Secret Voices E-Book

Sarah Gristwood

• Herausgeber: Batsford
• Kategorie: Sachliteratur, Reportagen, Biografien
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 805

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2024

Beschreibung

'Totally addictive.' – Alice Loxton, The Daily Telegraph 'An intriguing, highly snackable guide to women's experiences.' – Independent 'A modern classic.' – Alison Weir, author and historian 'The sort of book you return to again and again.' – Tracy Borman, author and historian  A captivating collection of daily extracts from women's diaries, looking back over four centuries to discover how women's experience – of men and children, sex and shopping, work and the natural world – has changed down the years. And, of course, how it hasn't.   Organised around the calendar year, in this engaging anthology you'll find Lady Anne Clifford in the seventeenth century and Loran Hurnscot in the twentieth both stoically recording the demands of an unreasonable husband; Joan Wyndham and Anne Frank, at much the same time, but in wildly different settings, describing their first experiences with sex; and Anne Lister (TV's Gentleman Jack) in eighteenth-century Yorkshire exploring her love affairs with women alongside Alice Walker in twentieth-century California.   With several selections for each day, from the 1st January to the 31st December, this book is a fascinating record of how women were thinking, feeling and reacting to historical events. From Virginia Woolf relishing her new haircut and Oprah Winfrey meditating on her career to Emilie Davis chronicling the death of Abraham Lincoln and teenage Ma Yan yearning for education in poverty-stricken China, Secret Voices contains a rich mix of well-known diarists and less familiar ones, and often the voices echoing down the centuries sound eerily familiar today. 

Leseprobe

Contents

Foreword

January

February

March

April

May

June

July

August

September

October

November

December

Diarists

Sources

Index

Foreword

This was never going to be an exhaustive record of women’s diaries. With so many individuals writing, under such different circumstances, a definitive record would be an impossibility. It is a personal take – but reflective, I trust, of the available evidence. Some women were writing in the deepest possible privacy; others had a reader in mind. But if I were to pick out the single strongest emotions voiced through all these diary entries I think it would be anger – frustration. And that is something that our cultural norms have allowed women to voice only secretly.

The diary has been the echo chamber for a woman’s own voice, as opposed to what she was supposed to say. And, down the centuries, the need to utilize records in support of a male-oriented history has often kept those voices silent – until now. But thanks to new work, to a new foregrounding of women’s history (and, in no small part to the internet’s role in making such work internationally available), they can be heard with increasing clarity.

A number of these diarists did contemplate the possibility of their diary being read. Many pioneers and emigrants, indeed, kept daily journals to be sent to relatives back home. I have limited the use of these journal-letters, though not excluded them entirely. More invidiously, perhaps, Dorothy Wordsworth read her famous diaries to her brother (who made use of her observations in his poetry), and Virginia Woolf speculated as to what kind of a book her husband might eventually make of hers. Oscar Wilde had a wry word for it: ‘it is simply a very young girl’s record of her own thoughts and impressions,’ says Cecily in The Importance of Being Earnest, ‘and consequently meant for publication.’

Two of the most famous female diarists, Anne Frank and Fanny Burney, addressed their diaries respectively to an imaginary ‘Kitty’, and to ‘a Certain Miss Nobody’. What that implies, of course, is that they could not find a live auditor to whom they could speak freely. A diary, wrote P. D. James, noting the prevalence of the ‘Dear Diary’ address, can be ‘a defence against loneliness ... both friend and confidant, one from whom neither criticism nor treachery need be feared.’ It can also be the repository of ‘thoughts that cannot be spoken aloud’. Or, as Fanny Burney put it, ‘To Nobody, then, will I write my journal, since to Nobody can I be wholly unreserved, to Nobody can I reveal every thought, every wish of my heart ...’ Still that sense of secrecy.

Of course, there is another agenda implicit here: the assumption that women’s experience differs from that of men; that their diaries reflect that difference; that they need to be chronicled separately. It risks cliché to suggest that the female diary is more inclined to introspection – or even that the women found the diary form, with its privacy and informality, its unassuming quality, less daunting than the open self-proclamation of the male-dominated autobiography.

But historically women’s experience has been different to that of men. (The husband of pioneer Amelia Stewart Knight likewise faced the hardships of the Oregon Trail – though he was not eight months pregnant while doing so.) Yet anthologies not devoted specifically to women still include an alarmingly low percentage of female diarists.

Many years ago, I wrote a book about the subjects women cover in their diaries. In this country at least, women’s writing was then to some degree still regarded as a second-class subject of study; but the point is that your own country was pretty much all you could study, since the barely nascent internet had not yet made texts from around the world available. (I managed, then, to include a few American texts not published here – but only because my mother happened to be visiting the USA, and was prepared to spend much of her trip in the Library of Congress.) The internet has exponentially altered that situation – but with new opportunities come new responsibilities. Something else has changed in those years, likewise for the better. Recent times have seen a growing awareness of the need for any selection of voices from the past to be as inclusive as possible.

Historically, the production (and, crucially, preservation) of diaries has, for obvious reasons, been weighted towards the literate middle and upper classes. That has, in turn, had the effect of prioritizing white women; though the situation is slowly being remedied today. I found a particular challenge in tracking down English-language or translated diaries by women of Asian origin; though I look forward to hearing from those whose work has taken them further along these lines. A disproportionate number of diaries published, moreover, are by professional writers ... or else by the female connections of famous men (Sophia Tolstoy, Frances Lloyd George, Dorothy Wordsworth, Anna Dostoevsky), a fact that tells its own story.

By the same token, the list of published diaries in the shops places a particular weight on the overtly extraordinary; recorded either because the diarist enjoyed an experience they wanted to remember, or suffered one the world must never forget. (Travellers, on the one hand – and on the other victims of the Holocaust.) I have limited the use of such very specific records – yet behind the uniqueness of what is described, there often lies a depth of common sentiment. Few widowhoods are as famous as that of Queen Victoria; few suffer Anne Morrow Lindbergh’s experience of the kidnap and death of her son. But the experience of grief and loss is universal.

