See slavery as it is

‘People tell me just go South once, & see Slavery as it is, & then you will talk very differently. I can assure all such, that contact with Slavery has not a tendency to make me hate it less, no, no, the ruinous effect of the institution, upon the white man alone, causes me to hate it.’ This is Susan B. Anthony - the famous American woman’s rights campaigner and social reformer, born 200 year ago today - writing in a diary she kept for much of her life. Although the diaries remain unpublished, the Library of Congress, which holds many of the manuscripts, has made digital copies of every page freely available online.

Anthony was born on 15 February 1820 in Adams, Massachusetts. Her father was a Quaker, abolitionist and temperance advocate, while her mother was a Methodist. In 1826, the family moved to Battenville, New York, where her father managed a large cotton mill. However, in 1837, with the depression, he went bankrupt, losing the Battenville house. In 1839, Anthony took a position in a Quaker seminary in New Rochelle, New York; and from 1846 to 1849 she taught at a female academy in upstate New York. Subsequently, she re-settled in the family home, now near Rochester, New York. There she met many leading abolitionists, as well as those campaigning for temperance. In 1851, she met Elizabeth Stanton, a leading women’s rights leader at the time, and the following year she was inspired by a speech given by Lucy Stone at the 1852 Syracuse Convention. From there on, she became a strenuous campaigner for women’s property rights and women’s suffrage; her work though made her a target for public and media hostility. In 1856, she became an agent for the American Anti-Slavery Society,

After the Civil War, Anthony campaigned (unsuccessfully) to have the language of the Fourteenth Amendment altered to allow for woman as well as African American suffrage; and in 1866 she became involved with the newly formed American Equal Rights Association. Two years later, she and Stanton began publishing The Revolution, a weekly American women’s rights newspaper. Although its circulation never exceeded 3,000, its influence on women’s rights is considered to have been huge, indeed the paper went on to serve as the official voice of the National Woman Suffrage Association, set up by Stanton and Anthony in 1869. However, the following year the paper went into  debt, and Anthony embarked on a series of lectures to raise funds. Through the 1870s and 1880s, she travelled much, often with Stanton, in support of efforts in various states towards the franchise for women. In 1890, rival suffrage movements merged into the National American Woman Suffrage Association with Anthony as president. By this time, she had become something of a national heroine, attending major conventions and expositions both at home and in Europe. She died in 1906. Further information is available online from Wikipedia, Encyclopaedia Britannica, National Women’s History Museum, the National Susan B. Anthony Museum, or the National Park Service.

According to the Library of Congress (LoC), its Susan B. Anthony archive contains 25 volumes of diaries. ‘[These] span the period from 1865 to 1906 with some gaps and omissions. For the most part, the diaries contain brief notations of Anthony’s activities and a financial record kept in the back of each volume. Other topics noted in the diaries include family matters, African-American and woman suffrage, lecture tours, and important events of the day, such as President Abraham Lincoln’s assassination.’ All of these have been digitised and made available on the LoC website. A few of the journals can also be viewed online at the Lewis & Clark Digital Collections with a summary of their content. However, as far as I can tell, none of the journals have been transcribed or published. A few entries from the journals can be found here (concerning the famous incident in 1872 when she cast a vote in the federal election). Otherwise, some extracts can also be read in the 1997 tome: The Selected Papers of Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony, Volume I - In the school of anti-slavery, 1840 to 1866, edited by Ann D. Gordon (see Googlebooks).

The following extracts have been taken from The Selected Papers. According to the editor, these extracts (and others) were sourced in a ‘notebook that served as her diary in 1854 and her copybook thereafter’. However, this particular notebook does not appear among the manuscripts held (and digitised) by the Library of Congress. It is, however, part of another Anthony archive held at Harvard Library.

(NB: The printed text in The Selected Papers comes with punctuation and spelling discrepancies etc. as found in the original. Mostly, I have left these as found, but I have made a few very minor punctuation changes - i.e. replacing dashes with full stops in some places.)

November 1853
‘During the three weeks following the National Woman’s Rights Convention held at Cleveland, Oct. 5, 6 & 7th 1853, I travelled through the Southern tier of Counties in N.Y. State, & held meetings in some eight or ten different villages. I talked upon the subject of Temperance.

One year previous to this Miss Emily Clark of LeRoy N.Y. had passed over the same ground, Lecturing upon the same subject, & had aided the Ladies of several of the villages in forming Womens Temperance Societies. In every place, except Elmira, those societies had never existed after the evening of their beginning. The reason given, by very nearly all the ladies with whom I conversed, for the failure of their societies, was womans want of time & money to meet their demands. Their Temperance meetings could be made interesting & useful to their members, or others, unless only by securing the attendance of persons who could speak to the edification of the People. Those of their own number who possessed ability to prepare essays, found they had not the command of the leisure hours necessary for their preparation. And to secure the attendance of speakers & Lecturers from abroad, required money & money they possessed not. Thus as I passed from town to town was I made to feel the great evil of womans entire dependency upon man, for the necessary means to aid on any & every reform movement. Though I had long admitted the wrongs I never, until this time, so fully took in the grand idea of pecuniary & personal independence

It matters not how overflowing with benevolence toward suffering humanity may be the heart of woman, it avails nothing so long as she possesses not the power to act in accordance with those prompting. Woman must have a purse of her own, & how can this be, so long as the wife is denied the right to her individual & joint earnings. Reflections like these, caused me to see & really feel that there was no true freedom for woman without the possession of all her property rights, & that these rights could be obtained through legislation only, & if so, the sooner the demand was made of the Legislature, the sooner would we be likely to obtain them. This demand must be made by Petitions to the Legislature, &. that too at its very next session. How could the work be started, why, by first holding a Convention & adopting some plan of united action.

On my return to Rochester on the A.M. of Nov. 8th I dined at W. R. Hallowell’s & then went directly to Mr. Channing, told of the work I had planned, he answered Capital. Capital. & forth.’
 
21 March 1854
[Washington] Called on Mrs. Melvin a friend of Mrs. Rose, a member of the M.E. Church South. We talked on the Slavery question, she called the relation between master & slave, a Patriarchial one, said Slavery is a humane institution. My blood chilled in my veins at the thought of a professed Christian, thus so entirely losing sight of the great principle of love, the Golden Rule.

Called at Gerritt Smith’s about two Oclock, Mrs. Smith alone, had a very pleasant chat with her, on the right of every individual to his own belief.

To day the Nebraska Bill in the House was referred to the Com. on the Whole by a vote of 110 to 65, thought to be virtually, death to the Bill.

Miss Miner of the Colored Girls School called on us after dinner a very interesting enthusiastic nature, expressed herself interested in the Woman’s Rights question. 

Mrs. Rose spoke in Carusis Saloon to a small audience, not exceeding 100, 40 tickets only were sold, thus $10 was the amount of receipts.

The smallness of the audience was attributable to the fact that the subject has never been agitated here, Lucy Stone spoke last January to a small audience, had a rainy night. Mrs. R’s subject the Educational & Social Rights of Woman.’

27 March 1854
‘Weather moderated but still cold. After walking about two miles, visiting five printing offices the Bill Printer, & Bill Poster, I returned & with Mrs. R. visited the Patent Office, the most remarkable curiosities there were the sword & Cane, the Coat, vest, & breeches of Gen. Washington worn at the time he resigned his Commission, his Camp Chest - with its appertenances - Tea Pot, Coffee Urn, Pepper dish. Salt - tea chest - Grid Iron, Tin Kettles for cooking &, also the writing desk used by him during all his Campaigns - there too was a bit of the old Tent cloth - ragged & dirty.

From the Patent Office we went to the Treasury department - thence to the State departments, here we were shown the identical letter Benedict Arnold, to Major Andre found in the pocket of Andre - signed Augustus & written as though Andre were a merchant. Saw also the Original Constitution of the United States with the signatures of the delegates from the 13 States - it was beautifully penned on Parchment one two feet square, tied together with a deep blue ribbon - at the Pattent Office saw also the original Declaration of Independence, many of the signatures were nearly obliterated, on account of having been written with poor ink.

From State Departments we went to the Presidents House took a peep into the East Room, splendidly furnished eight large gilt mirrors, in front of the White house in a beautiful park, is a very fine bronze Statue of Gen. Jackson, on horse back - mounted on a white marble pedestal - then called at Mr. Aker’s office to see the Bust of Mrs. Davis, a very fine one indeed. After dinner walked on to Capitol Hill & called on Anne Royal, a woman 85 years of age. She is indeed as Mrs. R. says, the Living Curiosity of Washington - was brought up by the Indians, married a Captain of the Army, he died, & she has printed a paper called the Huntress for the past 20 years. She has a fine, intellectual head. She lives in a small house, has two little boys whom she is educating, one boy she has instructed in Greek & Latin & Geometry. Said to me no one can know how to reason without studying Geometry learning to say Therefore, Wherefore & Because. We each of us subscribed for the Huntress, she gave us each two books, written by her many years ago. She is the most filthy specimen of humanity I ever beheld, her fingers look like birds claws, in color & attennuity, they shone as if glazed.

A great black New Foundland dog, old Cat & kittens sat at her feet & Mrs. R. says eight years ago she had in addition to these 2 Guinea hens & two little pigs running about the floor. She was writing her editorial for this weeks paper

Said I to her what a wonderful woman you are, she answered me, “I know it.” ’

31 March 1854
‘Baltimore. Had a small meeting last night. The landlord agreed to see me started from Alexandria in time to connect with the 8 Oclock Train from Washington but he did not, seemed to be perfectly indifferent to my request. There is no promptness no order, no anything about these southerners. I have had Pro Slavery People tell me just go South once, & see Slavery as it is, & then you will talk very differently. I can assure all such, that contact with Slavery has not a tendency to make me hate it less, no, no, the ruinous effect of the institution, upon the white man alone, causes me to hate it.

