The mob will reign supreme

‘At breakfast this morning B A Hill, in talking of the events of the past few days [Abraham Lincoln’s assassination], said, in a very excited manner, that there was now but one course to pursue - that the entire South must be depopulated, and repeopled with another race, and that all the “Copperheads” among us must be dragged from their houses and disposed of. I have heard similar sentiments expressed by others, and if this shall become the prevailing doctrine terrible scenes are before us. The mob will reign supreme, and slaughter and fire desolate the land till anarchy is succeeded by despotism.’ This is from the diaries of Orville Hickman Browning - born 220 years ago today - an attorney and a close political associate of Lincoln.

Browning was born on 10 February 1806 at Cynthiana, Harrison County, Kentucky, into a farming family that moved to frontier Illinois in 1817. His formal schooling was limited, but he educated himself through sustained reading while working on his father’s land and later teaching school. After reading law in Kentucky, he was admitted to the bar in 1831 and that year settled in Quincy, Illinois, which remained his home for the rest of his life; he also served in the Illinois Volunteers during the Black Hawk War in 1832.

In 1836 he married Eliza Caldwell; the marriage produced no surviving children, though the Brownings raised foster children and were prominent figures in Quincy society. His legal reputation led to election to the Illinois House of Representatives and then the State Senate, where he became a close political ally and personal friend of Abraham Lincoln. By the 1850s he was among the most influential antislavery lawyers in Illinois and a key organiser of the emerging Republican Party in the state.

During the Civil War he served as Senator for Illinois (1861-1863) and in 1861 acted as  minister to Russia, helping to secure diplomatic goodwill at a critical moment for the Union. In 1866 Andrew Johnson appointed him Secretary of the Interior, where he steered Reconstruction-era land, Native American, and western development policies through a fractious Congress. He also served briefly as Acting Attorney General in 1868, giving him influence in two major federal departments. In later life he was widely respected as an elder statesman of Illinois, a careful constitutional thinker, and one of Lincoln’s most trusted political confidants. He died on 10 August 1881 in Quincy. Illinois. See Wikipedia and Mr Lincoln’s White House for more biographical information. 

Browning kept an extensive personal diary spanning much of his public life, particularly from the 1850s through the end of his life in 1881. Because he was deeply involved in the political currents of his era, his diary entries provide unique firsthand observations of Illinois and national politics during the antebellum decades, the Civil War, Lincoln’s assassination, and the fraught Reconstruction period. Extracts from his journals have been used by scholars to understand daily reactions to major events - for example, entries on his experience of Lincoln’s assassination and its aftermath were later published in historical collections.

Interest in Browning’s manuscripts grew in the early 20th century as historians sought primary sources on Abraham Lincoln and mid-19th-century American politics. In 1923 Theodore Calvin Pease delivered a lecture before the Chicago Historical Society titled The Diary of Orville H. Browning, a New Source for Lincoln’s Presidency, highlighting the value of Browning’s diaries for Lincoln scholarship. 

Following this advocacy, the Trustees of the Illinois State Historical Library published his diary in two volumes - The Diary of Orville Hickman Browning - between 1925 and 1933, edited with introduction and notes by Pease and James G. Randall.  The first volume covers approximately 1850-1864, and the second covers 1865-1881, each with annotations and bibliographical references. Subsequent editions and reading editions - including modern unannotated trade paperback reprints - have made Browning’s diary more accessible to general readers and Civil War historians. 

Here are several extracts, including those for the day of Lincoln’s election as president, and the day of his assassination (see also Hunted like a dog).

7 November 1860

‘We were beaten in this City & County yesterday, but the pain of our defeat was greatly mitigated by the news of this evening, giving assurance that we had carried the state, and that Lincoln was elected President.

Attended Court to day and argued motion for new trial in the case of People vs Boon. New trial granted Cloudy, misty day.’

14 April 1865

‘At War Department and got passes for some refugee Germans to return to their families in Richmond. At Treasury Depart: about Singletons business At 3 P. M. went with Senator Stewart of Nevada to see the President, but he was done receiving for the day, and we did not send in our cards. At 7 P. M. we went back to the Presidents. I went into his room and sat there till 8 O’clock waiting for him, but he did not come. He was going to the Theatre and was not up at his room after dinner.

After 11 at night, and after Mrs Browning and myself had retired, but were not yet asleep, the bell rang - I went to the front window and looked out, and found Judge Watts there who made the astounding announcement that the President, Secretary Seward and Mr F W Seward had just been assassinated - the former at Ford’s Theatre - the two latter at their residence - the Secretary being in bed from the effects of recent injuries sustained by being thrown from his carriage. We were overwhelmed with horror at this shocking event.

I had been to both the Presidents and Mr Sewards since night, only a few hours before, and it was hard to realize that such fearful tragedies had been realized. The Marshal W H Lamon has several times within the last two months told me that he believed the President would be assassinated, but I had no fear whatever that such an event would occur. I thought his life of very great importance to the rebels - He was disposed to be very lenient and merciful to them and to smooth the way for their return to their allegiance. I thought him the best friend they had among those in authority and that they were beginning to appreciate that fact, and that his life would be dear to them as to us. It seemed to me that the people in rebellion had many reasons for desiring the continuance of his life - none to wish his death - and I did not think any of the disaffected among us could be insane and fiendish enough to perpetrate the deed. It is one of the most stupendous crimes that has ever been committed, and I pray God that all the guilty parties may be ferreted out and brought to condign punishment. I am at a loss as to the class of persons who instigated the crime - whether it was the rebel leaders - the copperheads among ourselves in conjunction with foreign emissaries, gold speculators, or the friends and accomplices of Bealle who was recently hung at New York. I am inclined to the latter opinion. But however this may be of the fearful fact of the Presidents murder there is no doubt; and the consequences may be exceedingly disastrous to the Country. It must, necessarily, greatly inflame and exasperate the minds of the people, and, I fear lead to attempts at summary vengeance upon those among us who have been suspected of sympathy with the rebellion, and hostility to our government. This would be followed by anarchy and the wildest scenes of confusion and bloodshed, ending in military Despotism. My only hope for the salvation of the Country is in reverence for and obedience to the law, and the constituted authorities, and every good man should inculcate this both by precept and example. And now, more than ever, wisdom, calmness & discretion are needful. Now more than ever we should take counsel from reason - not passion. This is the hour of our greatest peril. I have never feared what the rebels could do to us - I do fear what we may do to ourselves.

I was very hopeful that the war was substantially over, and that the measures of the administration would soon restore unity and prosperity to our unhappy Country; but this atrocity may blast all my hopes. It may inspire the rebels with some new, insane hope, and greatly protract the struggle. But whether this or not it will certainly retard the pacification of the Country, and the restoration of fraternal relations.

To my apprehension it is the heaviest calamity that could have befallen the country. But we are in God’s hands. His dealings are mysterious - his ways past finding out, but we must trust to his wisdom & goodness.

This is good Friday, and the anniversary of the fall of Fort Sumter’

15 April 1865

‘A dismal day. After breakfast I went to the Whitehouse. Soon after the body of the President was brought in, he having died at 7.20 this morning. The corpse was laid in the room on the North side in the second story, opposite Mrs Lincoln’s room. His eyes were both very much protruded - the right one most - and very black and puffy underneath. No other disfiguration. The skull was opened under the supervision of Surgeon Genl Barnes & Dr Stone, and the ball removed. It was a Derringer ball, much flattened on both sides. It entered at the base of the brain an inch and a half or two inches back of the left ear, and ranging upward and transversely in the direction of the right eye, lodged in the brain about two thirds of the way from where it entered to the front. He never had a moments consciousness after he was shot. Mr Stanton told me that he was at home last night - Quite a number of the Military had assembled at his house, and he had been making them a speech, which probably protected him, if designs were entertained against him. He said that a young man ran from the Theatre to his house to inform him of the assassination of the President, and that he arrived he found a man hiding in the shadow of a tree in front of the house, the crowd having dispersed a short time before. When the young man arrived this other man left the tree, ran across the street and disappeared.’

16 April 1865

‘At breakfast this morning B A Hill, in talking of the events of the past few days, said, in a very excited manner, that there was now but one course to pursue - that the entire South must be depopulated, and repeopled with another race, and that all the “Copperheads” among us must be dragged from their houses and disposed of. I have heard similar sentiments expressed by others, and if this shall become the prevailing doctrine terrible scenes are before us. The mob will reign supreme, and slaughter and fire desolate the land till anarchy is succeeded by despotism It matters not that the man who uttered the sentiment is a coward - It still alarms me, for cowards are fermenters and leaders of mobs. At Church the Rev Mr Chester delivered an inflammatory stump speech - the first one I ever heard in an old school Presbyterian Church. He thought the President might have been removed because he was too lenient, and trusted that we now had an avenger who would execute wrath.’

