Laws of the world organism

‘Shouldn’t the student of modern subjects learn from geology, physics, chemistry, etc., the laws of the world organism? The perceived unity of the world is the most magnificent event in the study of nature, it is the content of all true philosophy; for even the mind and its development, which philosophy in its narrow sense has considered up until now, is itself a production of nature.’ This is from the diary of Karl August Möbius, an influential German zoologist born two centuries ago today. There are no published diaries kept by Möbius, but an American academic, Lynn K. Nyhart, quotes from the diaries in her celebrated book on the history of natural science in Germany. 

Möbius was born on 7 February 1825 in Eilenburg, Prussia, the only child of Johann Heinrich Möbius, a dancing teacher who died when Karl was just three, and his mother who was a descendant of Martin Luther. He was educated at home until the age of 12-13 when he was sent away to a private training college to prepare for a career in primary school teaching. From 1844 to 1849 he taught at Seesen in the Harz Mountains in Northern Germany. He went to the University of Berlin to study natural sciences under Johannes Muller, then took up teaching again at the Johanneum Grammar School in Hamburg. His continuing studies in the natural sciences gained him a reputation that led to a post at the Hamburg Museum of Natural History. In 1855, Möbius married Helene Meyer, and they had three children. 

In 1863, Möbius cofounded the first German sea water aquarium, in Hamburg. In 1868, shortly after passing his doctoral examination at the University of Halle, he was appointed Professor of Zoology at the University of Kiel. There he devised and opened a zoology institute which would for decades be considered a model for such establishments. Between 1868 and 1870, he was commissioned by the Ministry of Agricultural Affairs in Prussia to conduct research on the Bay of Kiel oyster beds. This led to his groundbreaking work Die Auster und die Austernwirtschaft (The Oyster and Oyster Farming) in 1877. In this, he introduced the concept of ‘biocenosis’ or ‘living community,’ describing the interdependence of species in an ecosystem.

In the mid-1870s, Möbius participated in scientific expeditions, including a journey to Mauritius and the Seychelles in 1874-1875, which resulted in a comprehensive review of the fauna in that area. In 1888, he became the director of the zoological collections of the Natural History Museum of Berlin, and Professor of Systematic and Geographical Zoology at the Kaiser Wilhelm University, also in Berlin, where he taught until he retired in 1905 at the age of 80. He died three years later. More information can be found at Wikipedia, Encyclopaedia Britannica, and Kiel University

Although there is no evidence of any published diaries, Möbius did keep a diary from 1844 to 1849 while living in the Harz mountains. This is described and quoted from in Modern Nature: The Rise of the Biological Perspective in Germany by Lynn K. Nyhart (University of Chicago Press, 2009). Some pages can be previewed at Internet Archive.

In the book, Nyhart examines various responses that coalesced into the so-called ‘biological perspective’, including: the transformation of natural history practices; changes in museum displays; developments in classroom education; and the emergence of the modern zoo. In particular, she highlights the contributions of key figures such as Karl Möbius, who articulated the concept of the ‘living community’. The work is praised for being wide-ranging, closely argued, and very readable for it goes beyond just tracing the history of a scientific concept, offering insights into the broader cultural and institutional contexts of late 19th-century Germany

Here is one extract about Möbius and his diary.

‘During his time there, from 1844 to 1849, [Möbius] kept a diary that both recorded his love of nature and afforded him a chance to practice his writing - a form of conscious self-improvement and self-cultivation - as he strove tirelessly to prove himself. In the diary’s pages he alternated rhapsodies over his hikes in the mountains with admonishments to himself to be a better man. As he voraciously read history and nature writing, and studied English and the classical languages in his spare hours, he sought to live up to a standard of virtue that would overcome his resentment of his poverty. “Cannot the privation wrought by poverty and the disdain brought on by underestimation and misjudgment lead the spirit [den Geist] to depend on itself and to drive it to be enough for itself?” he agonized in September 1847. “Thoughts, feelings of inspiration, and pure will: these are the opinions that will break through the final barriers to draw us into the inspiring center of the All, into the deity.”

His communion with nature, which offered him considerable spiritual sustenance, was deepened by reading Humboldt. “Great Humboldt!” he gushed a few months later. “With the purest, most warmhearted enthusiasm you [Du] have penetrated into the unity [Zusammenhang] of the world, and in your Kosmos you have given to your race [deinem Geschlechte] the treasure of your spirit, your great knowledge, in clear, poetic language drenched with the warmth of your heart.” The human race “gazes in amazement at your work and wants to thank you on its knees.” 

Reading Shakespeare and Goethe inspired him to similar heights; their works allowed him to imagine himself “on the throne of the world,” with a view of God’s laws of eternal human nature. From this vantage point, he forgot his individual existence and felt part of a larger, God-given order. One route to this sublimation was science: “Science [die Wissenschaft] is the most beautiful bride. He whom she has once kissed is caught in her magic.” 

These youthful yearnings for connection and unity would persist in his private writing as preoccupations with community and self-abnegation and may be viewed as the first, ill-formed inklings of what would emerge in scientific form years later as his living-community concept.’

Here is a second extract.

‘By 1848 he was reading a pedagogical text called Education toward a Public Spirit (Erziehung zum Gemeingeist), whose author argued that philosophy was to play a very minor role in his proposed reformed “Naturgymnasium.” “Here I must object,” Möbius wrote in his diary “Shouldn’t the student of modern subjects [Realschiiler] learn from geology, physics, chemistry, etc., the laws of the world organism? The perceived unity of the world is the most magnificent event in the study of nature, it is the content of all true philosophy; for even the mind and its development, which philosophy in its narrow sense has considered up until now, is itself a production of nature.” ’

And here is a direct quotation by Nyhart from another diary kept by Möbius apparently between 1861 and 1863.

27 February 1863

‘When the son of a craftsman in a small town has come so far through his own work that he is counted among the more capable teachers and research scholars in a large city, he should act content if he is not granted a wished-for highest scientific position. He may keep working on with the accustomed effort, on the side of his practical profession, so that he never forgets his heritage. It is easy for us to consider ourselves more independent of the whole than we are. But our being follows on all sides from our birth, childhood, and course of development. We only want to be taken by others as we are in the present, and yet they always see, as well, how we got here.’

My guiding darkness

‘Perversion interests me most and is really my guiding darkness . . . I love to write of cruel deeds.’ This is Patricia Highsmith, who died 30 years ago today, confiding in a youthful diary about a preoccupation that would come to dominate her writing, and, indeed, inspire her to produce some of the most popular psychological crime stories of the 20th century. She did keep diaries and notebooks throughout her life, and although these were available to biographers in the past, they were not actually published until 2021.

 
Mary Patricia Plangman was born in Fort Worth, Texas, in 1921, the child of artists who divorced before she was born. Her mother soon married Stanley Highsmith, and the family moved to New York. She studied English composition at Barnard College, and found work at a comic publishers. Turning freelance allowed her to earn more money and to write her own short stories. She lived for a while in Mexico.

Highsmith published her first novel - Strangers on a Train - in 1950, to modest success. The famous film maker, Alfred Hitchcock, adapted the story in 1951, and the movie’s success rubbed off on Highsmith. Her second novel, The Price of Salt, a lesbian romance published under a pseudonym, Claire Morgan, came out in 1952. The Talented Mr. Ripley, probably her most famous novel nowadays, emerged soon after, in 1955. Many other psychological thrillers followed, but it was not until 1970 that she returned to Ripley, eventually completing five novels (the Ripliad) about her compelling anti-hero.

Highsmith never settled down for long with a partner, male or female, though she had many affairs. Her private life was constantly troubled, she moved around a lot, living in various parts of Europe. She drank and smoked to excess, and the older she got the more she preferred the company of cats (and snails, apparently!), while colleagues found her misanthropic and even cruel. For the last 14 years of her life she lived in Switzerland. She died there on 4 February 1995. Her archives are stored at Swiss Literary Archives in Bern - see also Swiss Info.

Further biographical information is available from Wikipedia, or from two biographies, available to preview through Googlebooks: Beautiful Shadow: a Life of Patricia Highsmith by Andrew Wilson (Bloomsbury, 2003) and The Talented Miss Highsmith: The Secret Life and Serious Art of Patricia Highsmith by Joan Schenkar (St Martin’s Press, 2009). See also reviews of the former at The Guardian, The New York Times; a review of the latter by Jeannette Winterson also at The New York Times, and an article by Schenkar at The Paris Review.

