We crossed the equator

‘At last we anchor for the night just inside Nazareth Bay, for Nazareth Bay wants daylight to deal with, being rich in low islands and sand shoals. We crossed the Equator this afternoon.’ This is Mary Henrietta Kingsley, a Victorian traveller and explorer, born 160 years ago today. She became a respected expert on West African society and politics, and she authored two popular books based on her experiences - the first includes a few extracts from her diaries.

Kingsley was born in London on 13 October 1862, the daughter and oldest child of physician, traveller and writer George Kingsley, and niece of novelists Charles Kingsley and Henry Kingsley. The family moved to Highgate less than a year after her birth. She received little in the way of a formal education, though she did have access to her father’s large library, and she loved to listen to his travel stories. Later, once her brother Charley had been admitted to Christ’s College, Cambridge, she benefitted from his academic connections. When her parents fell infirm, it was Mary who was by their bedside, until their deaths in 1892. 

Thereafter, with a reasonable inheritance, Kingsley was able to travel herself, first to the Canary Islands, and then to explore West Africa (twice), where she often immersed herself among the native peoples. On one expedition, she travelled through the country of the Fang, a tribe with a reputation for cannibalism, having many harrowing adventures apparently. She also collected natural history samples - not least specimens of fish previously unknown to western science - for the British Museum. Through her experiences, she acquired a detailed knowledge of West African society and politics.

Back in England, Kingsley spent several years touring and giving lectures to a wide variety of audiences about life in Africa. She was the first woman to address the Liverpool and Manchester chambers of commerce; but she also ran into trouble with the church for criticising missionaries who were engaged, she felt, in corrupting local religious practices. Hugely sympathetic to the Africans’ ways of life, her views were often controversial. Wikipedia has this analysis: ‘[Her] beliefs about cultural and economic imperialism are complex and widely debated by scholars today. Though, on the one hand, she regarded African people and cultures as those who needed protection and preservation, she also believed in the necessity of British economic and technological influence and in indirect rule, insisting that there was some work in West Africa that had to be completed by white men.’

After the outbreak of the Second Boer War, Kingsley travelled to Cape Town where she volunteered as a nurse. However, she soon contracted typhoid, and she died in June 1900, not yet 40 years old. Further biographical information is available from Wikipedia, Encyclopaedia Britannica, British Empire, or The Victorian Web. 

Kingsley kept detailed diaries on her travels, and later published two books based on those diaries. The first - Travels in West Africa: Congo Français, Corisco and Cameroons published by Macmillan in 1897 - was an immediate best-seller, and added to her academic prestige. (This is freely available online at Internet Archive or Googlebooks). She followed it two years later with West African Studies (1899). 

The first of Kingsley’s two books includes some - rather few - extracts from her diaries, and even those fade into the main narrative, so it is not always clear where the diary extracts end. At the start of Chapter 4, she goes to some lengths to explain why she put any diary extracts in at all.

‘I MUST pause here to explain my reasons for giving extracts from my diary, being informed on excellent authority that publishing a diary is a form of literary crime. Such being the case I have to urge in extenuation of my committing it that -Firstly, I have not done it before, for so far I have given a sketchy résumé of many diaries kept by me while visiting the regions I have attempted to describe. Secondly, no one expects literature in a book of travel. Thirdly, there are things to be said in favour of the diary form, particularly when it is kept in a little known and wild region, for the reader gets therein notice of things that, although unimportant in themselves, yet go to make up the conditions of life under which men and things exist. The worst of it is these things are not often presented in their due and proper proportion in diaries. Many pages in my journals that I will spare you display this crime to perfection.’

And then she includes the first verbatim extract from her diary.

5 June 1895
‘Off on Mové at 9.30. Passengers, Mr. Hudson, Mr. Woods, Mr. Huyghens, Père Steinitz, and I. There are black deck-passengers galore; Ï do not know their honourable names, but they are evidently very much married men, for there is quite a gorgeously coloured little crowd of ladies to see them off. They salute me as I pass down the pier, and start inquiries. I say hastily to them: “Farewell, I’m off up river,” for I notice Mr. Fildes bearing down on me, and I don’t want him to drop in on the subject of society interest. I expect it is settled now, or pretty nearly. There is a considerable amount of mild uproar among the black contingent, and the Mové firmly clears off before half the good advice and good wishes for the black husbands are aboard. She is a fine little vessel; far finer than I expected. The accommodation I am getting is excellent. A long, narrow cabin, with one bunk in it and pretty nearly everything one can wish for, and a copying press thrown in. Food is excellent, society charming, captain and engineer quite acquisitions. The saloon is square and roomy for the size of the vessel, and most things, from row-locks to teapots, are kept under the seats in good nautical style. We call at the guard-ship to pass our papers, and then steam ahead out of the Gaboon estuary to the south, round Pongara Point, keeping close into the land. About forty feet from shore there is a good free channel for vessels with a light draught which if you do not take, you have to make a big sweep seaward to avoid a reef. Between four and five miles below Pongara, we pass Point Gombi, which is fitted with a lighthouse, a lively and conspicuous structure by day as well as night. It is perched on a knoll, close to the extremity of the long arm of low, sandy ground, and is painted black and white, in horizontal bands, which, in conjunction with its general figure, give it a pagoda-like appearance.

Alongside it are a white-painted, red-roofed house for the light-house keeper, and a store for its oil. The light is either a flashing or a revolving or a stationary one, when it is alight. One must be accurate about these things, and my knowledge regarding it is from information received, and amounts to the above. I cannot throw in any personal experience, because I have never passed it at night-time, and seen from Glass it seems just steady. Most lighthouses on this Coast give up fancy tricks, like flashing or revolving, pretty soon after they are established. Seventy-five percent, of them are not alight half the time at all. “It’s the climate.” Gombi, however, you may depend on for being alight at night, and I have no hesitation in saying you can see it, when it is visible, seventeen miles out to sea, and that the knoll on which the lighthouse stands is a grass-covered sand cliff, about forty or fifty feet above sea-level. As we pass round Gombi point, the weather becomes distinctly rough, particularly at lunch-time. The Mové minds it less than her passengers, and stamps steadily along past the wooded shore, behind which shows a distant range of blue hills. Silence falls upon the black passengers, who assume recumbent positions on the deck, and suffer. All the things from under the saloon seats come out and dance together, and play puss-in-the-corner, after the fashion of loose gear when there is any sea on.

As the night comes down, the scene becomes more and more picturesque. The moonlit sea, shimmering and breaking on the darkened shore, the black forest and the hills silhouetted against the star-powdered purple sky, and, at my feet, the engine-room stoke-hole, lit with the rose-coloured glow from its furnace, showing by the great wood fire the two nearly naked Krumen stokers, shining like polished bronze in their perspiration, as they throw in on to the fire the billets of redwood that look like freshly-cut chunks of flesh. The white engineer hovers round the mouth of the pit, shouting down directions and ever and anon plunging down the little iron ladder to carry them out himself. At intervals he stands on the rail with his head craned round the edge of the sun deck to listen to the captain, who is up on the little deck above, for there is no telegraph to the engines, and our gallant commanders voice is not strong. While the white engineer is roosting on the rail, the black engineer comes partially up the ladder and gazes hard at me; so I give him a wad of tobacco, and he plainly regards me as inspired, for of course that was what he wanted. Remember that whenever you see a man, black or white, filled with a nameless longing, it is tobacco he requires. Grim despair accompanied by a gusty temper indicates something wrong with his pipe, in which case offer him a straightened-out hairpin. The black engineer having got his tobacco, goes below to the stokehole again and smokes a short clay as black and as strong as himself. The captain affects an immense churchwarden. How he gets through life, waving it about as he does, without smashing it ever two minutes, I cannot make out.

At last we anchor for the night just inside Nazareth Bay, for Nazareth Bay wants daylight to deal with, being rich in low islands and sand shoals. We crossed the Equator this afternoon.’

They cheered lustily

Today marks the bicentenary of the birth of Rutherford B Hayes. He became the 19th president of the US, but only after one of the most controversial elections in US history, and he was one of the few presidents who kept a diary while in office. In his first entry, after finally winning the presidency, he noted that ‘the colored hack-drivers and others cheered lustily’; and that his policy would be ‘trust, peace, and to put aside the bayonet’.

Rutherford Birchard Hayes was born on 4 October 1822, in Delaware, Ohio, the son of a storekeeper who died 10 weeks before his son’s birth. His mother, Sophia Birchard, cared for him and one sister without remarrying. After briefly reading law in Columbus, Ohio, Hayes moved to Harvard Law School in 1843. He was admitted to the Ohio bar in 1845 and soon after opened his own law office. By 1851, though, he had moved to Cincinnati, and opened another law firm with a partner; and the following year he married Lucy Webb, whose Methodist, teetotal, and abolitionist beliefs would affect his own. They had three children.

In 1858, after increasingly representing slaves fleeing over the border from Kentucky, still a slave state then, Hayes found his political reputation growing. He was appointed city solicitor for Cincinnati, a post he held until 1861, when he left politics to fight in the Civil War for the Union Army. He was wounded several times, earning a reputation for bravery, and was promoted to major general. After the war, he served in the US Congress from 1865 to 1867 as a Republican, and then was elected Governor of Ohio for two consecutive terms, from 1868 to 1872. Thereafter, he returned to law for a few years before being returned again as state governor in 1876.

