My filthy polluted heart

‘Behold the exceding grate mercy of God to me, I having labored excedingly under some corruptions of my filthy polluted heart which was ready to break forth, that it made me very heavi and pray, cry and sigh to my God.’ This is Nehemiah Wallington, ‘the quintessential puritan’, born 420 years ago today. Although a craftsman by trade, he was also an inveterate keeper of diary-type notebooks in which he wrote extensively about his own inner religious life, as well as public affairs, not least witchcraft trials in the mid-1640s.

Nehemiah Wallington was born on 12 May 1598 into a large family headed by John Wallington, a turner in Eastcheap, London. Nehemiah spent two years in his father’s workshop, but appears to have become very depressed for a while, to the point of trying to kill himself several times. As a freeman, he set up his own business in Eastcheap and, in 1621, married Grace Rampaigne. They had several children, only one of whom survived beyond childhood. He was an active member of the Presbyterian church. Although, generally, he lived an uneventful life around the year 1639 he was summoned before the court of the Star Chamber for possessing prohibited books. He is remembered today only because he published two volumes of Historical Notes and Meditations, and for a set of extensive and detailed diaries - the main source of information about his life.

The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (log-in required) has the following assessment. ‘Wallington was in many respects the quintessential puritan, introspective, bookish, sermon-going, scrupulous in his business relations, and constantly struggling for even-tempered acceptance of life and of himself, which he believed should accompany assurance of election. He followed the fortunes of protestantism during the Thirty Years’ War and those of parliament during the civil war. Although he served conscientiously as a lay elder in the fourth London classis from 1646 until his last years his Presbyterianism was based on his desire for parish discipline, and his only quarrel with the protectorate was that it did not bring the godly reformation that he had long prayed for.’ Wallington died in 1658. Further information is also available at Wikipedia.

Wallington kept notebooks throughout his life. It is known that there were at least 50 such notebooks, although only seven - containing over 3,000 pages - have survived. The British Library has four, while the Guildhall Library, the Folger Shakespeare Library, and Tatton Park all have one each. They were used by Paul S. Seaver for his 1985 work Wallington’s World: A puritan artisan in seventeenth-century London (Stanford University Press, 1985) - see Googlebooks for a preview. More recently the notebooks were carefully edited, reduced and annotated by David Booy for his book, The Notebooks of Nehemiah Wallington, 1618–1654 (Ashgate 2007, Routledge 2016). This too can be sampled at Googlebooks.
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More recently still (in 2011), the Tatton Park notebook (A Record of marcys continued or yet God is good to Israel) was digitised by the John Rylands Library (University of Manchester) and some 583 images from it are now freely available online. The project received considerable press largely because there is much about witchcraft in this particular notebook - see the university’s press release, The Telegraph, or the BBC

According to Booy: ‘Wallington’s persistence and the consequent magnitude of his output make him extraordinary, especially when he had to spend long hours at his trade and many in religious duties. [. . ..] Several seventeenth-century ministers left huge amounts of writing, but for a London craftsman to do so is remarkable. Moreover, writings of any kind by artisans in early modern England are scarce in comparison to the countless texts produced by highly educated minsters, scholars and professional writers, or even by members of the gentry, merchant class and higher reaches of society. [. . .] [His] writings are valuable and fascinating because they record what it was like to live in those turbulent times. The seven surviving notebooks contain a wide range of material: chronicles of the era (including numerous excerpts from pamphlets, newsbooks, letters and official documents), autobiographical writing about his secular and religious life (including spiritual journals), personal letters, biography, prayers, religious meditations and reflections, passages transcribed from godly treatises, sermons and the Bible.’

Although Booy has trimmed Wallington’s text considerably, the notebooks remain a difficult read. Sometimes there are dated entries, but they often run on beyond the date mentioned; and often the writing reads more like a memoir than a diary. Entries are not necessarily in chronological order. Although the text is already dense, Booy retains all the original spellings (he does provide a glossary and plenty of footnotes). He also adds a degree of busyness to the text through the prolific use of pointed brackets (to indicate Wallington’s insertions/corrections), square brackets (for missing punctuation), and pedantic references (often mid-text) to the original folio numbers.

Here are three extracts (though I have omitted Booy’s pointed brackets).

1 October 1628
‘One the first day of October 1628 at night as I lay in my bead with my wife and my daughter Sarah a candel hanging over my head in a wier candelsteke about one a cloke at night the candel burnt downe and fell through the wiers and fell uppon my head and burnt the haire of my head: wee then being all fast asleepe[.] I feeling my heade burne that it smart I started up and put it out, and did consider of the great goodnes of my God which never slumbers nor sleepes in the presarving mee and mine so wonderfully from fier: For it might a fell uppon my poore child or one my wifes head or beetwene the sheetes or boulster and have burnt mee and mine and all that I have: and many others. But God of wanted goodnes and great mercye delivered us his Name be for ever praised for this and all other his manifould deliverances now and evermore Amen Amen[.]’

16 April 1632
‘On the XVI day of Apriel (1632) being Monday at night betwext VIII and IX a cloke as I was in my shope came tow sargents one cilisetor and a broker and the sargent said to me that I was baile for one Jackson a yeere agoe, and now where he was they knew not: and therefore he said he was come for forescore pounds worth of my goods, and he said he must goe up into my cheching[.] at these words I was amased and put in grate feare[.] then I sent for my brother John and he came unto me, and they shewed him theyr warrant what he had to doe and so went up into the ceching where my wife was a providing supper (for her Brother and sister which ware come out of the contrie thinking to be merie together)[.] my wife seing a stranger coming in such a manner and saying he was come for forescore pounds worth of goods and hanging his cloke on the doore saying he would begin with the peuter first it did frite her very much: looking very pale on the matter and went downe into the shope and wronge her hands bursting out a weeping and then being with childe did miscarrye, and I rune to Tempel bare to find my brother Crosse to aske his counsell but I could not find him but before I came againe my Brother John and my Brother Kiffet told them if they wolde be contented till mornning they would be bound that nothing should be sterred but everything should stand in his place, but they would not: at the last they would have my Brothers bonds to pay them XV pound the next Satterday: So they made them a bonde.’

June 1634
‘June 1634[.] Behold the exceding grate mercy of God to me, I having labored excedingly under some corruptions of my filthy polluted heart which was ready to break forth, that it made me very heavi and pray, cry and sigh to my God continually for some munths together yet could I get but littel strength against it (but still had such paine of minde) that at last (which was toward the begining of Agust) as I was a going alonge the street, I resolved with myselfe this wicked purpose[:] as Solomon saith Rejoyce o yong man, in thy youth and let thine heart chere thee in the days of thy youth, and walke in the ways of thine heart and in the sight of thine eyes (Ecclesiastes 11:9), So did I resolve (not being able to forbare any longer) that now I would follow all those wicked corsses that my filthy and odious heart was given unto (a littel chered I was of these thoughts and fully [resolved] I was)[.] Whereupon I was striken in a grate masse and astonied, and as it ware tied hand and foote (in my mind) that I could not stirre in that kind my hart being very heavie yet none knowing the cause: But yet for all this I could never set to commit any sinne willingly but oh the goodnesse of my God in making mee to hate sinne so much the more[.]’

Hunted like a dog

‘After being hunted like a dog through swamps, woods, and last night being chased by gun boats till I was forced to return wet cold and starving, with every mans hand against me, I am here in despair.’ This is from a diary entry by John Wilkes Booth written a week after he had assassinated US President Abraham Lincoln and less than a week before he himself would be shot dead. Booth, born 180 years ago, left behind but a few fragments of a diary written while on the run, but they can be found in almost every account ever written about Lincoln’s assassination.

Booth was born on 10 May 1838 to a noted British Shakespearean actor Junius Brutus Booth and his mistress Mary Ann Holmes who had emigrated in 1821 to Bel Air, Maryland (roughly half way between Washington D.C. and Philadelphia). He went to various schools, including a Quaker boarding school and a military academy, but he left after his father’s death in 1852. Intent on following his father and older brothers into the theatre, he took up elocution lessons. He made his stage debut at a Baltimore theatre in 1855, and by 1857 had joined the stock company of the Arch Street Theatre in Philadelphia. He soon became popular, something of a celebrity actor, characterised by acrobatic and intensely physical performances. The following year, he joined the Richmond Theatre in Virginia and is said to have performed in over 80 plays that year alone.

The early 1860s, saw Booth a leading actor touring all the major cities, wowing audiences and most critics. He began to invest his growing wealth in land and oil production enterprises. However, he was highly political and a strong supporter of the South, thus he gravitated towards touring in the Deep South where his views (as well as his acting) were most warmly welcomed. He was a strong advocate of slavery, and developed a deep hatred for President Lincoln. During the Civil War, he acted as a secret agent for the Confederate cause, and by 1864 was beginning to plan, with other conspirators, a sensational abduction of Lincoln. However, those plans never came to anything. Increasingly, he found himself at odds with his pro-Union actor brother, Edwin. In 1865, Booth became secretly engaged to Lucy Lambert Hale, the daughter of a US senator, though she remained unaware of his antipathy towards Lincoln.

After Lincoln’s re-election as president on a platform to abolish slavery, Booth redoubled his efforts against him, though his aim had changed to one of murder. On the morning of 14 April 1865, Booth learned that Lincoln would be attending Ford’s theatre in Washington that evening. He quickly assembled his gang and assigned them tasks, including the murder of Secretary of State William Seward. Booth, who was well known in Ford’s theatre and enjoyed unhindered access, managed to enter the president’s box, during the third act of the play that night, and shoot him, fatally. Seward survived the attempt on his life (see also Lincoln and Fanny Seward). Booth may have broken a leg bone while fleeing, but managed to escape the city on his horse. Twelve days later, federal troops tracked him down to a farm in Virginia, where he was shot, either by himself or a soldier, and died a few hours later. Eight others implicated in the plot were found guilty by a military tribunal in Washington, D.C. and sentenced to prison sentences of varying lengths - though pardons were granted in 1869 by President Andrew Johnson. There’s a wealth of information about Booth online, at Wikipedia, Biography.com, Encyclopaedia Britannica, History.net, Visit Maryland, R. J. Norton’s Lincoln Assassination website, much of it focusing on the last few weeks of his life.

