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Saturday, October 31, 2009 ‘I will tell you what kind of a diary you will never wish to burn. Get a good sized, substantially bound blank-book and record in it simply facts of your every-day life . . .’ Such was the advice given by Jacob Abbott - a 19th century teacher and writer who died 130 years ago this day - to his pupils and other teachers. George F Root, a colleague of Abbott’s who had previously burnt all his diaries, followed this advice, and kept his new diary for 25 years, only to have it be burnt any way - in the great Chicago fire of 1871. Abbott was born at Hallowell, Maine, in 1803, and graduated from Bowdoin College in 1820. Thereafter, he studied at Andover Theological Seminary, and was a professor of mathematics and natural philosophy at Amherst College. He founded the Mount Vernon School for Young Ladies in Boston in 1829 and the Eliot Congregational Church at Roxbury, Massachusetts, in the mid 1830s. With his brothers, in the 1840s, he set up Abbott’s Institute; and was also a principle at the Mount Vernon School for Boys, in New York City. Abbott was also a prolific author, writing fiction, history, science and religious books. According to Wikipedia, his Rollo Books - such as Rollo at Work and Rollo at Play - are the best known of his writings. Original copies of some of these books, over a century old, can be bought on Abebooks for under a tenner. He died on 31 October 1879, 130 years ago today. Although Abbott himself does not appear to have left behind any journals, there is an intriguing account of how he advised the young ladies at his school, and other teachers, to keep a diary. This account is found in The Story of a Musical Life: An Autobiography by George F Root published by The John Church Co, Cincinnati, in 1891. It is freely available at Internet Archive, but original copies can also be bought from Abebooks for a little over £30. Here is that account (preceded by some description of Abbott’s school and the teaching methods - as found on Deidre Johnson’s website which has lots of information about fiction series aimed at 19th century girls). ‘Abbott’s school for young ladies at that time was in one of the fine houses in the white marble row in Lafayette Place, New York, spacious and convenient beyond anything I had before seen. I found the work delightful. Our methods were new, as Mr Abbott had said they would be, and no one having made class teaching and singing tedious and unpopular in the school it was not difficult to arouse and keep up an interest in the lessons. We had frequent visitors - parents and friends of the young ladies, and other persons interested in seeing the new work, and later on in hearing the pleasant part-singing. This singing in parts came along astonishingly soon, for three-quarters of an hour every school day with those bright, interested girls was very different from the two half hours a week that I had been accustomed to in the Public Schools of Boston. . . . . . I ought to say something more here of that remarkable family with whom it was my good fortune to be connected during my ten years in New York. The published works of Jacob Abbott and of John S C Abbott are known. In the legal profession the works of Benjamin Vaughan Abbott and of Austin Abbott are, I am told, regarded as standards, and in the theological and editorial world Lyman Abbott is one of the most eminent men of the present time. These three last mentioned are sons of Jacob Abbott, and were boys at the time of which I write. That, however, which is not ‘known and read of all’ is the home and school-life of these admirable men. In their homes and in their school-rooms, with each other and with all who were connected with them, either as pupils or teachers, their intercourse was characterized by a sincerity and a gentle friendliness so steady and so constant that breaking over it into roughness of any kind or into disobedience seemed impossible. I saw no outbreak or case of ‘discipline’ in all the years that I was with them. That their excellent methods and great skill and attainments as teachers had something to do with the result will of course be understood. . . As larger buildings were needed the school was moved, first to Houston street, then to Bleecker, both near Broadway. I can not remember just when the brothers decided to have two schools, and now I miss my diary again. In fact, as I go on, I miss it more and more. That book, by the way, and the circumstances that caused it, are worth speaking of. Early in my New York life Mr Jacob said to me one day: ‘Did you ever keep a diary?’ ‘Yes,’ I answered, ‘I have begun a half dozen at least.’ ‘You haven’t any of them now?’ ‘No.’ ‘You burned each one after writing a few weeks or a few months in it.’ ‘Yes.’ ‘Was it because you had been so sentimental that you gradually grew tired of what you had written, and at last ashamed to have any one see it?’ I laughed and said it was exactly so. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘that is a very common experience. I will tell you what kind of a diary you will never wish to burn. Get a good sized, substantially bound blank-book and record in it simply facts of your every-day life; first, every event of your past life, with its date, that you think you would like to remember years hence, then begin where you are now and do the same thing every day. Speak of pupils, letters, people you see, concerts, classes, journeys - in short, every occurrence of any prominence that is connected with your work or home. Do not give an opinion or admit a word of sentiment in regard to any of the records you make, but let them be stated in the briefest and most concise manner possible. They may look dry to you now, but years hence they will be full of associations of the successful and pleasant life you are now living, and instead of growing tiresome as you read them, they will become more and more interesting and valuable.’ I saw at once how good this advice was, and went right off to Mr Ivison (who was then a member of Mercer Street choir) and had the book made. It was as large as a good-sized ledger, was bound in strong leather, and so arranged that it could be locked. As soon as it was done I asked Mr Jacob to come and see it. He came, and when he had looked and approved I asked him to begin it for me. He did, and this is about what he wrote: ‘Mr George has brought me in here to see his new book. This is his music room. It is octagonal in shape, two corners being cut off for closets and two for doors of entrance. The wood-work is oak. All octagonal table occupies the center, and book-cases with glass doors are on the side between the doors. There is a piano and a lounge here, and several easy chairs in convenient places. Twenty years hence, Mr George, when you read this in some totally different scene let it remind you of your New York music room and ‘Mr Jacob.’ ’ I did as he advised - began with my early life, and found I could recall almost everything of importance before going to Boston, and while there, then started from that time (early in 1845) to make short daily records. This went through my New York life, my first stay in Europe, and my early convention work to 1871, when we were in full tide of successful business in Chicago - more than twenty-five years of brief, close record. The book was but little more than half full, and how true were Mr Jacob’s ideas about the memories and associations it recalled. ‘Closing exercises at Rutgers to-day’ was not merely the record of a musical exercise twenty years before. About that commonplace event were now summer flowers, bright skies and dear friends - and the flowers grew sweeter, the skies brighter, and the friends dearer as the years rolled on. But a memorable day came when my big journal shared the fate of its little predecessors. It was burned! But not by my hand. It went up, with many other mementos of my former life, in the flames of the great Chicago fire. Somebody may be as much obliged to me as I was to Mr Jacob for this suggestion about the way to keep a diary.’ Labels: 1800s, literature, US
Saturday, October 31, 2009 Otto Rank, a Viennese psychoanalyst who studied with Freud for many years, died 70 years ago today. He is remembered for theorising that some neuroses stem from the trauma of birth, and for extending psychoanalytic theory to the study of myth, art and creativity. One of his patients was the writer Anaïs Nin, but she was also his lover, and wrote much about him in her extraordinary and intimate diaries. Rank was born in Vienna in 1884, into a lower/middle-class Jewish family. Aged 21 he met Freud, who persuaded him to study psychoanalysis at the University of Vienna. Before long he had become Freud’s trusted assistant, and was appointed secretary to the emerging Vienna Psychoanalytic Society. Rank remained close to Freud for the best part of two decades. Nevertheless, through books such as The Artist and The Incest Theme in Literature, he developed his own theories, extending psychoanalytic theory, in particular to explain the significance of myths and artistic creativity. Rank served in the First World War and then returned to his studies. In 1924, though, he published The Trauma of Birth in which he maintained that anxiety and neurosis stemmed from a baby’s shock at being separated from his or her mother. Although Freud was initially impressed by this idea, he later rejected it, and the book distanced Rank from him and others in the Vienna Circle. The same year, he moved to the US, where he developed a reputation for his evolving ideas in psychotherapy (including that of getting patients to re-experience their birth traumas). For the next ten years he travelled often between New York and Paris, teaching and practicing psychotherapy. In 1936 he settled in New York City, where he died 70 years ago today, on 31 October 1939 (five weeks after Freud had died in London). For more detail on Rank’s life see the Otto Rank website or Wikipedia. Anaïs Nin, one of the 20th century’s most interesting diarists, was not only a patient of Rank, but his lover too. She was born in France, to musical parents of mixed and partly Cuban heritage. When they separated, her mother then took Anaïs and two brothers to New York City. At 20 she married a banker, Hugh Guiler, who later illustrated some of her books and went on to become a film maker. They moved to Paris, where Nin began writing fiction and where she fell in with the Villa Seurat group, which included the writers Henry Miller and Lawrence Durrell. She had many love affairs, often with well known literary figures, but her relationship with Miller was more constant than most. Although Nin wrote many short stories and some novels, it is her diaries that are considered to be her most enduring work. And, in the diaries, there is much about Rank, and her relationship with him. (See The Diary Junction for more on Nin’s diaries, and some links.) The following extracts which mention Rank have been culled from Incest: From ‘A Journal of Love’ by Anaïs Nin published by Peter Owen in 1993. It is considered the second volume of Nin’s unexpurgated diaries (the first being Henry and June), and even has its own Wikipedia entry. 21 December 1932 17 January 1933 19 January 1933 11 July 1933 21 July 1933 7 November 1933 ‘. . . Rank immediately gave me the feeling that he is curious, alive, fond of exploration, experiment, the open road, anarchism, that he swims freely in big free spaces. . .’ 20 January 1934 1 June 1934 7 July 1934 ‘. . . The word love is not enough. We are both ill with our joy; we are truly dying of joy. We are broken, feverish. All those who tried to make me renounce the impossible, accept the realities of love, its limitations! I possess it. I am possessed by it. For the first time, I am incapable of enjoying Henry, incapable of thinking of anyone but Rank - I’m full of him. I awake thinking of him. His selflessness. We live for each other. We break down obstacles. We love in a way everybody believes impossible. We love impossibly . . .’ 14 August 1934 Labels: France, literature, mind/body