Arrived at Washington about 9 Oclock. Called on Mrs. Davis. The Globe of 29th March commented on Mrs. Rose Lecture on the Nebraska Question as deduced from Human Rights very favorably, but misrepresented her on remark.

I came on to Baltimore on the 3 1/2 P.M., called on Dr. J. E. Snodgrass firstly & then went in search of a private hoarding house, finally decided to take rooms at Mrs. Waters, 49 Hannover st.! Every thing is plain but so far seems cleanly, learned from the Chambermaid Sarah, that she & four others of the [blank] Servants were Slaves. It is perfectly astonishing to see what an array of Servants there is about every establishment, three northern girls, with the engineering of a northern hoarding house keeper would do all the work of one Dozzen of these men, women &: children, whether Slaves or free. Such is the baneful effects of Slavery upon labor. The free blacks who receive wages, expect to do no more work than do the Slaves, Slave labor is the Standard - & it need but a glance at southern life, to enable an Abolitionist to understand, why it is that the northern man is a more exacting Slave master than is a southern one - he requires of the Slave an amount of labor equal to that he has been accustomed to get from the well paid northern free laborer. Vain requisition that.’

6 April 1854
‘I lectured this evening, by invitation from the Marion Temperance Society of Baltimore, had a full house. The meeting was called to order by the President of the Society & opened by prayer by an old Methodist man, who made the stereotye prayer of Stephen S. Foster’s Slave holder. “O Lord we thank thee, that our lives have been cast in places & that we live in a land where every man can sit under his own vine & fig tree, & none dare to molest or make him afraid” Oh, how did my blood boil within me, & then to go on with my lecture & not protest against a mans telling the Lord such terrible falsehoods. Mrs Rose was invited to speak after I had finished, she did so & alluded to the necessity of substituting healthful amusements in the place of alcoholic stimulus.
 
Several gentlemen desired me to speak again on Temperance

Received a letter from Lydia Mott, enclosing Mr. Angles report on the Woman’s Rights Petitions. Reported adverse, but presented a Bill giving to married women, in case the husband does not provide for the family, the right to their own earnings, also requiring the written consent of the mother, to apprentice or will away a child.’

Klemperer collecting life

Today, it is 60 years since the death of Victor Klemperer, author of one of the most famous diaries to have documented the horrors of the Nazi regime. The London Review of Books said his diaries will never be forgotten, and Der Speigel suggested they eclipse everything that has ever been written on the era of National Socialism. Der Spiegel also recalled that Klemperer said of his diary-writing habit that he was ‘collecting life’.

Born in Poland in 1881, Klemperer was the eighth child of a rabbi, but later converted to Christianity. One of his brothers went on to be a surgeon to Lenin, and a cousin was the famous composer Otto. Klemperer studied at various universities in Germany, Switzerland and France, and also worked as a journalist for a while. Having volunteered during the First World War, he was decorated with the Iron Cross.

After the war, Klemperer was appointed to the Chair of Romance studies at Dresden’s Technical University. In 1935, though, the Nazis took the job away from him, confiscated his house, sent him to a home for Jews, and obliged him to work as a labourer. Because his wife, Eva, was not a Jew, and because she stayed with him, Klemperer avoided deportation for most of the war. In 1945, though, he was due to be deported, but used the confusion created by Allied bombings to escape.

Klemperer went on to become a significant post-war cultural figure in East Germany, lecturing at the universities of Greifswald, Berlin and Halle, and publishing an important analysis of the language used by the Third Reich. He also became a delegate of the Cultural Union in the GDR parliament in 1950. He died on 11 February 1960. Further biographical information is available from Wikipedia.

However, it is for his diaries that Klemperer is best remembered today. First published in Germany in 1995, they became something of a literary sensation. English translations by Martin Chalmers were published by Weidenfeld and Nicolson (part of Orion) between 1998 and 2003 in three volumes: I Will Bear Witness (1933-1941), To The Bitter End (1942-1945) and The Lesser Evil (1945-1959). Last year (2019), the publisher De Gruyter launched Klemperer Online, a digital edition of the complete and unabridged diaries as transcripts and facsimiles of the handwritten pages.

The German magazine Der Spiegel offers this analysis of the diaries: ‘Klemperer trusted his thoughts and feelings to his diary. “Collecting life”, he called it. Already at the age of 16, Klemperer began keeping a diary, and he wrote till just before his death. His entries began in the days of Kaiser Wilhelm II, continued during the turbulent times of the Weimar Republic and the Third Reich, and conclude in post-War communist East Germany. During the Third Reich era and perhaps even before, Klemperer’s entries were, in a way, part of a survival strategy. At the time, Klemperer lived between humiliation, terror, and danger and he endured all of it. The reason was quite simple: Klemperer wanted to record his gruesome experiences of everyday life for those after him. In fact, he felt obligated to write. In his diary, Klemperer adopted the view of a distant observer even though the catastrophe affected him directly. The style of his writing was like a game of ping-pong, switching back and forth between inside and outside views on the things going on around him. Klemperer was seen as a Jew, but he didn’t feel like one. He wanted to be German, but the Nazis made him “un-German”.

And that makes Klemperer’s records unique.

Decades after his death, Klemperer’s diaries emerged as mainstays on bestseller lists, touching thousands of readers, shocking and gripping them. Author Martin Walser once said: “I know of no other means of communication that can make the reality of the Nazi dictatorship more comprehensible than Klemperer’s prose. Nowhere else than in these diaries have I been able to experience and see first-hand what type of criminals the leaders and functionaries of the time were. It’s incredible how this type of crime could legally establish itself.” In his writing, Klemperer placed expectations on himself as well, aspiring to “become a writer of contemporary cultural history”. Commenting on that issue in the weekly Die Zeit newspaper, Volker Ulrich wrote: “There’s no doubt: He became just that. The diaries covering 1933 to 1945 - which merge the most detailed observation skills, linguistic mastership, educational scepticism, and human grandeur - eclipse everything that has ever been written on the era of National Socialism.” ’

The London Review of Books argues that Klemperer’s diary will never be forgotten: ‘This record achieves two things. It tells us what was experienced by German Jews; Klemperer’s experience was typical in every way except its outcome - he survived. His vivid accounts of many others who didn’t, his careful record of what he overheard in the street or was told by others, his account of his own human diminishment as he was progressively stripped of every right and freedom, his gradual awareness of the enormity of what was happening to Europe’s Jews, his refusal to omit any gesture of courage or generosity, his discovery that he was a Jew after all, his care to notice the deprivations of war as food, fuel and clothing were at first rationed and then disappeared altogether: these observations preserve what can so easily be lost - a sense of what happened. For this alone his book will never be forgotten.’

Further reviews can be read at The Atlantic and The Guardian. Some pages from Klemperer’s I Will Bear Witness can be read freely online at Googlebooks. Here are two extracts.

10 March 1933
‘30th January: Hitler Chancellor. What, up to election Sunday on 5th March, I called terror, was a mild prelude. Now the business of 1918 is being exactly repeated, only under a different sign, under the swastika. Again it’s astounding how easily everything collapses. What has happened to Bavaria, what has happened to the Reichsbanner etc. etc.? Eight days before the election the clumsy business of the Reichstag fire - I cannot imagine that anyone really believes in Communist perpetrators instead of paid [Nazi] work. Then the wild prohibitions and acts of violence. And on top of that the never-ending propaganda in the street, on the radio etc. On Saturday, the 4th, I heard a part of Hitler’s speech from Konigsberg. The front of a hotel at the railway station, illuminated, a torchlight procession in front of it, torch-bearers and swastika flag-bearers on the balconies and loudspeakers. I understood only occasional words. But the tone! The unctuous bawling, truly bawling, of a priest. On the Sunday I voted for the Democrats, Eva for the Zentrum. In the evening around nine with the Blumenfelds to the Dembers. As a joke, because I entertained hopes of Bavaria, I wore my Bavarian Service Cross. Then the tremendous election victory of the National Socialists. Their vote doubled in Bavaria. The Horst Wessel Song between the announcements. An indignant denial, no harm will come to loyal Jews. Directly afterwards the Central Association of Jewish Citizens in Thuringia is banned because it had criticised the government in ‘Talmudic fashion’ and disparaged it. Since then day after day commissioners appointed, provincial governments trampled underfoot, flags raised, buildings taken over, people shot, newspapers banned, etc. etc. Yesterday, the dramaturg Karl Wollf dismissed ‘by order of the Nazi Party’ - not even in the name of the government - today the whole Saxon cabinet etc. etc. A complete revolution and party dictatorship. And all opposing forces as if vanished from the face of the earth. It is this utter collapse of a power only recently present, no, its complete disappearance (just as in 1918) which I find so staggering. Que sais-je? On Monday evening at Frau Schaps with the Gerstles. No one dares say anything any more, everyone is afraid [...] Gerstle was hobbling on crutches, he broke a leg skiing in the Alps. His wife drove her car and took us part of the way home.

How long will I keep my post?

On top of the political pressure the misery of the constant pain in my left arm, the constant thinking about death. And the distressing and always unsuccessful efforts to obtain building money. And the hours of lighting stoves, washing up, keeping house. And the constant sitting at home. And not being able to work, to think.