One of many extraordinary things about Patricia Highsmith was an obsession with documenting her own life. Having decided not to destroy her diaries, she left behind some 8,000 handwritten pages, in 37 work notebooks or cahiers (1938-1992), and 18 personal diaries (1940-1984). These diaries were mined thoroughly by the biographers, Wilson and Schenkar, but it was not until 2021 that Liveright published Patricia Highsmith: Her Diaries and Notebooks: 1941-1995 as meticulously edited by her longtime editor Anna von Planta. 

The publisher says of the book: ‘In these pages, we see Highsmith reflecting on good and evil, loneliness and intimacy, sexuality and sacrifice, love and murder. We see her tumultuous romantic relationships play out alongside her acquaintances with other writers including Jane Bowles, Aaron Copland, John Gielgud, Truman Capote, Carson McCullers, Arthur Koestler, and W. H. Auden. And in her skewering of McCarthy-era America, her prickly disparagement of contemporary art, her fixation on love and writing, and ever-percolating prejudices, we see the famously secretive Highsmith revealing the roots of her psychological angst and acuity. Written in her inimitable and dazzling prose and offering all the pleasures of Highsmith’s novels, these are one of the most compulsively readable literary diaries to be published in generations - and yield, at last an unparalleled, unfiltered, unforgettable picture of this enigmatic, iconic, trailblazing author's true self.’ Some pages can be previewed at Amazon, and a review can be read here.

Wilson’s biography - which is generally rated more highly than Schenkar’s - refers to Highsmith’s diaries constantly, and always provides the exact source (i.e. whether from a cahier or a private journal, and with the exact date). However, he rarely provides any complete or long quotations from the diaries, choosing instead to incorporate phrases within his own text.

Here is part of Wilson’s introduction: ‘Her work explores the motif of the double or splintered self. The changeable nature of identity fascinated her both philosophically and personally. “I had a strong feeling tonight . . . that I was many faceted like a ball of glass, or like the eye of a fly.” ’ [14 February 1942] [. . .]

Her private notebooks can be seen to represent, if not an authentic self, at least an identity that is somehow more substantial than the one she chose to show to the outside world. In addition to keeping incredibly detailed diaries, she recorded her creative ideas, observations and experiences in what she called her “cahiers” or working journals. [ . . .]

Many writers’ diaries are works of self-mythology, often more fantastical than their own fiction, but after checking Highsmith’s documents with other archival sources and information gleaned from my interviews, it is clear that her private journals were written without artifice. Her voice was tormented, self-critical but, significantly, brutally honest. She kept a diary, she said, because she was interested in analysing the motivation of her behaviour. “I cannot do this without dropping dried peas behind me to help me retrace my course, to point a straight line in the darkness.” [21 September 1949] Throughout her life she toyed with the idea of burning these most personal of journals, and although she was given the opportunity to incinerate any incriminating material before her death, she only chose to destroy a few letters from one of her younger lovers.’

Here are three extracts from Highsmith’s diaries taken from Wilson’s biography.

27 August 1942
‘Perversion interests me most and is really my guiding darkness . . . I love to write of cruel deeds. Murder fascinates me . . . Physical cruelty appeals to me mostly. It is visual & dramatic. Mental cruelty is a torture, even for me, to think of. I have known too much of it myself.’

25 October 1942
‘I believe people should be allowed to go the whole hog with their perversions, abnormalities, unhappinesses, [. . .] Mad people are the only active people, they have built the world.’

18 November 1942
‘The Lesbian, the classic Lesbian, never seeks her equal in life. She is . . . the soi-disant male, who does not expect his match in his mate, who would rather use her as the base-on-the-earth which he can never be.’

And here are several extracts from the published diaries.

23 March 1941

‘I met an insufferable young woman from school on my way to Billie’s. She was going to Temple Emanu-El for a meeting of young gays. What a thing to do on Sunday! My good angel tells me that would be better - but my God! I’ll take the devil! Billie very sweet - kisses, etc. She tells me that she likes me a lot. That she wants me. I feel very attracted to her. But I told her I was in love with Helen at school. Billie was very sad - I didn’t allow her to touch me - anyways, we decided not to see each other for a month. She gave me a little gold chain for my wrist. I won’t wear it - and I - I gave her nothing but one cent.’

19 May 1941

‘Work! Work! I’m not even reading the papers. A ship sank. 190 Americans. Hitler, perhaps. Everyone is talking about Germany’s victory. We’ve just entered the war. + I read Julius Caesar, Measure for Measure - etc. It’s exciting to study like this: all day! Other men’s thoughts.’

1 June 1941

‘A ghostly day - no ordinary people on the streets because everyone’s out of the city. I wonder what Va.’s doing? + I learned a lot - Don’t want to write stories about stupid, useless people. There are so many things crying out to be described. + Graham here 10:00. We talked quietly. The situations and circumstances at the camps are unbelievable/A sentry shot two men obeying his orders! We listened to records. He was wearing my slippers. They look nice on his feet. I’m happy.’

23 July 1941

‘Spent this night with Buffie as I knew I would. Arrived about five - she gave me a gorgeous pair of cufflinks - gold with a brown stone. Rather large. Then we picked up Irving D. & Billy Somebody & went to Spivy’s anniversary party. Then home. I’m not in love. Can’t even say I wish I were. Buffie is so damned “bandbox,” as Constable so aptly put it.’

26 July 1941

‘Caught the bus at 10:50 last evening. Graham along to see me off. Hot tiresome trip. I feel blue. Thinking constantly of Rosalind & not at all of Buffie. I am an ungrateful fickle little bastard. It’s so much fun to ride along, letting one’s mind build things like an Erector Set, and being quite alone as the miles go past, enjoying cigarettes & coffee, and thinking of possible stories, and of Rosalind, and of the busy, active, amusing, and wild life before me - not only next semester, when I shall work like hell, but for all time. I have a great destiny before me - a world of pleasures and accomplishments, beauty and love.’

14 September 1941

‘Things are coming to a crisis, Stanley says. Mother is nervous, again talks of removing me from school. I shall be lost. All the jobs I want require a B.A. She is jealous of my friends. Constantly making comparisons between herself & them and jealous too of my courtesy to Jeva & Marjorie when they come over. And could I possibly be in love with my own mother? Perhaps in some incredible way I am. And it is the recalcitrance in all of us that shows in my ingratitude for my mother’s over-zealous effort to please me, and to do things for me. It is the old story of things being too simple - and of our refusal to throw our love to the easiest and most deserving and most logical object.’

5 December 1941

‘Friday: Gloomy day. Short school. Went to Lola’s at 6:00. Gillespie, [Toni] Hughes, Buffie (whom I scarcely spoke to), Jimmie Stern & many Frenchmen. Also Melcarth. Thence to Barnard. Mary S. (also there) said Helen was the cutest thing she’d seen in years. That my taste was in my mouth. I didn’t know what she meant. Helen has all the warmth - and she wore her gray suit tight because she knows I love it - and we could not keep our eyes or our hands off each other all evening and it was all very beautiful. She loves me - she said so - in the cold air outdoors. And she means it. Why should I lie? I miss her so when I’m away an hour I can’t see straight. The first time I’ve been in love - the terrific physical appeal plus my love of her - God what a perilous combination!’

This article is a revised version of one first published on 204 February 2015.

The champion of reason

‘I want to be known as the greatest champion of reason and the greatest enemy of religion.’ This is Ayn Rand, a Russian-American writer and philosopher, born 120 years ago today. Her few novels were extremely popular in their day, and she developed a philosophical system, Objectivism, which also drew many admirers. She kept notebooks for much of her life, jotting thoughts about her novels and philosophy, and these were edited and published in the 1990s as Journals of Ayn Rand.

Alisa Zinovievna Rosenbaum was born on 2 February 1905 in St Petersburg into a wealthy Jewish family. The October Revolution and Bolshevik rule led to the family’s property being confiscated, and to them fleeing as far as the Crimean Peninsula. After graduating from high school there, Alisa returned, with her family, to Petrograd, where she was one of the first women to enrol in the state university, majoring in history. Subsequently, she studied for a year at the State Technicum for Screen Arts in Leningrad. Around this time, she adopted the surname Rand, and took her first name as Ayn.

In 1926, Rand went to visit relatives in the US, staying a few months in Chicago, before heading for Hollywood. There she did odd jobs, worked as a junior scriptwriter, and met a young actor Fank O’Connor who she married just before her visa ran out. She became an American citizen in 1931; several attempts to bring her family members to the US, though, failed.