Lincoln’s assassination and, therefore, Booth’s life and death have been written about and analysed in numerous publications. Most, if not all, mention a small red book found on Booth’s body which, although an appointment book, had been used as a diary. The diary has always been considered something of a mystery. According to Norton’s website, it was taken off Booth’s body and given to Lafayette C. Baker, chief of the War Department’s National Detective Police in Washington. Baker in turn gave it to Secretary of War Edwin Stanton but the book was not produced as evidence in the 1865 conspiracy trial. A couple of years later, the diary was re-discovered with pages missing. Although most sources indicate 18 pages were missing, Norton says, the FBI’s forensic laboratory has since examined the diary and stated that 43 separate sheets (86 pages) are missing. And these missing pages have led to all kinds of speculation. Today, the diary is held by Ford’s Theatre, and much about it can be read on the theatre’s website (there is also a photograph of the diary - as above). Many books/websites reproduce the text of Booth’s diary, sometimes editing/correcting the language/spelling. I have taken the following from The American Civil War: An Anthology of Essential Writings by Ian Frederick Finseth (available to preview at Googlebooks).

17 April 1865
‘14 Friday the Ides
Until to day [sic] nothing was ever thought of sacrificing to our country’s wrongs. For six months we had worked to capture. But our cause being almost lost, something decisive & great must be done. But its failure is owing to others, who did not strike for their country with a heart. I struck boldly and not as the papers say. I walked with a firm step through a thousand of his friends, was stopped, but pushed on. A Col - was at his side. I shouted Sic semper before I fired. In jumping broke my leg. I passed all his pickets, rode sixty miles that night, with the bones of my leg tearing the flesh at every jump. I can never repent it, though we hated to kill: Our country owed all her troubles to him, and God simply made me the instrument of his punishment. The country is not what it was. This forced union is not what I have loved. I care not what becomes of me. I have no desire to out-live my country. This night (before the deed), I wrote a long article and left it for one of the Editors of the National Inteligencer, [sic] in which I fully set forth our reasons for our proceedings. He or the Govmt’

22 April 1865
‘Friday 21
After being hunted like a dog through swamps, woods, and last night being chased by gun boats till I was forced to return wet cold and starving, with every mans hand against me, I am here in despair. And why; For doing what Brutus was honored for, what made Tell a Hero. And yet 1 for striking down a greater tyrant than they ever knew am looked upon as a common cutthroat. My action was purer than either of theirs. One, hoped to be great himself. The other had not only his countrys but his own wrongs to avenge. I hoped for no gain. I knew no private wrong. I struck for my country and that alone. A country groaned beneath this tyranny and prayed for this end. Yet now behold the cold hand they extend to me. God cannot pardon me if I have done wrong. Yet I cannot see any wrong except in serving a degenerate people. The little, the very little I left behind to clear my name, the Govrnt will not allow to be printed. So ends all. For my country I have given up all that makes life sweet and Holy, brought misery on my family, and am sure there is no pardon in Heaven for me since man condemns me so. I have only heard what has been done (except what I did myself) and it fills me with horror. God try and forgive me and bless my mother. To night 1 will once more try the river with the intent to cross, though I have a greater desire to return to Washington and in a measure clear my name which I feel I can do. I do not repent the blow I struck. I may before God but not to man.

I think I have done well, though I am abandoned, with the curse of Cain upon me. When if the world knew my heart, that one blow would have made me great, though I did desire no greatness.

To night I try to escape these blood hounds once more. Who can read his fate. Gods will be done.

I have too great a soul to die like a criminal. Oh may he, may he spare me that and let me die bravely.

I bless the entire world. Have never hated or wronged anyone. This last was not a wrong, unless God deems it so. And its with him, to damn or bless me. And for this brave boy with me who often prays (yes before and since) with a true and sincere heart, was it a crime in him, if so why can he pray the same I do not wish to shed a drop of blood, but “I must fight the course” Tis all thats left me.’

Cleese, also in a bikini

‘The last week has been spent filming in or around London, ending up at our traditional location - Walton-on-Thames - on Friday. It was less hot this time than in the past - I noticed this because for the last shot of the day I had to stand beside a fairly busy road clad in the It’s Man beard and moustache and a bikini. Next to me was John Cleese, also in a bikini.’ Laugh out loud, for this is the very funny Michael Palin, still in his 20s, who would go on to become a household name as a star of the Monty Python television series and films, and later as a travel presenter. Today he’s 75 - happy birthday!

Palin was born on 5 May 1943 in Ranmoor, Sheffield to an engineer and his wife; he had one sister, nine years older. He was educated at Shrewsbury School (like his father), and at Brasenose College, Oxford, where he read modern history. As a child he had shown some talent at acting, and he furthered this interest in Oxford by writing and performing comedy material, not least with Terry Jones. After completing his degree in 1965, he went to work in television, presenting a comedy pop show. The following year he married Helen Gibbons, they would have three children. For the next few years, he wrote many TV scripts, some with Terry Jones, for the likes of Ken Dod, Roy Hudd, and David Frost. He also wrote and appeared, with Eric Idle and Terry Jones, in the prize winning children’s show Do Not Adjust Your Set.

In 1969, Palin joined Graham Chapman, John Cleese, Terry Gilliam, Eric Idle and Terry Jones for a first series of the BBC’s Monty Python’s Flying Circus. Further series, films and books came thick and fast over the next five years or so, bringing fame to all of them. Thereafter, Palin continued to write for TV and film. In 1982, he wrote and starred in The Missionary, co-starring Maggie Smith, and this was followed by roles in Brazil (1984) and A Fish Called Wanda (1988) for which he won the BAFTA Award for Best Actor in a Supporting Role. From the late 1980s, however, and through to 2012, Palin has focused on presenting travel programmes, notably for the BBC, such as Around the World in 80 Days, Pole to Pole and Full Circle. He has completed eight series, each one accompanied by publication of a travel book. Most recently, he has presented one-off documentaries on art and history topics. He has also written several novels and children’s stories. In 2013, he was awarded the BAFTA Academy Fellowship Award. Further biographical information can be found at the Michael Palin website, Wikipedia, Screen Online, The Independent, or the BBC (Desert Island Discs audio recording from 1979).

Palin has been a committed diarist since his mid-20s. His motivation, he says, is simply ‘to keep a record of how I fill the days - Nothing more complicated than that.’ However, between 2006 and 2014, Weidenfeld & Nicolson has published three thick volumes of his diaries (all of which can be sampled at Googlebooks): The Python Years 1969-1979; Halfway To Hollywood: Diaries 1980-1988; Travelling to Work: Diaries 1988–1998. As with his Python movies and travel programmes, all have been highly popular, and much lauded. A few extracts can also be read on his own website, as can some tips for aspiring diarists.

Here is part of his introduction to the first volume (which gives an extract from a childhood diary, as well as a little insight as to why he began to keep a diary), as well as several excerpts from the same volume.

‘I have kept a diary, more or less continuously, since April 1969. I was twenty-five years old then, married for three years and with a six-month-old son. I had been writing comedy with Terry Jones since leaving university in 1965 and, in addition to contnbunng material to The Frost Report, Marty Feldman, The Two Ronnies and anyone else who’d take us, we had written and performed two series of Do Not Adjust Your Set (with Eric Idle, David Jason and Denise Coffey) and six episodes of The Complete and Utter History of Britain. Alter the last one went out in early 1969. John Cleese rang me.

“Well, you won’t be doing any more of those,” he predicted, accurately as it turned out, “so why don’t we think of something new.”

So it was that, quite coincidentally, Monty Python came into my life, only a month or so after the diary.

This was far from my first stab at keeping a regular account of how I spent my time. At the age of eleven I resolved to record each day of the year, and kept it up until the 18th of July. The style was staccato, and looking back now, quite surreal.

Letts Schoolboy's Diary, January, 1955
Tuesday, 18th. Big blow-up in prayers. Had easy prep. Listened to Goon Show. Got sore hand.
Monday 24th. Had fight with (form) VR. Got hit on nose. Did two sets of prep. Jolly hard! Cabbage for lunch. Watched TV.

At regular intervals I tried to resume the habit, but as I grew older keeping a diary seemed an irksome duty, like writing to one’s parents, and anyway, there was far too much going on in my teens and early twenties to have either the time or the inclination to write it all down. Yet there remained a nagging feeling that it was a small failure to let life go by without in some way documenting it. The feeling persisted as I grew older. All I lacked was the will-power.’

Palin then includes an anecdote about how he found the sudden will power to give up smoking which also gave him the impetus to re-start and maintain a diary. Palin continues:

‘There are times when I’ve resented the whole process, when I’ve felt lumpen, dull and inarticulate, when detail has slipped away and the whole exercise has seemed completely pointless. But the longer I’ve kept the diary the more inconceivable it has been to abandon it. Its become an effective and tenacious parasite, mutating over the years into something as germane to my life as an arm or a leg.

The motivation for keeping the diaries remains the same as it always was, to keep a record of how I fill the days. Nothing more complicated than that. Though this inevitably involves emotional reactions. I’ve never treated the diary as a confessional. Once I’ve noted the day’s events, usually the next morning, there’s little time left for soul-searching. [. . .]

This selection [i.e. 1969-1979] is culled from thirty-eight hand-written secretarial notebooks amounting to some five times the volume of material reproduced here. The early entries sit a little awkwardly as I search for a voice and a style that relies on more than lists of events. My reward for perseverance, often in the face of tempting discouragement, is to see the diary bed itself in and slowly begin to tell a story, with regular characters, a narrative, and a sense of continuity.

In the course of these diaries I grow up, my family grows up and Monty Python grows up. It was a great time to be alive.’

23 August 1970
‘The last week has been spent filming in or around London, ending up at our traditional location - Walton-on-Thames - on Friday. It was less hot this time than in the past - I noticed this because for the last shot of the day I had to stand beside a fairly busy road clad in the It’s Man beard and moustache and a bikini. Next to me was John Cleese, also in a bikini.’

25 December 1971
‘A rather fine, sunny morning, and for the first time in our marriage we woke on Christmas morning in our own home.

Thomas saw James across the road, and then they both saw Louise looking out of her window, and soon there was an impromptu gathering of little children comparing presents on the pavement outside our house. The quiet of the day, the sunny morning and the neighbours all talking made me feel very glad - about staying in London, and about living in Oak Village. If it doesn't sound too pedantic, I felt that this was how city life should be.’

31 December 1971
‘Harold Nicolson used to sum up his year on December 31st with a few pithy words. It’s a sort of diary writer’s reward for all those dull July 17ths and October 3rds. (Will I still be keeping my diary on Dec. 3Ist 1999? Now that’s the kind of thought which gives survival a new urgency.)

