The reading of other peoples’ diaries is a slightly sinful pleasure, which one would not easily undertake if the diarist were very close to you. Some wonderful diaries have been published, usually heavily edited to protect the living, the tender feelings of the families of the recently dead or to avoid the libel courts. Only historic diaries, Pepys’ (1660-69) and Boswell’s (1763-1795) can completely ignore these restrictions and the pleasure of reading them is sharpened by this freedom.
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| Samuel Pepys |
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| James Boswell |
Some modern diaries are only lightly edited although all are selections. One feels that Alan Bennett’s flow without much restriction, Alan Clark’s seems very candid and Joe Orton’s glory in gay abandon. The editors of fine diarists like Chips Channon and James Lees-Milne have, one believes, discreetly suppressed significant passages. Diarists are a heterogeneous group of widely differing character but there are some common threads.
The setting
Normally a memorable diarist needs to have a wide social or professional circle. Pepys held high office. Boswell relentlessly pursued the London literary world, the Continental courts on his Grand Tour, lions like Voltaire and Rousseau and was a member of the Scottish gentry. Lees-Milne knew the aristocracy well through the National Trust and was a lively, if snobbish, social asset. Diplomat and journalist Robert Bruce Lockhart met everybody in 1920-30’s London but sadly failed to illuminate anyone as he was not a perceptive writer. Beaton, Bennett and Orton throw a vivid light upon the world of the theatre and fashion. Channon and Clark combined high politics with moneyed ease while Alanbrooke and Tommy Lascelles saw dramatic events on the wide canvas of world war decisions and royal concerns, though the former was rather too tight-lipped for modern tastes.
The human touch
Meeting the famous is in itself not enough: it is the small events which give the diarist
sympathetic humanity.
Thus Pepys:
“A silk suit, which cost me much money, and I pray to God to make me able to pay for it.” (1.7.1660)
Plutocratic Chips Channon had more lavish tastes:
“It is very difficult to spend less than £200 a morning when one goes out shopping” (27.9.1935)
A young Boswell enjoys iced Twelfth Night cakes in London:
“I took a whim that between St Pauls and the Exchange and back again, taking the different sides of the street, I would eat a penny Twelfth-cake at every shop where I could get it. This I performed most faithfully. (6.1.1763)
Chris Mullin MP helps a humble Sunderland constituent:
“I rescued a woman and four young children facing eviction because their housing claim had been rejected. So rare these days that I do anything useful apart from collecting the litter in the street.” (30.8.2007)
Lees-Milne and his wife upset the fox-hunting 10th Duke of Beaufort, when their dogs disturb a vixen and her cubs:
“The Duke was almost apoplectic. Said he would not have our bloody dogs on his land. Bloody this and bloody that. He would get his gun and shoot them….Then he called at the house…again he ranted…Ghastly values, ghastly peoples. How I hate them. I shall never set foot in the big house again, in the unlikely event of being asked, and shall never speak to the hell-hound again beyond a curt good-morning if I pass him on the road” (21.5.1979)
Lascelles expects sobriety at Buckingham Palace:
“Augustus John, the painter, came to receive the OM from his Sovereign. I did not see him but trust it was one of his sober days. Not long ago I asked Ainslie, the Steward here, why a certain footman had been dismissed. ‘He took to drink, Sir’ he said. ‘On one occasion, I even suspected him of being fuddled in the Presence”
Idols
Often diaries are enlivened by a touch of hero-worship, most famously by Boswell of Dr Johnson, earning him this sardonic comment from Mrs Boswell:
“I have seen many a bear led by a man but I never before saw a man led by a bear”. Yet Boswell went on to write the finest biography in the language.
More recently, Alan Clark comparing his Mrs T to her predecessor:
“….Ted was a rude and arrogant flobbo without an ounce of patriotism in his body; whereas The Lady is a most wonderful person and could still work miracles” (2.6.1981)
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| Chips Channon |
Chips Channon’s admiration for Neville Chamberlain’s appeasement policies reached heights of hysteria:
“An unbelievable day, in which two things occurred. Hitler took Vienna and I fell in love with the Prime Minister” (11.3.1938)
Later Chamberlain agrees to fly to Munich:
“I felt sick with enthusiasm, longed to clutch him….then the House rose and in a scene of riotous delight, cheered, bellowed their approval. We stood on our benches, waved our order papers, shouted….-a scene of indescribable enthusiasm-Peace must now be saved, and with it the world …..I don’t know what this country has done to deserve him” (28.9.1938)
Cat’s claws
Theatrical diarists usually have a feline aura and some of the most colourful are or were gay.
