A sensitive and nervous man

Bret Harte, an American writer best remembered for his prose, particularly short stories about the Californian gold rush, and satirical poetry, was born 190 years ago today. He kept a diary for a few short months when a young man, but biographers tend to find more useful the diary of Annie Fields, wife of The Atlantic Monthly editor James T. Fields. She described Harte as a sensitive and nervous man.

Harte was born on 25 August 1836 in Albany, New York, into a family, originally Jewish immigrants. He seems to have left school at 13, and moved to California a few years later, where he worked in a variety of jobs. Having tried to make a living in the gold mining towns, he became a messenger for the Wells Fargo stagecoach company, guarding treasure boxes, before trying his hand as a teacher first then as a journalist. While working for the Northern Californian, he condemned the 1860 massacre of Wiyot people at Tuluwat; threats against him may have contributed to his decision to leave the area for San Francisco.”

In 1860, Harte began working for The Golden Era and contributed to its increasingly literary character; and in 1862 he married Anna Griswold. By this time, he was publishing poetry, romantic short stories about the Californian Gold Rush, as well as satirical prose. Some of his work was taken up by The Atlantic Monthly, edited by James Thomas Fields. In 1868, he became editor of the new literary magazine, Overland Monthly, which, two years later, published his poem Plain Language from Truthful James or, as it was better known, The Heathen Chinee. This narrative poem, satirising anti-Chinese sentiment, was widely republished, bringing Harte considerable fame. In search of furthering his literary career he moved to New York, and then Boston, and became contracted, at a high salary, to The Atlantic Monthly. His popularity did not last long, and by the end of 1872 the contract was over, and selling stories was becoming increasingly difficult.

Life remained tough for Harte until, in 1878, he went alone to Germany to take a position as US commercial agent in Krefeld, and then, in 1880, as US consul in Glasgow, UK. Though he wrote to his family (Anna and four children) and continued to support them, he never returned to the US (nor did they visit him in Europe). In 1885, he moved to London, where he continued to pursue his literary ambitions. He died in 1902. Further information is available from Wikipedia, Poem Hunter, or Encyclopaedia Britannica.

Harte kept a diary for a few months in 1857-1858. Bret Harte (American Book Company, 1941) by Joseph B. Harrison quotes from it but once. Gary Scharnhorst, in Bret Harte: Opening the American Literary West (University of Oklahoma Press, 2000), provides an extract from 31 December 1857: ‘Before I close this Journal containing but a small portion of last years doings let me indulge in a retrospect. I am at the commencement of this year - a teacher at a Salary of $25 per mo - last year at this time I was unemployed. Last year I thought I was in love - this year I think the same tho the object is a different one. ... I have added to my slight stock of experiences and have suffered considerable. Ah! well did the cynical Walpole say life is a comedy to those who think - a tragedy to those who feel. - I both think and feel. My life is a mixture of broad caricature and farce when I think of others, it is a melodrama when I feel for myself. In these 365 days I have again put forth a feeble essay toward fame and perhaps fortune. - I have tried literature albeit in an humble way - successfully - I have written some poetry: passable and some prose (good) which have been published. . . . Therefore I consecrate this year or as much as God may grant for my service - to honest heartfelt sincere labor and devotion to this occupation. - God help me - may I succeed.’

Axel Nissen, in his biography, Bret Harte: Prince and Pauper (University Press of Mississippi, 2000), refers to Harte’s diary more often but notes that he made his last entry on 5 March 1858. Here are two paragraphs of Nissen’s text, largely sourced on Harte’s diary.

‘Each day he would conscientiously record the day’s lessons in his diary, in addition to his own quotidian activities. One day was much like the other: school in the morning Monday through Saturday, a trip to town in the afternoon or a shooting expedition, alone or with one of the boys. During the five months Harte kept the diary, he painstakingly recorded every duck, meadowlark, teal, widgeon, and ring-necked and buttheaded plover he brought down. It was almost an obsession. Rain or shine, sick or well, he tramped out to the marshes with his gun after school, sometimes also in the morning before breakfast. On December 10, for example, he recorded that he shot a duck (“but couldn’t get him”), a teal, and a snipe, and remarked with evident satisfaction: “I am improving in my skill, and of late have made good success [one word illegible] shooting. However I must try to persevere in other things.” His hunting expeditions were an escape from the claustrophobia of living among strangers and gave him time to think. He got himself a dog. Bones, to keep him company. The diary gives us an impression of a sober, serious-minded, industrious, and critical young man - early to bed and early to rise - thoughtful and a mite restless in his country isolation.’

‘But there was also a darker side to his existence. The diary gives ample evidence of depression and even despair. Only a few days after moving in with the Liscombs, he came home from Sunday service “very blue and discontented.” A month later, on Thanksgiving, there was a dancing party in town. Everyone was there; Harte tried to dance, found he couldn’t, and was ‘‘very much annoyed.” He came home “incontinently” in the pouring rain and spent a restless night. Christmas Day was even worse. He helped Maggie prepare the meal, and they had Christmas dinner with the Martins and her in-laws. He was feeling quite melancholy by this point, and attendance at a dance in the evening only made it worse. ‘‘What the d....d am I to do with myself,” he scratched down desperately in his diary, ‘‘the simplest pleasures fail to please me - my melancholy and gloomy foreboding stick to me closer than a brother. I cannot enjoy myself rationally like others but am forced to make a gloomy spectacle of myself to gods and men.” The “thermometer of my spirits,” as he analyzed it that day, had started at 40 degrees temperate in the morning, risen to eighty by 3 P.M., fallen all the way down to zero by 9 P.M., and by 1 A.M., he was still awake and twenty below.’

Harte’s biographers have also drawn on the published diary of the wife of the editor of The Atlantic Monthly: Annie Fields - Memories of a hostess: A chronicle of eminent friendships, drawn chiefly from the diaries of Mrs. James T. Fields by M. A. DeWolfe Howe (The Atlantic Monthly Press, 1922). Here are several extracts about Harte.

5 September 1871
‘J. went to Boston. I wrote in the pastures and walked all the morning. Coming home, after dinner, came a telegram for me to meet J. and Bret Harte at Beverly station with the pony carriage. I drove hard to catch the train, but arrived in season, glad to take up the two good boys and show them Beverly shore. [. . .] Mr. Harte had much to say of the beautiful flowers of California, roses being in bloom about his own house there every month in the year. He found the cloudless skies and continued drought of California very hard to bear. For the first time in my life I considered how terrible perpetual cloudlessness would be! He thinks there is no beauty in the mountains of California, hard, bare, snowless peaks. Neither are there trees, nor any green grass.

He is delighted with the fragrant lawns of Newport and has, I believe, put into verse a delightful ghost story which he told us. He has taken a house of some antiquity in Newport, connected with which is the story of a lady who formerly lived there and who was very fond of the odor of mignonette. The flower was always growing in her house, and after her death, at two o’clock every night, a strong odor has always been perceived passing through the house as if wafted along by the garments of a woman. One night at the appointed hour, but entirely unconnected in his thought with the story Mr. Harte had long ago heard, he was arrested in his work by a strong perfume of mignonette which appeared to sweep by him. He looked about, thinking his wife might have placed a vase of flowers in the room, but finding nothing he began to follow the odor, which seemed to flit before him. Then he recalled, for the first time, the story he had heard. He opened the door; the odor was in the hall; he opened the room where the lady died, but there was no odor there; until returning, after making a circuit of the house, he found a faint perfume as if she had passed but not stayed there also. At last, somewhat oppressed perhaps by the ghostliness of the place and hour, he went out and stood upon the porch. There his dream vanished. The sweet lawn and tree flowers were emitting an odor, as is common at the hour when dews congeal, more sweet than at any other time of day or night, and the air was redolent of sweets which might easily be construed into mignonette. The story was well told and I shall be glad to see his poem. [. . .]

Mr. Harte is a very sensitive and nervous man. He struggles against himself all the time. He sat on the piazza with J. and talked till a late hour. This morning at breakfast I found him most interesting. He talked of his early and best-loved books. It appears that at the age of nine he was a lover and reader of Montaigne. Certain writers, he says, seem to him to stand out as friends and brothers side by side in literature. Now Horace and Montaigne are so associated in his mind. Mr. Emerson, he thinks, never in the least approaches a comprehension of the character of the man. With an admiration for his great sayings, he has never guessed at the subtle springs from which they come. The pleasant acceding to both sides in politics, and other traits of like nature, gives him affinity with Hawthorne. By the way, he is a true appreciator of Hawthorne. He was moved to much merriment yesterday by remembering a passage in the notes, where he slyly remarks, “Margaret Fuller’s cows hooked the other cows.” Speaking of Dr. Bartol, he said, “What a dear old man he is! A venerable baby, nothing more.” But Harte is most kindly and tender. His wife has been very ill and has given him cause for terrible anxiety. This accounts for much left undone, but he is an oblivious man oftentimes to his surroundings - leaves things behind!!’

