Robertson Davies as diarist

‘Bouts of sinus, headache, nausea, and cold sweats have left me unwell for the day. Brenda and I lay on sofas and read. Went for short walk. What a hateful winter! Every winter has its low point and I hope this it: is it age or bodily rot that brings this appalling tedium vitae?’ This is from the diaries of Robertson Davies, who died 30 years ago today. He was one of Canada’s most important literary figures and its leading man of letters in the mid-20th century. The diaries, which were embargoed for 20 years after his death, provide a wealth of detail about his daily life, but they do not provide evidence for the publisher’s claim that Davies must be considered ‘one of the great diarists’.

Davies was born in Thamesville, Ontario, in 1913, third son to William Davies, a Welsh-born Canadian publisher and politician. He was schooled at Upper Canada College and then went to Queen’s University, and Balliol College, Oxford, where he received a BLit in 1938. He wished to make a career in the British theatre world, and joined the staff of the Old Vic, led at that time by Tyrone Guthrie, and worked alongside the likes of Ralph Richardson and Vivien Leigh. 

In 1940, Davies married the Australian-born Brenda Mathews, whom he had met at Oxford, but who had also worked at the Old Vic. Shortly after war broke out, Davies was advised to return to Canada. Because of poor eyesight, though, he was unfit for military service. He worked as a literary journalist in Toronto until, in 1942, his father pressed him to take over one of his company’s newspapers, the daily Peterborough Examiner.

Davies, despite his full-time job, and Brenda continued to be involved in the theatre world, with Davies writing (and directing) several plays during the 1940s. He also collected his humorous essays for publication under the pseudonym, Samuel Marchbanks. Frustrated by an inability to get his plays noticed outside of Canada, Davies began writing novels in the 1950s, alongside more plays, publishing what came to be known as the Salterton Trilogy (Tempest-Tost in 1951, Leaven of Malice in 1954, and A Mixture of Frailties in 1958). A major turning point for Davies came in the early 1960s, when he began teaching at Trinity College, University of Toronto, and two years later was appointed Master of the new Massey College.

In all Davies’ endeavours, Brenda was a constant companion - stage managing her husband for six decades, according to an obituary in The Globe and Mail. Together, they had three daughters, one of whom, Jennifer (Surridge), would become her father’s literary executor. And Brenda helped organise many of the Master’s functions at Massey College during Davies’ near-20 years tenure - despite being excluded, as were all women, for the early years. In the 1970s, Davies again found form with the novel, publishing Fifth Business in 1970, The Manticore in 1972 and World of Wonders in 1975 - collectively known as The Deptford Trilogy.

Davies retired from academic life in the early 1980s, but continued to write novels, some of his best. What’s Bred in the Bone (1985), which became the middle book of The Cornish Trilogy, was short-listed for the Booker Prize for fiction. He published two books in the 1990s, but failed to finish the third of what would have been The Toronto Trilogy. He died in 1995. There are no dedicated Robertson Davies websites that I can find, and thus surprisingly little detailed information about him on the web, other than at The Canadian Encyclopaedia or Wikipedia (and in a few obituaries - The New York Times or The Independent, for example). The Paris Review has the text of an audience interview with Davies from 1986.

Although a great fan of Robertson Davies, having read most of his novels over the years, I never knew he was a diarist. Indeed, it seems, he dictated that, after his death, the plethora of his diary material - many different volumes and around three million words - should not be published for at least two decades. When those 20 years had passed, McClelland & Stewart published A Celtic Temperament: Robertson Davies as Diarist, as prepared and edited by Jennifer Surridge and Ramsay Derry. From his teens and throughout his life, Davies kept a variety of diaries: a personal daily diary, a ‘big’ diary for more considered entries, a theatre-going diary, travel diaries on trips, and, occasionally, other diaries for a specific topic, such as one kept during production of his play Love and Libel, and another about Massey College. Surridge and Derry say of their book that it covers ‘a particularly busy time in his immensely productive career’ when he was already known as Canada’s leading man of letters.

The editors have eschewed the idea of identifying the exact provenance of each diary entry ‘in order to maintain an easily readable ongoing narrative’ - though I, personally, would have liked to know which entries came from which diary. However, and very interestingly, there is a project, well under way, to create digital editions of all the diaries. The Davies Diaries project, as it is known, is under the guidance of James Neufeld, Professor Emeritus in the Department of English at Trent University, and is being funded by Editing Modernism in Canada and Library and Archives Canada. Ambitiously, the project expects to allow readers to browse and search not only digitised images of all diary pages, but verbatim transcripts, corrected transcripts, and annotated texts. That said, I can find little evidence of much progress in recent years.

Surridge and Derry conclude their introduction to A Celtic Temperament by claiming: ‘[T]he diaries are more than social history, as we hope this introductory selection shows. In their variety, intimacy, and honesty, they present an extraordinary rich portrait of the man and his times and an entertaining account of a life as it is being lived.’ All of which I can agree with. However, I don’t buy the publisher’s claim that this first book of Davies’ diaries establishes him ‘as one of the great diarists’. Far from it. Much, if not most, of the diaries are filled with, if not banal then, straightforward records of his daily activities. These records are, as a whole, hugely important, because Davies is one of the greatest of Canadian authors, but in the detail they are fairly dull. Davies was a decent, hard-working, family man - privileged and successful - and the detail of his daily life reflects these realities. A review in Canada’s The Globe and Mail calls the diaries ‘delightful’ but complains that there is ‘no dirt, little gossip’ and that, though fun and whimsical, they reveal little more than ‘the banalities of a privileged life in letters’.

Here are a few short extracts from A Celtic Temperament - and many thanks to the publisher for providing a review copy.

9 February 1961
‘Bill Broughall lunched with me at the University Club. He tells me Vincent Massey says “a gentleman never takes soup with luncheon at his club” because Lord Curzon said it. I fear I shall run into many things a gentleman does not do, and which are unknown to me; but I am writer, and therefore a bit of a bounder.’

25 February 1961
‘Nothing in the Globe and Mail about my appointment because I write for the Star: what small behaviour! Write a Star column in the morning and a critique of Saint Joan. In the afternoon, loaf and read Jung; Rosamund comes for the weekend, very lively; in the evening go through Browning’s “Andrea del Sarto” with her and read Rabelais.’

27 February 1961
‘Now that the news is out, and the world has received it with exemplary calm, and my Proposals are out of my hands, I feel a deep depression, a regression of the libido, what might be called the Hump. What have I let myself in for? What am I, a mere magpie of leaning and certainly no scholar, doing with a learned appointment in that collection of medieval schoolmen and learned but vulgar thrusters, the University of Toronto? My one desire is to crawl into a hole and work on the novel which has been in my mind since before A Mixture of Frailties.’

20 August 1961
‘Lay late reading Final Curtain by Ngaio Marsh. Dye my beard too dark - must look into this. Loafed all day never stirring from the place and found this very refreshing: my condition of mind asks for inactivity; worked on my speech. I am indeed changing: trying to purge my writing of ornament and mere eccentricity and my thinking of bile, emotionalism, and vulgarity. Oh! that I may make some progress in these things!

13 November 1961
‘Worked on Saturday Night piece “Pleasures of Love.” In the evening looked over old MSS of novels and plays and reread diary of Love and Libel a year since: still painful, and it might have succeeded; useless to repine.’

25 February 1962
‘Bouts of sinus, headache, nausea, and cold sweats have left me unwell for the day. Brenda and I lay on sofas and read. Went for short walk. What a hateful winter! Every winter has its low point and I hope this it: is it age or bodily rot that brings this appalling tedium vitae?’

19 December 1962
‘Minor bothers: car goes crook; parcels get mislaid, etc. Rosamund is out of school at 12. Give a good lecture at 2. We call on the Edinboroughs and have mince pies and rum punch. In the evening to Kind Hearts and Coronets, my favourite film.’

This article is a slightly revised version of one first published on 15 November 2015.

This remarkable day

‘The road was alive with ox carts returning from the fields, vendors selling coconuts - signaled by an upright palm frond - and women walking swiftly, balancing heavy loads on their heads. In a vast sugarcane field, a majestic Ceiba pentandra stood in solitary grandeur, a sight I captured in color photography to preserve the memory of this remarkable day.’ This is from a brief diary kept by the Canadian Brother Marie-Victorin on a 1941 field trip to Trinidad and Jamaica. Born 140 years ago today, he earned fame as a botanist, teacher but he was also a member of the Brothers of the Christian Schools, a Catholic lay congregation.