However, Hayes’s third term as governor was short lived since that same year he ran for president. Although he lost the popular vote to Democrat Samuel Tilden, he won the presidency after a Congressional commission awarded him 20 disputed electoral votes. The so-called Compromise of 1877 resulted in the Democrats acquiescing to Hayes’s election and Hayes accepting the end of military occupation of the South. This was one of the most contentious elections in US history.

Hayes’s presidency was characterised by meritocratic government, equal treatment without regard to race, and improvement through education. He is remembered for ordering federal troops out of Southern capitals as reconstruction came to an end, and for using troops to quell the Great Railroad Strike of 1877. He also began a process of civil service reform. He remained president until 4 March 1881, and, as he had pledged, did not seek re-election. During a period of active retirement, he continued to work towards extending children’s education and prison reform. He died in 1893. Further biographical information is available online from, among other sites, the Hayes Presidential Center, the Miller Center and Wikipedia.

Hayes kept a diary throughout his life from the age of 12 (and, apparently, was one of only three presidents to do so while in office - as far as is known). The diaries were edited by Charles Richard Williams and published in five volumes by Ohio State Archæological and Historical Society in 1922 as The Diary and Letters of Rutherford B. Hayes, Nineteenth President of the United States. These volumes are all out of copyright and available at Internet Archive. Also, the Rutherford B. Hayes Presidential Center has made available the 3,000 pages of text in a form that can be searched by keyword or browsed page by page. 

The following extracts are taken from the Center’s website, and most of them are highlighted as ‘memorable quotes’; however, the last extract - dating to the first days of his Presidency - is taken from Volume III.

19 June 1841
‘I will put down a few of my present hopes and designs for the sake of keeping them safe. I do not intend to leave here until about a year after I graduate, when I expect to commence the study of law. Before then I wish to become a master of logic and rhetoric and to obtain a good knowledge of history. To accomplish these objects I am willing to study hard, in which case I believe I can make, at least, a tolerable debater. It is another intention of mine, that after I have commenced in life, whatever may be my ability or station, to preserve a reputation for honesty and benevolence; and if ever I am a public man I will never do anything inconsistent with the character of a true friend and good citizen. To become such a man I shall necessarily have to live in accordance with the precepts of the Bible, which I firmly believe, although I have never made them strictly the “rule of my conduct.” Thus ends this long dry chapter on self.’

27 February 1853
‘Almost two months married. The great step of life which makes or mars the whole after journey, has been happily taken. The dear friend who is to share with me the joys and ills of our earthly being grows steadily nearer and dearer to me. A better wife I never hoped to have. Our little differences in points of taste or preference are readily adjusted, and judging by the past I do not see how our tender and affectionate relations can be disturbed by any jar. She bears with my “innocent peculiarities” so kindly, so lovingly; is so studious in providing for my little wants; is - is, in short, so true a wife that I cannot think it possible that any shadow of disappointment will ever cloud the prospect,save only such calamities as are the common allotment of Providence to all. Let me strive to be as true to her as she is to me.’

6 November 1853
‘On Friday, the 4th, at 2 P. M., Lucy gave birth to our first child - a son. I hoped, and had a presentiment almost, that the little one would be a boy. How I love Lucy, the mother of my boy! Sweetheart and wife, she had been before, loved tenderly and strongly as such, but the new feeling is more “home-felt,” quiet, substantial, and satisfying. For the “lad” my feeling has yet to grow a great deal. I prize him and rejoiced to have him, and when I take him in my arms begin to feel a father’s love and interest, hope and pride, enough to know what the feeling will be if not what it is. I think what is to be his future, his life. How strange a mystery all this is! This to me is the beginning of a new life. A happy one, I believe.’

15 May 1861
‘Judge Matthews and I have agreed to go into the service for the war, if possible into the same regiment. I spoke my feelings to him, which he said were his also, viz., that this was a just and necessary war and that it demanded the whole power of the country; that I would prefer to go into it if I knew I was to die or be killed in the course of it, than to live through and after it without taking any part in it.’

14 March 1877
‘We left Columbus soon afternoon, Thursday, March 1, for Washington on a special car; having, in fact, two cars of Colonel Tom Scott, attached to the regular passenger train. In our party were William Henry Smith, ex-Governor Noyes, General Young, General Grosvenor, [and] Colonel H. C. Corbin.

The evening before, we had a reception at the State House given by the people of Columbus. A large crowd followed us to the depot. We were escorted by the college cadets. I made a short speech which was well received. Crowds met us at Newark, Dennison, Steubenville, and other points. The enthusiasm was greater than I have seen in Ohio before. At Marysville(?), near Harrisburg, we were wakened to hear the news that the two houses had counted the last State and that I was declared elected!

We reached Washington about 9:30 A. M. General and Senator Sherman met us at the depot, and we were driven directly to Senator Sherman’s house. After breakfast I called with Senator Sherman on President Grant.

It was arranged that I should in the evening, before the state dinner at the White House, be sworn by the Chief Justice to prevent an interregnum between Sunday noon (the 4th) and the inauguration, Monday. This was the advice of Secretary Fish and the President. I did not altogether approve but acquiesced.

I then drove with Senator Sherman to the Capitol. The colored hack-drivers and others cheered lustily.  I went into the Vice-President’s room and many Senators and Representatives were introduced to me. Several Northern men, S. S. Cox and other Democrats, and still more Southern men.

Saturday and Sunday [I] saw Senators and Representatives and others, and [received] many suggestions on the Cabinet. Blaine urged Fry. Hamlin much vexed and grieved when I told him I couldn’t appoint Fry. Blaine seemed to claim it, as a condition of good relations with me. Cameron and Logan [were] greatly urged all day. I told Cameron I could not appoint him. Too many of the old Cabinet had good claims to remain, to recognize one without appointing more than would be advisable. I accordingly nominated: Wm. M. Evarts, New York, State; John Sherman, Ohio, Treasury; Carl Schurz, Missouri, Interior; General Charles Devens, Massachusetts, Attorney-General; D. M. Key, Tennessee, Postmaster-General; George W. McCrary, Iowa, War; R. W. Thompson, Indiana, Navy.

The chief disappointment among the influential men of the party was with Conkling, Blaine, Cameron, Logan, and their followers. They were very bitter. The opposition was chiefly to Evarts, Key, and especially Schurz. Speeches were made, and an attempt to combine with the Democrats to defeat the confirmation of the nominations only failed to be formidable by [reason of] the resolute support of the Southern Senators like Gordon, Lamar, and Hill. After a few days the public opinion of the country was shown by the press to be strongly with me. All of the nominations were confirmed by almost a unanimous vote.

The expressions of satisfaction from all parts of the country are most gratifying. The press and the private correspondence of Rogers [private secretary] and myself are full of it.

My policy is trust, peace, and to put aside the bayonet. I do not think the wise policy is to decide contested elections in the States by the use of the national army.’

This article is a slightly revised version of one first published on 4 October 2012.

In search of a rich wife

John Thomlinson, an English clergyman only remembered because of his diary, was born all of 330 years ago today. The diary is variously described as ‘strange’  and ‘unpleasing’ but is also said to give ‘a lively picture’ of the writer’s ‘sordid and selfish views’, in particular with reference to his efforts to find a rich wife.

Thomlinson was born in the small farming village of Blencogo, near Wigton, Cumberland, on 29 September 1692. He studied at St John’s College, Cambridge, and was ordained a deacon in 1717. Subsequently, he became curate at Rothbury, Northumberland, and rector at Glenfield, Leicestershire. He married Catherine Winstanley, daughter of his patron at Glenfield. He died in 1761. Very little else is known of Thomlinson, but for what is contained in his diary.

Extracts were first published in Six North Country Diaries edited by J C Hodgson (published by The Surtees Society, Durham in 1910). An introduction to Thomlinson’s diary notes the following: ‘On a sheet of paper pasted into the volume, there is written in an eighteenth or early nineteenth century hand, ‘This strange diary seems to have been kept by a young North-country man, of the name of Thomlinson, a student at Cambridge, just entering into Holy Orders. It affords a lively picture of the sordid and selfish views of the writer and of his friends for his advancement, in seeking for a rich wife, and the shameless traffic and trifling with the feelings of many women in this pursuit. There are many things that illustrate the domestic manners of the time, and some anecdotes of Dr Bentley and the proceedings at Cambridge, not without interest.’ ’

Arthur Ponsonby, author of English Diaries, says of Thomlinson’s diary: ‘This is an instance of a diary which, however unpleasing it may be, is quite spontaneous and honest and therefore portrays the character of the writer more vividly than letters or second-hand observations of others could do.’ And Wikipedia adds this: ‘Indeed, this is one of the most captivating, but little-known diaries of the period, rich in antiquarian and literary interest. Thomlinson does not hesitate to criticize his subjects, and reports scandals together with curious and humorous anecdotes including what is certainly one of the earliest limericks.’