The therapeutic qualities of diary-writing – ‘journalling’ – are now well known. The way women turn to their diary in times of distress may, however, present an unbalanced picture – besides offering a gloomy prospect for the diary reader! As Barbara Pym put it: ‘I seem to write in it only when I am depressed, like praying only when one is really in despair.’ But historically women have often had good cause to feel dissatisfaction, and the secrecy of the diary form allowed them to voice it. It may, indeed, have been the diary’s prime purpose. Beatrix Potter and Florence Nightingale are only two of the women whose diary-writing ceased or changed once they had at last found their path in life; others end their diary-keeping on marriage and maternity. Oprah Winfrey in her forties took the conscious decision to stop using her journals as therapy – venting her worries about men and weight – and instead started using them to, as she puts it, ‘express my gratitude’. Happily, the gratitude diary has its own long history, from the early Quaker and Dissenter diaries.

The frequency of diary-keeping greatly increased in the late seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, with the new interest in the private, as opposed to the public, identity. That gives us a lot of time to look back on – a lot of instances when we now know, unlike the diarist themselves, how their story turned out. It is impossible to read Anne Frank’s plans for life after the war without the painful awareness of what actually awaited her. It is also impossible not to feel a slight smug glow when reading George Eliot’s conviction that the novel on which she was working, Middlemarch, would never amount to anything ... Sometimes experience noted in a diary would emerge later in a better-known form. Reading Louisa May Alcott’s description of her sister’s decline and death, one can’t but think of Beth in Little Women, who likewise found the sewing needle grow ‘too heavy’. Often an element of outside knowledge can illumine the diary itself; hence the brief biographies of principal diarists given at the back of this book.

I would urge readers to consult those biographies for another reason, also: Secret Voices aims to reflect the totality of experience described in women’s diaries; and some of that, inevitably, travels to a dark place: suicide (Rachel Roberts); abortion (Loran Hurnscot). A look at the life stories of the diarists might provide a warning flag for those readers with particular vulnerabilities. Another word of warning: the diaries quoted here reflect the time in which they were written. As such they are bound occasionally to deploy terms no longer in use, or to display attitudes no longer considered acceptable.

The format of this book, arranged by the days of the calendar year, presents both opportunities and challenges. It excludes many famous diarists who choose not to list their entries under a particular day; as well, of course, as diarists from any part of the world not using the Western calendar. (As it is, Sophia Tolstoy and Anna Dostoevsky listed their entries according to the Julian rather than the Gregorian calendar, which Russia did not adopt until 1917.) In Britain, Jan Morris listed the entries in her ‘thought diary’ only as ‘Day 25, Day 26’. The Australian diarist Helen Garner, known to have written every morning and every night, nonetheless chose to have her diaries published without dates: I therefore include only such entries as she has allowed to be dated by reference to external events.

Arranging entries as if through one calendar year can risk confusion. Queen Victoria mourns the death of Prince Albert in January (1862); but marries him only in February (1840). In that particular case, I hope the basic facts of her life are sufficiently well-known; but with less famous writers, I have often tried to select their diary entries so as to tell a brief coherent story. Individual diarists may thus not be evenly distributed throughout the book, or the year.

Details like the place of writing, or the age of the writer – or the identity of other individuals mentioned – have been given only where I feel it helpful for an understanding of the text. Moreover, it has often been necessary to edit individual diary entries for length. (Vera Brittain seeing her fiancé off to the First World War runs, in the original, to seven pages, as does Susan Sontag’s discussion of her mother.) I found it necessary to take a similarly free hand with the question of where to standardize punctuation and spelling; or where to maintain, for example, the use of the dash as chief punctuation point to give a sense of the era, and the breathless quality of the writer’s entry.

No decision to adapt was taken without a pang; but I was sustained by one particular thought ... If the end result were to send readers back to check, to explore further in the original, this anthology would indeed have served its purpose.

Sarah Gristwood, Deal, July 2023

January

‘I have set myself many tasks for the year –

I wonder how many will be accomplished?

A Novel called Middlemarch ...’

George Eliot, 1869

1 January

New Year’s morn. 1858. Welcome in, New Year! A perfect day ushers thee in. I greet thee with mingled tears of joy and sorrow. I will record no vows, no good resolutions this year, – to shed, at the beginning of the next, bitter, repentant tears over their graves. In the secret depths of my own heart I make some vows. Oh! may God give me strength to keep them!

Charlotte Forten, 1858

A bright frosty morning! And we are both well. The servants are going to have their little treat, and we are going to see Mr and Mrs Burne Jones and carry a book for their little boy. I have set myself many tasks for the year – I wonder how many will be accomplished? A Novel called Middlemarch, a long poem on Timoleon, and several minor poems.

George Eliot, 1869

... i am beginning a new year in a new character. May it be worn decently yet lightly! I wish not to be rigid and fright my daughters by too much severity. I will not be wild and give them reason to lament the levity of my life. Resolutions, however, are vain ...

Hester Lynch Thrale Piozzi, 1782

To day has bin a memorable day and i thank god I have bin spered to see it the day was religiously observed all the churches were open we had quite a Jubiliee in the evenin i went to Joness to a Party had a very pleasent time.

Emilie Davis, 1863 (the day the Emancipation Proclamation became official)

My beloved and I woke at seven. Found by our bed side Petticoats and Pockets, a new year’s gift from our truest friends.

Eleanor Butler, 1790

Have been unable to write my Journal since the day my beloved one [Prince Albert] left us, and with what a heavy and broken heart I enter on a new year without him! My dreadful and overwhelming calamity gives me so much to do, that I must henceforth merely keep notes of my sad and solitary life. This day last year found us so perfectly happy, and now! Last year music woke us; little gifts, new year’s wishes, brought in by maid, and then given to dearest Albert, the children waiting with their gifts in the next room – all these recollections were pouring in on my mind in an overpowering manner ... Arthur gave me a nosegay, and the girls, drawings done by them of their dear father and me. Could hardly touch my breakfast.

Queen Victoria, 1862

Entered on another year. Happy experience emboldens us to look forward with joyful anticipations to the voyage of life; we have been hitherto in calm water indeed, and for this how thankful we should be, but we must expect some gales before we drop our anchor. May we be prepared to meet them!