Thursday, October 29, 2009 Gurdjieff, one of the last century’s most enigmatic and idiosyncratic spiritual leaders, died 60 years ago today, yet his Fourth Way is still followed by small and slightly secretive groups all over the world. Although he was not the greatest of communicators through the written word, several of his students - Ouspensky and Orage, for example - did much to propagate his ideas, while others - Bennett and Nott - kept diaries which provide some interesting insights into life with the great man, not least his fondness for referring to people as idiots, and to a possible encounter with Aleister Crowley. George Ivanovich Gurdjieff was born in Alexandropol (now Gyumri), Armenia, in the 1860s or 1870s (the exact date is unknown). He grew up in Kars and travelled widely before returning to Russia in 1912 were he began teaching. There he met Peter Ouspensky, who would become his most famous student, and interpreter of his teachings. That same year he married Julia Ostrowska. During the revolution, in 1917, he returned to his family home in Alexandropol, and continued to teach Russian pupils at various locations on the Black Sea coast of southern Russia. In 1919 Gurdjieff and his closest pupils moved to Tbilisi, then to Istanbul. After travelling around western Europe, lecturing and giving demonstrations of his work, he (and his Institute for the Harmonious Development of Man) settled near Paris in 1922 at Chateau du Prieuré. Over the next decade, the Institute attracted many artists and intellectuals from Britain and the US. He remained there until 1933, when he moved to Paris, where he lived and taught for the next 16 years until his death - 60 years ago today on 29 October 1949. In his teachings, Gurdjieff propounded a system of developing all sides of one’s being (body, emotions and intellect) simultaneously - the Fourth Way - through writing, music and dance movement. Followers of the system call Gurdjieff’s principles and instructions ‘The Work’. His most famous book - Meetings with Remarkable Men - is considered to be pseudo-autobiography, and is one part of a trilogy which also includes the less readable Beelzebub’s Tales to His Grandson, and Life is Real Only Then, When I Am. But it was Ouspensky who made Gurdjieff’s ideas more accessible with books such as In Search of the Miraculous: Fragments of an Unknown Teaching. There is no shortage of websites dedicated to Gurdjieff’s teachings. Wikipedia has a biography and links; or try Gurdjieff Studies for a longer biography (taken from the Dictionary of Gnosis and Western Esotericism) and a detailed chronology of his life. There are several published diaries which reveal something of Gurdjieff’s life and teachings. In 1978, Routledge & Kegan Paul published C. Stanley Nott’s Teachings of Gurdjieff: a pupil’s journal - an account of some years with G I Gurdjieff and A R Orage in New York and at Fontainebleau Avon. (Orage being another student of Gurdjieff and interpreter of his teachings.) Nott was a young English First World War veteran and literary intellectual living in New York. Having been spiritually restless and having travelled all over the East and West looking for answers, he eventually found them with Gurdjieff. The book was republished by Arkana (Penguin) in the early 1990s, and reviewed by New Dawn Magazine. It concluded: ‘This work is a valuable one in several ways. It is an objective account by one of Gurdjieff’s earliest young followers, who kept detailed journals and diaries. It follows his personal growth through the work and the method. It is also an insight into Gurdjieff himself, his family, senior pupils and his method. Nothing is whitewashed here.’ There is one extract from Nott’s book which is widely reproduced on the internet (such as on Cadeveo’s blog Waking the Midnight Sun). It concerns a meeting between Gurdjieff and another big personality from the 20th century who turned himself into a self-styled mystic - Aleister Crowley. This is Nott’s account. ‘One day in Paris I met an acquaintance from New York who spoke about the possibilities of publishing modern literature. As I showed some interest, he offered to introduce me to a friend of his who was thinking of going into publishing, and we arranged to meet the following day at the Select in Montparnasse. His friend arrived; it was Aleister Crowley. Drinks were ordered, for which of course I paid, and we began to talk. Crowley had magnetism, and the kind of charm which many charlatans have; he also had a dead weight that was somewhat impressive. His attitude was fatherly and benign, and a few years earlier I might have fallen for it. Now I saw and sensed that I could have nothing to do with him. He talked in general terms about publishing, and then drifted into his black-magic jargon. ‘To make a success of anything,’ he said, ‘including publishing, you must have a certain combination. Here you have a Master, here a Bear, there the Dragon - a triangle which will bring results . . . ’ and so on and so on. When he fell silent I said, ‘Yes, but one must have money. Am I right in supposing that you have the necessary capital?’. ‘I?’ he asked, ‘No not a franc.’ ‘Neither have I.’ I said. Knowing that I was at the Prieuré he asked me if I would get him an invitation there. But I did not wish to be responsible for introducing such a man. However, to my surprise, he appeared there a few days later and was given tea in the salon. The children were there, and he said to one of the boys something about his son who he was teaching to be a devil. Gurdjieff got up and spoke to the boy, who thereupon took no further notice of Crowley. There was some talk between Crowley and Gurdjieff, who kept a sharp watch on him all the time. I got the strong impression of two magicians, the white and the black - the one strong, powerful, full of light; the other also powerful but heavy, dull and ignorant. Though ‘black’ was too strong a word for Crowley; he never understood the meaning of real black magic, yet hundreds of people came under his ‘spell’. He was clever. But as Gurdjieff says: ‘He is stupid who is clever.’ ’ The veracity of this account, though, has been questioned - see the Lashtal discussion board - partly because of an entry in Crowley’s diaries, or magical diaries as he preferred to call them. (There are lots of editions, but a first edition and signed can be bought at Abebooks for £500.) The entry in question, though, is quoted in a much more readable book, a biography of Crowley by John Symonds - The Great Beast. ‘Gurdjieff, their prophet, seems a tip-top man. Heard more sense and insight than I’ve done for years. Pindar dines at 7.30. Oracle for my visit was ‘There are few men: there are enough’. Later, a really wonderful evening with Pindar. Gurdjieff clearly a very advanced adept. My chief quarrels are over sex (I doubt whether Pindar understands G’s true position) and their punishments, e.g. depriving the offender of a meal or making him stand half an hour with his arms out. Childish and morally valueless’. Then there is Diary of Madame Egout Pour Sweet by Rina Hands which was published by Two Rivers Press in 1991. (Two Rivers Press is part of the Two Rivers Farm Gurdjieff group in Oregon, US, and should not be confused with a small literary UK publisher of the same name.) Hands was a pupil of J G Bennett, also ex British army but subsequently an intelligence officer as well, who studied under Gurdjieff and Ouspensky and became a spiritual guide in his own right (see the Bennett website). She was given the honorary title of ‘égout’ (French for ‘sewer’ or ‘drain’) by Gurdjieff during evening meals with him in Paris, during the last few months of his life in 1948-1949. Rina wrote this diary primarily for herself, the publisher says, ‘for she was certain even then of the importance of those days’. Here is one extract from the journal (thanks to the Gurdjieff Legacy website): ‘And so we sit with the author at the lunches and dinners, hear Mr Gurdjieff recounting his English, Scottish and Irish jokes and, of course, toasting to the idiots, the toasts usually not getting beyond nine or ten idiots. (Mr Gurdjieff says he is Idiot No 17.) Recounted are Gurdjieff’s insights into the various idiots. For example, there are three kinds of Compassionate Idiot. The first sees a man in need of help and immediately helps him, even giving him his own shirt. The second does exactly the same, but only because his fianceé’s father is observing. The third kind, says Gurdjieff, ‘So-so-so, sometimes he gives and sometimes not, depending on many things, perhaps even the weather.’ ’ And here is another: ‘People are beginning to bring their children. They sit at the table with us and participate like everyone else, often being able to choose their idiots. There is a little English girl here at the moment, Lord Pentland’s daughter, Mary Sinclair. Today she sat at lunch beside her mother and just in front of Mr Gurdjieff. The meal was a long one and she was bored. She had been eating an orange and began to tear up the peel and scatter it on the table. Suddenly Mr Gurdjieff spoke to her. ‘You know something,’ he said, ‘in life it is never possible to do everything.’ The child looked puzzled, as well she might. We all wondered what was coming. ‘You see,’ he went on, ‘on my table you cannot make this mess. Perhaps at home Mother permits. Then if you want to do this thing, you must stay at home. But if you stay at home, you will not be able to come here and see me. So you see, you can never do everything. Now put all orange back on plate and remember what I tell - never can we do everything in life.’ She did as she was told with a very good grace. . . At the end of dinner, Mr Gurdjieff asked her, ‘Who do you respect the most?’ She did not understand and her mother said, ‘Who do you think is the most important person here?’ Without a moment’s hesitation, she replied, ‘My Daddy’. I thought I detected a faint look of consternation on her mother’s face, but she need not have had any qualms. Mr Gurdjieff beamed at the child and said, ‘I am not offended. God is not offended either.’ He went on to explain that who loves his parents, loves God. If people love their parents all the time that their parents are alive, then, when their parents die, there is a space left in them for him to fill.’ From the same period comes Idiots in Paris: Diaries of J G Bennett and Elizabeth Bennett, published by - as it happens - Bennett Books, set up in 1987 to publicise Bennett’s writings and teachings. The book is made up mostly of diary entries by Elizabeth (Bennett’s wife). In her introduction, she explains that the book is ‘designed to help those readers who are not familiar with the activities and environment of Gurdjieff and his followers.’ Twice daily the group would go through a series of rituals, including the ‘toast of the idiots’. The exact repetition of these rituals, Elizabeth says, ‘left one free to attend to the shifting responsibilities of the inner world’; and ‘every moment in Gurdjieff’s presence was a chance to learn, if one was sufficiently awake to take the chance.’ Here are a couple of extracts (taken from Gurdjieff International Review): ‘We would go to lunch at midday. There was always a reading aloud of some part of Gurdjieff’s own writings, or occasionally from P D Ouspensky’s In Search of the Miraculous [referred to throughout the diaries as Fragments, Ouspensky’s original choice of a title]. The reading would last for one or two hours and then we would go to the dining room for lunch.’ ‘In the evening he listened with great enjoyment to the reading of Fragments, leaning forward with his elbow on his knee and his cigarette-holder in his hand, his eyes snapping, shaking with laughter at the references to himself.’ ‘In the evening he was enjoying the reading from Fragments so much - Chapter XII, about the right use of sex energy - that we did not start dinner until ten to twelve.’ Labels: France, mind/body, religion
Monday, October 26, 2009 Itō Hirobumi, a 19th century Japanese statesmen who played a crucial role in building modern Japan, and became its first prime minister, was assassinated a century ago today. I cannot find any substantial information about him as a diarist, but the Library of the National Diet has an excellent website, partly in English, with images of a travel diary kept by Itō when visiting Prussia during a trip which would influence the very formation of the Diet. Itō Hirobumi was born in the feudal province of Chōshū in 1841. In 1863, in gained the title of samurai, and the same year was sent by the leaders of Chōshū to England to study naval sciences. On his return, he played a minor part in the Meiji (enlightened rule) Restoration, which overthrew the shogunate (or army) and returned power to the emperor in 1868. Subsequently, he undertook government assignments to the US and Europe (a long one in 1871-1873 - see below), before being appointed home affairs minister in 1878. Itō travelled to Europe again in 1882 to study foreign government systems, and then on his return to Japan he worked to establish a cabinet and civil service, eventually becoming the country’s first prime minister. He supervised the drafting of the first constitution (Meiji Constitution) and persuaded the government to adopt it. It was proclaimed by the emperor in 1889. A year later, the National Diet - the legislative assembly - was established. The constitution and Diet are considered to have been much influenced by the experience of Itō and others during their visits to Europe, and Prussia in particular, in the 1870s and 1880s. Itō’s pre-eminence continued in the 1890s. He successfully negotiated with the UK for British nationals in Japan to be subject to Japanese law (an agreement which was then emulated with other Western nations). And he led Japan to success in the Sino-Japanese War of 1894-95. He was not so successful domestically, as the infighting between political parties hindered government programmes in the Diet. Nevertheless, he served four terms in all as prime minister. Following the Russo-Japanese War of 1904-05, when Japan occupied Korea, Itō became Korea’s first Resident General, but he was assasinated on 26 October 1909, exactly 100 years ago today, by a Korean nationalist (an event which then served as a pretext for Japan’s full annexation of Korea in 1910). For more information on Itō’s life see Wikipedia or the Notable Names Database (NNDB). I can only find one small reference to Itō as a diarist, and this is on the Modern Japan in Archives website hosted by National Diet Library. It says he kept a diary while travelling in the West in 1871-1873 - the so-called Iwakura Mission (named after the mission leader Iwakura Tomomi). The mission lasted approximately two years, making a circuit of the US, Britain, France, Eastern Europe, and Russia. The website displays images from Itō’s diary in March 1873, and says it ‘records his stay in Prussia, with detailed memos about the parliamentary and electoral systems in that country’. Unfortunately, there’s no translation into English. Labels: history, Japan, politics
Friday, October 23, 2009 George B McClellan. According to some he is among the most controversial of figures in American military history. And now Louisiana State University Press is publishing what it calls the ‘definitive edition’ of his diary from the Mexican War in the mid-1840s. However, the text of McClellan’s diary, as published in 1917, is freely available online - and very colourful it is too. McClellan was born in Philadelphia in 1826, the son of a prominent surgeon. He entered the United States Military Academy at a young age, and graduated in 1846. After joining the US Army Corps of Engineers, he was detailed as a military engineer with General Winfield Scott’s expedition in the Mexican War (1846-1848). His experiences there - including the siege at Vera Cruz - proved formative. In the mid-1950s, he was sent to Crimea to report on European methods of warfare, a trip that led him to write a book on calvary tactics, and to design a saddle which became standard equipment in the calvary. Although McClellan resigned his commission to work on developing the country’s rail network, he soon returned to military life thanks to the civil war - but his was to be a controversial war. After his Union troops had successfully driven Confederate forces from western Virginia in 1861, President Lincoln called on him to restore and command the Army of the Potomac (which had been demoralised by the defeat at First Bull Run). Although he successfully rebuilt the army, his hesitant and indecisive Peninsular campaign led Lincoln to replace him. Although recalled later, he was blamed for failing to destroy the rebel forces at Antietam in 1862, and relieved of his duties again. in 1864, McClellan, still on active duty as a US Army general, ran for president, but was roundly beaten by Lincoln. He then resigned from the Army, and went back into business as a consulting engineer, but he also served a single term as governor of New Jersey. He died relatively young, in his mid-50s, in 1885. Since then, history has never quite made up its mind about McClellan. Wikipedia says he is ‘usually ranked in the lowest tier of Civil War generals’ but has been universally praised ‘for his organizational abilities and for his very good relations with his troops’. While still in his formative years and on his first major army assignment, during the Mexico War, McClellan kept a detailed record of his day-to-day activities. Louisiana State University Press is about to publish a ‘definitive edition’ of these diaries (and letters) as edited by Thomas W Cutrer - The Mexican War Diary and Correspondence of George B McClellan. (LSU Press and Amazon.com both give November 2009 as the date of publication, yet Amazon already has the books in stock.) LSU says McClellan’s ‘colorful diary’ and frequent letters ‘provide a wealth of military details of the campaign, insights into the character of his fellow engineers . . . and accounts of the friction that arose between the professional soldiers and the officers and men of the volunteer regiments that made up Scott’s command’. It calls McClellan ‘a courageous, indefatigable, and superbly intelligent young man’ but suggests the diaries reveal him ‘contemptuous of those he perceived as less talented than he, quick to see conspiracies where none existed, and eager to place upon others the blame for his own shortcomings and to take credit for actions performed by others’. No need to buy the book, though, since the diaries are freely available - at Internet Archive - in a version edited by William Starr Myers and published by Princeton University Press in 1917. This older version has a near identical title: The Mexican War Diary of George B McClellan. Here are a few extracts from March 1847, when the US Army won control of Vera Cruz. 9 March 1847 Shortly after anchoring the preparations for landing commenced, and the 1st (Worth’s) Brigade was formed in tow of the Princeton in two long lines of surf boats bayonets fixed and colors flying. At last all was ready, but just before the order was given to cast off a shot whistled over our heads. ‘Here it comes’ thought everybody, ‘now we will catch it.’ When the order was given the boats cast off and forming in three parallel lines pulled for the shore, not a word was said everyone expected to hear and feel their batteries open every instant. Still we pulled on and on until at last when the first boats struck the shore those behind, in the fleet, raised that same cheer which has echoed on all our battlefields we took it up and such cheering I never expect to hear again except on the field of battle. Without waiting for the boats to strike the men jumped in up to their middles in the water and the battalions formed on their colors in an instant our company was the right of the reserve under [Lieut.-] Colonel Belton. Our company and the 3rd Artillery ascended the sand hills and saw - nothing. We slept in the sand - wet to the middle. In the middle of the night we were awakened by musketry a skirmish between some pickets. The next morning we were sent to unload and reload the ‘red iron boat’ - after which we resumed our position and took our place in the line of investment. Before we commenced the investment, the whole army was drawn up on the beach. We took up our position on a line of sand hills about two miles from the town. The Mexicans amused themselves by firing shot and shells at us all of which (with one exception) fell short.’ 22 March 1847 25 March 1847 After the surrender of Vera Cruz we moved our encampment first to the beach, then to a position on the plain between our batteries and the city. . .’ Labels: 1800s, Latin America, US, war