Most of Thomlinson’s manuscript is held by The British Library, but The Huntington Library, in San Marino, California, holds one volume, and provides this information: ‘This journal or diary, kept at irregular intervals over nearly forty years (fullest for the 1720s), gradually morphs into a letterbook recording copies of Thomlinson’s correspondence. Early entries discuss with some frankness his family and prospects, his own and his family’s business and legal mattters, daily life and gossip, books and reading (including The Tatler), politics and current events, sermons, occasional medicinal recipes and cures, and accounts of his correspondence.’

Here are several extracts from Thomlinson’s diary (taken from Six North Country Diaries).

13 September 1717
‘Mr Fletcher debauched several women in Whitehaven; a lame gent, was told by some malicious woman that he had made an assignation with his wife and that they were then together - he went and found them, but it was accidental, he broke her and his head both - I believe with his crutch. But it is thought their meeting was accidental.’

14 September 1717
‘King of Spain entered upon Sardinia, and begun the war with the emperor - the pope is thought to be at the bottom of it - they deserved no mercy for disturbing the emperor when he is at war with the common enemy of Christendom.’

15 September 1717
‘Two men endeavoured to ravish a woman. Uncle took notice of it in his sermon, it had no less punishment assigned by our law than death, this startled the audience.’

8 October 1717
‘Brother told me yesterday that they de- signed one of Mr Ord’s daughters for me. Uncle John says they would never have gott that estate with the mill, if they had followed uncle Robert’s scheme, but he does not doubt but to gett it, if they’ll take his advice. Last Sunday Mr Dulap, senior, wished this place and uncle, such a hopefull successor as I, etc.’

10 October 1717
‘Mrs Nicholson accused uncle of great injustice about her fortune in making the match, etc. Said she was afraid the golden cup which old Mrs Nicholson had formerly given him had bribed him in her favour, and he knew no text of Scripture that commanded her to starve her children to enrich his relations, etc.’

15 November 1717
‘Uncle Robert says uncle John cares not how soon I was married - thinks of John Ord’s daughter - the eldest; she is a religious, good natured woman, not so handsome as the second who is a proud, conceiting herself to be a witt, etc. Neither the mother nor the eldest daughter are women of parts, or extraordinary sense, but enough to manage a house, etc. They think John may gett me this living, being acquainted with Mr Sharp’s brother, the lawyer, and he will do brother Richard business about the mill.’

30 December 1717
‘B Haddon sent me some apples, an orange, and a bottle of gooseberry wine to be drunk at Christopher’s. Uncle said he would be afraid to marry me into that family (i.e., Colingwood’s), I should gett into such a nest of drinkers at this time, etc.’

13 April 1718
‘Mr Werg reported to have offered to lay with two or three men’s wifes in Alnwick - one was the day before sacrament - she asked him how he durst, when he knew he was the next day to administer sacrament and she to receive it - he replyed love was a noble passion, and God would indulge it. This sent up to London, and they say he is stopt of the living.’

16 May 1718
‘Aunt Reed called me ‘an idle fellow - following his hussys,’ etc., and said she would tell my uncle when I came to Rothbury - staying something (sic) in town, etc., told by N Fay. Lettice and spinage will be fitt to be cutt in a week - cresses ready now - sown a few turnips.’

31 March 1722
‘Query whether I am not engaged to Mrs A Repington more than by inclination, i.e., because I like her best - I mean it is a query whether my words may not have engaged me - I cannot well recollect - only the letter to Mr Poynton, now in his hands, which she never saw. Uncle told bishop’s lady that if his lordship would give me a living, for he wanted to see me setled, and he beleived I would make a good parish preist, he would give bond to oblige a freind of my lord’s when his fell vacant, etc. The lady said his lordship had so many upon him for livings, that he knew not what to do - his chaplain had gott nothing yet, etc. This lady’s living is about 3 miles from Leicester, 300 l. per annum, and she has 1,200 l., and other sisters may die. 300 l. per annum is equivalent to 900 l. So that the lady of Amington is better fortune, if they have the estate, etc.’

This article is a slightly revised version of one first published on 29 September 2012.

The Chuder Ede diaries

James Chuder Ede, not a name much remembered these days, was a key Labour Party politician during and after the Second World War. Born 140 years ago today, he played a major role in the 1944 Education Act, and, after the war, he was Home Secretary throughout Clement Atlee’s period as Prime Minister. His wartime diaries - published in 1987 - are said to reveal ‘much about the operation of wartime politics at a variety of levels, notably within the Labour Party’.

Ede was born on 11 September 1882 in Epsom, Surrey, the son of a grocer. He was schooled locally and then attended Christ's College, Cambridge, where he studied natural sciences. However, he ran out of funds in his second year, and left without a degree. Having been raised as a Noncomformist, he turned to Unitarianism and remained religious throughout his life. From 1905 to 1914, he taught at elementary schools in Surrey, but he also took an active part in the Surrey County Teachers’ Association (part of the National Union of Teachers) and in the Liberal Party. In 1914, he was elected to Surrey County Council where he worked to develop education policy. However, he was soon caught up in the war, serving in the East Surrey Regiment and Royal Engineers (mostly in France), reaching the rank of Acting Regimental Sergeant Major.  

During the war, Ede married Lilian Mary Williams, but they would have no children. After the war, having switched to become a Labour Party member, he was elected to Parliament at a bye-election, though he lost his seat in general election soon after. From 1929, he was elected MP for South Shields, losing the seat in 1931; but, thereafter, he regained it in 1935, and held it to 1964. When Epsom and Ewell were awarded borough status in 1937, he was chosen as the Charter Mayor. He was also appointed a deputy lieutenant for the county of Surrey, and was chairman of the British Electrical Development Association in 1937.

In the wartime coalition, Ede was appointed Parliamentary Secretary to the Board of Education, and served under two Conservative Presidents, first Herwald Ramsbotham, and then Rab Butler. With Butler, Ede - having detailed knowledge of state education - steered the Education Act 1944 through Parliament. Following the post-war Labour victory, Clement Attlee appointed him Home Secretary, a post he held until Labour lost power in 1951 (though for the last few months he was also Leader of the Commons). During his remaining 15 years as an MP in opposition, he continued an involvement with the British Museum, was an active member of the BBC’s General Advisory Council, and he held a leading rôle in the Unitarian church. He also stepped up his efforts towards abolishing the death penalty - as Home Secretary he had denied a reprieve from the death penalty to a prisoner he later knew to have been innocent. 

In 1964, he was created a life peer as Baron Chuter Ede. He died the following year (his wife having died nearly 20 years earlier). Further information is available from Wikipedia, Christ’s College Cambridge, and Epsom & Ewell History Explorer.

Ede kept diaries for some of his life, though, after the Second World War, the responsibilities of being Home Secretary left him with insufficient time to keep up the habit. However, the diaries he wrote during the war were edited by Kevin Jeffreys and published by The Historians’ Press in 1987 as Labour and the Wartime Coalition - From the Diary of James Chulter Ede, 1941-1945.

Jeffreys’ introduction begins as follows: ‘The Chuter Ede diary sheds important new light on British politics during the Second World War. Wartime politics have often been treated as an adjunct to the military and diplomatic events which naturally dominate the period between 1939 and 1945. The politics of the war years have been considered by many of the biographers of leading twentieth-century politicians, and the background to the Labour Party’s famous victory at the 1945 general election has also been carefully examined. But for the most part the war has remained a neglected area of study in modern political history; a reflection in part of the assumption that party politics were somehow suspended after the formation of a coalition between Conservative and Labour forces under Churchill’s leadership in May 1940. In consequence, little attention has been paid to the everyday working of the coalition government, to the wartime concerns of back-benchers, or to the relationship between the political parties at Westminster. James Chuter Ede was well placed to observe these developments. He served as a Labour junior minister at the Board of Education from 1940 to 1945, and was subsequently to become Home Secretary in Attlee’s post-war governments. His daily record of events, reproduced in edited form here, reveals much about the operation of wartime politics at a variety of levels, notably within the Labour Party.’

The following extracts are taken from Labour and the Wartime Coalition, which can be freely borrowed digitally from Internet Archive. 

28 January 1942
‘As I entered the Party Meeting Aneurin Bevan was pleading for ‘large scale abstentions’ in tomorrow’s division. Tinker vehemently opposed this but said there should be a free vote so that no one need sit on the fence of abstention. Muff warned the abstentionists that they should read in the Book of Revelations the fate that threatened Laodicea. Pressed to say what that was he defined it as a process of regurgitation Philips Price said we should give a jolt to the Government but not bring it down. The 1922 Committee had been satisfied about India & the maintenance of private enterprise, therefore we were entitled to feel misgivings. Bellenger wanted a reasoned amendment. Woodbum said abstentionists were trying to break up the Govt. He objected to seeing the Labour Party as an appendage to Henderson-Stewart. No one could be acquitted of lack of foresight. The Chamberlain Govt, was brought down by the abstentionists. Shinwell said it was clear the Party could not vote against the Government. American shipping would not be available until the end of 1943 & would then be inadequate. It should not be assumed that if he was seen talking with Winterton in the corridors that he was intriguing; he was probably discussing fat stock prices. Mainwaring said the discussion had been more mischievous than helpful.

