Flying over the Poles

Richard E. Byrd, one of the most decorated US naval officers, died 60 years ago today. He was an aviation pioneer, credited with the first solo flights over the North and South Poles, and organised several major expeditions to the Antarctic leading to the US having a permanent base on the continent. Like most explorers, he kept diaries and notebooks, and some extracts have appeared in his own books. However, there’s been only one published work based on the diaries themselves, and that diary material, in fact, has fuelled a debate over whether Byrd’s flight ever reached the North Pole.

Byrd was born at Winchester, Virginia, in 1888, second son of a wealthy Virginian politician who was also an apple grower and proprietor of the Winchester Star newspaper. The older son, Harry, would become Governor of Virginia and serve in the US Senate. Richard attended the Shenandoah Valley Academy, the Virginia Military Institute, and the University of Virginia. He was enrolled as a cadet at the US Navel Academy in 1908, and, on graduating in 1912, was assigned to USS Kentucky; he served on two other vessels before being reassigned to USS Missouri during the Mexican War.

In 1914, Byrd rescued two seamen from drowning, for which he was later honoured, and he took his first flight in an airplane. Also that same year, he was assigned to the gunboat USS Dolphin which was involved in the US’s intervention in Veracruz. On board, Byrd met the future Fleet Admiral, William D. Leahy, as well as Assistant Secretary of the Navy, Franklin D. Roosevelt, who used ship occasionally to transport himself and his family. Byrd served on Dolphin until he was medically retired in 1916 for a foot injury. A year or so earlier, in 1915, Byrd married Marie Ames of Boston. They would have four children, and, from 1924, live in large brownstone in Boston purchased by Marie’s father.

After retirement from active duty, Byrd became involved with aviation, receiving his pilot wings in 1918. He was assigned to a transatlantic aviation project, helped set up the Navy Bureau of Aeronautics, and worked as a flying instructor. But, his polar career began in 1924 when he was given command of a small naval aviation detachment, part of Commander D. B. MacMillan’s Arctic expedition to western Greenland. This experience is said to have given him the ambition to be the first to fly over the North Pole.

On 9 May 1926, Byrd and Floyd Bennett, the navy’s chief aviation pilot, attempted a flight over the North Pole in a Fokker trimotor named Josephine Ford (after the daughter of Ford Motor Company president who helped finance the expedition). The flight from Spitsbergen and back lasted nearly 16 hours without mishap (apart from an oil leak). Byrd and Bennett claimed to have reached the Pole, a distance of 1,535 miles, and, subsequently, they were both awarded the US Congressional Medal of Honor. Byrd was promoted to the rank of commander, and his status as a national hero helped him raise funds for further ventures. However, whether Byrd and Bennett did, in fact, reach the North Pole has been much debated. The key point of early doubts being that Byrd’s plane might not have had the speed to achieve the distance claimed.

In 1927, Byrd not only helped Charles Lindbergh (see Our civilization’s survival) in his preparations for a non-stop flight across the Atlantic, thus winning the Orteig Prize, but made his own successful transatlantic crossing a few weeks later. This achievement which won him further honours in France and the US, and promotion to the rank of rear admiral. Byrd next turned his attention to the South Pole, leading three expeditions to explore and map the region (1928-1930, 1933-1935, and 1939-1941), the first two financed privately and the third undertaken at the behest of President Franklin D. Roosevelt and financed by the government. During the first, Byrd as navigator and three companions made the first flight over the South Pole. During the second, Byrd spent five months alone in a hut enduring extremely cold conditions, and was seriously ill when rescued. Among other achievements of the third expedition, he discovered Thurston Island. 

However, Byrd was recalled in 1940 to active duty in the Office of the Chief of Naval Operations, serving mostly through the Second World War as an advisor to the navy fleet Commander in Chief, Ernest King. Among other duties, he evaluated Pacific islands as operational sites. After the war, Byrd was placed in charge of Operation High Jump, the most ambitious Antarctic expedition ever attempted involving 4,700 men, 13 ships (including an aircraft carrier), and 25 airplanes. In 1955, he was made officer in charge of the US’s Antarctic programmes and became the senior authority for government Antarctic matters. He helped supervise a major scientific and exploratory expedition in 1955-1956 (Operation Deep Freeze) which marked the start of a permanent US military presence in Antarctica. Byrd died on 11 March 1957. Further information is available from Wikipedia, Encyclopaedia Britannica, Encyclopedia Virginia, or South-Pole.com.

The Byrd Polar and Climate Research Center Archival Program at Ohio State University holds the papers of Admiral Richard E. Byrd. The finding aid lists 10 diaries sporadically included within correspondence lots, but it also includes a section on ‘notebooks’, detailing close to 100 of them, dated between 1925-1957 (though some are undated). In Byrd’s own published books, he refers to his ‘detailed and voluminous’ ‘diary’ - so the notebooks at Ohio State might well also be diaries rather than merely notebooks.

Alone, a book about Byrd’s second Antarctic expedition, was first published by G. P. Putnam’s Sons in 1938, and reissued in 1966 by Shearwater Books - a modern reprint by Island Books can be previewed at Googlebooks. In his preface, Byrd writes: ‘The original intention was to use my diary, which was very detailed and voluminous, as the prime ingredient in the book; but I soon discovered that it was almost impossible to maintain an intelligible sequence and proportion by relying on the diary alone, since it was inescapably full of repetitious matter, cryptic references to things meaningful to myself, and random jottings; beside, there were many very personal things directed to my family which I did not wish to include.’

In fact, Byrd refers to his diary repeatedly through the text, and discuss the entries (often noting ‘as my diary testifies’). Here he is at the start of chapter three: ‘During the four and a half months I occupied Advance Base alone, I kept a fairly complete diary. Nearly every night, before turning in, I sat down and wrote a thoroughgoing account of the day’s doings. Yet, I have been surprised and puzzled, on reading the entries four years later, to find that not more of the emotions and circumstances which I have always associated with the first few days alone were actually committed to paper. For, afterwards, it seemed that I was never busier. Although I was up mornings before 8 o’clock and rarely went to bed before midnight, the days weren’t half long enough for me to accomplish the things I set out to do. A fagged mind in the midst of a task has little patience with autobiographical trifles. As witness:’ And then he quotes from the diary.

29 March 1934
‘. . . Last night, when I finished writing, I noticed a dark patch spreading over the floor from under the stove. A bad leak had opened up in the fuel line. Worried about the fire risk, I shut off the stove and searched all through my gear for a spare line. I couldn’t find one, which annoyed me; but I finally succeeded in stopping the leak with adhesive tape borrowed from the medical chest. Result: I was up until 4 o’clock this morning, most of the time damned cold, what with the fire out and the temperature at 58° below zero. The cold metal stripped the flesh from three fingers of one hand.
(Later) This being the twenty-second anniversary of the death of Captain Robert Falcon Scott, I have been reading again his immortal diary. He died on this same Barrier, at approximately the same latitude as that of Advance Base. I admire him as I admire few other men; better than most, perhaps, I can appreciate what he went through . . .’

The only publication of Byrd’s diaries to date (that I have been able to find) is To the Pole: the diary and notebook of Richard E. Byrd, 1925-1927 as edited by Raimund E. Goerler and published by Ohio State University Press in 1998. This can be previewed at Googlebooks. It contains diary extracts from Byrd’s Greenland Expedition in 1925, the North Pole flight in 1926, and his Transatlantic flight in 1927. Among the diary extracts about the North Pole flight are various navigational calculations, some of which were erased at the time, but which have been uncovered by researchers. These have tended to fuel more debate over whether Byrd and Bennett did, in fact, fly over the Pole. A review of the controversy, by Goerler (of the Byrd Polar Research Centre), found that, even with the new evidence in the book, it is not possible to be certain one way or the other.

Here are several extracts from To the Pole.

3 January 1925
‘Is the human race an accidental by-product of the cosmical processes? If God directs us, remaining silent and inscrutable to us, then he means either that he does not want us to know him or he is indifferent or he has made the knowing of him a difficult task.’

20 June 1925
‘The 20th has come at last and we left Wiscassett [Maine] at 2:45 PM today on schedule date. As anxious as I have been to get started on the expedition, I have felt so sad at leaving my precious family that I haven’t been able to mention the subject to Marie. I am doing her (apparently) a miserable mean trick in causing her to go through all the apprehensions she has felt for weeks and will for weeks to come. I feel mightily low and wicked today on account of it and the wonderful send off we got from thousands of people has meant absolutely nothing to me for nothing could matter with this terrible ache I have tried so hard to hide.

Dear little Dickie [Richard Byrd Jr.] didn’t realize what it was all about and that made me feel still more useless. Poor little fellow. He is too young to realize what an irresponsible “dad” he has. Marie as always was a wonderful sport.

With all this on my mind, I had to make a speech on the City Common to hundreds of people and also accept for the naval unit wonderful hunting knives presented to the personnel by the National Aeronautic Association of Maine.’

28 July 1925
‘7:45 a.m. Ran into flat pack ice today about 60 miles north of Upernivik. At first the flat pack ice was in cakes and far apart but gradually the cakes got larger and larger until about 5 this morning the Peary and Bowdoin were completely surrounded by an apparently unbroken field of ice. A number of the boys went over the ship’s side on the ice and walked several miles from the ships seal hunting. [Bromfield?] from the Bowdoin shot a seal in the head (a seal floats only when shot in the head). The seal was in a lead opened up by the Peaty as she came through the ice. We went after her in one of the Bowdoin boats. The Peary has been under a great strain bucking ice for the past seventeen hours. She is however very staunch and powerful and has stood the strain well.

