I flied the highest

‘I ran in the wind and played be a horse, and had a lovely time in the woods with Anna and Lizzie. We were fairies, and made gowns and paper wings. I “flied” the highest of all.’ This is Louisa Alcott - famous for being the author of the American classic Little Women - born 190 years ago today. She was writing in the diary then as a young girl, aged 11, but would go on to keep a diary for  much of her life. This diary, apart from documenting her own life, says much about the New England Transcendentalist movement her father was involved with.

Alcott was born in Germantown, Pennsylvania, on 29 November 1832. She spent her childhood in Boston and in Concord, Massachusetts, being schooled, with three sisters, at home by her father, a New England Transcendentalist. For three years, they were part of the Utopian Fruitlands community. When this failed, they were helped out by her father’s friend, Ralph Waldo Emerson; money problems, though, were never far away. Louisa started writing early, mostly poetry and short stories. Flower Fables, her first book, was published when she was just 22.

In 1862, Alcott, an avowed abolitionist, went to Washington to work as a nurse during the Civil War, but her service lasted only a few weeks, as she nearly died from typhoid. She never recovered full health again. A book of her letters at the time, called Hospital Letters, brought her a first taste of literary fame. She began writing stories for Atlantic Monthly. Her most famous work, Little Women, written in 1868, and set at Orchard House, is still popular today. Alcott continued writing children’s books - though she yearned to do more serious fiction - because the family needed the income. In all, she published over 30 books and collections of stories.

Alcott died, aged 55, in 1888, just two days after her father. Further information is available from Wikipedia, the website for Louisa May Alcott’s Orchard House (‘one of the oldest, most authentically-preserved historic house museums in America’) or The Dictionary of Unitarian and Universalist Biography.

From an early age through to the end of her life, Alcott kept a diary which she never intended for publication. Parts of it first appeared a year after her death in Louisa May Alcott Her Life, Letters and Journals edited by Ednah D. Cheney and published by Roberts Brothers in Boston. This book was continually reprinted before and after the publisher was taken over by Little, Brown in 1898. A first unabridged edition of Alcott’s diaries appeared a century later in 1989 when University of Georgia Press brought out The Journals of Louisa May Alcott edited by Madeleine B. Stern. Her Life, Letters and Journals is freely available at Internet Archive, and some of the more recent publication can be previewed at Googlebooks and Amazon.

1 September 1843
‘I rose at five and had my bath. I love cold water! Then we had our singing-lesson with Mr Lane. After breakfast I washed dishes, and ran on the hill till nine, and had some thoughts, it was so beautiful up there. Did my lessons, wrote and spelt and did sums; and Mr Lane read a story, “The Judicious Father”: How a rich girl told a poor girl not to look over the fence at the flowers, and was cross to her because she was unhappy. The father heard her do it, and made the girls change clothes. The poor one was glad to do it, and he told her to keep them. But the rich one was very sad; for she had to wear the old ones a week, and after that she was good to shabby girls. I liked it very much, and I shall be kind to poor people.

Father asked us what was God’s noblest work. Anna said men, but I said babies. Men are often bad; babies never are. We had a long talk, and I felt better after it, and cleared up.

We had bread and fruit for dinner. I read and walked and played till supper-time. We sung in the evening. As I went to bed the moon came up very brightly and looked at me. I felt sad because I have been cross to day, and did not mind Mother. I cried, and then I felt better, and said that piece from Mrs Sigourney, “I must not tease my mother.” I get to sleep saying poetry, I know a great deal.’

14 September 1843
‘Mr Parker Pillsbury came, and we talked about the poor slaves. I had a music lesson with Miss F. I hate her, she is so fussy. I ran in the wind and played be a horse, and had a lovely time in the woods with Anna and Lizzie. We were fairies, and made gowns and paper wings. I “flied” the highest of all. In the evening they talked about travelling. I thought about Father going to England, [. . .]

It rained when I went to bed, and made a pretty noise on the roof.’

8 October 1843
‘When I woke up, the first thought I got was, “It’s Mother s birthday: I must be very good.” I ran and wished her a happy birthday, and gave her my kiss. After breakfast we gave her our presents. I had a moss cross and a piece of poetry for her.

We did not have any school, and played in the woods and got red leaves. In the evening we danced and sung, and I read a story about “Contentment.” I wish I was rich, I was good, and we were all a happy family this day.’

4 January 1863
‘I shall record the events of a day as a sample of the days I spend:

Up at six, dress by gaslight, run through my ward and throw up the windows, though the men grumble and shiver; but the air is bad enough to breed a pestilence; and as no notice is taken of our frequent appeals for better ventilation, I must do what I can. Poke up the fire, add blankets, joke, coax, and command; but continue to open doors and windows as if life depended upon it. Mine does, and doubtless many another, for a more perfect pestilence-box than this house I never saw, cold, damp, dirty, full of vile odors from wounds, kitchens, wash-rooms, and stables. No competent head, male or female, to right matters, and a jumble of good, bad, and indifferent nurses, surgeons, and attendants, to complicate the chaos still more.

After this unwelcome progress through my stifling ward, I go to breakfast with what appetite I may; find the uninvitable fried beef, salt butter, husky bread, and washy coffee; listen to the clack of eight women and a dozen men, the first silly, stupid, or possessed of one idea; the last absorbed with their breakfast and themselves to a degree that is both ludicrous and provoking, for all the dishes are ordered down the table full and returned empty; the conversation is entirely among themselves, and each announces his opinion with an air of importance that frequently causes me to choke in my cup, or bolt my meals with undignified speed lest a laugh betray to these famous beings that a “chiel’s amang them takin’ notes.”

Till noon I trot, trot, giving out rations, cutting up food for helpless “boys,” washing faces, teaching my attendants how beds are made or floors are swept, dressing wounds, taking Dr F. P.’s orders (privately wishing all the time that he would be more gentle with my big babies), dusting tables, sewing bandages, keeping my tray tidy, rushing up and down after pillows, bed-linen, sponges, books, and directions, till it seems as if I would joyfully pay down all I possess for fifteen minutes’ rest. At twelve the big bell rings, and up comes dinner for the boys, who are always ready for it and never entirely satisfied. Soup, meat, potatoes, and bread is the bill of fare. Charley Thayer, the attendant, travels up and down the room serving out the rations, saving little for himself, yet always thoughtful of his mates, and patient as a woman with their helplessness. When dinner is over, some sleep, many read, and others want letters written. This I like to do, for they put in such odd things, and express their ideas so comically, I have great fun interiorally, while as grave as possible exteriorally. A few of the men word their paragraphs well and make excellent letters. John’s was the best of all I wrote. The answering of letters from friends after some one had died is the saddest and hardest duty a nurse has to do.