12 January 1872
‘Bret Harte was here at breakfast. It is curious to see his feeling with regard to society. For purely literary society, with its affectations and contempts, he has no sympathy. He has at length chosen New York as his residence, and among the Schuylers, Sherwoods, and their friends he appears to find what he enjoys. There is evidently a gene about people and life here, and provincialisms which he found would hurt him. He is very sensitive and keen, with a love and reverence for Dickens almost peculiar in this coldly critical age. Bryant he finds very cold and totally unwilling to lead the conversation, as he should do when they are together, as he justly remarks, he being so much younger - but never a word without cart and horses to fetch it. Bret Harte has a queer absent-minded way of spending his time, letting the hours slip by as if he had not altogether learned their value yet. It is a miracle to us how he lives, for he writes very little. Thus far I suppose he has had money from J. R. O. & Co., but I fancy they have done with giving out money save for a quid pro quo.’

18 September 1875
‘Bret Harte came on the 1⁄2 past 12 train. He came in good health, save a headache which ripened as the day went on; but he was bubbling over with fun, full of the most natural and unexpected sallies. He wished to know if I was acquainted with the Cochin China hen. They had one at Cohasset. They had named him Benventuro (after a certain gay Italian singer of strong self-appreciation who came formerly to America). He said this hen’s state of mind on finding a half-exploded fire-cracker and her depressed condition since its explosion was something extraordinary. His description was so vivid that I still see this hen perambulating about the house, first with pride, second with precipitation, fallen into disgrace among her fellows. He said Cohasset was not the place to live in the summer if one wanted sea-breezes. They all came straight from Chicago!! He fancied the place, thinking it an old fishing village, not unlike Yarmouth. Instead of which they prided themselves upon never having “any of your sea-smells,” and, being five miles from the doctor, could not be considered a cheerful place to live in with sick children. He said he was surprised to find J. T. F. without a sailor’s jacket and collar. The actors among whom he had been living rather overdid the business; their collars were wider, their shirts fuller, and their trousers more bulgy than those of any real sailor he had ever observed, and the manner of hitching up the trousers was entirely peculiar to themselves and to the stage. [. . .]

Harte said in speaking of Longfellow that no one had yet overpraised him. The delicate quality of humor, the exquisite fineness in the choice of words, the breadth and sweetness of his nature were something he could hardly help worshipping. One day after a dinner at Mr. Lowell’s he said, “I think I will not have a carriage to return to town. I will walk down to the Square.” “I will walk with you,” said Longfellow. When they arrived at his gate, he said, he was so beautiful that he could only think of the light and whiteness of the moon, and if he had stayed a moment longer he should have put his arms around him and made a fool of himself then and there. Whereat he said good night abruptly and turned away.

He brought his novel and play with him which are just now finished, for us to read. He has evidently enjoyed the play, and he enjoys the fame and the money they both bring him.

He is a dramatic, lovable creature with his blue silk pocket-handkerchief and red dressing slippers and his quick feelings. I could hate the man who could help loving him - or the woman either.’

This article is a slightly revised version of one first published on 25 August 2016.

Night music struck down

‘I feel as if a lovely delicate child, tender and humorous, had been knocked down by a truck and lay dying.’ This is the US playwright Clifford Odets, born 120 years ago today, commenting in his diary on the opening night reviews of his play Night Music. Though regarded as a key figure in the development of American theatre for his socially-relevant dramas, neither his name nor his plays are remembered as well as those of Tennessee Williams or Arthur Miller - perhaps because he gave in to pressure from McCarthy to name names, or perhaps, some writers suggest, his ’narrative of decline’.

Odets was born in Philadelphia to Jewish immigrant parents on 18 July 1906, the oldest of three children. Later the family moved to the Bronx, New York, where he went to high school, but dropped out to study acting. Having relocated to Greenwich Village, he worked in a number of jobs (such as radio elocutionist and camp drama counsellor) and performed with various theatre groups before landing a first casting on Broadway in 1928. He worked with the Theatre Guild for a bit, and was then selected, in 1931, to join the newly formed Group Theatre. Famously, this based its performances on the kind of method acting devised by Stanislavski and recently introduced into the US. Elia Kazan, who would go on to become a much feted director on Broadway and in Hollywood, was another member.

Employed only as a rarely used understudy, Odets began to use his time to write plays, but continued to take part in the Group Theatre’s training and rehearsal schedules. His plays, inspired by and suffused with Group Theatre’s techniques, were left wing and socially hard-hitting. However, at first they were not good enough for the group’s leader, and it was not until early in 1935 that one was produced - Waiting for Lefty. The opening night was a huge success. Within weeks, the group was opening with Awake and Sing!, a play Odets had been working on for some time, and which Encyclopaedia Brittanica (1979 edition) says ‘foreshadowed’ Arthur Miller and ‘related Odets with Tennessee Wiilliams’. Further plays followed, including Rocket to the Moon (1938) which led to Odets being featured on the cover of Time, and the highly successful Golden Boy. However, Night Music, which opened in 1940 with Elia Kazan in the lead, was a flop; and it was a disaster for Group Theatre, presaging the company’s end.

By the mid-1930s, Odets had relocated to Hollywood (though he would continue to travel to New York regularly) to work as a screen writer, often declining to be credited, and as a director (None but the Lonely Heart, 1944). There he met and married the German-born actress Luise Rainer (who by then had won best actress awards in 1936 and 1937), though the marriage would last but three years. He married another actress, Bette Grayson in 1943, and they had two children before divorcing in 1951. Odets was investigated by Joseph McCarthy in 1953, and is suspected of having named names; certainly he continued to work in Hollywood, but lost friends.

Though there have been several major biographies of Odets, his name is clearly not as well remembered as that of Eugene O’Neill, Tennessee Williams or Arthur Miller. On the centenary of the writer’s birth, in 2006, The New Yorker concluded: ‘It’s possible that Odets’s narrative of decline is what has kept him from claiming the privileged place in the theatrical discussion that he deserves. Odets’ plays showed a way for the next generation of playwrights to combine linear movement with psychological complexity and depth. He brought a new demotic music to stage speech. His subject was always the struggle of the heartbroken American soul under capitalism. “I will reveal America to itself by revealing myself to myself,” Odets wrote. His plays and his life, full of unique lament and liveliness, eloquently fulfill his prophecy.’ Further biographical information is also available at Wikipedia, New York Public Library, Encyclopaedia Britannica and Penniless Press.

Odets kept a diary regularly thought his life. His papers at the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts include a series of diaries and journals spanning 1926-1963, with entries from a number of separate years rather than one continuous diary. The archive lists journals from 1926, 1932, 1940, 1953, 1955, 1958 and other periods right up to the year of his death. However, only one diary - from 1940 - has been published: The Time Is Ripe: The 1940 Journals of Clifford Odets (Grove, 1988). Kirkus Reviews has a short review; and Library Journal says this: ‘His journal shows a gigantic ego lavishing severe judgment on friend and enemy alike, and an overactive libido seeking the perfect woman (he had access to a breathtaking array of them). Although Odets was hard on everyone, he judged himself most severely. This journal records the dark journey of a life and time out of joint yet seeking their proper form. Interspersed are glimpses of major figures in modern American theater and film.’

The only diary quotes from the book I can find online are thanks to The Sheila Variations (‘not a film’) blog - both extracts below concern Odets’s play The Night Music.

22 February 1940
‘This is the time for opening the play. Harold gave the cast a brief line run-through, but I stayed at home, sleeping, resting, lounging it out against my slowly constricting nerves. Restless, finally, I jumped into the roadster and rode out to Sunnyside to take Bill and Lee to dinner. I chattered away, quite calm, really, to that peculiar point of indifference which comes from having done all that one can do in a situation. We rode into New York and had dinner across the street from the theatre, at Sardi’s. A lot of the people who are going across the show were eating dinner there - it was like running the gauntlet. Stella Adler was there with a party, smoke-eyed and neurotic - usually when you are dying she is more dramatic about the event than you are! Finally I pushed my way through a lot of well-wishing people and went over to the theatre. The cast was in fine shape, quietly making up in their own rooms; no noise, no excitement backstage, things routine and orderly.

The audience was no better or worse than the usual opening night crowd. If anything they were an edge more respectful. Harold I had met outside the theatre for a moment - he was white and tired and was going to see a musical comedy, true to his habit of never attending an opening. I, on the other hand, get a kind of perverse spiteful pleasure from attending an opening. I saw none of the critics but shook hands with several friends.