Conrad Kirouac was born on 3 April 1885, in Kingsey Falls, Quebec, and grew up in a devout Catholic family with a strong appreciation for nature. His early fascination with plants and the natural world was nurtured in the rural landscape of his childhood. At the age of 15, he joined the Brothers of the Christian Schools, adopting the name Marie-Victorin. His formal education took place within the religious order, where he trained as a teacher while continuing to cultivate his passion for botany.

Despite a lack of formal university training in science, Marie-Victorin became one of Canada’s foremost botanists. He taught at Mont-Saint-Louis College in Montreal while conducting independent research on Quebec’s flora. His groundbreaking work culminated in the publication of Flore laurentienne in 1935, a comprehensive study of the plant life of the St. Lawrence Valley that remains an essential reference in Canadian botany. His writing and teaching helped popularise scientific knowledge in French-speaking Canada, bridging the gap between academia and the public.

Marie-Victorin played a key role in establishing the Montreal Botanical Garden, which opened in 1931 under his guidance. He envisioned it as a centre for education, research, and conservation. His efforts secured support from both religious and secular authorities, reflecting his ability to unite diverse communities in the pursuit of scientific and cultural advancement. He was also instrumental in founding the Institut botanique de l’Université de Montréal, further solidifying his legacy in botanical education.

Beyond his scientific contributions, Brother Marie-Victorin was known for his wit, charisma, and ability to inspire students. He balanced his commitment to religious life with a deep curiosity about the natural world, advocating a harmonious relationship between science and faith. Tragically, he died in a car accident in 1944, but his influence endures through his writings, the institutions he helped create, and the continued study of Quebec’s plant life. Further information is available from Wikipedia, The Canadian Encyclopaedia, Canada’s History, or the Kirouac Family Association website.

Between the ages of 18 and 35, Brother Marie-Victorin kept notebooks full of thoughts on religion, education, botany, community life, his vocation, and his reading. The contents of these ten notebooks (over 800 pages) were not published until 2004 when Saint-Laurent brought out Mon miroir: journaux intimes, 1903-1920, as edited by Gilles Beaudet et Lucie Jasmin. During this period, the editors say, ‘we see the emergence of an extraordinary temperament, an exceptional being, an avant-garde spirit who would instil the spark of the Quiet Revolution in pre-war French Canada’. This is available to preview - in the original French - at Googlebooks.

There are also at least two other short journals - in typescript form and in French - kept by Marie-Victorin that are available to view and download at Internet Archive. There is the ‘travelogue’ of Brother Marie-Victorin on a trip to Barranquilla (Colombia), Jamaica, and Trinidad in 1941, ‘courtesy of the Division de la Gestion de Documents et des Archives at the Université de Montréal’. There is a longer document (which includes an English translation) titled Brother Marie-Victorin In Haiti Botany, concerning his first trip to Quisqueya (Hispaniola) 1938-1939. Moreover, in December 2022, the Caribbean Journal of Science included a paper “Out of Cuba” - The Additional Botanical Expeditions of Brother Marie-Victorin Across the Caribbean (1940-1942).

The following two extracts have been copied from the journal of the 1941 trip, and computer translated into English.

 24 April 1941

‘I leave Havana at six o’clock in the morning. My driver Juan leaves me stranded in the middle of a deserted street in Vedado. His engine sputters and then dies: “What bad luck!” he repeats, raising his arms to the sky.

I jump into a tram, then a taxi, and finally into the Pan-American limousine on Prado. And here I am at the airport. Fortunately, there’s a restaurateur who brings me down from the kitchen a good American breakfast!

Around nine o’clock we board a small plane that takes us to Cienfuegos, where we wait for an hour for the “Clipper” coming from Miami.

From Havana to Cienfuegos, I observe the country from above. Approaching Cienfuegos, there are lakes and lagoons where we have never botanized; it’s probably part of the Ciénaga system, but I doubt there are passable roads to get there.

From Cienfuegos to Jamaica, no incidents (except that we stay at 10,000 feet). No one is upset when, after flying over the mountains of St. Ann, we land in Kingston Bay amidst a landscape dominated by the tall Cephalocereus Swartzii of Port Royal. We disembark - or rather step out of the Clipper - for about ten minutes. The driver Folkes is there because he hasn’t received my letter. We arrange to meet in about fifteen days. Then I reboard the Clipper to cross the Caribbean Sea.

It’s almost evening when we arrive in Barranquilla (Colombia). The Prado Hotel, where everyone stays, is a marvel: terraces, swimming pool, gardens. What a shame that we leave again tomorrow morning at dawn. With someone named Appleton [. . .], I take a tour of the city.

The Black driver, “Panama,” is resourceful. As we pass by, we see the new port, the mouth of the Magdalena River, and flat boats powered by paddle wheels located at the rear-Mississippi-style. These boats travel up the river almost to Bogotá, but it takes a week!

The city is picturesque. The “red-light district,” quite extensive, is actually a “blue-light district.” Prostitution is legalized, and there’s a small stone building labeled “Prophylaxia,” where Venus comes weekly to chat with Esculapius. Most courtesans live alone in their homes. In the evening, as we pass by, their doors are open to reveal brightly lit rooms displaying naive luxury and ad hoc chromolithographs. They resemble shop windows. The love merchant - fully dressed, well-groomed and powdered - sits advantageously in her doorway with hands folded on her lap and her bed clearly visible behind her. A street lined with two rows of these priestesses is quite colorful, especially at night. I’ve seen similar scenes in Mérida in Yucatán.

At the Prado Hotel, several of us who “clipped” together are present, including a Basque American businessman with whom I dine [. . .]. An interesting man. There’s also an engineer from Davenport, Iowa here for constructing the American naval base in Port-of-Spain. He’s not too thrilled about leaving his family behind for one or maybe two years.’

9 May 1941

‘We departed Montego Bay at around 8 a.m., following the coastline. For a long stretch, we traveled past mangrove marshes and encountered a rich variety of coastal vegetation, including Batis maritima, Coccoloba uvifera, Tournefortia gnaphalodes, and Suriana maritima. The striking golden leather fern (Acrostichum aureum) spread in vast formations, reaching into the brackish water. In the drier areas, we observed Opuntia dillenii, Agave species, and a Guilandina.

Turning inland, we visited a beautiful waterfall surrounded by a lush environment of Grias cauliflora, coconut palms (Cocos nucifera), Calyptronoma swartzii, and the towering Ceiba pentandra. This scenic location, frequented by tourists, displayed an impressive array of tropical flora. We then dined in St. Ann’s Bay before continuing our journey through Fern Gully, a narrow ravine renowned for its towering ferns. The dense, non-arborescent fern species, including Dryopteris, lined the route, adding to the area’s allure. Despite its fame, the tourist literature exaggerates the prevalence of this type of vegetation across Jamaica, as the island’s flora is far more diverse.

Upon exiting Fern Gully, we emerged onto a verdant plateau dotted with large trees. The landscape, with its scattered Roystonea jamaicensis palms stretching toward the sky, evoked the temperate countryside of Quebec’s Eastern Townships. As is common in the region, much of this beautiful land belonged to a few wealthy landowners. Our route led us through these cool, picturesque valleys before ascending Mount Diablo. Along the way, we encountered Brassia maculata, a terrestrial orchid in full bloom, its pale flowers offered for sale in neat bundles by local children. They also sold Hippeastrum puniceum, adding vibrant color to the roadside stalls.

Leaving the plateau behind, I noted the presence of Rhytidophyllum tomentosum, Bletia, Lantana camara, and a remarkable abundance of epiphytic bromeliads (Hohenbergia or Vriesia) clinging to tree branches. As we made our return journey through Spanish Town toward Kingston, the evening light cast a golden glow over the landscape. The road was alive with ox carts returning from the fields, vendors selling coconuts - signaled by an upright palm frond - and women walking swiftly, balancing heavy loads on their heads. In a vast sugarcane field, a majestic Ceiba pentandra stood in solitary grandeur, a sight I captured in color photography to preserve the memory of this remarkable day.’

Eskmeaux use slings

‘To the Eastward & the Westward the Ice breaks up but soon freezes again. The Eskmeaux saw large Canoes full of White Men to the Westward 8 or 10 Winters since, from whom they got Iron of which they exchanged part with them for Leather. [. . .] That the Eskmeaux dress like them wear their Hair short, have two holes one in each Side of the Mouth in a line with the under Lip, in which they stick long Beads, which they find in their Lakes, their Bows differ from theirs they make use of Slings to throw Stones at their Enemies, at which they are very dextrous.’ This is from the diaries of Sir Alexander Mackenzie, a Scottish explorer who was the first European to cross North America north of Mexico. He died 205 years ago today. 