Pethick-Lawrence lucidly summed up. We had to say whether we supported the Govt, or not. The Party had four courses open to it. (1) To oppose the Govt. No one had suggested that. (2) To allow a free vote. That would be a serious decision in an affair of this importance. (3) To have large abstentions. How this was to be arranged no one had explained although Muff had chaffingly suggested the A-M names should abstain & the N-Z names should support the Government. P.-L. suggested this course would render Labour Ministers continuance in the Govt. very precarious. (4) To support the Govt. Tinker insisted on moving for a free vote. 16 voted for this & 53 for supporting the Govt. Silverman asked that those against this should be counted and only 12 held up their hands . . .

When the P.M. left the House he remarked to Sandys, who was sitting beside me, that there was a lot of bitterness & there would be a rough journey . . .’

8 September 1942
‘. . . I reached the House just as the P.M. was moving the vote of condolence on the death of the Duke of Kent . . . The P.M. then rose, in Committee on the Vote of Credit, to give his review of the war situation. He was happy and did not strive after great oratorical effects. Nevertheless there were deft verbal touches that amused the House, which remained interested throughout the speech. He began by expressing his thanks for the defeat of the Wardlaw-Milne motion, nine weeks ago. . . He could assure the House we could maintain the defence of Egypt for months to come. He praised the policy of understatement practised by the Cairo communiqué in deference to the taste of the House. We were entitled to regard last week’s fighting as -and he made a dramatic pause as if seeking for some superlative - distinctly not unsatisfactory. Later Greenwood a little unnecessarily reproved the P.M. for this as a meaningless phrase. The House appreciated the humour of the deliberate anti-climax. He had had four days’ personal conference with Stalin to whom he paid a long, eloquent & hearty tribute . . . He made it clear we should go to Russia’s aid regardless of the loss & sacrifices involved. He had foreseen one political danger from the date of the collapse of France. He had feared that Hitler might create an empire like Charlemagne’s, but wherever the German went he was hated as no people had been hated in the history of the world. They corrupted everyone who associated with them. This remark led him to a stern denunciation of the attack on the Jews in France. The hour of victory would be the hour of retribution. The House emptied & not forty members stayed to hear Greenwood who was twice interrupted by Haden-Guest. who first asked if there was united strategy, & then ‘on a point of order’ if it was right for the P.M. to withdraw while the Leader of the Opposition was speaking -  Greenwood remarked that it was a point of hunger & intimated his sympathy with the P.M. When Greenwood sat down only Cary rose. I went to lunch . . .

Cripps, according to the wireless, trounced M.P.s who went out during the P.M.’s speech & those who did not stay to hear Greenwood or to carry on the debate. . .’

16 December 1943
‘I reached the House just before noon, but in time to hear Attlee tell the House that the P.M. had had a cold which had developed a patch of pneumonia. A bulletin signed by Lord Moran and two other doctors was read. Another is expected today. The House was evidently concerned and sympathetically cheered Attlee’s promise to send a message of good wishes to the invalid . . .

The Evening Papers have commendatory references in addition to long resumes of the Bill. For the purpose of this publicity the P.M.’s illness has taken the place we might otherwise have expected on the front pages. . .’

18 January 1944
‘. . . The P.M. strolled nonchalantly past me into the House. His progress was accompanied by loud, long and joyous cheers, every member in the House, except a few on the Front Opposition Bench, rising. Needless to say, he had another warm reception when he answered his first question. He had a long list. Herbert Williams, in a supplementary about the Italian campaign, asked if Montgomery’s speech some weeks [ago] had not caused false optimism. The P.M. drily, and brusquely, retorted: ‘I don’t know about false optimism; there’s been a lot of bad weather. . .’

6 July 1944
‘I heard the P.M.’s statement on the flying bombs. He had to wait to make it until a lot of questions on business about the Town & Country Planning Bill had been answered. The P.M. did not underrate the menace of the bomb. 2754 had been launched; these had caused 2752 casualties. He told of the months of heavy bombing which had delayed the use of this weapon by the enemy. He said June had been a very bad month from our point of view. The overcast skies had prevented us from using our great air supremacy over the Normandy battlefield and had prevented us from photographing & bombing the sites from which the flying bombs were launched. I was sitting below the Bar and there was some cynical amusement when the P.M. announced that Duncan Sandys, who is his son-in-law, was Chairman of the Committee in charge of offensive operations. The P.M. said the Chiefs of Staff suggested this arrangement. He announced that evacuation was taking place. No compulsion would be used. He could give no promise as to the length of the attack or its possible increase in strength. He paid a tribute to the work H. Morrison had done and wound up by saying this attack would not deflect our strength & determination from the Normandy battlefield . . .’

The Queen and I

I have never had a very close relationship with the Queen, who died yesterday, so no mourning for me. But I’m not a republican. I feel I’ve always appreciated the monarchy for what it is, a significant and colourful link to the past, one which enriches our cultural life. I often think of it as a first class tourist attraction. Absolutely, and like the rest of the country, I believe the Queen has been a fabulous force for good and for unifying of her people. She’s had a difficult and enduring job, and managed it exceptionally well. 

My mother was born in the same year as the Queen, and I was born in the year of her coronation. At the time, my soon-to-be-absent father bought all the new ‘definitive’ stamps (with the new monarch’s profile) to give me when I was older. Some he posted on the first day of issue, and I still have those First Day Covers as well as the mint definitives. 

The queen, I have to admit, has troubled my diary rather infrequently over the decades. Nevertheless, her death provides me with an opportunity to gather what few diary entries there are for a whistle stop personal memoir of her life - covering the last 50 years of her reign. If my diary entries are to be relied on, I only ever saw the Queen once in person, during my student days in Cardiff (though I don’t remember the event at all). The most recent of my diary entries mentioning the Queen was this year, when my family and I had a royal good time at a party hosted by the Symondsbury Estate in Dorset - my wife, Hattie, even posed with the Queen for a photo!

19 November 1971
‘Went in for 9 physics and pure maths skipped probability to see the Queen and Duke opening bypass.’

4 June 1977
‘Today England is celebrating everywhere the Queen’s Silver Jubilee. In London it is a magnificent festival and procession with the Queen and all her offspring. And what am I doing, sitting on the floor in the sitting room listening to Julie Felix, hoping the phone will ring. And yet, what is one of the most exciting things that can happen when one is travelling? To find a festival in process, to see the people celebrating - carnival in Brazil for instance. I enthuse exceedingly to find a festival, procession, and yet here I have my own most English celebration that can be, and I am completely disinterested.’

24 December 1985
‘The Pope wishes the world Happy Christmas in 51 languages. The Queen says everyone should add their bit, however small, to the goodness of the world. The UK PM says to the Falkland Islands people that their right is their democracy.’

6 August 1987
‘DREAM: I got the idea to interview the Queen and request her cooperation for a desert island discs programme. Much to my amazement she accepts. At first the full import of my achievement didn’t filter through but soon I realised that there were crowds of people interested (including many taxi drivers). I could see myself conducting the interview as if on TV. We were in a large room and seated quite far apart. The Queen was old and decrepit, and needed the advice and help of a small group of assistants behind her. She only came out with two or three records (one by Grieg) and when I asked her why she had chosen them she chastised me. The programme was about her discs not why she was choosing them.’

15 February 1992
‘THE QUEEN: I watch a documentary about the life of our Queen. It is well photographed and oh so very carefully judged. She comes across as a rather preposterous old woman, privileged beyond all realm of fantasy with wealth and high society - pandered too by the world’s most famous people yet with no higher intelligence than the hospital sick or dwellers in old peoples’ homes who she patronises with visits. Unlike Prince Charles who does show some spirit, some spontaneity, some depth of knowledge, Queenie appears vacuous and characterless. That documentary, I think, was an error of judgement - one kept on asking why bother, what is the point of her. She seems to sign countless documents but plays no part in their meaning; she talks to countless figures in public life (“one can call anyone in to have a chat”), but garners no intelligence. There is just ceremony without the slightest substance, formality without even the semblance of authority. The film only served to remind us of that.’

21 March 1992
‘CRISIS IN TWO INSTITUTIONS - ROYALTY AND MARRIAGE: Sarah Ferguson, dearly beloved of Prince Andrew and mother of Beatrice and Eugenie, direct descendants to the throne of Great Britain, has decided she can take no more. After a party lasting five years, after being a world star, she’s decided to quit. The Queen’s press secretary in talks with the palace correspondents quietly tried to blame Fergie but the tabloids called his bluff and ran headlines like - the Queen has the knives out for Fergie - and so on. Of course, the Queen couldn’t be seen to be saying such things, so the PR had to take it in the chin and apologise publicly to Queenie and Fergie. Of course, he only spoke what the palace believes, but the palace just couldn’t take all that stick. But there will be war now between Fergie and the Palace. She’ll demand lots and pots of lolly - after all if she’s to keep quiet and not accept $2m dollar for her story from an American publisher she’ll want reasonable compensation. Shame on her, I say, I’m with you Queenie; send her to Coventry; how dare she play around with the very history of our country as well as set such a poor example for the married folk of our society!’