The performance of the play was tip-top - the cast had never been better. The play suffered from what had always been wrong with it because of a certain lack in the direction - a lack of clear outlining of situations, a lack of building up scenes, a certain missing in places of dramatic intensity. But none of these things was enough to do vital harm to a beautiful show, smooth, powerful and yet tender, fresh, moving, and touching, with real quality in all the parts. But I could see during the first act that the audience was taking it more seriously than it deserved; and I knew that the old thing was here again - the critics had come expecting King Lear, not a small delicate play. It all made me very tired, but at the end I thought to myself that it didn’t matter, for the show was more or less what I intended; it was lovely and fresh, no matter what the critics said. And I knew, too, that if another and unknown writer’s name had been on the script, there would have been critical raves the next day.

People surged backstage after the curtain - they all seemed to have had a good time. There were the usual foolish remarks from many of them - “Enjoyable, but I don’t know why,” etc., etc. Also, a good deal of insincere gushing from a lot of people who would like nothing better than to stick a knife in your ribs. God knows why!

I invited some people down to the house for a drink. Along came the Eislers, Kozlenkos, Bette, Julie [John] Garfield, Boris Aronson, old Harry Carey and his wife, Morris and Phoebe later, Harold, Aaron Copland and Victor [Kraft[, Bobby Lewis and his Mexican woman, etc. etc. We drank champagne, Scotch when the wine ran out, smoked, filthied up the house, listened to some music. Then they went and I dropped into bed, dog-tired, unhappy, drunk, knowing what the reviews would be like in the morning. In and out I slept, in and out of a fever - all of modern twentieth-century life in one day and a night.’

23 February 1940
‘The biggest shock I have experienced since the auto crash in Mexico a year ago was the reviews of the play today. Perhaps it was the serious lack of sleep which kept me so calm and quiet. I wanted to send the Times man a wire telling him I thought his notice stupid and insulting, but I gave up that idea after a while. Equally distressing to me was the attitude at the office, an ugly passivity. They are quite inured there to the humdrum commercial aspect of doing a play this way - close if the notices are bad.

My feelings were and are very simple. I feel as if a lovely delicate child, tender and humorous, had been knocked down by a truck and lay dying. For this show has all the freshness of a child. It was Boris A. who called the turn. He said, “This show is very moving to me, a real artwork, but I don’t think they will get its quality - it is not commercial.”

In the morning I cashed fifteen thousand dollars worth of the baby bonds I hold. I thought to spend it on advertising, to keep the show open, etc., but by the time I finished at the office in the afternoon it was easy to see the foolishness of that; the show costs almost ten thousand a week to run.

So, friend, this is the American theatre, before, now, and in the future. This is where you live and this is what it is - this is the nature of the beast. Here is how the work and delight and pain of many months ends up in one single night. This is murder, to be exact, the murder of loveliness, of talent, of aspiration, of sincerity, the brutal imperception and indifference to one of the few projects which promise to keep the theatre alive. And it is murder in the first degree - with forethought (perhaps not malice, perhaps!), not second or third degree. Something will have to be done about these “critics”, these lean dry men who know little or nothing about the theatre despite their praise of the actors and production. How can it happen that this small handful of men can do such murderous mischief in a few hours? How can it be that we must all depend on them for our progress and growth, they who maybe drank a cocktail too much, quarreled with a wife, had indigestion or a painful toe before they came to see the play - they who are not critics, who are insensitive, who understand only the most literal realism, they who should be dealing in children’s ABC blocks? How can the audience be reached directly, without the middleman intervention of these fools?

I think now to write very inexpensive plays in the future, few actors, one set; perhaps hire a cheap theatre and play there. Good or bad, these “critics” must never be quoted, they must not opportunistically be used. A way must be found to beat them if people like myself are to stay in the theatre with any health and love. Only bitterness results this way, with no will or impulse for fresh work. The values must be sorted out and I must see my way clearly ahead, for I mean to work in the American theatre for many years to come.

I have such a strong feeling - a lovely child was murdered yesterday. Its life will drag on for another week or ten days, but the child is already stilled. A few friends will remember, that’s all.’

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

The giddy Wanda Gág

Wanda Gág, an American artist and author best known for her Millions of Cats children’s book (apparently, the oldest US picture book still in print), died 80 years ago today. She kept an interesting and intimate diary all her life, but only a selection from her youthful diaries have ever been published.

Gág was born in 1893 in rural Minnesota, the first of her parents’ seven children. Her father, an artist, had come from Bohemia, as had her mother’s parents. She wrote, later in life, that she grew up in an atmosphere of Old World customs and legends, and that her mother and she as well as all her siblings often drew and wrote stories. After the death of her father, in 1908, the family suffered financially, and Wanda struggled - against those advising she should work - to maintain her education. However, The Minneapolis Journal published some of her illustrated stories in their Junior Journal, which helped.

After graduating in 1912, Gág taught for a few months, but then continued her studies, attending The Minneapolis School of Art from 1914 to 1917, after which, with a scholarship, she moved to the Art Students League of New York, where she took lessons in composition, etching and advertising illustration. Around the same time, she completed a first illustrated boon on commission - A Child’s Book of Folk-Lore - and by the end of the decade was earning a living as a commercial illustrator.

The 1920s saw Gág become increasingly successful, involved in various publishing ventures and exhibitions. A one-woman show at the Weyhe Gallery in 1926 led to her being dubbed as ‘one of America’s most promising young graphic artists’. She also published essays on feminism, and illustrated covers for left-leaning magazines (such as The New Masses). To get away from commercial work, she rented a property in the country, calling it Tumble Timbers, where she could work on her fine art. She continued to support her unmarried siblings, some of whom lived with her from time to time, and even did work for her. She had various intimate relationships, though the most enduring was with her business manager, Earle Humphrey, who she married late in life.

Wooed as an illustrator by Ernestine Evans, director of Coward-McCann’s new children’s book division, Gág instead offered her own story with illustrations - Millions of Cats. It proved a winner, attracting awards, remaining in print since, and being judged one of the top 100 children’s stories. Further children’s books followed, but none so successful. She went on to translate and illustrate fairy tales by the Grimm brothers, while her art was recognised repeatedly with inclusion in major exhibitions, not least one at the Museum of Modern Art in 1939. She died of lung cancer on 27 June 1946. Further information can be found at Wikipedia, Minnesota Historical Society, Penn Libraries, or Wanda Gág House.

Gág kept a diary all her life, but while still alive chose only to edit and publish a selection from her youth: Growing Pains: diaries and drawings for the years 1908-1917 (Coward McCann, 1940). This is freely available online at Internet Archive, but has also been reprinted by Minnesota Historical Society Press. ‘Thirty-one notebooks originally compiled this diary,’ she wrote in her introduction ‘they are full of diagrams, self-portraits and other sketches, with many crossed-out words, ink spots - even tear blots. Several of the books are wrinkled and blurred from being stored in a damp cellar, and a few are lost.’ These notebooks, she explained, were carelessly stored in Minnesota for many years, but were eventually sent on to her in New York. ‘I had often wondered how I would feel upon re-reading them and had even speculated about it in my diary at times.’

In concluding her short introduction, Gág wrote about how she came to keep a diary in the first place: ‘At about this time I came across an old half-empty ledger of my father’s. In our household anything which could be drawn or written upon was in great demand; a notebook of any kind was a positive treasure. I pounced on the old ledger and, prompted perhaps by the fragmentary business accounts in my father’s handwriting, I began recording my earnings and expenditures, what drawings I had sent where and when, and other notes pertaining to my new business ventures. I was never able to limit myself to plain figures and facts in keeping accounts; and so reports on the weather, new additions to the baby’s vocabulary, family incidents, even youthful thoughts and yearnings, found their way into my “ledger.” And that, to the best of my memory, is how I came to start this diary.’

The following extracts are taken from Growing Pains. However, the Penn Libraries archive of Gág’s papers holds nine boxes with 59 diaries, dating from 1908 to 1945, as well as a dozen other notebooks - all itemised on the website. As far as I can tell, the only extracts from the later diaries have been published in Wanda Gág: A Catalogue Raisonné of the Prints by Audur H. Winnan (University of Minnesota Press, 1993). The publisher says this of the book: ‘Using excerpts form Gag's expressive diaries and letters, Winnan fleshes out a portrait of the artist. With extraordinary candor, Gag describes her intimate personal thoughts and experiences, and her friendships and encounters [. . .] Throughout her writings, Gag reflects on her career, the restrictions placed on women, and her sexual desires. This portrayal reveals both the internationally recognized artist who drew inspiration from van Gogh and Cezanne, and the vibrant, erotic woman who admitted to being amazed by her own passions.’