Wednesday, October 21, 2009 Jack Kerouac, author of one of America’s most celebrated novels, On the Road, died 40 years ago today. He is remembered particularly for that book, but also as the leader and inspiration for a whole generation of Beat writers. Although he left behind a lifetime of diary and notebook entries, only a limited selection has ever been published, and this was not until 35 years after his death. The New York Times said of his diaries that they ‘rescued Kerouac from the cultists’ and ‘secured his admission to the mainstream hall of fame’. In one particularly apposite entry, Kerouac tells his journal, ‘It’s not the words that count, but the rush of what is said.’ Kerouac was born in Lowell, Massachussetts, in 1922. He was recruited to be a student at Columbia University, New York, thanks to his football ability, but stopped playing before long because of a broken leg. He proved uninterested in studying, and quit before the year was out, having already decided to be a writer, and having met Allen Ginsberg and William S. Burroughs. After travelling around for a while, he joined the Navy but was honourably discharged for having a schizoid personality. Many more jobs followed, including merchant seaman, forester, and railman. Kerouac’s first novel written in the mid-1940s - The Town and the City - was not published until 1950, but received some literary acclaim. However, dissatisfied with literary conventions, Kerouac developed a new style of writing, spontaneous and free flowing, and it was this that formed the basis of his most famous book, On the Road. Written in 1951, the book was first published by Viking Press in 1957, and brought Kerouac almost instant fame. It tells of several frenetic road trips across the US and is considered, Wikipedia says, ‘a defining work of the postwar Beat Generation that was inspired by jazz, poetry, and drug experiences’. Further books followed, such as The Dharma Bums based on Kerouac’s experiences with Buddhism and a mountain climbing trip he took with the poet and essayist Gary Snyder. Kerouac married three times: his first marriage was annulled after a year, the second broke up after two months, and the third - to Joan Haverty - did not last much longer. Haverty left Kerouac while pregnant, in 1951, and it was only nearly a decade later, after a blood test, that he acknowledged Jan Kerouac as his daughter. Kerouac’s early death in 1969 - on 21 October, 40 years ago today - was caused by a lifetime of too much drinking. The internet is awash with information about Kerouac, one of the most iconic of American writers - try Wikipedia, The Beat Museum, Dharma Beat. Nearly thirty years after Kerouacs’s death, in 1998, The Atlantic Online ran a story about a hoard of unpublished Kerouac material, including ‘a voluminous diary that [Kerouac] started at the age of fourteen’. It said that ‘the great bulk’ of the writings had been turned over to Douglas Brinkley, director of The Eisenhower Center for American Studies and a professor of history at the University of New Orleans, who plans to produce a multi-volume edition of the Kerouac diaries. The article included a short preview by Brinkley himself. Here is one paragraph from that 1998 preview: ‘While gathering material for On the Road, criss-crossing America, Kerouac stopped in the eastern Montana town of Miles City. Soon Kerouac had one of his many epiphanies. ‘In a drugstore window I saw a book on sale - so beautiful!’ he wrote in his diary. ‘Yellowstone Red, a story of a man in the early days of the valley, & his tribulations & triumphs. Is this not better reading in Miles City than the Iliad? - their own epic?’ Kerouac was intent on creating his own Yellowstone Red story - but in a modern context, where existential jazz players and lost highway speedsters would be celebrated as the new vagabond saints.’ A single volume edition of the Kerouac diaries, edited by Brinkley, was published in 2004 as Windblown World, with the subtitle The Journals of Jack Kerouac, 1947-1954. Indeed, it focuses only on Kerouac’s first two novels; and there is no sign of any further volumes from Viking or Brinkley. A review by Publisher’s Weekly, on Amazon.com, explains that the ‘selections from a series of spiral notebooks into which the fledgling author constantly poured story ideas and private thoughts offer an intimate perspective on those novels’ development.’ It goes on to say: ‘Anybody who’s ever started a novel will grasp Kerouac’s obsession with his daily word count and the periodic frustration and self-doubt. ‘I know that I should never have been a writer,’ Kerouac laments at one dark moment; in another, he wonders, ‘Why doesn’t God appear to tell me I’m on the right track?’.’ There’s a longer review, by Walter Kirn in The New York Times. He says the book’s publication may ‘at first strike readers as an attempt to squeeze yet more toothpaste out of Kerouac’s flattened tube’, but that ‘unlike other posthumous volumes that have worn Kerouac’s name, it’s readable’, and tells ‘a story of self-invention, perseverance and breakthrough that should help rescue Kerouac from the cultists and secure his admission to the mainstream hall of fame, where he deserves to rest’. Here’s a further taste of Kirn’s review: ‘Despite the reputation for self-indulgence that continues to cling to him, Kerouac was a reflective, vigilant artist who constantly, and consciously, strove to overcome his limitations - the chief one being, as he saw it, his own self-critical temperament. ‘I’m going to discover a way,’ he wrote, casting forward to On the Road while he was completing The Town and the City, ‘of preserving the big rushing tremendousness in me and in all poets.’ One could call the effect he was after ‘willed spontaneity’. Verbal diarrhea it was not. The journals show him evolving toward his ideal almost by the month. Released from his monastic labors in his mother’s kitchen, the ascetic, introverted Kerouac took an abrasive dust bath in the real world and emerged a broader, stronger artist, who combined a mind for the transcendental with a feeling for the particular.’ Here are a few (undated) snippets from Kerouac’s journal (culled from Kirn’s review). ‘2,500-words today in a few hours. This may be it - freedom. And mastery! - so long denied me in my long mournful years of work, blind powerful work.’ ‘Tonight I’m going to write greatly and love greatly and strangle this folly. I’m catching these damnable changes of purpose in the flesh, red-handed, and throwing them to the winds, just like that.’ ‘It is suddenly occurring to me that a great new change is about to take place in mankind and in the world. Don’t ask me how I know this. And it’s going to be very simple and true, and men will have taken another great step forward.’ ‘No one has consciously realized the tremendous significance of American weekends, from proud sartorial Saturday night with its millions of premonitions of triumph and happiness, to dark Sunday night with its sweet and terrified loneliness.’ A last comment from Kirn: ‘The traditional rap against Kerouac - that he was a sort of half-baked dopehead primitivist who prized sensation over sense - crumbles on a reading of his journals. For every entry concerning a wild night out with his colorful cohort of insomniac poets, opiated philosophers and autodidact ex-cons, there’s a meditation on Mark Twain or a list of favorite Renaissance poets. There’s no way around it: for all his hobo posing, Kerouac began as a New England highbrow. . . He trusted, finally, in his own energy, but it was an energy produced from the finest sources: great books, adventurous friends, high moral purpose and wide experience. ‘It’s not the words that count,’ he wrote, ‘but the rush of what is said.’ Labels: literature, travel, US
Monday, October 19, 2009 ‘The town is stunned by the news that The Home Savings and Loan Co. has suspended payments and would demand 60 days notice of withdrawals. This is followed quickly by similar announcements from The Federal Savings and Loan Co. and The Metropolitan Savings and Loan Co. All of these loan companies paid 5 ½% on savings deposits and earned their money by lending on real estate.’ It’s a familiar tale, but one written down by an American lawyer - Benjamin Roth - in his diary over 75 years ago during the Great Depression. Much taken with ‘the haunting parallels to our own time’, Public Affairs, a New York-based publisher, has now brought out a hard back edition of Roth’s diary complete with black and white photographs of the era. Public Affairs provides a brief biography of Benjamin Roth on its website. He was born in New York City in 1894 but was brought up in Youngstown, Ohio. After gaining a law degree, and serving in the army during the First World War, he returned to Youngstown to work as a business lawyer. Two years after the stock market crash of 1929, he began to keep a diary, recording his impressions of what had happened to American economic life. He died in 1978. Joe Nocera, writing in The New York Times, provides a cute anecdote about how the diary came to be noticed in the present day. When Benjamin Roth’s son, Daniel, first went to work in his father’s law practice, in Youngstown, in the mid-1950s, he was told to read the diary in order to have some understanding of the trauma most of his clients had been through. Daniel Roth, Nocera says, was ‘startled’ by the diary, ‘its literary power, and also by the amount of sheer effort his father had put in trying simply to understand the events he was living through’. More than half a century later, in 2008, during the worst of the current crisis, Daniel’s son, Bill, apparently brought the diary to the attention of Jim Ledbetter, editor of the The Big Money website. Daniel Roth and Ledbetter have now edited the diary, and Public Affairs has published it as The Great Depression - a Diary, calling it a ‘chilling chronicle of hard times’. The book, which includes black and white photographs from the time, contains Roth’s diary entries for a decade, starting in June 1931 and finishing in December 1941. Nocera in The New York Times says the journal has no narrative, but is ‘compelling reading nonetheless’. What particularly struck him, he says, ‘was watching Mr. Roth . . . grope from day to day, and year to year, searching for an answer that wouldn’t be clear until long afterward’. He adds: ‘He’s like the proverbial blind man who feels an elephant’s trunk and thinks elephants look like a rope. Not unlike the way we are today, as we grope our way through our own financial crisis.’ The Washington Post describes Roth as ‘a fiend for macroeconomics’ and ‘more likely to list stock prices in his private journal than discuss his wife or children’. Like many other ‘stiff-upper-lipped professionals of his generation’, it adds, Roth is ‘anti-interventionist, anti-whiner and anti-Roosevelt’. It concludes that the book is ‘a valuable document’, but ‘offers underwhelming lessons about man’s powerlessness before market forces’. A few pages of the new book can be read on Amazon’s website, but a selection of choice extracts are also available on The Big Money website which first brought Roth’s diary to public attention last year. Here are a few of them. 30 July 1931 5 August 1931 ‘I went to the fruit market house this evening. It was almost deserted. The farmers cannot sell their produce because men are not working and it has become fashionable for each family to have its own vegetable garden.’ 7 August 1931 Labels: commerce, US