Thirst after grandeur

‘What a delightful sight it is, after a shower of rain, to see the dear Women tripping along and tucking their drapery round their lovely hips, now & then giving one a glimpse of a lovely ankle & part of a full leg.’ This is Benjamin Haydon, an English painter born 240 years ago today. He was an artist with a significant talent, but his allegiance to 18th century trends, especially historical subjects, meant he was swimming against the Romantic tide, one which would make household names of William Blake and J. M. W. Turner. Chronic financial difficulties compounded his artistic frustrations, and he rarely managed to live within his means, especially after he had married and had children. His story is a sad one, but his characterful diary - initially published in five volumes - is superb because it not only tells us much about the man, but also gives picturesque insights into London life, whether the art and literary scene, chasing after girls or the trials of a day out with his family.

The following is a chapter on Benjamin Haydon taken from my (unpublished) book London in Diaries (see The Diary Review for more about this). Further biographical information is available at Wikipedia and Encyclopaedia Britannica. And the diaries, themselves, can be sampled in Neglected Genius - The Diaries of Benjamin Robert Haydon, 1808-1846 by John Jolliffe (Faber & Faber, 2012) at Googlebooks.

Benjamin Haydon and his thirst after grandeur

Though thriving in the early 19th century, the London art scene was very much in flux. Painters associated with the Romantic movement - William Blake, John Constable and J. M. W. Turner - were moving away from classicism and its focus on history favoured by, among others, Sir Joshua Reynolds, first president of the Royal Academy, and popular interest was moving with them.

Benjamin Haydon, an ambitious young painter from the west country, arrived into this cauldron of change, his heart set on following in Reynolds’ footsteps, and re-establishing a grandeur of British art through historical painting. He wrote in his autobiography, ‘I thought only of LONDON - Sir Joshua - Drawing - Dissection and High Art.’ Unfortunately, Haydon’s life in London was to be beset with frustrations and difficulties, both artistic and financial, which would eventually lead him to take his own life. Today, his autobiographical writing and especially his diaries have saved him from obscurity, for they demonstrate an immense vitality of feeling and observation. They give brilliant insights into aspects of London, from its literary world - he was friends with the Romantic poets - to the trials of a day out to Gravesend with his family.

Haydon was born in Plymouth [on 26 January] in 1786. His father worked as a bookseller/publisher, and his mother was the daughter of a priest. He was schooled locally, but the relationship with his father, who had very different ideas for his career, was always strained. In 1804, he escaped to London. Initially thinking he would study alone, he soon became drawn into the Royal Academy, in particular through its recently-appointed keeper, Henry Fuseli. Aged 21, Haydon exhibited for the first time. The painting - Joseph and Mary Resting on the Road to Egypt - sold for £105. Two years later, he finished The Assassination of L. S. Dentatus, which sold for twice as much. Although it increased his fame, it also resulted in a lifelong quarrel with the Academy, which, he felt, had failed to hang it with sufficient prominence. An allowance from his father ceased in 1810, leading Haydon to start borrowing money, a habit that dogged him for the rest of his life. During the 1810s, he travelled to Paris and studied for a short while at the Louvre. Works such as Christ’s Entry into Jerusalem and The Raising of Lazarus followed, but so did his first arrest for debt.

In 1821, Haydon married Mary Hyman, a young widow with whom he had fallen in love some years earlier. Mary already had two children, and she bore eight more, although only three of these, including Haydon’s first born Frank, survived beyond childhood. In debt again, he was sent to prison for the first time in 1823 - other incarcerations followed at regular intervals. One of his most well-known paintings, from this time, The Mock Election, shows those in jail imitating an election taking place outside. King George IV gave him £500 for the work.

When not in prison or working on commissions, Haydon began to tour the country lecturing on painting and promoting his idea that important buildings should be decorated with historical representations of glory. In the late 1830s, he published a substantial essay - Painting and the Fine Arts - and soon after began writing his autobiography. This was edited by Tom Taylor in three volumes and published posthumously, in 1853. Today, it is considered one of Haydon’s most important achievements. 

Haydon continued to paint in the 1840s, sometimes very large pictures, like The Maid of Saragossa and The Anti-Slavery Convention, but his style was already long out of fashion, and he was chronically frustrated at the lack of public interest in his work. In May 1846, an exhibition he had organised closed with the loss of a considerable sum; a few days later a friend reneged over a promise of a £1,000 loan; and, on 22 June, he bought a gun and shot himself. The wound failed to kill him and left him conscious, so he resorted to a razor to cut his throat. A note to his wife said: ‘Pardon this last pang, many thou has suffered from me; God bless thee in dear widowhood. I hope Sir Robert Peel will consider I have earned a pension for thee. A thousand kisses. Thy husband & love to the last.’

Haydon began keeping a diary in 1808, and continued the practice throughout his life, the very last entry being on the day of his suicide. This diary was first quoted extensively in the three volume autobiography edited by Taylor, but publication of the complete text had to wait until the 1960s when Harvard University Press published five volumes, carefully edited and annotated by Willard Bissel Pope. In 1960, the Keats-Shelley Journal reviewing the diary called Haydon the only English romantic, not excepting Byron, to parallel ‘the self-torturing sophist, wild Rousseau’; and said of him that ‘a great writer was lost’ because again and again his sketches were more vivid than his novelistic contemporaries.

A more accessible collection of extracts from Haydon’s diary were edited by John Joliffe and published by Hutchinson in 1990 under the title, Neglected Genius: The Diaries of Benjamin Robert Haydon 1808-1846. ‘His violent self-righteousness,’ Joliffe says, ‘may have frustrated most of his aims, but his sheer vitality and his quite exceptional powers of observation and description make him an irresistible subject.’

The capital of the world
14 May 1809
I began to study in London in lodgings in the Strand, 342, May 20th, 1804, and studied night [and] day, till I brought a weakness in my eyes, which obstructed me for 6 weeks. In January, 1805, I first entered the Academy. March, went into Devonshire, where I obtained bones from a Surgeon of Plymouth and drew nothing else for three months; returned to the Academy in July; met [David] Wilkie [Scottish painter] there first time. Studied incessantly, sitting up many nights, shattered myself so much obliged to leave off. Went into Devonshire for the recovery of health. Began to paint after two years’ application to Anatomy & Drawing, May, 1806. Commenced my first picture, October 1st, and finished it March 31st, 1807. Went into Devonshire for 6 months. Studied heads from Nature. Came to town. My dear Mother died at Salt Hill. January 1st, 1808, commenced by second Picture, Dentatus.

11 July 1810
In passing Piccadilly I observed in some horses galloping the various positions of their limbs - what was the position of the fore legs when the hind legs were in such a position, &c - it is astonishing how truly you get at their motions by thus scrutinizing; I made some sketches, after I arrived home, and they seemed to spring and had all the variety I could possibly wish - and such a look of Nature and activity!

9 September 1810
I walked to see Wilkie yesterday to Hampstead; as I returned about four o’clock the Sun was on the decline - and all the valley as I looked from Primrose Hill wore the appearance of happiness & Peace. Ladies glittering in white, with their aerial drapery floating to the gentle breeze, children playing in the middle of the fields, and all the meadows were dotted with cows, grazing with their long shadows streamed across the grass engoldened by the setting Sun. Here was a mower intent on his pursuit, with his white shirt and brown arms illumined in brilliancy; there another, resting one hand on his Scythe, and with the other wetting it with tinkling music - some people were lying, others standing - all animate & inanimate nature seemed to enjoy and contribute to this delicious scene, while behind stood the capital of the World, with its hundred spires - and St Paul’s in the midst towering in the silent air with splendid magnificence.

A delicious tumble in Greenwich
30 November 1812
Went to the House of Lords to hear the Prince open Parliament in State. It was a very grand affair - the beautiful women - educated, refined, graceful, with their bending plumes & sparkling eyes - the Nobility, the Chancellor - I could not help reflecting how long it was before society arrived at such a pitch of peace & quietness, that order & regulation such as I witnessed existed. What tumult, what blood, what contention, what suffering, what error, before experience has ascertained what was to be selected, or what rejected.

25 April 1813
I felt this morning an almost irresistible inclination to go down to Greenwich and have delicious tumble with the Girls over the hills. I fancied a fine, beamy, primy, fresh, green spring day (as it was), a fine creature in a sweet, fluttering, clean drapery, with health rosing her shining cheeks, & love melting in her sparkling eyes, with a bending form ready to leap into your arms. After a short struggle, I seized my brush, knowing the consequences of yielding to my disposition, & that tho’ it might begin today, it would not end with it.