19 November 1913
‘Today I was out in the hall waiting for Sketch Class and two second-year students, Dave Hendrickson and Bob Brown, came along and stopped to look at my sketches. Bob Brown declared that my technique was very good (technique is Greek to me) and he said that I did not work in lines and that was a good thing. They think it’s so funny that I sit up nights and draw, and they think it’s funny too that I sketch myself. I thought all people who aspired to be artists drew as much as I do but it seems they don’t. I thought too that all, or at least a good many, of the art school students would be queer, but they aren’t; and it sometimes makes me wish that I weren’t so different. For I am - there is absolutely no getting around it. And a whole lot of my new acquaintances are in that stage now where they misunderstand me. I will stick to my old theory which is this: That I usually make a fairly good impression (I don’t mean to compliment myself by saying this, but it’s true and it only serves to make it so much harder afterwards) but that after they know me for a while they are disappointed in me. Then, if they have the faith to stick by me thru this second stage, they will find my true nature - at least as much of it as I ever show. Roughly speaking, at first they think I’m jolly, then they think I’m frivolous, and finally they find out that, after all, I am more serious than anything else. Paula has been the only one that I know of who has not come to the second stage after a year of my acquaintance. She stood by me for four years but even she is beginning to doubt me. Larry Morse said that I was “giddy” and altho Paula does not agree there, the remark has served to make her think-to think that perhaps he was not so far wrong. I am frivolous sometimes - giddy too, and silly - I can’t deny it. But often I act that way only to hide my real feelings. Besides (and I told this to Paula) if I were not frivolous once in a while, I am afraid I’d go mad or something like that, because I’d think too much. No one can know what it is to be I.’

20 January 1914
‘This noon at dinner we were discussing Love, Art & Marriage again. Miss Dean declared that she didn’t think there was any real love in the world. She believed in mother love, sister love, brother love and the rest, but not in The Love. I told her I had had that bee in my bonnet once too. She said, “Oh I know why you got over it,” and when I wanted to know why, she said, “Since you met Mr. Edgerley.” I told her I did not love Mr, Edgerley nor any other boy.

I reeled off the old story about taking Love & Art together etc. She thought I ought to sacrifice my art for my love. Theresa declared that I couldn’t take care of my children if I wouldn’t give up art, and I said if I would get married I’d drape my babies up in chiffon and sketch them, and that my husband would have to pose as king or beggar (according to what my latest fit would be like). To this Miss Dean said, “I pity your poor family!” and we ended up with a good all-around laugh.’

20 January 1915
‘Yesterday was an event in my life - I started painting in oils. I am rather timid about handling my brush for I am not at all used to the medium, so my study is abominally smooth and insipid. It looks something like the work of that eternal aunt or sister or cousin of everyone you meet “who does beautiful oil studies and has never taken a lesson in all her life.” But ding, I have a long road to travel in oil painting. It seems that Emma Brock (a former student who did some good illustrations last year) has returned. They say she doesn’t care about eating either.

I am beginning to like Mr. Goetsch and I think in a short time I shall like him very much indeed. Only some fine day we will have a good hot little discussion, I think. You see he thinks himself smart about some things, and I think myself smart about some things, and some day we’ll both think ourselves smart about the same thing. I don’t know how he found out I was an artist’s daughter, but yesterday during sketch class he looked at my crumpled wrapping paper and absolutely impractical method of holding the whole drawing outfit, and said, “Tz! Tz! Tz! And you an artist’s daughter?” I said, “Well, that just proves that I am an artist’s daughter. Artists aren’t practical.” And he laughed and went on.

I made a sketch last night which I consider rather decent but to which no one, up to this time, has taken a fancy to. I like it because it is bold and simple, and I think that I have successfully hidden the fact that it was studied out very carefully in the first place. I mean it looks as if it had been dashed in, only it hasn’t. [. . .] I am taking Color Harmony now and have stacks of make-up work to do.’

NB: The Girlhood Diary of Wanda Gág, 1908–1909: Portrait of a Young Artist published around 2000 by historian Megan O’Hara for Blue Earth Books/Capstone is a short 30-page volume within the ‘Girlhood Diary’ educational series.

This article is a slightly revised version of one first published on 27 June 2016.

An instant of an apoplexy

‘Nanny, our servant, died in an instant of an apoplexy. Lord, make it useful to the young people in our family, and may we all improve by the warning.’ This entry was written by Martha Laurens Ramsay, a rich Southerner who died 215 years ago today. Her published journals would later provide a rich account of family life in South Carolina during the early years of the United States.

Martha Laurens was born in Charleston, South Carolina, in 1759, the eldest daughter of Henry Laurens, one of colonial America's most prominent merchants and statesmen, and his wife Eleanor Ball Laurens. Her childhood was shaped by both privilege and upheaval. Following her mother's death when Martha was thirteen, much of her education fell to relatives and private tutors. During her youth she spent periods in England and France while her father pursued business and diplomatic responsibilities, experiences that broadened her outlook and exposed her to a wider world than most American women of her generation encountered.

The American Revolution transformed the Laurens family's fortunes and circumstances. Henry Laurens became President of the Continental Congress and later served as a diplomat for the new United States, while enduring imprisonment in the Tower of London after being captured at sea by the British. Throughout these turbulent years Martha developed the habits of religious self-examination and disciplined reflection. Deeply influenced by Presbyterian evangelicalism, she cultivated a faith that shaped every aspect of her private and family life.

In 1786 she married Dr David Ramsay, a physician, politician and historian who had served as a surgeon during the Revolutionary War and would become one of the earliest historians of the United States. The couple settled in Charleston and eventually had eleven children, though several died in infancy or childhood. Ramsay declared insolvency in the late 1790s, and was sued by Martha's brother in bankruptcy proceedings. As Ramsay’s wife, Martha experienced financial hardship, often feeling her faith was being tested. She took it upon herself to take responsibility for the ‘kins-keeping’ of the Laurens family; she and her husband adopted her niece Frances Eleanor Laurens, the daughter of her late brother John Laurens. Martha died on 10 June 1811, still only in her early 50s. Further information is available at Wikipedia.

Alongside the demands of motherhood and household management, Martha maintained journals and correspondence. These survive because her husband drew heavily upon them when compiling Memoirs of the Life of Martha Laurens Ramsay, published in two volumes in 1812, a year after her death. The work - freely available at Internet Archive - combines extracts from journals, letters and family recollections to present a portrait of her character and religious life. Although never intended for publication, the diary passages preserve a distinctive female voice from the early United States. Historians have since valued them as an important record of domestic life, evangelical belief and family relationships in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries.

16 July 1791

‘My feet had well nigh slipped, through the prevalence of my easily besetting sin; nevertheless, I laid me down to sleep, rejoicing that I had not utterly fallen. Lord, make me at all times watchful.’

17 July 1791

‘Lord, may this be a sanctified sabbath; a day to be remembered for holy resolutions and enabling grace. I am weak; O when shall the time of full strength come. In all the great trials and lesser vexations of life, may patience have its perfect work, till I lie down where the wicked cease from troubling, and the weary are at rest.’

19 July 1791

‘I thank God for the ease and cheerfulness of this day; and that, in spite of secret griefs, and spiritual conflicts, my soul and body do both sweetly repose themselves in the God of my salvation.’

21 July 1791

‘Nanny, our servant, died in an instant of an apoplexy. Lord, make it useful to the young people in our family, and may we all improve by the warning.’

25 November 1791

‘My husband set out for Columbia. I pray God bless and preserve him; the same day, my dear little Patty fell into the parlour fire; but by God's good providence I was enabled to snatch her out, and smother the flame, before she had received any considerable injury; may God's goodness deeply affect me; and may I show forth his praise in a holy life. Lord, pluck her as a brand from everlasting burnings, and make her thine own child.’

6 October 1794

‘My sister Pinckney died, having been generally delirious from Friday; and her speech so thickened, that though she attempted it in the intervals of reason, she never could make us understand what she wished to say to us. Miss Futerell and myself were constantly with her; but my heart is too full to write on this subject. Lord, thou knowest my groanings, and my sighings are not hid from thee; commiserate thy poor, sinful, suffering creature; and fill me with humility and resignation, under this exceedingly heavy stroke of thy Providence.’

23 August 1796

‘Eleanor and myself taken with the fever. I had it moderately, but our dear Eleanor was like to die; she was brought low, indeed, and our hearts were filled with anguish on her account; but it pleased God to give efficacy to the means used for her recovery; a fourth bleeding, more copious than three preceding ones, seemed to relieve some of the most distressing and alarming symptoms she laboured under. I did not hide her danger from her, and have since repeatedly urged to her the propriety of devoting to God the life which he redeemed from the grave.’