10 PM A lead opened up for us about 8 AM and we got out of the solid ice but there was continual bucking of large flat cake[s] of ice until 6 PM. Now the water is a dead calm and only a few ice bergs are in sight.’

13 August 1925
‘Good weather has at last come. The NA-2 & 3 are out of commission. Bennett and I are going tonight for the blessed old navy. We must make a showing for her. Everything went wrong today. NA-1 lost cowling overboard. NA-2 went down by nose. Almost lost her. NA-3 nearly sunk by icebergs and injured lower wing on raft.

Later. MacMillan wouldn’t let me go. He seems to have given up. MacMillan seems to be in [a] great hurry to pack up and go back. Wonder what is in his mind.’

24 August 1925
‘Laying in Booth Sound on account of bad weather.’

25 August 1925
‘Captain doesn’t know where we are. So won’t send a radio tonight. Reached Conical Rock finally. Laying behind here on account bad weather.’

30 August 1925
‘Iceberg rolled over somewhere in bay making a tidal wave that nearly drowned bay, a very dramatic incident.’

8 September 1925
‘Terrible storm tonight. Wind 80 miles per hour. Two small boats from Danish gunboat Island Falk could not make their ship. Came alongside our ship. Both boats sank and came within an ace of losing several of the nine or ten Danes - a very dramatic moment. I have only once before experienced such wind - a typhoon in the China Sea. Much excitement on board last night.’

29 April 1926
‘Greatly disappointed today to hear from Amundsen by radio that we could not go alongside dock as there are two Norwegian ships alongside.

Amundsen sent a lieutenant from the Norwegian gunboat that is alongside the dock out to meet us. He informed us that he didn’t know when we could go alongside dock.

We arrived about 4 PM. Asked the captain of the gunboat if we could go alongside him. He reluctantly consented. I called on Amundsen immediately but he was at supper. Met him later and went to his quarters with him

I then called on captain of the gunboat and asked him when we could get alongside dock and get our plane ashore. He replied Monday. I then requested that he let us go alongside when he is not coaling at night and put the plane ashore. He would not do that.

We cannot wait for days and I ordered the floats lowered so as to take the plane on four of our boats rigged together by planking.

I then called on Smithmeyer, the director of the coal mine. He told us that we would have to move from alongside the gunboat to allow a Norwegian whaler to get alongside and coal. We anchored out about 300 yards at midnight. Got our pontoon made and at this writing have the small plane’s [the Oriole’s] wing put aboard.

Got radio that Wilkins is OK at Point Barrow. Hurrah! Smithmeyer told us to go alongside dock. Small space other side [of] gunboat. We would surely have gone aground. I cannot understand.’

2 May 1926
‘Worked all night on beach to get plane ready but had bright sunlight. Built little hanger of [illegible]. Took lunch with Amundsen who professes great friendship but gave Lt. Balchen (who is a peach and wanted to help us and has helped us) orders not to come near us again.’

29 June 1927
‘Left 4.25 standard [Eastern Standard Time]
4:29 altitude 300 feet turning. After turn completed 400. Raining slight.
5:50 Altitude 2200 feet. Not so much vibration now. Well beyond Cape Cod. Still visible few ships. Few ships. Cold. Having quite [a] time keeping Bert [Acosta] on course. Balchen still aft with us. Cans [of] gas affect standard compass. Must get them out of way soon.
As I looked through our trap door passing north of Halifax a cl[o]ud was under us and the shadow of the America on the cloud had a beautiful rainbow around it. Oil leak near [illegible]. Leak fixed with glue.
Sometimes have difficult time attracting attention ahead [from other crew members] to send radio or change course. Lights don’t work so well. Found a long stick and hit Noville on shoe with that.
Went forward at 3:15 to pilot. I got caught in passage way.
For ten hours we have seen no land or water. It’s now ten A.M. I sit here wondering if the winds have been with us. If they haven’t we don’t reach land.
8:30 Impossible to navigate.’

30 June 1927
‘12:30 Dawn is here very beautiful over horizon.
2:00 Clouds are right up to us. Nothing seen below for 10 hours.
3:30 Ice began to form.
5:00 Dense fog that can’t climb out of. Terribly dangerous. No water yet.
5 (?) [sic] Haven’t seen water or land for 13 hours.
9:00 Can see water now
10:30 Things at last are pleasant.
12:30 Taking longer than I thought to get to land.’

See also The first aerial explorer for more about the diary of another aviation pioneer, Sir George Hubert Wilkins.

Father of African philology

Wilhelm Bleek, sometimes called the father of African philology, was born 190 years ago today. His most enduring legacies are the work he did with his sister-in-law on the |xam language and his published books such as Comparative Grammar of the South African Languages. But, early on in his career, having studied and worked with African languages in Bonn and Berlin, he visited Natal to help compile a Zulu grammar, and while there he kept a detailed diary - not published until the 1960s.

Bleek was born on 8 March 1827 in Berlin, to a professor of theology and his wife. He studied in Berlin and Bonn, and looked set to follow in his father’s footsteps, but, while at university, he developed an interest an African languages, and this became his prime area of study. He graduated in 1851 with a doctorate in linguistics. He was then entrusted by the eminent zoologist, Professor Wilhelm Peters. with interpreting and editing material, including as yet unknown languages, that Peters had collected during his travels in Africa.

Bleek was subsequently appointed official linguist to an expedition to Niger in 1854, but ill-health forced his return to England. There he met John William Colenso, the Anglican Bishop of Natal, and George Grey, soon to become governor of Cape Colony. The former invited him to Natal to complete a Zulu grammar, after which he went to Cape Town to work as Sir Grey’s official interpreter and to catalogue his private library. While working for Grey, Bleek continued with his philological research and contributed to various German publications. 

Bleek visited Europe in 1859, for health reasons, but soon returned to Cape Town. In 1862, he married an English woman, Jemima Lloyd with whom he had two children, though they both died in infancy. Jemima’s sister, Lucy, came to live in the household, and before long was working with Bleek helping to document the culture, language and history of the |xam and !kun people of Southern Africa - see the online Bleek and Lloyd Collection. Bleek published several important books, which helped establish his reputation as the father of African philology. These include Vocabulary of the Mozambique Language; Handbook of African, Australian and Polynesian Philology; and Comparative Grammar of the South African Languages.

Grey, on being appointed to the governorship of New Zealand (for the second time) and leaving Cape Colony, gifted his collection to the National Library of South Africa on condition that Bleek be its curator, a position he occupied from 1862 until his death in 1875. For more information on Bleek, see The Digital Bleek and Lloyd, Wikipedia, some pages from Every Step of the Way: The Journey to Freedom in South Africa, or the Dictionary of National Biography 1885-1900.

While in Natal and Zululand, Bleek devoted most of his time to linguistic and ethnological research, contributing articles to the leading German geographical journal of the time. He also kept a diary, well, two diaries (1855-1856 in English and German, and June-Oct 1856 in German). These are held by the University of Cape Town libraries. They were first translated from German by O. H. Spoor and published, as The Natal Diaries of Dr W. H. I. Bleek, for the Friends of the South African Library by A. A. Balkema in 1965. In Spohr’s preface he states: ‘With the translation of these diaries we hope to provide English-speaking historians, linguists and anthropologists with little known source material on Natal and Zululand in the middle of the last century.’ Here are several extracts from the diaries.

29 October 1855
’On October 29th, the cannon sounded thirteen times, announcing the arrival of Sir George Grey, the Governor of the Cape Colony. As usual, his arrival came as a surprise and thus all preparations for a welcome were forestalled. Seldom has so much been expected from a government official, rarely has a government official enjoyed so much confidence and been able to retain his popularity to such an extent as Sir George Grey, even when he had to refuse demands made on him. His position in Natal has been a strange one, since for the last few years Natal has been an independent colony, no longer under the Cape government, but directly linked with the Colonial Office (Dr Petermann adds in a note ‘According to the latest reports, the colony has since July 1856 its own governor in the person of John Scott.’). Sir George Grey is, therefore, not here as Governor, but only as High Commissioner, and as such he has no power to issue proclamations, but only to give advice. However, the Government has been instructed to follow his advice. This mainly concerns the encouragement of immigration of colonists from Europe by leasing property to every married man. Thus a premium has been put on marriage, and many a colonist may have been prompted by a few morgen of land to look around for a wife. Most of the young men do not lack the inclination, but the choice is limited. The labour potential of the colony is to be increased by the importation of Indians. The main problem is what to do with the natives. Sir George decided against the plan of obliging the natives to emigrate into the southern districts. He would prefer to found industrial schools which it would be compulsory for native children to attend. He is going to pay for this out of the £40,000 which he has received from the Ministry and Parliament for the education of the natives.’

5 November 1855
‘Monday 5th November. I managed to have a talk with the Governor, but my negotiations have not yet been finalised. As things stand now, it is likely that I shall go to Cape Town in six months’ time to help the Governor in editing a New Zealand dictionary (Sir George Grey used to be Governor of New Zealand). Afterwards, with his support, I hope to take up my researches into the interior of Africa again. Though this means a delay in my planned travels of discovery, it is important for my plans to win the ear and interest of the Governor. I hope to have climbed some snowy mountain peaks before you set eyes on me again.’

10 June 1856
‘On Tuesday 10th June I set off to climb the u Mpofu mountain north-east of the station. I tried to sketch the outline of the mountain, but as I am not skilled I was only moderately successful. I am enclosing the rough sketch, as it may give an idea of the formation of the mountain. [The sketch was sent to Dr Petermann; there is no copy in the Ms.]

