has nothing which belongs to you; the sovereign power of the all-loving God without whose permission you cannot approach me.’