Mackenzie was born in Stornoway on the Isle of Lewis, Scotland, in 1764. His father, a merchant and landowner, sought greater opportunities in the New World, prompting the family to emigrate to British North America (modern-day Canada) in 1774. Young Alexander was sent to school in Montreal, where he received a formal education and was later apprenticed to a fur-trading company. He joined the North West Company, a major rival of the Hudson’s Bay Company, in the 1780s and quickly rose through the ranks. Eager to expand the company’s influence and find a viable trade route to the Pacific, he embarked on a series of expeditions.

In 1789, Mackenzie set out from Fort Chipewyan on Lake Athabasca, following what he hoped was a passage to the Pacific. Instead, he reached the Arctic Ocean via the river that would later bear his name, the Mackenzie River. Undeterred by this unexpected outcome, he redoubled his efforts. His most famous journey came in 1792-1793, when he led an arduous overland expedition from Fort Chipewyan, through the Rocky Mountains, and down the Bella Coola River to the Pacific Ocean. He became the first European to cross the North American continent, predating the famed Lewis and Clark expedition by over a decade (see White bear, drunk Indians).

Following his explorations, Mackenzie returned to Britain, where he was knighted in 1802 for his contributions to geographical discovery. Crossing the Atlantic again to Canada as Sir Mackenzie, he was elected to the Legislature of Lower Canada, serving as member for Huntingdon County from 1804 to 1808. Once again, though, he returned to Scotland, in 1812, where he married 14-year-old Geddes Mackenzie, twin heiress of Avoch. They had two sons and a daughter, living alternatively in Avoch and London. He died in his mid-50s, on 12 March 1820. Further information is available from Wikipedia, Dictionary of Canadian Biography, or this Mackenzie Clan website.

Mackenzie kept detailed, and somewhat dry, journals on his expeditions. In his own lifetime, he published Voyages from Montreal, on the River St. Laurence through the Continent of North America, to the Frozen and Pacific Oceans; In the Years 1789 and 1793 (London, 1801). This is freely available to read online at Internet Archive.

More than 150 years later, in 1966, the University of Oklahoma Press published Exploring the Northwest Territory: Sir Alexander Mackenzie’s Journal of a Voyage by Bark Canoe from Lake Athabasca to the Pacific Ocean in the Summer of 1789 as edited by T. H. McDonald. More recently, modern reproductions of the journals have been issued by The Narrative Press.

Here are several extracts from the original 1801 volume.

9 July 1793

‘Thunder and Rain last Night, (and, in the course of it) our Conductor deserted. Could not find him, embarked one of the others against his will, and took his paddles from the one that remained that he might not follow us, at which he that was in our Canoe got quite enraged, jumped at the Paddle threw it on shore, but we embarked it again and pacified him. At half past 3 left our Campment. In a very short time, we saw a Smoak on the East shore which we made for. Our Stranger began to Hallow to them in a very strange manner. He told us that they were not of his Tribe that they were very wicked and would beat us all, and pull out our Hair etc. The Men waited our Arrival, but the Women and Children took to the Woods. They were only 4 in Number and they began to Harangue us all at the same time before we debarked seemingly in a very violent Passion, but our Hunters could not understand what they said. Our Conductor spoke to them and they became quiet. I made them presents of Beads, Knives, Awls etc. The Women and Children came out of the Wood and met with a similar Treatment. In all they were 15 People, and had a better appearance than any of those we had seen, being healthy and full of Flesh and more cleanly. Their language was something different, but I believe only in the accent, for they and our Conductor understood one another very well, and the English Chief understood one of them, tho’ he could not understand him. Their Arms and Utensils differ but little from those I have already described. They have no Iron except very small Pieces that serve them for Knives, which they get from the Eskmeaux. Their arrows are made of light wood and have only two Feathers at the End. They had a Bow which is different in Shape from theirs, and say they had it from the Eskmeaux who are their Neighbours.

Its of 2 pieces and a very strong Cord of Sinews along the Back of it tied in different places to keep it to the Shape which is this: When this Cord gets wet it requires a good Bow String and a strong arm to draw it. The former must resist the elastic force of the wood and the Cord (I mentioned above) which is very great when it is wet, as it is much contracted, but when it is dry it extends to its common length and is even then a great support to the Bow. The Vessel they cook their victuals is made of a thin frame of wood, oblonged shaped, the Bottom fixed in a Notch, same as a Cask. Their Shirts are not square at Bottom but Tapering to a point from the Belt downwards before and behind and come opposite the Knee embellished with a short Fringe. They have another Fringe the same as I have already described, with the addition of a Stone of a Grey furmacous Berry of the Size and Shape of a large Barley Corn, brown coloured and fluted which they bore thro’ the middle and run one on each String of the Fringe with which they decorate their Shirts by sewing one of them on forming a Demy Circle on the Breast and Back and crossing over both Shoulders. The Sleeves are wide and short, but their Mittens supply this Deficiency, as they are long enough to come over part of the Sleeve, and they wear them continually hanging by a Cord over their Necks. Their lygans want nothing but Waistbands to make them Trowsers. They fasten them with a Cord round the Middle so that they are more decent than their Neighbours. Their shoes are sewed to their lygans and garnished on every seam.

One of the Men were dressed in Shirt made of Musqural Skins. The Womens dress is the same with the Mens, only their Skirts are longer, and have not a Fringe on the Breast. They have a peculiar way of tying the Hair of the Head, viz the Hair of the Temples or fore part of the Skull is tied in the Fashion of two Queues and hanging before the Ears, the Hair of the Scalp or Crown is tied in the same manner down to where People commonly tie their Hair at some distance from the Head and hangs in Balance the whole with a Cord garnished very neatly with original Hair coloured. Some of the Men only dress their Hair in the above manner, the rest and the Women have it hanging loose long or short.’

23 July 1793

‘We began our March half past 3 this Morning, the Men on the lines (to tow the canoe) I walked with the Indians to their Huts which were further off than what expected. We took 3 Hours hard walking to get to them. Passed a narrow deep River in our way, at the Entrance of which the Natives had Nets set. They had hid their Effects and young Women in the wood, as we saw but few of the former and none of the latter. They have a large Hut built with Drift wood upon the Declivity of the Beach and dug in the Inside to a level. At each End are two Stout Forks, whereon is laid a strong Ridge split open to dry. They make Fires in different parts of the House that the Fish may dry the sooner. They have Rails on the Outside of the House which are likewise covered with Fish, but fresher than those in the Hut. They appear very careful of the Roes or Sperme (spawn) of the Fish which they dry in like manner. We got as many Fish from them as we chose to embark, for which I gave them Beads, as they were fonder of them than of any thing I possessed, tho’ I did not observe they had any of them. Iron they put little value in. During 2 Hours that I remained here I kept the English Chief continually questioning them - the result of which is as follows: That their Nation or Tribe is very numerous, that the Eskmeaux are always at variance with them, that they kill their Relations when they Find them weak. Notwithstanding they promise to be always Friends, they of late have shewn their Treachery by Butchering some of their People in proof of which some of the Relations of those deceased shewed us that they had cut off their Hair upon the occasion, & that they are determined not to believe the Eskmeaux any more; that they will collect all their Friends to go to revenge the Death of their Friends. That a strong Party of the Eskmeaux comes up this River in their large Canoes in search of Flint Stones to point their Spears and Arrows, that they were now at their Lakes due East from where we are now, that the distance is not great over land, where they kill the Rein Deer & that they will begin soon to kill big fish for their winter stock, that they know nothing about the Lake in the Direction we were in.

To the Eastward & the Westward the Ice breaks up but soon freezes again. The Eskmeaux saw large Canoes full of White Men to the Westward 8 or 10 Winters since, from whom they got Iron of which they exchanged part with them for Leather. Where the big Canoes came to, they call Belan howlay Tock (Belhoullay Toe) (White Mens Lake). That the Eskmeaux dress like them wear their Hair short, have two holes one in each Side of the Mouth in a line with the under Lip, in which they stick long Beads, which they find in their Lakes, their Bows differ from theirs they make use of Slings to throw Stones at their Enemies, at which they are very dextrous. They likewise informed us that we should not see any more of their Relations, that they had all left the River to go & kill Rein Deer for their Winters Provision, & that they intended to do the same in a few Days; that Rein Deers, Bears, Carcajeaux (wolvereens), Martin, Foxes, Hares and White Buffaloe, are the only quadrupèdes upon their Lands, the latter are only to be met with in the Mountains to the Westward. 

Went with the Line all Day except 2 Hours Sailing. We camp’d at 8 oClock. From where we started this Morning, the Banks of the River are well covered with Small wood, Epinette, Birch & Willows. We found it very warm travelling.’