21 November 1992
‘A terrible fire has consumed a third of Windsor Castle. It started in the Queen’s private chapel and raged for 10-12 hours. Hundreds of firemen worked to stop it but huge flames poured out of the building for most of yesterday. The media has reported variable facts about the castle such as that it contains the world’s most important private collection of art, that it is the most continuously lived in castle in the world, that with Westminster Abbey it is the most important building in the country.’

13 December 1992
‘DIANA LETS THE SIDE DOWN: I am upset by the news this week that Prince Charles and his wife Diana are to separate. The royal family has had a bitch of a year but this news is the worst of the lot. Charles is in line to be King and Diana to be Queen, therefore anything they do and say matters. The separation (and ultimate divorce) of Prince Andrew and Fergie does not matter half as much. By refusing to accept the strictures of royal family life, Diana has betrayed the trust and responsibility invested in her. We the people, do not shout and wave and adore Diana herself, we wave, shout, love and adore her because she is a symbol of the royal family, she has accepted the role and the responsibility that goes with it. She is sorely mistaken if she thinks she can carry on as a famous and important person, and be treated as such everywhere she goes, now that she has stabbed the whole system in the back. Royal families cannot expect to live like ordinary people; they have immense privileges and there are costs that go with them. Diana appears to want her cake and to eat it. And how on earth can she go on speaking for the marriage guidance charity Relate, when she doesn’t have the stamina for her own marriage. She and Charles, like many royal families, already live separate lives; what does Diana hope to gain by proving to the world that she is not living a dream happy marriage as shown in cornflake advertisements. In five or ten years time, Diana will realise what a terrible mistake she has made. She will not find whatever is missing in her relationship with Charles anywhere else, other than for a few moments, or hours or days - like everybody else. Life is about getting on with the business and making it as bearable as you can. Whatever she chooses to do, it will be the same in the end, yet as Queen she could have had the most fascinating and interesting of lives. 

And poor old Charlie must be in the very pits of depression - he has failed to provide the leadership to the people that he so desperately wants to give, he has failed personally to hold his marriage together, and he has failed the whole historic tradition of the royalty in this country by choosing the wrong wife.

The Annus Horribilis, as Queenie has called 1992, begins to sound like an understatement, a pathetic statement of personal frustration. Yet the tragedy is of historic proportions, and the Queen herself must take a huge chunk of the blame; all three of her children who married are now separated. The fact that one of them, Anne, remarried this weekend does nothing at all to mitigate the historic fall of the House of Windsor.’

28 December 1993
‘On Christmas Day, we did make one short call, across the road to see Alice and Dan. It was their 60th wedding anniversary - they married on Christmas day in 1933 at St Peters Church, down the road. And they have lived in that house opposite almost all that time. I do find it quite amazing. Dan has not been well, but the two of them were perky and holding court to many friends in the street who were popping in to see the telegram they had received from the Queen. Oh they were so proud, but they had not yet opened it. They were waiting to open it with some of their family on Boxing Day, even though Christmas Day was the day, but they forgot to take it with them and thus missed the pleasure they had been looking forward to. On Monday Alice popped over to show us the open telegram. It wasn’t signed (of course telegrams are never signed - why doesn’t she send cards with photos of Buck Palace and a reproduced signature?) but Alice was still as pleased as punch with it. Apparently, in order to get a telegram, someone has to send the details in good time to the Palace so they can be checked out. At least you don’t have to pay for them, yet.’

5 September 1997
‘Diana-mania has continued all week, and will culminate tomorrow with her funeral and mass crowds in London. Me and mine are all utterly cynical and find the whole thing amazing. In a chorus, which must have been coordinated in some way, the newspapers came out strongly against the Queen and the Royal Family on Wednesday for not speaking to the nation and by lunchtime she and they had reacted. This evening we had a five minute live broadcast by Queenie herself. A carefully crafted speech, full of the right words but not an ounce of feeling behind them. She did, though, say the Royal Family would learn from the lessons of Princess Diana. And she extended the route of the hearse to Westminster Abbey, thus allowing more people to line the roads. Millions are expected tomorrow - god help them all - just for a glimpse of the coffin. Even the excuse of wanting to be there for such a unique moment is pretty thin when you consider how much more of a real moment it would have been to see her alive. She attracted crowds when she was alive, but nothing like the crowds who are prepared to put up with horrendous conditions tomorrow just to see the car in which her coffin is riding!’

1 June 2002
‘All around is the Queen’s Jubilee. It means nothing to me, nothing at all. I’ve no problem with people finding an excuse to celebrate, but I see no reason to do so myself. The Prom at the Palace is probably under way by now - poor old Queenie she must be wondering what she’s done to deserve having her lawn and shrubs subjected to the tramplings and pickings and litterings of 12,000 commoners. It will only get worse on Monday, when the prom turns into a party, and the tramplers, pickers and litterers, all too genteel tonight, will be youthful and wild.’

4 June 2012
‘Yesterday was the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee, though I don’t know why. She ascended the throne in February 1952, and her coronation was not until 1953, so how is June 1952 a proper anniversary of anything?

There has been, and continues to be, a lot of pomp and pageant. Yesterday saw a pretty amazing regatta on the Thames, with a 1,000 boats all joining an orderly procession with the Queen on ‘The Spirit of Chartwell’ and motoring/rowing from Wandsworth to Tower Bridge. Evidently, most of the TV coverage by the BBC was focused on the Queen and her entourage and any celebrities taking part, but I wanted to know a lot more about who was in all the hundreds of other boats and why they were there. Here at least is a list of the flotilla sections, which gives some idea of who took part: The Royal Jubilee Bells, Man-Powered Boats, Academy of Ancient Music, The Royal Squadron, The Band of Her Majesty’s Royal Marines Plymouth, Dunkirk Little Ships, Shree Muktajeevan Pipe Band and Dhol Ensemble, Historic Boats, The Jubilant Commonwealth Choir, Service, Steam and Working Vessels, Leisure Vessels, The New Water Music, Narrow Boats and Barges, The Mayor’s Jubilee Band, Passenger Boats, Rhythm on the River, Downriver Passenger Boats, London Philharmonic Orchestra. 

To be honest, I would have liked to be there . . . Unlike sports, where I usually feel the best seat is in the lounge, at least to watch the action, which to me is more important than the atmosphere, this regatta was something to be seen live, in the crowds on the banks of the river. Adam was due to come visit us yesterday, but I wrote him suggesting that surely he would want to see the regatta and that he could come down another day; and he decided to do just that. But, when I rang him yesterday afternoon, to get a first hand account, he wasn’t there, he was at home watching it on TV! He claimed the rain, and problems getting a viewing spot decided him against going.

Also yesterday there were Big Lunches up and down the country, and street parties carry on today and tomorrow (an extra public holiday) as well.’

31 August 2013
‘Adam has been to the Bank of England, and seen its gold, and held it in his hands. It’s very rare for anyone to get to do this, he tells me, and the last person was the Queen a few months ago. His minister has responsibility for the gold reserves, which is why he and Adam were there. In a few days, they go to Poland for a conference; then Adam goes to Spain for a week’s holiday. And then he starts his new job.’

20 June 2016
‘I watched some of the build up to the service at St Paul’s Cathedral this morning, and the service itself. Some 53 members of the royal family were there, along with British dignitaries and representatives of many organisations with whom the queen has had dealings with over the decades. She was dressed in sherbet yellow, from top to toe (well not her shoes), and tottered down the aisle with her hubby, also tottering, both some 15 minutes late (very unusual). David Attenborough read a piece of nostalgia by Michael Bond, author of the Paddington books (both also 90).’

5 April 2020
‘The Queen is giving a live broadcast tonight on TV. I wonder if this year is already turning out to be even more of an Annus Horribilis than 1992 was for her. I mean she’s lost her grandson from the royal family to someone who not only has coloured blood but is an American, and now her citizens are dying in their hundreds every day of some godawful disease.’

22 October 2021
‘The Queen was in hospital Wednesday afternoon (at least she didn’t have to wait many hours in an A&E queue - Cornwall apparently has only one emergency A&E and it declared a ‘critical incident’ because of the queues of ambulances waiting with patients). There appears no cause for alarm as she went home the following morning. But it was not many months ago that her husband was hospitalised for a few days, and then died not long after.’

2 June 2022
‘The Queen’s Platinum Jubilee - god bless her. 70 years on the throne, the longest in British history. We’ve been to a fete/party hosted by the Symondsbury Estate this lunchtime. It was pretty crowded out with families, enjoying the sun, the food, the drink. Red, white and blue bunting everywhere, not to mention cardboard cutouts and portraits of her majesty. Long trestle tables had been put out for picnicking, and if you’d pre-ordered a lunch box it was yours for the collecting, so long as you didn’t mind standing in a long queue. We, of course, brought our lunch, and took photos at the Jubilee party tables (as well as with the Queen, and while playing some of the fete games).’

The King went from his castle

Henry V, one the great warrior kings in medieval England, died exactly six centuries ago today. He is honoured especially for his military successes in France culminating in the famous victory at the Battle of Agincourt. There exists a diary-like account of the Battle -  amazingly so, since it must vie to be one of the very earliest of extant European diaries. Written in Latin by an anonymous priest, it was  translated into English for a 19th century history of Henry V’s expedition into France.