Caroline Fox, 1840

What I have to write today is terribly sad. I called on Gustav [Mahler] – in the afternoon we were alone in his room. He gave me his body – & I let him touch me with his hand. Stiff and upright stood his vigour. He carried me to the sofa, laid me gently down and swung himself over me. Then – just as I felt him penetrate, he lost all strength. He laid his head on my breast, shattered – and almost wept for shame. Distraught as I was, I comforted him.

We drove home, dismayed and dejected. He grew a little more cheerful. Then I broke down, had to weep, weep on his breast. What if he were to lose – that! My poor, poor husband!

Alma Mahler-Werfel, 1902

This is the first day of a new year; and I am not in the humour for being wished a happy one. Into the hands oh God of all consolation, into thy merciful hands which chastise not willingly I commit the remains of my earthly happiness; and Thou mayest will that from these few barley loaves & small fishes, twelve basketfuls may be gathered.

Elizabeth Barrett (Browning), 1832

2 January

Sick day. Lay quietly & lived in my mind where I can generally find amusement for myself. Planned Fred’s wedding, took Lulu to Boston, & went on with my novel. Dr W. came as my head was bad. Said rest, food & time were all I needed A. [Anna, her sister] in p.m., Rubbed & made cosy & slept all night. Thank God for the blessing of sleep!

Louisa May Alcott, 1887

I looked with amazement at the slashing reductions in coats, dresses and suits – up to a third of the price – but, contrasting them with the ‘new look’ ones, they did look dated. I knew if I’d been buying I’d not have been tempted to buy out-of-date clothes and give up coupons. I am so lucky. I’ve no middle-aged spread and a dart each side of my corsets gives me a waist. I’ve a good hem on my costume and with dropping the skirt from the top to the bottom of my waist belt and putting on a velvet ribbon belt from a belt I have, I can lengthen my skirt to London length, and with my new dusty pink and altered best dress I feel quite up to date.

Nella Last, 1948

It is wrong to set out on the New Year without thinking of the great event of 1865: the American war ending with the downfall of Slavery. It is nothing short of the fulfilment of the words: ‘With men it is impossible: but with God all things are possible.’

Lucy (Lady Frederick) Cavendish, 1866

... We came back from Rodmell yesterday, and I am in one of my moods, as the nurses used to call it, today. And what is it and why? A desire for children, I suppose, for Nessa’s life [her sister, Vanessa Bell]; for the sense of flowers breaking all round me involuntarily. Here’s Angelica – here’s Quentin and Julian [Vanessa’s children]. They make my life seem a little bare sometimes; and then my inveterate romanticism suggests an image of forging ahead, alone, through the night; of suffering inwardly, stoically; of blazing my way through to the end – and so forth. The truth is that the sails flap about me for a day or two on coming back. And it is all temporary: yes, let me be quite clear about that.

Virginia Woolf, 1923

3 January

What a day! One huge snowstorm from end to end and the thermometer at zero. I feel smothered. Even the windows are so thickly covered with snow and frost that the sensation is of being literally imprisoned. This has seemed as long as three days.

The other day I came across this sentence in a magazine.

‘It is the unhappy people who keep diaries. Happy people are too busy to keep diaries.’

At the time it rather impressed me as clever, but after thinking it over I have decided that it may be epigrammatic but it is not true. To be sure, I am not exactly a happy person; but I kept a diary and enjoyed doing so when I was quite happy. Besides, if being busy made people happy I ought to be a very happy mortal. No, the epigram should have read ‘It is the lonely people who keep diaries’ – people who are living solitary lives and have no other outlet for their moods and tenses. When I have anybody to ‘talk it over with’ I don’t feel the need of a diary so strongly. When I haven’t I must have a journal to overflow in. It is a companion – and a relief.

L. M. Montgomery, 1904

Bliss and rapture.

Alma Mahler-Werfel, 1902

Yes. This diary does sound vain. But that is what it is for. To get it out of my system. I can not even pray without the little jeering thoughts saying ‘Ha! Ha! Ha! Being melodramatic. Lying prone. Seeming urgent.’ It’s devilish to keep them down. That is one of the biggest reasons for this blabber-book. To write here and thus away all the little jibbers.

Elizabeth Smart, 1934

4 January

There’s no reason after all why one should expect special events for the first page of a new book; still one does: and so I may count three facts of different importance; our first use of the 17 Club; talk of peace; and the breaking of my tortoiseshell spectacles. This talk of peace (after all the most important of the three) comes to the surface with a kind of tremor of hope once in three months; then subsides; then swells again. What it now amounts to, one doesn’t even like to guess; at any rate, one can’t help feeling something moving.

Virginia Woolf, 1918

Snow deep. A few sheep wandering about the field in great distress. One of them apparently consumptive and coughing up its poor lungs. Made my heart ache. I wish they cou’d take money, or that I cou’d relieve them in their own simple way.

Lady Eleanor Butler, 1789

Rapture without end.

Alma Mahler-Werfel, 1902

Such a beautiful day, that one felt quite confused how to make the most of it, and accordingly frittered it away.

Caroline Fox, 1848

5 January

... a man in a greatcoat made like a soldier’s followed me down our lane & asked if I wanted a sweetheart. He was a few yards behind & I said, ‘If you do not go about your business, sir, I’ll send one that will help you.’ I heard him say, ‘I should like to kiss you.’ It annoyed me only for a moment, for I felt, on coming upstairs, as if I could have knocked him down. But I ought not to have spoken, nor should, but being so near home I was at unawares provoked to it.

Anne Lister, 1820

Yesterday I read an article about blushing by Sis Heyster. This article might have been addressed to me personally. Although I don’t blush very easily, the other things in it certainly all fit me. She writes roughly something like this – that a girl in the years of puberty becomes quiet within and begins to think about the wonders that are happening to her body ...

... I think what is happening to me is so wonderful, and not only what can be seen on my body, but all that is taking place inside. I never discuss myself or any of these things with anybody; that is why I have to talk to myself about them.

Each time I have a period – and that has only been three times – I have a feeling that in spite of all the pain, unpleasantness, and nastiness, I have a sweet secret, and that is why, although it is nothing but a nuisance to me in a way, I always long for the time that I shall feel that secret within me again.