In the early 1930s, Rand sold a screenplay to Universal Studios, and had a play produced on Broadway (later turned into a film by Paramount). Her first, partly autobiographical, novel - We the Living - was published in 1936. Although not a success at the time, later, when her other novels sold so well, Rand issued a revised edition which went on to sell over three million copies.

By the 1940s, Rand had become politically active; and she volunteered for the presidential campaign of Republican Wendell Wilkie. She took on speaking appointments, and came into contact with other free market-leaning intellectuals. Her first major success as a writer came with The Fountainhead, published in 1943, a novel of romance and philosophy. Warner Bros hired her to write a screenplay for a film version (which came out in 1949). Subsequently, she was hired by Hal Wallis (who had produced Casablanca for Warner) as a screenwriter and script-doctor for his own, new production company. One of her projects was to write a screenplay about the development of the atomic bomb - although the film never got made. Meanwhile, her political activities led her to become associated with other anti-Communist writers.

In 1951, Rand moved to New York where she established a group of admirers, including Nathan Blumenthal (later Nathaniel Branden) and his wife Barbara, and Barbara’s cousin Leonard Peikoff. By 1954, she and Nathaniel were having an affair with the full knowledge of their spouses. Atlas Shrugged, considered Rand’s most important work, was published in 1957, and became an international bestseller. More than any other of her novels, Atlas Shrugged was rich in her developing ideas on philosophy, a system she called Objectivism.

Thereafter, Rand eschewed fiction in favour of promoting her philosophical ideas, by writing books, giving lectures, and often taking controversial stances on political issues (wholeheartedly rejecting religion, for example, and supporting the right to abortion). In 1958, Branden established the Nathaniel Branden Lectures (later Institute) to promote Rand’s philosophy. This expanded considerably, until it was offering courses in 80 cities; but, in 1968, Rand denounced Branden and publicly broke off with him and the Institute.

After an operation for lung cancer in 1974, Rand’s work activities declined. Her husband died in 1979, and she passed away in 1982, leaving her estate to Peikoff. Further biographical information can be found at the Internet Encyclopaedia of Philosophy, Encyclopaedia Britannica, or Wikipedia. Wikipedia also has an extensive article on Rand’s Objectivism

Soon after Rand’s death, Peikoff released extracts from her notebooks for publication in two magazines The Objectivist Forum and The Intellectual Activist. Then, in 1997, Dutton released Journals of Ayn Rand, edited by David Harriman with Peikoff’s approval. The book has its own Wikipedia entry, which states: ‘Some reviewers considered it an interesting source of information for readers with an interest in Rand, but several scholars criticized Harriman’s editing as being too heavy-handed and insufficiently acknowledged in the published text.’

In a foreword, Peikoff explains: ‘Ayn Rand’s Journals - my name for her notes to herself through the decade - is the bulk of her still unpublished work, arranged chronologically. [. . .] The Journals contain most of AR’s notes for her three main novels - along with some early material, some notes made between The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged, and some notes from her final decades.’

He continues: ‘If the primary value of the Journals to us is the evidence it furnishes of AR’s growth, a second value is the evidence that her growth was a product of thinking - in the art of which the Journals may serve as a textbook. The subtitle of this book really ought to be: How to Answer Your Own Questions.’

In his preface, Harriman says: ‘In a note to herself at the age of twenty-three, AR wrote: “From now on - no thought whatever about yourself, only about your work. You are only a writing engine. Don’t stop, until you really and honestly know that you cannot go on.” Throughout her long career, she remained true to this pledge - she was a “writing engine”. With the publication of her journals, we can now see the “writing behind the writing” and appreciate fully the prodigious effort that went into her published work. AR’s notes, typically handwritten, were spread among numerous boxes of papers she left behind at her death in 1982. My editing of this material has consisted of selection, organization, line editing, and insertion of explanatory comments. Selection. This book presents AR’s working journals - i.e. the notes in which she developed her literary and philosophical ideas. Notes of a personal nature will be included in a forthcoming authorized biography.’

Many if not most of the entries in Journals of Ayn Rand (which can be previewed online at Googlebooks) are not dated, and those that are tend to be more associated with her philosophical musings (as opposed to those about her novels). Here are a few samples (the last concerns her work for Hal Wallis on the atomic bomb screenplay).

9 April 1934
‘The human race has only two unlimited capacities: for suffering and for lying. I want to fight religion as the root of all human lying and the only excuse for suffering.

I believe - and I want to gather all the facts to illustrate this - that the worst curse on mankind is the ability to consider ideals as something quite abstract and detached from one’s everyday life. The ability to live and think quite differently, thus eliminating thinking from your actual life. This applied not to deliberate and conscious hypocrites, but to those more dangerous and hopeless ones who, alone with themselves and to themselves, tolerate a complete break between their convictions and their lives, and still believe that they have convictions. To them, either their ideals or their lives are worthless - and usually both.

I hold religion mainly responsible for this. I want to prove that religion breaks a character before it’s formed, in childhood, by teaching a child lies before he knows what a lie is, by breaking him of the habit of thinking before he has begun to think, by making him a hypocrite before he knows any other possible attitude to life. [. . .]

Why are men so afraid of pure, logical reasoning? Why do they have a profound, ferocious hatred of it? Are instincts and emotions necessarily beyond the control of plain thinking? Or were they trained to be? Why is a complete harmony between mind and emotions impossible? Isn’t it merely a matter of strict mental honesty? And who stands at the very bottom denying such honesty? Isn’t it the church?

I want to be known as the greatest champion of reason and the greatest enemy of religion.’

6 November 1944
‘The art of writing is the art of doing what you think you’re doing. This is not as simple as it sounds. It implies a very difficult undertaking: the necessity to think. And it implies the requirement to think out three separate, very hard problems: What is it you want to say? How are you going to say it? Have you really said it?

It’s a coldly intellectual process. If your emotions do not proceed from your intellect, you will not be able to apply it, even if you know all the rules. The mental ability of a writer determines the literary level of his output. If you grasp only home problems well, you’ll only be a writer of good homey stories. (But what about Tolstoy?)’

25 January 1946
‘Interview with Mrs Oppenheimer: Test was referred to as “Trinity”. Test was on a Monday - the next Saturday Mrs. Oppenheimer gave a party - evening dress. Mood was one of relief. After Hiroshima they did not feel like celebrating. The Oppenheimers were the first family to move to Los Alamos. [The town] had about 30 people then - a big dormitory for scientists in one of the schoolrooms. The Oppenheimers lived in one of the masters’ houses of the old school. Community life was much friendlier and more harmonious than in other cities - higher mental level. Dr Oppenheimer took job only on condition that his essential workers would know the secret. A great part of their work was spent in meetings and conferences. At first, scientists were afraid of possible German atomic research, but later learned there was none. Scientists worked in order to save lives and end the war. Was it in order to beat the Germans to the discovery? “Good God, no!” ’

This article is a slightly revised version of one first published on 2 February 2015.

Catch some of my life

James Gordon Farrell, who might have reached ninety today had he not died young in a storm accident, would have become one of the really great novelists writing in the English language today - according to a claim by Salman Rushdie widely quoted on internet sites. The editor of a collection of Farrell’s letters and ‘diary fragments’, published a few years ago by Cork University Press, argues that her book reveals Farrell’s ‘lost autobiographical voice.’ In a first entry, Farrell writes of using the diary to ‘catch some of my life’, and in another he catches a moment of inspiration, one that will lead to his best book.

Farrell was born in Liverpool on 25 January 1935 into an Anglo-Irish family. Although his family moved to County Dublin after the war, he was enrolled at Rossall boarding school in Lancashire from the age of 12, spending holidays in Ireland. After Rossall, he taught in Dublin, and also worked at a radar station in the Canadian Arctic. He entered Brasenose College, Oxford, in 1956, but contracted polio which left him partially crippled. On leaving Oxford with a low class degree, he went to live and teach in France, the setting for his first novel A Man from Elsewhere.

Thereafter, Farrell led a peripatetic life, variously in Paris, Morocco, Dublin and London. In 1966, he won a Harkness Fellowship to visit the US, and although this did not lead him, as he hoped, to study at Yale Drama School, it did provide him with the stimulus to write Troubles (about Ireland’s struggle for independence), the book that would bring him literary fame. It won the Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize, and with the proceeds he went to India, the setting for his next novel on colonial power, The Siege of Krishnapur. This won the UK’s Booker Prize in 1973. A third, thematically similar, novel followed - The Singapore Grip.