1971 was my fifth full year in television and certainly on the face of it we have achieved a lot. A TV series, which has reached the sort of national notoriety of TW3. ‘Monty Python’, ‘Silly Walks’, ‘And Now For Something Completely Different’, etc, have become household words. The TV series has won several awards during the year, including the Silver Rose of Montreux. The second Monty Python album has sold over 20,000 copies since release in October, and Monty Python’s Big Red Book completely sold out of both printings within two weeks. It has sold 55,000 copies, and 20,000 more are being printed for February. In London it was top of the bestseller lists. And finally the film which we made a year ago and were so unhappy about, looks like being equally successful.

From all this no-one can deny that Monty Python has been the most talked about TV show of 1971 - and here is the supreme irony, for we have not, until this month, recorded any new shows since October 1970.

The split between John and Eric and the rest of us has grown a little recently. It doesn’t prevent us all from sharing - and enjoying sharing - most of our attitudes, except for attitudes to work. It’s the usual story - John and Eric see Monty Python as a means to an end - money to buy freedom from work. Terry J is completely the opposite and feels that Python is an end in itself - i.e. work which he enjoys doing and which keeps him from the dangerous world of leisure. In between are Graham and myself.’

25 September 1975
‘I spent the lunch hour in a recording studio doing three voice-overs for Sanderson Wallpaper. I really did it because I wanted to keep my hand in and a voice-over, however dull or badly written it may be, at least requires a bit of application and a little bit of performing. It’s good practice. By the same token I’ve accepted an offer to appear as the guest on two editions of Just a Minute, a Radio 4 quiz game, next week.

Down to Regents Park for a Python meeting.

Eric was very positive and I could scarcely believe that it was the same Eric who had berated us all for turning Python into a money-obsessed, capitalist waste of time in this same room in February last year. Eric’s moods should really be ignored, but it’s impossible because he nearly always has a big effect on any meeting. Today it was nice, kind, helpful, constructive Eric.

John had just returned from three days in Biarritz. He was the same as ever, unable to resist a vindictive dig at T Gilliam (on the usual lines of us ‘carrying the animator’ for three years). This didn’t find much support amongst the gathering and squashed TG more than John intended.

Terry J had had a lunch with Michael White, who felt it would be suicidal for us not to make another film this year. Anne said that most ‘advice’ tended this way.’

24 August 1976
‘Chasing up and down corridors. A bit of sub-Errol Flynn work. Anti-swashbuckling. To be actually living these childhood dreams and fantasies - and getting paid handsomely for them - I have to pinch myself mentally to be sure its happening. Fifteen years ago Graham [Stuart-Harris] and I were lapping up all the films, good or bad, that hit Sheffield, and now here I am making the bloody things.

Eric (complete with specially printed T-shirt ’Jabberwocky - The New Python Movie’) and Susie the wet-lipped Aussie model, came to see us on set. Eric brought me a signed advance copy of the book which he says has already had massive re-orders, The Rutland Dirty Weekend Book (containing three pages by M Palin!), to be released next month. It’s a lavish production job - a combination of the Goodies and Python book designs over the last four years, but fused and improved.

I feel that it pre-empts more Python books - a particular area of comic book design has been capped by the Rutland book - and if the Python ‘periodical’ which is being heavily sold to us by Eric, is to be the work of these same designers, I fear it will look unoriginal - and that Python, far from creating a bandwagon, will appear to be climbing on one.

Sit in the sun and read more of The Final Days, chase up a few more corridors.’

28 September 1976
‘No Jabberwocking for me today, but my last day off, apart from Sundays, until late October. Letters, visit Anne Henshaw. She has her head down in the labyrinthine affairs of Python as usual. She reports that the sooner we start writing the Python film the better for some in the group - she says Graham especially seems to be at a loose end and drinking more, with several of his projects, TV series and his film of Bernard McKenna’s script, having collapsed.

Shopping in the King’s Road - have to give brief run-down on Python plans in almost every shop - the assistants all seem to recognise me and want to talk.

To BBC to meet Don Henderson - T Hughes’ selection for the RSM in ‘Across the Andes’. I’m in trepidation for this is a major role and I don’t even know the guy.

Fears allayed - he looks good - with a rather fierce, red face and a good sense of humour. He’s easy company and seems to understand the role well. Still no Dora - as Michele Dotrice turned down the role (the first artist to turn down a Ripping Yarns role this time around!).

Out to dinner in the evening with Robin S-H and Barbara. By a strange stroke of coincidence a Peruvian is present. I tell him about ‘Across the Andes by Frog’ - and to my amazement he tells me that the biggest frogs in the world live in Lake Titicaca, Peru, and that the frog is a common motif in old Peruvian carvings!’

23 September 1977
‘Squash with Terry Jones at five. Beaten again. I’m afraid. Then up to the Flask for a drink. Tell Terry J that I shall be writing the novel (hereinafter called ‘the work’) until Christmas. He doesn’t sound disappointed. Says that it will suit him, as he has further work to do on Chaucer, now his book has found a publisher. He’s just finished a translation of ‘The Prologue’, which TJ says he’s more excited about than the book.

Off to Abbotsley tomorrow for a quick burst of countryside, then back to London and the novel on Monday. A strange feeling - not knowing quite what will come out. I keep wanting to start - waking up in bed and composing cracking first six lines, then controlling myself.

Will I be able to keep the diary up? Will I choke on a surfeit of writing? Will the malfunctioning, non-reversing ribbon on my typewriter cut short a promising career? Watch these spaces . . .’

The 1st Earl of Egmont

John Perceval, 1st Earl of Egmont, died 270 years ago today. He is remembered today for being instrumental in the early development of Georgia, North America, which was given a charter by, and named after, George II, and because of his grandson, Spencer Perceval, who became a UK prime minister (and is the only one ever to have been murdered - see An agony of tears). However, he is also remembered for his diary which provides historically important information on the development of Georgia as well as on the details of élite society in early Georgian London.

John Perceval was born in 1683 in County Cork, Ireland, part of an aristocratic family. His father, third baronet, died when he was two, and John succeeded to the title as fifth baronet in 1691 (after the death of his older brother). He was educated at Westminster School, London, and at Magdalen College, Oxford, but left before taking a degree. In 1704, he inherited large estates in Ireland, and the same year was first elected to the Irish House of Commons, and served on the Irish Privy Council. He married Catherine Parker, the daughter of Sir Philip Parker, in 1710. They had seven children, only three of whom survived into adulthood. Their oldest, also John, became the 2nd Earl of Egmont, and was a confidant of George III; and their grandson, Spencer Perceval, served as prime minister from 1809 until his assassination in 1812.

Perceval, determined to acquire English status (as well as Irish), assiduously cultivated the support of influential persons in the highest social and political circles, becoming closely acquainted with the Prince of Wales, later George II, Queen Caroline, and Sir Robert Walpole among others. He finally entered the British Parliament as Member for Harwich in 1727. The following year he joined the committee investigating prison conditions, and became a close associate of the committee’s chairman James Oglethorpe. In 1730, with Oglethorpe and others, he formed the Trustees for the Establishment of the Colony of Georgia in America. Two years later, King George II granted the colony a charter, naming Perceval president of the Georgia Trustees. A year later, Perceval was created Earl of Egmont in the Peerage of Ireland. In 1734, Egmont stood down from his Harwich seat (in favour of his son, who failed to secure it), and concentrated on his work, with Oglethorpe, to establish the colony of Georgia. He died on 1 May 1748. Further information online can be found at Wikipedia or the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (ONDB - log-in required).

Egmont was a committed diarist. It seems he started keeping a journal in his teenage years, however only diaries from the last two decades of his life appear to be extant (with the exception of a travel diary from 1701, and a few weeks from 1728-1729). These were first published in 1920-1923 by the Historical Manuscripts Commission as Manuscripts of the Earl of Egmont (in three volumes, all freely available at Internet Archive: 1730-1733, 1734-1738, 1739-1747, this latter volume also includes a few pages of diary from 1728-1729 and a 170-page index for all three volumes). The diaries are considered an important primary source of information about Parliamentary debates in the 1730s, and about the history of the development of the Georgia colony.

According to the introduction by R. A. Roberts ‘[Egmont’s] diary is a punctilious work founded on personal knowledge, laboriously entered up with details of events, speeches, conversations, reflections, and the like, both public and private and personal.’ Roberts gives further details: ‘The entries were made either day by day or, possibly, on the days when he “stayed at home,” or during the evenings which he “spent in his study” - in any case quite near to the events chronicled, when impressions were fresh in his mind. There are periods in the year which are lightly passed over or omitted altogether, chiefly those of the summer holiday months spent at his country house at Charlton, or on visits to Bath. But when residing in town, as was his habit for the greater part of the year, and especially during the sessions of Parliament, his diligence and assiduity as a diarist are most remarkable.’

The ONDB has this assessment: ‘Egmont kept a personal diary for many years, and this, together with his accounts of the Georgia trustees’ proceedings, provides a mine of information not only about his own life but also about many different facets of élite society in early Georgian London. Egmont’s diaries, and the unreliable Genealogical History of the House of Yvery, published under his supervision in 1742, lend credence to the contemporary view of him as a pompous and conceited person. However, his diaries also reveal that he had a deep and abiding love of the arts and enjoyed a generally happy relationship with his wife.’

In 1989, University of Missouri Press published The English Travels of Sir John Percival and William Byrd II: the Percival diary of 1701 as edited by Mark R. Wenger. Here, though, are several extracts from the volumes published in 1920-1923.

7 April 1734
‘This morning I went to chapel, then to the Prince of Orange’s levee, who asked me several questions about Ireland. Then I went to the Prince of Wales’ Court, who asked me if my son was sure at Harwich. I replied, Yes, if no tricks were played me. He said it would be hard indeed that so good a friend to the Government as I am should have tricks played me. I dined with my Lord Tyrconnel in company of the Earl of Shaftesbury, Captain Coram, Dr. Rundle, Mr. Vernon, and Mr. Martin, our secretary.

I was called from thence by Cousin Ned Southwell to go to Wotton the Painter’s, to see some noble large hunting pieces made by him for the Earl of Sunderland to be set up at Althorp. He is the best painter of horses in England.

I passed some time at the coffee house, and then returned home. My son returned from Malden, where he and Mr. Cross took up their freedom. One Malden of the place, an apothecary, told my son that his brother-in-law, Alderman Rudland of Harwich, would to his knowledge vote for my son. This morning Mr. Horace Walpole went to Harwich in order to embark for Holland.’