A critique of Sir Joshua’s exhibition
8 May 1813
Sir Joshua’s exhibition opened. The first impression on my mind was certainly that of flimsiness. They looked faint, notwithstanding the effect was so judiciously arranged. Sir Joshua’s modes of conveying ideas were colour & light and shadow; of form, he knew nothing. The consequence was he hinted to his eye & untrained hand, and with great labour & bungling, modeled out his feelings with a floating richness, an harmonious depth, and a gemmy brilliancy that was perhaps encreased by his perpetual repetitions, and which renders him as great a master of colour as ever lived. Of poetical conception of character as it regards Portrait, he had a singular share. How delightful are his Portraits, their artless simplicity, their unstudied grace, their chaste dignity, their retired sentiment command us, enchant us, subdue us.

The exhibition does great credit to the Directors of the British Gallery. It will have a visible effect on Art; it will raise the character of the English School; it will stop that bigotted, deluded, absurd propensity for Leonardo Da Vincis & insipid Corregios, and as men who shared Sir J’s friendship and been soothed by his manners, it does credit to their hearts as men.

6 August 1815
What a delightful sight it is, after a shower of rain, to see the dear Women tripping along and tucking their drapery round their lovely hips, now & then giving one a glimpse of a lovely ankle & part of a full leg.

Nature in the park; marbles in the museum
2 June 1816
I rode yesterday to Hampton Court round by Kingston & dined at Richmond. The day is delicious, the hedges smelling of may blossom, the trees green, the leaves full & out, the Thames shining with a silvery glitter, & a lovely girl who loves you, [in] the dining room of the Star & Garter at Richmond, sitting after dinner on your knee, with her heavenly bosom palpitating against your own, her arm round your neck playing with your hair, while you are sufficiently heated to be passionately alive to the ecstasy without having lost your senses from its excesses - Claret on the table and the delicious scene of Nature in Richmond Park beneath your open window, moaty, sunny, out of which rises the wandering voice of the cuckoo, while the sun, who throws a silent splendour over all, sinks into the lower vaults & the whole sky is beginning to assume the tinged lustre of an afternoon.

28 May 1817
On Monday last there were one thousand and two people visited the Elgin marbles! a greater number than ever visited the British Museum since it was established. It is quite interesting to listen to the remarks of the people. They make them with the utmost simplicity, with no affectation of taste, but with a homely truth that shews they are sound at the core. We overheard two common looking decent men say to each other, ‘How broken they, a’ant they?’ ‘Yes,’ said the other, ‘but how like life.’

28 June 1817
Dined at Kemble’s farewell dinner [the actor John Philip Kemble had played his last stage role, Corialanus, a few days earlier, his retirement having been hastened, perhaps, by the rise in popularity of Edmund Kean]. A more complete farce was never acted. Many, I daresay, regretted his leaving us, but the affectations of all parties disgusted me. The Drury Lane actors flattering the Covent Garden, the Covent Garden flattered in turn the Drury Lane. Lord Holland flattered Kemble; Kemble flattered Lord Holland. [. . .] Anyone would have thought that the English Stage had taken its origin from Kemble - Garrick was never mentioned - when all that Kemble has done for it has been to improve the costume. Yet Kemble is really & truly the Hero of all ranting; all second rate ability find it much easier to imitate his droning regularity than the furious impulses of Kean, who cannot point out when they come or why, but is an organ for Nature, when she takes it in her head to play on him.

Of Walter Scott and Wordsworth; and Keats in Kilburn meadows
7 March 1821
Sir Walter Scott breakfasted with me with Lamb, & Wilkie, and a delightful morning we had. I never saw any man have such an effect on company as he; he operated on us like champagne & whisky mixed. It is singular how success & want of it operate on two extraordinary men, Wordsworth & Walter Scott. Scott enters a room & sits at table, with the coolness & self possession of conscious fame; Wordsworth with an air of mortified elevation of head, as if fearful he was not estimated as he deserved. Scott is always cool, & amusing; Wordsworth often egotistical and overbearing. [. . .] Scott’s success would have made Wordsworth insufferable, while Wordsworth’s failures would not have rendered Scott a bit less delightful.

29 March 1821
Keats is gone too! [A few weeks earlier, Haydon had written of the death of John Scott, editor of the London Magazine, after a duel.] He died at Rome, Feby. 23rd, aged 25. Poor Keats - a genius more purely poetical never existed. [. . .]

The death of his brother [in December 1818] wounded him deeply, and it appeared to me from that hour he began seriously to droop. He wrote at this time his beautiful ode to the nightingale. ‘Where Youth grows pale & spectre thin & dies!’ - alluded to his poor Brother.

As we were walking along the Kilburn meadows, he repeated this beautiful ode, with a tremulous undertone, that was extremely affecting! I was attached to Keats, & he had great enthusiasm for me. I was angry because he would not bend his great powers to some definite object, & always told him so. Latterly he grew angry because I shook my head at his irregularity, and told him he was destroying himself.

The last time I saw him was at Hampstead, lying in a white bed with a book, hectic, weak, & on his back, irritable at his feebleness, and wounded at the way he had been used; he seemed to be going out of the world with a contempt for this and no hopes of the other.

Gorgeous splendour of ancient chivalry
21 July 1821
What a scene was Westminster Hall on Thursday last! It combined all the gorgeous splendour of ancient chivalry with the intense heroic interest of modern times; every thing that could effect or excite, either in beauty, heroism, grace, elegance, or taste; all that was rich in colour, gorgeous in effect, touching in association, English in character or Asiatic in magnificence, was crowded into this golden & enchanted hall!

I only got my ticket on Wednesday at two, and dearest Mary & I drove about to get all I wanted. Sir George Beaumont lent me ruffles & frill, another a blue velvet coat, a third a sword; I bought buckles, & the rest I had, and we returned to dinner exhausted. [. . .] I dressed, breakfasted, & was at the Hall Door at half past one. Three Ladies were before me. The doors opened about four & I got a front place in the Chamberlain’s box, between the door and Throne, & saw the whole room distinctly. Many of the door keepers were tipsey; quarrels took place. The sun began to light up the old gothic windows, the peers to stroll in, & the company to crowd in, of all descriptions; elegant young men tripping along in silken grace with elegant girls trembling in feathers and diamonds. Some took seats they had not any right to occupy, and were obliged to leave them after sturdy disputes. Others lost their tickets. Every movement, as the time approached for the King’s appearance, was pregnant with interest. The appearance of the Monarch has something the air of a rising sun; there are indications which announce his approach, a whisper of mystery turns all eyes to the throne! Suddenly two or three run; others fall back; some talk, direct, hurry, stand still, or disappear. Then three or four of high rank appear from behind the Throne; and interval is left; the crowds scarce breathe! The room rises with a sort of feathered, silken thunder! Plumes wave, eyes sparkle, glasses are out, mouths smile. The way in which the King bowed was really monarchic! As he looked towards the Peeresses & Foreign Ambassadors, he looked like some gorgeous bird of the East.

After all the ceremonies he arose, the Procession was arranged, the Music played, and the line began to move. All this was exceedingly imposing. After two or three hours’ waiting, the doors opened, and the flower girls entered, strewing flowers. The exquisite poetry of their look, the grace of their actions, their slow movement, their white dresses, were indescribably touching; their light milky colour contrasted with the dark shadow of the archway. The distant trumpets & shouts of the people, the slow march, and at last the appearance of the King under a golden canopy, crowned, and the universal burst of the assembly at seeing him, affected every body.

A crowd of feelings but I cannot write
4 December 1821
I am married! Ah, what a crowd of feelings lie buried in that little word. I cannot write or think for the present. I thank God for at last bringing me to the arms of the only creature that ever made my heart burn really, & I hope he will bless me with health & understanding & means to make her happy & blessed. Dearest, dearest Mary - I cannot write.

17 September 1826
Walked into a delicious meadow, and sat down on an old stump behind some hay ricks, my back turned on the Edgware road. It was a beautiful seclusion; just after passing the Turnpike near West End Lane, you turn down a lane which leads to the Harrow road; about a dozen yards on the left is a style, & close to the style hay ricks & a fallen stump. Here I sat and read Xenophon’s treatise on riding & Cavalry exercise, in a French translation, which decidedly proves the Greeks did not shoe their Horses, as he gives instructions how to get the hoof so firm that it shall resist injury successfully.