2 June 1808

‘My dear husband, who is certainly a true believer, and a great noter of Providence, having received two dollars from a casual patient, said to me, “Here are two dollars which I have just got by chance.” I said, thank ye; but don't, at this time, when we are in such want of money, say that any comes by chance. He smiled with his usual kindness, and said, I only meant that I got it from a passing and not a stated patient... About two hours after he sent me up twenty dollars, just after I had been earnestly praying that the Lord from the storehouses of his mercy, would send some supply to my necessities and those of my family.’

Thoughts, epiphanies, poems

Today marks the centenary of the birth of Allen Ginsberg, one of the most prominent members of the so-called Beat Generation, which also included Jack Kerouac and William S. Burroughs. Unlike Kerouac, whose diaries were not published until long after his death - see The rush of what is said - Ginsberg published several volumes of journals during his lifetime. Ginsberg himself, however, described them as ‘thoughts, epiphanies, vivid moments of haiku, poems, but not a continuous diary of conversations like Virginia Woolf, or Anais Nin, or Boswell.’

Ginsberg was born on 3 June 1926 into a Jewish family in Newark, New Jersey, though he grew up in Paterson, 15 miles further north. His father was a published poet and teacher, and his mother a communist and unstable depressive. He attended Columbia University on a scholarship from the Young Men’s Hebrew Association of Paterson. There he met William Burroughs and Jack Kerouac, all later to be pivotal figures of the beat movement. Their behaviour was generally considered wayward, not least because of dabbling with drugs. By 1948, his last year at Columbia, Ginsberg had decided to become a poet, supposedly thanks to hearing the voice of William Blake in a vision. The following year, he spent several months in a mental institution as a consequence of pleading insanity when stolen goods were discovered in his dorm.

In late 1953, Ginsberg travelled to Mexico, and then settled in San Francisco. He fell in love with Peter Orlovsky, also a poet, who would subseqently remain his lifelong partner. In 1955, inspired by a poem by Kerouac, he wrote the long poem Howl which he performed at a reading he organised - Six Poets at the Six Gallery (known now as the Six Gallery reading). The poem, full of raw language and acceptance of his own homosexuality, would bring him world attention, not least because it was the subject of a failed obscenity charge. During the trial, Ginsberg and Orlovsky moved to Paris, living off the royalties from Howl and a disability pension that Orlovsky collected as a Korean veteran. For a period, they went to Tangier to stay with Burroughs who was working on, what would become, Naked Lunch.

In 1958, Ginsberg returned to New York City, troubled by his mother’s death two years earlier in an asylum. There he wrote what is considered his best work - Kaddish for Naomi Ginsberg, an elegy for his mother based on a traditional Hebrew prayer for the deceased. Thereafter, he continued experimenting with drugs, and travelling widely, most significantly in India where he sought out holy men, remaining for the best part of two years. Having turned to Buddhism, he wrote, in Japan, The Change, about how meditation rather than drugs would help him towards enlightenment. Back in New York City, he befriended A. C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada, the founder of the Hare Krishna movement, helping him with money, organisation and contacts. By this time, he was also incorporating chanting and music (he had acquired a harmonium in India) into his poetry readings.

In the mid-1960s, Ginsberg became strongly associated with the hippy and antiwar movements, and is credited with creating the idea of ‘flower power’, using positive values, peace and love, in demonstrations. He was constantly at odds with the establishment. In 1965. he was asked to leave Cuba and Czechoslovakia by their respective governments. At home he was arrested at various demonstrations, and, in 1972, was jailed in Miami for protesting against President Richard Nixon. A few years later, he was arrested with Orlovsky for sitting on train tracks to try and stop a train loaded with radioactive waste.

In his later years, Ginsberg was a public figure, the archetypal Beat Generation writer. Despite increasing health problems, he continued to publish steadily and travel often, giving readings across the globe. He died in 1997 - for more biographical info see Wikipedia, Allen Ginsberg Project, Poetry Foundation, American National Biography Online, or various obituaries (New York Times, for example, or The Independent).

Ginsberg began using notebooks in childhood, collecting source material for poetry and prose, and for drafting poems. Anansi, in Toronto, published a first selection of extracts in 1968, 35 pages worth, under the title Airplane Dreams: Compositions from Journals (described as ‘not exactly poems, nor not poems’.)  This can be digitally borrowed from Internet Archive.

Two years later, David Halewood Books and City Lights Books jointly published Ginsberg’s Indian Journals (describing, in prose and verse, his drug-induced experiences in the sub-continent). Grove Press brought out, in 1977, Journals: Early Fifties, Early Sixties, as edited by Gordon Ball. And nearly 20 years later, but still with input from Ginsberg himself, HarperCollins issued Journals: Mid-Fifties, also edited by Gordon Ball (1995).

According to Ball’s introduction, the printed text of the last book of journals draws on material entered by Ginsberg in twelve notebooks (and related separated pages) from June 1954 through mid-July 1958. Though presented as a single entity, he says, the editing has involved considerable interleaving between one journal and another, and sometimes yet a third; and both Ginsberg and Gordon Ball ‘lightly pruned and shaped’ the text.

The book also contains a few pages dictated by Ginsberg in 1984 (many journal notes were similarly dictated) which have been presented under the title: ‘Meditations on Record Keeping by Poet’. In these meditations, he describes how he was aware of a ‘historical change of consciousness and some kind of cultural revolution’, and how there was a contest between further liberation or 1984 authoritarianism. He felt he needed to record this in some way, and mentions some of society’s troubles (censorship, drugs, a growing military budget). He then says: ‘I saw all that at stake and thought best to keep a record: in my own writing but also just sort of an archive. So after I milked the notebooks for poems, I just kept hold of the notebooks for whatever I had in it, though I didn’t keep like a historical record of conversations - that wasn’t my function; I thought Kerouac had done that, historical record of scenes, conversations, characters, and persons. He had covered that and I couldn’t possibly compete with him; the best I thought I could do was just keep a record of my own changes of self-nature and perceptions - you know, intermittent perceptions, spots of time. So my notebook is thoughts, epiphanies, vivid moments of haiku, poems, but not a continuous diary of conversations like Virginia Woolf, or Anais Nin, or Boswell.’

Here are samples from two dated extracts in Journals: Mid-Fifties (though the vast majority of entries are undated, and many are poetry rather than prose).

31 March 1955
‘Tiring of the Journal - no writing in it - promotes slop - an egocentric method.

Life’s quiet finally, no love, another plane, after-hours from the office, struggle completed (high tonite on terpinhydrate of codeine), music, rugs, a lousy room and evening robes in which to read, a typewriter.

Lately in revising I’ve noticed a tendency - revising year pile of notes - to adjust the notes to small groups of lines as in 3-line stanza, begun however before reading the Williams late forms - the division being by active words, number of active words in phrase.

“the sad heart of August dies”

the nouns & verbs have a single weight, the adjectives usually less unless strong words or long ones. Count mainly by eye. But requirement of regularity of some lines is a clarity I find apparent lately, so that the notes don’t present themselves totally amorphous. The lines are not yet free enough - for this reason the concentration process is useful again in order to get a sense of measuring small lines - with later possibility, the expansion to a large form with lines distributed over the page

but equal, each parallel indentation equal or equivalent

So that the structure has a structure at least as an excuse for its form

following, as we might guess, the given possibilities of lengths of speech mind-think lines - there will probably be a select number to recognise & distinguish, the double:

and the triplet
“fantastical physical
images
Neal’s naked breast” ’


21 December 1956
‘Strange faces in the subway - the minute I sat down I realized I had power to see them straight in the eye and dig the eternal moment’s mask - as they ride by dreaming rocked in the dark with neon on their faces.

The 59th St. stop - recollecting Burroughs and Lucien, Columbus Circle, IRT Station, the dark pavement and endless outpouring of students and ballet dancers and musicians and fairies on this platform, waiting in their youth for life to begin - while I come back here dead (for the fourth time), disconnected. The new IRT B’way train - brighter and shinier - futuristic 1930s air conditioning aluminum big flowers growing out of the roof - parkay tile floors, glassy lights, shining steel poles to hold on to, even the people seem cleaner and richer - and the seats so nice and soft, red cushions.

A man with a notebook in front of me making notes for an ad. My own rusty (gaudy) book.

Beside me a fat well-dressed little kid bow tie, bright Jewish eyes, ass-length salt and pepper jacket - he don’t work on nothing, just lies in bed and eats ham in the morning. And gets up to ride the subway showing off all afternoon, at nite he goes back to supper and eats huge pork chops with lots of greasy potatoes and peas.

Approaching 116 St. Columbia Stop.’