Henry was the eldest son of Henry, earl of Derby (afterward Henry IV), by Mary de Bohun. On his father’s exile in 1398, Richard II took the boy into his own charge, and knighted him in 1399. He was well educated, grew up fond of music and reading and became the first English king who could both read and write with ease in the vernacular tongue. When his father became king, Henry was created earl of Chester, duke of Cornwall, and prince of Wales, and soon afterward, duke of Aquitaine and Lancaster. From October 1400 the administration of Wales was conducted in his name, and in 1403 he took over actual command of the war against the Welsh rebels, a struggle that absorbed much of his time until 1408. 

Henry succeeded his father in March 1413. In the early years of his reign he was threatened by various rebels and conspiracies but suppressed them ruthlessly. However, his main ambition was towards France. Not content with lands ceded by the French at the Treaty of Calais in 1360, he laid claim to Normandy, Touraine, Maine, and to parts of France that had never been in English hands. Negotiations with the French and their King Charles, initiated during the reign of Richard II, were finally broken off in June 1415, but Henry was far advanced in his preparations for war.

Henry’s first campaigns in 1415 brought the capture of Harfleur and the great victory of Agincourt, triumphs which brought him much power in the European arena. The following year he was visited by the Holy Roman emperor Sigismund, with whom he made a treaty of alliance at Canterbury. The cooperation of these two rulers led directly to the ending of the papal schism through the election of Martin V in 1417. Using sieges, Henry gradually conquered of Normandy; and Rouen, the capital of northern France, fell in early 1419. Other successes followed, and, in 1420, Henry was recognised as heir to the French throne and regent of France; he was married to Catherine, the daughter of Charles VI. His triumphs were short-lived, though, as his health grew worse, and he died of camp fever at the château of Vincennes on 31 August 1422.  Henry VI, just 9 months old, became King. Further information is available at Wikipedia, Encyclopaedia Britannica, History.com, or The Royal Family.

An anonymous priest, it seems, accompanied Henry on his expedition to France and at the Battle of Agincourt; and he left behind a diary-like record written in Latin. This was translated into English to become the centrepiece of a History of the Battle of Agincourt and of the Expedition of Henry the Fifth into France in 1415 by Sir Harris Nicolas (published by Johnson & Co., 1832). The book itself can be freely downloaded from Internet Archive. However, it was also reviewed in the Journal of the Society for Army Historical Research (Vol 12, No. 46, summer 1933) by Sir James Edmonds. 

Edmonds titles his piece An Early War Diary - indeed, if the text is considered a diary it is one of the very earliest written in Europe to have survived - see The Diary Junction. He explains that the book has a narrative ‘deduced from such contemporary statements as were consistent with each other and with truth’. ‘The gem of the book,’ though, he adds, ‘is the translation of a diary, written in Latin, of an anonymous Priest who accompanied the expedition and was, he expressly states, present at Agincourt, where “I write this, sitting on horse-back among the baggage in the rear of the battle”. It is a first-class military record of the campaign, better kept than many diaries of 1914-1918.’ The translated diary covers the period from 7 August 1415, when Henry V embarked from Porchester, until 25 October, the day of the battle. Here are the opening passages of the text, and a section from a month or so later.

‘On Wednesday, the 7th of August, the King went from his Castle of Porchester in a small vessel to the sea, and embarking on board his ship called ‘The Trinity,’ between the ports of Southampton and Portsmouth, he immediately ordered that the sail should be set, to signify his readiness to depart; and at the same time to serve as a signal to the fleet, which was dispersed among the sea ports, to hasten the more speedily to him. And when, on the following day, being Sunday, almost all had arrived, he set sail with a favorable wind. There were about fifteen hundred vessels, including about a hundred which were left behind. After having passed the Isle of Wight, swans were seen swimming in the midst of the fleet, which in the opinion of all, were said to be happy auspices of the undertaking. On the next day, being Tuesday, about the fifth hour after noon, the King entered the mouth of the Seine, which passes to the sea from Paris, through Rouen and Harfleur, and anchored before a place called Kidecaus, about three miles from Harfleur, where he proposed landing: and immediately a banner was displayed as a signal for the captains to attend a council; and they having assembled in council, he issued an order throughout the fleet that no one, under pain of death should land before him, but that the next morning they should be prepared to accompany him. This was done lest the ardour of the English should cause them, without consulting danger, to land before it was proper, disperse in search of plunder, and leave the landing of the King too much exposed. And when the following day dawned, that is on Wednesday, the vigil of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin, the sun shining, and the morning beautiful, between the hours of six and seven, the noble Knight, Sir John Holland, Earl of Huntingdon the King’s cousin, having been sent by his desire before day-break, in the stillness of the night, with certain horsemen as scouts to explore the country and place, the King, with the greater part of his army, landed in small vessels, boats, and skiffs, and immediately took up a position on the hill nearest Harfleur, having on the one side, on the declivity of the valley, a coppice wood towards the river Seine, and on the other enclosed farms and orchards, in order to rest himself and the army, until the remainder of the people, the horses, and other necessaries should be brought from the ships. [. . .]’

‘[On 17th of September], a conference was held with the aforesaid Lord de Gaucourt, who acted as captain, and with the more powerful leaders, whether it were the determination of the inhabitants, still remembering the penalties of Deuteronomy, to surrender the town, without suffering farther rigour of death or war. But the King, seeing his terms despised, and that they could not be overcome by the distress occasioned by a mild mode of attack, determined to proceed with more rigour against a people whose obstinacy, neither alluring kindness, nor destructive severity could soften.

Towards night, therefore, he caused proclamation by trumpet to be made in the midst of the squadrons, that all the mariners, as well as others who were on the stations assigned them by their captains, should be prepared on the morrow to storm and mount the walls, which had been rendered by the shot of our guns more convenient and safe for the purpose, and much more unfit for the enemy to make resistance, or even to protect themselves from destruction. Towards night he began to assail them more than usual with stones, that he might prevent them from sleeping, and thereby render them on the morrow more easy to conquer. But God himself, propitious and merciful to his people, sparing the effusion of blood which probably would have been shed in storming the walls, turned away from us the sword, and struck terror into our enemies, who were probably broken-hearted on account of the loss of the said bulwark, and hearing they were so suddenly to be assaulted and stormed; and also at the penalties of the law of Deuteronomy, if a fortified town be recovered from them while making resistance; and perplexed and harassed by the stones, and almost despairing of being rescued by the French, which they had expected long beyond the promised time. On that night they entered into a treaty with the King, that if he would deign to defer the assault, and would refrain from harassing and oppressing them with stones, they would surrender to him the town, and themselves, and their property, if the French King, or the Dauphin, his first-born, being informed, should not raise the siege and deliver them by force of arms, within the first hour after noon on the Sunday following.’

As if I were flying

’For the first time I have broken out from the cage which encloses me, and opened a shutter to the outside world. I have touched things which I hoped were there but I have never dared to show. I am so happy for this picture. It is as if I were flying. I feel no chains. I can fly higher and higher because the bars of my cage are broken.’ This is Ingrid Bergman, the great Swedish actress, who died 40 years ago today. She lived a colourful and international life, starring in many now classic and iconic films. Although there are no published editions of any diaries (at least not in English), several of the many biographies written about her do contain a few brief extracts, such as the undated one above.

Bergman was born in Stockholm, Sweden, in 1915. Her German mother died when Ingrid was just 3, and her father raised her, taking many photographs of his daughter, and encouraging her to pose. He died when she was 12, and she was left to the care first of an unmarried aunt who died within months and then the family of another relation. She earned a scholarship to the state-sponsored Royal Dramatic Theatre School (as Greta Garbo had done some years earlier) but left long before her three-year study period had concluded to take up professional work for a Swedish film studio. She played small roles in several films but was soon starring in others, not least Intermezzo, created for her by director Gustaf Molander. In 1937, when still only 21, she married a dentist, Petter Lindström. They had one daughter, but eventually divorced.

In 1939, Bergman starred in a Hollywood version of Intermezzo which brought her international fame, as well as in such now-iconic movies as Casablanca, For Whom the Bell Tolls, and Gaslight (for which she won an Academy Award for best actress). In the mid-40s, she starred in two films directed by Alfred Hitchcock - Spellbound and Notorious. During the filming of Stromboli, released in 1950, Bergman began a love affair with the Italian director Roberto Rossellini. They had a child out of wedlock (she had not yet managed to finalise her divorce from Molander and marry Rossellini), which caused a scandal in Hollywood and prompted her to stay in Europe. 

However, by 1956, Bergman was back in the US, making Anastasia for which she won a second Academy Award for best actress. She won one further Academy Award in 1974 for best supporting actress in Murder on the Orient Express. In 1978, she starred in Autumn Sonata, directed by her countryman and namesake, Ingmar Bergman (who, confusingly, was married to another Ingrid, his fifth wife) - see A dishcloth round my soul. Having suffered from cancer for some eight years, Bergman died on 29 August 1982, her 67th birthday.