London Bridge is opening
1 August 1831
Went to see the King’s procession to open the London Bridge, by particular desire, that is, of Master Frank, Alfred, Frederick, Harry, & Mary Haydon, not forgetting Mrs Mary Haydon the Elder. Well, I went, to the gallery of St Paul’s, and after waiting about 5 hours, a little speck with a flag and another little speck with a flag, and another speck in which I saw ten white specks, and 6 red & yellow specks, came by, & immediately 200,000 specks uttered a shout I could just hear, and some specks waved handkerchiefs, & other specks raised hats, and this, they said, was the King, and directly a little round ball went up in the air and that, they said, was an air balloon, and then they all shouted, and Mrs Mary Haydon the Elder had a pain in her stomach, and Master Frederick wanted to drink, and Miss Mary said she was faint, and Master Frank Haydon said, ‘is this all?’ - and Mr Haydon said he was very hot, and then they went down an infinite number of dark stairs and got into a coach & drove home, & each fell asleep and this was pleasure. Now if Mr Haydon had gone to work with his Xenophon, neither Master or Mrs or Mr Haydon would have had a pain in their bellies and Mr Haydon’s Back-ground would have been done, and his Conscience would have been quiet, & now he has spent 1.18.6 to get a pain in his belly, and has the pain without the money - and this is pleasure.

18 November 1831
This day my dear little child Fanny died, at 1/2 past one in the forenoon, aged 2 years, 8 months, & 12 days being born on March 6th, 1829. Dear Little Soul, she had water in the head, all the consequences of weakness & deranged digestion, and was one of those conceived creatures, born when the Mother has hardly any strength from the effects of a previous confinement. Good God! She never spoke, or was not able to utter syllable, & never walked. Reader, whoever thou are, shrink not from Death with apprehension. Death was the greatest mercy an Almighty could grant.

For this earthly happiness I paid 2.12.6
1 September 1838
Went to Gravesend with my family for a day of relief & pleasure. First we got into an Omnibus & were jolted & suffocated [to] the Bank. Second the Steamer at the Bridge had just gone. Third we had to wait amongst the Porters & Packages 3/4 of an hour for the next. 4th we got on board the sunny side in a cabin, close to the Boiler, & were alternately baked by the sun & broiled by the steam pipe. Fifth we got to Gravesend tired & hungry. 6th we walked to a romantic love lane, which was a garden straight walk with dirty wooden seats, and sundry evidences that people in Gravesend had good digestions & sound peristaltic motion. 7th we ordered Roast Beef for Dinner, and my dear Mary kept her appetite to enjoy a hearty meal, when the Landlord put down lamb she hated  & so did I. 8th we had rum as hot as aqua-fortis, & then old port as weak as children pap. We all got aboard with indigestion. I fell asleep on Deck & got a pain in my head, and we got home tired, grumbling, ill humoured, had tea & crept to bed.

Today I am heated, discontented, & indignant, & it will take 24 hours more to recover in. For this earthly happiness I paid 2.12.6. - enough to feed us for a week! - so much for pleasure.

20 May 1846
Continually attending to Exhibitions is dreadful and if you do not, you get robbed. These things an Artist should have nothing to do with; details of business injure my mind and when I paint I feel as if Nectar was floating in the Interstices of the brain. God be praised, I have painted today.

22 June 1846
God forgive - me - Amen. Finis of B R Haydon ‘Stretch me no longer on this tough World’ - Lear. End.

This article is a slightly revised version of one first published on 26 January 2016.

Something of myself

The English writer Rudyard Kipling, who died 80 years ago today, left behind a treasure of much-loved stories and poems, such as The Jungle Book, Kim and If. But, he didn’t leave much autobiographical material - hating the idea of biographers churning over his life - and what diary material has survived is thanks to chance rather than purpose: one diary from 1885, when he was working as a journalist in India, and several notebooks he kept while on motoring tours. In addition, and of much use to biographers, are surviving partial transcripts of the daily diary kept by Kipling’s American wife, Carrie, the originals of which were destroyed by the Kiplings’ daughter Elsie.

Kipling was born in Bombay in 1865. He was named after Rudyard Lake in Staffordshire near where his parents had met and courted. Aged five he was taken, with his younger sister Alice, to live with a couple in Southsea, who boarded children of British nationals serving in India, and they remained there for six years. Alice returned to India, while Rudyard was admitted to the United Services College at Westward Ho!. In 1882, he, too, returned to India - his parents lacking the resources to send him to Oxford, and doubting his academic ability to win a scholarship - where his father, in Lahore by this time, secured him a job as assistant editor of a local newspaper, the Civil and Military Gazette, published six days a week. This suited Kipling, whose need to write (journalism, poetry, short stories), apparently, was unstoppable. In the late 1880s, he moved to Allahabad to work for The Pioneer, though was discharged in 1889 after a dispute. He published a first collection of his poems as Departmental Ditties in 1886, and a first prose collection, Plain Tales from the Hills, in Calcutta in early 1888.

Determined on a literary career, Kipling returned to London, visiting Japan and North America on the way. He published several short stories, and a novel, and also took another tour, this one to South Africa and the antipodes. In early 1892, in London, he married the American Carrie Balestier, and they settled in Vermont where their two daughters (Elsie and Josephine) were born. During the next four years, he wrote several books of short stories (not least The Jungle Book and its sequel), a further novel and much poetry. But, in 1896, the Kiplings left the US - partly because of an increase in perceived anti-British feeling and partly because of a dispute with Carrie’s family - to return to England, where they first lived in Torquay, Devon, then Rottingdean and, finally, in a house called Bateman’s in Burwash, Sussex. A third child, John, was born to the Kiplings in 1897. And from 1898, for a decade, the family travelled every winter to South Africa (where they were given a house by Cecil Rhodes) - except for 1899. That year, the Kiplings sailed to America, so Carrie could see her mother, but the journey across the Atlantic was very hard, and Kipling and Josephine both fell seriously ill. Josephine did not survive.

By this time, Kipling was famous. He continued writing short stories and novels, producing Kim and the Just So Stories soon after the turn of the century, as well as songs and poems (such as If, published in 1910). In 1907, after turning down other honours, including a knighthood, he accepted the Nobel Prize for Literature. With the onset of war, Kipling supported the fight against Germany, and even helped his son, who had eyesight problems, get enlisted. However, John went missing within a few weeks, and his body was never recovered. Devastated, Kipling continued to write after the war, but never returned to the bright colourful children’s stories he had once so delighted in; indeed, his conservative and imperialist views fell out of fashion, and his writing too. He died in London on 18 January 1936. His ashes were buried in Westminster Abbey’s Poets’ Corner, next to the graves of Charles Dickens and Thomas Hardy. Further information can be found at Wikipedia, The Kipling Society, the BBC, Encyclopædia Britannica or The Poetry Foundation.

Kipling was apt to destroy many of his personal papers, disliking the idea of biographers churning over his life; his wife, Carrie, and daughter, Elsie Bambridge, took a similar view. Only a few diaries kept by Kipling have survived by chance: one from when he was young in 1885, and a set of notebooks he kept while on motoring holidays later in his life. Carrie, kept a daily diary from 1892 until her husband’s death. Although the originals were destroyed by Bambridge, two biographers, Charles Carrington and Lord Birkenhead, had already made extensive notes and transcribed parts of the diary. These are held by the University of Sussex’s Kipling archive at The Keep, but The Kipling Society also has copies (and has made them available online, with an index).

Biographers have made good use of the 1885 diary - see Andrew Lycett’s Rudyard Kipling, for example - but the full text can be found in Rudyard Kipling: Something of Myself and Other Autobiographical Writings edited by Thomas Pinney, Cambridge University Press, 1991, available to preview at Googlebooks. (Something of Myself is a rare autobiographical text, started by Kipling in the last months of his life but not properly finished - Carrie edited it for publication.) Here are several extracts of the 1885 diary included in that Pinney edition.

28 January 1885
‘Scraps on Accidents on Indian Railways, The Dynamitard’s attempts at Westminster and Hume’s vegetarianism. About one column altogether. An easy day as far as the paper was concerned; there being plenty of matter in hand and not much proofwork.’

13 February 1885
‘Scrap. Musketry schools. Annotated Prejvalsky’s explorations in Thibet - and rec’d bellew’s Sanitary Report for notes of the week. Typhoid at home went in today: Mem scrap on Rai Kanega Lall and design for town hall must be done tomorrow.’

25 February 1885
‘Sting of yesterday blinded me couldn’t see. Went to hospital Lawrie came over about mid day and looked at it. Attention more occupied by blain of my face. Must come to hospital tomorrow and see how cocaine works. Did not to go office.’

26 February 1885
‘Eye all right. W said it wasn’t and so lost my work for the day - served him right. Went to hospital [?] cocaine and was impressed. To Cinderella in the evening and was impresseder.’

6 April 1885
‘No bank holiday for me. Special of three columns on review. Fine weather at last but I must shut up with a click before long. Too little sleep and too much seen.’

1 May 1885
‘On the road to Kotgur. May day at Mahasu inexpressibly lovely. Lay on the grass and felt health coming back, again. De brath a delightful man. What a blessed luxury is idleness. Eagles and shot at bottles.’