This article is a slightly revised version of one first published on 3 June 2016.

Severed heads drinking Coke

Born 90 years ago today, Eleanor Coppola emerged from the shadow of her husband, Francis Ford Coppola, to carve out a distinctive career documenting the realities of film-making. Her reputation rests not only on her films about films, but on the remarkable diary she kept during the troubled production of Apocalypse Now - a record that revealed the human cost behind cinematic ambition and set the course for much of her later work.

Eleanor Jessie Neil was born on 4 May 1936 in Los Angeles. Her father, a political cartoonist, died when she was 10, and her mother brought her up in Sunset Beach, 30 miles south of LA. After graduating in applied design from the University of California, Eleanor met Francis Ford Coppola while working as an assistant art director during the filming of Dementia 13 in 1962. They married in Las Vegas the following year. Their three children, Sofia, Roman and Gian-Carlo have followed them into the film industry. 

Eleanor, herself, has directed and/or been the cinematographer on several documentaries about the making of films. Otherwise, among her other activities, she helped manage the family winery in California, and designed for a dance company in San Francisco. She also developed an art project, Circle of Memory, ‘to inspire visitors to recall and commemorate children who are missing or dead.’ Further biographical information can be found at Wikipedia.

While Eleanor Coppola’s husband was working on Apocalypse Now, in the 1970s, with a shooting schedule in the Philippines, she kept extensive diary-like notes. These were published in 1979 by Simon & Schuster and simply called Notes, although subsequent editions were called Notes on the Making of Apocalypse Now. This book, in turn, led to a film, co-directed by Eleanor Coppola, Hearts of Darkness: A Filmmaker’s Apocalypse. Irene and Alan Taylor, authors of the anthology, The Assassin’s Cloak, say the diary is ‘an extraordinary record not only of making a movie but of the emotional and physical prices extracted from all who participated in it.’ Later, she published Notes on a Life, in a similar style, but with a much broader focus on her world. Further information and and extracts from Notes on the Making of Apocalypse Now can be found at SF Gate, Los Angeles Times, and The Independent.

In her book, Coppola explains that she went with her husband and their three children to the Philippines in March 1976, where they rented a large house in Manila for the five-month scheduled shooting of Apocalypse Now. The film was conceived as an action/adventure structured on Joseph Conrad’s novel Heart of Darkness, but rather than Africa in the 1800s, the film was set on a river in Vietnam during the late sixties. The story concerns a Captain Willard who is given an assignment to go on a classified mission up a river in Vietnam, cross into Cambodia and assassinate Colonel Kurtz, a Green Beret colonel who has apparently gone insane and is conducting the war by his own rules. When Willard finally arrives at his destination, he has been changed by the experience of making the journey. Coppola concludes her introduction by saying: ‘Many of the people who worked on the film were also changed.’

Notes can be digitally borrowed online at Internet Archive. Here are several extracts.

24 June 1976

‘Napa. Yesterday Mike and Arlene saw two hours of rushes, and when they called to ask us if we would like anything from the city, Arlene said she thought the acting was kind of tentative. Francis went into a tailspin. He felt totally defeated. He has spent $7 million, and months of grueling production, and they didn’t say, “Hey, you’ve got some fantastic stuff there.” He really got into a black depression. As I see it, Francis has ninety hours of film, and no chunk can give you an idea of what fifteen minutes’ worth of moments he is going to select from it. What you finally see on the screen does not give the slightest clue of what was left out. For someone to just look at an arbitrary piece is meaningless. Francis felt hopeless and scared. We slept outside on the lawn. It was a beautiful night, so clear with stars. Francis tossed and turned most of the night, having nightmares. We woke up at dawn; there was a crescent of new moon rising near the horizon in the pinkish light. Francis said he had had a dream about how to finish the script, but now that he was awake it wasn’t really any good. Francis talked to Brando on the phone yesterday.’

15 October 1976

‘Thirty-eight takes, and Francis said it was never the way he wanted it. The people who were playing the severed heads sat in their boxes, buried in the ground, from eight in the morning till six at night. All day they were there in the hot sun, with smoke blowing on them. Between takes they were covered with umbrellas. They got out for lunch, but the rest of the time they were there in place.

During one take, Dennis Hopper backed up and stepped right at a girl’s cheek and collapsed part of the container she was in, nearly stepping on her face. The mud on both sides of the dolly track was deep and people kept slipping. Dennis and Fred Forrest both fell during takes. The sound man had someone hold on to his belt in the back and stabilize him as he followed the actors, so that he wouldn’t fall with the boom.

It was one of those days where the dry ice mist, or the orange smoke, or the performance, or the light, or something just never came together for a take that Francis was satisfied with.

At one point I was sitting there looking around. The severed heads were drinking Cokes. The Ifugao children were putting chunks of dry ice in film cans and making the lids pop off. Some Ifugao girls were picking lice out of each other’s hair. One girl had a wrapped skirt, bare breasts and pink plastic hair rollers. A man sitting down in his loincloth held up the fringed ends neatly so they wouldn’t get in the mud. The man with the boa constrictor was giving it a drink of water. Alex was talking about the fake blood . . . “It’s thirty-five dollars a gallon and they’re really using a lot today.” Special effects ran out of orange smoke and had to use red. My favorite old Ifugao priest wasn’t in costume today; he had on a loincloth and beige print, nylon jersey sport shirt. He came up close to the steps to take a look at the fake severed heads. They say his tribe were headhunters as recently as five years ago. Angelo had a tuna sandwich he was passing around, and people were saying, “You know how long its been since I had a tuna sandwich?” ’

17 October 1976

‘Pagsanjan. I shot an interview with Dennis Hopper. One of the things he said that interested me the most was that he thought filmmaking was in the same phase of development that art was during the cathedral-building period. When they built those great cathedrals in Europe, they employed stonemasons, engineers, fresco painters, etc., and created the work through the combined talents of many. By the nineteenth century, art evolved to the point where the major work of the day was being done by individual artists working alone at an easel. Dennis was making the point that now film-making involves the talents of many departments and perhaps eventually major films will be made by one person with a video port-a-pack.’

4 November 1978

‘Napa. Yesterday I went with Francis to a screening of the last half of the film to see some changes he was working on with the editors. I hadn’t seen any footage since June. There is no question in my mind, beyond all my personal feelings and connections, it is an extraordinary work. It feels like Francis’s level of desperation and fear is shrinking. The lawyers and United Artists are starting to talk more optimistically about the financial situation. There is still more work to do in the final sequence at Kurtz Compound, but each cut seems to improve, get closer.’

This article is a slightly revised version of one first published on 4 May 2016.

I am finally an Ambassador

‘I am finally officially an Ambassador. At eight-fifty yesterday morning, the Chief of Protocol from the Ministry of External Affairs called at the Residence where my principal colleagues had already assembled - the military men in an exceptionally high state of polish. We rode in an open procession - motorcycle and patrol car - to the President’s Palace (the Rashtrapati Bhavan) at the gates of which we were met by a detachment of mounted lancers on beautifully matched bay horses.’ This is John Kenneth Galbraith, a Canadian-American economist and diplomat who died 20 years ago today. Although not a diarist by nature, while US ambassador he did keep a daily diary, and this was later published as Ambassador’s Journal.

Galbraith was born in 1908 into a farming family of Scottish descent in Iona Station, Ontario. He studied agricultural economics at the Ontario Agricultural College (now part of the University of Guelph), graduating in 1931, and completed a PhD at the University of California, Berkeley in 1934. He became a US citizen in 1937. In 1937 he married Catherine Merriam Atwater, with whom he had four sons. They resided in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and had a summer home in Townshend, Vermont.

Galbraith’s career combined academia, public service, and writing. He taught economics at Harvard University for much of his career, while also serving in government roles during and after the Second World War. He was a prominent adviser to Democratic administrations and served as US Ambassador to India from 1961 to 1963 under John F. Kennedy. As such, he played a significant diplomatic role at a critical moment in the Cold War. He developed a close working relationship with Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru and sought to strengthen US-Indian ties while respecting India’s non-aligned position. During the Sino-Indian War, he acted as a key intermediary, helping to coordinate US military assistance to India. His dispatches and memoranda from New Delhi combined policy analysis with detailed personal observation, and were influential in shaping Washington’s understanding of South Asian geopolitics.

Galbraith wrote widely, publishing many books. His style was unusually accessible for an economist, and his books reached a broad public well beyond academia - thus helping make him a major interpreter of economics for general readers in the postwar era. Among his most important books were American Capitalism (1952), The Affluent Society (1958), The New Industrial State (1967), and Economics and the Public Purpose (1973), as well as the later synthesis A Short History of Financial Euphoria (1990). 