After cursory reading I wrote a bad newspaper piece, ‘The New Spain’, after previously writing a bad article for Dante in Paris, ‘The Idea of Latinity in Germany’. Now I want to - no, I must return to the nightmare of the ‘Image of France’. I want to force myself to write now and catch up on the missing reading chapter by chapter.

I ordered a lot of books for my department, since it turned out there was still 100M left in my budget: Spain, 18th-century France and cultural history. On Tuesday I have to give a primary-school teaching candidate the now required unseen translation into French. I am so out of practice myself that I would only make a very poor translation. [...]’

27 November 1938
‘On the morning of the 11th two policemen accompanied by a ‘resident of Dölzschen’. Did I have any weapons? Certainly my sabre, perhaps even my bayonet as a war memento, but I wouldn’t know where. We have to help you find it. The house was searched for hours. At the beginning Eva made the mistake of quite innocently telling one of the policemen he should not go through the clean linen cupboard without washing his hands. The man, considerably affronted, could hardly be calmed down. A second, younger policeman was more friendly, the civilian was the worst. Pigsty etc.. We said we had been without domestic help for months, many things were dusty and still unpacked. They rummaged through everything, chests and wooden constructions Eva had made were broken open with an axe. The sabre was found in a suitcase in the attic, the bayonet was not found. Among the books they found a copy of the Sozialistische Monatshefte (Socialist Monthly Magazine - an SPD theoretical journal) [. . .] this was also confiscated. At one point when Eva wanted to fetch one of her tools, the young policeman ran after her; the older one called out: You are making us suspicious, you are making your situation worse. At about one o’clock the civilian and the older policeman left the house, the young one remained and took a statement. He was good-natured and courteous, I had the feeling he himself found the thing embarrassing. In addition he complained about an upset stomach and we offered him a schnapps, which he declined. Then the three of them appeared to hold a conference in the garden. The young policeman returned: You must dress and come to the court building at Münchner Platz with me. There’s nothing to fear, you will probably(!) be back 
by evening. I asked whether I was now under arrest. His reply was good-natured and noncommittal, it was only a war memento after all, I would probably be released right away. I was allowed to shave (with the door half open), I slipped Eva some money, and we made our way down to the tramcar. I was allowed to walk through the park alone while the policeman wheeled his bicycle at a distance behind me. We got on to the platform of the number 16, and got off at Münchner Platz; the policeman kindly covered up the fact that I was being taken into custody. A wing in the court building: Public Prosecutor. A room with clerks and policemen. Sit down. The policeman had to copy the statement. He took me to a room with a typewriter. He led me back to the first room. I sat there apathetically. The policeman said: Perhaps you’ll even be home in time for afternoon coffee. A clerk said: The Public Prosecutor’s Office makes the decision. The policeman disappeared, I continued to sit there apathetically. Then someone called: Take the man to relieve himself, and someone took me to the lavatory. Then: To Room X. There: This is the new committals room! More waiting. After a while a young man with a Party badge appeared, evidently the examining magistrate. You are Professor Klemperer? You can go. But first of all a certificate of discharge has to be made out, otherwise the police in Freital will think you have escaped and arrest you again. He returned immediately, he had telephoned, I could go. At the exit of the wing, by the first room into which I had been led, a clerk rushed towards me: Where do you think you’re going? I said: Home, and calmly stood there. They telephoned, to verify that I had been released. The examining magistrate had also replied to my enquiry, that the matter was not being passed on to the Public Prosecutor. At four o’clock I was on the street again with the curious feeling, free - but for how long? Since then we have both been unceasingly tormented by the question, go or stay? To go too early, to stay too late? To go where we have nothing, to remain in this corruption? We are constantly trying to shed all subjective feelings of disgust, of injured pride, of mood and only weigh up the concrete facts of the situation. In the end we shall literally be able to throw dice for pro and contra. Our first response to events was to think it absolutely necessary to leave and we started making preparations and enquiries. On Sunday, 12th November, the day after my arrest, I wrote urgent SOS letters to Frau Schaps and Georg. The short letter to Georg began: With a heavy heart, in a quite altered situation, pushed right to the edge, no details: Can you stand surety for my wife and myself, can you help the two of us over there for a couple of months? By my own efforts I would surely find some post as a teacher or in an office. I telephoned the Arons - the husband had spoken to me on Bismarckplatz on the day of the Munich Agreement. Herr Aron was not at home, Frau Aron would receive me at eight in the evening. I drove there: a wealthy villa in Bernhardstrasse. I learned that he and very many others with him had been arrested and taken away; at present we still don’t know whether they are in the camp at Weimar or are working on the fortifications in the west as convicts and hostages.’

This article is a revised version of one first published 10 years ago on 11 February 2010.

The mud of Dakar Bay

Alex Comfort, a scientist and the famed author of the sex manual The Joy of Sex, was born a century ago today. In fact, he wrote many books, scientific and political, as well as fiction and poetry; but his very first published work was a diary kept during a six week voyage, with his father, to Senegal and Argentina.

Alexander Comfort was an only child born in London 10 February 1920. He was home educated to begin with and then at Highgate School. Aged around 15, he lost four fingers of his left hand while trying to manufacture fireworks in his garden. He studied medicine at Trinity College, Cambridge, qualifying in 1944. By then, he had married Ruth Harris (with whom he would have one son), and he had already written several works of fiction and poetry. He went to work for London Hospital and later became a lecturer in physiology at the hospital’s medical college. He earned further qualifications at University College (a PhD in 1950 and a DSc in 1963).

Comfort was a conscientious objector during World War II, and he became an active member of the Peace Pledge Union (PPU) and the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament. He wrote many a political pamphlet for Peace News and PPU, and exchanged public letters with George Orwell defending pacifism. In 1961, he was imprisoned for a month, with Bertrand Russell and other leading members of the Committee of 100, for refusing to be bound over not to continue organising protests.

During the 1950 and 1960s, Comfort focused his science work on studying the biology of ageing, and popularised the subject by publishing several books. In the early 1970s, he was highly successful in popularising another subject: The Joy of Sex (1972) brought him international fame, as well as wealth. He divorced his wife soon after it came out, and took up with Jane Henderson, his long-term mistress. The much-admired illustrations in The Joy of Sex were based on photographs taken by the two of them. That same year, they relocated to California, US, where they then married.

Comfort joined the Center for the Study of Democratic Institutions, an unconventional think tank, but he also took up academic appointments at Stanford University (1974-1983), the University of California at Irvine (1976-1978), and at the Neuropsychiatric Institute in Los Angeles (1980-1991). He also worked at Brentwood Veterans’ Hospital in Los Angeles (1978-1981) as a geriatric psychiatrist, and as a consultant at Ventura County Hospital, California (1981-1891). In California, Alex and Jane became involved with a swingers community, the Sandstone Retreat. 

By the mid-1980s, Comfort and his second wife had returned to live mostly in England, though Comfort maintained his professional connections with the US. Jane died in the early 1990s, while Alex suffered several strokes, leaving him wheelchair bound. He died in 2000. Further details are available from Wikipedia, Libcom, The Guardian, The New York Times, The Washington Post, or from a chapter on Comfort in Anarchist Seeds Beneath the Snow by David Goodway (see Googlebooks).

There is no evidence that Comfort was a diarist by nature, but the very first book he published, aged 18, was a journal of a six week voyage he took with his father by ship through the South Atlantic, stopping in Senegal and Argentina.  The Silver River - Being the Diary of a Schoolboy in the South Atlantic, 1936, was published by Chapman & Hall in 1938. Although there are dated entries in the narrative, much of the time they read more like a memoir than a bona fide diary. However, the diary does demonstrate Comfort’s precocious literary ability - he was only 16 at the time of writing it. Here are several extracts.

30 September 1936
‘To-day, the 30th of September, I sacrificed any reputation for sanity which I may have had among my Greek hosts by collecting at some pains all the mud brought up by the anchor and passing it through a fine wire sieve into a tin can. The mud of Dakar Bay is crammed with shells: descriptions of those to be found there were published by the indefatigable naturalist, Adanson, in 1757, and later by a specializing conchologist, Dautzenberg. It is not my place to bore the reader with a catalogue of empty whelk shells, but for such as are interested I have placed at the end of the book a short list of my collection, which adds a few names to Dautzenberg’s careful catalogue. It is perhaps worth a page to put this list on record.

The skipper had filled the larder. He purchased the entire supply of fish existing in Dakar, to the extent of one hundred and forty kilos, and during the coaling all hands sat among the black dust gutting the fish and littering the deck with their intestines, while the cook fried the remains in batter and preserved them in herbs, vinegar and salt. On the first day they were excellent. On the second day they were hard. On the third day they could usefully have been used for building. On subsequent days - and we had fish every day till we passed Ushant - they were unspeakable. I have no idea where the cook can have stowed his fish. They seemed endless, and we who had to eat them were glad of the other additions to our larder which had come on board. There were hibiscus pods - one of the most tasty vegetables I know: there were also the more truly Greek melisdanas or egg-plant (Solanum melongena) which are wholly unlike the French aubergine variety. They are oval, purple fruit, which the Greeks boil, fry in slices, and otherwise maltreat until they produce a mass of orange pulp, brown hides and pertinaceous pips, tasting of unripe tomato and smelling strongly of nightshade, datura, and the other noxious members of the same family. I will stick to the edible hibiscus pod. It surpasses all known greens save spinach. But I have only to hear the name melisdana to smell pickles and hear the water outside and Niko grumbling in the alley-way.’