21 August 1885
‘Dinner with Tarleton Young at his chummery. Where met one LeMaistre who is a womans mind small and mean featured. He may be decent enough for aught I know. Usual philander in Gardens. Home to count the risks of my resolution.’

Transcripts of Kipling’s diaries of his motor tours, around 100 pages, are held in the archive at The Keep. The original notebooks were thought lost, at least until found in a dusty drawer at Macmillan (see The Daily Telegraph). Several articles in the Kipling Journal mention or quote from the notebooks, for example see volume 91 dated December 2017,

This article is a slightly revised version of one first published on 18 January 2016.

Founding Father Franklin

Today marks the 320th anniversary of the birth of Benjamin Franklin. From humble origins, he not only became a very wealthy businessmen, but also a scientist of distinction, postmaster to American colonies, an international statesman and one of the founding fathers of the United States - in short a giant of 18th century American history. He wrote much and often through his life, but not often in diary form - a brief journal of a journey by ship when he was returning from England for the first time as a young man, and no more than fragments later in his life.

Franklin was born in Boston, Massachusetts, on 17 January 1706, one of 10 children born to Josiah Franklin with his second wife, Abiah Folger. He attended Boston Latin School briefly, but went to work for his father very young, at age 12 being apprenticed to his brother James, a printer. In 1721, James founded The New-England Courant, an independent newspaper. When told he couldn’t write letters for publication in the paper, Franklin adopted the pseudonym of Mrs. Silence Dogood, a middle-aged widow, whose letters were published. When his brother was jailed for a few weeks, he took over the newspaper and had Mrs. Dogood (quoting Cato’s Letters) proclaim: ‘Without freedom of thought there can be no such thing as wisdom and no such thing as public liberty without freedom of speech.’

Aged still only 17, he absconded from his apprenticeship, running away to Philadelphia where he worked in printing shops. He caught the attention of the Pennsylvania Governor Sir William Keith who offered to help him set up a new newspaper if he went to London to acquire the necessary printing equipment. But, having made the journey, he soon found Keith had failed to deliver any letters of credit or introductions. He found employment with a printer, and enjoyed much of what London had to offer. Eventually, with the promise of a clerkship from the merchant Thomas Denham, he returned to Philadelphia in 1726. Aged 21, he launched Junto, a discussion group whose members sought ways to help improve their community - the idea was, in part, based on his experience of English coffee houses. One of the group’s early ventures was to set up a subscription library, which, in time, became the Library Company of Philadelphia.

On Denham’s death, Franklin formed a partnership with a friend, in 1728, setting up a new printing house. Within a couple of years, though, he had borrowed money to buy his partner out, and to become sole proprietor. One of the company’s first successes was to win an order to print all of Pennsylvania’s paper currency, a business it would soon secure in other colonies too. The company invested in further profitable ventures, including the Pennsylvania Gazette, published by Franklin from 1729 and generally acknowledged as among the best of the colonial newspapers, and Poor Richard’s Almanack, printed annually from 1732 to 1757. Franklin’s business ventures spread, as he developed franchises and partnerships with other printers in the Carolinas, New York and the British West Indies.

In 1730, Franklin entered into a common-law marriage with Deborah Read. He had known her since she was 15 and he 17, and, before leaving for London, had promised to marry her. However, while in London, she married a man who had then fled the country, leaving her unable to remarry. Franklin brought with him to the union an illegitimate son, and he had a further two children with Deborah, though one of them died in childhood. By the late 1740s, Franklin was a very wealthy man, and decided to retire from any direct involvement in business and to become a Gentleman, occupying himself with various cultural pursuits, not least science experiments. He is credited with a number of innovations, such as the Franklin stove and the lightning rod, as well as demonstrating that lightning and electricity are identical.

In 1753, Franklin moved directly into public service as deputy postmaster for the Colonies, a position he held for over 20 years. However, from 1757 until 1774, he lived in London (apart from a two year return to Philadelphia in 1762-1764) where he acted as the colonial representative for Pennsylvania in a dispute over lands held by the Penn family. Deborah having remained in America, he and William resided with a widow, Margaret Stevenson, near Charing Cross, and mixed in elevated social circles. Firmly loyal to the Crown at this stage (he managed to get his son William appointed royal governor of New Jersey), he was at pains to bridge the growing divide between Britain and her colonies, and is said to have written over 100 newspaper articles between 1765 and 1775 trying to explain each side to the other.

On his return to America, the War of Independence had already broken out. In 1776, he helped to draft, and was then a signatory to, the Declaration of Independence. William, however, remained loyal to Britain, causing a rift that lasted for the rest of Franklin’s life. Later that year, Franklin and two others were appointed to represent America in France. He negotiated the Franco-American Alliance which provided for military cooperation between the two countries against Britain, and he ensured significant French subsidies to America. In 1783, as American ambassador to France, Franklin signed the Treaty of Paris, ending the American War of Independence. Having been very loved, and very happy in France, he returned, once again, to America in 1785, but received only a lukewarm welcome. He died in 1790.

Encyclopædia Britannica gives this assessment of the man: ‘Franklin was not only the most famous American in the 18th century but also one of the most famous figures in the Western world of the 18th century; indeed, he is one of the most celebrated and influential Americans who has ever lived. Although one is apt to think of Franklin exclusively as an inventor, as an early version of Thomas Edison, which he was, his 18th-century fame came not simply from his many inventions but, more important, from his fundamental contributions to the science of electricity. If there had been a Nobel Prize for Physics in the 18th century, Franklin would have been a contender. Enhancing his fame was the fact that he was an American, a simple man from an obscure background who emerged from the wilds of America to dazzle the entire intellectual world. Most Europeans in the 18th century thought of America as a primitive, undeveloped place full of forests and savages and scarcely capable of producing enlightened thinkers. Yet Franklin’s electrical discoveries in the mid-18th century had surpassed the achievements of the most sophisticated scientists of Europe. Franklin became a living example of the natural untutored genius of the New World that was free from the encumbrances of a decadent and tired Old World - an image that he later parlayed into French support for the American Revolution.’ Further biographical information is readily available at Wikipedia, the BBC, US History, PBS, or Franklin’s own autobiography.

Franklin wrote many texts through his life, not least his autobiography which has been published and republished often. One version, readily available at Internet Archive, is The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin - the Unmutilitated and Correct Version Compiled and Edited with Notes by John Bigelow published by G. P. Putnam’s & Sons in 1916. This edition includes one of the rather few Franklin diaries - the Benjamin Franklin Journal of a voyage from England to Philadelphia 1726. The same text can be sourced elsewhere online, at American History, and the Online Library of Liberty (where it can be found in the first of 12 volumes of The Works of Benjamin Franklin).

Here are several extracts from that diary.

22 July 1726
‘Yesterday in the afternoon we left London, and came to an anchor off Gravesend about eleven at night. I lay ashore all night, and this morning took a walk up to the Windmill Hill, from whence I had an agreeable prospect of the country for above twenty miles round, and two or three reaches of the river, with ships and boats sailing both up and down, and Tilbury Fort on the other side, which commands the river and passage to London. This Gravesend is a cursed biting place; the chief dependence of the people being the advantage they make of imposing upon strangers. If you buy anything of them, and give half what they ask, you pay twice as much as the thing is worth. Thank God, we shall leave it tomorrow.’

23 July 1726
‘This day we weighed anchor and fell down with the tide, there being little or no wind. In the afternoon we had a fresh gale, that brought us down to Margate, where we shall lie at anchor this night. Most of the passengers are very sick. Saw several porpoises, &c.’

24 July 1726
‘This morning we weighed anchor, and coming to the Downs, we set our pilot ashore at Deal, and passed through. And now, whilst I write this, sitting upon the quarterdeck, I have methinks one of the pleasantest scenes in the world before me. Tis a fine, clear day, and we are going away before the wind with an easy, pleasant gale. We have near fifteen sail of ships in sight, and I may say in company. On the left hand appears the coast of France at a distance, and on the right is the town and castle of Dover, with the green hills and chalky cliffs of England, to which we must now bid farewell. Albion, farewell!’

27 July 1726
‘This morning, the wind blowing very hard at West, we stood in for the land, in order to make some harbour. About noon we took on board a pilot out of a fishing shallop, who brought the ship into Spithead off Portsmouth. The captain, Mr. Denham, and myself went on shore, and, during the little time we stayed, I made some observations on the place.