25 December 1735
‘Christmas Day, communicated at the King’s Chapel. Dr. Couraye dined with me. Went in the evening again to chapel, and from thence to the coffee house, where Mr. John Banks, late member for Corfe Castle in Dorsetshire, told several of the company who were sitting together that Justice Robe, now living at Clerkenwell, cured his butler of an inveterate rheumatism by a powder he called his magnetic powder. The man had been long so ill that he had lost the use of his hand, when Robe, who was an acquaintance of Mr. Banks’ father, ordered him to be laid in bed, after he had saved about three pints or two quarts of his urine made in quantities after a considerable retention. This urine the justice set on the fire and put into it some of his powder, stirring it round with a stick that had several notches in it (which Mr. Banks thought was to show there was some mystery in the thing). The whole family stood by the bed, as did some friends called in to watch if the Justice gave the man anything inwardly, but he never approached him, continuing at the fire and stirring the urine and saying at times, “Now in three minutes you shall see your butler begin to sweat; now in five minutes he shall sweat stronger; now in three minutes he shall sweat plentifully”: all which they observed to be true. At length, having finished his operation, he bid the man remain an hour in bed and cool gradually, and then to get up and dress himself by the fire, and stay an hour in the room, after which he might go out about his master’s business. The man followed his directions, and from that day to this never ailed anything, being perfectly cured. Mr. Banks asked him if he was dry all the time he sweated, or found any particular affection. He replied, No, only that he lay as one in a trance quite listless of using his limbs. He also expressed his apprehension to the Justice that if he took his servant into the country where he was going the rheumatism might return, and what should he do in that case? The Justice replied he need but write him word of it, for he would bottle up the urine, and it would serve to recover him a second time though at a hundred miles distance. This is a plain instance of sympathetic cure, though very extraordinary, but nobody doubted Mr. Banks’ veracity, and besides Governor Peachy, who was present, declared he knew another instance of Justice Robe’s making a like cure the same way.’

14 October 1736
‘Returned to Charlton to dinner. A few days ago Lady Catherine Shirley died in 24 hours by the sting of a wasp, on which being advised to clap on a halfpenny to assuage and draw out the venom, the sting which remained within the flesh mortified the part and killed her.

Also a few days ago, the Queen returning from London to Kensington, the mob got round her coach and cried, “No gin, no King”; upon which she put forth her head and told them that if they had patience till the next Session they should have again both their gin and their King.’

2 November 1739
‘Mr. Verelts brought me letters from Mr. Oglethorp to the Trustees, dated from Frederica 4 July and from Savannah 16 the same month. I also had a letter from Mr. Oglethorp dated from Frederica 5 July.

Mr. Verelts told me Mr. Ausperger speaks very advantageously of the colony, to which he intends to return after he has settled some affairs in Switzerland his native country. He said he eat some grapes at Savannah in July as fine as can be seen, which will make the best Vidonia wine. He brought over twelve pound of extraordinary good silk, and there had been more of it, but that a multitude of worms died by putting them into the place where our sick people were kept.’

10 November 1739
‘This day Dr. Bearcroft, preacher at the Charterhouse and King’s Chaplain, formerly my son’s tutor, married my daughter to Sir John Rawdon, and gave me a certificate thereof signed on the back of the licence. They were married in my chapel at Charlton.’

12 November 1739
‘This day I gave the wedding dinner.’

The Diary Junction

A thousand pieces

‘Their way of making war is very much the same. Into the pot they cast human flesh, explosive powders, and extracts from manuals of military science, then they put on the lid of uncompromising discipline and wait for a whistle to tell them that it’s all over. Only the whistle doesn’t blow, and the pot explodes into a thousand pieces.’ This is the famous Italian Giovannino Guareschi, born 110 years ago today, writing in a diary he kept during his imprisonment by the Germans in the latter years of World War Two. Guareschi is best known for his comic short stories about Don Camillo, but his humour also shines through the tales of horrors in prison camp life.

Giovanni or Giovannino Guareschi was born in Fontanelle di Roccabianca, near Parma, on 1 May 1908 into a middle-class family. After an unsuccessful stint at the local university he worked as a doorman at a sugar refinery, but soon found his niche in writing for a local newspaper. In 1929 he became editor of Corriere Emiliano, a satirical magazine, and between 1936 and 1943 he was chief editor of Bertoldo, a similar publication. In 1940, he marred Ennia Pallini, and they had two children. During the Second World War, he was a critic of the Mussolini government, but nevertheless joined the army (to avoid prosecution), and trained as an artillery officer. After Italy signed its armistice with the Allies, he was stationed on the Eastern front. He was imprisoned, alongside other Italian soldiers, by the Germans in Poland for three years.

Subsequently, Guareschi returned to Italy and was a cofounder of Candido, a satirical magazine, which he edited until 1957 (apart from a spell in a Parma prison for libel). However, Guareschi is most warmly remembered for his novels, in particular those featuring Don Camillo, the stubborn Catholic priest, who is constantly in trouble with the local communist mayor Peppone. From 1956, he began to spend time in Switzerland for health reasons; he died 1968. There isn’t a wealth of biographical information on Guareschi available online in English, but there is a little at Wikipedia, and the World of Guareschi.

During his imprisonment during the war, Guareschi kept diary notebooks - often reading aloud their contents to other prisoners. He brought them home after the liberation, and these were published in 1949 by Rizzoli as Diario Clandestino 1943-1945 (which has its own Italian Wikipedia page). Some years later, in 1958, this was translated by Frances Frenaye for publication in English in the US (Farrar, Straus and Cudahy) and the UK (Victor Gollancz) as My Secret Diary 1943-1945. The full text is freely available online at Internet Archive.

Rather than a preface or introduction, Guareschi begins his published diary with Instructions for Use, which is worth reproducing at length.

‘This Secret Diary is so secret that it isn’t a diary at all. I say this partly in order to correct the title of the book and partly in order to allay the misgivings of anyone whom it happens to antagonize. It is not a diary in the sense of being a day-by-day account of what the writer thought and did, one of the usual compilations in which he regards himself as the center and fulcrum of the universe.

I did have the intention of compiling a diary of this kind, and for two years I jotted down everything I did or didn’t do, everything I thought and saw, including what I should have thought, even if I didn’t think it. As a result, I brought home with me three bulky notebooks, containing enough material to fill a volume of two thousand pages. As soon as I got there, I put a new ribbon in the typewriter and set about deciphering and amplifying my notes. Out of the two years I did not skip a single day. It was a tiresome and feverish job but, at the end, my diary was complete. I reread it attentively, polished it up and tried to give it a good tempo. Then I had it retyped and, after all this was done, I put it away with the intention of never looking at it again. This, I believe, is one of the wisest acts of my whole career as a writer. [. . .]

Like millions of others, better and worse than myself, I was drawn into this war. As an Italian, I found myself an ally of the Germans at the start and at the end their prisoner. In 1943 the Anglo-Americans bombed my house; in 1945 they freed me from prison and gave me cans of soup and condensed milk. As far as I am concerned, that is the whole story. I had no more influence than a nutshell tossed about on the ocean, and I emerged without ribbons or medals on my chest. I emerged as a victor, however, because I came through the cataclysm without hatred in my soul and I made the discovery of a precious friend, myself.

As for the exact course of my personal story, it was this. One day in September of 1943, I found myself, along with a group of other officers, in an internment camp in Poland. Subsequently I changed camps several times, but the story remained essentially the same. It’s no use going into all the details, because anyone who wasn’t a prisoner in this last war or the one before it will probably be a prisoner in the next. If he has not had the experience himself, then a father has had it before him or a son will have it after, or else he has heard about it from a brother or a friend.

For present purposes, the only thing of interest is that, even in prison, I remained a stubborn native of the province of Emilia, of the lower reaches of the Po valley; I gritted my teeth and said to myself: “I won’t die, even if they kill me!” And I didn’t die, either, probably only because they didn’t kill me, but at any rate I didn't die. I stayed alive in spirit as well as in body, and kept right on working. I wrote not only notes for my diary, but also a number of things for everyday camp use.

Indeed, I spent a good part of my time going from hut to hut and reading aloud the sort of thing of which the present book will furnish examples. Pieces which were intended at the time only for camp consumption and not at all for publication in the world outside the Lager. And yet, now that years have gone by, these pieces are the only ones that seem to me to have some validity. Having locked up my diary, I searched among the greasy, thumb-marked sheets of my camp writings and made up this “secret” collection.

As I have said before, it is a diary so secret as not to be a diary at all. Yet, in many ways, it seems to me to give a better picture of those days, and their thoughts and sorrows than my huge original compendium. Nothing else, I repeat, is valid or deserving of publication. This material is what you might call “authorized”.’

And here are a few extracts from the diary itself.

31 October 1943
‘Many of the captured Russian coats which the Germans have distributed to us have a patch on the chest or back, a little, round patch covering the hole where a bullet went in and a soul went out. My coat has such a patch, just over the heart. It is made of stout cloth and carefully sewn, yet a breath of cold air penetrates the patch, even when there is no wind and a warm sun. And my heart aches, when it is pierced by this icy needle.’

10 December 1943
‘Some men spend the day covering sheets of paper with plans and sketches. They rebuild the house, shift the furniture and debate the wisdom of carving a fireplace out of the living room. This is homesickness, pure and simple; it expresses a man’s need to cast out a safety line linking him to the vital center of his life.

Some men throw themselves into lectures, and into historical, political, philosophical, artistic and literary discussions; they argue about Proust, Croce, Marx, Cézanne and Leopardi. This is the instinct of self-preservation; it reflects the necessity of injecting oxygen into the Lager’s dank, stuffy air.

There are men that wander from hut to hut, from bunk to bunk, asking for opinions on the war, how long it will last and what will come after. This may reveal a certain weakness of character, but it is due in large part to boredom and inanition. Other men do nothing but think and talk about food. And this is sheer madness. Of course we are hungry. Hunger hovers over us at every hour of the day and peoples our dreams at night. We accept it in a spirit of resignation, as an inevitable and incurable ill.

But such men are on the way to going mad. Food is the only subject of their conversation. They plan breakfasts, lunches, dinners, snacks and midnight suppers. They describe and invent sandwiches, draw up menus for sensational banquets to be held after their return home. They collect the names of good restaurants and local delicacies and compile gastronomic guidebooks, or else they write down and annotate recipes for the most complicated dishes.

The futile chatter about things to eat and the futile thought concentrated on eating only spur the appetite. In these men’s heated imaginations are bottomless pits, with stomachs the dimensions of their desires. This form of madness is fraught with anxiety. Its practitioners acquire protruding bones; their faces are yellow from the fear of being hungry rather than from actual hunger.’