Wikipedia has these assessments of her life: ‘Biographer Donald Spoto said she was “arguably the most international star in the history of entertainment”. [. . .] Hollywood saw her as a unique actress who was completely natural in style, and without need for make-up. Film critic James Agee wrote that she “not only bears a startling resemblance to an imaginable human being; she really knows how to act, in a blend of poetic grace with quiet realism”. Film historian David Thomson, said she “always strove to be a ‘true’ woman and many filmgoers identified with her.” [. . .] According to her daughter, Isabella Rossellini, her mother had a deep sense of freedom and independence. . . “She was able to integrate so many cultures . . . she is not even American but she is totally part of American culture like she is totally part of the Swedish, Italian, French, European film making.” ’ Further information is also available at Encyclopaedia Britannica, Biography.com, or IMDB.

There are many published biographies of Bergman, and some of them make tantalising but brief mention of diaries she must have kept at different times in her life. Charlotte Chandler, for example, in Ingrid Bergman, A Personal Biography (Simon & Schuster, 2007) refers to a childhood diary in these two passages:

‘Ingrid was fourteen when Uncle Gunnar gave her a handsome leather-bound diary with a metal lock, which had her name embossed on it so there could be no mistake as to whom it belonged. For a number of years it remained her closest confidant. She called it “Dear Book.” “Uncle Gunnar told me if I wrote down my thoughts, I would have a record of them which would, years later, surprise me. I learned that even the next day, I might be surprised by what was important to me the night before. I had put down thoughts I didn’t even know I was thinking. The act of having written them down, then of seeing them written down, usually placed it in my memory, forever. I could tell my diary all of my hopes and dreams and feelings. I never had to tell my dreams to anyone because I could tell my diary. I never felt the need to lock it. No one in my family would ever have looked in it.” ’

‘Over the years,’ Chandler goes on to write, ‘Ingrid and her diary had grown apart. She gradually confided less of her innermost feelings than she had done in Stockholm and in her first years in Hollywood. As she had more exciting events to tell her diary, she told it less. She no longer took time at night to pour her heart into “Dear Book.” She found herself not taking time and not making time. One day, Ingrid looked at her diary and was shocked to find she had been writing words, not feelings, abbreviated thoughts, and she had been “guarded, careful.” “I was no longer open. My diary must have been bored by me. Had I changed? Somehow, I no longer felt the same bond with my diary. It wasn’t that I told lies to my diary. That would have been really terrible. It was more that I was evasive. What you don’t tell is a lie, too.” ’

Spoto - author of Notorious : the life of Ingrid Bergman (HarperCollins, 1997) - gives a couple of verbatim quotes from her youthful diary.

‘For the very first time people asked for my autograph. [The crew] all praise me, and I must keep my head with all these compliments. I only wish I had been really good in every scene. In the rehearsals I think it is good, but then there is a take and somehow it is not the same. One thing that made me happy was that Sten Undgren, the actor who plays my clergyman lover, believes our love scenes are so passionate that possibly they will not get past the censor.’

1935 (her first premiere at the Skandia Theater was forthcoming)
‘I am insecure and secure at the same time, I am unsure about all the publicity there has been. I hope the public will think I can live up to it. What would Mama and Papa have said if they could see me here in my loneliness? I long to be able to creep into someone’s arms to find protection and comfort and love.’

In Ingrid Bergman - The Life, Career and Public Image (McFarland & Co, 2012), David Smit says: ‘In her diary, Bergman is practically ecstatic about her experience on the film: “You can’t get everything on a platter, you have to pay for everything. I paid with Rage in Heaven for Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. I would have paid anything for this picture.” She goes on to claim that she has never been happier, that she will never get a better part, a better director, a better leading man, and a better cameraman. With these people she can give herself over entirely to her work.’ And he quotes an entry from her diary (also available in other biographies:

January-March 1941
‘For the first time I have broken out from the cage which encloses me, and opened a shutter to the outside world. I have touched things which I hoped were there but I have never dared to show. I am so happy for this picture. It is as if I were flying. I feel no chains. I can fly higher and higher because the bars of my cage are broken.’

Finally, there is Bergman’s own book: Ingrid Bergman: My Story written with Alan Burgess (Thorndike Press, 1980). Bergman’s diary is mentioned half a dozen times, mostly in regard to her time on the film Stromboli, but the only actual quotes provided are no more than single words. 

Gandhi and the cat

‘Bapu has been observing the behaviour of the cats. His letter to the Ashram today is devoted to that subject. The cat’s concentration in observing the lizard was perhaps not noticed by our sages, or else they would have suggested that we must concentrate on God in the same manner. Yesterday a lizard was coming near the cat, which began to shake its tail, but then it turned back and went away in the opposite direction. The cat began to cry as if asking it to be good enough to enter its own mouth and not to go away like that. Englishmen who honestly believe that India should continue to be a British possession remind me of this cat. The cat is their prototype, not the snake.’ 

This is from the extraordinary diary of Mahadev Desai, who died 60 years ago today. For most of his adult life, Desai was Gandhi’s personal secretary and most trusted confidante, and through that time he kept a detailed diary which is, today, considered a valuable chronicle of the major events in Gandhi’s life and in Indian independence movement.Desai was born into a Brahmin family in 1892 in the village of Saras in Gujarat. His father was a teacher, and his mother died when he was seven. Aged 13, he was married to Durgabehn. He went to Surat High School and the Elphinstone College; after graduating in law, he took a position as an inspector at the central co-operative bank in Mumbai. He first met Gandhi in 1915 and joined his ashram two years later. In 1919, when the colonial government arrested Gandhi in Punjab, he named Desai his heir. Desai often found himself arrested and in prison alongside Gandhi.

Desai remained Gandhi’s personal secretary and closest associate for 25 years, serving him in many different ways. Apart from transcribing Gandhi’s words and drafting his letters, Desai also served as his interpreter, travel manager, interlocutor and, when necessary, cook. Far more learned than his master, he tutored him on sociology, literature, and history, and much else besides. Desai often disputed with Gandhi on matters of principle and politics, sometimes changing his mind. Desai wrote a number of books (some in English), many of them about Gandhi, while others were historical. He was also an editor of various publications, and contributed to the mainstream Indian press. He was arrested on the morning of 9 August 1942 and  interred with Gandhi at the Aga Khan Palace, but a heart attack killed him six days later on 15 August. Further information is available online at Wikipedia and the MK Gandhi website,

Throughout his time with Gandhi (or Bapu as he was known), Desai kept a detailed and daily diary focused largely on Gandhi (see also Gandhi’s London diary). This was eventually published in 22 volumes, as edited by Narhari Parikh (volumes I-VI) and Chandulal Bhagubhai Dalal (VII-XXII). It is considered a valuable chronicle of the major events in Gandhi’s life and in the Indian independence movement. The English version is freely available online at Internet Archive or the Gandhi Heritage Portal.

In the 1950s, Valji Govindji Desai translated and edited further portions of the diary. Here is part of his introduction to the first volume: ‘The importance of this volume lies in that we have here before us for the first time a very full account of Gandhiji’s life in prison. He was no less active there than outside. Only his activity took a different direction. Thus we find him looking after other prisoners like a father, prosecuting studies for which he had no time outside, performing dietetic experiments, spinning in spite of pain now in the right hand and then in the left, observing the stars, taking his morning and evening walks and carrying on an extensive correspondence with members of the Sabarmati Ashram and others.

Then again we have a unique pen-picture of Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel in various moods, rendering personal service to Gandhiji like a mother ministering to her child, undertaking unusual studies, displaying his skill with the hands, and relieving the monotony of prison life with flashes of sardonic humour.

Last but not the least, we are in the company of Mahadev Desai, humble and self-effacing, always discontented with his own achievement, reading books and analysing them for us, making study of ‘crusted characters’ whom he happened to meet, initiating discussions with Gandhiji on a variety of subjects and placing them on record for our benefit.’

Here are several extracts from that volume.

9 May 1932
‘Bapu had asked me to write something to be sent to the Ashram. I therefore wrote five scenes of a play which I had projected in Nasik prison. But Bapu remarked that such things could not be sent from jail. The authorities would not allow them to pass, but if they did, they would make themselves liable to censure. The play might be written out in jail and printed after I was released.

Bapu has been observing the behaviour of the cats. His letter to the Ashram today is devoted to that subject. The cat’s concentration in observing the lizard was perhaps not noticed by our sages, or else they would have suggested that we must concentrate on God in the same manner. Yesterday a lizard was coming near the cat, which began to shake its tail, but then it turned back and went away in the opposite direction. The cat began to cry as if asking it to be good enough to enter its own mouth and not to go away like that. Englishmen who honestly believe that India should continue to be a British possession remind me of this cat. The cat is their prototype, not the snake.’

21 May 1932
‘The riots in Bombay are subsiding. On Saturday none was murdered, but about 25 persons were wounded. Dahyabhai and Manibehn interviewed the Sardar and said that in Bombay too Government had asked the people to seek Congress protection. Thus Bapu’s intuition was correct.