7 August 1739

‘Commenced our Day at 1/2 past 3 this Morning. Shortly after we saw two Rein Deer on the Beach a head. We stopp’d & our Indians went to approach them, but they were too ambitious who shou’d first get near them, that they rais’d the Animals, of course lost them. At the same time we saw an Animal traversing, we immediately made for it & killed it. It proved to be a Rein Deer Female, & from the Number of cuts she had in the hind Legs, we judged she had been pursued by Wolves & that they had destroy’d her Young Ones. Her Udder was full of Milk, one of the Young Indians cut it up & emptied the Milk among some boiled Corn & ate it declaring it was (Wicazen) delicious. At 5 PM. we saw an Animal running along the Beach which some said was a Dog & others said was a Grey Fox. Soon after I put a Shore for the Night at the Entrance of a small River, as I thot. there might be some Natives not far off. I order my Hunters to arange their Fuzees & gave them Ammunition to go a hunting To-morrow & at the same Time to look out for Natives in the Neighbouring Mountains. I found a small Canoe in the Edge of the Wood, had a Paddle & Bow in it. It had been mended this Spring, the Bark was much neater sewed than any I had yet seen. We saw many old Campmts. in the Course of the Day. The Current very strong & point (along the points) equal to rapids.’

Killed ♀ Ivory Gull

’The ice we are amongst is chiefly this years, but fragments of older floes are intermixed and some heavy pieces of berg. A large one is lying at the head of the bay inside of Prince Imperial Island. I suppose there must be a discharging glacier somewhere at the head of the bay. Depth 47 fathoms mud. Killed ♀ Ivory Gull.’ This is from the diary of Henry Wemyss Feilden - born 190 years ago today - who served as naturalist on Sir George Nare’s Polar Expedition in 1875.

Feilden was born at Newbridge Barracks in Kildare on 6 October 1838 the second son of Sir William Henry Feilden, 2nd Baronet of Feniscowles. He was educated at Cheltenham College before joining, aged 19, the 3rd Battalion, Royal Regiment of Scotland (The Black Watch). He fought in the suppression of the Indian Mutiny 1857-1858 and at the Taku Forts in China in 1860. In 1862, he volunteered for the Confederate States Army during the American Civil War, serving as assistant adjutant-general with the remnant of the Army of Tennessee under General Joseph E. Johnston. In 1864, he married Julia, daughter of a South Carolina judge. He returned to the British Army, where he made captain in the Royal Artillery, in 1874. 

The following year, Feilden was selected to serve as naturalist to Sir George Nare’s Polar Expedition in H.M.S. Alert. After the expedition, he returned to active service, participating in the South African campaign between 1880 and 1881. He visited Spitsbergen and Novaya Zemlya as a naturalist on private expeditions between 1894 and 1897, publishing short notes on his findings. During the Boer War, he returned to South Africa as Paymaster of the Imperial Yeomanry, retiring from the army as a colonel. He was decorated for his service in India, China and South Africa, and was appointed a Companion of the Order of the Bath in 1900. 

From 1880, Feilden had lived in Wells-next-the-Sea, Norfolk, becoming, for a while, president of the Norfolk and Norwich Naturalists’ Society, but he moved to a property he inherited in Burwash, Sussex, in 1902. He died in 1921, a year after his wife had passed away. A little further information is available from Wikipedia, British Birds and Archives Hub.

Although not known as a diarist, Feilden did keep a detailed log during his polar expedition. This was only edited and annotated recently, by Trevor Levere, and published as The Arctic Journal of Captain Henry Wemyss Feilden, R. A., The Naturalist in H. M. S. Alert, 1875-1876 (Hakluyt Society, 2019). Many pages from the book can be sampled at Googlebooks. In his introduction, Levere explains the background to the expedition and the journal:

‘The disappearance of Sir John Franklin’s Arctic expedition of 1846-1847 and the failure of numerous attempts to find the ships and men made the British Admiralty reluctant to expend any more resources on Arctic exploration, despite appeals from the Royal Geographical Society and other scientific organizations. However, in 1874 the leader of the Conservative Party, Benjamin Disraeli (1804-81), became Prime Minister and he decided, partly for political reasons, that a new expedition should be sent to explore towards the North Pole, carrying out scientific work en route. A British Arctic Expedition, commanded by George Strong Nares (1831-1915), was swiftly called into being, with detailed scientific as well as naval instructions. Henry Wemyss Feilden (1838-1921) was the naturalist in Nares’s ship, H.M.S. Alert, which wintered at the north-east corner of Ellesmere Island. This volume is an annotated version of the journal which Feilden kept during that expedition, including the preparations and the immediate aftermath, from 1 February 1875 until 7 January 1877. The original manuscript is in the archives of the Royal Geographical Society in London and it has never been published before, although Nares as leader produced a two-volume account of the expedition, to which Feilden contributed appendices on ethnology, mammalia, and ornithology. Feilden’s journal has the immediacy of an account written day by day, illustrated by sketches, all of which have been reproduced.’

Here are several extracts from the edited diaries.

10 August I876
‘Dobbin Bay. The young ice is forming rapidly and consolidating the loose floe-pieces. Captain Nares after ascending a hill and looking round thought that we could reach some loose looking stuff outside of Cape Hawks. Under steam by 2 p.m. both boilers, Discovery and ourselves boring through the pack. We could make but little way. It is extraordinary the rapidity with which the young ice even when only an inch or two thick joins the floes together. We moored again between 4 and 5 p.m. after getting about three-quarters of the way across Dobbin Bay.

Thermo sunk to +18° it feels quite cold again. Markham landed on Prince Imperial Island, and brought from it a skull of the walrus, it had been broken by human agency.

Ginger the cat invaded my sanctum this evening tore off the head of a Ptarmigan I killed yesterday and which I took great pains to carry clean onboard and also destroyed two snow-buntings.’

23 August 1876
‘The wind blew so strong directly in our teeth this morning that with 98 revolutions we could hardly hold our own. We took shelter in a small bay which I take to be Hayes’ Gould Bay. If I am right then our next Cape South is Leidy and then Cape Louis Napoleon. A tremendous big floe is jammed against the shore and extends out into the channel, at 9 a.m. we moored to this floe waiting for something to turn up.

A fine falcon Falco graenlandicus flew round the ship, but did not come within range. Parr shot a floe-rat P. hispida a female weight 65 lbs. Tip of hind flipper to snout 4’. 3 1/2”. Girth behind axillae 2’.4”. Front of fore-flipper to nose 1’.0” girth round umbilicus 2’’.4 1/2” occiput to nose 7 ins. Length between fore and hind flipper 2’. 2 1/4” Length of fore-flipper 5 1/2” Length hind flipper 8 in. Dovekies are numerous in the pools around us, counted 27 in one party. The big floe to which we were moored drifted N. so we ran for shelter into the little bay we left this morning.

Landed with Nares & Hart, found many fossils - saw a Walrus. Parr saw a little auk.’

25 August 1876
‘At 3 a.m. the Captain called me and asked me to accompany him on shore and look at two old Eskimo camps that he had seen on the beach, from the crowsnest.

He and I and Malley landed. The Eskimo traces consisted of two rings of stones for summer tents, placed on a shingle beach raised 15 feet above high-water mark. The sea must have encroached at this particular point for half of one of the circles had been undermined and washed away.

Saw a magnificent Falco candicans sitting on the slope of Cape Leidy. Crawled up to him and let rip two barrels at him 70 yards off. No result. Walking towards the south, Malley picked up a broken Eskimo harpoon. Found a foxes skull, and a few fossils. (Trilobite.).

Back to the ship by 6 a.m. got under weigh and worked through the pack some five miles, moored to floe two miles north of Cape Napoleon. Several broods of Eiders were passed, the old birds became much excited. Landed in the evening with Nares, and walked along the beach round Cape Napoleon, until we saw well into Raised Beach Bay, this was rimmed with heavy ice, and so was Dobbin Bay beyond. It appears to me as if a deal of heavy ice from the N. had drifted down here and stuck

The ice-foot along this coast is beautifully wide and smooth. At this late period of the summer it is much cut up by water channels but in the spring in must be fine travelling.

Saw a circle of stones marking Eskimo encampment a mile and a half N. of Cape Napoleon.’

28 August 1876
‘Dobbin Bay. A cheerless looking day. The snow has covered the hills with their winter garb. Several Ivory Gulls are cruising round the ship just out of shot, and picking up their livelyhood [sic] from the small pools still left open. The ice we are amongst is chiefly this years, but fragments of older floes are intermixed and some heavy pieces of berg. A large one is lying at the head of the bay inside of Prince Imperial Island. I suppose there must be a discharging glacier somewhere at the head of the bay. Depth 47 fathoms mud. Killed ♀ Ivory Gull.’