Sunday, October 18, 2009 Lee Harvey Oswald might have reached his three score years and ten on this day - 18 October - had he not been gunned down and killed, aged 24, by a Dallas night club operator while being held by the police for the most notorious assassination in modern history - that of John F Kennedy. For a couple of years in his short life, just before his 20th birthday - half a century ago today - and while trying to become a Soviet citizen, Oswald turned diarist. Oswald was born in New Orleans on 18 October 1939, 70 years ago today, but his father died even before he was born. After a period in a children’s home, he returned to live with his mother and two brothers in Benbrook and Fort Worth. In 1952, Lee and his mother moved to New York, where he was sent to a detention centre and underwent psychiatric treatment. Leaving school at 16, he joined the US Marines Corps. After qualifying as an aviation electronics operator, he was posted, in 1957, to the Atsugi Air Base in Japan. He also served in Taiwan and the Philippines before returning to California, and then, in 1959, leaving the Marines. Oswald became interested in Marxism and a supporter of Fidel Castro. He travelled to Finland and then to Moscow, where he applied to become a Soviet citizen. When his application was rejected, Oswald attempted suicide. Thereafter, he was allowed to remain in the country. He went to Minsk where he was given work as an assembler at a radio and television factory. There, in April 1960, he married Marina Prusakova, a young pharmacy worker. Two years later, Oswald took his wife and a baby daughter to the US, where they settled, first in Fort Worth, then Dallas and then New Orleans. He became increasingly political, associating with the Fair Play for Cuba Committee, as well as some known criminals. In September 1963, Oswald’s wife moved to Dallas to have her second child while Oswald, after failing to get a visa for Cuba, found a job at the Texas School Book Depository. And it was from there that he shot and killed John F Kennedy. Two days later Oswald was murdered by Jack Ruby, a Dallas nightclub operator, while in police custody. There is a huge amount of information about Oswald in books and on the internet. Wikipedia is as good a place as any to start: its biography is very well referenced, and provides many links. For over two years, Oswald kept a diary - which has been dubbed Historic Diary - and this is widely available on the internet. Wikisource has the original text, with all its errors (possibly suggestive of dsylexia), but a cleaned-up version can be found on John McAdams’ website The Kennedy Assassination. Images of the actual pages can also be viewed among the many papers of the Warren Commission Hearings at the website of The Assassination Archives and Research Center. See also The Diary Junction. The diary starts in October 1959, two days before Oswald’s 20th birthday, on arrival in Moscow where he is hoping to gain Soviet citizenship. Here are all the entries from the diary’s first week, including his 20th birthday, being snubbed by the Soviet state, and the attempt to commit suicide. (The extracts are taken from Wikisource and are as Oswald wrote them, not least using spellings like ‘flabbergassed’ and ‘Ideot’!) 16 October 1959 17 October 1959 18 October 1959 19 October 1959 20 October 1959 21 October 1959 ‘7.00 P.M. I decide to end it..[1] Soak rist in cold water to numb the pain. Than slash my left wrist. Than plunge wrist into bathtub of hot water. I think ‘when Rimma comes at 8. to find me dead it wil be a great shock. somewhere, a violin plays, as I watch my life whirl away. I think to myself, ‘how easy to die’ and ‘a sweet death,’ (to violins) wacth my life whirl away. I think to myself. ‘how easy to die’ and a sweet death, (to violins ) about 8.00 Rimma finds my unconcious (bathtub water a rich red color) she screams (I remember that) and runs for help. Amulance comes, am taken to hospital where five stitches are put in my wrist. Poor Rimmea stays by side as interrpator (my Russian is still very bad) far into the night, I tell her ‘go home’ (my mood is bad) but she stays, she is my ‘friend’ She has a strong will only at this moment I notice she is preety’ 22 October 1959 23 October 1959 Labels: crime, history, Russia, US
Friday, October 16, 2009 It is 330 years since the death of Roger Boyle, 1st Earl of Orrery, a man who managed to combine life as a soldier and statesman with that of being a playwright. As far as I know he didn’t keep a diary, but he was a contemporary of the most famous diarist of all - Samuel Pepys - who wasn’t short of a comment or two on Boyle’s plays, and on paying to see them! Roger Boyle, son of Richard Boyle, 1st Earl of Cork, was born in Lismore Castle, Ireland, in 1621. (Robert Boyle, who became a scientist and gave his name to Boyle’s Law, was one of his younger brothers.) He was created Baron of Broghill while still a boy; later he studied at Trinity College, Dublin. He fought against the Irish rebels in 1642, and then sided with Cromwell during the English Civil War, becoming one of his advisers. He was returned to Cromwell’s parliaments of 1654 and 1656 as member for the county of Cork, and also served as lord president of the council in Scotland for the latter year. After Cromwell’s death he returned to Ireland, and manage to secure favour with Charles II, and was created earl of Orrery. He was appointed a lord justice of Ireland in 1660, and drew up the Act of Settlement. In 1661, he founded the town of Charleville, County Cork, near his estate at Broghill. And towards the end of the decade, he successfully defended himself before Parliament on charges of having tried to seize the lord lieutenantship of Ireland. He died three centuries and three decades ago today, on 16 October 1679. Apart from his administrative and diplomatic abilities, Boyle was also a noted writer and playwright. Among his works were the romance Parthenissa, and The Black Prince, a verse tragedy. More information is available from Wikipedia and the British Civil Wars website. But here is what the diarist Pepys had to say about Boyle’s plays - thanks as ever to Phil Gyford and his website The Diary of Samuel Pepys. 13 August 1664 28 September 1664 Labels: 1600s, literature, UK
Sunday, October 11, 2009 Died 200 years ago today, did Meriwether Lewis, in strange circumstances. He was only in his mid-30s, but he had already led the US government’s first overland exploration to the Louisiana Purchase - a huge swathe of land bought from the French in 1803 - and from there to the Pacific Coast. Both Lewis and his co-leader William Clark kept trail diaries, amounting to almost five thousand pages, which are widely celebrated today, and freely available on the internet. Lewis was born in Albemarle County, Virginia, and moved with his family to Georgia in 1784. At 13 he was sent back to Virginia to be educated privately. He served in the army for about five years, achieving the rank of captain. In 1801, he was appointed as private secretary to President Thomas Jefferson, who had been a childhood neighbour, and became involved in the planning of an overland expedition to the Pacific coast and back, in part exploring a huge territory - the Louisiana Purchase - that, by the time of the expedition, had been bought from the French. Lewis was chosen to lead the expedition, afterwards known as the Corps of Discovery, and he selected William Clark as his second in command. Setting off in the summer of 1803, about 40 men followed the Missouri River westward, through what is now Kansas City, Missouri and Omaha, Nebraska. They crossed the Rocky Mountains and descended through what is now Portland, Oregon, to the Pacific Ocean in December 1805. The journey home began in March 1806 and was completed in September. Lewis, Clark and other members of the expedition kept diaries on the journey - amounting to almost 5,000 pages. On his return, Lewis was appointed governor of the Louisiana Territory and settled in St Louis, Missouri. However, Lewis died tragically, aged only 35, on 11 October 1809 - two centuries ago today - killed by gunshots while staying at an inn on the way to Washington DC. It is generally thought he committed suicide, though some believe he was murdered. There is lots of information on Wikipedia about Lewis and Clark, and their expedition; and there are some diary-related links on The Diary Junction pages. The best and most interesting information, though, can be found at The Journals of the Lewis and Clark Expedition Online, a website hosted by the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. The website says it uses the text published in the ‘celebrated Nebraska edition of the Lewis and Clark journals’, edited by Gary E Moulton in 13 volumes. This edition, it adds, is not only ‘the most accurate and inclusive edition ever published’, but is ‘one of the major scholarly achievements of the late twentieth century’. Apart from the journals themselves, there is also an excellent and scholarly 20,000 word introduction. Here is a small snippet from that introduction: ‘Clark’s last entry is a reminder that ‘wrighting &c.’ was one of the principal tasks of the captains, and one that they thoroughly fulfilled. As Donald Jackson has observed, Lewis and Clark were ‘the writingest explorers of their time. They wrote constantly and abundantly, afloat and ashore, legibly and illegibly, and always with an urgent sense of purpose.’ They left us a remarkably full record of their enterprise . . .’ (A much earlier version of the journals, edited by Reuben Gold Thwaites, was published in 1904 by Dodd, Mead & Company. Only 200 sets were printed, on Van Gelder handmade paper. Today these fetch several thousand pounds - see Abebooks.) Here are a couple of extracts from Lewis’s journal (the paragraph breaks are mine, but the grammar and spelling are all Lewis’s). 13 April 1805 saw some Buffaloe and Elk at a distance today but killed none of them. we found a number of carcases of the Buffaloe lying along shore, which had been drowned by falling through the ice in winter and lodged on shore by the high water when the river broke up about the first of this month. we saw also many tracks of the white bear of enormous size, along the river shore and about the carcases of the Buffaloe, on which I presume they feed. we have not as yet seen one of these anamals, tho’ their tracks are so abundant and recent. the men as well as ourselves are anxious to meet with some of these bear. the Indians give a very formidable account of the strengh and ferocity of this anamal, which they never dare to attack but in parties of six eight or ten persons; and are even then frequently defeated with the loss of one or more of their party. the savages attack this anamal with their bows and arrows and the indifferent guns with which the traders furnish them, with these they shoot with such uncertainty and at so short a distance, [NB: unless shot thro’ head or heart wound not mortal] that they frequently mis their aim & fall a sacrefice to the bear. two Minetaries were killed during the last winter in an attack on a white bear. this anamall is said more frequently to attack a man on meeting with him, than to flee from him. When the Indians are about to go in quest of the white bear, previous to their departure, they paint themselves and perform all those supersticious rights commonly observed when they are about to make war uppon a neighbouring nation. Oserved more bald eagles on this part of the Missouri than we have previously seen. saw the small hawk, frequently called the sparrow hawk, which is common to most parts of the U States. great quantities of gees are seen feeding in the praries. saw a large flock of white brant or gees with black wings pass up the river; there were a number of gray brant with them; from their flight I presume they proceed much further still to the N. W.- we have never been enabled yet to shoot one of these birds, and cannot therefore determine whether the gray brant found with the white are their brude of the last year or whether they are the same with the grey brant common to the Mississippi and lower part of the Missouri.- we killed 2 Antelopes today which we found swiming from the S. to the N. side of the river; they were very poor.- We encamped this evening on the Stard. shore in a beautifull plain. elivated about 30 feet above the river.’ 14 April 1805 of this article the Assinniboins are pationately fond, and we are informed that it forms their principal inducement to furnish the British establishments on the Assinniboin river with the dryed and pounded meat and grease which they do. they also supply those establishments with a small quantity of fur, consisting principally of the large and small wolves and the small fox skins. these they barter for small kegs of rum which they generally transport to their camps at a distance from the establishments, where they revel with their friends and relations as long as they possess the means of intoxication, their women and children are equally indulged on those occations and are all seen drunk together. so far is a state of intoxication from being a cause of reproach among them, that with the men, it is a matter of exultation that their skill and industry as hunters has enabled them to get drunk frequently. . .’ Labels: 1800s, exploration, US
Saturday, October 10, 2009 Abel Janszoon Tasman, a Dutch explorer who is credited with discovering Tasmania, New Zealand and various Pacific island, died three and half centuries ago today. Like other explorers of the time he kept a journal, though an English translation wasn’t published until the late 1890s. A copy of the book with that translation can cost well over £1,000, but thanks to Project Gutenberg Australia it is freely available on the web. Born at Lutjegast in Groningen, the Netherlands, probably in 1603, Tasman joined the Dutch East India company in the early 1630s and then made several exploratory voyages to the east. He married Claesgie Meyndrix, by whom he had a daughter, but Claesgie died young, and he married Joanna Tiercx in 1632. In the early 1640s, he was chosen to lead the most ambitious of Dutch ventures to the Indian Ocean, south of the regular routes, and to investigate the possibility of a sea route through to Chile. He sailed in August 1642 from Batavia (modern-day Djakarta, Indonesia) with two ships Heemskerk and Zeehaen, first to Mauritius, and then eastward. On 24 November, Tasman sighted the west coast of Tasmania, north of Macquarie Harbour, and then spent the next few days sailing round the island seeking a place to land. However, the weather was against him, and it was only on 3 December, when a carpenter swam through the rough sea to the shore and planted the Dutch flag in North Bay, that Tasman claimed formal possession. He named his discovery Van Diemen’s Land after Anthony van Diemen, governor-general of the Dutch East Indies, and it was to remain that for over 200 years, until the British changed the name to Tasmania in 1855 (see National Archives of Australia website for an explanation). Ten days later, Tasman was also the first European to sight land on the northwest coast of New Zealand’s South Island, which he named Staten Landt (thinking it was connected to Staten Island, Argentina). On the northern tip of the same island, one of Tasman’s boats was attacked by Māori, and four of his men were killed. He named it Murderers’ Bay (though it is now known as Golden Bay). On the return journey, he passed the Tongan archipelago and the Fiji Islands, where his ships came close to being wrecked on reefs, and charted the eastern tip of Vanua Levu and Cikobia. Unknowingly, he had circumnavigated Australia. Several further voyages followed, one again in search of a passage to Chile (in which he mapped parts of the Australian coast), one to Siam (Thailand), and another in charge of a war fleet against the Spanish in the Philippines. Having been promoted to rank of commander, and appointed a member of the Council of Justice of Batavia, he left the service of the Dutch East India company in 1653; and he died on 10 October 1659 - exactly 350 years ago today. For more information see the Australian Dictionary of Biography, the New Zealand in History website, or Wikipedia. Tasman’s Journal was originally published by Frederik Muller, Amsterdam, in 1898. The book includes a photographic reproduction of the hand-written journal, a translation by J De Hoop Scheffer and C Stoffel, footnotes by Prof J E Heeres, as well as a biography of Tasman also by Heeres. There is one copy currently available for sale on Abebooks for £1,700. But much of the book - including the English translation of the journal itself - is freely available online thanks to Project Gutenberg Australia. Here are two entries taken from the first days that Tasman sighted the land that would eventually carry his name. 24 November 1642 25 November 1642 This land being the first land we have met with in the South Sea and not known to any European nation we have conferred on it the name of Anthoony Van Diemenslandt in honour of the Honourable Governor-General, our illustrious master, who sent us to make this discovery; the islands circumjacent, so far as known to us, we have named after the Honourable Councillors of India, as may be seen from the little chart which has been made of them.’ Labels: 1600s, Australia/NZ, exploration
Friday, October 9, 2009 ‘The most frightful judicial error which has ever been made.’ This is how Alfred Dreyfus - born exactly 150 years ago today - described the judgement that had sent him to years of prison on Devil’s Island in French Guiana. After being put in irons, it was one of the very last entries he made in a diary that would later be published simply as Five Years of My Life. In the same entry, he writes about pitying torturers, for ‘history unmasks all secrets’. The full text of the book is freely available online. Dreyfus was born on 9 October 1859, one and a half centuries ago today, in Mulhouse, France, near the Swiss border, and was the youngest of seven children in a prosperous Jewish family. The family moved to Paris after the Franco-Prussian War, when Alsace-Lorraine was annexed by the German Empire in 1871. He trained at the elite École Polytechnique military school and Fontainebleau artillery school before being attached to the 32nd Cavalry Regiment. By 1889 he had been promoted to captain and was working for a government arsenal. In 1891, he married Lucie Hadamard and they had two children. Immediately afterwards he entered the war college (École Supérieure de Guerre), graduating two years later. Thereafter, he was appointed a trainee at the French Army’s General Staff headquarters. However, in October 1894, Dreyfus was accused of spying for the Germans, and arrested for treason. His Jewishness, his ability to speak German (coming from Alsace), and a complaint he had made at the war college over irregularities in the marking of papers, all seemed to prejudice many against him. The following January he was convicted in a secret court martial, publicly stripped of his army rank, and sentenced to life imprisonment on Devil’s Island in French Guiana. Two years later, evidence came to light identifying a major named Esterhazy as the real culprit, but high-ranking military officials suppressed the evidence and Esterhazy was acquitted. Instead of being exonerated, Dreyfus was further accused by the army on the basis of false documents. The Dreyfus Affair, as it became known, did not go away, partly thanks to the writer Émile Zola who published vehement accusations of a cover-up, most famously in an article headlined J’accuse!. Eventually, in 1899, Dreyfus was brought back from Guiana to face a second military trial, but he was convicted again, and sentenced to ten years in prison. He was subsequently pardoned, though, by President Émile Loubet and freed, although it was not until 1906 that he was formally exonerated and reinstated as a major in the French Army. He later served during the whole