Sis Heyster also writes that girls of this age don’t feel quite certain of themselves, and discover that they themselves are individuals with ideas, thoughts, and habits. After I came here, when I was just fourteen, I began to think about myself sooner than most girls, and to know that I am a ‘person’. Sometimes, when I lie in bed at night, I have a terrible desire to feel my breasts and to listen to the quiet rhythmic beat of my heart.

Anne Frank, 1944

Turned out of doors into the street! In the anguish of my mind, I broke out into complaints; this only was my fault. I took a chaise to Leigh; my brother not being at home, dismissed it and stopped two nights. He brought me home with an intention to effect either a reconciliation or a separation. He could do neither. Mr Stock [her husband] wants me either to remain at home penniless, as an underling to his own daughter, or to be kept by anyone that will take me. I cannot agree to such a reconciliation, or such a separation, whilst he has plenty of money. I am obliged totally to withdraw myself from any domestic affairs, in obedience to my husband’s orders; to live in an apartment alone; not to sit at table with the family, but to have my meat sent to me; and amuse or employ myself as I can.

When and how will this end?

Ellen Weeton, 1818

6 January

Black day. Dark, no sky to be seen; a livid sea; a noise of boiling in the air. Dreamed the cats died of anti-pneumonia. Heart attack 8 a.m. Awful day. No relief for a moment. Couldn’t work. At night changed the position of my bed. At five o’clock I thought I was at sea tossing – for ever. N.B.

Katherine Mansfield, Ospedaletti, Italy, 1920

A sun-burst touched my face early this morning and actually coaxed me out of bed. I opened the window and exuberant greetings floated up to me from the box hedges, just as in April. Polly said the crows were cawing lustily, the thrushes and tits twittering all round. Out in the garden I saw the yellow jasmine blooming, and they tell me snowdrops and other spring flowers will appear soon. How different Scotland, with its frost and snow melting at noonday and a happy imminence of spring through the winter, is from the northern United States with the sod frozen hard and not a sign of greenness or fragrance during four or five months!

Six long notes and two short written this morning, and there are still a dozen in the offing, but my hands demanded a rest ... Curiously enough, a presentiment keeps knocking away at my mind’s door that I shall not much longer be able to keep at the typewriter as steadily as I have. Often my hands feel cramped or limp, which does not surprise me, as they have never been still, except in sleep, since I was two years old. They mean the world I live in – they are eyes, ears, channels of thought and goodwill. Sooner would I lose my health or even the ability to walk (and walking is among the few cherished bits of personal liberty I possess) than the use of these two hands. However, if I take proper care of them now and use other muscles not already overtasked, I shall still have the joy of working in different ways. What these ways will be I am not certain, but I shall know when I begin experimenting.

Helen Keller, 1937

Beb [her husband] was on duty so I had one of my little dinners and went straight to bed. I am in best looks. Marie Bashkirtseff is always apologetic when she makes a similar entry in her diary, but why should one be? Today I could really pass a great deal of time very happily just looking at myself in the glass. It’s extraordinary how one’s whole outline seems to alter, as well as complexion and eyes.

Lady Cynthia Asquith, 1917

7 January

Dashed home to change hurriedly for the Buckingham Palace reception for the Commonwealth Prime Ministers. It was an awful nuisance having to dress but the only way I could see of meeting my old friends during my frantic week. It was nice to see Indira Gandhi again: I warm to her. She is a pleasant, rather shy and unassuming woman and we exchanged notes about the fun of being at the top in politics. When I asked her whether it was hell being Prime Minister she smiled and said, ‘It is a challenge.’ Oddly enough, I always feel protective towards her.

Every group I spoke to greeted me as the first woman Prime Minister to be. I hate this talk. First, I’m never going to be PM and, secondly, I don’t think I’m clever enough. Only I know the depth of my limitations: it takes all I’ve got to survive my present job.

Barbara Castle, 1969

I am in a very bitter state. The end of every hope and plan is that I am tied to an invalid [her husband Hubert] whom I do not love. I have tenderness for him, and pity, but there’s no love, there’s sometimes panic fear and sometimes hatred. Well, I conceal my bitterness. Short of finally breaking with Barny [her lover], which I cannot and will not do, for it is only he that makes this dreadful existence possible at all, I am drearily unwilling to do everything I can for this Hubert I once loved – or imagined I did.

Loran Hurnscot, 1924

... a neighbor told me she had been in a small car accident and had managed to persuade the local paper to ignore her true age (as it appears on her license) and to print her age as thirty-nine! I was really astonished by this confidence. I am proud of being fifty-eight, and still alive and kicking, in love, more creative, balanced, and potent than I have ever been. I mind certain physical deteriorations, but not really. And not at all when I look at the marvelous photograph that Bill sent me of Isak Dinesen just before she died. For after all we make our faces as we go along, and who when young could ever look as she does?

May Sarton, 1971

A queer day. Up early, and had my bread and milk and baked apples. Fed my doves. Made May a bonnet, and cut out a flannel wrapper for Marmee, who feels the cold in the Concord snowbanks. Did my editorial work in the p.m., and fixed my dresses for the plays. L sent $50, and F $40, for tales. A. and boys came.

To Dorchester in evening, and acted Mrs Pontifex, in ‘Naval Engagements,’ to a good house. A gay time, had flowers, etc. Talked half the night with H. A. about the fast ways of young people nowadays, and gave the child much older-sisterly advice, as no one seems to see how much she needs help at this time in her young life.

Dreamed that I was an opera dancer, and waked up prancing.

Louisa May Alcott, 1868

8 January

O such a scramble of shopums as I have gone through! ... I have bought velvet and cloth cloaks, a hat, flowers, a bonnet, boots and shoes, gloves, collars and cuffs, a canezon, a sealskin muff, a linsey petticoat, a set of jet, a buckle, a set of studs, a fan, a new gown, etc., etc.

Lucy (Lady Frederick) Cavendish, 1864

... My dear Brother’s letter reached me with the melancholy, but not unexpected intelligence of my dearest Mother’s death on the 23rd Augt last. Very thankful am I to Almighty God that she was to the very last free from pain, & although I was not permitted to be with her I bow with submission to the will of God & with a grateful heart for all his mercies humbly trusting to meet him my dear Father & all we love on earth in a better world.