In the evening we talked about the communal riots. The Sardar said, “It is not a straight fight. If people are stabbed in the back and women are injured in the chawls by Muslims disguised as Khadi-clad Congressmen, what is to be done and what is the advice to be given to the citizens of Bombay?” Bapu replied he had pointed out the way: Fight it out or die without offering resistance. The Sardar asked how Hindus could fight it out, as they were not capable of doing what the Muslims did. Bapu remarked that was not so. All were capable of doing what they did, as for instance in Kanpur. “Dr. Munje says Hindus should fight Muslims with the same weapons and the same methods. I think he is a brave man; he speaks out his mind without any reservations. But I hold that Hindus are incapable of fighting the Muslims with the latter’s weapons, as it is not in their nature. Therefore we must die unresistingly. The ahimsa observed at present is practical ahimsa and cannot make any impression on Muslims.” I said, “If big parties face and fight each other, we can imagine one party to be ready to follow the advice of dying without offering resistance. But what can be done about stray cases of murder and loot?” Bapu replied, “My advice would be the same even in such cases. But it is no good as no one is ready to accept it. This is a pointer to my own weakness. My ahimsa is not as it should be spontaneously effective. And yet it is a pity that people seek my advice. The poor things are on the horns of a dilemma. They would be able to find a way out for themselves if I were not alive. My presence is an obstruction for them, and such being the case, fasting is my only resource. If I had been a free man and in Bombay, I might have already employed that weapon.” I remarked that it was then a good thing that Bapu was behind prison bars. Bapu agreed and observed that if they had been free men, they would have been unable to do anything useful. I said I would not wonder if there was now open civil war. Bapu reminded us that civil war had actually broken out before as for instance at Kohat. And in England he had pocketed any number of insults from the Muslims and drunk many a bitter draught uncomplainingly.

To Raihana Tyebji Bapu wrote a letter, hoping all members of the family had derived benefit from the visit to Abu. Did Abbas Saheb read anything? Abu must have given him back the vigour of youth. But the madness in Bombay had damped their spirits. Bapu could not for the life of him understand, how one man could fight another in the sacred name of religion. But he must restrain his mind as well as pen. It was poison that he had been drinking now from day to day.’
 
14 June 1932
‘Bapu takes lemon squash with soda twice a day, at 9 a.m. and 6 p.m. Lemons are dearer in summer. Therefore Bapu suggested the use of tamarind instead, as there are many tamarind trees in jail. But the Sardar rejected the suggestion, as tamarind water was supposed to be bad for the bones and to cause rheumatism. Bapu said, “But Jamnalalji is taking tamarind.” The Sardar replied, “It will not do him harm, as it cannot penetrate deep enough to reach his bones.” Bapu said he himself too had taken a lot of tamarind. The Sardar said that was when he had a splendid digestion as a young man. It would not suit him now in his old age.

Doyle, the Inspector General of Prisons, saw Bapu in connection with the question of giving writing materials to C class prisoners. He was extremely courteous. He shook hands with all of us and said to Bapu, “I could not come earlier as I was very busy. Your request is reasonable and I will give the necessary instructions to Major Bhandari. But please do not ask for general orders. The facility should certainly be granted to all who can make a good use of it.” Turning to the Sardar he said, “I am arranging to transfer good women prisoners from Belgam to Yeravda as suggested by your daughter. Please tell her not to be anxious about them.” I formed a very good opinion of him, but the jailer violently disagreed: “He has certainly acceded to Bapu’s every request, but the experience of subordinates like myself is of a different kind.”

Doyle said he acted on the principle that in jail they would not take the conduct of a prisoner outside jail into account. Thus a turbulent murderer would be placed on a par with gentler prisoners. Perhaps that is the right thing to do. The treatment a convict is to receive in jail must depend upon his conduct inside jail and not upon the nature of his crime. And still there is discrimination typified by the black and yellow caps given to some prisoners.

After reading Birla’s forthcoming book on Indian currency Bapu remarked: “The big theft is not theft, the big robbery is not robbery and murder on a colossal scale is righteous warfare. Not being satisfied with draining away the country’s wealth, Britishers manipulated the currency for their own selfish purposes, depleted the reserves. No country in the world was bled white like this. Mahmud of Ghazni’s looting expeditions were limited in number, and the property plundered by the Moghuls remained in the country after all. But robbery by the British in India is unique.” ’

27 June 1932
‘Today’s spinning tired me out. Either the slivers are not good enough for 50s or perhaps I have not still attained the requisite skill. My speed is low, and the thread breaks off and on, so that I take nearly 5 hours to spin 840 yards, not to talk of the physical fatigue it entails. This is no good. I said to Bapu I was down and out. Bapu suggested that I must now spin only one-half of what I spun before. Narandas writes that Keshu spins equally fine yarn at the rate of 350 rounds an hour. How far behind him I am! Yoga means skill in action, says the Gita (II, 50) but I am as far from such skill as ever. I have been carding for a long time but I am unable to produce fine slivers, and if I spin fine yarn, my speed amounts to zero.’

La Foce is liberated

Today marks the 120th anniversary of the birth of the celebrated English biographer, Iris Origo. She spent most of her life in Italy; there she married, and there, with her husband, she developed a ramshackle farming estate at La Foce, in Tuscany. Famously, during the Second World War, the estate took in refugee children and sheltered escaping prisoners. Her diary of that time has become a classic of war literature.

Iris Margaret Cutting was born on 15 August 1902 in England, the child of an Anglo-Irish mother and a rich American father. She was educated privately in Florence, Italy, and, with inherited wealth, spent much time in her youth travelling. She married an Italian nobleman, Antonio Origo, and together they developed a rundown farming estate, La Foce, some 150km north of Rome. They had one son who died young of meningitis, and two daughters.

In the 1930s, Origo turned to writing, publishing biographies of the Italian poet Giacomo Leopardi and Cola di Rienzo, a fourteenth century Roman politician. During the war, the family stayed at La Foce where they secretly took in refugee children and helped escaping Allied prisoners. After the war, the Origos lived in both Rome and La Foce, and Iris continued writing biographies and autobiographical books. She was appointed Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire in 1976, and died in 1988. Further biographical information is available from Wikipedia, The Florentine and The Guardian.

Origo’s first published autobiographical work was a diary she kept during the war - War in Val d’Orcia (Jonathan Cape, 1947, but reissued several times since then, most recently by Pushkin Press). The book’s publicity material says: ‘In a corner of Tuscany, one woman - born in England, married to an Italian- kept a record of daily life in a country at war. Iris Origo’s compellingly powerful diary, War in Val d’Orcia, is the spare and vivid account of what happened when a peaceful farming valley became a battleground.’ Some pages can be previewed online at Googlebooks.

 9 June 1943
‘At four am in the Clinica Quisisana, my second daughter, Donata, is born. During the long night before her birth I heard from the room, through my own pain, the groans for morphia of a young airman whose leg had been amputated.’

10 June 1943
‘The third anniversary of Italy’s entry into the war. No celebrations. A rumour had spread that there were to be air-raids all over Italy, and all day many mothers have kept their children at home. Nothing, however, occurred until six pm, when a few enemy planes flew over the town - and a few more during the night. The air-raid warnings in the hospital (even though nothing happens) are rather uncomfortable, owing to one’s enforced immobility and the jumpiness of some of the patients.’

24 January 1944
‘The German officer turns up: a parachutist, covered with medals of both this war and the last, in which he served as a volunteer at the age of sixteen. He inspects the Castellucio, is unfortunately delighted with it, and a notice, stating that the castle has been requisitioned, is placed on the door. Mercifully, our own house is not required - as yet. In the afternoon we walk up to Pietraporciana - a lonely farm on the hill-top at the top of our property - to see if we could take all the children there, if we are turned out. There would be thirty-six of us.’

26 January 1944
‘Spend the day sorting furniture and books to be hidden in outlying farms. Schwester Marie, the babies’ charming Swiss nurse, who was to have returned home at this time, decides to stay on with us and see us through, in view of the possibility of our being arrested and the children left alone. Our relief is very great, but she may soon be completely cut off from her home.’

29 June 1944
[. . .] The Germans have gone. [Later] Not only have they gone, but the Allies are here! The first good news came to Antonio, who (while standing beside one of the Germans who are still left in town) was hurriedly summoned by a partisan: some English soldiers, he said, were looking for him. He accordingly hurried down into a wheatfield, and there found a small patrol, headed by a subaltern in the Scots Guards, who had actually come from La Foce. He wanted information as to the number of Germans who are still in town, the lie of the land, the bridges that had been blown up, and so on, all of which Antonio gave him, and in return, he gave us fairly good news of La Foce. The house has only been hit in two or three places, and though the damage inside is considerable, it is not irremediable. All this conversation took place hurriedly, hidden in the wheat, with sentries posted, and just as it was over, a pretty peasant-girl came up with a basket on her head, on her way to town. What next? She said she would hold her tongue, but it seemed safer for the soldiers to take her off with them for a few hours, to which indeed she agreed very willingly. The plan is for the regiment to occupy the town this afternoon. Meanwhile, we are having some German shelling for a change, and Palazzo Ricci and some other buildings have been hit. La Foce has had the honour of being mentioned in the midday bulletin as ‘liberated’ - together with Pienza and Montalcino. But we can hardly listen to the news now: we want to see with our own eyes. Every minute, now, the Allies may arrive!

This article is a slightly revised version of one first published on 15 August 2012.