7 September 1876
‘Franklin Pierce Bay. Up steam at 9.30 a.m. and the ice slackening we moved into a large pool of water extending some distance to the eastern side of Walrus Island. Moored to a berg and landed on the island. Snow about 3 inches in depth, effectually concealed the Eskimo traces which we know to be so numerous on the Island.

Here and there a cache or the walls of an unroofed igloo were to be seen. I took a pick with me but the soil was too hard frozen to make any impression. Numerous skulls of Walrus showed above the snow, these crania are interesting because they have all been broken in the same manner, the skull broken through across the eye-holes and the front part split in order to extract the tusks. I also found the skull of a large seal P. barbata.

Several broods of eider ducks in a pool were still unable to fly. Giffard bagged 8, Malley was carrying them when the ice breaking, Malley let go the ducks, Giffard only managed to save one. I saw a pair of Ravens, and 2 Ptarmigan. A Phoca hispida was shot in the afternoon.

It was a strange sensation standing alone on the point of Cape Isabella, to the north lay the channel to the unreached Pole, a route ever to be impressed on our minds by the recollection of our dangers and escapes. The ships were drifting with the tide along with heavy masses of ice to the northward, and to the south an open sea with dark lowering clouds hanging over it. the boom of the waves breaking against the granite shore, brought back a flood of recollections from the outer world that have not crossed my mind for 18 months. So interested have I been in my work that up till now, I have never let the thought of home enter my mind, but the southern wind and open sea brought back a strange longing for home, which our letters did not dispel.’

A tale of defeat and bitterness

‘For a brief interval he had no questions to answer, no justifications to proffer, no explanations to make. The contrast with the general tenor of his life is striking. Later years would also bring occasional intervals of deep joy, of triumph, even perhaps of tranquillity, but his life as a whole was to be an almost unbroken tale of defeat and bitterness.’ This is about Charles Fothergill, born 240 years ago today, an ardent naturalist and failed entrepreneur many times over. The comment comes from the introduction to a book of diary notes kept by a still very young Fothergill on returning to his home county to research its natural history.

Fothergill was born into a Quaker family in York, England, on 23 May 1782. He was trained in his father’s business - ivory craft - but developed an early interest in natural history, even publishing a short folio he called Ornithologia Britannica at the age of 17. He travelled to London to become an actor, then tried to secure a commission in the Royal Navy. However, in 1805, he returned to Yorkshire to research a natural and civil history of Yorkshire, and the following year saw him in the Orkney and Shetland islands undertaking another similar idea. He commissioned celebrated engravers to illustrate the works, but only ever managed to published his Essay on the philosophy, study, and use of natural history. In his later 20s, he seems to have squandered an inheritance on racehorse breeding. In 1811, he married Charlotte Nevins and they had two sons. 

Further career attempts followed - studying medicine in Edinburgh, farming on the Isle of Man - before he and his family emigrated to Upper Canada (partly to escape debts). He settled Smith’s Creek (Port Hope) where he opened a general store. He was the first postmaster at Port Hope in 1817; and in 1818, he was appointed justice of the peace in the Newcastle District. He built a distillery at Port Hope and a sawmill and gristmill at Peterborough. However, debts again overwhelmed him, and his properties were seized. In 1821, he was appointed the King’s Printer and moved to York (Toronto). The years that followed were dogged with ill-health, the death of his wife, and schemes that came to naught.

In 1824, he won a seat in the Legislative Assembly of Upper Canada. In parliament, he was critical of the administration and was dismissed as King’s Printer in 1826. He failed to get re-elected in 1830. During the 1830s, he also published An essay descriptive of the quadrupeds of British North America and another paper on the situation of the salmon in Lake Ontario. However, several new business ventures failed, and he died, penniless, in 1840. Wikipedia says he is considered to be Ontario’s first resident ornithologist. Further information is also available from the Dictionary of Canadian Biography and a biography by James I. Baillie Jr. in the Canadian Historical Review.

The University of Toronto Library holds the bulk of Fothergill’s extant papers, including some diaries. Shetland Museum and Archives holds Fothergill’s diary of his 1806 travels there. The Yorkshire Archaeological Society may hold the Yorkshire diary since, in 1984, it published The Diary of Charles Fothergill, 1805: An Itinerary to York, Flamborough and the North-Western Dales of Yorkshire by Paul Romney. The introduction in this latter is available to view online at Academia.

Here are three extracts from that introduction.

‘The document published here is Fothergill’s diary of his adventures as he perambulated the county of Yorkshire between May 1805 and January 1806. It is the record of a young Yorkshire Quaker, of yeoman roots and bourgeois estate, in search of the history, antiquities, folklore, customs and other phenomena, both ‘natural’ and ‘civil’, of his native county. Much of the diary is therefore taken up with jottings relevant to those subjects: accounts of archaeological relics; scraps of local history; notes on economic life, and on local dialect and nomenclature; and, of course, descriptions of flora and fauna - for Fothergill was always a naturalist first and foremost, and above all an ornithologist.’

‘None of the data the diary offers is as interesting as the interplay between the writer’s sensibility and his subject: the past and present of Yorkshire. This interplay creates a whole that exceeds the sum of the parts, conveying to the reader a sense of the time and place which is almost novelistic in its immediacy. Indeed, the diary is almost novelistic in structure; for, as the scene shifts to and fro between York and the Ridings, and scenes of solitude and tranquillity alternate with those of society and bustle, our sense of both narrator and milieu expands, while the plot takes some surprising twists before accelerating gently but perceptibly to its bittersweet climax.’

‘The diary records what was, despite its unsatisfactory epilogue, an idyllic interlude in Fothergill’s life. In the dales he wandered amidst scenery sometimes picturesque, sometimes sublime, in a region to which the name of Fothergill was native. Here was none of the clamour, filth and expense of London, none of the claustrophobia and family strife of York. For a brief interval he had no questions to answer, no justifications to proffer, no explanations to make. The contrast with the general tenor of his life is striking. Later years would also bring occasional intervals of deep joy, of triumph, even perhaps of tranquillity, but his life as a whole was to be an almost unbroken tale of defeat and bitterness.’

Newfoundland’s Dr Rusted

Dr Nigel Rusted, a Canadian doctor much honoured and credited with having made outstanding contributions to the medical profession in Newfoundland and Labrador, died 10 years ago today - aged 104! Throughout his long life he kept daily diaries, one per year, for nearly 90 years. All these diaries, every manuscript page of them, are available online thanks to the Memorial University of Newfoundland - Digital Archives Initiative.

Rusted was born, son of a reverend, in 1907 in Salvage, Newfoundland, the eldest of six children, and grew up in Upper Island Cove. He attended the newly-established Memorial University College, graduating in 1927, before training at Dalhousie Medical School. During two summers, he worked as health officer aboard the SS Kyle which visited communities along the Labrador coast. On qualifying, he took a position at St. John’s General Hospital (New Brunswick). But, after suffering a severe throat infection in 1935, he worked on the floating clinic ship MV Lady Anderson for a year. He married Florence Anderson and they had three children.

In 1936, Rusted opened a private clinic in St. John’s and also became a junior surgeon at the General Hospital. He married From 1954 to 1968, he served as chief surgeon; he also served as medical director, chief of staff and chief surgeon at the Grace General Hospital, and senior consultant at St John’s two other hospitals. In 1968, with the opening of Memorial University’s medical school, he was appointed Clinical Professor of Surgery.

Rusted retired from surgery in 1982 and from clinical practice in 1987. Over the years, he received numerous honours, including the Order of Newfoundland and Labrador and the first William B. Spaulding Certificate of Merit for contribution to the history of medicine in Canada. In 2011, he was made a Member of the Order of Canada. He died on 18 March 2012. Further biographical information is available at Wikipedia, the Canadian Medical Association Journal, or the Memorial University’s website.

Rusted kept a daily journal from 1925 through to the year of his death - 88 yearly diaries in all. Every single one of them has been digitalised and made available online by the Digital Archives Initiative of the Memorial University of Newfoundland. They have not, however, been transcribed, and so, although Rusted’s handwriting is legible enough, the pages cannot be scanned or searched efficiently. Rusted also published a memoir based on his diaries and this was published by the university in 1985 - It’s Devil Deep Down There.

Spiritless generals!

It is 150 years since the death of the soldier William Swabey. Having served in the British army, he spent twenty years farming and politicking in the Canadian colony of Prince Edward Island. However, he is largely remembered today because of the diary he kept during the Peninsular War. Arthur Ponsonby, the early 20th century expert in diaries, rates it as a good example of a soldier’s diary with ‘rather humorous comments’.