Sarah Broughton, clergyman’s wife and emigrant to Australia, 1837

At Marks and Spencer’s I bought a peach coloured vest and trollies to match with insertions of lace. Disgraceful I know but I can’t help choosing my underwear with a view to it being seen!

Barbara Pym, 1934

9 January

The President’s man Jim – whom he believed in, as we all believe in our own servants – and Betsy, Mrs Davis’s maid, decamped last night. It is miraculous that they had the fortitude to resist the temptation so long. At Mrs Davis’s, the hired servants are mere birds of passage; first they are seen with gold galore, and then they fly to the Yankees. But I am sure they have nothing to tell. It is wasted money to the Yankees.

Mary Boykin Chesnut, Confederate States of America, 1864

Tiberio was standing with the light on in the bedroom looking out, and he’d been waiting for me for three hours. I had such a bad feeling. He calmly told me that he wanted to leave me, because he’d had enough of waiting for me all night, of me never being home because I was at the House of Commons, because I was married to the constituency and not to him ...

It boils down to this: he doesn’t see me, he doesn’t have a life with me, and he wants a partner who is a partner, not a ghost. He is going to find out if his office can move him to Italy, and if that happens we should separate.

I have this image of me clinging to the bottom of his trousers while he’s trying to shake me off.

‘I don’t want to live without you,’ I pleaded. ‘You are the most important thing in my life.’

‘Oona, you’re bullshitting me. I’m not the most important thing in your life. If I was the most important thing in your life you would stop working the hours you do ...’

I was left choking on that really bitter pill that so many women swallow, or so many people actually: the choice between your job or your life ...

Oona King, 2001

Is sexual attraction natural, or must it be suppressed? ...

I see life without sexual love. I do not know whether this can be, but I should incline to think that it is possible. It is simpler and more comprehensible; however, not knowing where truth is, I dare not affirm this, but want to think that it is the truth.

The feeling exists. And at present it expresses itself in uncouth and misshapen forms. New ones must take their place. That is what I think.

Nelly Ptashkina (aged 15), 1919

What a day this was for me. Till the evening I was in the most anxious expectation. Fremantle made Mr French speak to Papa in the morning and as Papa did not mention one word about it to anybody at home, I concluded that he had refused. The evening my surprise and happiness were beyond expression at hearing that on the contrary Papa had given a very favourable answer. It is now decided I shall marry Fremantle, I could say much on this subject but what I must feel on this occasion is not easily expressed.

Betsey Wynne Fremantle, 1797

10 January

Look at that ugly dead mask here and do not forget it. It is a chalk mask with dead dry poison behind it, like the death angel. It is what I was this fall, and what I never want to be again. The pouting disconsolate mouth, the flat, bored, numb, expressionless eyes: symptoms of the foul decay within. Eddie wrote me after my last honest letter saying I had better go get psychiatric treatment to root out the sources of my terrible problems. I smile, now, thinking: we all like to think we are important enough to need psychiatrists. But all I need is sleep, a constructive attitude, and a little good luck.

Sylvia Plath, 1953

Still in my solitary confinement. Had a new cloak brought home, and the first thought on seeing it was, Well! I have made sure of this, however (having long wished for a Winter garment of this description, and not had it in my power to obtain it). Alas! ... how presumptuous! That very night might my soul have been required of me, disease having seized me, or fire have destroyed both it and me and all else I possessed. But Thou, O Father, hast been very merciful. Yes! although my husband makes me as it were, a prisoner in my own home, I have a Peace which he knows nothing of, a Joy which he cannot take away. Oh! That his heart would soften, and that he might repent.

Ellen Weeton, 1818

Head swimming with murderous rages again. Must keep away from people during this period as it is almost uncontrollable – never know where it will light.

Dawn Powell, 1935

Today we were sitting in front of the cabin, the whole family. Mama was picking over rice; [her brothers] Renato and Nhonhô were making bird-traps, I was darning my stockings and [her sister] Luizinha was watching us work. All of a sudden I asked, ‘Why do you think we’re alive? Wouldn’t it have been better if God hadn’t created the world? Life is nothing but work. We work, eat, work some more, and sleep, and then we never know if we’re finally going to hell or not. I really don’t know why we’re alive. Mama said, ‘What a horrible thing to say, child! What have you been studying your catechism for all this time ... ?’

Helena Morley (aged 13), 1894

11 January

Sir William Hamilton and his Lady came in the morning. It is impossible to say how civil they were, especially Lady Hamilton, she is a charming woman, beautiful and exceedingly good humoured and amiable. She took all the management of this affair, and the wedding is to be tomorrow at her own house. I never felt more miserable than I did this morning, I was almost sorry that my marriage was to take place, I feared I would not have courage to undertake so much. However I made up my mind to it. Happy I am sure to be with Fremantle, it certainly is dreadful to be obliged to leave my family ...

... For the last time I shall write as Miss Wynne, what a day tomorrow is – I dread it.

Betsey Wynne Fremantle, Naples, 1797

Another sedentary day, which must however be entered for the sake of recording that the Lords have passed the Suffrage Bill [giving British women the vote]. I don’t feel much more important – perhaps slightly so. It’s like a knighthood; might be useful to impress people one despises.

Virginia Woolf, 1918

My birthday.

Sita Wrede has talked the doctors of her Luftwaffe hospital into taking me on to work there ... The training includes first-aid under fire (in case we are posted to an airfield), etc. I have been given a Red Cross uniform, a new set of identity papers and an identity tag on which my name is engraved twice and which can be broken in two if I am ‘killed in action’, one half being then sent back to my ‘dear ones’ – rather a weird feeling.

Marie Vassiltchikov, 1945

This day began in the early hours of the morning with a long talk. Lyndon woke up, as he often does these nights, and we talked about the prospects for the years ahead. They are so fraught with danger and with decisions whose outcomes we cannot see. I am torn between two feelings. One, the healthy one, is that I should enjoy each day in this job and live it to the fullest. The other, that the end of the term is like the light at the end of a tunnel. And my advice to Lyndon is so mundane and uninspiring: stay healthy, laugh a little, remember you are as tough as other Presidents who have lived through the same or worse.