3 February 1944
‘They fill a pot with water, measure out the meat and the powdered extracts, close the airtight lid, light the gas and then, when a certain valve emits a whistling sound, the soup is ready.

Their way of making war is very much the same. Into the pot they cast human flesh, explosive powders, and extracts from manuals of military science, then they put on the lid of uncompromising discipline and wait for a whistle to tell them that it’s all over.

Only the whistle doesn’t blow, and the pot explodes into a thousand pieces.’

14 May 1944
‘Today is my son’s fourth birthday. In him I relived my childhood, and now this is taken away. I count his days rather than my own, and even if I am a prisoner I wish that time could have a stop.’

28 June 1944
‘It is pouring rain; the camp is a sea of mud, and the dripping huts look like old boats rotting in some forgotten harbor. The shirts and shorts hung up to dry on a wire in front of the hut hang limp, like a charwoman’s rags.

In these parts hanging up the laundry is a futile act of faith. The weather is just as unstable as the temper of the rags called men, who are supposed to be drying out after immersion in the purifying bath of sorrow. After a brief moment of calm, they have sunk into a mood of complaint and gloom, of doubt, fear and resentment. It is just as futile an act of faith to believe in their spiritual resurrection.

The rain has ceased, and men are streaming outdoors. The camp is studded with puddles, and in them is mirrored the hopeless failure of the Italian middle class, clad in rags and pettiness.’

The Diary Junction

Painting with brother

‘This morning I painted the Parsee Widow’s jacket and Sari, while brother retouched the Nizzam’s head for Mr Schleicher.’ This is from the diary of the artist Raja Varma, recently published to provide a portrait of the diarist’s older brother, Ravi Varma, one of the most famous painters working in India in the late 19th century and early 20th century. Although Raja Varma’s diary provides few specific details about his brother (who is only ever referred to as ‘brother’ in the diary), their working lives were so intertwined that almost all of Raja Varma’s diary entries use the plural pronoun ‘we’ and refer to Ravi as well as himself. According to one expert, Ravi Varma (born 170 years ago today) was the most important academic artist produced by colonial India, and without the wealth of detail found in his brother’s diary both artists would have remained ‘shadowy figures’.

Raja Ravi Varma was born on 29 April 1848 in the village of Killimannur, Travancore (now the state of Kerala), in the very south of the Indian subcontinent. At the time, Travancore was one of many Princely States in India, and Ravi Varma’s family had long held connections to the Travancore royal family. His father was a scholar and his mother an artist and poet. He was the oldest of four children, but was particularly close to his brother Raja Raja Varma 12 years his junior. Ravi Varma was married to 12-year-old Bhageerthi Bayi, of royal birth in 1866, and they had five children. Subsequently, thanks to a complex system of succession, two of their grandchildren were adopted into the royal family of Travancore; and one of their great grandchildren was Chithira Thirunal, the last ruling Maharaja of Travancore.

From early on, Ravi Varma showed a keen interest in painting. This was nurtured by an uncle, an artist of the Tanjore style, who helped him meet artists in the court of the Maharajah of Travancore. He received instruction in water colours, but was also much influenced by the European oil painter Theodore Jensen who was in residence at the Maharajah’s palace for a while. Edgar Thurston, the British superintendent at the Madras Government Museum, played a significant role in promoting Ravi Varma’s career. His fame started to grow after winning an award for an exhibition of his paintings in Vienna in 1873. In 1881, the newly crowned Maharaja of Baroda (a princely state in present-day Gujarat) invited Ravi Varma to paint his ceremonial portrait. He was so impressed that many more commissions - mythological paintings and portraits - followed, and soon Ravi Varma’s paintings, a fusion of Indian traditions with European techniques, were much in demand all over the country.

In 1895, Ravi Varma set up a studio, in Bombay, fashioned on the practice of European artists, with his brother a constant companion and collaborator. Together they also set up a lithographic printing press, called the Raja Ravi Varma Press. It became the largest in the country, printing many thousands of oleographs of Hindu gods and goddesses, and thus helping popularise their art. However, when the business ran into too much debt they sold it to their printing technician, Fritz Schleicher (originally from Germany), who then ran it successfully for many years. In 1904, Ravi Varma was awarded (on behalf of King Edward VII) the Kaisar-i-Hind Gold Medal. Early the following year, his brother Raja Varma died, and then, in 1906, Ravi Varma died. Although considered the foremost Indian artist of the time, he came in for severe criticism from later artists for imitating Western styles, and thus producing art which was only superficially Indian. Further biographical information be found online at Wikipedia, Encyclopaedia Britannica, Cultural India, Gulf News, Spectrum or Ravi Varma Oleographs.

Apart from a lifelong role working in support of his brother’s projects (co-worker, assistant, secretary, business manager), Raja Varma was an important early landscape artist in his own right. But his own significance, in a historical context, is brought into clearer focus because of a diary he kept, chronicling his own life and that of his brother’s. The diary has recently (in 2005) been published in a lavish edition by Oxford University Press (New Delhi) as Raja Ravi Varma - Portrait of an Artist: The Diary of C. Raja Raja Varma. Edited by Erwin Neumayer and Christine Schelberger, it includes a foreword by Partha Mitter, Emeritus Professor of Art History at the University of Sussex, a long introduction as well as 50 pages of plates. According to Mitter: ‘The importance of the diary lies in the fact that it allows us to understand the life and working methods of Indian academic artists in the colonial period, and especially the achievements of Ravi Varma, the most important academic artist produced by colonial India. Without the wealth of detail that we encounter in the diary, the artists would have remained shadowy figures.’

Mitter’s foreword is particularly enlightening on the trend, during the British Raj, for Indian artists to maintain diaries. To understand this, he says, it is necessary to consider ‘the transformation wrought by the introduction of colonial institutions such as art schools and art societies’ whereby ‘artistic outlook and practice, genres or art, as well as status of artists underwent profound changes’. Previously Indian artists had low status (other than a few honoured by earlier Mughal emperors). ‘The new Western-literate, self-conscious graduates of impersonal art schools now looked to the public for appreciation. [. . .] They sought inspiration in European romanticism and, above all, in the image of the artist as a lonely outsider relentlessly pursuing a transcendental idea against all the odds.’

According to the editors’ preface, Raja Varma began the diary as a collection of preparatory notes for a travelogue, fashioned on the accounts of European gentlemen travellers on the tiger-shooting and elephant-hunting circuit in India. They continue: ‘It was meant to have been published after the upper India tour undertaken by Prince Martanda Varma, along with Ravi Varma and Raja Varma, and a retinue of fifteen other persons during the cool season of 1894-5. Although the book was never published, the completed manuscript [. . .] was privately circulated one year later. From the following year, no diary entries seem to have been made. The diary appears to have been continued only in May 1898 and entries were made regularly until August the same year. Thereafter, Raja Varma kept up the habit of making daily notes when on a journey. It was only during the years 1902 and 1903 that daily notes were written even in his native place.’

In their introduction, the editors analyse the diary, showing how it sheds light on some aspects of the brothers’ lives, but also how it fails to provide any information on others:
- ‘[The] diary chronicles the long periods away from their native Travancore, attending to their flourishing portraiture business or looking after the affairs of the printing press.’
- ‘The diary enlightens us about many of the rather down-to-earth problems of the painters’ professional life.’
- ‘The diary is a multilayered document on the development of the aesthetics of mass communication in India. It deals with art, but under the surface, the blunt reality and contradictions of the colonial period around 1900, when British Imperialism was at its peak, show clearly.’
- ‘The diary, although giving important hints as to the cause of the financial fiasco of the press, hardly gives a glimpse of the technical processes involved in the production of the prints.’
- ‘The artistic areas on which the diary remains silent are probably the very areas where the confessed artistic ethos clashed with the artistic practice of the Varma brothers.’

Here are several extracts taken from the published version of Raja Varma’s diary (square brackets are as found in the original).

6 March 1902
‘We paid a visit to the Nawab [+++] the premier noble of the state. He sent a carriage and [+++] two of his sowars for us. His palace is a very big and extensive pile of buildings. He is confined with rheumatic complaint. Ms Pestonji, his wife, daughter and son-in-law came this evening to see our pictures.’

13 March 1902
‘Our opinion of Ms Faridinji, the Dewan’s private secretary is that he is a glib talker, but insincere in the extreme. He is ever intent on pleasing Europeans and do[es] not seem to care much for natives.’

14 March 1902
‘We paid a return visit to Ms Ulit who has got fine old copy of Rembrandt. It cannot be the original as I remember having seen printed copies of the same. It is a very beautiful work. Ulit is a man of taste.’

17 March 1902
‘Since coming here we have got other students too. One is Shankar Rao son of Captain Madhava Rao of the Nizam’s Artillery, and the other is Mr Calastry’s son. As we teach gratis there are boys always coming to us for tuition.’

20 March 1902
‘We paid a visit to the Meeralum Tank about 5 or 6 miles from here [ChaddrighautJ. I made a sketch of the lake and hills surrounding it with the sun setting. The drive was hot and dusty.’

21 March I902
‘We are glad to hear that our eldest cousin’s state of health is not now so serious as it was some time before. He is now undergoing treatment at Kilimanur at the hand of Chiruttaman Moos the younger. He wants us to return home soon, but we are in a dilemma.’

2 April 1902
‘Last night the Nizam entertained Lord Curzon at dinner at the Chow Mahal Palace. We had also gone there. The streets from the Residency to the palace were splendidly illuminated. The palace itself presented a scene of unrivalled splendour. When the dinner was over there was a fine display of fire-works, after which the party dispersed, big drops of rain from a passing cloud having commenced to fell to the inconvenience of those present.’

15 September 1903
‘Received a cheque for Rs 300 from Sir Arthur Mundrial Fund being the balance due for a portrait of the Ex-Governor. In the afternoon visited the old pictures in the different parts of the palace. None of the old pictures could[?] be made out. Of course the best pictures are those by the European painters. We were [sic] are pleased to hear that the Ooman Palli Kara [Omanpallikara] appeal was dismissed by the Dewan. The other party intends instituting a civil suit against us.’

18 September 1903
‘We visited Mr Nagamiah settlement, Dewan Peshkar, who, it is rumoured is in the running for the next Dewan Peshkarship. We have just finished his old mother’s portrait and he expressed himself highly pleased with it. I gave him the short account I have written of our family for his state manual. He thought that it was rather too short. He wants us to give him as much information as we can relating to the Maharajas court and manner of today.’