Portsmouth has a fine harbour. The entrance is so narrow that you may throw a stone from Fort to Fort; yet it is near ten fathom deep, and bold close to; but within there is room enough for five hundred, or, for aught l know, a thousand sail of ships. The town is strongly fortified, being encompassed with a high wall and a deep and broad ditch, and two gates, that are entered over drawbridges; besides several forts, batteries of large cannon, and other outworks, the names of which I know not, nor had I time to take so strict a view as to be able to describe them. In war time, the town has a garrison of 10,000 men; but at present ’tis only manned by about 100 Invalids. Notwithstanding the English have so many fleets of men-of-war at sea at this time, I counted in this harbour above thirty sail of 2nd, 3rd, and 4th Rates, that lay by unrigged, but easily fitted out upon occasion, all their masts and rigging lying marked and numbered in storehouses at hand. The King’s yards and docks employ abundance of men, who, even in peace time, are constantly building and refitting men-of-war for the King’s Service.

Gosport lies opposite to Portsmouth, and is near as big, if not bigger; but, except the fort at the mouth of the harbour, and a small outwork before the main street of the town, it is only defended by a mud wall, which surrounds it, and a trench or dry ditch of about ten feet depth and breadth. Portsmouth is a place of very little trade in peace time; it depending chiefly on fitting out men-of-war. Spithead is the place where the Fleet commonly anchor, and is a very good riding-place. The people of Portsmouth tell strange stories of the severity of one Gibson, who was governor of this place in the Queen’s time, to his soldiers, and show you a miserable dungeon by the town gate, which they call Johnny Gibson’s Hole, where, for trifling misdemeanors, he used to confine his soldiers till they were almost starved to death. It is a common maxim, that, without severe discipline, ’tis impossible to govern the licentious rabble of soldiery. I own, indeed, that if a commander finds he has not those qualities in him that will make him beloved by his people, he ought, by all means, to make use of such methods as will make them fear him, since one or the other (or both) is absolutely necessary; but Alexander and Caesar, those renowned generals, received more faithful service, and performed greater actions, by means of the love their soldiers bore them, than they could possibly have done, if, instead of being beloved and respected, they had been hated and feared by those they commanded.’

4 October 1726
‘Last night we struck a dolphin and this morning we found a flying-fish dead under the windlass. He is about the bigness of a small mackerel, a sharp head, a small mouth, and a tail forked somewhat like a dolphin, but the lowest branch much larger and longer than the other, and tinged with yellow. His back and sided of a darkish blue, his belly white, and his skin very thick. His wings are of a finny substance, about a span long, reaching, when close to his body from an inch below his gills to an inch above his tail. When they fly it is straight forward, (for they cannot readily turn,) a yard or two above the water; and perhaps fifty yards in the furthest before they dip into the water again, for they cannot support themselves in the air any longer than while their wings continue wet. These flying-fish are the common prey of the dolphin, who is their mortal enemy. When he pursues them, they rise and fly; and he keeps close under them till they drop, and then snaps them up immediately. They generally fly in flocks, four or five, or perhaps a dozen together and a dolphin is seldom caught without one or more in his belly. We put this flying-fish upon the hook, in hopes of catching one, but in a few minutes they got it off without hooking themselves; and they will not meddle with any other bait.’

5 October 1726
‘This morning we saw a heron, who had lodged aboard last night. It is a long-legged, long-necked bird, having, as they say, but one gut. They live upon fish, and will swallow a living eel thrice, sometimes, before it will remain in their body. The wind is west again. The ship’s crew was brought to a short allowance of water.’

6 October 1726
‘This morning abundance of grass, rock-weed, &c., passed by us; evident tokens that land is not far off. We hooked a dolphin this morning, made us a good breakfast. A sail passed by us about twelve o’clock, and nobody saw her till she was too far astern to be spoken with. It is very near calm; we saw another sail ahead this afternoon; but, night coming on, we could not speak with her, though we very much desired it; she stood to the northward, and it is possible might have informed us how far we are from land. Our artists on board are much at a loss. We hoisted our jack to her, but she took no notice of it.

7 October 1726
‘Last night, about nine o’clock sprung up a fine gale at northeast, which run us in our course at the rate of seven miles an hour all night. We were in hopes of seeing land this morning, but cannot. The water, which we thought was changed, is now as blue as the sky; so that, unless at that time we were running over some unknown shoal, our eyes strangely deceived us. All the reckonings have been out these several days; though the captain says it is his opinion we are yet a hundred leagues from land; for my part I know not what to think of it; we have run all this day at a great rate, and now night is come on we have no soundings. Sure the American continent is not all sunk under water since we left it.’

8 October 1726
‘The fair wind continues still; we ran all night in our course, sounding every four hours, but can find no ground yet, nor is the water changed by all this day’s run. This afternoon we saw an Irish Lord and a bird which flying looked like a yellow duck. These, they say, are not seen far from the coast. Other signs of lands have we none. Abundance of large porpoises ran by us this afternoon, and we were followed by a shoal of small ones, leaping out of the water as they approached. Towards evening we spied a sail ahead, and spoke with her just before dark. She was bound from New York for Jamaica and left Sandy Hook yesterday about noon, from which they reckon themselves forty-five leagues distant. By this we compute that we are not above thirty leagues from our Capes, and hope to see land to-morrow.’

9 October 1726
‘We have had the wind fair all the morning; at twelve o’clock we sounded, perceiving the water visibly changed, and struck ground at twenty-five fathoms, to our universal joy. After dinner one of our mess went up aloft to look out, and presently pronounced the long wished-for sound, LAND! LAND! In less than an hour we could decry it from the deck, appearing like tufts of trees. I could not discern it so soon as the rest; my eyes were dimmed with the suffusion of two small drops of joy. By three o’clock we were run in within two leagues of the land, and spied a small sail standing along shore. We would gladly have spoken with her, for our captain was unacquainted with the Coast, and knew not what land it was that we saw. We made all the sail we could to speak with her. We made a signal of distress; but all would not do, the ill-natured dog would not come near us. Then we stood off again till morning, not caring to venture too near.’

10 October 1726
‘This morning we stood in again for land; and we that had been here before all agreed that it was Cape Henlopen; about noon we were come very near, and to our great joy saw the pilot-boat come off to us, which was exceeding welcome. He brought on board about a peck of apples with him; they seemed the most delicious I ever tasted in my life; the salt provisions we had been used to gave them a relish. We had extraordinary fair wind all the afternoon, and ran above a hundred miles up the Delaware before ten at night. The country appears very pleasant to the eye, being covered with woods, except here and there a house and plantation. We cast anchor when the tide turned, about two miles below Newcastle, and there lay till the morning tide.’

11 October 1726
‘This morning we weighed anchor with a gentle breeze, and passed by Newcastle, whence they hailed us and bade us welcome. It is extreme find weather. The sun enlivens our stiff limbs with his glorious rays of warmth and brightness. The sky looks gay, with here and there a silver cloud. The fresh breezes from the woods refresh us; the immediate prospect of liberty, after so long and irksome confinement, ravishes us. In short, all things conspire to make this the most joyful day I ever knew. As we passed by Chester, some of the company went on shore, impatient once more to tread on terra firma, and designing for Philadelphia by land. Four of us remained on board, not caring for the fatigue of travel when we knew the voyage had much weakened us. About eight at night, the wind failing us, we cast anchor at Redbank six miles from Philadelphia, and thought we must be obliged to lie on board that night; but, some young Philadelphians happening to be out upon their pleasure in a boat, they came on board, and offered to take us up with them; we accepted of their kind proposal, and about ten o’clock landed at Philadelphia, heartily congratulating each upon our having happily completed so tedious and dangerous a voyage. Thank God!’

Much later in his life Franklin also kept a diary very occasionally, and fragments can be found in, for example, Memoirs of the Life and Writings of Benjamin Franklin (Volume 1 published in 1818). Here are a couple of extracts from that volume.

26 June 1784
‘Mr. Waltersdorff called on me, and acquainted me with a duel that had been fought yesterday morning, between a French officer, and a Swedish gentleman of that king’s suite, in which the latter was killed on the spot, and the other dangerously wounded: that the king does not resent it, as he thinks his subject was in the wrong.

He asked me if I had seen the king of Sweden? I had not yet had that honor. He said his behavior here was not liked: that he took little notice of his own ambassador, who, being acquainted with the usages of this court, was capable of advising him, but was not consulted. That he was always talking of himself, and vainly boasting of his revolution, though it was known to have been the work of M. de Vergennies. That they began to be tired of him here, and wished him gone; but he proposed staying till the 12th July. That he had now laid aside his project of invading Norway, as he found Denmark had made preparations to receive him. That he pretended the Danes had designed to invade Sweden, though it was a known fact that the Danes had made no military preparations, even for deface, till six months after his began. I asked if it was clear that he had had an intention to invade Norway? He said that the marching and disposition of his troops, and the fortifications he had erected, indicated it very plainly. He added, that Sweden was at present greatly distressed for provisions; that many people had actually died of hunger! That it was reported the king came here to borrow money, and to offer to sell Gottenburg to France; a thing not very probable.’