Lady Bird Johnson, White House, 1966

The old Eve in me is delighted with buying a trousseau for our nine months’ journey. It is a long time since I have had a really good ‘go’ at clothes and I am revelling in buying silks and satins, gloves, underclothing, furs and everything that a sober-minded woman of forty can want to inspire Americans and Colonials with a due respect for the refinement of attractiveness! It is a pleasure to clothe myself charmingly! For the last ten years I have not had either the time or the will to think of it ... I believe that it is a deliberate expenditure because six months ago I determined that I would do myself handsomely as part of a policy, but I daresay one or two of the specially becoming blouses are the expression of concrete vanity.

Beatrice Webb, 1898

12 January

At one o’clock we all went to Lady Hamilton’s [sic] where the ceremony was performed by Mr Lambton’s Chaplain. What I felt at the wedding is not to be described. Prince Augustus gave me away, Sir Gilbert Elliot, Sir William Hamilton, Mr Lambton, Colonel Drinkwater were all witnesses. We all dined at Sir William’s, went to the opera in the evening and returned to the Albergo Reale ...

Betsey Wynne Fremantle, Naples, 1797

The hope of peace all broken up again; once more running in every direction, as far as one can tell.

Virginia Woolf, 1918

Soon the flotilla began to roll in, some sober, some slightly whizzed, some gloriously and homerically stinkers. Everyone was delighted to see me again. There were guitars and accordions so we sang sea shanties, then everything from ‘Loch Lomond’ to ‘Lili Marlene’. There were men lying on the floor, heaped up on bunks, dancing on the table. It was a grand party, and Hans, who was wearing my earrings, got happily drunk, but almost made a point of not showing me any special affection. I imagined he was shy in front of his new crew.

Then to my surprise, a little Norwegian Wren appeared.

‘Who’s that?’ I asked suspiciously.

‘Oh,’ Hans said casually, ‘that’s Lieven, she’s a mother to us all.’

Lucky old Lieven, I thought, wondering how many of the men there had been her lovers. She certainly didn’t look the motherly type ...

Joan Wyndham, 1945

13 January

I never felt better and happier in my life than I did today. I did not choose to see anybody and the weather being horrid we could not go to see any thing of Naples so I did not go out of my apartment. The family is not so dismal and Papa in quite high spirits. Lady Hamilton came with Sir Gilbert in the evening, it is not possible to express the many civilities she has shown us as well as every other person here.

Betsey Wynne Fremantle, Naples, 1797

Dear Kitty,

Everything has upset me again this morning, so I wasn’t able to finish a single thing properly.

It is terrible outside. Day and night more of those poor miserable people are being dragged off, with nothing but a rucksack and a little money. On the way they are deprived even of these possessions. Families are torn apart, the men, women and children all being separated. Children coming home from school to find that their parents have disappeared. Women return from shopping to find their homes shut up and their families gone....

... And as for us, we are fortunate. Yes, we are luckier than millions of people. It is quiet and safe here, and we are, so to speak, living on capital. We are even so selfish as to talk about ‘after the war’, brighten up at the thought of having new clothes and new shoes, whereas we really ought to save every penny, to help other people, and save what is left from the wreckage after the war ...

... I could go on for hours about all the suffering the war has brought, but then I would only make myself more dejected. There is nothing we can do but wait as calmly as we can till the misery comes to an end. Jews and Christians wait, the whole earth waits; and there are many who wait for death.

Yours, Anne

Anne Frank, 1943

Can we count on another twenty years? I shall be fifty on 25th, Monday week that is; and sometimes feel that I have lived 250 years already and sometimes that I am still the youngest person on the omnibus. (Nessa says she still always thinks this, as she sits down.) And I want to write another four novels; and the Tap on the Door; and to go through English literature, like a string through cheese, or rather like some industrious insect, eating its way from book to book, from Chaucer to Lawrence. This is a programme, considering my slowness, to last out my twenty years, if I have them.

Virginia Woolf, 1932

14 January

Ann was married to Wm. Osgood. God grant them to live in love to their lives end. She lived with us 13 years and half, and was a Faithful Servant.

Mary Woodforde, 1686

I fed the hens, put the blackouts up all over (except the dining-room, which I left till later) and made tea: a boiled egg, wholemeal bread, two tiny toasted scones from yesterday, a baked apple – and a little piece of Christmas cake for my husband. I drew the table up to the fire, and my husband’s slippers were warm when he came in. I wonder if Arthur was right once when he said, ‘You make home too attractive, dearie – and it’s turned into your prison.’ But when I look at my husband’s tired face sometimes, I wonder what else I could have done.

Nella Last, 1942

Poor Alice Green! ... the other evening when I was alone with her she broke down and wept bitterly in my arms. Arthur Strong, after using her money and her influence to climb into the position of Librarian to the House of Lords, marries a brilliant and beautiful Greek scholar – Eugenie Sellers. For eighteen months the poor woman has been eaten into with bitterness; when at times I have watched her unawares she has looked like a lost soul. And a certain lack of dignity and the extreme unhappiness of her expression has alienated some of her old friends, and even Society is becoming cold to her. The world gets impatient at her restless unhappiness: at fifty years of age, with a good income, distinguished position, a woman ought to settle down contentedly. But some women never grow too old to be in love, or at least to require love. And why should they?

Beatrice Webb, 1898

15 January

A new term in a new year – a golden opportunity to get a peer’s heir – a worthy theological student – or to change entirely! But Oxford really is intoxicating.

Barbara Pym (aged 18), 1932

Inconstant

We sailed last night, had fair weather and pretty good wind all day. I find it quite odd to be alone here. I dare not think on those I left at Naples for it makes my heart swell with anguish, however I can make no complaints for I am as happy in my situation as it is possible to be. Fremantle is all attention and kindness. I have got a comfortable little cabin where I can do what I like. The Vice Roy and Colonel Drinkwater are a pleasant society for us.

Betsey Wynne Fremantle, 1797

... I suppose [her friend] Jos doesn’t know any more about it than I do, but her words ‘I hope ... ’ imply that people only have children when they really want to. That does make sense, but on the other hand, the way things happen in poor families makes me wonder if this is so. Last week at the X’s, the mother and father were down in the dumps because they are going to have a sixth child, while the other five already don’t have enough to eat. Surely, when there is no work, that is too many children for their means. But isn’t it up to them, then, to decide not to have any more?