23 September 1903
‘We went this morning to the temple of Lalu Kavu to worship the Goddess, since this is the second day of the Navrathrie-Dusserah. On my return home I remitted two money orders one for Rs 6 to the manager of the Malayale Manorama and the other for Rs 4 to the Manorama at Calicut, the former being the last year’s subscription to it and the latter this year’s subscription.’

28 October 1903
‘In the morning called on Sir Balachandra to get medicine for Brother and to consult him with regard to the complaint. Our cook Chathu is suffering from [+++]. In the afternoon I wrote a letter to Messrs Arbuthnot & Co. enclosing a draft of Hundi for Rs 4000 to be credited to my account and invested on fixed deposit for one year at 5 percent interest payable half yearly in the same way as the Rs 6000 invested with them on the 20th instant. The draft was obtained from the Chartered Bank of India, Australia and China. I next visited Messrs Marks & Co., Hussainally Abdulally, Kump and Co. etc. Returning home at about 5.30. Bapuji and Pannuswami Pillai came.’

29 October 1903
‘Last night we witnessed the performance of Sinjit Saubhadra of Kirloskar Dramatic Company at one of the Grant Road Theaters. This is the best Mahratta dramatic troupe. A carriage has been engaged from today at a rate of Rs 3 per day for our use. Its owner is a Parse[e] who had given his carriage on former occasions too. We drove to the Fort, gave Brother’s watch to Charpie & Co. for repairs, ordered Laidlaw & Whiteaway for two long coats for summer weather.’

30 October 1903
‘In the morning we paid a visit to Mr Jagmohan Das Vandravandas Bhaiset our friend who had been suffering lately from [a] paralytic attack. He has fortunately escaped from the first attack and is now alright. In the evening Mr Bapuji and we two went to Mr Soundy and purchased tickets for the London Comedy Company’s play of ‘H.E. The Governor’. Next we attended a discourse on Mahabharat by a clever Banares Pandit as he spoke in Hindusthani we could well understand him.’

1 November 1903
‘This evening we removed to a bungalow on the Gamdevi Road near the fire engine, as Kalbadevi Road was too noisy and crowded to be agreeable for residence. The new residence requires a lot of cleaning.’

4 November 1903
‘Last night we witnessed the Comedy of ‘H.E. the Governor’ at the Novelty.
I did not like it much nor did Brother or Bapuji. There was not much for the display of an actor’s skill. The whole thing was a domestic incident and nothing else. This morning I painted the Parsee Widow’s jacket and Sari, while brother retouched the Nizzam’s head for Mr Schleicher. In the evening we returned the visit of our Hyderabad friend Mr Permanand Das. He lives in the palace of Devaki Namdas Maharaja, one of the high priests of the Vaishnavas of the Vallabhachari persuasion. The building is splendid.’

6 November 1903
‘Early this morning we paid a visit to Mr Puroshotram Vishram Moraji in whose house on the Kalbadevi Road we had put up during the first few days of our arrival here. He is a man of taste and is writing a history of Shivaji the great Mahratta Hero. He has visited all the scenes connected with his exploits. He has got some good pictures and picture books. There are few Bhalias with artistic and literary taste.’

8 November 1903
‘This morning we went to Mr Chaturbhuj Khinji’s to photograph him and his wife who are anxious to have their portraits painted by us. On our return we were pleased to see Mr A. Raffin whom we had known 10 years ago as a boy at Grant Road.’

9 November 1903
‘Today we have severed all connection with our press known as ‘The Ravi Varma Fine Art Lithographic Press’ selling it to Mr Fritz Schleicher for a consideration of Rs 25,000 over and above paying all the debts connected with the establishment amounting to Rs 5 or 6 thousand. Out of this amount Rs 12,000 has been invested on fixed deposit in my name with Messrs Arbuthnoth & Co. bearing interest at 5 percent. The proprietorship of the Press was in my name though it was called after Brother.’
 
13 November 1903
‘Not having been well for the last three or four days, I opened my bowels this morning with Rubinat Water. In the afternoon I went to Phadkis Studio to make an enlargement of a negative. This done I returned home and went again with Brother to the market to purchase curtains and other things for our studio. On return home we saw Mr Chaturbhuj Khinji waiting for us. His request is that we should make some reduction in our charges.’

18 November 1903
‘This morning I was engaged in painting the body and sari of Dr Dawar’s wife while Brother painted his mothers head. As I did not feel well we drove in the afternoon to Dr Mathai’s dispensary at the Chakle[?] and he was pleased to give me a mixture. My complaint is unequal temperature of the body going up to 99 1/2 towards evening and a trouble headache. We gave Mr Naoroji a loan of Rs 30 when we met him at the Band Stand from where we went to the Apollo Bunder and hence returned home. Bapuji was with us.’

23 November 1903
‘I had to spend this day also at home not feeling quite disposed to go out, did little in the way of work, as too much concentration of mind produces headache. Chathu is making favourable progress. The wound is fast healing. He has slight fever on [?] for which Dr Mathai is treating him. Brother out as usual for his evening drive.’

25th November 1903
‘I went out with Brother for a drive this evening and got back his watch which had been given to Messrs Charpia & Co. for repairs which cost Rs 25. My health is much improved now. I purchased a bottle of Fellow’s Syrup from Madow & Co. for Rs 1-12-0 and commenced taking it this evening. Dr Mathai has recommended [to] me [to] take it regularly for some months as it relieves one of headache, poverty of blood and other complaints.’

27 November 1903
‘This morning Dr Dawar came and had a look at his wife’s portrait and said that he could not recognize her. Though it requires improvements we did not think it was so great a failure. These are the difficulties of portrait painting especially from Photographs. An other Parsee youth came with a profile of his deceased brother and wants a three quarter face made from this profile.’

Diverse corners of my heart

‘It is an other thing that I desire, to know mine owne hart better, where I know that much is to be gotten in understaunding of it, and to be acquainted with the diverse corners of it and what sin I am most in daunger of and what dilig[ence] and meanes I use against any sin and how I goe under any afflic[tion].’ This is from a religious diary kept by Richard Rogers, an English nonconformist clergyman who died 400 years today. The diary was not published until the 1930s, but is now considered an important source of information on the puritan clergy at the time.

Rogers was born in Chelmsford, Essex, in 1551. He was educated at Christ’s College, Cambridge, graduating in 1571, being ordained the same year. He served as curate in Radwinter, Essex, for William Harrison, author of Description of England. In 1577, he was appointed lecturer at Wethersfield, also in Essex. He travelled frequently, and became well connected with other puritan clergy in the area. In 1583, he was suspended, along with other ministers, for petitioning against the so-called Three Articles, introduced by the new Archbishop of Canterbury, John Whitgift, to bring nonconformists into line. After eight months, he was re-instated due to the intervention of the politician Sir Robert Wroth.

During the 1580s, Rogers joined an association of clergy, the presbyterian movement under Thomas Cartwright. He continued to run foul of the ecclesiastical authorities, but was again re-instated thanks to influential friends. For a short while when Richard Vaughan was bishop of London, between 1604 and 1607, Rogers enjoyed more tolerance of his non-conformity, and it was during this period that he published the work for which he is most famous: Seven Treatises Containing such Directions as is Gathered out of the Holie Scriptures. Rogers married twice. His first wife, Mary Duckfield, bore him several children, two of whom became well known ministers (one in New England). After Mary’s death, he married Susan Ward. Rogers died on 21 April 1618. Further information can be found at Wikipedia, Bible Study Tools, or the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (ODNB - log-in required).

Roger kept a religious diary, some pages of which survived to be unearthed in the 20th century, and edited by Marshall Mason Knappen for his book Two Elizabethan Puritan Diaries. This was published in 1933 by The American Society of Church History (Chicago) and Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge (London) - see also Looking after damsens for more on the other diarist, Samuel Ward, in the same book. The Rogers diary, according to Knappen’s preface, consists of forty-one leaves of an anonymous unbound book with numbering that indicates several pages are missing. The diarist left his papers to his sons and to a cousin, and by the end of the 17th century these had fallen into the hands of the Puritan historian Roger Morrice. It was not until the mid 19th century that the antiquarian W. H. Black confirmed the diary’s author as the Cambridge minister Richard Rogers. A review of the book can be read online in The Journal of Religion.

According to Francis J. Bremer’s entry on Rogers in the ODNB, the Rogers diary ‘is an important source, revealing both of puritan piety and of the activities of the puritan clergy at the time.’ But, he adds, ‘the diary shows that Rogers was not comfortable with every aspect of his pastoral ministry, revealing his frustration with the lack of Christian piety of members of his congregation and his impatience with catechizing the young people who studied in the town school located in his home.’

More recently, the Rogers diary was re-published in Seeking a Settled Heart - The 16th Century Diary of Puritan Richard Rogers - some pages of which can be read at Googlebooks. Here are several extracts, though, taken from the 1933 edition.

22 July 1587
‘This month, tor all the gracious intraunce into it, which I made mention of before, a sweet seasoninge of my minde with sensible sorow for mine unnwoorthiness and wants, hath been much lik unto the former, for though I began well, yet I by litle and litle fell from the strenghth which I had gotten and became unprofitable in study, and praier and med[itation] were not continued privatly of me with such ioy as the first week, yet not broken of. But I felt not how the frut of them did sweetly accompany me all the day after. And study was better folowed the first and 2 week then since, but setled at it I cannot feele my self, which is my sorow. And among other thinges I cannot feele use of that which I know, nether have any freshe remembr[ance] of it for that I doe not still increase it. What strugglinges and yet apparent hindraunces I feele about it, it is merveilous. In the other 3 thinges about the which and this I am especially occupied, as I cannot say that there hath passed much against me to accuse me, so I count that to have been becaus I have not had such occasions offred me as might have proved me. And for that the lord hath kept these from me in great measure, let me geve glory to the lorde allwayes.

I thanck god at the setting downe hereof I was well affected, and mine hart since yesterday was greeved to see such a decay of grac as partly now I have set downe. And in deed I am glad that I may see with grief when there is any declineing in my lif, seing it cannot be avoided but such shalbe, but yet that thei are so often, and that so few times of grace may be redde in these papers to have been inioyed of me, it is no meane grief unto me.

I escaped a great peril of the disfiguring of my fac, if no greater, under a tree at the commencment. Where, to see how their ordrelynes in other places creepeth in also, it may iustly greev a Christian hart. We mett at B. also this week and conferred. I visited 2 sick persons this time, not without profit. I have also been well affected at the doctrine of exod[us] 16 for the most part this month, weeping once or twice.’