Supper at five sets every one to running that can run; and when that flurry is over, all settle down for the evening amusements, which consist of newspapers, gossip, the doctor’s last round, and, for such as need them, the final doses for the night. At nine the bell rings, gas is turned down, and day nurses go to bed. Night nurses go on duty, and sleep and death have the house to themselves.

My work is changed to night watching, or half night and half day, from twelve to twelve. I like it, as it leaves me time for a morning run, which is what I need to keep well; for bad air, food, and water, work and watching, are getting to be too much for me. I trot up and down the streets in all directions, sometimes to the Heights, then half way to Washington, again to the hill, over which the long trains of army wagons are constantly vanishing and ambulances appearing. That way the fighting lies, and I long to follow.

Ordered to keep my room, being threatened with pneumonia. Sharp pain in the side, cough, fever, and dizziness. A pleasant prospect for a lonely soul five hundred miles from home! Sit and sew on the boys’ clothes, write letters, sleep, and read; try to talk and keep merry, but fail decidedly, as day after day goes, and I feel no better. Dream awfully, and wake unrefreshed, think of home, and wonder if I am to die here, as Mrs R., the matron, is likely to do. Feel too miserable to care much what becomes of me. Dr S. creaks up twice a day to feel my pulse, give me doses, and ask if I am at all consumptive, or some other cheering question. Dr O. examines my lungs and looks sober. Dr J. haunts the room, coming by day and night with wood, cologne, books, and messes, like a motherly little man as he is. Nurses fussy and anxious, matron dying, and everything very gloomy. They want me to go home, but I won t yet.’

27 April 1872
‘Mr Emerson died at 9 P.M. suddenly. Our best and greatest American gone. The nearest and dearest friend Father has ever had, and the man who has helped me most by his life, his books, his society. I can never tell all he has been to me, from the time I sang Mignon’s song under his window (a little girl) and wrote letters a la Bettine to him, my Goethe, at fifteen, up through my hard years, when his essays on Self-Reliance, Character, Compensation, Love, and Friendship helped me to understand myself and life, and God and Nature. Illustrious and beloved friend, good-by!’

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

Party at the palace

Eighty years ago today, Mary, youngest daughter of Winston Churchill, went to a party hosted by King George VI and Queen Elizabeth at Buckingham Palace. Expressions of pleasure and nervousness fill an entry in her diary for the day: ‘I suppose I must still be very young because I was simply THRILLED by the party & felt stupidly shy & overcome & excited.’  

Mary Spencer-Churchill was born in London on 15 September 1922, the same week in fact as her father purchased Chartwell, a country house in Kent, where she was brought up, and where she attended local schools. She worked for the Red Cross and the Women’s Voluntary Service from 1939 to 1941, subsequently joining the Auxiliary Territorial Service, serving in London, Belgium and Germany in mixed anti-aircraft batteries, rising to the rank of Junior Commander. She accompanied her father as aide-de-camp on several of his overseas journeys. In 1945, she was awarded an MBE in recognition of her military service.

Mary married the Conservative politician Christopher Soames (later created Baron Soames) in 1947 and they had five children. She accompanied him on his foreign postings to France and Rhodesia. She served many public organisations at various times in various positions (Churchill Society, Church Army, Royal National Theatre Board of Trustees, National Benevolent Fund for the Aged). However, she also published several acclaimed family biographical works, including Clementine Churchill: The Biography of a Marriage and Winston Churchill: His Life as a Painter. In 1980, she was made Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire (DBE) for her public service, particularly in Rhodesia. She died in 2014. Further information is available from Wikipedia, or from obituaries in The Guardian, The New York Times, and the BBC.

Mary Churchill began keeping a diary in earnest in January 1939, and kept up the habit during the war years. With motherhood and marriage, her diary became less detailed, and by the mid-1950s her entries mainly concern gardening (with the exception of the diary for 1979-1980 when she was with her husband in Rhodesia). All her diaries are open for public inspection at the Churchill Archives Centre, and its website has a detailed description of each volume. 

Mary’s daughter, Emma, has recently edited some of the diaries for publication as Mary Churchill’s War - The Wartime Diaries of Churchill’s Youngest Daughter (Two Roads, 2021). This can be previewed at Googlebooks. Here is her entry from 80 years ago today - describing a thrilling visit to Buckingham Palace!

6 November 1942
‘Thanksgiving Day and I’m thrilled at the thought of the party at Buckingham Palace. Caught 1.05 train & had picnic lunch. Found Mummie still in bed but quite well & very gay. Tidied up frantically. Car took me to No. 10 at 3. Found Papa talking to Adml Noble who is off to Washington on a mission. We set off about 3.10.

I felt so excited couldn’t have been more thrilled if I d been in white satin & feathers (tho’ of course that would have been rather gay). And I felt so proud going with Papa. When we arrived we were shown into a drawing room by Sir Alexander Hardinge. Here we waited - there was Mr Winant, the Mountbattens, Ladies in Waiting, Admiral Stark & so on. The other guests were being shown into the next door room. Then another door opened & the Queen followed by the King & the 2 Princesses came in.

Papa unnerved me by saying in a hoarse whisper as Patricia Mountb. kissed the Queen’s hand & then her cheek - ‘You don’t do that’ - I was feeling VERY nervous by this time & I do hope I curtseyed ok. The King asked me about the OCTU - which was rather nice of him I thought. Then we stood behind the R[oyal] F[amily] as they received the guests. Papa had the King’s permission to leave soon afterwards & left me under the friendly wing of Mr Winant - who was looking more like Abe Lincoln than ever. Sir Charles Portal also adopted me & introduced me to S[quadron] Leader Nettleton VC (so good-looking AND married - tant pis) & S Leader Scott Malden who’s just made a tour of the USA.

Then I suddenly got caught up in a whirl of American army - cols, gens, majors etc - Very kind & gay & charming. Also some charming marines, Admiral Stark’s ADC. Stood for about 2 1/2 hrs. King & Queen talked constantly to the Americans. They (the Americans) were very much impressed & I felt so proud that they are our King & Queen. She is so beautiful & fresh & gracious - she was wearing lavender & pearls & was quite perfect. Then they played ‘God Save the King’ & Mr Winant took me home.