In 1979, Farrell decided to move from London (where he had been based since around 1970) to the southwest of Ireland. A few months later, he was found dead, after being swept from rocks in a storm while fishing. He never married, though he had affairs, and a wide circle of literary friends. Further information can be found at Wikipedia, which quotes Salmon Rushdie as saying, in 2008, that had Farrell not died so young,‘he would today be one of the really major novelists of the English language.’ There are various other articles online about Farrell, some reporting on how Troubles won, in 2010, the Lost Booker Prize for 1970 - at The Guardian, The Daily Telegraph, and BBC. (‘Lost’ because books published in that year missed out on being considered thanks to a rule change.) A chapter on Farrell in Writing Liverpool: Essays and Interviews can be read at Googlebooks.

Farrell does not appear to have been a committed diarist, but, in 2009, Cork University Press published J. G. Farrell in his Own Words - Selected Letters and Diaries, as edited by Lavinia Greacen. Most of the book is taken up with letters, and Graecen, herself, refers to the rest as ‘diary fragments’. A review can be found online at Estudios Irlandeses.

Although the name J. G. Farrell tends to come with an austerely confident ring to it, Greacen says the ‘lost autobiographical voice’ in this book reveals him to be warm and sometimes full of self doubt. In a very short foreword, John Banville explains that he met Farrell once, a few days before he won the Booker Prize for The Siege of Krishnapur. He notes, however, that Farrell himself thought Troubles was a better book.

Here are two extracts from J. G. Farrell in his Own Words - Selected Letters and Diaries. I’ve chosen the first because it explains Farrell’s motivations for starting a diary; and the second for it records a pivotal moment in the genesis of Troubles. However, I have also chosen the second because of a link with my own life: the very same Surf Hotel on Block Island, mentioned by Farrell, was where I was taken having been expelled from my father’s island house - I never saw or spoke to him again (see my diaries).

22 December 1966
‘This is addressed to an absent third party . . . in all respects like me, but not me. Alright then, the idea of this diary is to help me to get control of my talent for writing. I hope that it will help me in the following ways:
1) That I shall bring myself face to face with things that I normally discard through sheer mental laziness.
2) That I shall be able to remember things people say that make an impression on me as well as things I read.
3) Get in the habit of discussing problems with myself.
4) Catch some of my life before I forget it. I’m appalled to think how little I can remember of my first trip to America, even though it was only ten years ago. However, avoid being garrulous or it will become a chore. Avoid self-pity and sentimentality. Avoid haranguing myself uselessly like this.

On Monday I had lunch with Mike Roemer. He was busy and somewhat harassed; I noticed for the first time how he tends to talk too loud, as if afraid that he won’t be able to assert himself if he doesn’t. He had been to see Polanski’s Cul de Sac and hadn’t liked it. I was unable to understand his reasons for not liking it. He said he thought it was badly written; that it hadn’t gone far enough if it was supposed to be black humour etc. Well, perhaps I do partly see what he means. For all that, he couldn’t convince me (he didn’t try) that it was a bad film. I still find parts of it sublime: the kitchen scene at the beginning and the visit of friends [. . .] Roemer told me had once dined with E. M. Forster and been very impressed with his modesty and simplicity. F. had only wanted to talk about films. In the course of lunch R. repeated his theory that writers use up their experience when young, then go through a middle period of hard work before they can learn to invent their own material. In return I talked to him of intuitive writers, citing Edna O’Brien as one who had gone off the rails once she had begun to think about it. [. . .] I don’t think either of us were particularly convinced by this. Nothing, anyway, will convince R. that writing is not a field in which one only succeeds by hard and ruthless work. With deep misgivings I gave him a copy of The Lung.

Reading Virginia Woolf’s diary in the train to N. Caroline to spend Christmas with Bob. Odd and curious flashes of contempt for the lower classes appear every now and then that seem sadly out of date (these are the only things that seem unusual for a person like V. W. by today’s standards).’

11 May 1967
‘Over a month since my last entry - an interval in which things went downhill at a fairly brisk pace, with the roaches multiplying in my room at the Belvedere faster than I could control them . . . In this time I took out Anita Gross a couple of times. She’s attractive, sure. But there’s something slightly wrong somewhere [. . .]

A week ago I came to Block Island to stay at the Surf Hotel under the aegis of Mr and Mrs Sears. He is a fat, genial chap and she is somewhat severe with elegantly rolled white hair that makes her look like an immigrant from Versailles. [. . .] At first I found myself eating with an English couple called Porter: she is a psychiatrist, he described himself as a ‘poet’ but I didn’t question him about this and he didn’t volunteer any further information. [. . .]

I’ve covered most of the island on foot in the past week and feel much healthier for it. The weather has been a mixture of terrible storms and sunny, windy days. Last weekend the ferry was unable to make the return trip because of a storm. Now the rain has returned I think I shall return to NY tomorrow.

While here I have made yet another ‘fresh start’ on my book - partly inspired by the charred remains of the Ocean View Hotel which stands, or stood, on a cliff overlooking the old harbour where the ferry comes in. It burned down a year or so ago. “A place with a thousand rooms,” Mr Porter (the poet) said. “200 to 300” said his wife. This morning I went up to look at the remains while the sun was still shining. Old bedsprings twisted with heat; puddles of molten glass; washbowls that had fallen through to the foundations; a flight of stone steps leading up to thin air; twisted pipes; lots of nails lying everywhere and a few charred beams. I think the way the glass had collected like candlegreas under the windows impressed me most. When you picked it up it was inclined to flake away into smaller pieces in your hand. I must remember to ask someone how many storeys it had. Anyway this gave me an idea, which seems to me a good one, for the dwelling place of the family.’ [Ocean View Hotel did, in fact, provide the catalyst for the Majestic Hotel in Troubles, and give him the structure for the novel.]

This article is a slightly revised version of one first published on 25 January 2015.

Ampère falling in love

André-Marie Ampère, dubbed the father of electrodynamics, was born 250 years ago today. A child of the enlightenment and Rousseau’s education principles, he became a great scientist without formal training. He left behind one youthful diary, a naive and charming account of his love and courtship of the woman who became his wife, but then died just four years later.

Ampère was born in Lyon, France, on 20 January 1775. His father was a prosperous businessman who admired the teachings of Jean-Jacques Rousseau. In line with Rousseau’s education ideas, he left his son to educate himself at the family home - with a well-stocked library - at Poleymieux-au-Mont-d’Or near Lyon. Although his father came to be called into public service by the new revolutionary government, he was guillotined in 1793 as part of the so-called Jacobin purges. Ampère, himself, found regular work as a maths teacher in 1799. This gave him enough income to marry his sweetheart, Julie Carron.

In 1802, Ampère was appointed a professor of physics and chemistry at the École Centrale in Bourg-en-Bresse, which meant leaving Julie, by then a sick woman, and his son in Lyon. In Bourg, he produced his first treatise on mathematical probability - Considerations on the Mathematical Theory of Games, which he sent to the Paris Academy of Sciences. Following the death of Julie, he moved to the capital and began teaching at the new École Polytechnique, where, in 1809, he was appointed professor of mathematics.

As well as holding positions at the École Polytechnique through to 1828, Ampère also taught philosophy and astronomy at the University of Paris for a while, and in 1824 was elected to the chair in experimental physics at the Collège de France. He engaged in all kinds of scientific enquiry, but, from 1820, when hearing of a Danish discovery which showed how a magnetic needle can be deflected by an electric current, he began developing theories to understand the relationship between electricity and magnetism.

It is for his work in understanding electromagnetism that Ampère is best remembered. He developed a physical account of electromagnetic phenomena, empirically demonstrable and mathematically predictive, and in 1827 published his major work, Memoir on the Mathematical Theory of Electrodynamic Phenomena, Uniquely Deduced from Experience. This work coined the name of a new science, electrodynamics, while Ampère also gave his name, in time, to Ampère’s Law, and the SI unit of electric current, the ampere, often shortened to amp. He died in 1836. Further biographical information is available from Wikipedia, NNBD, Encyclopaedia Britannica. James R. Hofmann’s biography - André-Marie Ampère: Enlightenment an Electrodynamics - can also be previewed at Googlebooks.