Swabey was born in Buckinghamshire, England, in 1789. He married Mary Ann Hobson in 1820 and together they had 11 children. For 18 years he served in the British Army, rising to the rank of captain and fighting in the Peninsular War (between France and the allied powers of Spain, Portugal and UK for control of the Iberian Peninsula) and at Waterloo. Following his retirement from the army in 1840, Swabey and his family emigrated to Prince Edward Island colony in Canada, where he leased land and took up farming.

In November 1841, Swabey was appointed to the Legislative Council as a Tory, but he then switched his allegiances to become a leading spokesman for the Reform Party. In 1851, Swabey joined the Executive Council of George Coles’ Liberal government, and served in various posts until the Liberals were defeated in 1859. He also served for the best part of two decades on the Board of Education. In 1861 Swabey left Prince Edward Island to return to England. He died on 6 February 1872. The most comprehensive biography of Swabey online can be found at the Dictionary of Canadian Biography.

Swabey’s diaries, which only cover the period of the Peninsular War, were edited by F. A. Whinyates and published in 1895 as Diary of Campaigns in the Peninsula for the years 1811, 12 and 13. Despite being out of copyright, there do not appear to be any copies of the book freely available to read online (at Internet Archive for example). A portion of Swabey’s diaries - from July to October 1807 - was also published in Journal of the Royal United Service Institution in 1916. A description of Swabey’s diary and some extracts are available in English Diaries by Arthur Ponsonby (Methuen, 1923) which can be downloaded from Internet Archive. Ponsonby says Swabey’s is ‘a good example of a soldier’s diary, which in addition to technical military details contains descriptions of scenery and places and some rather humorous comments.’

Here are a few (undated) extracts from Swabey’s diary quoted by Ponsonby.

‘I found this day as well as many of late so little worthy of being remembered that I begin to think of curtailing my plan of journal altogether and am the more tempted to do so from the habits that necessity imposes on us.’

‘The first ceremony was that the whole dinner with the two servants and myself went bodily to leeward on the floor. I kept fast hold of a chicken by the leg and we fell to without knives and forks. I think I have not laughed so much since I left Christchurch.’

‘Rather troubled with a headache which was not deserved by idleness.’

‘I am apt to be desponding when too quiet and unemployed.’

‘There is such a complete vacancy and want of employment in our time that I cannot congratulate myself of a night on having done anything either useful or entertaining.’

‘I feel myself so constantly engaged in the daily pursuits of infantry officers in England viz: watching fishes swim under the bridge, throwing stones at pigs, etc. I am ashamed of it but have nothing else to do.

‘The beds had counterpanes of satin with lace borders and fringe ornaments but oh comfort where are you gone?’

‘Confound all dilatory and spiritless generals!’

Ponsonby adds: ‘The military engagements are fully described, and in many places there are additional notes inserted by [Swabey] at a later date. He is much more concerned in giving a full account of the victory at Vittoria than in relating the incident of his being wounded in the knee. Afterwards, however, he chafes a good deal at being incapacitated, and finally he is invalided home. [. . .] Swabey returned afterwards to active service, fought in the battle of Toulouse and also at Waterloo.’

And here is one dated extract from an article on the Napoleon Series website.

7 August 1912
‘I woke this morning with the most violent and insupportable pain in my head I ever felt, which having endured for some hours, at last turned into a fit of the ague, which I was extremely glad to change for the apprehensions that an alarming fever occasions. Mr. Peach of the 9th Dragoons who attended me, made me immediately get into water during the hot fit, and repeat this operation several times. The getting into water in a fever makes one shudder almost as much as if told to get into a furnace. One of the worst of my complaints was the total want of money, so that I could not even get fruit and wine, that were particularly recommended. When the fit left me after 3 hours, I began to feel a wish to be quietly reposing in some cool spot in England, and it brought to my remembrance every tender recollection and regret. Sickness is at any time bad, but under all my circumstances and with the probability of the army’s moving in which case I could not have stirred, it put me in mind of French prisons, Bayonne and all its horrors.’

This article is a slightly revised version of one first published on 6 February 2022.

Buggering around aimlessly

‘This being the New Year’s Day of practice, as distinct from theory, I paid tribute to it by buggering around aimlessly all morning, and then went down to the office in the afternoon. It was a foggy day - one of the heaviest fogs I’ve ever seen here, and I should think that those who obediently get gloomy in gloomy weather would go into reverse & feel exhilarated with the mystery & glamour that a fog spreads over things.’ This is from the diaries of Northrop Frye, a celebrated Canadian literary academic who died 30 years ago today. On publication of Frye’s diaries, the publisher claimed they provided ‘an unprecedented view of the life and times of this now-legendary scholar’.

Frye was born in Sherbrooke, Quebec, in 1912 but was raised in Moncton, New Brunswick. His much older brother, Howard, died in World War I. He studied philosophy at Victoria College in the University of Toronto, where he edited the college literary journal. He then studied theology at Emmanuel College. After a brief period as a student minister in Saskatchewan, he was ordained to the ministry of the United Church of Canada. He studied further at Merton College, Oxford, where he was a member and Secretary of the Bodley Club, before returning to Victoria College. In 1937, he married Helen Kemp, an art student. In 1947, Frye’s first book, Fearful Symmetry, a study of William Blake, brought him international attention. 

Frye was made chairman of the English department at Victoria College from 1952, he then served as principal (1959-67) and chancellor (1978-91). As well as teaching at the Toronto college, he travelled widely to give lectures in the US and overseas (he was also, in 1974-1975, the Norton professor at Harvard University). According to his bio in Encyclopaedia Britannica: ‘In Anatomy of Criticism [1957] he challenged the hegemony of the New Criticism by emphasizing the modes and genres of literary texts. Rather than analyze the language of individual works of literature, as the New Critics did, Frye stressed the larger or deeper imaginative patterns from which all literary works are constructed and the recurring importance of literature’s underlying archetypes.’ Many further works of literary criticism followed, consolidating his position as one of Canada’s most important literary critics. After the death of his wife in 1986, he married the widow Elizabeth Brown in 1988; but he, himself, died on 23 January 1991. Further information can  be found online at the Dictionary of Canadian Biography, Online Encyclopaedia of Canada Christian Leaders, and Wikipedia.

From the mid-1990s until 2012, The University of Toronto Press published the Collected Works of Northrop Frye in 30 volumes. Transcriptions of all his diaries were published in Volume 8 - The Diaries of Northrop Frye, 1942–1955 - as edited by Robert D. Denham (who also edited half a dozen or more other volumes in the series). The publisher says, for Frye, diary writing was a tool for recording ‘everything of importance and this ruled out very little’. His entries contain a large measure of self-analysis and self-revelation, and in this respect are ‘confessional’. They cover his classes, planning his career, recording his dreams, registering frank reactions to the hundreds of people who cross his path, eyeing attractive women, reflecting on books, music and movies, pondering religious and political issues, as well as considering his various physical and psychological ailments. The volume (which can be previewed at Googlebooks) is fully annotated, contains a directory that identifies more than 1,200 people mentioned in the text, and has a detailed, lengthy and informative introduction. Here are several extracts.

10 August 1942
‘Bitched the day, celebrating because Ned [Pratt] liked the Blake. Show at night. Thurber’s “Male Animal.” Not bad: but Henry James was a bad dramatist and a master of Thurber’s. The main theme, a hot-headed undergraduate editor turning a piece of ordinary teaching routine into a crusade, is sound. The episodic clowning with his wife was a bit weak. But the Chairman of Trustees was too crude: one never gets them like that. They always turn up quoting Holy Scripture and John Stuart Mill on Liberty. A novel about a similar situation with the weakling’s endlessly rationalizing would be all right. The other show was a bad English thriller based on fake ‘psychology’: Flora Robson writing poison-pen letters because she was a spinster & her maternal impulse was frustrated. [. . .]

Mary [Winspear] said the last person to have real intellectual guts was Bernard Shaw. I said writers were becoming a stereotype, a Brahmin caste, and I trotted out my anatomy theory. If I ever get around to writing a novel called Liberal, the motto for which will be Isaiah 32:8, I want a sentimental weather-cocky Craggish hero with an anatomic  Jack counterpoint and a fantastic  Regillus one. When my ideas are major, why is my execution so miserably stupid: is it just lack of practice? My opening scene with Kennedy is all right if he reinforces the liberalism. But it’s so bloody Quixotic to think in terms of Dostoievsky and produce something on the level of Cosmopolitan or Maclean’s. I‘m getting fed up with it and all my wool-gathering dreary accidia.’

19 August 1942
‘Today the news was all about the Dieppe raid, & the Russian front also got a front-page splash. The fact that the Chinese stormed & captured Wenchow, a city of 100,000 on the coast, was recorded in a tiny box in the second section. I simply cannot understand this assumption that the Chinese front is of no importance or interest. It’s all the sillier when one realizes that the current of world history is now going through Asia & that Europe has ceased to be of any organic historical significance. China will probably have the next century pretty well to itself as far as culture, & perhaps even civilization, are concerned.’