After leaving India, Galbraith remained an influential political figure and public intellectual. He continued to advise Democratic leaders, supported the presidential campaigns of Lyndon B. Johnson and later George McGovern, and became an outspoken critic of the Vietnam War. Within academia and public debate, he advanced a critique of corporate power and conventional economic theory, arguing for the importance of public investment and institutional analysis. He was honored with major civilian awards, including the Presidential Medal of Freedom. He died on 29 April 2006. Further information is widely available, see Wikipedia, Encyclopaedia Britannica, and the JFK Library.

Although there’s no evidence of Galbraith being a regular diarist, he did keep a day-by-day account of his service as US Ambassador to India. He recorded meetings with Nehru, Kennedy, Indian officials, diplomats and journalists, as well as the practical detail of embassy life and the pressures of the Sino-Indian War. Ambassador’s Journal - available to read online at Internet Archive - was published by Houghton Mifflin in 1969 and runs to nearly 700 pages. In later years he would write and publish two memoirs - A Life in Our Times (1981) and Name-Dropping (1999) - which drew on memory, papers and correspondence rather than any further diaries.

Here is the opening paragraph to Galbraith's introduction for Ambassador’s Journal, followed by three extracts.

Introduction: ‘In the autumn of 1960, after John F. Kennedy had called to tell me that I was to be his Ambassador to India, I decided it would be an interesting time and that I would keep a full account of what happened. It was a taxing decision. At the end of a long day, the temptation to say to hell with it and go to bed can be overwhelming. Even worse is the temptation to take care of one’s high resolve with a few perfunctory words. The more important the events, the wearier you are and the better the seeming excuse for dismissing it all. Nevertheless, I persisted and this is the result. Sometimes I wrote in the evening, more often when I got up next morning. If I had a journey in prospect, I saved up and wrote on the plane. And I also wrote more faithfully of travels than of sedentary days at the Embassy so the journal gives an exaggerated impression of movement. However, I did travel a lot. The date and place of the entry refer, in each instance, to the date and place of writing and not necessarily of the events described.’

12 April 1961

‘After lunch Kitty and I were photographed at great length looking at birds, flowers and each other and at five I called on the Prime Minister. This involved some ceremony.

First, I went to the Foreign Office where I picked up the Chief of Protocol. Then we went to Nehru’s Parliament office where we made our way through the crowded antechamber. Then after a short wait we were ushered in. It was the same smallish, slightly used-looking and not very handsome office in which I had visited him two years before. I presented myself as the most amateur of diplomats. He proclaimed himself an amateur prime minister. I think that truth will not be a barrier to our association - both of us were professing a modesty no one else would find creditable. We then chatted about our respective books, Cambridge University in our respective days there, and the improvement in India which I told him I measured by the number of bicycles. He agreed on the value of this index. He said that he had heard that the new Administration was dominated by Rhodes Scholars. I said that the key positions in the world were still held by Cambridge men. Then, as I was about to go, he said he wanted to talk of the Congo. This continued for half an hour or more - rather to the discomfort of the new French Ambassador who was waiting his turn. He mentioned the misunderstanding of Lumumba - “not a Communist and he probably doesn’t know what Communism is”, the delays in transporting Indian troops; the insufficiently hard stand against the white irregulars and Belgians, the mistreatments of Dayal by the U.S. papers “with some official inspiration”; the shortcomings of Timberlake, the United States Ambassador in the Congo, and the prediction of some unspecified American that India intended to colonize the Congo. Despite all the briefing, I would have handled myself better if I had been informed. Where I could respond, as in the case of the reference to colonization, I did. “I am sure you know that no responsible member of the American Government ever made any such statement.” For the rest, I found silence golden but uncomfortable. Afterward, I sent off my first cable to the Department and then went to dinner pleasantly with my chief Political Counselor.’

13 April 1961, New Delhi

‘I displayed my exceptionally modest administrative talents this morning - I reviewed plans to build offices in the basement of the new Chancery which seemed insane, I considered the Residence which is under construction but on strike - the contractor seems to be chiseling on the minimum wage and is paying something less than two rupees (about forty cents) a day; and I went into the matter of a swimming pool for our staff and youngsters. I also sent a note of congratulations to the Soviet Ambassador on “the epochal journey of Major Gagarin” I was officially advised that the household staff is competent in all matters and included even one or two experts in imaginative larceny. “They stole the Bunkers blind” (This was a grave exaggeration. Ellsworth Bunker emerged quite solvent.) I borrowed some books from USIS for the empty bookshelves at the Residence and had lunch with my Cultural Counselor, and dinner with Maffitt and my old classmate at California, Robert Carr, who is now Consul-General in Bombay. Maffitt’s cooking, as also his wine, improves greatly on that of the Residence.’

19 April 1961, New Delhi

‘I am finally officially an Ambassador. At eight-fifty yesterday morning, the Chief of Protocol from the Ministry of External Affairs called at the Residence where my principal colleagues had already assembled - the military men in an exceptionally high state of polish. We rode in an open procession - motorcycle and patrol car - to the President’s Palace (the Rashtrapati Bhavan) at the gates of which we were met by a detachment of mounted lancers on beautifully matched bay horses. They escorted us to an open courtyard where an honor guard of Sikhs was drawn up in two ranks - perhaps the best turned-out soldiers in the world. I mounted the reviewing block while the national anthems were played. Then I inspected the guard, nothing seemed seriously wrong. I drew heavily on old newsreels for my protocol, but the Commanding Officer was there to nudge me if I needed it.

After congratulating the O.C., we went into the palace and rehearsed the ceremony. Then we had the ceremony. A slow approach to the President, my speech, his reply, presentation of credentials, then down to his study for a private chat, and finally on to a state room for a public reception for all present. It was exceedingly well done, the Indians approach ceremony as though they meant it, rather than, as in the United States, in a kind of abashed reluctance. And the soldiers, band and military aides were all sparkling by our standards. My speech, in which I urged accomplishment as distinct from conversation and noted that the warmest words of friendship were exchanged just before the breaking of diplomatic relations, was evidently well-regarded. When we emerged to come home, my automobile flag was unfurled for the first time.

After some champagne for the staff, I got into the TCM [a meeting room] again and spent the afternoon on routine matters ending up with a meeting with Stebbins. The question is whether I should see the principal exiled leader from Nepal. Obviously I should. He is a liberal and a democrat — and the American Ambassador should be available to any leader of importance.

The Cuban business (the Bay of Pigs) has come and the effect here is not good. I am afraid that even if we win, we will lose. Castro would eventually have died on his vine. His army was not a threat and now we lose prestige and esteem where it counts. This inability to balance small Rover Boy gains against large general loss was the prime weakness of the Eisenhower Administration. The same people who erred before are diligently promoting error again.’

Life in Richmond under siege

The American diarist Emma Mordecai died 120 years ago today, leaving behind a rare and detailed civilian record of life in the Confederate capital during the final year of the Civil War. Written in Richmond as military pressure tightened around the city, her diary captures both the routines of domestic life and the growing strain of conflict, offering a contemporaneous account of a society under siege.

Mordecai was born in 1812 in Richmond into a prominent Jewish mercantile family long established in the city. Her father, Samuel Mordecai, was a successful merchant, and the family occupied a respected position within Richmond society. She received a solid education for a woman of her background and remained closely tied to her extended family throughout her life, never marrying and instead living within a network of siblings and relations whose fortunes were intertwined with those of the breakaway Confederacy states.

During the American Civil War, Mordecai remained in Richmond, then the Confederate capital, and experienced the conflict at close quarters. Her household life was shaped by wartime shortages, the presence of enslaved servants, and the constant proximity of military activity. Like many in her social circle, she supported the Confederate cause, and her perspective was conditioned by both her class position and her investment in the South’s social order.

After the war, Mordecai continued to live in Richmond, adjusting to the profound social and economic changes brought by defeat and emancipation. In later life she copied out and preserved her wartime diary, producing a fair version in 1886. She died on 8 April 1906. Further information is available from Wikipedia and the Jewish Women’s’ Archive.

Mordecai’s diary covers the period from April 1864 to May 1865, one of the most intense phases of the war in Virginia, including the siege conditions in Richmond and the city’s eventual fall. The entries vary considerably in length, from brief factual notes to extended passages running to several hundred words. Alongside records of weather, household routines, and visits, Mordecai develops fuller scenes - in hospitals, on the roads, and in the surrounding countryside - combining close observation with moments of personal reflection and judgement, particularly as the pressures of war intensify.

The manuscript survived among the Mordecai family papers and was preserved in archival collections before attracting sustained scholarly attention. A full edition, The Civil War Diary of Emma Mordecai, was published by New York University Press in 2024, edited by Dianne Ashton with Melissa R. Klapper, and accompanied by a substantial scholarly introduction situating the text within the history of the Civil War and American Jewish life.