Although Ampère is not known as a diarist, he did leave behind one published diary, a record of his courtship with his future wife. This was first published, in French, in 1869, as Journal et Correspondance de André-Marie Ampère (freely available in French at Internet Archive or Gallica). An 1875 English review of the book can be found in The North American Review (Vol. 121, No. 249, Oct., 1875), viewable online at JSTOR. The reviewer, T. S. Perry, says the volume is ‘idyllic’ and ‘charming’, and though Ampère was ‘far from being a fool, he certainly shows how foolish an intelligent man can be in the privacy of his diary’. And Perry adds: ‘Although Ampère’s letters and diary lack the historical value of Pepys’s they have a far higher interest in the light they throw upon the private life and character of a great and good man.’ High praise indeed.

An English translation was published by R. Bentley & Son, a few years later, in 1873, with the title The Story of his Love: being the journal and early correspondence of of André-Marie Ampère with his family circle during the First Republic, 1793-1804. The full text of the English version can be read online at Googlebooks.

10 April 1796
‘I saw her for the first time.’

10 August 1796
‘I went to her house, and they lent me ‘Le Nouvelle Morali di Soave’.’

3 September 1796
‘M. Coupier had left the day before. I went to return ‘Le Nouvelle’ and they allowed me to select a volume from the library. I took Mme. Deshoulières. I was a few moments alone with her.’

4 September 1796
‘I accompanied the two sisters after mass. I brought away the first volume of Benardin. She told me that she should be alone, as her mother and sister were leaving on Wednesday.’

9 September 1796
‘I went there, and only Elise.’

14 September 1796
‘I returned the second volume of Bernardin, and had some conversation both her and Jenny. I promised to bring some comedies on the following day.’

17 September 1796
‘I took them, and began to open my heart.’

27 January 1797
‘At length she has arrived from Lyons; her mother did not come into the room at once. Apparently for the sake of looking at some vignettes, I knelt by her side; her mother came in and made me sit down by her.’

9 June 1797
‘I was prevented from giving a lesson on account my cough; I went away rather early, taking with Gresset, and the third volume of the Histoire de France. Julie shows me the trick of solitaire, which I had guessed the evening before; I seated myself near Julie, and remained by her till the end.

Incidentally, referring to some airs and songs, I left C’est en vain que la nature on the table. I ate a cherry she had let fall, and kissed a rose which she had smelt; in the walk I twice gave her my hand to get over a stile, her mother made room for me on the seat between herself and Julia; in returning I told her that it was long since I had passed so happy a day, but that it was the contemplation of nature which had charmed me the most; she spoke to me the whole day with much kindness.’

21 May 1803
‘Walk in the garden. Julie very ill.’

9 July 1803
‘Julie very ill in the morning. I begged M. Mollet to take my place at the Lyceum. M. Pelotin continued the same treatment, in spite of the new symptom.’

This article is a slightly revised version of one first published on 20 January 2015.

Went violetting

‘At home - went violetting in Mr. Body’s Fields & our own - got a great many - Read Mill’s History of the Crusades very good.’ This is one of the entries to be found in the daily diary kept by Mary Russell Mitford, an English writer who died 170 years ago today. The diary entries, all very brief, give no hint of the success she would find later with her sketches of village life and in the theatre.

Mitford was born in 1787 in Alresford, Hampshire, the only daughter of George Mitford and Mary a descendant of the aristocratic Russell family. She grew up near Jane Austen and the two were acquaintances when young. Mitford attended a school in Hans Place, Knightsbridge, London, the successor to Reading Abbey Girls’ School (which Austen had attended earlier). Her father engaged Frances Arabella Rowden to give his daughter extra tuition. Rowden was a published poet, and introduced her to the theatre, especially to plays featuring John Kemble.

In 1810, Mitford published Miscellaneous Poems, which was followed by five more volumes of verse, including Watlington Hill (1812) and Dramatic Scenes, Sonnets, and Other Poems (1827). Her narrative poem Christina (1811) was revised by Samuel Taylor Coleridge. She turned to the theatre, with some success, most notably in the blank-verse tragedies Julian and Rienzi.

However, Mitford’s reputation primarily rests on her prose sketches of English village life, collected in the five volumes of Our Village (1824-32). These sketches, based on her observations of life in and around Three Mile Cross, where she lived from 1820, captured the atmosphere of the English countryside and the quaintness of village characters. Despite literary success, Mitford struggled financially due to her father’s gambling debts. In 1837, she received a civil list pension, providing some financial relief. Her writing is said to have helped establish the format of the realistic domestic novel of provincial life.

Mitford maintained friendships and extensive correspondence with literary figures of the time, notably Elizabeth Barrett Browning. In 1851, she moved to Swallowfield, where she lived until her death on 10 January 1855, following injuries sustained in a carriage accident. Further information can be found at Wikipedia, Encyclopedia Britannica and Berkshire History.

For a short while in her early 30s, Mitford maintained a journal (late December 1818 to March 1823), which she kept almost daily in a volume originally designed to hold only one year’s worth of entries. Moreover, the journal was actually Leigh Hunt’s The Literary Pocket Book: or, Companion for the Lover of Art and Nature and to make entries she had to overwrite much of the printed matter. Some of the diary has been transcribed by volunteers and is available online at Digital Mitford, a project begun in April 2013 with the formation of the Mary Russell Mitford Society. Here are some sample entries.

16 December 1819

‘Went to Reading - had a most delightful chat with Miss Brooke - bought things at Marshes - saw a number of people - came home to dinner quite well & was exceedingly ill (sick & purged) all night.’

17 December 1819

‘Rather better - Lucy a famous nurse - in bed almost all day - had a charming letter from Mr. Haydon & read Malcolm's Anecdotes of the 17th Century.’

18 December 1819

‘A great deal better. Amused myself with doing up some gowns against the end of the mourning  - read Burke's works. All day at home.’

19 December 1819

‘Quite well. Wrote a long note to Miss Brooke - read Scott’s Visit to Paris & played with my beautiful puppy Miranda born at Stratford on Avon.’

31 December 1819

‘Went with Papa & Eliza Webb to a dance at Mrs. Dickinson’s very splendid - very delightful - much laughing - Mr. Crowther not to be forgotten.

At Farley Hill - Happy day - Mrs. D's singing - Where’er you walk - Mr. D’s reading - Count Ugolino.’

1 April 1820

‘At home - went violetting in Mr. Body's Fields & our own - got a great many - Read Mill’s History of the Crusades very good.’

1 May 1820

‘Went in the Cart to Reading Fair with Drum & Lucy - called on the Brooks Newberys, Whites, Anstruthers &c. - dined at Dr. Valpy’s & met the Shuters, Mr. Harris, Mr. Monk, Harry Marsh & Mr. Dickinson - a very pleasant day - came home at night.’

2 May 1820

‘At home - went primrosing & cowslipping to Bertram House - got a great many  - wrote to Mr. Johnson. Read Hogg.’

3 May 1820

‘At home - walked with Granny & the Pets up Woodcock lane - read the Diary of an Invalid on the Continent’

4 May 1820

‘At home - called with Drum on Mr. Body who gave me some lovely flowers - wrote to Eliza Webb - read Bowdich's Mission to Ashantee - dull.’

5 May 1820

‘At home - went walking with dear Drum, Granny, & the Pets - Dr. Valpy called.’

6 May 1820

‘At home - went cowslipping in the Meadows with dear Granny & the Pets - heard from Mrs. Hayward with a beautiful basket of flower roots - planted them out & wrote Mrs. Hayward - read Bonduca.’

Day of brain fever

‘Today was a day of brain fever. I have decided to write a full length drama on Kalidas, before starting on the novel. Shall set about it tomorrow. Should complete it by the 21st.’ This is from the diary of Mohan Rakesh, a pioneer of modern Hindi literature, born a century ago today. Once written and produced, the work about Kalidas would soon become recognized as the first modern Hindi play.

Rakesh was born as Madan Mohan Guglani on 8 January 1925 in Amritsar (Punjab Province of British India). His father was a lawyer who died when he was 16. He studied for an MA in English and Hindi at Punjab University in Lahore, and earned the title of Shatri in Sanskrit. His professional journey included stints as a postman, teacher, and editor (of the literary journal Sarika) before he dedicated himself fully to writing in 1957.

As a writer, Rakesh excelled in multiple genres, particularly novels and plays. He is credited with writing the first modern Hindi play, Ashadh Ka Ek Din (1958) - about Kalidas, a classical Sanskrit author some claim is ancient India’s greatest poet and playwright. Indeed, Rakesh is also considered to have been one of the pioneers of the Nai Kahani (‘New Story’) Hindi literary movement. His writing often focused on the urban middle class, exploring their struggles and aspirations in post-independence India. His works are said to be characterised by their realistic portrayal of characters and their dilemmas, reflecting the changing social dynamics of the time.