I suppose I must still be very young because I was simply THRILLED by the party & felt stupidly shy & overcome & excited - & it was so full of colour - red & gold & beautifully lit & lots of uniforms & gold braid!’

Incidentally, and apropos of nothing other than the date, on the very same day, the film Casablanca (which went on to become one of the most famous and loved films of all time) was being premiered at the Hollywood Theater in New York City.’

Shakespeare’s name William

It is four centuries to the day since the death of John Manningham, a lawyer at Middle Temple. There was nothing much remarkable about his life, but he is remembered thanks to a diary he kept for a year or two at the dawn of the 17th century; and this diary happens to mention Shakespeare, and to give an historically important account of the death of Queen Elizabeth I.

John was born around 1575, the son of Robert Manningham of Cambridgeshire. When Robert died, John was formally adopted by his grandfather’s younger brother, Richard, a prosperous London mercer. He studied at Cambridge, graduating in 1596 before entering the Middle Temple.

Manningham married Anne Curle in 1605, and they had at least six children. He practised law throughout his life, and had a position at the court of wards and liveries. He inherited, from Richard Manningham, the manor house of Bradbourne in East Malling, Kent. He died on 22 November 1622. There is a little more biographical information available at Wikipedia or the Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900.

Undoubtedly, Manningham is remembered today because of a diary he kept for a short while at the start of the 17th century while he was still a student at Middle Temple. Diary of John Manningham of the Middle Temple, and of Bradbourne, Kent, Barrister-at-law, 1602-1603, was first edited by John Bruce and published by the Camden Society in 1868. It is freely available at Internet Archive.

Bruce suggests Manningham’s text ‘is scarcely what is generally understood by a Diary. It is rather a note-book in which the writer has jotted down from time to time his impressions of whatever he chanced to hear, read, or see, or whatever he desired to preserve in his memory. The result is a curious patchwork. Anecdotes, witticisms, aphoristic expressions, gossip, rumours, extracts from books, large notes of sermons, occasional memoranda of journeys into Kent and Huntingdonshire, with some little personal matter of the true Diary kind, are all thrown together into a miscellany of odds and ends.’

The Dictionary of National Biography describes it thus: ‘The work is an entertaining medley of anecdotes of London life, political rumours, accounts of sermons, and memoranda of journeys. The gossip respecting Queen Elizabeth’s illness and death and the accession of James I is set down in attractive detail, and Manningham often supplies shrewd comments on the character of the chief lawyers and preachers of the day. He also gives an interesting account of the performance of Shakespeare’s ‘Twelfth Night’ [. . .] in the Middle Temple Hall. [. . .] The familiar anecdote of Shakespeare’s triumph over Richard Burbage in the pursuit of the favours of a lady of doubtful virtue rests on Manningham’s authority [see Shakespeare Online for example]. Sir Thomas Bodley, John Stow, and Sir Thomas Overbury are also occasionally mentioned by Manningham.’

Here are several extracts, including those that mention Shakespeare and the dying/death of Queen Elizabeth I.

18 January 1602
‘I rode with my cosen’s wife to Maidstone; dyned at Gellibrands.

As we were viewinge a scull in his studye, he shewed the seame in the middle over the heade, and said that was the place which the midwife useth shutt in women children before the wit can enter, and that is a reason that women be such fooles ever after.

My cosen shee said that the Gellibrands two wives lived like a couple of whelpes togither, meaninge sporting, but I sayd like a payre of turtles, or a couple of connies, sweetely and lovingly.

Mr. Alane, a minister, was very sicke. Gellibrand gave him a glyster, and lett him bloud the same day, for a feuer; his reason was, that not to have lett him bloud had bin verry dangerous; but to lett bloud is doubtfull, it may doe good as well as harme.

My cosen shee told me, that when shee was first married to hir husband Marche, as shee rode behinde him, shee slipt downe, and he left hir behinde, never lookt back to take hir up; soe shee went soe long a foote that shee tooke it soe unkindly that shee thought neuer to have come againe to him, but to haue sought a service in some vnknowne place; but he tooke hir at last.

Wee were at Mrs Cavils, when she practised some wit upon my cosen. Cosen she called double anemonies double enimies.’

2 February 1602
‘At our feast wee had a play called “Twelue Night, or What you Will,” much like the Commedy of Errores, or Menechmi in Plautus, but most like and neere to that in Italian called Inganni. A good practise in it to make the Steward beleeve his Lady widdowe was in love with him, by counterfeyting a letter as from his Lady in generall termes, telling him what shee liked best in him, and prescribing his gesture in smiling, his apparaile, &c., and then when he came to practise making him beleeue they tooke him to be mad.’

13 March 1602
‘Vpon a tyme when Burbidge played Richard III, there was a citizen grone soe farr in liking with him, that before shee went from the play shee appointed him to come that night vnto hir by the name of Richard the Third. Shakespeare ouerhearing their conclusion went before, was intertained and at his game ere Burbidge came. Then message being brought that Richard the Third was at the dore, Shakespeare caused returne to be made that William the Conqueror was before Richard the Third. Shakespeare’s name William.’

23 March 1603
‘I dyned with Dr Parry in the Priuy Chamber, and understood by him, the Bishop of Chichester, the Deane of Canterbury, the Deane of Windsore, &c. that hir Majestie hath bin by fitts troubled with melancholy some three or four monethes, but for this fortnight extreame oppressed with it, in soe much that shee refused to eate anie thing, to receive any phisike, or admit any rest in bedd, till within these two or three dayes. Shee hath bin in a manner speacheles for two dayes, verry pensive and silent; since Shrovetide sitting sometymes with hir eye fixed upon one obiect many howres togither, yet shee alwayes had hir perfect senses and memory, and yesterday signified by the lifting up of hir hand and eyes to heaven, a signe which Dr Parry entreated of hir, that shee beleeved that fayth which shee hath caused to be professed, and looked faythfully to be saved by Christes merits and mercy only, and noe other meanes. She tooke great delight in hearing prayers, would often at the name of Jesus lift up hir handes and eyes to Heaven. Shee would not heare the Arch[bishop] speake of hope of hir longer lyfe, but when he prayed or spake of Heaven, and those ioyes, shee would hug his hand, &c. It seemes shee might have lived yf she would have used meanes; but shee would not be persuaded, and princes must not be forced. Hir physicians said shee had a body of a firme and perfect constitucion, likely to have liued many yeares. A royall Maiesty is noe priviledge against death.’