Henriette Dessaulles (aged 20), 1881

... the chestnut horse is disposed of at last. Papa sent Reynolds to the Zoological Gardens to enquire the price of cat’s meat: £2 for a very fat horse, 30/- for a middling one, thin ones not taken as the lions are particular. However he is sold to a cab owner along the road for £15.

Beatrix Potter (aged 15), 1882

16 January

It is strange how even in a land where scarce a thing is growing, a sudden benediction comes, and lo, the spring is there.

So it was yesterday morning, or at least it was so to me, for I went for the first time these three weeks out from among the brown houses of the town to see the Moongod’s temple, now fully excavated and already abandoned. I had meant to try the hour’s ride, but Abdulillah stepped providentially out of space from his green-tasselled car and offered to take me. Sayyid ’Ali came; Qasim seized his white coat with the gilt buttons and leaped in: the Mansab’s son boarded us in the High Street, and I snatched up little Husain, who was the only infant about, for a joy-ride: he was far too overcome to say a word of thanks, but in silence turned his face towards us at intervals from the seat in front, with an expression of such ineffable ecstasy that that alone seemed like the springtime of the world ...

Freya Stark, Hureidha, Arabia, 1938

All the morning, preparing clean stays, covering the steel busk, etc. & putting by my hoard, forty-four pounds & Tib [Isabella Norcliffe] owes me six, which will make fifty. I never was so rich before.

Anne Lister, 1819

But oh these resilient sunny mornings! The lemon trees, the tall poinsettias and hibiscus and residential palms! He gives me back my love of the world, my medicinal, alchemical love that can convert everything into food for the soul and senses. I am happy. I go to him at lunchtime with two lettuces and a basket of strawberries under my arm. I see the tall palms with fat trunks, the dark untidy garden and the little hut that is his studio. Such underground tunes singing in my head! And the things said and unsaid hardly have a difference, so little do they burst or break the surface in issuing forth.

Elizabeth Smart, 1940

My brother came with a view to assist, if in his power, to put an end to the unhappy state in which Mr Stock and me were. It was done. My hopes are not very sanguine; but should this peace be of short continuance, or should it be more lasting than before, may I bear it meekly ...

Ellen Weeton, 1818

17 January

A.’s [her husband’s] birthday. He is nervy over his birthday just as Doria and I are. Today I felt oh! the nothing done; all the effort and waste of small creative powers, and nothing to leave behind. Is that why people want children? But I want the glory of living, and not to live by proxy, even through a child.

Ivy Jacquier, 1922

I fear my diary has got very behindhand. The last three weeks have been so busy and happy that I have not had the opportunity for writing things down. C. [her married lover David Lloyd George; Chancellor of the Exchequer] returned from Wales on Dec 29th and from then till now I have been with him at W. H. [Walton Heath, Lloyd George’s home], coming up every day to town, and going back in the evening. It has been like an idyll, but alas! came to an end yesterday when the family returned from Criccieth, & I returned home. The longer we are together, the more our love and affection seem to increase, so that it is all the more difficult to part. But we have resolved not to be miserable at parting, for ‘my true love hath my heart, & I have his’ and happy memories will buoy us up till ‘the next time’ ....

Frances Stevenson, 1915

I had ridden over late in the morning, when the workmen had gone. No one was available to lead the donkey, till the small Muhammad, who has the beautiful mother, saw me and leaped at the chance of missing school ...

Sick men came running as we went: peasants came up to shake hands and greet my reappearance: an old man spurring along sold me a bronze spear from Mekka [sic]. It was pleasant to be alive again at last in the friendly open world ... When I reached our door my heart was giving some trouble, and I have had to rest it and see people from my bed again.

Freya Stark, 1938

When Henry [Miller] telephones me, wants to see me, the world begins to sing again, the chaos crystallizes into one desire – all the heavings, fermentations, constellations are soldered by the rich sound of his voice.

I run upstairs in my kimono and add five pages to the dream book. I obey only instinct, senses, and they are subjugated by Henry. I am afloat again. Children. What are children? Abdication before life. Here, little one, I transit a life to you of which I have made a superb failure. No. N. What a female I am! Even children. I must have been tired last night. Allons donc. Pull yourself together, you fake artist, you ...

The other day, Hugh [her husband] took me to a hotel room to fuck me – playing at an adventure. ‘You whore, you, you whore.’ He loved the strangeness of it, and for a moment as I touched his body it seemed like a stranger’s body – but it was a joyless game for me. I’m physically obsessed by Henry. I’m afraid I’m a faithful female, all in all!

Anaïs Nin, 1933

18 January

A strange empty day. I did not feel well, lay around, looked at daffodils against the white walls, and twice thought I must be having hallucinations because of their extraordinary scent that goes from room to room. I always forget how important the empty days are, how important it may be sometimes not to expect to produce anything, even a few lines in a journal. I am still pursued by a neurosis about work inherited from my father. A day when one has not pushed oneself to the limit seems a damaged damaging day, a sinful day. Not so! The most valuable thing we can do for the psyche, occasionally, is to let it rest, wander, live in the ever-changing light of a room, not try to be or do anything whatever.

May Sarton, 1971

Another skip, partly due to my writing a long letter to Nessa, which drained up some of the things I should have said here. But I like this better than letter writing. On Thursday and Friday we worked away at printing. Unvarying cold and gloom, which turns now to rain, now to snow. This is the Hell of the year. We seem to mark time in the mud.

Virginia Woolf, 1918

... I received a message from my uncle, requesting to see me. I called upon him, and he offered me an asylum at his house, should I ever want one. He had heard how I had been situated lately, and was then ready, he said, to take me in. I told him that a kind of reconciliation had taken place; that his offer, notwithstanding, had released my mind from an anxious burthen; for I did not know where to go when turned out before. At the same time, I would do all that was in my power to avoid being placed in such a situation again. I had ever striven to act as a wife ought to do; in the same way, I would endeavour to continue. I could not promise more.

Ellen Weeton, 1818

Dined with Mr and Mrs P. We talked of the wrongs and suffering of our race. Mr P. thought me too sensitive. – But oh! how inexpressibly bitter and agonizing it is to feel oneself an outcast from the rest of mankind, as we are in this country! To me it is dreadful, dreadful. Were I to indulge in the thought I fear I should become insane. But I do not despair. I will not despair; though very often I can hardly help doing so. God help us! We are indeed a wretched people. Oh, that I could do much towards bettering our condition. I will do all, all the very little that lies in my power, while life and strength last!