of World War I, ending his service with the rank of Lieutenant-Colonel. He died in 1935. Wikipedia has an article on Dreyfus, and an even longer one on The Dreyfus Affair. There has been very much written about The Dreyfus Affair, and Dreyfus himself wrote or contributed to various books. Most notable, perhaps, is Five Years of My Life, which covers the period of his incarceration on Devil’s Island and is made up of letters and diary entries. It was first translated by James Mortimer into English and published by George Newnes Ltd in 1901. The full text is available at Internet Archive. Here are the last two diary entries included in the book. 9 September 1896 Putting in irons a measure of precaution! When I am already guarded like a wild beast, night and day, by a warder armed with rifle and revolver! No; the truth should be told: that it is a measure of hatred and torture, ordered from Paris by those who, not being able to strike a family, strike an innocent man, because neither he nor his family will or should bow their heads, and thus submit to the most frightful judicial error which has ever been made. Who is it that thus constitutes himself my executioner and the executioner of my dear ones? I know not. One easily divines that the local administration (except the chief-warder, who has been specially sent from Paris) feels a horror of such arbitrary and inhuman measures, but is compelled to apply them to me. It has no choice but to carry out the orders which are imposed on it. No; the responsibility for them is of higher source; it rests entirely with the author or authors of these inhuman orders. In any case, no matter what the sufferings, the physical and moral tortures they may inflict on me, my duty and that of my family remains always the same. As I keep thinking of all this, I no longer fear to become even angry; I have an immense pity for those who thus torture human beings! What remorse they are preparing for themselves, when everything shall come to light; for history unmasks all secrets. I am overwhelmed with sadness; my heart is so torn, my brain is so shattered, that I can scarcely collect my thoughts; it is indeed the acme of suffering, and still I have this crushing enigma to face.’ 10 September 1896 I will close it with this last prayer to the President of the Republic, in case I should succumb before seeing the curtain fall on this horrible drama: Monsieur le President, I take the liberty of asking you to allow this diary, which has been written day by day, to be sent to my wife. It may perhaps contain, Monsieur le President, expressions of anger and disgust relative to the most terrible conviction that has ever been pronounced against a human being, and a human being who has never forfeited his honour. I do not feel equal to the task of re-reading, of going over the horrible recital again. I now reproach nobody; every one has acted within his faculties, and as his conscience dictated. I simply declare once more that I am innocent of this abominable crime, and still ask for one thing, the same thing, that search may be made for the true culprit, the author of this abominable deed. And on the day when the light breaks, I beg that my dear wife and my dear children may receive all the pity that such a great misfortune should inspire. END OF MY DIARY’ Labels: 1800s, crime, France
Fraday, October 9, 2009 ‘[I] filled my eyes with her,’ wrote Samuel Pepys about Barbara Palmer - who died exactly 300 years ago today - when she was 20, only a few months, in fact, after she'd given birth to her first child. What a woman! She was the most notorious of Charles II’s mistresses. She charmed and schemed her way into court as the Queen’s Lady of the Bedchamber and became more influential in court than the Queen herself; moreover, she had five of the King’s illegitimate children. I imagine she was too busy with this charming and scheming to keep a diary, but Samuel Pepys mentions her (and her beauty) often enough in his. [This article was first published last April but gave the wrong day for Palmer’s death - according to Wikipedia it was 9 October 1709, not 9 April 1709!] Barbara was born in 1641 at Westminster, London, the only child of the 2nd Viscount Grandison (William Villiers), and Mary Bayning. Grandison died two or so years later while fighting for the Royalists; subsequently, Mary married again, to one of his cousins, Charles Villiers, Earl of Anglesea, but Barbara was brought up without a fortune or prospects. Nevertheless, in 1659 she managed to marry Roger Palmer, although this was against his family’s wishes. Barely a year later she became a mistress of King Charles, then still in exile. Her first child, Anne, was born in 1661, probably fathered by the King. Barbara and Charles (who had been elevated to Earl of Castlemaine) separated in 1662 but remained married until his death, though it’s thought he didn’t father any of Barbara’s children. For that decade, the 1660s, Barbara Villiers, or Lady Castlemaine as Pepys calls her, was an important player in the King Charles court, sometimes more in favour, sometimes less. But her star was definitely in the ascendant when the king appointed her Lady of the Bedchamber in 1662 - very much against the wishes of the Queen, Catherine of Braganza. Indeed, behind the scenes there was a constant feud between Barbara and the Queen, but it was Barbara that tended to carry more influence. In 1663, Barbara converted to Catholicism, possibly to consolidate her position with the King. Wikipedia gives more details of the ups and downs of the relationship, but, by the early 1670s, Barbara was on the way out, supplanted by new favourites, the actress Nell Gwynne and then Louise de Kéroualle. Of Barbara’s six children, though, five are thought to have been fathered by King Charles. Both the late Diana, Princess of Wales, and Sir Anthony Eden are her descendants. After leaving court, she moved to France with several of her younger children, and then returned to England. Her husband, Palmer, died in 1705, and she married Robert ‘Beau’ Fielding, a rake and fortune-hunter whom she later had prosecuted for bigamy. She died on 9 October 1709, exactly 300 years ago today. According to Antonia Fraser’s biography of Charles II, Barbara Villiers was tall and voluptuous; she had masses of auburn hair, slanting, heavy-lidded blue-violet eyes, alabaster skin, and a sensuous, sulky mouth. I feel sure she must have been too busy flirting and scheming to keep a diary, but Samual Pepys managed to work, scheme, flirt, plus a whole lot more, and keep a diary. And he wrote often of Barbara - she was easy on the eyes, and good copy, as they say. The Diary of Samuel Pepys website - a marvellous resource - provides a short commentary on the diary entries made by Pepys about Barbara Villiers, and a separate essay on the so-called bedchamber incident. But here are some titbits from Pepys’s diary that show his admiration for her beauty and his own willingness to be influenced by it. Friday 13 July 1660 Tuesday 23 July 1661 Saturday 7 September 1661 Wednesday 21 May 1662 Wednesday 16 July 1662 Saturday 26 July 1662 Sunday 8 February 1662/63 Labels: 1600s, relationships, royalty, UK
Wednesday, October 7, 2009 It is 90 years ago today that Alfred Deakin died. He was an early Australian leader, shaping many of the new federation’s policies, and becoming its second prime minister, serving three terms in all. The National Library of Australia has an extensive set of his diaries, covering over 30 years, all of which are available to view online - but only in their original handwritten form. Alfred Deakin was born in Melbourne 1856, the second child of English immigrants. While teaching to earn a living, he studied law at the University of Melbourne, and graduated in 1877. By 1880, though, he had a taken a job as editor of The Leader, a weekly magazine associated with Melbourne’s daily paper, The Age. About the same time, he was elected to the Victorian parliament, where he served for 20 years, sponsoring an important irrigation bill and acts protecting factory workers. In 1882, he married Elizabeth Browne. They had three daughters. From the early 1890s or so, Deakin refused cabinet posts in the Victorian parliament so as to concentrate his efforts on the federation movement. This led, eventually, to him travelling to England (with others) in 1900 to guide the constitution bill through parliament. He served in the new commonwealth’s first parliament as attorney general under prime minister Sir Edmund Barton, and then, in 1903, became prime minister himself. His party, though, devoted to protectionism, could not muster a majority, and he resigned the following year. Deakin returned as leader in 1905. The legislation his government passed in the next three years is considered to have done much to shape the Australian commonwealth. He also served another short term as prime minister from 1909 to 1910. He retired from politics in 1913, and died, aged only 63, on 7 October 1919, exactly 90 years ago today. There is no shortage of biographical information about Deakin on the internet. Wikipedia has a longish entry and a few links, but both the National Archives Australia’s Prime Ministers website and Australian Dictionary of Biography Online have far more detailed biographies. For Deakin’s diaries, though, look no further than the National Library of Australia which holds a large archive of Deakin material, and has made images of all the pages of all the diaries available on its website. The National Library of Australia gives a brief description of the holding: ‘Alfred Deakin’s diaries, kept each year from 1884 to 1916, provide a succinct account of his daily activities. There is a tendency towards fuller entries in the later years. Two volumes were kept for 1887 and for 1890 (the large one for the latter year being used in part for his visit to India). The series also contains Deakin’s two ‘travel diaries’, being a daily account of his tour of America in 1885 and his visit in 1887 to the Colonial Conference in London. The diaries are based on letters that Deakin sent back to his family, which were transcribed and edited by his sister, Catherine Deakin. Deakin’s ‘Crude index to the diaries’ comprises brief diary entries for the years 1878 to 1913. . .’ I can’t find any substantial extracts of the diaries on the internet, but Marilyn Lake has culled a few quotes - including a part of the one below - for her interesting essay on Deakin’s oratorical powers - Sounds of History: Oratory and the fantasy of male power. Here is Deakin in London in April 1887 (taken from the page images on the National Library of Australia website): ‘I have been to the Commons and found the interior so rich and beautiful as the exterior - the House itself tho’ not over large - of fine carved wood and full of members. Heard no speaking of special note. Two feeble old Liberals moved an amendment and an aldermanish but capable Conservative made a good solid reply. Easter coming. Start for Scotland on Thursday.’ Labels: 1800s, Australia/NZ, politics