24 March 1603
‘This morning about three at clocke hir Majestie departed this lyfe, mildly like a lambe, easily like a ripe apple from the tree, [. . .] Dr Parry told me that he was present, and sent his prayers before hir soule; and I doubt not but shee is amongst the royall saints in Heaven in eternall joyes.’

This article is a slightly revised version of one first published on 22 November 2012.

I always see the ruin of Italy

‘Am listless and sleepy, as I have never been before. I sleep little at nights: before me I always see the ruin of Italy, . .’ This is from the diaries of the Italian writer and philosopher Benedetto Croce, who died 70 years ago today. Reluctantly, he took on, briefly, active political roles before and after Mussolini’s rise and fall, but he is best remembered for his philosophical works and contributions to liberal political theory.

Croce was born in 1866 in Pescasseroli (Abruzzi region of Italy) into a Catholic and wealthy landowning family. In 1883, he lost his parents in an earthquake on the island of Ischia, and went to live with an uncle in Rome, where he studied law at university. There he abandoned his religious faith, but also became disillusioned with the university, returning to Naples. Having inherited his family’s fortune, he had the freedom to devote time to personal studies, such as on historical realism. He traveled in Spain, Germany, France, and England, but in 1893, influenced by the Neapolitan-born Gianbattista Vico, he turned his learning towards philosophy (even buying the house in which Vico had lived). Friends persuaded him to read Hegel, and in 1907 he published a commentary on the German philosopher - What is Living and What is Dead of the Philosophy of Hegel - which brought him increased attention.

Croce published other significant works around this time, not least Aesthetic (1902), Logic (1908), and Philosophy of the Practical (1908). In 1903, he also founded (in collaboration with his friend the philosopher Giovanni Gentile) La Critica, a journal of cultural criticism in which, over the next 40 years, he would publish nearly all of his writings. Hitherto, he had eschewed interest in politics, but in 1910 he was persuaded into a more public role, being appointed to the Italian Senate. In 1914, he married Adela Rossi, with whom he had four daughters. He opposed Italy’s participation in the First World War. In 1919, he supported the government of Francesco Saverio Nitti, and was appointed Minister of Public Education - a position he held between 1920 and 1921. 

Initially, he supported Mussolini’s fascist government, but by 1925 he had written and signed a Manifesto of the Anti-Fascist Intellectuals. After Mussolini’s fall, in 1943, he became Minister without Portofilio of the new democratic government and a member of the Constituent Assembly. From 1943 to 1947, he was President of the reconstituted Liberal party. In 1947, he retired from politics and established the Institute for Historical Studies in his Naples home, where he had an extensive library. From 1949 until 1952, he was president of PEN International, the worldwide writers’ association, and he was nominated 16 times for the Nobel Prize in Literature. He died on 20 November 1952. Further information is available from Wikipedia, Encyclopaedia Britannica and the New World Encyclopedia.

Croce kept a diary for much of his life; and at some point had them privatively printed in six volumes. But after the Second World War, a year’s worth of his diary entries in 1943/1944 were published in Quaderni della Critica. These were then translated into English by Sylvia Sprigge for publication by George Allen & Unwin in 1950 as Croce, the King and the Allies: Extracts from a diary by Benedetto Croce July 1943 - June 1944. This was re-published in 2019 by Routledge - an edition which can be sampled at Googlebooks. Extracts of Croce’s diaries from other periods in his life can also be found in the biography Benedetto Croce and Italian Fascism by Fabio Fernando Rizi (which can be digitally borrowed from Internet Archive).

A foreword to the 1943/1944 diary extracts provided by Croce for Quaderni della Critica was also included in the English editions. He wrote: ‘Historical accounts are beginning to appear in print of the nine months from early September 1943 to June 1944, a period when Government and political party activity could only take place in southern Italy and in the islands. I thought I might correct and integrate certain errors and certain omissions not easy to avoid in such accounts, with these notes from a diary, which I have been keeping these last forty years in a fairly brief form, at the beginning or end of my day, and whose purpose has been to note the course of my literary work. But after July 25th 1943, owing to the rush of events, the diary gradually filled with notes on political matters. In the following pages are extracts without the literary and private notes, of which I have left only a few in the early pages so that the character and nature of the Diary may be kept in mind. The political notes were a part of it, and at first were entered occasionally and almost involuntarily. Some details of little importance I have left in, being desirous and careful not to offend the susceptibilities or rouse the resentment of any one, for my purpose is solely that which I have already outlined. I do not know whether I have always succeeded in this, despite the goodwill which I have put into it.’

And here are three extracts (including the first) from Croce, the King and the Allies.

25 July 1943, Sorrento
‘In the morning, historical reading; but in the afternoon, visits from friends. Parente, both the Morellis, Zanotti Bianco, Petaccia. The Dohrns are here too. I was tired and had gone to bed at eleven o’clock when a telephone call from Signorina Elena di Serracapriola’s villa brought the news that Mussolini had resigned and that the new Government had been entrusted to Badoglio by the King. Parente and the Morellis, who had gone away half an hour ago, on hearing the news also arrived, jubilant, and we talked of the event. Back to bed, but I could not close my eyes till four o’clock or later. The feeling I have is of liberation from an evil which weighed upon the heart’s core; derivative evils and dangers remain, but that evil will not return.’

20 August 1943
‘Am listless and sleepy, as I have never been before. I sleep little at nights: before me I always see the ruin of Italy, and the news of Giovanni Laterza’s bad health, rapidly deteriorating, depresses me. When they brought the news of the fall of Fascism to his sick-bed on July 26th, he ordered the words “God be praised” to be written at the head of all letters and bills of that day. In the afternoon, as best I could, took up the threads of work in hand, including the revised elaboration of Blanch. The Giornale d’ltalia has printed my article on the Italian Academy despite the veto of the censors which Bergamini has overridden. But other articles on the subject are forbidden. I am told that the King said, “The Academy is not to be tampered with any more than the Senate.” But the Senate too, unworthy and corrupt as it is, will have to be ‘tampered with.’

17 September 1943
‘In the morning a visit from an American journalist, Kearney, who asked me some political questions, which I answered as best I could, what with being tired, not having slept and it being stiflingly hot. While Elena was helping to translate my answers into English, the English Admiral, J. B. Morse, came to visit me with his aide, Richard Long, and we had a short conversation. The lieutenant asked me who were the dangerous or Fascist people in Sorrento, and I asked to be excused because I could not, in my old age, begin doing things I had never done in the course of my life, to which the lieutenant agreed and said he well understood. The Germans left over there were mentioned in the conversation; but the Dohrn family, although attached to their country, has been noted as ‘neutral.’ In the evening a much famed journalist, Knickerbocker, came to say a lot of kind things to me, and then talked for a long time with my daughters, and wanting to give proof of his admiration, he wrote some lines by which to remember him in a copy of Shakespeare which they had with them.’