24 September 1942
‘Morley [Callaghan] & Eleanor [Godfrey] dislike the English but don’t fully understand why: it’s because they’re Catholics, of course. The confusions of interests today are curious. Heywood Broun turned R.C. after he’d become convinced, wrongly of course, that it wasn’t inherently Fascist. He judged the church by a political standard assumed superior to it. Yet if he had realized this he‘d have sold out to the reactionaries. Funny deadlock.

The theory of democracy about the will of the people being the source of government is, in that form, just will-worship like Calvin’s.’

28 September 1942
‘Three lectures and busting with shit: went home early this afternoon. Then to Havelock’s for a debating society executive meeting. Eric has taken quite a shine to me evidently & he certainly does work hard at debates. They varied between political and local-scandal subjects, suggesting “should formal parties be suspended?” I said it would be more interesting to say “should formal dresses be suspended?” They came to no conclusions but are planning a group of inter-year debates.’ 

6 January 1949
‘Lectures all morning. In Milton I dealt with the paradox of evil as a metaphysical negation & a moral fact, comparing it with the conception of cold in physics. Somebody asked me why chaos existed. I said all conceptions of the universe, not just the Einsteinian, are limited, & chaos marks the limit of that which is created by God yet is not God. There can be nothing beyond chaos, because there can be nothing beyond God; but God‘s power radiates to the limit of matter, or creation, hence there has to be chaos, or as near to pure matter as is conceivable, at that limit. I said that God’s power is a vision to angels, a mystery to men, an automatic instinct in animals, plants &, according to the 17th c., minerals, and operates as luck or chance in chaos, hence Satan’s footslip. That the 19th c, influenced by the prestige of biological & other sciences, had looked downward from the human mystery & seen the world as a mechanism, and that the 20th c., peering through that, had struck probability & the “principle of indeterminacy” at the bottom of it. A touch of glibness there, as there is in a lot of what I say. [. . .]

Marjorie King has just phoned to say that Harold [KingJ] is dead. Heart attack striking without warning last night. Harold was as lovable a person as I knew, & I shall miss him intensely: it’s one of the few deaths I have experienced that hurt. She wants me to do the funeral: I always refuse marriages, but I don’t see how I can refuse this - actually my attitude to marriages may be ungracious. I suppose when people ask me they want either a personal touch or less religion than they get from professionals. Personal touches are out of place at funerals there one wants only to see the great wheels of the Church rolling by. It is much more of an imposition than Marjorie realizes, as the death is a considerable shock to me, even if it cannot be compared with the shock to her. As for the religion, all one can do at a funeral is proclaim the fact of resurrection: any funeral that doesn’t do that is just variations on “Behold, he stinketh” [John 11:39].’

23 January 1949
‘Overtired after a strenuous week: will I never learn not to accept invitations outside Toronto? A very dull day: out to hear Sclater at Old St. Andrews talk about the gap (curtain he called it) between youth & age. He’s a frivolous person & seemed to assume that after 1913 the world lost a point of stability it had up to that time. Life goes in a parabola, thus: [. . .] & on the descending curve you’re apt to be fascinated by the point opposite you on the up curve. I think there may be even a physiological basis to this, indicated by the way young childhood crowds into the minds of the very aged. I didn‘t actually hear much of the sermon. The Wilsons came in for supper & Margaret [Newton] returned from Washington. Says the Truman inaugural wasn’t, like most American parades, exuberant & good-humored, but a grim military march-past for the benefit of the Soviet Ambassador. If I were a leading Russian Communist I’d say: we now have Russia, one-sixth of the world. We have East Europe & the West is in our pocket we could occupy it in two weeks anyway. The revolt of Asia is the great political fact in the contemporary world, & we’re in a position to exploit that: the Americans can only prop up beaten & discredited governments. The revolt of Africa hasn’t yet come, but is certainly coming. The only power able to oppose our conquest of the world is the U.S.A. There’s no use fighting her: she’s too strong: she has the atom bomb & an economic system that works best under wartime conditions. With the three continents in our grip, we can sit tight & let her blow up & burst with her economy which demands continuous centrifugal expansion & which we I think. Why should they start a war? Margaret’s on the Reserve Army list & has been told to report to H.Q. It doesn’t look like war yet, to me, but that may be just a “wistful vista.” The Americans could start a war to forestall their blowup; but the Russians could start one too to forestall the blowing up of the contradictions in the argument I’ve just outlined.’

2 January 1950
‘This being the New Year’s Day of practice, as distinct from theory, I paid tribute to it by buggering around aimlessly all morning, and then went down to the office in the afternoon. It was a foggy day - one of the heaviest fogs I’ve ever seen here, and I should think that those who obediently get gloomy in gloomy weather would go into reverse & feel exhilarated with the mystery & glamour that a fog spreads over things. My Hudson Review was in the mail, and I spent some time gloating over it: I’m getting to be a terrible intellectual narcist. Saw Ned [Pratt], who has been converted to John Sutherland by a friendly letter, & who tells me Mrs. Ford is dead. Came home and voted. I plumped for May Birchard for alderman again, but she still didn’t make it, though she was close. The Sunday sport issue went pro, greatly to my surprise. Both Protestants & the Cardinal had gone against it, two of the three papers who had been for it had ratted midway (the third, the Star, was against it anyway) and not a candidate except Lamport had dared to open his mouth in favor if it. It indicates that “public opinion” that everyone is afraid of is largely a matter of lobbying and organized minorities.’

Canadian painter of icebergs

‘My paintings are always disasters while I am doing them. It isn’t until I see them later, and someone else likes them, that I can see their virtues.’ This is from the early teen diary of Doris Mccarthy, a Canadian artist who died a decade ago today (aged 100!). She spent her life teaching, and it was only in retirement that she began to exhibit more commercially, often of paintings inspired by travels in Canada and to the Arctic. She also wrote several autobiographical works in which she occasionally referenced her own diaries.

McCarthy was born in Calgary, Alberta, in 1910. She attended the Ontario College of Art from 1926 to 1930, where she was awarded various scholarships and prizes. She became a teacher at Central Technical School in downtown Toronto where she worked for much of her life. She travelled abroad extensively and painted the landscapes of various countries. Following her retirement in 1972, she began exhibiting commercially on a more regular basis, not just in Toronto but across the country. That year, she also made the first of a number of trips to the Arctic. Indeed, she was probably best known for her Canadian landscapes and her scenes of Arctic icebergs. In 1999, she was the subject of a major retrospective exhibition at the McMichael Canadian Collection in Kleinberg, Ontario. She was made a member of the Royal Canadian Academy of Arts, and was a recipient of the Order of Canada among other honours. She died on 25 November 2010. A little further information is available at Wikipedia, the Wynick/Tuck Gallery, and Mountain Galleries.

McCarthy seems to have been a diarist. Among the many items in her archive, the University of Toronto lists ‘over five decades of correspondence between McCarthy and her best friend, Marjorie Beer (née Wood); diaries written by McCarthy between the ages of 12 and 90; personal artifacts and keepsakes; photographs of her family, life and travels dating back to the late 19th Century; and draft manuscripts of McCarthy's autobiographical publications’. Images from two of her diaries - the first from January 1922 to October 1924 and the second from 1930-1931 - are available to view at the university’s collections website, although there is no text transcription.

The university provides a brief description of the first of these two diaries. ‘Doris McCarthy’s personal journal from ages twelve to fourteen. Doris McCarthy started writing with Marjorie for the school newspaper. Both of them developed an interest in authorship and decided they would ask for diaries on Christmas 1921. Doris started her first journal, this one, on New Year's day, 1922. Because Doris’ journal was blank, she could write whenever and however much she wanted to on the pages. Doris also developed the habit of drawing/sketching at the same time as her interest in writing. Although there are some sketches in the journals, she primarily used other exercise books for drawing.’

Although McCarthy’s diaries have never been published (as far as I know), she did, later in life, write several autobiographical works - A Fool in Paradise, The Good Wine, and Ninety Years Wise - which can be digitally borrowed (briefly) at Internet Archive. These include occasional references to, and quotes from, her diaries.

In 2006, Second Story Press published Doris McCarthy: My Life. The publisher states: ‘This memoir marries the best of McCarthy’s previous writings with exciting new material and traces a compelling woman’s life from energetic early girlhood to reflective old age.’ Some pages of this can be previewed at Googlebooks. And, like the earlier books, she makes infrequent references to her diaries. Here are several of those references (in no particular order).  