Sunday, October 4, 2009 The British Library has launched an appeal to raise over £300,000 to save a 17th century diary from being sold abroad. According to the Library, the journal, by Sir John Narbrough, contains the fullest known account of his voyage to South America, and is particularly significant because it demonstrated ‘the apparent viability of the English dream of trade in the Pacific’. Narbrough (or Narborough) was descended from an old Norfolk family, according to Wikipedia’s information, and received his naval commission in 1664. He was promoted to lieutenant during the Second Anglo-Dutch war, and then, after the battle of Solebay during the Third Anglo-Dutch War, he was made rear-admiral and knighted. In the late 1670s, he had further naval successes against North African pirates. He was appointed commissioner of the Navy in 1680, an office he held till his death in 1688. The most comprehensive information about Narbrough online is available from the second volume (of eight) of The Naval History of Great Britain by Dr John Campbell published in 1818, which is freely available on Googlebooks. Between the second and third Anglo-Dutch wars, though, Narbrough led an important voyage of exploration to the South Seas in HMS Sweepstakes. He was instructed to investigate the possibilities of trade with, and in that context to survey and map, the coasts of South America but without provoking the Spanish. He successfully sailed the treacherous Straits of Magellan, and fulfilled two of the three objectives. However, he ran into trouble with the Spanish authorities, and consequently had a somewhat inglorious return to England. A narrative of this journey was first published some 20 years later in An Account of Several Late Voyages and Discoveries to the South and North. Towards the Streights of Maggellen, the South Seas, the Vast Tracts of Land beyond Hollandia Nova, &c. also towards Nova Zembla, Greenland or Spitsberg, Groynland or Engrondland, &c. Copies are available, at a price - £2,800 for a 1711 edition - on Abebooks. Earlier this year, Narbrough’s original journal, which includes the period of his voyage to South America, was discovered alongside a series of illustrated maps and drawings with the family papers of the Earls of Romney at the Centre for Kentish Studies. It was subsequently sold to a foreign private collector for £310,000, but the government placed a temporary bar - until 7 November - on exporting athe manuscript. So far the British Library has raised £290,000 (£200,000 from the National Heritage Memorial Fund), but is appealing for a further £30,000 to improve on the sale price. A press release from the British Library says: ‘The beautifully illustrated journal together with intricate maps and drawings of animals and natives of the region enables Narbrough to be seen more clearly as a crucial figure in the history of English exploration. If his search for gold and dealings with the Spaniards look back to the heroic days of Francis Drake, his preoccupation with the welfare of his crew and his scientific interests look forward to the achievements of James Cook. On top of that, Narbrough, a contemporary of Samuel Pepys, was an excellent diarist.’ History Today has a good summary of the story. Peter Barber, the head of map collections at the British Library, told MailOnline that the diary’s discovery was ‘fantastically exciting - this is an historical icon of the future and it was unknown, visually so good, scientifically excellent and of such high research value’. And he explained why the diary is so important: ‘Narbrough’s journey proved it was possible for Britain to get involved in the Pacific trade, which set the direction of our foreign policy for the next 50 years . . . The repercussions [were] extraordinary - if Sir John hadn’t made his trip, Britain probably would not have gone into the War of the Spanish Succession and there would never have been the South Sea Bubble of 1720-21 - the biggest financial crisis of the 18th century.’ It was Barber who put the case to The Museums, Libraries and Archives Council for Narbrough’s diary and charts to be considered of national importance. In his expert submission (available online), he gave three reasons (nb: Barber and the British Library seem to use both spellings of the name): ‘1. Narborough’s successful passage of the Straight in both directions proved that the South Seas trade was technically feasible for the English. . . 2. The manuscript enables Narborough, one of the few English-born explorers of the later seventeenth century, to be seen more clearly as a crucial figure in the history of English exploration. If his dealings with the Spaniards suggest a latter day (and much less successful) Francis Drake, his precise measurement of coastlines and depths, his lively ethnographical and wild life curiosity and his active interest in the welfare of his crew, well illustrated in the maps, foreshadow the achievements of James Cook. 3. The charts from the voyage are of considerable importance as amongst the earliest English large-scale maps of Spanish America. Those of Valdivia and particularly of Port St Julian are especially important for their ethnographical and wild life illustrations.’ Finally, here are several short extracts from the diary, taken from the article at MailOnline. ‘This island is of indifferent height and full of large timber trees, like ash.’ ‘And there are those trees, as in the Straits of Magellan, of which the rind is like hot ginger.’ ‘Here is good fresh water - the island is about two leagues long from the North West to the South East. . . The earth is a black mould.’ ‘I killed many ducks and geese and hars and ostorages here. There are good fowls in the winter, a great store of mullets in the summer and very good salt in the ponds.’ Labels: 1600s, exploration, UK
Friday, October 2, 2009 ‘What led to the intention of proceeding to London? The scene opens about the end of April. Before the intention of coming to London for the sake of study was actually formed, I had a secret design in my mind of coming here to satisfy my curiosity of knowing what London was.’ This is how Gandhi - born 140 years ago today - started a diary he wrote in London aged 19. Only the first 20 pages of the diary still exist, but the text is available online, and appears fairly banal. A Canadian group, however, is propagating the idea that Gandhi’s London Diary is something else entirely, something secretly masonic. Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi was born on the coast of present-day Gujarat, India, on 2 October 1869. He lived an extraordinary life, and is considered the country’s most important political and spiritual leader. He led India to independence in the middle of the 20th century, and was a pioneer of resistance (to the British rulers) through mass civil disobedience without violence, thus becoming an inspiration for similar civil rights movements across the world. He died in January 1948, leaving behind 100 volumes of collected writings, amounting to over 50,000 pages of text. Wikisource has an incomplete listing of the volumes, plus a photograph of them. The very first volume, which covers the years 1988 to 1896, contains the first 20 pages of what is now called Gandhi’s London Diary. According to A Comprehensive, Annotated Bibliography on Mahatma Gandhi by Ananda Pandiri (which itself runs to three volumes), the diary originally included 120 handwritten pages. In 1909, Gandhi gave it to his nephew who was travelling to London; ten years later the nephew gave it to Mahadev Desai. By then, Desai had become Gandhi’s personal secretary and would stay so for over 25 years. For some unknown reason, Desai copied out only the first 20 pages of the diary, and the contents of the other 100 pages remain unknown. (In contrast to Gandhi, Desai was a committed diarist, and eventually published nine volumes - Day to Day with Gandhi - one of which is available on Wikisource.) Here are the first and last surviving paragraphs from Gandhi’s London Diary. All the pages between these two extracts are devoted to an analysis of how the trip to London came about, and a description of the sea voyage. Thus, in fact, it is not a proper diary at all. October-November 1888 Elsewhere on the internet, a search for ‘Gandhi’ and ‘diary’ soon churns up an intriguing proposition posted by a Toronto group, Conspiracy Culture. Last year they hosted a lecture - Gandhi the Freemason? - in connection it seems with the publication of a book by Tim Watson titled Gandhi - Under Cross-Examination. Here’s some of the propaganda for that lecture: ‘The title ‘Mahatma’ is derived from those who are initiated members of the Theosophical Society but who are already initiated members of Freemasonry. The title means ‘Great Soul’. Gandhi’s London Diary was his Freemason diary. It was written in Masonic Code. Only 20 pages survive from this book. The rest of the 120 page volume has conveniently disappeared. The 20 pages which survive describe his initiation to the 3rd Degree of Freemasonry. Why is Gandhi’s affiliation with Freemasonry and the Theosophical Society being suppressed? Gandhi went to the Bar and studied law at the Inner Temple, one of the Inns of Court in the City of London, quite a privilege for a person of colour in the late 19th century, late 1880s in point of fact. Student admission was normally reserved for landed gentry and aristocrats. How did he luck out? Why was Gandhi in touch with the head of the Muslim League, a known terrorist organization? And why was this organization based in London? It is well known that MI6 and British Freemasonry were behind the creation of the Muslim Brotherhood, generally regarded as Islamic Freemasonry, which boasts known terrorists like Osama bin Laden among its membership. It is also well known that the CIA was behind the creation of al-Qaeda, the Mujahaddin and the Taliban. . .’ Etc. etc. etc. Interestingly, there exists an earnest article about Gandhi and Freemasonry on the website of the Grand Lodge of India, but it makes no reference to London Diary. And one final thought. Gandhi produced another work with the word ‘diary’ in the title - Delhi Diary. This is a collection of prayer speeches in the very last months of his life, from October 1947 to January 1948. A sample can be seen on Questia’s website. Labels: Asia, politics, religion, UK |
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