22 September 1943
‘Raimondo has left again. Suffocating heat continues. Tight feeling about the heart for Naples in the hands of the Germans. From here we hear explosions and see fires, and get rumours of people killed, devastation and looting. General Donovan and a journalist called Whitaker, together with an American officer called Tomkins, whom I got to know in the last few days and who has been in Italy previously for a long time, came to see me. The General told me that large supplies have been prepared for Naples, to be landed ten or fifteen days after the occupation. He said it might be a good thing if I let this be known in Naples. I said I would spread the news among people I shall see, but that I have no means of communicating with Naples. Similarly, with another of his suggestions that the Neapolitans should try to prevent the Germans from destroying the port. Whitaker offered me presses, paper and ink with which to print a paper here! General Donovan asked me how the spirit of the Italians was, and I said that what all the best Italians wanted, and what would most encourage them, would be permission to form a combatant legion under the Italian flag to co-operate with the Anglo-American armies in liberating Italian soil from the Germans; and then, when he asked me whether there was anybody who could command such a legion, I gave him General Pavone’s name, a man of an old southern family, a patriot and a liberal, and presently a member of the Party of Action.’

Secondary arias were omitted

‘We obeyed and stood at the walls for forty minutes. Anti-aircraft guns were firing somewhere in the distance. After the lights out, the performance continued, albeit at an accelerated pace: secondary arias and duets were omitted . . .’. This is the celebrated Russian poet Vera Inber - who died 50 years ago today - writing in her diary about an air raid during a visit to the opera. It was the early days of Germany’s siege of Leningrad, an offensive that would last for 872 days and take the lives of 1.5 million people. Inber’s diary of those desperate times was subsequently published, and later translated for publication in English.

Vera Moiseyevna Shpenzer was born in Odessa in 1890. Her father (a cousin to Leon Trotsky) ran a scientific publishing house, and her mother was a teacher of Russian. She briefly attended classes in history and philology. Her first poems were published in 1910 in local newspapers. Until 1914, she lived, together with her husband Nathan Inber, in Paris (where she paid for her first collection of poems to be printed), Switzerland and then Moscow. She worked as a journalist and foreign correspondent, traveling across the country and sometimes living abroad. In her literary writing, she associated with the constructivist movement. 

Through the 1920s and 1930s, her writing focused on Moscow, the Revolution, and Vladimir Lenin. She wrote short stories - depicting the clash between old and new Soviet life - and for the theatre. During the Second World War, she joined the Communist Party and began producing patriotic works. In 1941, she moved with her second husband, Ilya Davydovich Strashun, to Leningrad, where Strashun had been appointed director of a medical institute. Her poem Pulkovo Meridian, which details daily life in Leningrad during the siege, won a Stalin Prize in 1946. After the war, she continued to live in Leningrad. She died on 11 November 1972. A little further information is available from Wikipedia, The New York Times, Encyclopedia.com, and the Jewish Virtual Library.

Inber kept a diary during the siege of Leningrad; this was published in 1945. Some time later, in 1971, it was translated into English by Serge M. Wolff and Rachel Grieve for publication by Hutchinson in 1971 as Leningrad Diary. I cannot find much about this online, though Carol Harrison uploaded the following review for Good Reads:

‘A remarkable diary, describing the siege of Leningrad during World War II. The author, an eminent Russian poet, tells the daily struggles and tragedies, from the extreme food and water shortages to the relentless shelling, from the sudden terrible deaths to the persistence of concerts and lectures even when going across the street was a risk to life (but so was staying at home). At the end of the book, although the war is still going on, Leningrad is beginning to rebuild, and there is already a museum commemorating the long siege. Trees are being replanted, and the botanical gardens are planning new trips to re-gather plants from around the world. 90% of their collection died from the cold during the siege, and the loss of tadpoles and frogs also meant the loss of some plants dependent on them. The overall message of the book is summed up by a fifteen-year-old boy who is mortally injured: “a waste”. War is always a waste of lives and of nature and of beautiful, purposeful buildings.’

And I found a substantial article about Inber and her poetry in English on a Russian website (with trigger-happy adverts!) which also had a few extracts from her diary.

26 August 1941
‘Our apartment on Pesochnaya, on the fifth floor, is high, light, half-empty. Only bookshelves and plates on the walls are plentiful. Unfading Elizabethan and Catherine’s roses, nicholas, blue and gold ornament. Gray-white faience. A fragile economy. Where with him now ?! Bedroom windows and balcony overlook the Botanical Garden. Although it is still hot, some trees are already preparing for autumn: they have dressed up in all gold and scarlet. And what else will happen in September! From the balcony one can clearly see a huge palm greenhouse, all of glass. There are few people in the garden. I haven’t been there yet. Let's go on Sunday . . .’

9 September 1941
‘In the afternoon, as usual, there were several alarms, but we nevertheless decided to go to the Musical Comedy, to the “Bat”. . . In the intermission between the first and second acts, another alarm began. The administrator came out into the foyer and, in the same tone as he probably announced the replacement of the performer due to illness, he said clearly: “I ask the citizens to get as close to the walls as possible, since there (he pointed to the huge span of the ceiling) there are no ceilings here”. We obeyed and stood at the walls for forty minutes. Anti-aircraft guns were firing somewhere in the distance. After the lights out, the performance continued, albeit at an accelerated pace: secondary arias and duets were omitted . . . As the car rounded the square, we suddenly saw black swirling mountains of smoke, illuminated from below by flames. All this piled up in the sky, swelled, let out terrible curls and spurs. Kovrov (the driver) turned and said in a dull voice: “The German threw bombs and set fire to the food depots.” . . . The houses stood on the balcony for a long time, everyone looked at the burning Badayev warehouses. We went to bed at eleven. But at two o’clock in the morning I had to (for the first time in Leningrad) go down to the shelter. . .’

17 September 1941
‘Our room is very small: a desk by the window, two iron beds, a bookcase, an armchair and two chairs. To wash, you have to bring in a stool and a basin. On the walls are portraits of scientists. There is a round iron stove in the room. Outside the window are mighty poplars. We have convinced ourselves that they will protect us from the fragments. And the room itself is well located. In the depths of the letter “P”, between the wings of the house . . .’