4 August 1587
‘I cannot yet setle my selfe to my study, but through unfitnes of mind, weaknes of body, and partly discontinueing of diligenc thereat am holden back, and in every kinde of it so behinde hande, more then some yeares agone, that I am much discouraged. I doe not see, but that if it pleased the lorde to graunt me that benefite I were many waves to count mine estat good above many men. For some recovery of strength and freedome this way I doe purpose to intreat the lorde more specially this day, hopeing for blessing not onely in that behalf but also against some corruption which I see break foorth by occasions, although it seme not so before trials come, as to be soone stirred when any thing goeth otherwise with me then I woulde: also wandring and fonde desires, though not strongue, and sometime too longe dwellinges in them, which I know to be condemned by the law. Further, though I doe not much feele my self disquieted about the worlde nor hurtful to any, yet I am not so profitable and painfull through love to procure the good of others as I have been, though I study litle. But most occupied about an entring in to it, and heavy for that I attaine not to it. For in deed when I obteine grace that way and gather strenghth of matter by reading I am the fitter after to be ether in company with others with doinge good or to be solitary by my self with comfort. I pray god send me frut of my request herein.’

30 September 1587
‘Declineinges this first week I have sensibly found in my selfe from that staidnes in a godly life in the which I lately determined a new to continue. But I brak of. Ether now or at other times it were hard for me to sett downe the particulars. Sometime by unfitnes and iornying my study is intermitted, and except in place thereof my minde be well taken up some other way even that is cause suffic[ient] of hindring my purpose of proceedinge. For I am exceedingly cast downe when my studye is hindred. Other partic[ulars] I have noted at other times, as that sleape cutteth me of from some peece of study, or the inordinat love of some thinge in this lif maketh me dull and unapt to goe on as I desire.

In this time it cometh to my minde in what reverent account in many places I have been, whereas by the b[ishop’s] discountenaunceing of us who have refused subscription to the book we are more odious to all that company and to such as thei can perswade then the worst men liveinge, and such as the seeliest minister in giftes may not onely be hard against us, but may insult uppon us, and futher then with such as have taken good by our minist[ry] and who, god be thancked, in more soundnes of iudgment doe mak account of us, further, I say, we have no great cause to glory in our favour or credit which we have in the world. But I trust the lord will hereby acquaint us the more with the contempt of it. For mine owne part I freely confesse that it is the happiest time when I can sett least by it. But the cause whi I made mencion of this chaunge was that I may look for more of them, and count them no straunge thinges even till my lif be taken from me also, as well as credit, count[enance], and all hope of maintenaunce, if it were not by those few which have profited by my minist[ry].

This last week I staied with certaine of our friendes till the ende of it allmost, whereas through takeinge good I lost nothinge of any good thing which I caryed thither with me, save at the ende a litle speach of some unkindness betwixt me and him.’

30 October 1587
‘Among other medit[ations] this was one in this month: that I beholding how graciously the lord hath hedged me in on every side, what sweet knowledg of his will, in comparison of that which I was like to have attained to, he hath geven me, and other bless[ings], good will and a good name with the godlier sort, communion with them and such manifold comfort in my life and with his people, with liberty in my ministery, I looked back to the yeare 1570 and thereabout, how lik it was that all this should have been holden from me and I, before I had ether learning or goodnes, to have been drawen to mar[ry] and to have lived in that doungehil of abhominacion where I was borne, whereas by all liklehood I must have been undone both in body and soule.

Then this one thing much occupied me, that, as I and some other of us here have obtained mercy of the lorde to beleve in him, to be comforted exceedingly by him so that we might grow and that our profiting might appear to all men, that we might see in what partic[ulars] we were chaunged as well concerneing knowledge as pract[ise]. Somewhat in the right use of the world I seemed to my self to have gotten of my selfe, to determine in this great abomi[nation] not to be hunting, gapeing for more with discontent[ment], torment, or such affections as might hinder my course in godlines, wherein, since our last fast, I thancke god I may say with some comfort that I have been better in watchfullnes about my hart and lif more continual and stayed, more constant also in keepeing that my covenaunt of wary walkinge with the lord. And surely god hath been veary merciful to me in this time to awak me againe when I have been declineinge or growing weak or wearisome in well doeinge to offer me occasions many wayes of continuaunce by good company, as Cul[verwel]. So that I must needes with admiracion say, Oh lord how wonderfull are thy mercies.

Then also exceedinge free we have been from the biteinges of evil men, etc. Although this I must say with much grief that there breaketh out of me much corruption, though nether so often nor so strongue, yet by occasions, espec[ially] when I am not watchfull, before I perceive, some harde speaches, for I count them so which are not milde, some riseing of hart against m., and glaunceing at myne old sin, but in none of these abideinge. So that I thanck god for his goodnes which I have felt this month.

My studie as time hath suffred hath not been unpleasaunt to me nor much neglected, save that I have been much abroad in good company and visitinge the sick. Once in this while, to see mine untowarde hart to my study, it appeared so grose to me that I twitted myself thus: I who now in a maner doe want nothinge and yet am oft untoward to my book which is my calling would thinck that liberty and estat happy which I inioy if the lord should bringe me low as it might please him to do many wayes, in povertie, in continual trouble, abroad in all weather, whereas it would be dainty to have liberty to study, and, except I labour to maintaine a delight in me that way, I look for no other but that the lord shall cast uppon me some grose blindnes to imbrac the worlde or plundg me into many grevous calamities or notorious offences, as I may see with mine eies many to have been throwen downe because thei kept not in their place with humility. This I desire to feare so as I many never fall into it.

It is an other thing that I desire, to know mine owne hart better, where I know that much is to be gotten in understaunding of it, and to be acquainted with the diverse corners of it and what sin I am most in daunger of and what dilig[ence] and meanes I use against any sin and how I goe under any afflic[tion]. To conclude, I hope it shal somewhat further my desire and purpose to please god which I taught yesterday, Exod[us] 18:21, that it is the worck and occupation of a Christian to learne to understande the lawes of god and to walk in his wayes, and thus that should be the chiefest thinge which should be looked after and from thing to thinge practized.’

The Diary Junction

They are real diaries

‘Sometimes lacking in charity; often trivial; occasionally lewd; cloyingly sentimental, repetitious, whingeing and imperfectly formed. For some readers the entries may seem to be all of these things. But they are real diaries.’ This is from an introduction by the maverick politician and historian Alan Clark to his own diaries. Born 90 years ago today, he became well known for his love of cars and women, for his right-wing politics, for his friendship with Margaret Thatcher, and for the outrageous part he played in the Matrix-Churchill affair. But, it’s for his diaries that he’s best remembered. They certainly are real diaries, colourful, entertaining, spicy, unguarded, and full of extraordinary arrogance - providing an unrivalled insight into the man himself.

Clark was born in London on 13 April 1928, the eldest son of the art historian Kenneth Clark (from whom he would later inherit Saltwood Castle in Kent). After a series of preparatory schools, he was educated at Eton and Christ Church, Oxford, where he studied history, partly under Hugh Trevor-Roper, but only just passed his degree, with a third-class honours. He was called to the bar in 1955, but did not practice law. He preferred to research military history with a view to publishing books, while living the life of a rich young man, particularly interested in cars. For a couple of years he belonged to the Royal Auxiliary Air Force. In 1958 he married Jane Beuttler, aged 16 at the time. They had two sons; and despite his chronic womanising she remained with him throughout his life.

Although Clark published two novels, it was his first book on history - The Donkeys - that brought him public success. Other histories followed, though in time his ultra right-wing politics showed in his writing, through, for example, his appreciation of Nazi Germany’s efficiency. After failing to win several nominations as a Conservative candidate, he succeeded in 1972, and became the Conservative MP for Plymouth Sutton in 1974. He was considered something of a maverick in Parliament, openly plotting against the prime minister, Edward Heath, yet an amusing and witty dining companion. To the surprise of others in the Conservative Party, he was given a junior ministerial position by Margaret Thatcher (who seemed to take an indulgent view of his many indiscretions - see also Thatcher gives a cuddle). He went on to serve in various other posts during her governments, ultimately rising to minister of state in the Ministry of Defence. He was heavily implicated in a political/legal controversy concerning the fraudulent sales of arms to Iraq by the engineering firm, Matrix-Churchill.

Following Thatcher’s fall, Clark left politics in 1992. A year later, he published the first volume of his now-famous and infamously indiscrete diaries. In 1997, encouraged by the success of his diaries, he returned to parliament as MP for Kensington and Chelsea, but was soon ill, dying from a brain tumour in 1999. Further information can be found at Wikipedia, and various obituaries online: The Guardian, The Independent, but see also Dominic Lawson’s character assassination in The Independent (‘He was sleazy, vindictive, greedy, callous and cruel’). Some pages of Ion Trewin’s official biography - Alan Clark - can be read online at Amazon or Googlebooks.

From his mid-30s and throughout his life, Clark kept a regular and private diary. A first collection of extracts were published simply as Diaries by Weidenfeld & Nicolson in 1993. Many reprints followed until the edition was reissued in 2001 as Diaries: In Power 1983-1992. This first volume has been recognised as providing the most detailed and colourful account of the downfall of Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher. But, equally, according to the publisher, it is famed for Clark’s ‘witty and acerbic pen’ and for being ‘the most outspoken and revealing account of British political life ever written’. Two further volumes were published posthumously, also by Weidenfeld & Nicolson - Diaries: Into Politics (2000), and The Last Diaries: In and Out of the Wilderness (2002). Although Clark himself had begun work on the former, his wife Jane took the decision to publish the latter, as edited by Trewin, and it also contains several pages of Jane’s diary from the last week’s of Clark’s life. All three volumes, in more recent editions, can be previewed at Googlebooks (1972-1982, 1983-1992, 1993-1999)

Clark’s own preface to the first volume of diaries is worth quoting:

‘Diaries are so intensely personal - to publish them is a baring, if not a flaunting, of the ego. And for the author also to write a preface could be thought excessive.

Let me explain. These are not ‘Memoirs’. They are not written to throw light on events in the past, or retrospectively to justify the actions of the author. They are exactly as they were recorded on the day; sometimes even the hour, or the minute, of a particular episode or sensation.

I wrote, in longhand, in a variety of locations; principally at Saltwood, or in my room at the House of Commons, or at my desk in the Department(s). Also in trains, embassies, hotels abroad, at the Cabinet table in Number 10 and at international conferences. When I had completed an entry I closed the notebook and seldom turned to that page again.

During the whole of this period, nearly eight years, I was a Minister in three successive Tory administrations. Politics - Party, Governmental and Constituency - dominated my life and energies. But on re-reading the entries I am struck by how small a proportion - less than half - is actually devoted to the various themes that dominated political life over the period. [. . .]