The course which I had chosen was to ascend the u Mpofu on the southern side, as I considered that slope of the mountain as the most gentle. The range runs horizontally, dividing the i Noemane from the streams on the other side. Before I reached the summit, I came across a kraal which was just being built. It was a double kraal with narrow doorways facing one another. Nothing but the outer frame, and a hut in each of them, had been completed. Only two men and a few boys were present. One of the men was a strange sight, as the bone of his nose had the appearance of being cloven in twain. Right in the middle was an ugly ulcer. The Zulus say he looks like a hyena (a Mpisi). I wanted the other man to come with me up the mountain to tell me the names of the mountains and rivers in the neighbourhood, but he declined, being too busy building huts. From then on the path was no longer straight, but wound around the western side of the mountain, so that I reached the summit from the north. On top of the mountain there were quite a few kaffer gardens. The view was only fair; generally the view is only clear immediately after the rain. Riding down the eastern slope of the mountain, I arrived at a kraal, or rather three kraals grouped together, called u Ndabepambile, and their u Mnumzana (master of the kraal), u Mcaguza. The doors were so low and narrow that my horse could only squeeze through in a bent position. How cattle, especially those with big horns, can get through remains a mystery to me. I had the same dinner as the previous day. While I was there, the man whom I had wanted to take as a guide appeared suddenly in full splendour, he had dressed himself smartly and had followed me, but had missed me on the mountain. Though he was of no use to me now, I was touched by his eagerness. On my way back, I climbed the summit again and descended the steep southern slope towards the huts in construction, and then home the same way. I sketched the outline of the u Mandawe mountain from a spot above the spring of the i Noemane. This little river runs towards the north-east and then winds northwards round the slopes of the Mpafu.’

15 August 1856
‘Friday 15th August, I questioned u Walapansi. He is a servant of Masipula, a commoner, who, however, was very useful to me in procuring food, naturally for a stout commission. His home is not really Zululand, but the country of Sotohangane, who was the successor to Zuite. Before Tshaka ascended the throne, he left Selmtetwa for the north-east. Between Delagoa Bay and Inhambane (u Ingambane) is supposed to live part of a tribe related to the Zulus. They originate from the Umtetwa and speak the Tefula dialect which nearly half the Zulu nation speaks, a Moelalapansi [sic!J I also spoke about the customs and language of the natives in that part.’

16 August 1856
‘Saturday 16th August. The king gave a big beer-drinking party, from which many of the chiefs returned towards evening in more than merry mood, u Mnayamane demonstrated this usually by beating his wives and young men, while Masipula did not show it so obviously, but his servants had to approach him very obediently. One of the chiefs un Nkalakuwa was bold enough to tell him, ‘ndakiwe’ (you are drunk) whereupon Masipula said very indignantly, ‘ndakive [sie!] wena’ (you are drunk yourself).

In the evening Tshalaza arrived to ask for an i hofu, a red woollen neckerchief to give to one of the king’s daughters, who was to take part in the celebration of her womanhood at u Mnayamane’s place. u Mnayamane also sent a message, bidding me farewell. He was off on an elephant hunt the next day and naturally asked me for a farewell present. I let him know that as he was not the king I could not consider his message.’

8 September 1856
‘Monday 8th September. After breakfast, I started on my way to D’Urban. My servants had caught up with me on Saturday night and had left very early. I had to cross the u Mhlango. There was no mistake about the aptness of its name - ‘Reed River’. It was very difficult to get through the reeds and the marsh. I was soon in a dense, high forest with impenetrable undergrowth and for hours followed the hilly path. In these forests one still heard not so very long ago of natives being torn to pieces by hyenas. It is impossible to penetrate the thicket which is supposed to be inhabited by elephants which the most courageous hunters cannot capture. There is also a great deal of game and wild animals of different species. This is where the four lions must have come from which were seen recently in Cato Manor. I saw nothing on the road except an ordinary troop of monkeys and when I came nearer they climbed quickly into the tree-tops. I could easily have shot down one or two with my revolver, but I have a great aversion to wounding an animal which is so much like a human and whose death agony is supposed to be like that of a being gifted with reason. I would have loved to catch a small one to find out how far one can civilise it, a sort of missionary activity more prompted by my desire for knowledge than any humanitarian motives.

A number of wagons were on the way to and from the Bay. On the front seat of one of the wagons sat a native in an elegant white suit and a hat, swinging his whip. Inside sat someone clad in black with a white tie and a blank, melancholy look, unmistakably an American missionary. Next to him sat his wife, very much the same in attire and appearance. It was undoubtedly Mr Alden Grant [Aldin Grout] and his family on their way from his mission station on the Umvoti down to D’Urban, just to take a Sunday service in the Presbyterian congregation. The American missionaries take turns in doing this. Behind the wagon rode one of the missionary’s small sons and a Hottentot youngster.

The dense forest stretched as far as the Umgeni, which I crossed below the refinery of Springfield’s sugar plantation. The water just reached up to the horse’s girth. I then went along below the Berea, past sand-dunes which stretch from here down to the sea. I arrived in D’Urban about 2 o’clock. Along the way I saw none of my men, nor did I see them at the place where we were to meet. A parcel from Liverpool had arrived for me by the ‘Royal William’. It contained a few newspapers from Elberfeld, several English and American ones, two parts of ‘Petermann’s Mittheilungen’ and ‘Die Zeitschrift der Deutschen Morgenländischen Gesellschaft’ and also several books. Some came from my family and for some I was indebted to my friend. Daniel Wichelhaus.’

Death in my heart

‘There is nothing but death in my heart. It is as though I have been pumped with lead. There is nothing to look forward to at all, at all . . . even financially, I’ve had it this time. I owe my rent, the car tax, the car insurance, I’ve had my pay and it is gone. I have 10 pfgs in the house and no petrol in the car. There is nothing to look forward to at all. I am also going through an acute sense of self-pity again and deadening loneliness.’ This is Waguih Ghali, a self-exiled Egyptian writer, whose deep depression, intensely described in his diaries, led eventually to suicide. A first volume of these diaries has just been published by The American University in Cairo Press.

Ghali was born in 1929 or 1930 (the actual date seems unknown) in Alexandria, Egypt, part of a Coptic family, but his father died when he was young, and his mother remarried. As he grew older, he was considered something a wild youth, careless with money and property. From 1944 to 1947, he was sent to Victoria College, a private institution run like a British public school. Friction with his stepfather, led him to spend more time at the college’s Cairo campus, where he stayed with relatives, particularly his maternal aunt, Ketty. After studying medicine at Cairo University for a while, he transferred to the Sorbonne, Paris, but dropped out, leaving Paris in 1953.

Ghali struggled with symptoms of manic depression throughout his life, and he never found a place to settle for long or work that fulfilled him. He became a sponger, a libertine, too fond of alcohol and casual sex, like others in the sixties, but he was also charming and principled. An antipathy towards the Egyptian government left him reluctant to return to his home country. He lived in London and Sweden in the second half of the 1950s, during which time he wrote several personal essays published in The Guardian, and then moved to Rheydt, West Germany, where he remained from 1960 to 1966. It was in Germany that he finished and published his only novel - Beer in the Snooker Club (André Deutsch, 1964) - which achieved some literary success.

While editing the book for André Deutsch, Diana Athill, one of its editors, became involved with Ghali. Concerned about his welfare in 1966, she arranged for him to move to London and live in her flat. It was not an easy friendship, stormy and full of conflict. One major argument flared up, for example, when Athill happened to read what Ghali had written about her in his diary. In 1967, following the Arab-Israeli war, he visited Israel for six weeks, acting as a free-lance journalist. He filed two articles for the London Times and a piece for the BBC, but, by then, the Egyptian authorities had denied renewal of his passport.

In late 1968, while still living in Athill’s flat, Ghali committed suicide. Some time later, in the mid-1980s, Athill published a memoir about her relationship with Ghali - After a Funeral. Until recently, this was the main source of information on the Egyptian writer. Wikipedia has a brief briography, and there is a more nuanced analysis of Ghali and his novel available in The Edinburgh Companion to the Arab Novel in English by Nouri Gana which can be previewed at Googlebooks.

However, now more biographical information has become available with the publication, by The American University in Cairo Press, of a first volume of Ghali’s diaries - a second volume is to follow in the summer. The diaries cover, and shed much light on, the last four years of Ghali’s life as well as, through reminiscences, aspects of his youth. The Diaries of Waguih Ghali: An Egyptian Writer in the Swinging Sixties 1964-1966 has been meticulously edited by May Hawas of the University of Alexandria. Although Athill had, apparently, inadvertently allowed the original diaries to be lost or destroyed, she had also given permission, much earlier to a researcher, Deborah Starr (now an associate professor at Cornell University) to photocopy the diaries, and it is these photocopies that Hawas has worked on for the new publication.

‘The diaries are an interesting read for their own sake,’ says Hawas in her introduction. ‘In the context of the success of Ghali’s novel and the diversity of its audience, as well as the pathos of the writer’s own life, the diaries also represent for Ghali’s fans a much-awaited second work.’ She goes on to look at how Ghali’s diaries (the published volume and the forthcoming one) reflect the Swinging Sixties (as in her subtitle), and how they illuminate the parasitic nature of his relationship with Athill.

Particularly interesting, however, is her brief analysis of the role that keeping a diary played in Ghali’s life. Hamas notes that in his final diary entry - yet to be published, in the second volume - he explains how and why he is going to commit suicide. She says: ‘Although Ghali starts the diary by explaining that he writes to save himself from going mad, it is in these last sections in particular where he elaborates on the role that the diary has played in his life: how writing it has relieved his feelings, but how it has also displaced effort which otherwise might have been channeled into writing a novel. In his suicide note, Ghali stresses his desire to have his diaries published, spelling out the degree to which his creative energy has been directed toward the diary, even if it was not the novelistic work he had really wanted to produce. In some way, the diaries replace the novel as another creative genre, like the short story or novel or poem, simply another way, in his words, that a writer could “create something.” ’

In the first volume of diaries, Hawas also includes a compilation of correspondence between Starr and Athill between 1999 and 2014. In one exchange, Hawas asks Athill, ‘Did Ghali leave you any instructions about what to do with his personal papers after he died?’ Athill replies, ‘Waguih left the bundle in my bedroom with a note saying I should do with it what I saw fit.’ What she saw fit, however, did not apparently include publishing the diaries. Athill is still alive, living in a retirement home, and, all being well, will celebrate her 100th birthday this coming December.