12 February 1942
‘The view of the city is terrible. Met six or seven dead on a sled. (In “The Lay of Igor’s Campaign” there is a “mortal sleigh.” ice, drinking water. An early, early premonition of spring.

5 August 1942
‘In general, I have a feeling that only while I am working, nothing bad can happen to me.’

See also Only Tanya is left

Longest Latin America diary

Heinrich Witt, a Danish merchant and financier who lived in Peru, died 130 years ago today. He is remembered for a diary he kept for much of his life. This was published in 10 volumes by Brill in 2016. It is considered exceptional for its length, and for being a ‘treasure trove for interdisciplinary postcolonial and transcultural research’.

Witt was born in 1799 in Altona, then part of Denmark (but now part of Hamburg city), into a merchant family. He was apprenticed to a trading house, before moving to London in 1823 and taking up work with Antony Gibbs and Sons. He was sent to the firm’s South American branch working first in Arequipa, Peru. In 1832, he married a widow, Maria Sierra Velarde, who already had three children. By 1833, he had been promoted to head of office in Lima. In 1842, he established himself as an independent trader of goods from Europe; and he was also active in the guano trade. 

Over time, Witt’s business became focused on financial dealings, and the country’s developing infrastructure. He was appointed Consul for the Kingdom of Denmark in Peru in 1841, and then Consul General in 1845. He was frequently in Europe, though, spending several years touring each time, between 1843 and 1845, for example, in the first half of the 1850s, and in the early 1860s. After the death of his wife in 1876, he entered a period of extensive mourning. Thereafter, for some time, his life and that of his family were affected by a war involving Peru and Chile, but he managed one more trip to Europe, afterwards living in relatively quiet retirement. He died on 3 November 1892. A few biographical details on Witt can be found in the English translation of the German Wikipedia page. But an extensive, academic-quality, biography is freely available online thanks to the publisher Brill.

Witt is largely remembered today because of the detailed diary - written in English - he kept for most of his life. Indeed, it is considered to be the most extensive private diary written in Latin America. A ten volume edition, edited by Ulrich Mücke, was published by Brill in 2016 - The Diary of Heinrich Witt. The paperback version costs over €1,000; however, every chapter appears to be freely available online (open source). Many pages are also available to read at Googlebooks. Brill states: ‘The diary gives a unique version of commerce and trade, politics and politicians, and of lawsuits and corruption in nineteenth-century Peru and abroad. It abounds in details about family life, customs and culture, and is a truly unique source for everyone interested in the history of Peru and of international trade and migration.’

Angelika Schaser, reviewing the diary in the European Journal of Life Writing, says: ‘This edition of Witt’s diary constitutes a very important source for historians. It is also a treasure trove for interdisciplinary postcolonial and transcultural research. Literary scholars can identify Witt’s narratological features and rhetorical strategies in detail. Witt’s diary provides unique opportunities for a host of profound and innovative studies.’

It is worth noting however that there is some debate over whether the work is more autobiography than diary. For example, Mücke in one of her explanatory sections, states: ‘The first question arising in an analysis of Witt’s voluminous text is whether this is actually a diary. Witt himself speaks of a diary, but he also calls the text a chronicle. Speaking against classifying the text as a diary is in particular one key fact: Witt did not write most of the text simultaneously or nearly so with the time it describes but rather in part some decades later. In addition, substantial passages in the text are not in keeping with the form of a diary or journal, i.e are not ordered as dated entries.’

Much of the diary is dense to browse, and full of societal detail, and the Brill edition, fully annotated, is very much aimed at scholars. Nevertheless, here’s a few samples from the published volumes.

5 February 1850
‘A little past 6 o’clock I started for Lima the fog was uncommonly dense, I could hardly see a few yards ahead so that I reached Lima without suffering from heat, Rufino Macedo was my companion on the road. I remained in Lima until Sunday. I took my plain meals in the Victoria Fonda, Juan his in another, whilst Garland breakfasted and dined with Foster of Allsop’s.

On Wednesday 6th my dear mother’s birthday, the exequies of the late king of Sardinia were celebrated by order and at the expense of Jose Canevaro, Sardinian Consul General, in the church of San Pedro. I learned several months later that the outlay had been made good to him by his governments, not without blaming him however, for the large sum he had expended. At about 10 o’clock I drove in full uniform to Canevaro’s house, where the members of the diplomatic and consular bodies assembled, two by two we walked to the Church and took our seats on a bench to the right of the high altar; Manuel Ferreyros, Peruv. Minister for Foreign Affairs occupied the first place, next to him Canevaro as chief mourner, then the remainder; how they sat I didn’t observe, they were Mr. W. Pitt Adams chargé for the United Kingdom, Levrand for France, Elredge for the Sandwich Isles, Toro for Chile, Triunfo Consul General for Nueva Grenada, Sousa Ferreira, for Brazil, I for Denmark, Rodewald for Hamburgh, Prévost for the United States, Lacharrière for Belgium, Alvarez for Venezuela, and Menendez for Mexico, Clay chargé for the United States had remained in Chorillos; behind us sat Barton and some Fre [. . .] The interior of the Church was splendidly decorated, all hung in black with gold fringes, the high altar brilliantly illumined, and in front of the Catafalque stood lighted wax candles of an extraordinary size. We had fine instrumental and vocal music performed by the opera singers. Mass, a sermon, or more properly speaking a discourse lauding the deceased king and pronounced by Don Tordoye, and finally the responses chanted by Don Pasquel, Bishop of Eretria “in partibus infidelium”. Though the church was crowded it was not so hot as I had apprehended, nevertheless it was no joke to sit there till three o’clock braced up in my tight filling uniform. We accompanied Canevaro back to his house, who contrary to our expectation did not offer any refreshment, which I thought at the time we had well deserved. 

On Friday the north Steamer arrived which brought me a few letters containing however hardly anything of importance. Adelaide, Queen Dowager of William 4th had died in England. On the Continent all was quiet for the present, but both Sieveking and Simon Post, from which latter I had a letter for a wonder, were of opinion that the fire was but smothering, and that it would break out on the first occasion. The two rival states Austria and Prussia looked menacingly on each other neither being inclined to be the first to draw the sword. 