15 July 1784
‘The Duke de Chartres’s balloon went off this morning from St. Cloud, himself and three others in the gallery. It was foggy, and they were soon out of sight. But the machine being disordered, so that the trap or valve could not be opened to let out the expanding air, and fearing that the balloon would burst, they cut a hole in it which ripped larger, and they fell rapidly, but received no harm. They had been a vast height, met with a doud of snow, and a tornado which frightened them.’

This article is a slightly revised version of one first published on 17 January 2016.

Art but no artists

René Maria Rilke, one of the most intense of German-language poets and considered by some to be a founder of modernist poetry, was born 150 years ago today. During a two year period - when he was in love with the married Russian-born Lou Andreas-Salomé and then meeting his future wife Clara Westhoff - he kept a series of diaries. The editors of the English edition of these diaries claim they span a crucial period in the artistic growth of the young poet.

Rilke was born in Prague, then part of the Austro-Hungarian empire, on 4 December 1875. His father worked as a railway official having retired from the military, and his mother was considered socially ambitious. René’s childhood was not especially happy, and he was sent to military academy for five years until 1891. He left on account of ill health, only to find his parents had separated. He was tutored for university entrance, and then began studying philosophy at Charles-Ferdinand University. But, by this time, he had already published a first volume of poetry, Leben und Lieder, and was intent on a literary career. Disenchanted with his academic studies, he left, travelling to Munich to study art. There he mixed with artistic types, managed to get some of his plays produced, and published more poetry.

In 1897, Rilke fell in love with the much-travelled Lou Andreas-Salomé, a married woman many years his senior. She appears to have had a major influence over the still-young Rilke, persuading him to change his first name to Rainer, and introducing him to the ideas of psychoanalysis (she had studied with Freud). After a brief stay in Florence, he twice travelled to Russia with Salomé in 1899 and 1900, meeting Leo Tolstoy in 1898, and Leonid Pasternak (the painter and father of Boris Pasternak) and Spiridon Drozhzhin, a peasant poet, in 1899. The following year, Rilke stayed at the artists’ colony at Worpswede, where he met Clara Westhoff. They married early in 1900, and had one daughter, Ruth, in late 1901.

In 1902, Rilke travelled to Paris, where he would stay for much of the rest of the decade. Clara left Ruth with her parents and joined him there. He became fascinated by Rodin, writing and lecturing on the sculptor, and even acting as his secretary for a period, and later by Cezanne. Apart from two or three more collections of poetry, he also completed his only novel The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge. In the early 1910s he visited Ronda in Spain and Duino/Trieste in Italy, but the outbreak of WWI found him in Germany and unable to return to Paris. He managed to avoid active service, with the help of influential friends, by being assigned to the War Records Office.

AIn Switzerland he completed the Duino Elegies and, in a burst of 1922 inspiration, wrote the Sonnets to Orpheus. He died of leukemia late in 1926, highly respected in literary and artistic spheres but barely known by the general public. The Poetry Foundation provides this modern assessment: ‘Widely recognized as one of the most lyrically intense German-language poets, Rainer Maria Rilke was unique in his efforts to expand the realm of poetry through new uses of syntax and imagery and in the philosophy that his poems explored.’ While Encyclopaedia Britannica (1979 edition) calls him ‘a major Austro-German poet regarded as one of the founders and giants of modern literature.’ Further information can be found at Wikipedia, the Academy of American Poets, The Atlantic, or Picture Poems. For samples of Rilke’s poems see All Poetry.

Between April 1898 and December 1900, Rilke kept three diaries. The first of these, while in Florence, was probably written for or inspired by Salomé, since it is known that her own mental regimen included keeping a diary, and she is said to have asked Rilke to bring her back a diary. Biographers suggest the second diary, kept after his return to Schmargendorf, might also have been written with her in mind. The third diary was written during his sojourn at Worpswede. (However, it is worth noting that despite the diary names, Rilke visited Worpswede during the time of the Schmargendorf diary, and stayed at Schmargendorf during the time of the Worpswede diary.) They were first edited and published in German in 1942 by Ruth and her husband Carl Sieber.

A first English edition, translated and annotated by Edward Snow and Michael Winkler, was published by W. W. Norton & Co in 1997 - Rainer Maria Rilke - Diaries of a Young Poet. In their introduction, Snow and Winkler explain: ‘Rilke’s diaries do maintain a certain chronological flow, albeit one with breaks and longer interruptions, but they are not directly the immediate account of a specific time; it is not their intent to record the minutiae of day-to-day life. For this reason they have not become identified by their chronology. Rather, they are usually titled after three places where Rilke lived and, at least for a time, felt at home: Florence (and the Tuscan countryside), the village of Schmargendorf just outside Berlin, and Worpswede, an artists’ colony in the moors near Bremen.’

The editors claim that the diary period spans a crucial period in Rilke’s artistic growth: ‘At the beginning of this phase the young poet had perfected, if not yet exhausted the rhetorical techniques and mannerisms of his early, impressionistic style. His verse was still prone to the gossamer and was given more to a flirtation than a sustained artistic engagement with the exquisite and the delicate. [. . . He] had come to realise only too well that he needed to constrain his busy games of make-believe and learn how to control his ingenious lyricism. This made it necessary, most of all, to free himself from the rapturous self-indulgence that could spin mellifluous lines and intricate rhymes with prolific ease. He had to submit himself to the kind of self-discipline that comes with the ascetic solitude of regular, arduous work. Rilke’s three early diaries reflect this search for a language that might capture the specificity of things natural and crafted and at the same time convey their intrinsic spirituality. They chronicle, in other words, the emergence of the “sachliche Sagen,” the objective and visually precise language that will come to characterise his “poetry of things.” ’

Although diary entries - many dated but not all - do predominate in Diaries of a Young Poet, there is also a good deal of poetry as well as some letters. The book can be previewed online at Google Books. Here, though, is one extract from each diary.

17 May 1898 [Florence diary]
‘No human being can raise so much beauty out of himself that it will cover him over completely. A part of himself will always gaze out from behind it. But in the peak times of art a few have erected before themselves, in addition to their own beauty, so much noble heritage, that the work no longer needs them. The curiosity and custom of the public will seek and of course find their personality; but that misses the point. In such times there is an art, but there are no artists.

There is an ever-recurring cycle of three generations. One finds the god, the second arches the narrow temple over him and in doing so fetters him, while the third slides into poverty and takes stone after stone from the sanctuary in order to build meagre and makeshift huts. And then comes one which must seek god again; and to such a generation these belonged: Dante and Botticelli and Fra Bartolommeo.

The element of reconciliation and loveliness that one treasures in the works of Raphael is a triumph that only seldom occurs; it signifies a high point of art, but not a high point of the artist.

Pre-Raphaelites: simply a caprice. Tired of smooth beauty, one seeks the effortful - not so? How facile a proposition! Tired of art, one seeks the artist, and in each work looks for the deed that elevated the man, the triumph over something within him, and the longing for himself.

In notes jotted down day after day vis-à-vis the paintings of the quattrocento, I could have offered nothing more than the tourists’ handbooks do. For they have formulated with unsurpassable cogency the measure of abstract beauty that inheres in the things. So much so that in fleeting consideration one employs quite unconsciously those infamous half-scientific terms that, once sharp and pregnant, have through so many mindless uses become dull and vacuous.

A handbook on Italy, if it wanted to teach pleasure, would have in it but one single word and one single piece of advice. Look! Whoever has a certain culture in him must make do with this guidance. He will not acquire pearls of knowledge and it will scarcely occur to him to ask whether this work is from the late period of an artist or whether in that work “the broad manner of the master” holds sway. But he will recognize an abundance of will and power that came from longing and from apprehension, and this revelation will make him better, greater, more thankful.’

11 September 1900 [Schmargendorf diary]
‘A fine evening at the Overbecks’. The blond painter was with me for the length of the twilight; I showed her some Russian books, the pictures of Nadson and Garshin, Droshin’s portraits, and other mementos. In the evening she sat next to me, and there was much conversation between us. The table was nicely set; small chamomiles slanted to one side framed the simple white runner, which was accented by blue-and-red-embroidered signatures of guests who had preceded us. Dr. Hauptmann and I added our names to this roll. Hauptmann was in rare form, made many cutting remarks regarding the temper of our time, always in the most charmingly ingenuous way. [. . .]

Clara Westhoff had come on her bicycle, But she walked almost the whole way back to Westerwede, since while we were talking I had passed by my gate and continued on at her side. It was about two hours past midnight. The skies were gray, quiet, and the landscape could be seen, completely without color, stretching far in the distance . . . The birch trees stood like candles beside long trails. The only thing white was a white cat, which would appear from behind the bushes in silent leaps, then vanish in the mistless meadows. It was a melancholy cat that staged a solitary dance. In the garden everything green was a shade darker. Almost black, the full bushes leaned against the white railing of the forecourt. Around the urns there was depth and air.’