3 October 1936
‘At six o’clock on the morning of October the 3rd we passed between Tenerife and Gran Canaria We had entered the South Atlantic by the back door and we came out by the front. The skipper had been nervous of the passage: the civil war in Spain had been in progress for some months, and a battle had been fought at the Canary Islands the previous week. But we had no cause to be apprehensive. To our right lay the irregular shape of Gran Canaria, grey and mist-capped, but beginning to assume a gradual oriole of gold as the sun rose behind it. To port was Tenerife, its peak shrouded in a curtain of cloud, and its scoriaceous slopes sinking into a nebulous transparency of scented foliage. Between the two was the strait, blue and rippling, with islands and towers of mist which passed and repassed on its surface. Nobody ever fought a battle here; we were the discoverers of an archipelago. I sat in pyjamas on the fore-hatch, wondering what group of islands our shiploads of tourists had mistaken for the Hesperides. A long finger of sunlight passed suddenly over the peaks of Gran Canaria, above our masts, and fell upon the curtain of mist. The vapour eddied, divided, and lifted as if it had been rung up. Under it lay the perfect cone of Tenerife, its summit of rose-tinted sugar, its sides falling in ridges and hummocks to grey and olive. The first ray of light a lifted the heavens off Atlas’s shoulders, and there he stood, crested and supreme, while the fiery red orange of the [s]un rose and silhouetted in its disc the cairn surmounting a jagged peak on the farther island. Then the glow faded, and the curtain fell once more. A long column of smoke rose from the far corner of Tenerife, where Santa Cruz lies in its bay.’

9 October 1936
‘In the afternoon of October the 9th we passed Ushant. The weather abated, and the waters began to depart from the face of the earth. With their going a silence settled upon the ship - broken only by the dismal “thump . . . swish . . . drip” as a wave came over - and remained undispelled even by the sight of the cook shaving bull’s trotters for the night’s soup with a safety razor. The last carcase swung idly on the bridge, which was now clear of most of its vegetables. There had been a day in the voyage, before we passed Finisterre, when the midday peace of the ship was shattered by a most terrible racket on the lower bridge. A hoarse shouting and a persistent swishing noise were blended with a wild yelling, and the observer, peering cautiously round the end of the captain’s quarters, could see the little man, a malacca cane fully a metre long in his hand, dashing about in pursuit of one of the little dogs, walloping wildly at everything within reach, and hitting chairs, table, sides of beef, and himself, but never under any circumstances his victim. Madame and the daughter stood wringing their hands and trying to arrest their lord and master’s progress as he thundered about, demolishing lifebelts and cucumbers, while the dog, more frightened than hurt, yelled as if the whole crew was cutting its throat.’

My wedding day!

‘My wedding day! How simple it is to say and how hard to realize that I am married, no longer a young lady with nothing to think of but myself and nothing to do.’ This is a diary entry by Kate Chopin, an American short story writer of the late 19th century who was born 170 years ago today. Though some of her literary themes were controversial in their day, she is now considered a forerunner of 20th-century feminist authors. Only two of her diaries survive - one from her youth through to the end of her honeymoon, and one from the year 1894.

Catherine (Kate) O’Flaherty was born on 8 February 1850 in St. Louis, Missouri. Her father, Thomas, had immigrated from Ireland, and her mother, Eliza Faris (Thomas’s second wife) was of French heritage. Kate was schooled at the Academy of the Sacred Hearts, graduating in 1868. In 1870, she married Oscar Chopin, settling with him in his home town of New Orleans, and having six children. Oscar Chopin’s business failed in 1879, and the family went to live in Cloutierville, some 200 miles northwest of New Orleans, where he managed several small plantations and a general store. He died three years later, leaving Kate with huge debts. She tried to sustain the business, and eventually sold it before returning with her children to St Louis. Two years later, her mother died, and she was left struggling with depression.

A family doctor and friend suggested writing as a therapy for Kate, and by the early 1890s, she was contributing a variety of articles and stories for local periodicals. Many of these were about the Creole and Cajun people she observed around her. In 1899, she published a novel, The Awakening, which achieved a few favourable reviews but which was also vilified for its treatment of female sexuality and interracial marriage. Chopin, discouraged by this response, returned to short story writing, for example Désirée’s Baby and Madame Celestin’s Divorce. She died in 1904. Although The Awakening remained out of print for many years, it was rediscovered in the 1970s, and is now considered an ‘important early work of the South’ (see Wikipedia). She, herself, has become widely recognised as a forerunner of American feminist literature. Further information is also available from the Kate Chopin International Society, American Literature, Missouri Encyclopedia, and Encyclopaedia Britannica.

Some of her Chopin’s diary material was first published in Per Seyersted’s A Kate Chopin Miscellany (Northwestern State University, 1979), but a much more comprehensive collection of her previously unpublished writings were put together in 1998 by both Seyersted and Emily Toth as Kate Chopin’s Private Papers (Indiana University Press). Some pages of the latter are available to view on Googlebooks. According to this, only one diary - for 1894 - has survived from her adult years (discovered by her grandson, Robert Hattersley, in the 1960s), but there is also her Commonplace Book which is said to have much in common with the 1894 diary. The Commonplace Book was started when she was just 16, and used for copying out passages of literature that she admired, and for her own early attempts at literature. However, increasingly, it became a depository for her thoughts, serving as a diary through her honeymoon in Europe. Here are several extracts from the Commonplace Book, and one longer one from the 1894 diary.

9 June 1870
‘My wedding day! How simple it is to say and how hard to realize that I am married, no longer a young lady with nothing to think of but myself and nothing to do. We went to holy Communion this morning, my mother with us, and it gave me a double happiness to see so many of my friends at mass for I knew they prayed for me on this happiest day of my life. The whole day seems now like a dream to me; how I awoke early in the morning before the household was stirring and looked out of the window to see whether the sun would shine or not; how I went to mass and could not read the prayers in my book; afterwards how I dressed for my marriage - went to church and found myself married before I could think what I was doing. What kissing of old and young! I never expect to receive as many embraces during the remainder of my life. Oscar has since confessed that he did not know it was customary to kiss and that he conferred that favor on only a very few - I will have to make a most sacred apology for him when I get home. It was very painful to leave my mother and all at home; and it was only at starting that I discovered how much I would miss them and how much I would be missed. We meet several acquaintances on the cars who congratulated us very extensively, and who could not be brought to realize that they must call me Mrs Chopin and not Miss Katy. They joined us however in consuming a few champagne bottles that had escaped the dire destruction of their companions to meet with a more honorable consummation by the bride and groom.’

27 July 1870
‘Left Stuttgart this morning - arriving at Ulm in two hours time; having barely time to dine & visit the handsome Cathedral and fine fortifications, and left for Friedrickshafen which we reached late at night. Took lodgings for a nights rest, and started early in the morning for Constanz. We are anxious to get into Switzerland.’

28 July 1870
‘Took the boat at 10 this morning - day cloudy - but I was glad we had no sun. The “blue lake of Constanz” looked bluer than ever through the mist. Just as we were starting out, a child playing near the boat, fell in the water: we had not time to wait & see if he was rescued, but I fear not as he must have been caught in some of the numerous net work of wooden piles. The scenery was exquisite along the shore, and the hour glided away only too fast.

At Constanz
We set out immediately to “see the town;” taking in the beautiful church of St. Stephens, which belongs to the severe gothic order; saw some beautiful paintings not the less lovely for being new, and then went to the Cathedral - ascending some 5000000 steps (more or less) to reach the tower, but were repaid for our fatigue by the view. I should fancy such scenery - such a beautiful side of nature, would influence these people only for good deeds. Left Constaz at 4 1/2, reaching Schaufhausen at a 7.

Schaufhausen.
The Blue bien Hotel; where we have taken quarters seems to be entirely at our disposal: the war having frightened off all visitors. I trust the landlord will not attempt to make his accounts balance at our expense. We command a charming view of the Rhein falls (the largest in Europe) and will remain here some time, if only our impatient spirits permit.’

29 July 1870
‘Rain! All the day rain. So we could not venture out, and have amused ourselves all day, making mental photographes of the falls.’

22 May 1894
‘I have finished a story of 4800 words and called it “Lilacs." I cannot recall what suggested it. If the story had been written after my visit of last Sunday to the convent, I would not have to seek the impulse far. Those nuns seem to retain or gain a certain beauty with their advancing years which we women in the world are strangers to. The unchanging form of their garments through years and years seems to impart a distinct character to their bodily movements. Liza’s face held a peculiar fascination for me as I sat looking into it enframed in its white rushing. It is more than twenty years since I last saw her; but in less than twenty minutes those twenty years had vanished and she was the Liza of our school days. The same narrow, happy grey eyes with their swollen upper lids; the same delicious upward curves to the corners of her pretty mouth. No little vexatious wrinkles anywhere. Only a few good strong lines giving a touch of character that the younger Liza lacked perhaps. The conditions under which these women live are such as keep them young and fresh in heart and in visage. One day - usually one hey-day of youth they kneel before the altar of a God whom they have learned to worship, and they give themselves wholly - body and spirit into his keeping. They have only to remain faithful through the years, these modern Psyches, to the lover who lavishes all his precious gifts upon them in the darkness - the most precious of which is perpetual youth. I wonder what Liza thought as she looked into my face. I know she was remembering my pink cheeks of more than twenty years ago and my brown hair and innocent young face. I do not know whether she could see that I had loved - lovers who were not divine - and hated and suffered and been glad. She could see, no doubt the stamp which a thousand things had left upon my face, but she could not read it. She, with her lover in the dark. He has not anointed her eyes for perfect vision. She does not need it - in the dark. When we came away, my friend who had gone with me said: “Would you not give anything to have her vocation and happy life!” There was a long beaten path spreading before us; the grass grew along its edges and the branches of trees in their thick rich May garb hung over the path like an arbor, making a long vista that ended in a green blur. An old man - a plain old man leaning on a cane was walking down the path holding a small child by the hand and a little dog was trotting beside them. “I would rather be that dog” I answered her. I know she was disgusted and took it for irreverence and I did not take the trouble to explain that this was a little picture of life and that what we had left was a phantasmagoria.