On Saturday the south Steamer arrived. C. W. Schutte wrote private letters to the whole family, he found himself in difficulties, and as it was his habit looked to me for assistance. He wrote that at the end of the year his contract with his two partners, Aurégan and Le Platenier would expire; that Aurégan would withdraw his capital, but that the other in order not to leave Schutte entirely in the lurch would lend him for several years without interest 25 to 30,000$ and perhaps 10,000 more at 5% P.A. He added that he himself was not worth a real, that he was desirous Juan should join him and take the management of the Paris House, and that I should lend to the new firm from 40, to 50,000$ at a low interest, besides becoming responsible for the purchases they might make for 40,000$ more. For a certainty he had sufficient “brass” for asking. My answer is copied in my letter book; I am sure it was a negative one; so was Juan’s who had told his sister Rosa in the greatest confidence, that if circumstances would allow him, he hoped to be [. . .] husband of Isabel Bergmann within two years. Before going to bed [. . .] what, not many days previously burglars had acheived at Urmenetas, I laid my pistols close to my bed, moreover I barricaded the door; whilst W. Hopper the coachman took care of the street door.’

20 February 1850
‘I rode to Lima, a drizzling rain accompanying me all the way, even in Chorillos one or two people had been wounded, owing to the elections [. . .] Lima things had really been very bad, and it was generally affirmed [. . .] some let out of prison for the purpose, had been seen in the ranks of Echeniques fighting men. People went so far as to say that he had to ask the assistance of the police, to defend himself against his own partizans, some of whom had sacked the shop of a confectioner close to the theatre, Jose Saldivar, a staunch Vivanquista; on the other hand Genl. Colo[m]a a great friend of Echenique was severely, not dangerously wounded. The result was that Echenique’s party had completely triumphed, the electors who had been elected were almost without exception, known to be decidedly in his interests.’

15 February 1854
‘Carnival day. Early in the morning I was up San Cristoval, and by the 2 o’clock train I went to Chorrillos. Both in Lima and Chorrillos I did not escape without water being thrown upon me. I bathed, made a few calls, and strolled about in the handsome Calle de Lima, until it was Henry’s dinner hour, Dona Anita having previously invited me. In the said street, towards the sea side the houses, the one m[. . .] handsome than the other extended already as far as the desc[. . .] to that [. . .] sea-beach called Agua-Dulce. The last house, still in progress of construction, and an enormous pile, was that of Don Mariano Laos; a few steps from it was that of José Antonio Garcia y Garcia, nicknamed “El Lord Inglés” on account of the airs which he gave himself; he showed me all over it, and it was certainly very well arranged. Heudebert, it was said, was desirous to sell his, a particularly handsome villa, for S/6o,ooo though it had cost him more. At 6 I was at Henry’s, who had rented one of Swayne’s new houses. A quarter of an hour later we sat down to dinner; we were, Dona Anita at the head of the table, I to her right, next to me Mr. Swift of Graham Rowe & Co.’s house, to her left, Macandrew, then Bohl, at the bottom of the table Henry, to his right Alice Gallagher, a very nice girl. There were two other gentlemen, whose names I did not learn. Dinner was nothing particular; in fact, provisions had become so horribly dear that to give anything out of the usual way cost heaps of money. Only English was spoken, and the time slipped away very pleasantly until 8 o’clock, when I had to say good bye; and returned to Lima.’

Planted some tomatoes

Today marks the centenary of the birth of the great British variety performer Max Bygraves. From humble origins, he rose steadily to the top of the show business world successfully releasing many albums, playing many times at the London Palladium and hosting his own television shows. He also wrote several autobiographical works; one of these is half filled with extracts from diaries he kept in 1996 and 1997. ‘One thing that is noticeable about my diaries of the past,’ he says in one entry, ‘is that they all start off with good intentions - the months of January and February are always quite full with entries, but then I either get lazy, or else nothing noteworthy seems to happen. When the summer arrives I only ever seem to jot down such entries as ‘golf’, ‘laid in garden’ or ‘planted some tomatoes’, etc, etc.’

Walter William Bygraves was born in London on 16 October 1922 where he grew up in a council flat with five siblings. His father was a boxer and a casual dockworker. Walter was educated locally, but sang with a choir at Westminster Cathedral. He left school at 14, working as a pageboy in a hotel, then as a messenger. During the war, he served as fitter in the Royal Air Force as well as working as a carpenter. After the war, he was employed on building sites, but he also worked as an entertainer in pubs during the evenings. He changed his first name to Max in honour of the comedian Max Miller. He married Gladys (Blossom) Murray in 1942, and they had three children. (Though Bygraves also had three children from extra-marital affairs.)

In the summer of 1946, Bygraves toured in a variety show with Frankie Howerd, who introduced him to Eric Sykes. With Sykes, he began writing scripts and developed a radio show - Educating Archie. In 1950, he made his first appearance at the London Palladium, supporting Abbott and Costello; the following year he did the same for Judy Garland who then invited him to perform at the Palace in New York. The 1950s saw Bygraves release seven top ten hits, many of them novelty songs, appear in several films and on television. By 1961 he was famous enough for Eamonn Andrews to feature him on This Is Your Life. In the 1970s he released several very successful albums, and appeared more often on TV shows - he hosted Family Fortunes (having taken over from his friend Bob Monkhouse) between 1983 and 1985.

Bygraves and Blossom retired to Australia, but he was coaxed out of retirement for a series of tours with the Beverly Sisters in 2002, then for a farewell set of performances in 2006. Bygraves published several books, from a novel (The Milkman's on His Way, 1977) to autobiographical works such as Stars in My Eyes: A Life in Show Business, 2002). He collected 31 gold discs in total and was appointed OBE in 1983. He died in Australia 2012, the year after his wife. Further information is available online from Wikipedia, The Guardian obituary and All Music.

In 1997 Breedon Books brought out Max Bygraves In His Own Words. The first six chapters of this are written as conventional autobiography covering the extent of his life through to 1996 (when he was in his mid-70s). In chapter 20, Bygraves reflects on his friendships and relationships with other ‘stars’, and in chapter 21 he focuses particularly on The London Palladium (which he played so often). And, in two of the final chapters he reflects on his life more generally. But, more than half of the book - chapters 7-18 - is filled with extracts from diaries he kept in 1996-1997 - i.e. the year or so directly prior to publication of the book. A copy can be digitally borrowed at Internet Archive. Here’s a couple of extracts in which he mulls over his diary writing habits and expresses sympathy for John Profumo.