Rakesh married three times: a first marriage in 1950 was arranged and ended in divorce in 1957; a second marriage, to Sudha in 1960, was also short-lived; and in 1963, he married 21 year-old Anita Aulakh. Throughout his career, Rakesh received several accolades, including the Sangeet Natak Akademi Award in 1968. He died in 1972, aged only 47. However, his legacy continues to influence Hindi literature and theatre, with his plays still being performed and acclaimed worldwide. For further information see Wikipedia. 

Rakesh kept a diary for some years. Extracts from this were edited by Sudha and published posthumously as Mohan Rakesh Ki Diary (Rajpal & Sons, 1977). A more modern edition can be sampled online at Googlebooks. Although the bulk of the book is written in Hindi, there are a few passages in English. (Moreover, it is possible, these days, to produce a serviceable English translation by dragging and dropping images of the Hindi text into Google Translate.

22 January 1958

‘I do not know how I feel. Probably I am happy, very happy. M... came this morning, when I was working at my typewriter. She remained here for an hour or so. I said everything to her that I wanted to. She gave me her promise to marry me. I do not know how I feel about it. I feel terribly excited. The day had a real feel of spring in it. The grass looked more green than ever. I felt as if I were the master of the world. Love certainly is a positive sentiment, in spite of all the master of the cynicism of my friends. I love the young girl and it gave me intense pleasure to know that she has this same feeling for me. I am happy, for I took a few glasses of beer just now to enjoy my happiness. Oh! How nice and blissful I feel! I feel as if we are already married!’

9 February 1958

‘A week of hectic life in Delhi. Sharat’s marriage was the main event of the week. Met so many persons. Talked so many things. Returned very tired. Slept till eleven in the morning.

Today was a day of brain fever. I have decided to write a full length drama on Kalidas, before starting on the novel. Shall set about it tomorrow. Should complete it by the 21st.’

13 February 1958

‘Plans are ready for shifting to Delhi. 1st of March is the latest by when I should leave Jullundur. Staying here already seems like living in the past. But I had developed more attachments in this city than in any other city before. I shall carry with me many pleasant and unpleasant memories. And I shall never come back to live here.

I do not yet know what is going to be my major occupation for earning a livelihood in the days to come, writing does not provide a living. It may be anything, but I shall at no cost come back to have a job in this city. I shall try to write out the play on Kalidas during the days that I am here.’

16 February 1958


‘I felt suffocated - extremely so, living at Jullundur. I do not know why I am so sensitive to certain situations. Till yesterday, I was not sure if I shall travel to Delhi. Even till later this morning I did not know. Only felt a certain pain, a piercing agony right within my heart. I could not write. I could not read. I even could not imagine things. I felt as if my heart and brain were being eaten up by worms. I feel so terribly depressed. Now that I am sitting in a train, in the compartment next to the engine, the engine is whistling continuously, doing about 50 miles an hour, I feel if the oppressive burden is being slowly lifted. I like this terrible speed, this maddening push. I hope to feel light and happy in an hour's time.

I shall try to settle down in Delhi. I shall live there. I might probably die there. I am so tired of these shiftings, and yet I cannot help them. My whole system has been poisoned by the bitterness of circumstances. How long I have suffered and how much! Could I ever be relieved of this pain, this sorrow?

The train is going very fast. But I also feel lonely and desolate. How can I help it? As the train steams off from Ambala Cantt, the depression is over. 

New Delhi

A feeling like that of having slept well. A vague sensation of pleasant excitement. Wind is chilly. I feel that it is spring.

I like this mode of living. I like this life. Everything around seems to be pulsating with activity.

I cannot believe that I, myself, have been through all that suffering. I want to believe that it was not reality but a nightmare - a hallucination.’

Dipped into Bacon’s essays

Thomas Green, a man of leisure and a self-professed lover of literature, died two centuries ago today. He kept a diary for much of his life, but one focused almost exclusively on his thoughts and opinions about books he was reading. According to this diary, he was often to be found ‘dipping into’ some great work of non-fiction or other, such as Bacon’s essays.

Green was born at Monmouth in 1769. His grandfather was a wealthy Suffolk soap-boiler who had made a fortune during the reign of Queen Anne, and his father was a man of letters, a pamphleteer, and a champion of the Church of England. Green was partly educated privately, and partly at the free grammar school in Ispwich; he was admitted to Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge. However, illness prevented him from taking up his university studies. Instead, he was called to the bar, and travelled the Norfolk Circuit. He married Catherine Hartcup, and they had one son.

Aged 25, Green inherited the family estate, leaving him free to live a life of leisure and reading literature. He resided in Ipswich, visiting the Continent and different parts of England from time to time. Occasionally, he wrote and published political pamphlets, and he provided contributions to The Gentleman’s Magazine. He died on 6 January 1825. Further biographical information is available from an 1834 edition of The Gentleman’s Magazine, Dictionary of National Biography 1895-1900, or Edmund Gosse’s Gossip in a Library.

Green kept a diary for most of his adult life, and he is mostly remembered because of a quirky book, based on this diary, that he published in 1810: Extracts from The Diary of a Lover of Literature (this is freely available at Internet Archive). It records his thoughts and lengthy opinions on the books he was reading, most of which were worthy, non-fiction classics. Although his selection of diary extracts in this book are confined to a five year period (1796-1800), his friend John Mitford published further extracts in The Gentleman’s Magazine between 1834 and 1843 (here and here for example).

Here are several extracts from Green’s book, starting with much of his elaborately self-effacing and wittily apologetic preface.

PREFACE
‘At length, after much hesitation, and in an evil hour perhaps, I am induced to submit to the indulgence of the Public, the idlest Work, probably, that ever was composed; but, I could wish to hope, not absolutely the most unentertaining or unprofitable.

For the errors and defects naturally incident to a composition successively exhibiting the impressions of the moment in the language which the moment prompted, and which must derive any interest it may possess from the ease and freedom with which these impressions are communicated, it would be fruitless and absurd to attempt an apology. [. . .] For faults of every other description; and for more than a due proportion of these, I feel that I am strictly accountable ; and present myself before the Audience whose attention I have presumed to engage with my babble, under an appalling sense of the responsibility which my rashness has incurred.

To the objector, who should fiercely demand, why I obtruded on the Public at all, matter confessedly so crude and so peccant, I have really little to allege which is quite satisfactory to my own mind, or which I could reasonably hope, therefore, would prove so to his: but to an offended spirit of a gentler nature, I might perhaps be allowed to intimate, that, whatever my faults may be, I have not attempted to decoy unwary Readers by an imposing Title, nor to tax their curiosity with the costly splendours of fashionable typography. It has been my earnest wish, at least, to obviate disappointment, by accommodating, as much as possible, my appearance to my pretensions. These are simple, and of easy statement. To furnish occupation, in a vacant hour, to minds imbued with a relish for literary pursuits, by suggesting topics for reflection and incentives to research, partly from an exhibition of whatever struck me as most interesting in the thoughts of others, during a miscellaneous course of reading, and partly, too, from a free and unreserved communication of the thoughts they gave rise to in my own mind - this is all that I venture to propose to the Reader as my aim in the publication of the following Extracts. [. . .]

With respect to my success in this adventure, if I am not generally very sanguine, there are certain moments - under the encouraging influence of a balmy air, bright sky, and vigorous digestion - in which I am not altogether without hope. When I advert, it is true, to the numerous faults that deform the following pages, all crowding in hideous succession before me - when I reflect on the various improvements of which the whole would be susceptible, even under my own mature revisal - above all, when I compute what brighter talents and ampler attainments might have achieved in a similar career - my heart, oppressed with the load of my infirmities, sinks in despondency within me: but when I consider, on the other hand, the wretched trash with which the Public is sometimes apparently content to be amused, my spirits, in a slight degree, revive; I cannot disguise, from myself, that I am at least entitled to equal indulgence with some of these candidates for public favour; and in the momentary elation of this ignoble triumph, am tempted to anticipate a reception, which however moderate and subdued for an illusion of the fancy, may perhaps prove ridiculously flattering compared with the actual doom that awaits me. [. . .]

The following Sheets are, of course, only a sample, though a pretty large one, of a more considerable Work: but the Purchaser of the present Volume (I hasten to add) need not be alarmed. I cannot flatter myself that the materials for a future selection, are eminently better than those from which I have thus far drawn; and with the present Extracts I am so little satisfied, on a review of them in print, that unless they should experience the most unequivocal symptoms of public favour, they are the last that will appear. An idle experiment, however unsuccessful, may be good-naturedly excused; but to persist in a piece of folly of this kind, after a fair warning that it is such, would betray an unpardonable disregard of what is due, on the occasion, both to public feeling and my own character.’