‘My diary is full of complaints about the bad sketches I was making, but it later reports a quite successful exhibition of them and the canvases based on them. My paintings are always disasters while I am doing them. It isn’t until I see them later, and someone else likes them, that I can see their virtues.’

***

‘Living in my own little flat had given me back the freedom of my diary, and I wrote out the emotions of those first tormented up-and-down months. I fought against falling into such a profitless love, struggling to be content with companionship, lying awake nights in anger and despair, weeping on Marjorie’s shoulder. By early November we had agreed to stop seeing each other.

“November 6: I’m glad it’s done, and I’m more terrified of going on than of stopping; but I still feel the way I did the week war was declared - as if my world had suddenly fallen apart, and I’m sick with loneliness and fear of my own weakness.” ’

***

‘My diary for the spring of 1974 is full of details about sales of paintings, fresh delight in the garden, and the newfound pleasures of retirement.’

***

‘It was wonderful that two children who were so different could grow to be so close. Marjorie was almost delicate; Doris was stocky and strong, with her mother’s emotional energy, and the confidence to take the lead in physical skills. Doris was a good student, intellectual, with high marks in everything. Marjorie was top student in the humanities but had no head for mathematics; her genius was with people. She met everyone with a warmth and interest that took her right through their reserve and into their hearts. Marjorie was a poet with a magical imagination and a delicious sense of fun. We both intended to become great authors, and each of us had in the works several short stories and at least one full-length novel. In discussing our literary ambitions, we agreed, probably on her suggestion, to ask to be given diaries for Christmas, in order to practice Improving Our Style. On New Year’s Day 1922, each of us began a journal.

A few weeks later we wrote a verse play together, a one-act drama about a fairy kingdom suffering under persecution by mischievous elves. I suspect that its plot owed much to Lamb’s Tales from Shakespeare. It contained some slight variety of character, a modicum of conflict, and a happy ending. Our elders were impressed and, thanks no doubt to Mother’s influence, it was produced as part of a concert to raise money for the building of the St. Aidan’s church Memorial Hall. As the curtain closed, the rector, Dr. Cotton, called us up to the stage to be presented with flowers. My diary’s detailed description of the event concludes with the declaration, “This day is an epoch in my life.” ’

A real companion and friend

It’s 70 years to the day since William Lyon Mackenzie King died. He was one of the leading Canadian politicians of the 20th century, having been prime minister for over 20 years. He was also a very committed diarist, writing, or dictating, detailed entries for most of his life up until a couple of days before his death. All of King’s prolific diary output is freely available online thanks to Library and Archives Canada.

King was born in Berlin (later renamed Kitchener), Ontario, in 1874. His maternal grandfather, William Lyon Mackenzie, led the 1837 Rebellion in Upper Canada. King studied at the University of Toronto, the University of Chicago and at Harvard before entering the civil service. He joined the Liberal Party and won a seat in the 1908 election. The following year, he was appointed Minister of Labour in Sir Wilfrid Laurier’s Cabinet. After losing his seat in 1911, he worked as a consultant for a while before, in 1919, being elected leader of his party.

Two years later, in 1921, the Liberals won a general election, and then won again in 1925 and 1926, before losing power in 1930. However, King was re-elected in 1935 and led Canada through the Second World War, benefitting from strong relationships with both Roosevelt and Churchill. He died less than two years after retiring,  on 22 July 1950. Much more biographical information is available online, at Library and Archives Canada, Dictionary of Canadian Biography Online, and, of course, Wikipedia.

Although King was a prolific correspondent and the author of numerous books and articles, by far his most important literary project - according to Library and Archives Canada - was the ongoing, daily writing of his diary, which began in 1893, while he was an undergraduate, and ended in 1950, a few days before his death. Taken together, the diary texts comprise nearly 30,000 pages (more than seven million words) and arguably represents one of Canada’s greatest literary achievements.

King explained his original purpose in writing a diary in the very first entry (6 September 1893): ‘This diary is to contain a very brief sketch of the events, actions, feelings, and thoughts of my daily life. It must above all be a true and faithful account. The chief object of my keeping this diary is that I may be ashamed to let even one day have nothing worthy of its showing, and it is hoped that through its pages the reader may be able to trace how the author has sought to improve his time. Another object must here be mentioned and is this, the writer hopes that in future days - be they far or near - he may find great pleasure both for himself and friends in the remembrance of events recorded, surrounded as they must be, by many an unwritten association. If either aim is reached this present diary will not have been in vain.’

According to an online exhibition hosted by Library and Archives Canada, by 1902 King’s diary had taken an additional role in his life - ‘as a confidant, a friend with whom he could share his innermost thoughts and feelings’. Shortly after the death of a friend he wrote, ‘I am taking up this diary again as a means of keeping me true to my true purpose . . . it has helped to clear me in my thought and convictions, and it has been a real companion and friend.’ King also used the diary to give himself advice (to do better, to work harder), and to berate himself (for gaining weight, for example, or wasting time at parties). Furthermore, for King, the writing of the diary was a duty, an exercise in self-discipline. In the early years, it was common for him to put aside the diary for several days or even months, but in later years it was very rare that he missed a day. He felt remorse whenever he failed to keep it up.

All of King’s diaries are online at Library and Archives Canada! Here are a couple of extracts - two connected with Shirley Temple (for no other reason than that they go with a fine out-of-copyright photograph of the two of them taken on the same day as the second extract), and the third is the very last diary entry King made a few days before he died.

17 August 1937
‘. . . The Coronation pictures were followed by Shirley Temple in Wee Willie Winkle - what I saw of the child rather annoyed than pleased me, a precociousness & forwardness, etc. however, as the play went on she ‘improved’ - there were bits that were quite lovely - a fine little actress, - but one feels it is a mistake so to raise children. . .’

21 October 1944
‘Arrived at the Parliament Buildings at noon had a really interesting afternoon as a consequence. In the Railway Committee room met Shirley Temple, her mother and father, and some of the repatriated boys. . . I was greatly attracted by Shirley Temple - a young girl of great charm, very pretty, very natural; I liked her father and mother, both of whom were quiet, pleasant people. . . I have seldom found anyone more natural than Shirley Temple was, or quicker to adapt herself to every situation. We walked out together to the platform facing Parliament Hill and I sat to her right, and St Laurent to her left. It was quite interesting to watch her methods to rouse the boys to cheer. Very self-possessed, full of joyous freedom and expression in every way. . .

After the proceedings we had a very exciting time. I walked with her to the car, allowed her father and mother to get in, and sat on a small seat myself. We were not more than started when crowds gathered in front of the car and on all sides. It was such that it was impossible for us to move. This kept up all the way to the hotel. Police arrangements not good. . . I expected to find it easy once in the hotel, but there the situation was worse than ever. There was no police, except a big man, who had gone in first and another who joined in later. The Chateau was crowded with children. Young people squeezed in around us. Shirley’s father and I tried to protect her but Mrs Temple got lost in the crowd to one side. To my amazement we had to crash through all the way, to one of elevator doors, leaving Mrs Temple behind. . .

When we came up together everyone was pretty well fatigued. I found my heart beating very fast, and finding it difficult to get my breath. I had not realised how considerable the strain had been. I was really fearful at one stage that the little girl would be crushed. Certainly, if anyone had slipped there would have been a terrible situation. It was quite shocking, having no police, and to have to have let the crowds indoors. I literally had to carry her along from the front door through the gathering to the elevator.’

19 July 1950
‘Last night was a very unfortunate night. I went soundly to sleep almost at once, but wakened because of conditions in the room, too cold, etc. Got nurse to arrange things. Took usual morphine injection about one. Found the room very cold around five past five. The nurse had left the window open, and the temperature had changed. I called to her many times. Put on the light, etc. and finally had to go to her room to come to straighten things in my room. She was saying over and over again that she was sorry. As far as I could see, she was enjoying a meal on her bed, when I looked into the room, she also said she had been writing. It was very disappointing as it was from that time that I found my breathing heavy, and had a broken night’s sleep instead of one of the best I should have had. John brought tea at seven, but again my sleep was broken until ten. I could not get properly rested. At one stage he came to change my gowns . . . I had a new drug this morning . . . Got through a little dictation with Lafleur both before and after luncheon. I really should have gone into the sun at three, but was very tired, and feeling weary, went to bed instead. Evidently this was wise as I slept very soundly until quarter to seven - almost three hours. . . I regret having missed the out-of-doors for a walk through the day. When it came to getting up for dinner, found myself alone to give me clothing part of which had been taken away. Lafleur came to the rescure. I got what was needed and later signed letters. Then, went downstairs for dinner, at quarter to eight, dictating diary to date. Very very sorry to have kept Lafleur all that time.’

This article is a slightly revised version of one first published on 22 July 2010.