This is Jean’s birthday - twenty-three years old today! How curiously the past effaces itself for me! I sometimes regret that it is so; for there must be a certain pleasure in retrospection. I cannot live through yesterday or tomorrow. It is why the dead in their character of dead and association with the grave have no hold on me. I cannot connect my mother or husband or any of those I have lots with those mounds of earth out at Calvary Cemetery. I cannot visit graves and stand contemplating them as some people do, and seem to love to do. If it were possible for my husband and my mother to come back to earth, I feel that I would unhesitatingly give up every thing that has come into my life since they left it and join my existence again with theirs. To do that, I would have to forget the past ten years of my growth - my real growth. But I would take back a little wisdom with me; it would the spirit of a perfect acquiescence. This is a long way from Jean, 23 years ago. I can remember yet that hot southern day on Magazine street in New Orleans. The noises of the street coming through the open windows; that heaviness with which I dragged myself about; my husband’s and mother’s solicitude; old Alexandrine the quadroon nurse with her high bandana lignin, her hoop-earrings and placid smile; old Doctor Faget; the smell of chloroform, and then waking at 6 in the evening from out of a stupor to see in my mothers arms a little piece of humanity all dressed in white which told me was my little son!. The sensation with which I touched my lips and finger tips to his soft flesh only comes once to a mother. It must be the pure animal sensation; nothing spiritual could be so real - so poignant.’

Gideon Mantell - geologist

Although Gideon Algernon Mantell - born 230 years ago today - was almost 50 by the time Victoria became Queen, when reading his lively and interesting diaries from the first half of the 19th century, one has the sense of someone already living in the heart of the Victorian age. He held advanced views on science and medicine; he lived his life in the most energetic and industrious way; and he had a keen intellectual ambition married with a strong sense of social duty. However, although outwardly successful, Mantell was a man never fulfilled, never quite happy. Having moved, for example, from Lewes to the centre of Brighton to extend his medical practice to those attending the King’s court there, he soon became very frustrated for being the centre of too much attention, not due to his surgical skills but because of his remarkable collection of fossils.

Mantell was born in the historic market town of Lewes on 3 February 1790, the son of a shoemaker. Partly educated by an uncle, at age 15 he was apprenticed to a Lewes surgeon, James Moore. Following six months training at St Bartholomew’s Hospital, London, he joined Moore’s practice as a partner, and eventually took it over. In 1816, he married Mary Ann Woodhouse, and soon after acquired a house in Castle Place. They had four children who survived into adulthood.

Apart from his medical practice, Mantell spent much time exploring the Weald of Sussex, studying its geology and looking for fossils. In 1822, he published The Fossils of the South Downs (with lithography by his wife), the first of a dozen or so books he was to write on geology and palaeontology. In the mid-1820s, he announced the discovery of Iguanodon, an extinct gigantic herbivorous reptile, a genus of, what later would be commonly called, dinosaurs. The fossils were proudly exhibited in a museum housed in his own home. A few years later he discovered a second kind of dinosaur, and confirmed they were land, not amphibian, reptiles.

Notwithstanding his growing fame as a palaeontologist, Mantell was constantly seeking to be and to be seen as a successful doctor. And for this reason, he wanted to move his practice to Brighton, where he could find higher class patients among the constant flow of aristocrats to King George’s court at the Pavilion. However, for several years he prevaricated fearing the disruption to his family. Bolstered by a large gift of money from an aristocratic patron, he finally made the move towards the end of 1833, and took up a fashionable residence at 20 The Steine.

Bizarrely, or so it must have seemed to him, his geological and scientific knowledge became far more in demand than his surgeon’s skill. He could barely cope with the influx of visitors, and before long the house was turned into a public museum; and then in 1838 the collection was purchased by the British Museum. That same year he bought a practice in Clapham Common, which soon became a success and allowed him frequent trips to London to attend institutional meetings. He moved again in 1844 to Pimlico, where he remained until his death in 1852. Further information is available from Wikipedia, Strange Science, Dinohunters.

For most of his adult life, from 1818 until his death, Mantell kept a diary. The manuscripts, however, went with his son Walter to New Zealand, where they were given to the Alexander Turnbull Library in Wellington. Many years later, a typescript copy was acquired by the archaeologist Dr Eliot Curwen (who lived on St Aubyns, Hove) which is now held by the Sussex Archaeological Society. Curwen’s son E. Cecil Curwen edited the typescript copy, and Oxford University Press published The Journal of Gideon Mantell, Surgeon and Geologist in 1940. Decades later, in 2010, John A. Cooper produced a transcript of all the unpublished parts of Mantell’s diaries, and these have been made available to the public, courtesy of David Colquhoun of the Alexander Turnbull Library, by Brighton Royal Pavilion and Museums.

In his introduction to the 1940 book, Curwen says of Mantell: ‘[He was] a man of abundant restless energy, fired with an ambition to become immortal in the realms of science; all obstacles were to him irritating frustrations which he bore down with the weight of his dominating personality, and even his domestic happiness was sacrificed to his ambition. . . The journal, however, reveals how the realisation of his ambitions brought neither joy nor peace nor any real satisfaction, for as time went on he became more and more disappointed and embittered. . . And yet Mantell was not in other respects a selfish man. He was a keen surgeon, with a great sense of fairness and a deep sympathy with the poor and down-trodden, and he would often put himself to much trouble to alleviate suffering or to right a wrong.’

Here is a selection of extracts taken from Curwen’s book and from Cooper’s document.

14 December 1822
‘Drove to Brighton: called at Stanmer Park in my way, and left a medallion of Oliver Cromwell as a present to the Earl of Chichester. Drank tea with my friend Chassereau. On my return found my dear boy Walter in a very dangerous state from inflammation of the lungs; applied three leeches which bled till he fainted.’

23 November 1824
‘A severe hurricane and occurring at the spring tide, the low tracts along the coast were inundated and considerable damage occasioned thereby. I drove to Brighton and arrived there between one and two, at the time the sea was raging with the greatest violence, the surf dashed over the pier and occasionally hid it from our view. So soon as the water was retired so as to allow of walking on the esplanade, we went to the Pier, which was much damaged by the waves; the railing in many places washed away, and the platform destroyed, so as to render access to the Pier-head difficult and dangerous: however we ventured to the farthest end although every now and then a sea dashed over us, and completely drenched us, but the awful grandeur of the scene more than compensated for the inconvenience of our situation.’

31 July 1827
‘Tuesday - Drove with my dear boy to Brighton Races; visited a menagerie: took tea with Mr Chassereau and returned home early. Dr Hopkins and his lady, from London, visited us yesterday.’

6 September 1830
‘Every day last week at Brighton, visiting Miss Langham. On Friday a public dinner to 4,000 children on the Steine. The King and Queen visited them: a very gratifying sight. Mrs Mantell accompanied me and saw the Royal Family.

Called on a smuggler and dealer in vertu on the East Cliffe. Bought a magnificent Cabinet drawers of Buhl and tortoiseshell; formerly belonged to Napoleon - quite a bijou - cost me £25. 15s; purchased also a beautiful little statue of a child sleeping; said to be the King of Rome. This evening wrote addresses to the King and Queen; resolutions etc. for the town meeting. I am indeed jack-of-all-trades - more fool I, for I get neither profit, credit, nor thanks! still there is pleasure in moving the public mind and guiding it unseen.’

18 September 1830
‘To Brighton every day. Miss Langham still very ill. [. . .] Last week performed the operation of trephining, or rather with Hey’s saw removed several portions of skull that had been forced into the brain - a boy 16 years old crushed by a horse, died the next morning.’

2 May 1833
‘Received a copy of my Geology of the S. East of England from the publishers and am much pleased with the style in which it is brought out. Received on Sunday a beautiful present of polished fossil woods from Dr Henry of Manchester. Yesterday sent a parcel to London - wrote to Earl of Egremont, on behalf of poor Archer the artist, whose painting of the King’s visit to Lewes, is still on his hands; to the great honor! of the loyal and liberal inhabitants of Lewes! What a precious set!’

5 October 1833
‘Drove to Brighton and called on Lord Egremont, who spoke to me on the subject of my removal to Brighton, and munificently offered me a thousand pounds to assist me in the removal!’

21 December 1833
‘My family and all my servants etc. take up their abode in 20 Steyne - farewell for ever to Castle Place [Lewes].’

18 September 1834
‘Soon after tea was sent for to near Kemp Town to a young man who had just been drowned: an hour had elapsed from the time of the accident till my arrival: I inflated the lungs and assisted in removing the body to the hospital - where the surgeon put it in a warm bath for a few minutes then took it out again and placed it before a fire - then inflated the lungs! and after waiting there nearly two hours I left the place and returned home at near one o’clock very much fatigued.’

9 October 1834
‘As usual murdering my time - hosts of visitors but no patients! Rambled on the Chain Pier in the evening - very beautiful weather.’

11 October 1835
‘Very unwell from a cold: saw the Comet (Halley’s) last night with the naked eye: I had seen it through a telescope on Tuesday: how solemn is the thought that when this body of light next appears in its present situation almost every eye that now gazes on it will have closed for ever!’