Here are several extracts from The Diaries of Waguih Ghali: An Egyptian Writer in the Swinging Sixties 1964-1966. (Ellipses between brackets - [. . .] - indicate where Hawas has cut material; if not between brackets the ellipses are a standardised version of Ghali’s own and variable trailing dots.)

4 June 1964
‘Am at the office. Lovely sunny day. Woke up in an excellent mood. Sang in the car going to work. Perhaps even relieved that that Liselotte thing is finished with. Had a nice walk in the sun to the bank. Bought Simone de Beauvoir’s Le deuxième sexe - in English, unfortunately. But something to read in lieu of depression and thinking. “Thoughts are a disease of the flesh,” said Thomas Hardy.

Will go swimming at noon. Let me live today for today and damn everything else. I’ve got enough to eat, haven’t I? A flat? A car. What do I want? A woman? I’ll go get one from a dancing hall this weekend. Fuck her and throw her. It is the only language they understand. They love that. They’ll love you for it. Leave my bloody anaemic sentimentality and sickliness - Let me be fresh, for Christ’s sake. Am in a good mood today.’

3 December 1964
‘In bed at night. This will be pompous and horrid but nevertheless: been reading An Area of Darkness (Naipaul). He will, hélas, never be a great writer (not popular, either, complimentary nowadays). Too engrossed with himself, his feelings, his thoughts which should only be a concern to himself and not expect others to feel. The ‘cab’ in Alexandria, whether imaginary or not, is too insignificant to build a philosophy upon, a theory and work. “He was a child, an innocent, a maker; someone for whom the world had never held either glory or pathos; someone for whom there had been no place.” This (page 43) could have emanated from a review (a cheap one, probably) of a work or man, but not a description of a man’s life in a work (Ramon in this case). No, no, ‘l’effort préalablement conçu’ as it were.’

26 September 1965
‘There is nothing but death in my heart. It is as though I have been pumped with lead. There is nothing to look forward to at all, at all . . . even financially, I’ve had it this time. I owe my rent, the car tax, the car insurance, I’ve had my pay and it is gone. I have 10 pfgs in the house and no petrol in the car. There is nothing to look forward to at all. I am also going through an acute sense of self-pity again and deadening loneliness. Hélas, I want to die again. Happiness is denied me, and if, at times and out of cowardliness, I believe in God, I see him only as a cruel sadist. What, if he exists, is he doing to me? Why did he give me my brain and way of thinking and my emotions, and then stifle them all the time, torment me all the time? I have nothing to look forward to and I am dead internally. I don’t want to live anymore. I have suffered too much, suffered too much in spite of at times having tried to accept it, and make my life bearable with small things . . . the other car, the radio in it, the trips to Holland, and an aloofness from life . . . But I get knocked all the time, terribly knocked, and at the moment I can’t support it anymore. The thought of tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow is unbearable. I walk about in my flat, all in disorder since yesterday . . . vestiges of Brigitta. I walk up and down, sit down, smoke, every minute is a torture as I wait for it to pass, only to bring another more dreadful minute. I have reached the bottom again . . . self-pity, horror at the future, loneliness, and utter despair:

[. . .] Sat., [. . .] 2.30 or so, Brigitta came. I was only expecting her at seven. She wanted to go for a swim. She went for her trunks, and I shaved quickly and picked her up at Marienplatz. I could feel she wasn’t in love with me. The pool was closed, but we scrambled in and had a swim. It was a warm lovely day. The man came and told us we were not allowed in, so [we] went away and came to my place. I was a bit nervous, and although I took her in my arms now and then and kissed her, there wasn’t the real response I know. We both had a shower at my place and I found her very beautiful. [. . .] We sat and talked and then she said, “I really didn’t want to come today.” “I felt that perhaps you didn’t and even that you might not [. . .],” I said. We had drank a bit, and one was frank. It was about 7.30.
“I don’t want to have an affair with you . . . I don’t love you,” she said.
“Yes,” I said. And then I asked, “The affair is ended today?”
“Yes,” [. . .] she said.
It meant I wasn’t going to possess her. Death struck me at once. Lead, tons of it, was poured into me. The idea of food, of eating [. . .], gave me nausea.

“You must be hungry,” I said. “Start making the salad. I shall cook the steak. [. . .] I can’t eat, sweetheart,” I said. “I can’t now because I am a bit dead inside.” She said she understood. At once I switched on my charm. I wasn’t going to moan, to be a bore. I treated her as [a] Queen and called her queen. I laughed, set the table for her . . . put a candle [. . .] on the table. Joked. Served her like a waiter, and as she was eating, I went out in the garden, sat on the steps, and smoked a cigarette, one full of misery and utter despair. She came out and called me in. I went in, laughed, watched her eat (she was tucking it in, alright). Drank a few schnapps with her, then cleared the table while she made coffee. I lay on the sofa and we talked for a while. I had plucked a rose from the garden and she found it beautiful. I told her that anyway I was mad . . . that there was a sort of madness in me. We held hands and then I pulled her and she came in my arms as I lay on the sofa. I told her two short stories of Dostoevsky and one of Gogol’s. Gogol’s story of the poet and the bird which struck her heart in the rose’s thorn [sic] to bloom a rose for the beloved, and the poet throwing the rose away, and Dostoevsky’s story of the clerk who died because he couldn’t believe in his happiness. I had my hands beneath her pullover and tried to undo her soutien.

“No - no, Waguih,” she said.
“Why not?” I asked softly. “It is the last time anyway,” and I undid it and pulled her pullover off and again she tore at my things and pulled them off my head and we caressed passionately and then she took her things off. I told her more stories and we kissed and caressed. Then I took her to bed, and made wonderful love to her. I kissed her breasts and her armpits, and she kissed my chest and neck, and after the first time, we lay relaxed and happy and she murmured she would love to spend a whole night in my arms, then I kissed her body and her breasts and made love to her for many an hour, but suddenly I hated this rubber contraption and tore it away and told her I hated it, and she said, “yes”. . . and I came in her. And it is just the critical time. She worried about it, and I am worried too. I gave her an aspirin to take, pretending it’s another kind of pill . . . just to stop her worrying. What will worrying do?

We kissed and I drove her near home. She will not come again. “For a while,” I told her. “I must get over you.” “Of course,” she said. When I let her out of the car, I gave her the rose which I had tucked in the car . . . and a very small folded paper. “I dropped a tear for you and collected it to give you.” Stupid romantic, but she was touched. I walked with her for a while, and in the corner, kissed her. “Goodbye . . . and God bless you,” I said . . . and it is finished.

I am glad and grateful we made love. It would have been terrible otherwise. Glad I haven’t parted humiliated . . . But it is finished. Ended. A pretty little affair, except that no affair is ‘little’ to me, and I am demolished today. Utterly dead. Writing this has helped a bit . . . What can I look forward to?’

27 September 1965
‘Thanks God [sic] for this Diary again, because, being the way I am I must pour out my heart somewhere or other. But I don’t feel as bad as yesterday this morning. Certainly harder and not as soft and as repulsive as yesterday. [. . . ] What is good with this girl, is that I know it is finished, know I shall not see her anymore, so that eliminates a whole lot of ramifications of pain. And strangely, I don’t really love her this morning anymore, in the sense that it is not love, but something I possessed and have lost. I shall try very very hard not to think of her at all. What frightens me most of all, is the period between 5.30 and 8.30 at home. When I return from work, I dread being alone in my flat and suddenly hate the flat itself and everything in it. I do not know what I shall do about money. The whole picture is terribly hopeless.’

18 October 1965
‘I am beginning to hate this Diary somehow - it has become a ‘person,’ who goes on and on putting up with my complaints and groans . . . and whenever I look at it, see it, it is only a reminder of the utter misery that I am. How the weekend dragged - and dragged. Again utterly dead and empty inside. Sunday swimming and racquets again, then a few beers with Kurt and Zander in the evening. Zander’s mother had invited me to lunch, where I learnt from Zander that Brigitta was with Bubbi on Saturday evening.

As I said, I am just absolutely and utterly empty inside. Thoughts of suicide, the whole hog. Damn.

Evening
I think I shall not write this Diary for some time. It depresses me to look at it.’

22 October 1965
‘As I said, the Diary does depress me. Have worked well the last three days on the novel. It is my salvation. I am slowly entering my cocoon, and when I am in it, I am alright. I’ve discovered an isolated pub, which is becoming my local. One or two beers now and then, all alone, dreading any of my acquaintances finding the pub [. . .] But the novel [unfinished at the time of his death] is my salvation.’

16 December 1965
‘I have not been to work since - and I certainly can’t face going. I have handed in my notice for the 15th of January and will play sick as long as possible . . . et après?. . . après ça la deluge, as we know well from experience. But deluge or not, I can’t really worsen very much. I seem to have improved slightly during the last week [. . .].