29 September 1796
‘Read the 9th Chapter of Roscoe’s Lorenzo de Medici; in which the rise (or renovation) and progress of the arts of painting, statuary, engraving, and sculpture upon gems, with the merits of the respective artists in each department, are happily delineated. The account of Michael Angelo - his giant powers - and the concussion with which his advent shook the world of genius and taste - is even sublime. Roscoe is not always exact in the choice of his expressions: for instance, he uses “instigate” in a good sense; which, where we have another appropriate term, is unpardonable: “compromise”, which properly means, the adjustment of differences by reciprocal concession, he employs, by what authority I know not, to express, the putting to hazard by implication. A catalogue of synonymes, executed with philological skill and philosophical discrimination, would be a valuable accession to English Literature.

Read, after a long interval, with much delight, the first two Books of Caesar’s Commentaries. The States of Gaul are represented as far more advanced in government and manners, than I should have expected him to find them; and it would puzzle the Directory of France, at this moment, to frame a manifesto, so neatly conceived, and so forcibly yet chastely expressed, as the reply of Ariovistus, a barbaric chief from the wilds off Germany, to the embassy of Caesar. It is interesting to trace the route of this great commander (and the similitude of names will sometimes fix it with precision) on a modern map. Nothing can exceed the ease, perspicuity, and spirit, with which this incomparable narrative is conducted.

Dipped into Boswell’s Life of Johnson. Boswell, from his open, communicative, good-humoured vanity, which leads him to display events and feelings that other men, of more judgment, though slighter pretensions, would have studiously concealed, has depressed himself below his just level in public estimation. His information is extensive; his talents far from despicable; and he seems so exactly adapted, even by his very foibles, that we might almost suppose him purposely created, to be the Chronicler of Johnson. A pleasing and instructive packet-companion might be formed, by a judicious selection from his copious repertory of Johnson’s talk.’

5 October 1796
‘Pursued Boswell’s Life of Johnson. Johnson’s coarse censure of Lord Chesterfield, “that he taught the morals of a whore, and the manners of a dancing master”, is as unjust as it is harsh. Indeed I have always thought the noble author of Letters to his Son, hardly dealt with by the Public; though to public opinion I have the highest deference. How stands the case? Having bred up his son to a youth of learning and virtue, and consigned him to a tutor well adapted to cultivate these qualities, he naturally wishes to render him an accomplished gentleman; and, for this purpose, undertakes, in person, a task for which none surely was so well qualified as himself. I follow the order he assigns, and that which his Letters testify he pursued. Well! but he insists eternally on such frivolous points - the graces - the graces! Because they were wanting, and the only thing wanting. Other qualities were attained, or presumed to be attained: to correct those slovenly, shy, reserved, and uncouth habits in the son, which as he advanced in life grew more conspicuous; and threatened to thwart all the parent’s fondest prospects in his child, was felt, and justly felt, by the father, to have become an imperious and urgent duty; and he accordingly labours at it with parental assiduity, an assiduity, which none but a father would have bestowed upon the subject. Had his Lordship published these Letters; as a regular System of Education, the common objection to their contents would have, had unanswerable force: viewing them however in their true light, as written privately and confidentially by a parent to his child - inculcating, as he naturally would, with the greatest earnestness, not what was the most important, but most requisite - it must surely be confessed, there never was a popular exception more unfounded. But he - I admit it: he touches upon certain topics, which, a sentiment of delicacy suggests, between a father and son had better been forborne: yet those who might hesitate to give the advice, if they are conversant with the world, and advert to circumstances, will not be disposed to think the advice itself injudicious.’

11 October 1796
‘Read Hawkesworth’s Life of Swift; of whose character and conduct but an imperfect idea is given by the narrative of Johnson. Hawkesworth is much more communicative and interesting; and the minuteness and simplicity with which he details the few, but deplorable, incidents of the four last years of Swift’s life, are highly affecting. The circumstance of his struggling to express himself, after a silence broken but once for more than a year; and, finding all his efforts ineffectual, heaving a deep sigh, quite cleaves the heart.’

12 September 1798
‘Dipped into Bacon’s Essays; so pregnant with just, original, and striking observations on every topic which is touched, that I cannot select what pleases me most. For reach of thought, variety and extent of view, sheer solid and powerful sense, and admirable sagacity, what works of man can be placed in competition with these wonderful effusions.’

6 May 1800
‘Read Gildon’s Essay, prefixed to Shakespear’s Poems; in which he largely discusses Dramatic Poetry. Poetry, he considers as an art; and he is a grand stickler for the rules of this art, which he regards, rather as the original suggestions of right reason, instructing us how to please, than the mere conclusions of experience from what has pleased: a preposterous piece of folly, nearly akin to that which attempts to solve the phaenomena of nature from the chimaeras of the fancy, instead of collecting the materials for this solution from a patient investigation of the laws by which nature is really governed in all her operations; but as a practical piece of folly, leading to consequences still more absurd. According to Gildon, all excellence flows from the observance of the rules of composition, and all deformity from their violation: to such a taste, Shakespear’s Dramas must have a most untoward aspect; yet his “wood-notes wild” occasionally extort, even from this sturdy champion of the summum jus in critical jurisprudence, an approving nod, with - “this is very well”. At the close of his Remarks on Shakespear’s Plays, he observes, that “verisimilitude in the Drama, is more essential than truth, because fact itself is sometimes so barely possible that it is almost incredible”. Hurd has caught this idea: and it is not the only instance in which I fancy I have detected him poaching on this antient and neglected manor.’

This article is a slightly revised version of one first published on 6 January 2015.

Devastation in Darwin

Half a century ago today, Cyclone Tracy devastated the Australian town of Darwin, destroying 80% of houses, making 41,000 out of the 47,000 residents homeless, and killing 66 people. The Age newspaper called it a ‘disaster of the first magnitude . . . without parallel in Australia’s history.’ I was there, having arrived from Bali just a few weeks earlier after spending six months travelling across Asia. I’d got a job working in the power station, and I had a room in a house of travellers owned by Dutch Peter. It was Christmas Eve when the wind started blowing, and most people expected Tracy to veer away from land -  like a cyclone earlier in the year - but in the early hours of the morning of Christmas Day it struck with a vengeance, blowing at over 100 mph. Around 3 in the morning, after the eye had given us all a few minutes peace, Dutch Peter’s house exploded, the wooden walls and all its contents, including us, were catapulted into the night. What follows is my (rather hastily written) diary account of that night and the following few days.

24-30 December 1974
‘And suddenly it is Christmas Eve. Work [I was employed by the local power station] isn’t really work (yesterday it was quite interesting - we had to take the complete two ton end of the cylinder off - I was a little afraid the hoist wasn’t going to hold). I finish work at 12:00 and then at 2:00 there’s a nice little work social at the Rugby Union club - beer as free as the air and a constant flow of steaks. I talk to a range of people including the foreman - I am really pissed. He invites me round to lunch tomorrow - I am beginning to get blotto - the beer is running out but he keeps giving me cans - at one point he informs me about the cyclone heading straight for Darwin. I’ve no idea how I get home. Later, Gus tells me I shouted ‘the cyclone’s really coming’ and passed out, and that all attempts to wake me for dinner were in vain.

I wake early in the evening and go upstairs with a splitting headache. I sleep some more until I wake up absolutely soaking - the rain is howling in through the window and the floor is flooded. I join the others downstairs - it’s pretty bad here too. For some reason we all go to Peter’s room or the room behind it, at least it’s dry there. The wind is getting pretty heavy - Wayne is fairly drunk and jolly - doors are banging - the wind continues to get stronger. We make expeditions outside - first one, just after midnight, is to see why a car has stopped - it is virtually impossible to walk, the wind is so strong. Inside again, I go to fetch my diary and clutch onto it - things are getting a little serious - I suggest going to the hospital or somewhere safe, but there are no takers. I fetched my ‘mustn’t lose’ things such as money, passport etc and put them in a plastic bag with the diary. I sleep a while along with Pete and Go and Gus - Wayne falls asleep in the cupboard - Paul and Susie are asleep in the other dry room. When the eye comes, sometime between 2 and 3, it is a chance to sleep undisturbed

When the eye has passed, the wind comes back with a vengeance in the other direction blowing against the windows of the room I’m in - the gusts reach a tremendous force (from virtually nothing at all in a matter of minutes) - Gus is still half asleep, I wake him and he jumps in the cupboard with Wayne - Go and I have drawers over our heads and we crouch down behind the bed - we can’t get out of the room, the door won’t open - the whole wall is going to go - Jesus - I reach up with my hand up to the bed for my plastic bag and pull it down to me - and the house explodes.