1 February 1836
‘For the last fortnight, scarcely a day has passed without my time being engrossed by meetings concerning the project [Sussex] Scientific Institution [and Mantellian Museum] - I am already tired of the eternal changes of opinion which the gentlemen engaged in it, are constantly evincing. I see but too surely that I shall be made a mere stepping stone for the accomplishment of the principal object with most of them - a gossiping club.’

25 April 1836
‘My family removed to Southover and I to lodgings on the Steyne. My collection to be arranged for public exhibition for two and three-quarter years - but I am sick of the cold-blooded creatures I am surrounded by - a change of circumstances with me is but a change of troubles - I will not record them! [From this point on, and at the cost of his home life, Mantell’s house on The Steine was given over to the Institution and museum entirely.]’

29 October 1836
‘A dreadful hurricane from the SSW at about eleven AM it was terrific - houses unroofed - trees torn up by the roots: chimney-pots and chimneys blown in every direction - sea mountains high. Went to the Pier, and was present when violent oscillations began to be produced by the hurricane: the whole lines of platforms and chains were thrown into undulations, and the suspension bridges appeared like an enormous serpent writing in agony - at length one of the bridges gave way, and planks, beams, iron rods - all were hurled instantaneously into the boiling surge! The tension of the bridge being thus set at liberty, the remaining bridges gradually became motionless; the damage done to this beautiful structure cannot be much less than £1,000. Some persons were killed by the falling of chimneys and lead blown off the houses.’

18 February 1837
‘Lecture at the Old Ship, on the South Downs - pretty good company. On my own account, because the Council were unwilling to take the chance of loss!!! During the last fortnight received a splendid collection of Elephantine and remains from Capt. Cautley, Sub-Himalayah mountains, discoursed on them last Tuesday at the Conversazione - about 6 members of the Institution present.’

24 July 1837
‘To the Devil’s Dyke - arrived there at seven - the most glorious sight imaginable - the sun breaking through a mass of clouds poured streams of living light on the landscape - the distant downs, by Steyning and to the far west were crested with mist, and the reflection of the sun’s rays, gave them a magical effect which is seen on the snow-clad Alps. This gorgeous scene continued about ten minutes and then all was wrapped in gloom. Broke the spring of my carriage - obliged to walk home.’

4 March 1839
‘August Received the sum of £4000 from the trustees of the British Museum for my collection. And so passes away the labor of 25 years!!! G. A. MANTELL. But I will begin de novo!’

This is a revised and extended version of an article first published in 2011. 

The Jones/Palin relationship

In the last ten days, two stalwarts of the British entertainment industry - Terry Jones and Nicholas Parsons - have departed the stage for the last time. Jones was a multi-talented writer, comedian and director, one of the key creators of the Monty Python shows and films. Parsons was an actor but became better known for presenting radio and TV shows, most particularly, Just a Minute which he hosted for over 50 years without missing an episode. As far as I know, neither men were diarists (certainly there are no published diaries by either of them). However, Terry Jones is a ubiquitous presence in Michael Palin’s diaries (for example, one entry reads, ‘Another meeting about the Jones/Palin relationship’. As it happens, Palin received a Special Recognition Award last night at the British Television Awards, and dedicated it to Terry Jones. Palin’s diaries also include at least one mention of Parsons - when Palin took part in Just a Minute as a panellist.

Jones, the son of a bank clerk, was born in 1942 in the seaside town of Colwyn Bay, on the north coast of Wales. He attended the Royal Grammar School in Guildford, and then read English at St Edmund Hall, Oxford, where he performed in the Oxford Revue with Michael Palin. He went on to perform in, and write for, many TV shows, not least Monty Python’s Flying Circus (with Palin and others) which ran for 45 episodes between 1969 and 1974. He also co-directed and directed several Monty Python films. Also with Palin, he co-wrote the comedy anthology series Ripping Yarns (1976-1979). Jones authored several medieval history works, and he presented television documentaries on the subject; he also wrote books for children. He died on 21 January aged 77, leaving behind two children by his first wife, Alison Telfer, and one by his second wife, Anna Söderström.  Further information is readily available at Wikipedia, IMDB, or from the many obituaries (BBC, The Guardian, The New York Times, The Daily Mail).

Although there are no indications that Jones was ever a diarist, he figures prominently in the published diaries of his life-long friend Michael Palin. Palin has published three volumes of diaries - see Cleese, also in a bikini for more on Palin and his diaries. The following extracts all come from the first volume, Diaries 1969–1979: The Python Years. Some pages of this can be previewed at Googlebooks.

7 June 1970
‘Terry and I had to spend the morning working on another of our small-earning sidelines. This time it was a rewrite of a film called ‘How to Use a Cheque Book’ for the Midland Bank.’

18 June 1970
‘General election day. [. . .] The morning’s work interrupted by the delivery of a large amount of dung. We were sitting writing at Terry’s marble-topped table under a tree sheltering us from the sun. All rather Mediterranean. Suddenly the dung-carriers appeared. Fat, ruddy-faced, highly conversational and relentlessly cheerful, they carried their steaming goodies and deposited them at the far end of Terry’s garden. As they passed I gleaned that they had come from Reading, that they had started loading at 5 pm, that one of them was about to go on holiday to Selsey Bill - his first holiday for seven years. After about twenty-five tubfuls they were gone, but at least they had left a sketch behind.’

2 October 1972
‘Arrived back after rushes at about 7.45. There was a call waiting for Terry from Midhurst - it was Nigel to say that their mother had been taken to hospital. Terry was immediately on to BEA to book a plane back to England. He was in a rush and a hurry, but seemed to be in control. Al came upstairs and broke down and cried for just a moment - there was no flight back to London tonight from anywhere in Germany.

Thomas [Woitkewitsch] was fortunately here to help, and he started to ring charter flights and private air-hire firms. The irony of the situation was that we had all been invited to Alfred’s to watch an Anglo-Dutch comedy show which Thomas had produced. As Terry phoned Chichester Hospital from Alfred’s bedroom, the strident shouts from the telly grew louder and more disconcerting. I sat and talked to Graham in the neutral room. He had spoken to the ward sister and she had told both Graham and Terry that her chances of recovery were minimal. Graham argued clearly and reasonably, and yet still sympathetically, that it was not worth Terry’s while trying to charter a plane to London in order to see his unconscious mother.

It was about 10.00 when I saw Terry in his room. He was sitting in a wicker chair, he seemed composed, reflective and rather distant. I clasped him around the shoulders. He said he was happy just to ‘sit and think about her’. Graham and I left, and went next door to the Klosterl, for a meal with Alfred, Thomas and Justus [our cameraman]. Not a great meal. Back to the hotel at about 11.30.

A note from A1 was stuck in my door. ‘Terry’s mother died at 9.20. He has gone to sleep with the aid of a sleeping pill.’

For a moment I felt a strange stifling surge of sadness. My eyes welled with tears and for a few moments the news hit me really hard.’

26 September 1973
Terry and I went up to the Flask in Hampstead and had a good airclearing talk about the future. We both feel now (c.f. flight to Calgary three months ago) that another series of Python for the BBC - with John writing a regulation three and a half minutes per show - is not worth doing, certainly at present, if at all. I was not encouraged enough by the material we wrote for the record to believe that Python has vast untapped resources. I think we may be straining to keep up our standards and, without John, the strain could be too great. On the other hand, Terry and I do have another direction to go in, with a play in commission and another on the stocks. We work fast and economically, and still pretty successfully together. Python it seems is being forced to continue, rather than continuing from the genuine enthusiasm and excitement of the six people who created it.’

22 January 1976
‘Tomorrow I must be on the ball, for even more important discussions, this time about the professional future, must be raised with Terry as a result of a couple of calls from Jimmy Gilbert who has once again emphasised that he would like the Tomkinson series to be a Michael Palin series, written by Michael Palin and Terry Jones and starring Michael Palin.’

23 January 1976
‘Today, upstairs in Terry’s work-room, I told him of Jimmy’s attitude. TJ looked hurt - but there was a good, healthy fighting spirit there too. TJ feels that Tomkinson may well have been originally my project, but it worked as a team project and Terry is now very angry that the BBC want to break the team by institutionalising a hierarchy into our working relationship - i.e. The Michael Palin Show.

We talked ourselves round in circles. I couldn’t honestly say that I was prepared for TJ to take an entirely equal part in the acting, because this would involve me in a tussle with Jimmy over something I didn’t feel was in my own best interests. We break off for lunch with Jill Foster at Salami’s in Fulham Road.

It certainly seems that 1976 is all-change year. After almost ten years together, Terry and I are exploring and altering our relationship and Jill Foster and Fraser and Dunlop are doing the same. In short, Jill is leaving. She felt stifled at F & D, so now she wants to set up on her own.

We think we’ll stay with Jill, despite the various problems that have cropped up over our Python activities. She’s a good agent for us in many ways - a good talker, not renowned as vicious or hard in the business, but always seems to deliver an efficient, worthy, if not startling, deal.

After lunch we drive down to Terry’s, talking again about the series. A peripatetic day, in fact, both literally and metaphorically. We decide to meet Jimmy together, but he can’t make it until Monday. So I leave about 5.00 - with Terry still reeling slightly under a blow, which he hadn’t after all expected. It’s a rotten situation and rotten to see someone you like and whose friendship is so valuable being given a hard time. But it’s all got to be said and to be gone through.’

26 January 1976
‘Another meeting about the Jones/Palin relationship. This time at the BBC. Meet TJ for a coffee first and he, as I had expected, had taken stock of the situation over the weekend and come to an optimistic conclusion. He would write the series with me and then go off and make a film for children (a project he’s had his thoughts on before) whilst I was filming. He seemed very happy.