Here is my day: I go to bed about 2 a.m., having drunk myself to sleepiness. In the morning I force myself to go on sleeping as long as possible. I am usually up at about two in the afternoon. Wash, have two coffees and many cigarettes, then I drive to town for another coffee. I walk about a bit [. . .] and return home. I try and write, but it is nearly impossible. I do write, though, a few pages of a play I am writing together with Kurt Flocken - the same Kurt Flocken of Liselotte days. When I say ‘with’ him I mean I write it in English, then when he comes he takes it down in German (usually my German) . . . For someone who pretends to have literary leanings, he is hopeless. Anyway, my dictating to him is not unpleasant, and it forces me to write a few pages a day because I know he will be coming. After that we go to a pub and drink till 1 or 2 a.m . . . and a new day starts. I ward off the depression with those pills, but have decided to go without them, and without the booze for a few days. [. . .]

Diana Athill’s letters have been short and not too affectionate lately. How well I understand that and sympathise with what I take to be the inevitable revulsion I must now unconsciously cause in her. Those horrible moaning and weeping letters I have inflicted on her for so long. She would have been a monster if she didn’t finally react with some sort of disgust. And then, of course, this lunatic, selfish and absolutely egoistical proposal of mine for her to let me live in her flat for six months or so AT HER OWN COST!! Obviously I was looney to propose such a thing . . . yet. Bless her, she at once wrote to the Home Office to try and get me permission to live in London for six months . . .

Brenda Laring, who strangely turned very affectionate and friendly lately, and concerned about me, hasn’t replied to me last letter . . . a detailed description of my state of despair and fear . . .

But I remember the state I was in as I wrote to Diana suggesting she bring me to England . . . literally begging for her mercy. I remember how I was, how I feared for my sanity . . . how I could foresee that what I was going through is just simply, medically let us say, physiologically . . . unbearable.

As I said, except for this sudden attack this afternoon . . . and coupled with a sudden yearning for Brigitta, I seem to have been steadily improving. And my finances? I have been regularly winning lately. In fact if I add all I have won the last two months, it must add to about DM 200 [. . .]

I have calmed down since that attack (I played patience while it seized me) . . . I am sitting cosily, even the radio on (something I couldn’t bear to listen to until lately). Sometimes I get very hungry and eat a lot, but usually I am on an empty stomach. About my finances, le déluge will start at about the beginning of February I suppose . . .

I have discarded the novel because it started with unrequited love, and it reminds me of B. I have also read Gunter Grass’s The Tin Drum and again saw what literature can be . . . what insipid caca’s [sic] most of us write. [. . . ]

My mother has sent me two very affectionate letters . . . No word from Ketty or Samir. I think they would like to be left alone.

There was something I wanted to mention. During the last two years, I have suffered terribly from matters of the heart, and anyone reading this Diary, and reading the affair with Liselotte, and then Brigitta, would laugh . . . This, to me, is one of the cruellest things I am experiencing, the fact that, in essential, it is a laughable matter. What is this ‘love’ I am talking about? Liselotte . . . Brenda . . . Iricka . . . Brigitta . . . all in the space of one year or so? I can see it too, and how cruel and terribly bitter that what is laughable distresses so intolerably. And with those last wise words, will end today’s reportage.’

Oh how weak is man

Some 210 years ago today was born Wilford Woodruff. As a very young man he was drawn to the new religious teachings of one Joseph Smith, and was soon being sent out as a missionary by the Latter-day Saints. He rose rapidly in the church, eventually becoming its fourth leader. Though he had many wives himself, he is remembered for guiding the church towards outlawing polygamy, and thus easing its acceptance by the Union. Also, his lifelong diary is much admired as being a unique resource concerning the church’s early history.

Woodruff was born on 1 March 1807, one of nine children, in Farmington, Connecticut. His father was a miller, but his mother died when he was very young; he was brought up by a step-mother. He worked for his father as a young man, but in 1832 moved to Richland, Oswego Co., New York, where he was recruited by elders of the Latter-day Saints church, baptised and ordained as a teacher in 1834. He moved to the church’s centre, in Kirtland, Ohio. There he met the founder, Joseph Smith, and he was soon ordained a priest. Over the next few years, he was sent on various missions, and rose quickly through the church’s hierarchy, being called to the First Quorum of the Seventy in 1837, to the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles in 1838, and, the following year, to the Apostleship. He married his first wife, Phoebe Carter, in 1837; in the next 40 years, he would marry eight more times. His wives are said to have born him 34 children.

In the late 1830s, Woodruff led a party of church of members to Nauvoo, Illinois, where they settled, and where Woodruff became a member of the city council, as well as chaplain for the Nauvoo Legion, a local militia. During the 1840s, Woodruff made two successful missions to Britain; and in 1847 he was a member of the first pioneer company of Latter-day Saints to arrive in Utah’s Great Basin. He became a successful farmer with extensive livestock herds, as well as orchards. He served for 14 years as head of the Deseret Agricultural and Manufacturing Society, and in 1855 became president of the Utah Territorial Horticultural Society. He was also very involved in the early 1860s (but unsuccessful) bid by Utah to join the Union. In 1856, he was appointed as the Latter-day Saints church’s historian, a role he then held for over 30 years.

In 1877, Woodruff became president of St. George’s, the Latter-Day Saints’ first temple in Utah, and was instrumental in developing its ceremonial procedures. When John Taylor (who had succeeded Brigham Young as leader of the church) died in 1887, Woodruff assumed the leadership (being ordained president in 1889). However, at the time, he was still in hiding from federal agents wanting to arrest him for polygamy; and the church itself was facing increasing political, legal and financial pressure because of its stance on plural marriages. In 1890, Woodruff issued a Manifesto that officially terminated the practice of polygamy, an act which then eased the way for Utah to be accepted in the Union in 1896. Woodruff died in 1898. Further information is available from Wikipedia, Encyclopedia of Mormonism or the Latter-day Saints Church History website.

Apart from being the leader that formally ended polygamy within the church, Woodruff is also remembered and admired for his diary. The Encyclopedia of Mormonism says it is ‘a meticulous multivolume work covering nearly the entire history of the Church in the nineteenth century’, and that it ‘contains the only record of many events and speeches of Church leaders’. A biography of Woodruff by Matthias F. Cowley called Wilford Woodruff - History of His Life and Labors as recorded in his daily journals was published by Deseret News in 1909. But despite the title, the narrative is based on the diaries rather than quoting from them. However, in 1982, a selection of extracts from Woodruff’s 15 journals was published by Kraut’s Pioneer Press. This is freely available at Internet Archive.

Here is part of the publisher’s preface: ‘Wilford Woodruff kept one of the most important journals in the early Church. Recorded within its pages are some of the greatest moments in the Church’s history, much of which might otherwise have gone unrecorded. He was personally acquainted with the Prophet Joseph Smith, Brigham Young and John Taylor, and kept a faithful record of many of their private meetings and counsel. Here for the first time in print are selected out the choicest gems of doctrine and history as they were recorded by this great man.’ And here are several extracts.

19 February 1837
‘I repaired to the house of the Lord and stood in the midst of the congregation of the Saints, where I beheld President Joseph Smith Jr. arise in the stand and for several hours addressed the Saints in the power of God. Joseph had been absent from Kirtland on business for the Church, though not half as long as Moses was in the mount. Many were stirred up in their hearts and some were against him as the Israelites were against Moses, but when he arose in the power of God in their midst, as Moses did anciently, they were put to silence for the complainers saw that he stood in the power of a Prophet. O how weak is man.’

15 May 1842
‘True information has just reached us that the noted Governor Boggs of Missouri who by his orders expelled ten thousand Latter-day Saints, has just been assassinated in his own house and fallen in his own blood. Three balls were shot through his head, two through his brains and one through his mouth, tongue and throat. Thus this ungodly wretch has fallen in the midst of his iniquity and the vengeance of God has overtaken him at last, and he has met his just deserts though by an unknown hand. This information is proclaimed through all the papers and by dispatched messengers and hand bills through the land. Thus Boggs hath died as a fool dieth and gone to his place to receive the reward of his works.’

30 June 1843
‘Excerpts from the synopsis of the remarks of Joseph Smith following his close escape from officials of Missouri; the excerpts indicate the bellicose expressions uttered publicly on this occasion: “. . . If our enemies are determined to oppress us and deprive us of our rights and privileges as they have done and if the authorities that be on the earth will not assist us in our rights, nor give us that protection which the laws and Constitution of the United States and of this State guarantee unto us, then we will claim them from higher power from heaven and from God Almighty and the Constitution, etc. I swear I will not deal so mildly with them again, for the time has come when forbearance is no longer a virtue, and if you are again taken unlawfully, you are at liberty to give loose to blood and thunder, but act with Almighty power.”
“. . . Will not the State of Missouri stay her hand in her unhallowed persecutions against the Saints; if not, I restrain you not any longer; I say in the name of Jesus Christ, I this day turn the key that opens the heavens to restrain you no longer from this time forth. I will lead you to battle, if you are not afraid to die and feel disposed to spill your blood in your own defense you will not offend me. Be not the aggressor; bear until they strike on the one cheek, offer the other and they will be sure to strike that, then defend yourselves and God shall bear you off. Will any part of Illinois say we shall not have our rights, treat them as strangers and not friends and let them go to Hell. Say some, we will mob you and be damned, if I under the necessity of giving up our charted rights, privileges and freedom which our fathers fought, bled and died for, and which the Constitution of the United States and this state guarantee unto us, I will do it at the point of the bayonet and sword.”
“. . . Furthermore if Missouri continues her warfare and continues to issue her writs against me and this people unlawfully and unjustly, as they have done and our rights are trampled upon and they take away my rights, I swear with uplifted hands to heaven I will spill my blood in its defense. They shall not take away our rights and if they don’t stop leading me by the nose, I will lead them by the nose; and if they don’t let me alone, I will turn up the world. I will make war. When we shake our own bushes, we want to catch our own fruit.” ’

17 September 1843
‘In Maine, I walked part of the way home with Father. I talked of taking Rhoda Foss home with me. Father said it would be well if I was a mind to it. I am quite at a stand, don’t know what Phebe will say about it. I returned to Sister Foss and spent the night. I conversed with her during the evening and blessed her. She is strong in faith and desires to go to Nauvoo and intends soon to come and make a visit and stay as long as she pleases. Shosh is not very well contented down east; had rather come to the west. There is quite a western fever in a number of our friends in Maine.’