Thus Alan Bennett strikes his characteristic note:
“Spike Milligan dies and the nation’s laughter-makers queue up testify to what it was that made his talents unique, how irreplaceable in his inspired lunacy, and how they personally have benefited from his instructive anarchy. All of which is, I suppose, true, though comedians are never reluctant to provide such posthumous attestations of one another’s genius. It happened when Peter Cook died and with the same maudlin affection. “Dear Cooky”. “Dear Spike.” The necessary element of suffering, the cost always sought for in the deaths of comics, and which in Peter’s case came with the drink, is here supplied by mental illness (‘No less than 12 nervous breakdowns’ the price he had to pay)…..The disciples were always the problem, The Goon Show was very funny, the people who liked it (and knew it by heart) less so.”
(28.2.2002)
Cecil Beaton first meets Noel Coward on a trans-Atlantic liner:
“I staggered from my bed this morning, dressed in plus fours and managed to walk to my chair on deck without being ill. There I met Noel Coward and Mrs Venetia Montagu, whom I had always imagined to be charming and interesting people. At once they attacked me. ‘Why do you write such malicious articles? Why do you say such nasty things about Mr Coward?’ I staggered, my knees quaked. ‘You must not attack me now. I am feeling ill’…The blows came raining down upon me
…..As for Noel Coward, the truth is I’ve wanted to meet him for many years. I admire everything about his work…. Why then have I hated him?... I hated him personally, out of pique. I was envious of his success, of a triumphant career that seemed so much like the career I might have wished for myself. (5.4.1930)
Joe Orton reveals his macabre side a few days after burying his mother:
“I’d taken my mother’s false teeth down to the theatre. I said to Kenneth Cranham, ‘Here, I thought you’d like the originals’ ‘What?’ ‘Teeth’, I said. ‘Whose?’ he said. ‘My mum’s’ I said. He looked very sick. ‘You see,’ I said, ‘it’s obvious you’re not thinking of the events of the play in terms of reality, if a thing affects you like that.’ Simon Ward shook like a jelly when I gave them to him.” (4.1.1967)
Mrs Orton’s dentures subsequently served as castanets in the production of Loot.
Notable events
We like diaries if they give graphic eye-witness accounts.
Tommy Lascelles recalls resigning in 1929 as secretary to Edward, Prince of Wales and telling him some home truths:
“..The Prince himself sent for me. The resultant interview was the most exhausting experience I’ve ever had. I did not consider myself any longer in his service, and when he asked me why I wanted to leave, I paced his room for the best part of an hour, telling him, as I might have told a younger brother, what I thought of him and his whole scheme of life, and foretelling, with an accuracy which might have surprised me at the time, that he would lose the Throne of England.
He heard me with scarcely an interruption, and when we parted said, ‘Well goodnight, Tommy, and thank you for the talk. I suppose the fact of the matter is that I am quite the wrong sort of person to be Prince of Wales’ – which was so pathetically true that it almost melted me.” (5.3.1943)
Samuel Pepys observes the Great Fire of London:
“I walked to my boat… So near to the Fire as we could for smoke; and all over the Thames, with one’s face in the wind you were almost burned with a shower of firedrops…When we could endure no more upon the water, we to a little alehouse on the Bankside .. and there stayed and saw the Fire grow...in a most horrid malicious bloody flame, not like the fine flame of an ordinary fire… It made me weep to see it. The churches, houses, and all on fire and flaming at once, and a horrid noise the flames made, and the cracking of houses at their ruin.” (2.9.1666)
Boswell surreptitiously introduces high Tory Dr Johnson to demonised Radical John Wilkes:
“When we entered Mr Dilly’s dining-room, he found himself in the midst of a company he did not know. I kept myself snug and silent, watching how he would conduct himself….. ‘And who is the gentleman in lace?’ ‘Mr Wilkes, Sir’ This information confounded him still more. He had some difficulty to restrain himself, and taking up a book, sat down at a window…At dinner, Mr Wilkes placed himself next to Dr Johnson, and behaved to him with so much attention and politeness that he gained upon him insensibly.’ After helping Johnson to fine veal, the conversation turns to Foote, Garrick and Cibber. Mr Lee mentioned some Scotch, who had taken possession of a barren part of America, and wondered why they should choose this. “Johnson: ‘Why, Sir, all barrenness is comparative. The Scotch would not know it to be barren. Boswell: Come, come, you have now been in Scotland and say if you did not see meat and drink enough there. Johnson: Why, meat and drink enough to give the inhabitants strength sufficient to run away from home!’….Johnson: ‘For you know Boswell lives among savages at home and among rakes in London. Wilkes; Except when he is with grave, sober, decent people like you and me’…. Somebody said ‘Poor old England is lost’ Johnson ‘It is not so much to be lamented that old England is lost, as that the Scotch have found it.’