However, once in Jimmy’s office, TJ took a rather less accommodating line (quite rightly for, as he said afterwards, there was no point in the meeting if he didn’t try to change JG’s mind with a forceful view of his own).

I didn’t do a lot of talking - I let Terry say all he wanted to say and Jimmy say what he wanted to say. JG was excellent I thought. He held to his position, but was sympathetic to all Terry said so, at the end of one and a half hour’s meeting we were all still friends - and Jimmy adjourned us for a week to think about it. TJ did seem to be less angry than impatient with Jimmy and we went off for a lunch at Tethers.

I’m trying to avoid an utterly basic dissection of our relationship, because I think it’s a relationship that obeys no strict rules, it works without introspection - it’s an extrovert relationship based on writing and often performing jokes together. It’s instinctive and I don’t want to damage it by over-examination. I want (for such is my half-cowardly nature!) to solve this re-adjustment crisis without tears.’

27 January 1976
‘Spoke to Terry, mid-morning. Rather than pursuing the Children’s Film Foundation, TJ has instead revived that most hardy perennial - the Fegg film. He has rung John Goldstone, who reckons that The Nastiest Film in the World’ has distinct possibilities!’

28 January 1976
‘Another gorgeous day of clear, crisp, sharp sunshine. Terry comes up to Julia Street to talk about the Fegg film. We have some nice ideas - Fegg is a brooding and malevolent influence who lives in a corrugated iron extension up against a Gothic castle, near to the world’s prettiest village, where everyone is terribly nice to each other. But the presence of Fegg (whom we see in a sinister, opening buildup sequence letting the air out of someone’s tyres) is too much for them. They advertise for a hero. Scene cuts to a Hostel for Heroes, where unemployed heroes sit around in a sort of collegey atmosphere - occasionally getting jobs.

At the end of our day on Fegg - and with a possible commitment to writing on Fegg until we go to the US - I suddenly feel a touch of panic. Helen, with her usual down-to-earth perspicacity, provoked it by her reaction to the news of the Fegg film. I know she’s right - I am taking on too much. The Fegg film is going to take time and ideas away from what should really be my primary project of the next two years - the BBC series of thirteen. Helen forces me to confront the fact that I am in danger of losing what I am trying to save.’

12 December 1976
‘[. . .] Brief chat with EI, who seems concerned that Terry J should not have too much control of the next Python movie. He does blow hot and cold. It was only a few months ago that Eric wanted TJ to direct his TV series! But now he feels that TJ’s problem is that he doesn’t appreciate compromise.

Our chat was inconclusive, but I can see that the direction of the film will be a difficult issue looming up.’

29 November 1978, Stirling
‘[. . .] To Grant’s Bookshop in Stirling for my first signing session. [. . .] John Lennie, the Methuen rep for Scotland, drives me to Edinburgh.

Terry J arrives. He and I go for a nostalgic walk up to the Royal Mile. We nose around the Cranston Street Hall in the traditional manner. TJ remembers the thrill of seeing the feet of a forming queue through a small window down in the toilets . . . That was fifteen yean ago.

We find ourselves in a wonderful, small, grubby, friendly bar in Young Street - the Oxford Bar. This is the glorious opposite of all the carpeted ‘lounges’ where drinks are now taken. It’s small and gossipy and quite uncompromising with regard to comfort and decor . . . definitely a new ‘must’ when visiting Edinburgh.’

21 April 1979
‘Talk with TJ on the phone. Last Wednesday night he was attacked by an old gent in Soho who asked him where Charing Cross Station was. When he told him, the old man called our director ‘a lying bastard’ and belaboured him with his stick. TJ’s head was cut and bleeding. A ‘passer-by’, who TJ thinks may have been a plainclothes man from the Metropolitan force, leapt on the old bloke and hauled him off to the nick. Apparently he had just attacked someone else further up the street.’

***

Whereas one might consider Jones a heavyweight of British entertainment, Nicholas Parsons was more of a lightweight, though a long-lived and much-loved one. He was born in 1923, and grew up in Grantham, Lincolnshire. He attended St Paul’s School, London; and, with the war over, opted for acting as a career. He appeared in the West End, and toured with repertory theatres, but also ventured into film. In the 1950s and 1960s, he became well known to TV audiences as the straight man to comedian Arthur Haynes. During the late 1960s, he created and presented a satirical programme on BBC Radio 4 called Listen to This Space, which helped him earn the Radio Personality of the Year Award in 1967. From 1971 to 1983, he fronted the Anglia quiz show Sale of the Century. In 1967, he began presenting the radio panel show Just a Minute, and hosted every episode through to 2018. In 1994, he published his autobiography, The Straight Man: My Life in Comedy (Weidenfeld & Nicolson). He married twice, firstly to Denise Bryer with whom he had two children, and subsequently to Ann Reynolds. He died yesterday, 28 January. Further information is available at Wikipedia, IMDB, and from obituaries (The Guardian, BBC). Here, though is Michael Palin reporting to his diary about the experience of being a panellist on Parsons’ show Just a Minute.

3 October 1975
‘At 5.15 arrived in taxi at the BBC’s Paris studio - which is not in Paris, of course, but in Lower Regent Street - for recording of Just a Minute. A few people from the queue came up and asked me for an autograph - and there was my face on a display board outside. Inside, the peculiarly non-festive air which the BBC (radio especially) has made its own - everything from the colour of the walls and the design of the furniture to the doorman’s uniform and the coffee-serving hatch seems designed to quell any lightness of spirit you may have.

Then I met Clement Freud. He stared at me with those saucer-shaped, heavy-lidded eyes with an expression of such straightforward distaste that for a moment I thought he had just taken cyanide. The producer, John Lloyd - a ray of light in the darkness that was rapidly closing in on me - hurriedly took my arm and led me aside as if to explain something about Clement F. It was just that he had a ‘thing’ about smoking - and for some inexplicable reason I had just taken one of John L’s cigarettes. Still, this blew over.

A depressingly half-full house filed quietly in and at 5.45 the 
contestants - three regulars, Freud, K Williams, the rather forbiddingly authoritative Peter Jones, myself, not exactly in my element any more - and quiz master Nicholas Parsons were introduced to friendly applause and took our places at our desks. The three regulars have been playing the game together for five years - Williams and Freud for eight - and it shows. They are smooth and polished, they know when to ad-lib, when to bend the rules a little, and when to be cross with each other. I buzzed Clement Freud when he was at full tilt and, when asked why, I apologised and said I was testing my buzzer. That’s the only time I saw him smile in my direction.

The game became easier, but I never mastered the technique of microphone-hogging which they all have perfected.

Before I knew it, two shows and about an hour and a half had passed and it was all over. I signed autographs. Peter Jones was very kind to me and complimentary, Freud I never saw again and Nicholas Parsons was the only one to come round to the pub and drink with us. Us being myself, Douglas Adams (who had recommended me to his friend, the producer) and John Lloyd. They seemed to be quite pleased with me and Peter Jones, as he left, said he would see me again on the show. I gather some guests manage it (Barry Took, Katharine Whitehorn) and some don’t (Barry Cryer, Willy Rushton) and at least I wasn’t considered amongst the don’ts.’

A solid stretch of ice

It is now generally accepted that the very first sighting of Antartica took place on this day, two hundred years ago, by a Russian expedition under the leadership of Fabian Gottlieb von Bellingshausen (also known as Thaddeus von Bellingshausen). The British got there a few days later, and the Americans ten months after that. Bellingshausen’s expedition diary makes no mention of the discovery of a continent, referring only to ‘a solid stretch of ice’, nevertheless it is thanks to the diary that scientists have been able to establish the facts of Bellingshausen’s achievement.

Born to a Baltic German family in 1779 in what is now Estonia but was then part of the Russian Empire, Bellingshausen joined the Imperial Russian Navy at the age of ten. After studying at the Kronstadt naval academy, he rapidly rose to the rank of captain, and took part in the first Russian circumnavigation of the world. Subsequently he was in charge of various ships in the Baltic and Black Seas.

When Czar Alexander I decided on two major expeditions in 1819, one to the northern polar seas the other to the southern, Bellingshausen was chosen to lead the latter (after the first choice, Commodore Roschmanow, suffered ill-health). His two vessel convoy (Vostok and Mirnyi) set off from Portsmouth in September the same year. The expedition crossed the Antarctic Circle and on 27 January 1829 it made the first sighting of the Antarctic coast.

During the voyage Bellingshausen also visited Ship Cove in New Zealand, the South Shetland Islands, and discovered and named various other islands. He returned to Kronstadt in August 1821, and thereafter fought in the Russo-Turkish War of 1828-1829 attaining the rank of admiral. In 1839 he was appointed military governor of Kronstadt, and died there in 1852. See Wikipedia or the Antartic Gude, for more on Bellingshausen, and South-Pole.com for more on the actual expedition.

In the early 1980s, according to Wikipedia, the British polar historian A. G. E. Jones looked at competing claims for the first sighting of Antartica. He concluded that Bellingshausen was indeed the discoverer of the sought-after Terra Australis, beating the British explorer Edward Bransfield whose first sighting was on 30 January 1820. Jones’s study relied on various documents in the Russian State Museum of the Arctic and Antarctic in Saint Petersburg, including Bellingshausen’s diary.