30 August 1846
‘President Young then addressed the meeting and said that it was an Eternal Principle that before God would chose a man to rule any part of his kingdom, he must first learn to be ruled, and that the Lord was preparing a people for that purpose and fifty years would not pass away before many who are now present will each rule over many more than what I do this day.’

16 May 1851
‘At Summit Creek, met with the citizens to agree upon electing officers. President Young said that he cared nothing about the feeling of the nation who had driven us out. We should not follow in the path of political foolery. We should have one candidate and but one as delegate to Congress. We can speak our feelings freely, but when we vote, let it be for the candidate of our choice. Should we have two candidates and they have about equal votes, the United States would know we had apostatized from our faith and union, or we were trying to deceive them. We would stand better in their eyes to take our own independent course and get united. If we have but one track, the Saints will walk on it. If we have two tracks, there will be a plenty of devils to run on them. If we begin right, we shall go right. If we begin wrong, we shall keep wrong. The United States are afraid of our union and so is the world. In speaking of the Indians, he said these Indians were the descendants of the Old Gadianton robbers who infested these mountains for more than a thousand years.’

19 October 1856
‘President Young said I have got a letter from Elder Hyde. He officiated as clerk in Drummonds Court and wrote things there day after day against God, our religion and the people for a few dimes. He ought to be cut off from the Quorum of the Twelve and the Church. He is no more fit to stand at the head of the Quorum of the Twelve than a dog. His soul is entirely occupied with a few dimes and it is much more in his eyes than God, Heaven, and Eternal Life. He is a stink in my nostrils.’

7 February 1879
‘For the first time in my life I have had to flee away from the enemies for the gospel’s sake or from any other cause. They are now trying to arrest me on polygamy. And as I had to leave St. George at 7 o’clock, I got into a wagon from the temple with David H. Cannon and drove all night.’

16 December 1879
‘I dreamed at night that President Taylor was sealing all in the Church, plural marriages to them that wished it. We met in the Council of the 12. I thought the glory of God rested upon us and we did all our work openly and the government had no power over us and we rejoiced together.’

See also Father of Mormon history and Mobocracy is rife, the former concerning the diaries of Leonard J Arrington, and the latter about those of Brigham Young.

Gabrielle, Celestine or Evangeline?

‘I know not what name to give it, not my new baby, but my new poem. Shall it be ‘Gabrielle,’ or ‘Celestine,’ or Evangeline’?’ This is Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, once the country’s most popular poet, mulling over, in his diary, what name to give a work that would become one of his most famous. Longfellow, born 210 years ago today, kept a diary for most of his life, and though the entries are often brief, they are also very lyrical. By way of a postscript, I found the prologue to Evangeline in my own diaries, way back in 1975, and a reference to it 20 years later when I was visiting Wistman’s Wood on Dartmoor.

Longfellow was born on 27 February 1807 in Portland, Maine, the second of eight children. His mother’s father had been a general in the American War of Independence and a Member of Congress, and his father was a lawyer. He went to private school where, among other subjects, he learned Latin, and published his first poem aged 13. At 15, he entered Bowdoin College in Brunswick, Maine. There he met Nathaniel Hawthorne who would become a lifelong friend. While at Bowdoin, Longfellow published as many as 40 poems. Thereafter, he travelled to Europe and spent three years on a grand tour.

On returning to Maine in 1829, Longfellow took took up an offer from Bowdoin to teach languages and act as the college’s librarian. In 1831, he married Mary Potter, a childhood friend, but, during a second sojourn in Europe - at the behest of Harvard College - she had a miscarriage and died soon after. He returned to the US, and took up the professorship of modern languages at Harvard, renting rooms in Cambridge, at the Craigie House (once George Washington’s HQ during the Siege of Boston). He began publishing books of poetry, Voices of the Night (1939) and Ballads and Other Poems (1941). Soon after the former, he also published Hyperion, a prose romance inspired by his trips abroad and his hitherto unsuccessful courtship of Fanny Appleton (whom he had first met in Switzerland).

In 1843, after a seven year courtship, Longfellow and Appleton finally married, and Fanny’s father bought them Craigie House as a wedding present. They lived there for the rest of their lives, having six children. In 1847, Longfellow published his famous poem Evangeline, which helped increase his literary income. In 1854, he retired from Harvard to concentrate on writing, and five years later Harvard awarded him an honorary doctorate of laws. In the summer of 1861, a tragic fire led to Fanny’s death. In trying to save his wife, Longfellow burned his face, and subsequently wore a beard to cover the scarring. Biographers say he never fully recovered from his wife’s death. He spent several years translating Dante’s Divine Comedy; a weekly meeting with friends came to be known as the Dante Club.

During the last 15 years or so of his life, Longfellow’s fame continued to grow, and he was awarded many honours, and met many other famous figures. He supported the abolitionist cause and hoped for a reconciliation between the northern and southern states after the American Civil War. He published several more books; and he travelled to Europe, receiving an honorary doctorate from Cambridge, and meeting Queen Victoria in 1868. He died in 1882. For further information see Wikipedia, Maine Historical Society, Poets.org, Poetry Foundation, or a Houghton Library’s online exhibition.

Longfellow kept a diary throughout his life, rarely making long entries. Despite their brevity, they often exhibit his poetical and lyrical view (physically and metaphorically) of the world around him. The journal entries were first edited and compiled by his brother Samuel within a two volume biography - Life of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow: with extracts from his journals and correspondence (1886, Ticknor and Co, Boston).

An extended version of the Life (dominated by the journals) was also included by Samuel Longfellow in The Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow: with bibliographical and critical notes and his life, with extracts from his journals and correspondence (14 volumes, 1886-1891, Houghton, Mifflin and Company, Boston). The journals in particular can be found in vol 12 (also labelled volume I of the Life) covering the years 1807-1842; vol 13 (volume II of the Life) covering the years 1843-1861; and vol 14 (volume III of the Life) covering the years 1862-1882. Here are several extracts from each of the three volumes.

17 October 1838
‘Face swollen with tooth-ache; look like King Henry VIII. A working day in college. Have I been wise to give up three whole days [in the week] to college classes? I think I have; for thus I make my presence felt here, and have no idle time to mope and grieve.’

18 October 1838
‘Wrote a chapter in Hyperion. Thus slowly goes on the work. Well or ill, I must work right on, and wait for no happier moments. This is a glorious autumn day. The coat of arms of the dying year hangs on the forest wall,as the coat of arras on the walls of a nobleman’s house in England, when he dies.’

7 December 1845
‘I know not what name to give it, not my new baby, but my new poem. Shall it be ‘Gabrielle,’ or ‘Celestine,’ or Evangeline’?’

20 May 1846
‘Tried to work at Evangeline. Unsuccessful. Gave it up and read Legard’s letters, which give one a favorable idea of his abilities and aims. In the afternoon drove to town. Dined at Prescott’s at five [the eminent historian William H. Prescott, author of The History of the Conquest of Peru among others]. He received us in his library, where I found Rev. Mr. Young, Rev. Mr. Ellis, and West the painter, looking at the two rival Mexican editions of the Conquest of Mexico. Near by, Theophilus Parsons and Alexander Everett talking together. Felton, Sumner, and Hillard came in later. We discussed the French liquid ll, whether it should be heard or sunk into a y. Then marched down to dinner. Many matters discussed at table; among others the Puritans; then the Fathers of the Revolution.’

6 July 1846
‘Examination in Modem Languages. The Spanish classes did very well; the Italian not so well; the German best of all, as is usually the case. A warm, weary day, made more weary by a long Faculty-meeting in the evening. So ends the college year with me, and vacation begins. Dear vacation, when alone I feel that I am free! I have a longing for Berkshire or the sea-side. Both Nahant and Stockbridge beckon; and Niagara thunders its warning and invitation. And now let me see if I cannot bring my mind into more poetic mood by the sweet influences of sun and air and open fields.’

9 July 1846
‘Idly busy days; days which leave no record in verse; no advance made in my long-neglected yet dearly loved Evangeline. The cares of the world choke the good seed. But these stones must be cleared away.’

17 November 1846
‘I said as I dressed myself this morning, “To-day at least I will work on Evangeline.” But no sooner had I breakfasted than there came a note from ___ to be answered forthwith; then ___, to talk about a doctor; then Mr. Bates, to put up a fireplace; then this journal, to be written for a week. And now it is past eleven o’clock, and the sun shines so brightly upon my desk and papers that I can write no more.’

15 May 1855
‘I am plagued to death with letters from all sorts of people, of course about their own affairs. No hesitation, no reserve, no consideration or delicacy. What people!’

17 May 1855
‘A beautiful morning. Went and sat an hour with Lowell in his upper chamber among the treetops. He sails for Havre the first of June.’

20 May 1855
‘Sumner just returned from New York, where he has been lecturing on Slavery to huge audiences in theatres. A great success, and a great sign of the state of the public mind.’

31 January 1859
‘Prescott’s funeral at the Chauncey-Place Church, at three in the afternoon. It was very impressive and touched me very much. I remember the last time I spoke with Prescott. It was only a few days ago. I met him in Washington Street, just at the foot of Winter Street He was merry, and laughing as usual. At the close of the conversation he said, “I am going to shave off my whiskers; they are growing gray.” “Gray hair is becoming,” I said. “Becoming,” said he; “what do we care about becoming, who must so soon he going?” “Then why take the trouble to shave them off?” “That’s true,” he replied with a pleasant laugh, and crossed over to Summer Street. So my last remembrance of him is a sunny smile at the comer of the street!’