I attended Dr Johnson home, and had the satisfaction to hear him tell Mrs Williams how much he had been pleased with Mr Wilkes’ company and what an agreeable day he had passed.” (15.5.1776)
Men behaving badly
Some diarists are far from saintly.
Pepys dallies with Betty Lane:
" I had my full liberty of towsing her and doing what I would but the last thing of all; for I felt as much as I would, and made her feel my thing also, and put the end of it to her breast and by and by to her very belly - of which I am heartily ashamed. But I do resolve never to do more so." (24.9.1663)
Boswell rampages through London on 3 consecutive nights;
“I madly drank a bottle of claret by myself and this made me brutally feverish. So I sallied to the Park again, and again dallied….As I was coming home, I was picked up by a strumpet at the head of St James’s Street, who went with me to the entry of the passage from Hay Hill by Lord Shelburne’s, and in my drunken venturousness, I lay with her. (29.3.1776) I observed a pretty, fresh-looking girl… told me her name was Nanny Smith…. She agreed to go with me to the One Tun, Chelsea, a house of lewd entertainment in a garden, and there I enjoyed her. (30.3.1776) When I got into the street, the whoring rage came upon me. …I went to Charing Cross Bagnio with a wholesome-looking, bouncing wench, stripped and went to bed with her. But after my desires were satiated by repeated indulgence…I parted from her after she had honestly delivered to me my watch and ring and handkerchief, which I should not have missed I was so drunk.” (31.3.1776)
Orton indulges his tastes with 8 men in a public convenience after a boring, sex-free trip to Libya: (the details are much too graphic to reproduce).
“The little pissoir under the bridge had become the scene of a frenzied homosexual saturnalia. No more than two feet away the citizens of Holloway moved about their ordinary business. I came….and quickly pulled up my jeans.
I told Kenneth who said, ‘It sounds as though eightpence and a bus down the Holloway Road was more interesting than £200 and a plane to Tripoli.’” (4.3.1967)
The trials of politics
Many of the best diarists have been steeped in politics, a bubbling arena for intrigue and jealousy. Richard Crossman and Tony Benn had too many axes to grind but Chips is a great favourite while Alan Clark and Chris Mullin are the pick of near-contemporaries.
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| Alan Clark |
Clark attends the annual Privy Councillors’ dinner at the Palace:
“Royal Gallery, and overflow in the Robing Chamber presided by Prince of Wales and including various – Cranborne, Ancram, Tom King and – God alive, how did he get one?- Atkins R. Copious and excellent wines.
The Queen is transformed, no longer the wicked stepmother with her frumpish and ill-natured features that have been permanently in place since Mrs T rescued the 1979 election. As I said at the time, the whole Royal Family delighted in the elimination of Diana, and now has settled back comfortably into their favourite role – preservation of their own perks and privileges at the expense, whenever necessary, of other individuals and institutions. The Empire, the Church, the Law, the hereditary principle, the Lords, even a yacht, and now there are faithful servants who are being dismissed in droves as they modernise Sandringham and Balmoral.” (10.12.1997).
Mullins does not admire aspects of New Labour:
“Much speculation about which members of the New Labour elite will be parachuted into the safe seats vacated by MPs retiring at the last moments. Ed Balls and David Miliband are among the names being mentioned. Not for them the cutting of teeth in hopeless seats or the long, wearying slog around the selection circuit. A few high-level phone calls, a quiet word in the right ear and….Bob’s your uncle….a safe seat for life. And who knows, within two or three years a foot on the ministerial ladder, first steps on the inevitable rise to the Cabinet. Most resentment, not to say anger, is reserved for Shaun Woodward, who is being touted for St Helens.” (11.5.2001)
“Shaun Woodward has been selected in St Helens. Hearing him on the radio this morning promising to be the champion of the poor and downtrodden made my flesh creep. This is one of New Labour’s vilest stitch-ups.” (14.5.2001).
It is not possible to do justice to all diarists and the literature must be huge. The selections above are certainly idiosyncratic and the omissions are glaring. Diarists are a very mixed group – almost exclusively male, women are more protective of their reputations than men – and to write well you normally must have an obsessive interest in your own person – a huge ego in other words. Boswell was for ever analysing himself as did Channon and Clark. Chips put his finger on a key aspect “What is more dull than a discreet diary? One might as well have a discreet soul.” Long may the indiscretions flow!
SMD
25.5.2011
Copyright Sidney Donald 2011
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