31 December 1996
‘Today we say farewell to 1996 - tomorrow a brand new year. I am going for my last swim of ’96 as soon as I have made this entry in my large new desk diary one of the nicest I have ever had. It reminds me of that large five-year diary that my father gave me on the day I joined the RAF back in 1940. It is on moments like these that his words come back to me: “Anything worth remembering, jot down! You’ll never regret it.”

When he eventually died, almost 20 years ago, we continually discovered old Woodbine packets and small bits of paper with the day’s events, neatly dated and written down in his own particular brand of shorthand: “Feb 19 - Tram strike, w Bellamys. ND hand plast - mend pumps”. Deciphered, this read: “There was a tram strike and so I walked to Bellamy’s Wharf. There was no work (ND - nothing doing). His hand was in plaster but he managed to do a repair job on his boots (mend pumps)”.

I have two regrets and may possibly do something about them in 1997. One is that I should have learned shorthand, and the other is to type as competently as Jennifer, my assistant. To her it comes as easy as ABC. I write in long-hand, pass it to her and, shortly afterward, she hands me a pristine copy. I never cease to marvel at lyrics that I have dashed off in a way that sometimes even I can’t read - and yet Jennifer nonchalantly hands them back to me complete and neat - and I am so impressed! I look at my scribble, which is now beautifully typed, and think what a genius I am, thank you Jennifer ... and your word-processor!

The old year is going with a flourish. The plants and bushes have never looked more radiant. In full bloom, the tippichina trees and poincianas make the grounds here at Attunga Park into a wonderland. It is hard to stand at the entrance and not feel the poem that has been carved in stone in so many gardens all around the world. I read the words by the bird bath that Bloss put in place more than five years ago ...

The kiss of the sun for pardon.
The song of the birds for mirth.
You are nearer God’s heart in a garden,
Than anywhere else on earth.

I once asked a gardener who had written those words, but it seems that it was by that writer named Anonymous. It’s a shame to think of all the pleasure his or her words have given and yet have to miss out on the copyright!

It is hot - 85 degrees - not a bird in sight it is much cooler to stay in the trees. Now and again a crow squawks. The news is that Europe is experiencing the worst winter in a decade with quite a few old people dying. The protest marches in Belgrade have dwindled because the rebels can’t face the cold - and I feel so very lucky and humble that I am in a profession that allows me to travel away from all those tribulations. Mind you, we still have to watch out for sunburn, skin cancer, mosquito bites, snakes and so on, but there are few places that I would rather be.

When you are used to Christmas and the New Year being all that winter wonderland stuff that the traditional Christmas cards portray, it comes as a bit of a culture shock to spend that time in Australia. Gone are the robins, the log fires and the gentle snowflakes - instead there are parrots, barbecues and the sort of sunshine that enables you to fry eggs on the rocks. There are, of course, exceptions to even Australia’s beautiful weather.

2 January 1997
‘One thing that is noticeable about my diaries of the past is that they all start off with good intentions - the months of January and February are always quite full with entries, but then I either get lazy, or else nothing noteworthy seems to happen. When the summer arrives I only ever seem to jot down such entries as ‘golf’, ‘laid in garden’ or ‘planted some tomatoes’, etc, etc.

In the summer of my 1996 diary I am surprised to see how many blank pages there are, and not because there was nothing happening - in fact I had a most busy time. Contracted for a ten-week season at Bournemouth’s Pavilion Theatre, every show a different audience, relatives coming to stay, fly-fishing on the River Test a couple of days each week, golf with good friends like Gordon Dean, directors from the BBC in London to talk over proposed shows, phone-ins, charity appearances etc. (The strangest charity show was to cut the ribbon at a pedestrian crossing on the Poole Road, to allow old folk from a retirement home to cross without having to walk a quarter of a mile down the road to another crossing). Looking back, there are quite a few entries that I could have made interesting, so I can only plead laziness!

After cutting that tape on the Poole Road, I was invited back to the home for tea and cakes. Because I am in the business of entertainment I am usually button-holed by the senior citizens to do something about the appalling quality of programmes on television. They must think that I am some form of Mary Whitehouse. One lady, while making a point, made the company laugh when she said: “Why don’t they do something about all that swearing on TV? It’s bloody disgusting!”

I just have to stand there helpless. All I can do is nod and agree, but they think that I can just pick up the phone and say to the Director-General: “Now look here, folk don’t like four-letter words that they hear on TV. With very little being done to chastise the guilty actors and directors you should do something about it - after all, you’re the boss!”

That’s what they think that I can do. And I have to pass it all off with a shrug by saying: “It’s not bloody right is it!” A sneaky way to get out of an argument with a little of what they call comic relief.

Another entry is for May 16th. I promised to appear for Jack (known as John) Profumo at Toynbee Hall in the East End of London. John does such wonderful work at the ‘Hall’ for the poor and deprived - not just now, but for many years past. One stupid mistake forever labelled him as the man who brought down the Tory government because of the Christine Keeler affair. The country lost a very good bloke.

I knew him slightly before the Keeler affair, when he was Minister for War. It was during those days that we went to different parts of the world entertaining our troops. John was such a gentleman, and a real pleasure to talk with - he didn’t become charming after the affair. His wife, former actress Valerie Hobson, is a sweetie too. They both work hard at Toynbee Hall. You know what I’d like to do? I’d like to walk down Park Lane holding the biggest banner that I could carry, emblazoned with the words: ‘John Profumo and Co ... public benefactor . . . let’s hear it for John!’

Another entry is for Monday, April 22nd 1996. All I noted down was ‘QE2 to New York.’ This turned out to be one of the best trips ever on this lovely ship. I am not quite sure if it was my eighth or ninth voyage, but it was really enjoyable. My son Anthony came with me to help out with the lighting, look after the props, take the bandcall and be general dogsbody. He is good company and we get along well.

The other joyful part was that my good friend Gordon Dean and his attractive wife also came aboard to celebrate their tenth wedding anniversary - a cruise to New York, then fly back to Heathrow on Concorde. We shared a table with two other good friends from Bournemouth - Jim and Jane, so the six of us had some splendid meals in the Queens grill. Colin, the mâitre d’ excelled - every dish was a banquet.

I did two concerts in the main lounge, which had been refurbished since our last trip. I thought that the good old QE2 had suffered badly with the publicity surrounding the fact that she had not being ready in time on a previous trip. Many of the passengers had complained and Cunard had been forced to pay out some pretty hefty sums in compensation. On this trip, however, all faults had been rectified and we were there to enjoy it. The audience appeared to enjoy my stint and I finished by doing several encores and everyone was most complimentary.’

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.