Expurgation, from considerations of taste or cruelty, I have tried to keep to a minimum. My friends know me, and know that I love them, and that my private explosions of irritation or bad temper are of no import. And as for taste, it, too, is subjective. There are passages that will offend some, just as there are excerpts that I myself found embarrassing to read when I returned to them. Much of course has been excised. But of what remains nothing has been altered since the day it was written. Is this conceit - or laziness? A bit of both, I suppose. But I found that when I attempted to alter, or moderate, or explain, the structure and rhythm of the whole entry would be disturbed.

There remain certain passages that vex me considerably. Mainly they refer to friends and colleagues with whom I have worked - or who have worked for me with loyalty and dedication: for example, Dave, my competent driver for many years; Rose, my sweet diary secretary at DTI who coped with ‘harassment’ with dignity and decorum; Bruce Anderson, one of my closest confidants; Tom King, Secretary of State above me in two departments, whom I still regard with affection in spite of the way in which we treated each other in the heat of our political careers. And there are many others to whom references coloured by the irritation of the moment are ill-suited.

There are also passages that, to some readers, will be unintelligible. Family joke-words, Eton slang, arcane references to events in the past, crude expletives, all these are present but I have done my best to illuminate the unfamiliar in a glossary that covers events, locations, individuals and so forth.

Sometimes lacking in charity; often trivial; occasionally lewd; cloyingly sentimental, repetitious, whingeing and imperfectly formed. For some readers the entries may seem to be all of these things.

But they are real diaries.’

Here are several extracts from Diaries and The Last Diaries.

23 December 1983
‘Evening of the first day of the Christmas hols.

I don’t seem to have done anything except get rid of a lot of cash filling all the cars with petrol. And cash is so scarce over Christmas. Again and again one goes down to the bank to draw, always the last cheque until the New Year.

At tea time I wanted pliers. I could not find pliers. Nowhere in this whole fucking place, with its seventeen outhouses, garages, sheds, eighteen vehicles. After stealing tool kits from every car I’ve sold on over the last twenty-five years - could I find pliers?

I was screaming frail. I ransacked the china room, where I kept my most precious things. My new red vintage tool locker was empty, except for a lot of useless stuff for an Austin Heavy Twenty. Why? I am surrounded by unreliables.

I’ve done practically no shopping. How could I? When? Yet tomorrow is Christmas Eve.

As for the Dept, I never want to go through its doors again. Total shit-heap, bored blue. Strained and befuddled by all the paper work. Fuck them.

Fortunately, I’m dining with Ian on Wednesday next. I hope he gives me a boost.’

10 April 1984
‘I was in vile mood this morning, even on arrival. I had done a lot of washing-up, drying, wiping, etc., at Albany, and I always find this enervating. I do it so badly and so slowly. For someone as great and gifted as me it is the most uneconomic possible use of time.

Then, triumphantly ‘marked up’, a page of Mediascan was pushed under my nose. Impending sackings (!!). Named were Arthur Cockfield, David Mitchell, Bob Dunn, John Butcher and myself. Flushed and shocked I became.

Either way it’s a bore
(a) that anyone should believe that I am a candidate
(b) it becomes self-feeding (journalists draw from each other)
(c) a plant from Ingham and Downing St

As long ago as 6 February I wrote in my Day Diary, on the space for 23 April (when we come back from the Easter break) ‘Am I free today?’ But now that I am actually faced with the prospect of being dropped as - allegedly - no good, I don’t like it. All the gabblers are of course immune. As always, AS ALWAYS, Heseltine and that podgy life-insurance-risk Kenneth Clarke are approvingly tipped. Apparently (this is what makes me think there is a bit of Ingham in it) the changes will not take place at Easter, but during the Whitsun break. Or (much worse) in September, after a summer of travail and misery.

I am going on Question Time in a couple of days. Might gallop.’

4 November 1990
‘The papers are all very bad. Tory Party falling apart, the death blow, that kind of thing. Something in it, I fear, unless we can get a grip on events. The only person who can restore order in the parliamentary ranks is Tristan. He can do it short-term (like many intelligent people T. can only see things very long or very short) but that’s enough. Get us past November.

After breakfast I telephoned Chequers.
‘The Prime Minister is speechwriting.’
‘Who with?’
‘Charles Powell.’
‘When will she be free?’
‘There might be a minute before lunch.’
‘When’s that?’
‘One o’clock sharp.’
I was being kept at bay. Unusual. The Number 10 switchboard girls are always helpful. With Chequers I’ve had this problem before.
‘Oh well, please pass her my name, in case she wants to take a call then.’

It was a lovely crisp day of late autumn. I had said I’d join Jane in the garden. Now I was going to be stuck indoors waitng for a call. But I had barely got to the doorway to give her a shout when the phone started ringing.
‘Alan . . .’
I tried to cheer her up: ‘There’s an awful lot of wind about’. ‘Hold tight and it’ll all blow away’. ‘Geoffrey was past it by now, anyway.’
I said, with suitable preface, that I would never seek to tell her who she should employ or why; but that if she could find something for ’Tim’ to do . . .
‘Tim who?’ (thinking, I suppose, that I wanted her to bring someone called Tim into the Cabinet. Blast, blast. Too oblique Never works with her.)
‘Renton. You really ought to make Tristan your Chief Whip.’
A very long silence. I almost said ‘hullo’, but didn’t.
‘Oh but he’s enjoying his present job so much . . .’

I don’t think she realises what a jam she’s in. It’s the Bunker syndrome. Everyone round you is clicking their heels. The saluting sentries have highly polished boots and beautifully creased uniforms But out there at the Front it’s all disintegrating. The soldiers are starving in tatters and makeshift bandages. Whole units are mutinous and in flight.’

10 March 1991
[Saltwood] ‘God, is it already 10th March? A quarter of the year gone by, and I have done nothing, not answered a single letter, paid a bill - still less ‘played’ with cars or other hobbies. I must break out of the cycle, but I can only really effectively do so by giving ‘notice’ in the next three weeks. The sheer administrative complication that this entails compounds it. This morning, woken up from a deep muck-sweat slumber by Jane at 2.30 a m. I lay awake for about 1 1/2 hours, thought among other things - I really would just as soon pack it in now, just not go back to London at all. She rightly pointed out I must see through Options, the tank etc - leave my mark. Then again, I suppose, the Cabinet changes at Easter - if there is to be no General Election - but even Secretary of State would almost have to ask - because of how it might have been.

Finances are now in a total mess - Coats at 160+. Vast new outgoings of Mains in prospect, lead roof, moat leaking. I fear it will have to be the Degas because we will save the CGT by doing it through Andrew. Might yet scrape by as stock markets are recovering. But how do I see my future? Get the diary into shape as soon as you can, then really become a recluse, naturalist, pinpoint feats. Loch Shiel to Loch Eriboll. A kind of upmarket Albert (if he was called Albert) Wainwright. With a hint, perhaps, of Poucher (and a touch of class, as Jane said, with Robin Fedden).

But right at the moment, I am in really bad shape - shaking, inability to concentrate. The knowledge of this makes me medically apprehensive.’

26 December 1991
‘I’m very depressed - not from hangover, as had drunk little, though Christmas lunch was always lovely and I consumed (sic) three glasses of Stolichnaya with the caviar, then more Roodeburg than Andrew with the turkey and pudding. (His young lady Sarah, was a success.)

I’m concerned, somewhat profoundly, at the recandescence of my nose place; my sexuality seems to be diminishing again. I’m dust off the dial in terms of political insignificance - Bruce Anderson no longer makes contact, but he wouldn't ‘chuck’ like this if he thought I rated. Also, of course. I’m miserable about dear little ‘x’, away in some French ski resort while I mope around here trying to get old cars to start and splitting firewood. That’s something else that is going to come to a head this year (if it hasn't done so already).

Well it’s no good moping.

I must pull myself together ... I will ‘hold the line’ at the Department - might even get in a couple more jolly trips. Then it’s cutting peat in the Highlands and the fallow period of editing the diaries - and inventorising the contents and dispositions.

I wonder how long I’ve got? I have this nasty feeling that things are going to go so badly this year that I will be ‘on the way out’ next Christmas. My hair is white in certain back lighting. When I’m 65, sadly, I will actually look 65. Shopping for Jane on Christmas Eve I ‘happened on’ a ski shop in Folkestone’s main street, thought to buy her an anorak and also found myself buying a ski suit for myself. It made me feel ten years younger. Oh if only I could really regenerate!’

7 October 1992
[Brighton] ‘On the way over here I parked the car, got out in the moonlight, and walked along the Downs to a 5-bar gate. I spoke to God. I apologised for having avoided Him for so long. The muddle of guilt and lust over ‘x’ had blighted our contact for over a year. Now I had to make penance - first for hurting sweet Jane over ‘x’, and for still harbouring sinful, muddled thoughts there; second for having discarded the special advantages He had given me, to get me into Plymouth Sutton so late and so old, without consulting Him or taking his permission. Now the moment had come, at last, when I could do something. But how could He give me another chance? If He did, of course, our relationship would be impregnable. But could He? Everything is possible of course. But nothing works out so easily.’

30 November 1993
[Saltwood] ‘I went over after tea to shut the drive gates of Garden House, and on the way back I looked at the dark outline of the Mains, the Santé wall. My open prison. I am not ready to stand back yet. But I am nervous of using up time - even when, e.g., ‘polishing’ the Buick - because I dread that suddenly, I may ‘go’.’

18 December 1997
‘Sitting in Albany kitchcn -  still in dressing-gown al 11.05; and the delightful, and unusual pleasure of the two clocks striking simultaneously ‘across’ each other. Very Edwardian, or early twenties. I am hugely calmer and more contented - although of course anxiety in new form will always flow into the vacuum created by the extinction of a real one, and I am apprehensive. The trial has not gone badly and the judge seemed sympathetic, although Prescott was odious at every stage. If I lose, of course, I will be open season. But my real consolation, fresh boost, is Spalton. Stuttery, amiable and bespectacled (naturally)  oculist. He tested me, I told him all my symptoms [here AC draws on the page the edge of a spot]. He was unphased. Said the optic nerve ok etc. And I really haven’t had a headache of any kind since ...! Defocusing, and periodic lights and ‘flooders’ of no consequence. This is such a relief; I clap my hands in prayer of thanks a lot of the time and when I wake up at night.

Just in time. As I need to think long and hard about the next three months. The real damage and threat to Parliament. The cogent conspiracy between Blair and Hague. We are actually going along with what Blair is doing.’

The Diary Junction