8 August 1877
‘A lovely summer day; I wanted to be in many places at once.’

27 February 1879
‘My seventy-second birthday. A present from the children of Cambridge of a beautiful armchair, made from the wood of the Village Blacksmith’s chestnut-tree.’

 13 June 1880
‘Yesterday I had a visit from two schools; some sixty girls and boys, in all. It seems to give them so much pleasure, that it gives me pleasure.’

By way of a postscript, I, myself, as a young man was much enamoured of Longfellow’s Evangeline, and copied the prologue into my diary in 1975, and learned it off by heart. Here are the first few lines.

‘This is the forest primeval. The murmuring pines and the hemlocks,
Bearded with moss, and in garments green, indistinct in the twilight,
Stand like Druids of eld, with voices sad and prophetic,
Stand like harpers hoar, with beards that rest on their bosoms.’

And then, 20 years later, I remembered the poem when visiting Wistman’s Wood, an ancient patch of oak woodland on Dartmoor, and wrote this in my diary.

25 October 1996
‘[Wistman’s] wood was beautiful. The oaks were indeed small old and decrepit and covered in moss and lichens some of which was hanging down and reminded me of the Longfellow poem Evangeline. The clinging mist and rain added to the atmosphere making it seem, if anything, that much more of an ancient place. We clambered around the moss-covered boulders through which the trees had been growing for so many years and inspected the different trees, admiring the patterns of the gnarled and partly dead branches and the various flora they supported, not least good strong ferns growing among the lichen and moss.’

The Andy Warhol Diaries

Today marks 30 years since the death of the American pop artist Andy Warhol. A huge celebrity in his own lifetime, his fame seems to have continued unabated, several of his paintings having sold in the 21st century for around the $100m mark. Not a prolific writer, Warhol did produce a few best-selling books, although most of them were in collaboration with his friend Pat Hackett. Indeed, The Andy Warhol Diaries is a compilation of the typed-up daily conversations she had with Warhol over a ten year period.

Andrew Warhola was born Pittsburgh in 1928, the youngest child of working class immigrants from a village in the Carpathian Mountains(in what is now part of the Slovak Republic). He was sickly youth, which left him with hypochondriac tendencies. On leaving school, he studied commercial art at the Carnegie Institute of Technology. On finishing, in 1949, he moved to New York City, changed his name to Warhol, and worked as a commercial artist for magazines as well as at designing advertising and window displays. He gained some attention for his whimsical ink drawings of shoe advertisements, and he was one of the first to adopt the silk screen print-making process for artworks.

By the late 1950s, he was exhibiting in New York galleries, but 1962 saw his first solo exhibition of pop art at the Stable Gallery. It included some now very famous works, the Marilyn Diptych, 100 Soup Cans, 100 Coke Bottles, and 100 Dollar Bills. The same year saw Warhol open a New York studio, referred to as the Silver Factory, and later simple as The Factory, employing various assistants, and it also saw his first exhibition on the West Coast, in Los Angeles. Around this time, Warhol began experimenting with film, and, in 1963, he produced Sleep, an ‘anti-film’ with over five hours footage of his close friend, John Giorno, sleeping. Hundreds of art films were to follow over the next ten years. In 1967, he produced his first commercial book, Andy Warhol’s Index, and a couple of years later, with John Wilcock, he launched the magazine Interview.

When a radical feminist and hanger-on, Valerie Solanas, tried to murder Warhol in 1968, it marked the end of a period which had seen The Factory harbour an unconventional, alternative scene. Thereafter, Warhol himself sought more upmarket society - often finding himself in the company of other celebrities. His work in the 1970s shifted towards earning high fees for society portraits, leading some critics to argue he was prostituting his talent, and that his art was in decline. However, in 1973, Warhol did also produce his famous Mao series as a comment on President Richard Nixon’s visit to China. In 1979, Warhol was involved with the founding of the New York Academy of Art. In the 1980s, he returned to painting and collaborated with younger artists earning him renewed critical attention. He died on 22 February 1987 after suffering post-surgery complications - see a New York Times story on the health problems that led up to his death.

The Art Story website sums up Warhol’s legacy as follows: ‘[He] was one of the most influential artists of the second half of the 20th century, creating some of the most recognizable images ever produced. Challenging the idealist visions and personal emotions conveyed by abstraction, Warhol embraced popular culture and commercial processes to produce work that appealed to the general public. He was one of the founding fathers of the Pop art movement, expanding the ideas of Duchamp by challenging the very definition of art. His artistic risks and constant experimentation with subjects and media made him a pioneer in almost all forms of visual art. His unconventional sense of style and his celebrity entourage helped him reach the mega-star status to which he aspired.’ More detailed information is also readily available from The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Wikipedia, The Carpathian Connection, The New Yorker, or The New York Review of Books.

Warhol was not a diarist, but, from 1976 until the year of his death, he chatted, usually every weekday morning over the telephone, to his friend Pat Hackett who would then ‘sit at the typewriter and get it all down on paper’. Prior to 1976, Hackett had kept a ‘sketchy Factory log’ listing business visitors, key events, expenses and so on, often by talking to different individuals, and she was also collaborating with Warhol on his memoir: Popism - The Warhol Sixties. However, when Hackett wanted to quit The Factory, Warhol asked if she would continue to keep the log.

Hackett explains: ‘I told him that I didn’t want to have to continue calling everyone at the office every day to find out what had happened the day before - that if I were going to do that I might as well still be working there. So we agreed that from then on, the daily accounts would come from Andy himself. At this point the log became Andy’s own personal narrative. In the fall of 1976 Andy and I established a weekday morning routine of talking to each other on the phone. Ostensibly still for the purpose of getting down on record everything he had done and every place he had gone the day and night before and logging the cash business expenses he had incurred in the process, this account of daily activity came to have the larger function of letting Andy examine life. In a word, it was a diary.’

Two years after his death, in 1989, Warner Books published The Andy Warhol Diaries as edited by Pat Hackett. In her introduction (from which the above quotes also come) Hackett explains that she distilled the original length of the diaries, some 20,000 pages, down into one volume with what ‘I feel is the best material and the most representative of Andy’. It was republished as a Penguin Classic in 2010. A Guardian review of the latter starts: ‘The 90s bestseller that no one admitted having read, Andy Warhol’s diaries have long been the definition of a guilty pleasure, famed for their celebrity anecdotes, their triviality, their lack of engagement with world events. From 1976 to 1987, Andy tells us of parties attended, champagne drunk, cabs taken - and dollars spent. He hangs out with “everybody”: Bianca Jagger (“God, she’s dumb”), Jackie O (“thinks she’s so grand she doesn't even owe it to the public to have another great marriage to somebody big”), Yoko (“We dialed F-U-C-K-Y-O-U and L-O-V-E-Y-O-U to see what happened, we had so much fun”) and “Princess Marina of I guess Greece”.’

More recently, in 2014, it was republished in the US, by Twelve (see Amazon), on the 25th anniversary of the original edition. An article on the Christie’s website about the latest reissue draws on a rare recent interview with Hackett. ‘The diaries,’ she says, ‘were cathartic for Warhol. Towards the end of his life, she asked him, “Have you ever thought about talking to a psychiatrist?” He said, “I don’t need one. I have you.” And Hackett recalls: ‘Everybody was reading [the diaries] like mad largely because we made a calculated decision not [to] publish an index, [. . .] A lot of people at the time were extremely upset. But [Studio 54 co-owner] Steve Rubell did something great. He went on TV and said, “We’re all going crazy because of what Andy said about us in the Diaries but nobody can do anything because it’s all true!” ’ Here are several extracts from the Penguin Classics edition.

19 December 1979
‘The ABC 20/20 camera crew was coming to the office to film. I worked until 7:30. Then at home I glued myself together. Bob called and said he was exhausted but he really wanted to go to the Alice Mason dinner, so he picked me up and we walked to 72nd Street and Lexington. I was next to Norris Church Mailer. I told her we were still interested in doing something with her for Interview but she said she’d put on weight and that she really liked eating better than staying thin for modeling. Then we got a cab to El Morocco, Norris and Norman and Bob and me (cab $5). It was a party for Margaux Hemingway’s engagement. I ran into Jamie Blandford there and had a fight with him, I don’t know why, I just always do, I hope I didn’t (laughs) offend him. And Mimi Trujillo was there. She was married to the son of that dictator and she’s a fashion designer. Victor sees her stuff then tells Halston about it - I mean, she does stuff like Halston, but she does it sort of first.

Millie and Bill Kaiserman were there. I introduced Norris to them, but I think I did it in a strange way, I guess I said, “This is Norris Church, she wants free clothes.” But they should have good-looking people walking around in their clothes for free. There were lots of funny young people, El Morocco’s back on its way again.’

11 February 1980, Zurich
‘Slept late and then Thomas Ammann woke me up to do a portrait. A beautiful wife with a fat husband. I said she didn’t need makeup. She was easy to do because she was a raving beauty. Her husband tells her she’s ugly - Thomas says that’s how Swiss people treat their wives because they never want them to get too secure. We gave them a book and an Interview and we sent out the film. It’s so hard to find anything but SX-70 film here, they’re phasing the other out. We bought English papers which I paid for ($5).