The path to publication was unusually prolonged. Ashton, a specialist in American Jewish history, had worked on the project for more than a decade and left behind a substantial draft on her death in 2022. Her colleague Melissa R. Klapper took on the task of completing the manuscript, drawing on Ashton’s research while updating the scholarship and preparing the diary for press. The project had already been committed to publication, and Klapper described finishing it as an effort to ensure that years of work did not ‘disappear’. More about the book can be found here, and some pages can sampled at Googlebooks. Moreover, a few of the diary extracts can be found in a pdf thanks to the Rosenbach Museum.

28 May 1864

‘A most beautiful morning, took a sweet little ramble in the woods about Laurel Branch, after breakfast. Got honeysuckle, laurel, lupin & other flowers. Grape vines not quite in bloom yet. How tranquil it was in the wooded pasture, where the cows look as if they would tire themselves with grazing, so uncommonly luxuriant is the growth of grass & clover in the woods around. The negro boys who mind them are happy, careless little beings - as free as Robin Hood’s men “under the green wood tree”. How much better off will they be in the North? Our ruthless invaders do full as much injury to the poor negroes, as to their owners. Spent the day in quiet, grateful rest. It turned very cool and rained in the afternoon. Ate the first strawberries - a few out of the Garden, & some that Fanny Young sent George, but ladies have brought me some to the Hospital all the week.’

29 May 1864

‘Another most beautiful day; so cool as to make our wood fires quite acceptable if not necessary. Rose & Gusta went to church. George & I staid at home, he reading & I writing all the morning, a very long letter to Peggy Mordecai in Raleigh, in answer to one from her rec’d yesterday. When Rose came from Church, she told us that Lee’s Army is very near Richmond. There has been a Cavalry skirmish at Atlee’s Station, about six miles from here. Ewell’s wagon train was passing Mr. Stuart’s, for hours yesterday, going down on the Meadow - Bridge road. The Battle grounds of 1861 seem to be selected by Grant for his next failure, & Genl. Lee is arranging to meet him in his new position. Hear that much of our artillery is in Atlee’s Station, & we may see Willie & John here at any moment. Had an excellent dinner of nice fried chicken, asparagus, boiled onions & rice, with a dessert of cool clauber. After dinner George drove Rose and me in to see Lawrence Young & take buttermilk to the Hospital. I carried my favorite patient, Mr. Horton, of Georgia, a breast of chicken, & a slice of bread & butter. Found him less well than when I left him Friday. He ate part of it, & seemed to relish it, but has little appetite. He has much to contend with. Has lost his left foot, and was severely wounded in the right leg. Poor fellow! so brave & so handsome! - with his white forehead, soft chestnut hair, clear steel blue eyes - strait nose & expressive mouth.

Lawrence Young is not thought to be improving. His surgeon, Dr. Montague (who afterwards married Rosa Young - Lawrence’s sister, with whom he fell in love around her brother’s cot], thinks his condition very discouraging. George saw his wound, & thinks it looks dreadfully. He is said to be the idol of his mother. Several of the men had died since I was there on Friday - all were hopeless cases. Many ladies visited the Hospital this P.M. One brought a large basket of strawberries & dispensed them. The poor invalids enjoy them much. On our way to town we saw several families moving with their servants, cattle, horses, and sheep &c to take refuge within the lines of fortification, as we returned, some were preparing to camp out a common, near the road. Ladies & children seated round a camp - fire, while their carts, wagons and a carriage were drawn up round them, with counterpanes arranged so as to make a sort of tent. Families east of the turnpike, (we are a mile to the west of it) have sent everything they can dispense with, to the City, for safety.’

30 May 1864

‘Beautiful, cool morning, cars not running yet on Fredsbg. Rd. Gusta went in with her uncle John, to school. I could not get to the Hospital. Took a walk in the woods after breakfast. Sewed all the morning mending clothes. Rose felt poorly & lay down most of the time. A perfectly quiet day. No sounds of War. After dinner read a little & took a long nap. Got up & dressed. Mrs. Young sent a large bowl of strawberries, and in the cool of the evening, walked over with the children. Gusta could not get home from school. Willie came about 8 o’clock from Mechanicsville, having ridden ten miles since sunset. He constant expression of his countenance. He had no one to attend to him except at stated periods. No one to keep off the swarming flies, or to answer the many urgent requirements of such a sufferer. Comfortless & perhaps without any one’s knowing it, he will die. The sisters do not allow any outsiders to remain with a patient but 15 minutes, so I had to leave him after this short time. I shall probably not find him there when I go again. I have prayed for him - May God pardon and take him to Himself.’

10 June 1864

‘I had intended visiting the Hospitals to day, but on consulting my Heb. Calendar, I found it was the 1st day of Pentecost, so I remained at home to observe the day as well as I could by reading the services, and reminding myself of my peculiar duties as an Inheritor of law given to us by Him who said “I, the Lord, change not”. Blind & foolish are those children of Israel, who persuade themselves that the laws given to them by the Unchanging One, for them & their descendants to observe forever, are not binding on them. I omitted to mention yesterday that Willie took us by surprise yesterday at Westbrook. He came home & finding we were at his uncle’s he dressed himself decently & went over. Rose sent for Gusta who was still in town, & Mary Chiles, with whom she was staying, came out with her to stay until Monday. Willie spent the night at home, & returned to camp after breakfast. A wagon train camped in the woods in front of the house today - the headquarter train of Stuart’s, now Hampton’s Cavalry. Horses are constantly passing on their way to & from the horse - recruiting camp up the river.’

Up from slavery

‘We talked over together the general interests of the school . . . He promised to give something and said that he thought that he could get one or two other gentlemen to give $100 each.’ This is from a short diary kept by the once-enslaved Booker T. Washington, born 170 years ago today, who grew up in conditions of poverty before emancipation enabled him to pursue an education. This diary, which dates from 1882, can be found online in a multi-volume scholarly edition of all Washington’s writing.

Born into slavery in Virginia on 5 April 1856, Washington worked in salt furnaces and coal mines while teaching himself to read and write. His formal education began at the Hampton Institute, where he studied under General Samuel Chapman Armstrong, graduating in 1875. Hampton’s emphasis on industrial training and self-reliance shaped Washington’s educational philosophy and his later career.

After a period teaching in West Virginia and studying further at Hampton, Washington was appointed in 1881 to lead a new school in Alabama, soon known as the Tuskegee Institute. There he developed a programme combining academic learning with vocational training; and he remained principal for the rest of his life. He married three times - first to Fannie N. Smith (who died in 1884), then Olivia Davidson (who died in 1889), and finally Margaret James Murray, who survived him. 

By the early twentieth century Washington was a nationally known public figure, advising politicians and securing funding for Tuskegee from both Northern philanthropists and Southern supporters. His autobiography Up from Slavery (1901) brought him international recognition. He died in 1915. See Wikipedia for further biographical information. His legacy is preserved in a large body of correspondence, speeches, and institutional records, later edited and published as The Booker T. Washington Papers, a multi-volume scholarly edition drawing on manuscripts held chiefly at the Library of Congress and Tuskegee.

The published papers contain very little that can be described as a diary. Apart from retrospective autobiographical writing, there survives only a brief series of contemporaneous entries from 1882, printed under the heading ‘Diary, May 1-May 8, 1882’. These entries - in volume 2, see Internet Archive - appear to have been written while Washington was travelling in the North raising funds for Tuskegee, and they are closely linked to accounts of money received and visits to potential donors. No continuous journal is known beyond this short sequence.

The surviving entries are concise and factual. On the opening day Washington records: ‘Started from N.Y. at 8 a.m. and arrived at Farmington at noon. Called on Mr. Fessenden who rec’d me kindly and gave me valuable advice, also a general letter and a number of letters of introduction.’ Later the same day he notes his reception at Plantsville: ‘At 8½ p.m. I called on Mr. H. D. Smith who rec’d me more kindly than I had ever been by any white man.’ Staying overnight, he records: ‘We talked over together the general interests of the school . . . He promised to give something and said that he thought that he could get one or two other gentlemen to give $100 each.’

The following days continue in the same manner, recording travel, meetings, and small successes. On 3 May: ‘He rec’d me kindly, but did not care to give any money for real estate. He said that he would help one or two needy students when school began.’ On 4 May: ‘Did not collect any money. Things looked rather gloomy.’ A more successful day follows on 5 May: ‘Collected from individuals $40 . . . gave me encouragement and several good names.’ The entries conclude with brief notes on further efforts and public speaking: ‘Spoke in the evening . . . to an appreciative audience. Rec’d several small gifts.’