Here is what Wikipedia says: ‘The first confirmed sighting of mainland Antarctica, on 27 January 1820, is attributed to the Russian expedition led by Fabian Gottlieb von Bellingshausen and Mikhail Lazarev, discovering an ice shelf at Princess Martha Coast that later became known as the Fimbul Ice Shelf. Bellingshausen and Lazarev became the first explorers to see and officially discover the land of the continent of Antarctica. It is certain that the expedition, led by von Bellingshausen and Lazarev on the ships Vostok and Mirny, reached on 28 January 1820 a point within 32 km (20 mi) from Princess Martha Coast and recorded the sight of an ice shelf at 69° 21′ 28″ S 2°14′ 50″ W that became known as the Fimbul ice shelf.’

An English version of Bellingshausen’s diary of the journey was published in 1945 by the Hakluyt Society - The Voyage of Captain Bellingshausen to the Antarctic Seas, 1819-1821 (two volumes, translated by Edward Bullough and edited by Frank Debenham). The first volume can be viewed online at Internet Archive; and the second volume can be previewed at Googlebooks. A few copies are available secondhand on Abebooks, but are not cheap, costing several hundred pounds each.

Here are Bellingshausen’s diary entries for 27-28 January 1820 (the published diary entries are given with Julian Calendar dates - which slightly pre-date the West European Gregorian Calendar).

16 January 1820 [27 January 1820]
‘The thick weather, with snow and ice and high north-west wind, continued through the night. At 4.0 a.m. we saw a grey (smoke-coloured) albatross flying near the ship. At 7.0 a.m. the wind changed to the north, the snow ceased for a time and the blessed sun now and then broke through the clouds.

At 9.0 a.m., in Lat. 69° 17’ 26” S., Long. 2° 45’ 46” W., we found a magnetic variation of 8° 48’ W. Proceeding south, at midday, in Lat. 69° 21’ 28” S., Long. 2° 14’ 50” W., we encountered icebergs, which came in sight through the falling snow looking like white clouds. We had a moderate north-east wind with a heavy swell from the north-west and, in consequence of the snow, we could see for but a short distance. We hauled close to the wind on a south-east course and had made 2 miles in this direction when we observed that there was a solid stretch of ice running from east through south to west. Our course was leading us straight in to this field, which was covered with ice hillocks. The barometer fell from 29-50 to 29, warning us of bad weather. We had 2° F. of frost. We turned north-west by west in the hope that in this direction we should find no ice. During the last 24 hours we had observed snow-white and blue petrels and heard the cries of penguins.’

17 January 1820 [28 January 1820]
‘The thick weather and snow continued through the night. At 2.0 a.m. both ships put about on to the port tack. At 6.0 a.m. we observed right ahead of us an iceberg which we only just succeeded in avoiding. The thermometer stood at freezing point; at the same time the wind began to freshen and we were forced to double-reef the topsails. At 8.0 a.m. the Vostok, turning to the wind, joined up with the Mimyi. Towards midday the sky cleared a little of snow clouds and the sun appeared. We were able to take midday observations and found our position to be Lat. 68° 51’ 51” S., Long. 3° 07’ 06” W., the stream having set N. 20° W. 13 miles. We did not, however, enjoy the sun for long; in these latitudes it is so rarely visible. Fog and snow, the travelling companions of the navigator in the Antarctic, again overtook us.

In these high latitudes, into which we extended our voyage, the sea is a most beautiful blue colour, which in some measure serves to indicate the great distance of land. The penguins, whose, cries we heard, are in no need of land. They live just as comfortably, and indeed seem to prefer living, on the flat ice, far more so than other birds do on land. When we caught penguins on the ice, many dived into the water but, without even waiting till the hunters had gone, they returned to their former places with the help of the waves. Judging by the form of their bodies and their air of repose, one may conclude that it is merely the stimulus of seeking food that drives them from the ice into the water. They are very tame. When Mr Lyeskov threw a net over a number of them, the others, not caught by the net, remained quite quiet and indifferent to the fate of their unhappy fellows who, before their eyes, were put into sacks. The suffocating air in these sacks and careless handling while catching, transferring and taking the penguins on board the vessels, produced a sickness amongst them, and in a short time they threw up a great quantity of shrimps, which evidently form their food. At this point I may add that we had so far not found any sort of fish in the high southern latitudes, excepting the different species of whale.

At 8 o’clock the Vostok waited for the Mirnyi and, joining her, we passed to windward on a starboard tack so as to draw away from the ice and lie to during the foggy weather. The wind blew steadily from the north with occasional snow. The whole horizon was in a haze. Since our arrival in these higher latitudes we had always the same sort of bad weather with north winds, but with the wind from the south we had dry weather with a clear horizon.’

This article is a revised version of one first published 10 years ago in January 2010.

Dobzhansky, Darwin and religion

Theodosius Dobzhansky, a Russian-American scientist who did much in the 20th century to marry Darwin’s biological theories with the new science of genetics, was born 110 years ago today. His papers, held by the American Philosophical Library, include over 50 notebooks and diaries, but there is very little information about their content in the public domain - except that found in a biographical essay linking Dobzhansky’s religious outlook to his scientific understanding.

Dobzhansky was born on 25 January 1900 in Nemyriv, then in the Russian Empire now in Ukraine. His father was a mathematics teacher. In 1910, the family moved to Kiev, where Dobzhansky attended secondary school and decided to become a biologist. In 1915, he met Victor Luchnik, an older college drop-out who was obsessed with beetles. Dobzhansky studied at the Kiev state university from 1917 to 1921, specialising in entomology, and stayed on teaching until 1924. Also in 1924, he married Natalia Sivertzeva; they had one daughter. He then moved to Leningrad (now St Petersburg), to study under Yuri Filipchenko, where a Drosophila melanogaster (fruit fly) lab had been established.

In 1927, Dobzhansky went to work at Columbia University in New York City as a Rockefeller Fellow, continuing his work on fruit flies with the geneticist Thomas Hunt Morgan. Subsequently, he accompanied Morgan to the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena and, on being offered a teaching position there, decided to remain in the US, becoming a citizen in 1937. That same year, he published the groundbreaking Genetics and the Origin of Species, which helped establish evolutionary genetics as an independent discipline. He returned to Columbia as a professor of zoology in 1940, and remained there until 1962, when he moved to Rockefeller Institute (later Rockefeller University). After his official retirement, he went, in 1971, to the University of California at Davis. Following a long battle with leukaemia, he died in late 1975.

The Understanding Evolution website has this assessment: ‘Dobzhansky’s ability to combine genetics and natural history attracted many other biologists to join him in the effort to find a unified explanation of how evolution happens. Their combined work, known as The Modern Synthesis, brought together genetics, paleontology, systematics, and many other sciences into one powerful explanation of evolution, showing how mutations and natural selection could produce large-scale evolutionary change.’ Further information can also be found online at Wikipedia, Encyclopaedia Britannica, or Genetics.

Dobzhansky left behind 54 notebooks and diaries. These are held by the American Philosophical Library which provides this information: ‘The fifty-four notebooks and diaries give a virtually uninterrupted first-hand commentary on Dobzhansky’s life and career, save for the period 1936-1941. Although the earliest dates are 1934, the first entries (sketches and data on coccinellid beetles) may have been made as early as 1917. With few exceptions, the entries are all in Russian, although two long stretches written in English occur during the late 1940s and early 1950s (presumably the years during which he felt most alienated from Russia) and from 1971 until his death. In an entry from this period, he commented that he was again writing in English so that his last thoughts would be accessible to friends and relatives unable to read Russian.’

Although none of Dobzhansky’s diaries have been published (as far as I can tell), they have been used as source material for biographical works, in particular by Jitse van der Meer in his essay on Dobzhansky for Eminent Lives in Twentieth-century Science & Religion (edited by Nicolaas A. Rupke, published by Peter Lang in 2009). Some pages can be previewed online at Googlebooks. The following paragraphs, quoted directly from the essay, are based almost entirely on information gleaned from Dobhansky’s diaries, and are referenced by van der Meer with over a dozen citations (not included here) from those diaries (held by American Philosophical Library).

‘. . . This is why he was concerned about moral and religious education. In 1969, following a conversation with his grandson Nicolai he wrote about the younger generation: “But the trouble is that they do not have moral and religious schooling, and that they grow up to be egotists and self-centred and free thinkers”.

Religious faith had existential meaning for Dobzhansky. During the height of WW II he tried to encourage his despondent colleague and friend Leslie Dunn (1893-1974), but failed. He then observed that Dunn needed religion, but that he did not have it. Dobzhansky deliberately initiated discussions about Dostoevsky, specifically of The Grand Inquisitor, to bring others such as his colleagues and friends Carl Epling (1894-1968) and Alfred Ezra Mirsky (1900-74) closer to God. He tried to be Christian and prayed almost every morning. Many notes in his diary, especially from the last years of his life, started and ended with expressions glorifying God. For instance, the entry for March 1, 1971 has the traditional ending, “but first of all God, glory to you.” He prays for strength in the face of illness, pain and death and thanks God for the grace of his blessings.
 
One of the most important characteristics of Russian Orthodoxy is the religious unity of believers in the practical and spiritual sense expressed in the idea of sobornost. This formed the context for Dobzhansky’s concerns about the Church. For instance, he appears hopeful about the apparently unusual presence of young people at a Russian church service. He deplores the absence of religion and the commercialization of churches in Japan and is bitterly disappointed about the rejection of his religious vision of evolutionary progress by both atheists and the Christian Church. These concerns are consistent with his own church attendance.

A further characteristic of Russian Orthodoxy is that the architecture of their church buildings reflects the universe. Dobzhansky expresses sensitivity to the spiritual symbolism of architecture after visiting the palace of Louis XIV in Versailles. Comparing it with the cathedral in Chartres he wonders how a Christian monarch could build a palace that he considers a piece of anti-Christian propaganda.’