Charlotte Forten, 1857

To Nan’s in p.m., to take care of her while Papa and Freddie went to C[oncord]. The dear little man so happy and important with his bit of a bag, six pennies, and a cake for refreshment during the long journey of an hour.

We brooded over Johnny [her sister’s baby] as if he were a heavenly sort of fire to warm and comfort us with his sunny little face and loving ways. She is a happy woman! I sell my children, and though they feed me, they don’t love me as hers do.

Louisa May Alcott, 1868

In writing a diary all the most important things get left out. Only the decorations get mentioned and the shape of the building is taken for granted. Far the greatest pleasure I have almost every day of my life is simply being with R. [her husband Ralph], or, when I’m not with him, from remembering everything to tell him afterwards. In some ways the outer bleakness created by the war has intensified this very great happiness.

Frances Partridge, 1940

19 January

The cold increases, the snow is getting deep, and I hear the Thames is frozen over very nearly, which has not happened since 1814.

Queen Victoria, 1838

Nothing but sensuousness seducing me, cajoling me, muffling me up in lazy luxury. The will to work is a faint idea, not an urgent immediate one. It is pleasant – no, it would be pleasant, but for the feeling underneath of time flying, of waste, of unaccomplishment, and the story of The Talents. This is the fight against the powerful, the irresistible, the compelling monster Sex.

Elizabeth Smart, 1934

I said to my husband, ‘Have you never thought of leaving me?’ I said it jokingly, but he considered it very seriously and said, ‘No – why should I? I would have everything to lose.’ I said, ‘Tell me then – what do you consider my greatest attraction for you?’ I didn’t expect him to say, ‘Your beauty’, but did think he would say, ‘Because you are such a good cook’ or at least something ‘positive’. Instead he said, ‘Because you are such a comfortable person to live with.’ I felt all flat feet and red flannel – as others see us!

Nella Last, 1946

20 January

I’ve fussed more about food and its values and looks since war finished than I’m sure I did all the war years, and watched over my husband’s health more. Perhaps it’s because so many people I know have cracked up and, if they have not died, have seemed to go all to pieces. This morning when the sea birds came over in screaming clouds, he came upstairs and said, ‘You should come and see your pitiful pensioners’, and I said ‘Tip those boiled scraps in the bucket, under the crab-apple tree. If you put it by the rockery the gulls gobble all, and the rest don’t get a chance.’ He said, ‘Well, I never thought to see birds fight over boiled potato peelings. They flapped round me head till I felt their wings brush me. I’m glad you don’t like to see things hungry’ – and he smiled at me. I said, ‘Ah well, you said I was “comfortable to live with”. I suppose you referred to me feeding you.’ He said, ‘I don’t know why you feel so snippy about me saying that. I meant to say there was comfort and peace wherever you were, and I think it’s the best compliment that could be paid to a woman.’ I suppose it is, but it’s the demanding women who get most fun!

Nella Last, 1946

Oh God, grant my prayer! Preserve my voice; should I lose all else I shall have my voice. Oh God, continue to show me Thy goodness; do not let me die of grief and vexation! I long so much to go into society. Time passes and I make no progress; I am nailed to the same place, I who would live, live by steam, I who burn, who boil over, who bubble with impatience!

‘I have never seen anyone in such a fever of life,’ said Doria of me.

Marie Bashkirtseff (aged 15), 1876

The fortnight in bed was the result of having a tooth out, and being tired enough to get a headache – a long dreary affair, that receded and advanced much like the mist on a January day. One hour’s writing daily is my allowance for the next few weeks; and having hoarded it this morning, I may spend part of it now, since I am much behindhand with the month of January. I note however that this diary writing does not count as writing, since I have just reread my year’s diary and am much struck by the rapid haphazard gallop at which it swings along, sometimes indeed jerking almost intolerably over the cobbles. Still if it were not written rather faster than the fastest typewriting, if I stopped and took thought, it would never be written at all; and the advantage of the method is that it sweeps up accidentally several stray matters which I should exclude if I hesitated, but which are the diamonds of the dustheap.

Virginia Woolf, 1919

... At times I feel quite anxious in looking forward to another confinement, but Willie needs a companion and I ought to be willing to give him one. Yet at times the thought will come over me that I may bring into the world a deformed child. And if I should? May not mercy mingle with this judgement? May not such a trial be the very thing I need to teach me humility and patience? God knoweth.

Caroline Healey Dall, 1849

21 January

I am astonished more and more at the stupid extravagance of the women. Mrs H. (who gains her living by keeping a boarding house) has spent, she says, at least £60 on hair dyes in the last ten years. All the ladies, even little girls, wear white powder on their faces and many rouge. All wear silk dresses in the street and my carmelite and grey linen dresses are so singular here that many ladies would refuse to walk with me. Fashion rules so absolutely that to wear a hat requires great courage.

Barbara Leigh Smith Bodichon, New Orleans, 1858

Driving to Falmouth, a pig attached itself to the cortège and made us even more remarkable than usual. Piggy and Dory (the dog) scampering on side by side, and playing like frolicsome children, spite of all we could do to turn the incipient Bacon back his former path in life.

Caroline Fox, 1849

C. [Lloyd George] is not very well today. He has been working very hard, but personally I think he is suffering from too much ‘family’. He was very upset on Monday because not one of them had remembered that it was his birthday on Sunday ... ‘They take me for granted’, he said to me rather bitterly.

Frances Stevenson, 1915

It’s a terrible thing when the person you love says they don’t like you any more; not even they don’t love you, but they don’t like you. So that’s why I think I’m close to a mental breakdown. He says to me what they all say, ‘You’re a politician, I don’t believe a word that comes out of your mouth. You’ll never change.’ I feel that I try really hard to be a better person. I feel I try as hard as it’s possible to try, but either I’m not trying hard enough, or what I’m trying to do is impossible.

I arrive at the surgery, and I’m thinking, ‘Don’t cry, don’t cry ...’

Oona King, 2001

22 January