We had lunch downstairs in the restaurant with Loulou de la Falaise Klossowski and her husband Thadée and Thomas. We signed for it. The food was good. The place was so beautiful with a view of the lake and the mountains. We were the only people there and the sun was beating through the window on our backs. It’d been hailing in the morning. The weather has been so strange. Loulou told us that YSL really was such a genius that he just can’t take it, he has to take a million pills and the whole office gets so depressed when he’s depressed except for her. She said she acts happy no matter what. That’s why she gets sick, because she’s always trying to act happy and it’s really a lot of stress on her liver. She hasn’t had a drink in a year and a quarter but she doesn’t think cocaine is bad. I do, though. We talked about her stepfather, John McKendry. She said he had so many boyfriends. His idea of marrying Maxime was fantasizing that her son Alexis was going to live at home with them and that he could have an affair with him. But the son immediately got married and moved to Wales. Then he envisioned Loulou being there bringing home pretty boys every minute that he could fuck. And actually he did steal her boys.

Loulou said John McKendry was actually killing himself slowly because he’d always fantasized how great and romantic and wonderful and literary the aristocracy must be. Then when he met them, and married a countess - her mother - and got to meet Jackie O. and people like that every day through his job at the Met, he realized they were just normal dumb people like everybody else. There was nothing left for him to live for. Of course I think that Maxime just drove him crazy. I couldn’t say that to Loulou, though. Then we took a cab downtown ($10.50).’

19 February 1980
‘I got up before 9:00 to watch the Today Show and try to figure out why Gene Shalit hasn’t used the thing he did on me. He’ll use it after I die, he’ll say, “I spoke with Andy Warhol in 1980 and here is that clip.” I must be a really terrible guest. I mean, I must be too weird for TV because it’s always the same thing - they never know what to do with it. Well, the 20/20 thing that Karen Lerner shot during the Exposures tour is supposed to be on next week. The twenty-eighth.

We had office pizza lunch ($5).

Oh, and this guy from New York called about the first part of Popism that they’re running on the cover. Wouldn’t it be great if the book was a big hit and we didn’t have to work to promote it?

Ron Feldman came down and we looked at the Ten Jews. It’s really such a good idea to do that, they’re going to sell. And all the Germans want portraits. Maybe because we have a good person selling there, Hans Mayer. How come we don’t get many American portraits?

And I forgot to say that when I was walking along University Place a kid stuck his head out of a car window and said, “Aren’t boys cuter in cars?” ’

1 April 1980
‘Up at 10:00, interview with Expresso again. Lucio picked us up and took us to the gallery because we had a press conference with 400 people. Joseph Beuys loves the press now because he’s running for president of Germany under the Free Sky Party and with me he can get more coverage - no, it’s the Green Party, that’s it. Then São Schlumberger arrived and we invited her to lunch at this waterfront place. Then we were picked up for the opening and there were at least 3,000 or 4,000 people there, you couldn’t get in, it was horrible, and finally we slipped away, they were giving us a party at a place called something like City Hall, a drag nightclub. Finally after three hours of waiting, this drag queen with hair on his chest came in and I was talking so she told me to shut up, she did a couple of numbers and then all of a sudden pushed me aside and stormed out and we didn’t understand what had happened, but somebody said she was too emotional because she was singing for me, she gets that way. But it was too boring. Fred got insulted because the TV lights were shining on us too long, and told Lucio off, that it was the most ridiculous evening, and that Lucio had wasted our time because that kind of evening wouldn’t sell pictures, and that he was just using us to get into show business. We didn’t get into bed till about 4:00.’

2 December 1980
‘Richard Weisman called and invited me to the party for the famous Hollywood photographer George Hurrell at Doubles. Got there and Douglas Fairbanks, Jr. was coming out, and I asked him why he was leaving and he said because he’d stood in front of his photograph and had his picture taken by the press so then it was time to leave.

The big stars there were Lillian Gish, Maureen Stapleton. Tammy Grimes. I met Mr. Hurrell and he’s really strong and straight and Paul Morrissey had said that he was about to pop off any minute, but there he was and he knew all about me and he raved and he was sweet and I asked him if I could take a picture and he said sure.

Maureen O’Sullivan was next to me and she was saying. “Oh, I’ve just been throwing out so many Hurrells and Clarence Bulls, we’ve been moving.” I asked her what it was like to get so close to Johnny Weissmuller’s body and she said it was okay but that she only was interested in intellectuals, my dear. I said, ‘So is Mia really going to marry Woody Allen?’ And she said that she really didn’t know, and then I told her that I was only kidding, that I didn’t care. And I met Teresa Wnght and she looked good.’

24 December 1980
Cabbed up to Jerry and Mick’s apartment for Chnstmas lunch. Jerry’s pregnant sister Cyndy just married Robin Lehman, and so everybody was happy. Jerry’s mother was there. Jerry had an apron on that when you unzippered it a big cock came out, so I was taking funny pictures of that, her cooking a turkey with a cock in her hand.

Earl McGrath was there, and Ahmet Ertegun stopped by for a second. The food was ready at 5:00 but it was supposed to have been ready at 2:00. Everything was great, though, it was the best turkey and everything was fresh, the peas and everything, so I porked it up.

The limo came at 6:30 to take us out to the Guests’. We picked up Barbara Allen who was wearing a green taffeta YSL and then we went to the ‘hem of Harlem’ - that’s what Jerry Zipkin calls his neighborhood - and picked up Jerry and he had Nelson Seabra with him. It was a sit down dinner and the turkey was terrible. It was like canned stuff, and the cranberry sauce was canned and there were eighteen different desserts but none of them were good. I was next to ‘Suzy’ and Bob was next to Liz Smith and Iris Love, and Iris had a kilt on and let me feel if she was wearing underpants. Cornelia looked beautiful.

Then I had to get back to Halston’s in town and it had suddenly dropped from forty degrees to minus fifteen. Halston gave me a green beaded dress to hang in my closet. It’s like a $5,000 dress. It’s his art. But it’s not really my favorite green although it’s a nice green. I would rather have had a red one.

I felt another cold coming on and I wanted to go home to bed, but since the house was empty I didn’t. I gave Halston a chocolate box of art candy that I made, not too great, and a Diamond painting, and I gave Victor a Shoe one. I got home about 1:30 and opened my packages. Reinhold gave me a little TV set, a 2” x 2” Sony Trinitron.’

6 February 1983
‘Went to church. Worked some more on drawings. Went to bed early. The phone didn’t ring all day.’

11 February 1983
‘The snow hadn’t started at the beginning of the day and I just didn’t believe it would, the weather reports are always wrong. But by 12:30 it’d started (cabs $5, $3, phone$.50).

Interview was having a screening of The Lords of Discipline at Paramount and I was afraid we wouldn’t be able to get around so I hired a limousine. And then I went into Interview and invited some of the kids to ride up with me, and then Fred screamed at me that 1 had destroyed the office protocol. I keep forgetting that at Interview they have all these levels of who gets invited to what with who, based on how important your title is. Like a regular office. And I didn’t invite Robert Hayes to ride up with me because he was with his sister and his boyfriend Cisco, and Cisco has AIDS so I didn’t want to be that close to him.

People in the streets were laughing and throwing snow.

The movie was great, I enjoyed it so much, it’s so decadent. There are no girls in it, and all these boys fighting. Mitchell Lichtenstein looks great, just like his father, Roy, twenty years ago, and I do think David Keith is going to be the new John Wayne.’

17 February 1987 [the last entry]
‘In the morning I was preparing myself for my appearance in the fashion show Benjamin coordinated at the Tunnel. They’d sent the clothes over and I look like Liberace in them. Should I just go all the way and be the new Liberace? Snakeskin and rabbit fur. Julian Schnabel (laughs) would be so impressed with these clothes he would start wearing them

Oh, and Brigid is at the English fat farm and she’s going to be fired when she gets back. I’ll give her a pink slip. l’ll give her dogs pink slips - Fame and Fortune will be fired!

Vincent was going to tape the fashion show and he called to say a car would pick me up at the office at 2:00. Ken came and we went downtown (cab $6). Worked hard at the office.

Then went over to the Tunnel and they gave us the best dressing room, but still it was absolutely freezing. I had all my makeup with me. Miles Davis was there and he has such delicate fingers. They’re the same length as mine but half the width. I’d gone with Jean Michel last year to see his show at the Beacon, and I’d met him in the sixties at that store on Christopher Street, Hernando’s, where we used to go get leather pants. I reminded him that I’d met him there and he said he remembered. Miles is a clotheshorse. And we made a deal that we’d trade ten minutes of him playing music for me, for me doing his portrait. He gave me his address and a drawing - he draws while he gets his hair done. His hairdresser does the hair weaving, the extensions.

They did a $5,000 custom outfit for Miles with gold musical notes on it and everything, and they didn’t do a thing for me, they were so mean. They could’ve made me a gold palette or something. So 1 looked like the poor stepchild, and in the end they even (laughs) told me I walked too slow.

And the clothes in the show really stank. Alligator, fur, and lace. And I really worked my ass off. The Japanese crew was more interested in me than in Miles. They were doing the show again at 10:00 but I didn’t have to do the second one, I was only in the one that was for the press. And then afterwards Vincent had a taxi come.

When I got home I called Fred and explained that I was just too exhausted to go to the Fendi dinner, so when he called them to say I wouldn’t be coming with him and that he’d bring a girl instead, they said don’t bother, that they didn’t want him without me.

Got into bed and Wilfredo called and then Sam called and then I fell asleep. But I woke up at 6:30 and I couldn’t get back to sleep, so I took some Valium and a Seconal and two aspirin, and I was sleeping so heavily that I didn’t wake up when PH called at nine o’clock. And when I didn’t answer she got scared because that had never happened before, so she called on the other line and Aurora answered in the kitchen, and PH made her come up to my bedroom to shake me but I wish she’d just let me sleep.’

The Diary Junction