I remember shouting and swearing and somersaulting through the air and landing on a load of rubbish - I may have been unconscious for a while. The next thing I know is that thousands of pieces of glass are hitting in my back - I lie down and grope with my hand for some cover - I feel so lucky because I find a board just big enough to cover me - I hold onto it with my life to stop the wind blowing it away. I am lying on my side on glass and wood - I dare not move my left leg because I think it’s slit open or broken - I can’t see much - I think I’m facing away from the house but I’m afraid to move and look round. Rocks hit my board, and sometimes I nearly lose it (the board) - I think through what I’ll do if the board does fly, and I decide to make a run for it. It is cold too - I find a plastic mac by me and wrap myself in it but the wind keeps blowing it off - I am shivering - I can’t decide if I’m going to live - when I think I see lights I shout several times but my voice can’t rise up above the roar of the storm - I am sure all the others [from the house] are dead - I can’t see how they can be alive - I am feeling so lucky that I’m not in pain and that I found the board to protect me.

I lie in two inches of water thinking, working out plans, looking, but never moving other than my hand, which keeps searching around for more protection. Occasionally a light glimmers from across the way - I can’t work out which direction it is, nor can I work out what a bridge-like structure is (it has cars underneath). Later, as visibility improves, I see lights and a house nearby - I am shouting more often now as the dense mistiness lifts.

More than two hours later, and dawn is approaching and the wind is abating to nothing more than a strong gale. I look around a little more and discover that my board has only remained where it is because it’s wedged down by the bed that I’d been hiding behind. Then I hear voices behind me - there are people alive - I pull myself together to turn over - it is the first time I’ve moved properly in two and a half hours, There is a light and I can see Peter and the van. There is no cut in my leg, or anything seriously wrong with it, but I still have to hobble when I walk. I go to the van where I find Gerry. Willem joins us shortly. Paul and Susie are safe in a cupboard. Only Wayne and Gus are missing - Peter and Joel are searching for them frantically but there is no sign. We are really worried that they are under the pile of debris where Peter’s house once stood.

Long after it is light and the wind has fallen still more, we hear that they are next door. I am crying with joy. Incredible. We all have little wounds but nobody is seriously hurt - Gus, Wayne, Paul, Joel and Peter start a frantic search of neighbouring houses, and then they take a couple of cars and start taking people down to the hospital. I really want to be part of this operation - I even try to join them at one point but my knee is really crook. The whole town is completely devastated - steel telegraph poles are bent to the ground - palm trees completely uprooted - roofs lying around everywhere except on the tops of houses. All that is left of Peter’s house is the bathroom on stilts and one of the long walls at a 45 degree angle, not a thing else upstairs. The dining room and kitchen below are wrecked. Everything, absolutely everything, is 100% wet - there are glass, wood, mosquito netting, nails, doors, clothes, books, everywhere. I take a ride down to the hospital - it is fenced in (the wire around the entrance had been put up before to stop hoards of people). I talk to someone at the hospital within 15 minutes but they aren’t interested in my problems and I’m not surprised - many people are bleeding or crying or nursing wounded children - all around is tragedy, tragedy tragedy.

I hitch back to the others - there’s not a building left in tact - corrugated iron, power lines, cars, caravans, trees are strewn everywhere - some of the road is under 6-8 in of water - destruction is everywhere you look.

When I get back, Peter and Wayne are hanging about the house, while most of the others have gone to the first aid centre. I chuck a few things in the van - Paul and I drive to the centre with some food and wine - we find the others from the house huddled in warm blankets - I join them and we swap stories. Gus has some bad cuts by the ear, Joel cut his foot running around helping people afterwards. Peter and Gerry had sheltered in the van soon after the house exploded; Wayne had lain on the grass in the middle of the road, he’d lost his way following Gus who ran to the other house. Gus, Gerry and I are the worst injured. After a couple of hours, a doctor comes, but again he’s not interested in me - Gus and Gerry get some stitches. Willem is OK even though he had been trapped and needed rescuing by Joel and Peter - Go is OK but for some cut knuckles. It’s Christmas Day.

Paul ferries us all to Darwin High School in little groups with blankets as our only clothes. I have real trouble bending my leg, and it takes time to get in and out of the purloined Volkswagen. We are among the first to arrive at the school. Everywhere is under water, but there’s not too much damage. We annex a dryish room for ourselves, but we can’t get the water out because the corridor is under water too. Peter is alternating between fits of crying and fits of trying to organise everybody, and boss them around. Paul goes back to pick up all the obvious things lying about round the house pile, and then he returns the car, and gets Peter’s wagon going

I have a little cry at the thought of Julian and Melanie waking Mum and Dad, then sitting down excitedly for breakfast and turning on the radio and hearing about Darwin. We all manage to send a telegram off home for free, and, a day later, we get a free telephone call. I am emotionally distraught hearing all their voices after so long.

The Aussie prime minister Whitlam flies back from his European tour and spends an afternoon here; Jim Cairns stays a little longer. The head of a newly formed disaster squad is working 25 hours a day, and, apparently, nearly breaking down sometimes.

People begin to pour into the school, and it becomes a main centre where all goods (food, clothes, cigarettes) are brought before distribution. There is a small team of dedicated cooks - so we have good food. My knee doubles in size. I am so incapacitated that I really can’t walk, it is as much as I can do to go to the toilet. Willem, Gerry and Gus do nothing either.

Around us, the authorities (concerned largely about health and disease because the water supply broke down) have acted efficiently. People were already being evacuated on Boxing Day, and by the third day they had got 6,000 people out by plane. The radio station was working again quite quickly, which helped everyone know what was going on, and what to do.

Some of our group keep going back to the house looking for their stuff, and especially for Peter’s money which was supposed to be in an attache case. Poor Peter, having lost his house, never found his money, and one day he just left, in his combie van, for Sydney.

Paul, Joel and Wayne work consistently - Susie and I do a little work in the kitchen - I prefer to wash dishes for two hours, and then get my meal immediately than to queue for half an hour. There are almost 800 people here, I think, and the queues are unbelievable. The evacuation programme continues and is going better than expected.

On 29th December the radio informs us that single men can now be evacuated.

Susie is going to Sydney. Willem is unsure how he is going to make it back to the island where he was working. Kiki is living and working at the Travel Lodge, and is happy to stay here.

Originally, I had planned to fly to Townsville and hitch down the coast (wanting to see something of Australia) but the evacuation planes are only flying to state capitals. I feel Brisbane is already too far south so I decide I might as well go with Gerry to Sydney. There is a lot of messing about before we are finally taken to the airport (in a beaut air-conditioned bus). However, the officials aren’t expecting another coach load, and there are queues and queues waiting to get on the one plane standing. We, and a lot of others already there, don’t make it - we sleep in the destroyed airport buildings. We spend the next day in the airport watching coach loads of women and children being evacuated; we are given food and drink all day long by the Salvation Army. There are newspapers lying around with long stories about Darwin. I talk for a while to one of the people from the school - he adores Joni Mitchell, but didn’t enjoy his overland trip.

Early evening the Starlifter we’d been promised arrives. It is going to take us all away from this devastated disaster area - we all fetch our bags and rush to the buses. I am horrified at the way the Americans are squeezing every last person in. We have to sit cross-legged in about 1 sq ft - from front to back nobody is going to be able to move. I still can’t bend my legs properly and so decide to get off - I’m not that desperate. I think the American was going for some sort of people record - he left all the baggage behind. Early this morning, on the first flight, they were trying hard to find people to go to Townsville - I should have gone, as I’d planned, but I was loathe to leave new friends after so long travelling. It was sad any way to leave Paul, Wayne and Gus - I had some good times with them.

The following morning I take the first plane - a Hercules to Brisbane. We sit on seats, and are allowed in the cockpit to have a smoke - it’s a beautiful serene sight, floating above the clouds. The journey takes five hours and we land in late afternoon - we are shuttled across a boring-looking town to an evacuation centre - an empty bus garage with clothes, social services, Sally Army, airline officials. We register, are given $62, and then booked onto a flight to Sydney. We eat, and I put on some new underpants.’