14 December 1900 [Worpswede diary]
‘Sometimes I remember in exact detail things and epochs that never existed. I see every gesture of people who never lived a life and feel the swaying cadence of their never-spoken works. And a never-smiled smiling shines. Those who were never born die. And those who never died lie with their hands folded, repeated in beautiful stone, on long level sarcophagi in the halflight of churches no one built. Bells that never rang, that are still uncast metal and undiscovered ore in mountains, ring. Will ring: for what never existed is what is on its way, on its way over to us, something in the future, new. And perhaps I’m remembering distant futures when what never existed rises up in me and speaks.’

This article is a slightly revised version of one first published on 4 December 2015.

The father of neurology

‘The floor is made of tile mosaics as are the walls - no seat - only a hole which seems narrow to me at ground level. One has to be agile - but the Arabs certainly are in this respect. They do everything squatting. It is perfect, a paradise for the sense of sight and smell.’ This is Jean-Martin Charcot, born two centuries ago today, the great physician of France’s early Belle Epoque, the so-called ‘father of neurology’ and/or the ‘Napoleon of the neuroses’, writing about a Moroccan toilet in his one and only significant diary.

Charcot was born in Paris on 29 November 1825 into a modest artisan family. He seems to have been a gifted school child, mastering several languages, and was selected by his father as the one child to receive a higher education and enter medical school. He received his M.D. from the University of Paris in 1853 with a dissertation on arthritis. In 1860, he was named associate professor in medicine, and two years later, he was appointed head of a hospital service at Salpêtrière, a complex in the 13th arrondissement near the Seine. Aged 39, he married Augustine-Victoire Durvis, a young widow, with whom he had two children.

Charcot began to publish many books and articles on infectious illnesses, geriatrics, diseases of the internal organs. And, in 1872, he was elected to the Paris Medical Faculty as professor of pathological anatomy. During the 1870s, he turned increasingly to the new discipline of neurology, becoming one of the world’s foremost experts on the subject, publishing on a wide range of neurological conditions, MS, Parkinson’s disease, Tourette’s, aphasia etc. He was the first to describe several conditions, including multiple sclerosis and the disintegration of ligaments and joint surfaces (Charcot’s disease, or Charcot’s joint) caused by locomotor ataxia and related diseases or injuries. In particular, he was known for his work on hysteria, and he developed the practice of using hypnosis as a means to study his patients, often using the technique in public demonstrations.

This - the early years of the Belle Epoque - was a heyday for the medical profession in France, as a group  progressive physician-scientists - among whom Charcot was the most famous - sought to modernise medicine more in line with scientific understanding. Apart from his medical discoveries, he also pioneered the art and science of medical photography. Charcot’s second-to-none reputation as a teacher attracted students from all over the world, not least, in 1885, Sigmund Freud.

Meanwhile, in their grand home on the boulevard Saint-Germain, the Charcots would give lavish parties, attracting the cream of Parisian society, politicians, artists, writers and, of course, other physicians. In 1882, Charcot was named Chair for the diseases of the nervous system, the first such professorial post in the world. Financing followed his fame, with the government resourcing a new neuropathological institute at Salpêtrière. Charcot died, relatively young, in 1893. Further information is available at Wikipedia, National Center for Biotechnology Information, Science Museum, and inside Medical Muses: Hysteria in 19th-Century Paris by Asti Hustvedt (some pages of which about Charcot are viewable at Googlebooks).

Charcot was not a diarist, though he did occasionally keep note-books when on holiday or travelling. One such note-book so stood out from the rest for Toby Gelfland (Department of History, University of Ottawa) that he decided to translate, edit and publish it - as Charcot in Morocco (University of Ottawa Press, 2012). In July 1887, Charcot went south to Spain for his annual summer holiday, but, on this occasion, concluded the voyage with a week in Morocco, and while there kept a detailed personal diary, amounting to 14,000 words, 95 manuscript pages, and various sketches, maps and watercolours.

The journal is a unique document, says Gelfand, because of its sheer length and detail but also because of ‘the intimate, relaxed, colorful, at times frankly exuberant quality of a first-person narrative written primarily for oneself, even if it were later to be shared with family and friends’. Furthermore: ‘The journal offers rare access to an otherwise elusive figure who said little of a spontaneous nature in public. [. . .] Historians, following most contemporary accounts, tend to portray Charcot as an authoritarian and rather austere medical leader, a “grand patron” who was at once intimidating and shy, if not secretive. The Moroccan journals reveals a less pretentious figure possessed of a rough and ready sense of humor, someone who did not always take himself or others so seriously.’

10 August 1887
‘Soon we reach the 1st Moroccan doorway, a square house, which sits atop a high hill. Two Moors of the Emperor who are to accompany us emerge; one carries a gun, the other a bag. These 2 do not join in with our group. Sometimes they approach, then at other times they disappear - only to reappear a little afterwards at a turn in the way . . . they are definitely strange; as well they have a rather unhealthy look about them with their caped robes that seem to be soaked with sweat.

We have been walking perhaps 2 hours when suddenly the plain widens out. In the middle we see a castle in ruins covered with ivy - not far off, some stones are piled up in a way that marks off an oval shape of earth. It is a tomb. There are many others. On a few of the tombs, red rags hang from sticks planted in the ground, rags now faded which must have formerly had a beautiful red color. They mark the tomb of a chieftain, more or less canonized and elevated to the level of a saint. It was here that the battle against the Moroccans took place which led to the march on Tetuan. More than 20 years ago, all that. The name Prim returns to mind. We walk on and keep on walking. From time to time I look at my watch. We’re going to get to the Moor’s place soon, no doubt! By this time hunger and thirst have set in. But where is this the devil of a house of the Moor? We don’t see it. Here are a few trees and rocks. We have lost sight of the sea. Anxiously, we walk on for nearly an hour; devil of a house gone astray. We begin to berate the Moors of the Emperor who led us down this wrong path. At last, there it is, a hut scarcely above the ground, hidden among the underbrush and tall cactus. [. . .]

I get up and rejoin the group drinking water, who are sharing a watermelon. On the mound where they are sitting, there is no more space. One of the Moors of the King noticed; he goes up to my son and, tapping him gently on the shoulder, says to him, in Spanish, “Your father is not seated.” My son gets up and I sit down in his place. An example of Arab manners that is in sum very edifying and which demonstrates that, even if we are among the people of Barbary, we are not with barbarians.’

11 August 1887
‘Soon we arrive at one of our “wealthy Moors”. [. . .] The young ladies go into the women’s quarters. Employing a searching gaze, we look into everything open to us. I think they were expecting us; most certainly, they were waiting for us. However a flurry of emotion, doubtless feigned, a pretended surprise, took place when we entered. A lady of mature years, who appeared beautiful to me, quickly fled, but not before showing us her face. That left 4 or 5 negresses, who shamelessly stayed where they were. Moreover, they were very beautiful, their arms and legs nude, their bodies lightly clothed in a clear fabric. They certainly do not belong to the religion whose acolytes cover up. As always, the first floor with balcony is just about the same as the lower floor. But it seems we cannot visit since the private living quarters are there. I look everywhere for a certain spot which interests me from a hygienic perspective. Instinct guides me. Here water flows on the ground - one certainly cannot go in without clogs. The floor is made of tile mosaics as are the walls - no seat - only a hole which seems narrow to me at ground level. One has to be agile - but the Arabs certainly are in this respect. They do everything squatting. It is perfect, a paradise for the sense of sight and smell.’

12 August 1887
‘It is agreed that I will give a few medical consultations; they implored me to do so. A few people have been referred by the consul, or by M. Alvans, the military envoy, who never tires of being helpful.

Here come the patients, 5 or 6 of them, all Jews. They file into the patio. I sketch one who presents a beautiful case of Parkinson’s. Nothing very interesting from the point of view of diagnosis. But all are nervous cases. Yesterday, on the square, they showed me a Jew who remained mute, so they say, during his entire childhood but who eventually began to speak. Was he a case of hysteria?

The consultation is over. I must see the town some more so as to take with me an indelible visual impression. Along the way, on one of the most densely inhabited streets, we hear in the distance a sort of chanting, mixed and monotonous at the same time: the voices of men. They appear in a cortege of about a hundred persons; they are walking quickly, they seem to be in a hurry. “The dead go quickly.” In fact it is a burial. The deceased is carried on a kind of cot, nude in a white shroud which hides him completely, the head too. It seems to me that no one stirs nor extends greetings. We don’t either: that is not the custom here. We let the cortege pass, we will meet it again momentarily, in the cemetery.’

This article is a slightly revised version of one first published on 29 November 2015.