Term paper

Each of us on this course is required to submit, by November 27 (check this!), a 3,000–5,000 word essay on an approved autobiographical subject. We are also required to deliver, during one of our weekly sessions, a twenty minute discourse on an autobiographical subject.

My original intention was to write on how people use blogs to write their autobiographies but, as I indicated in my post on Thursday, it became clear that the blog format is not suitable for this purpose and my initial researches in the blogosphere did not reveal anything that could reasonably be termed an autobiography, as opposed to a diary or a journal. I intend to continue my research, widening its scope to include anything autobiographical in any format on the internet, but I do not believe that I will have anything worthwhile to report before the deadline for submission.

It has emerged that the discourse can be related to the essay, so I had the idea of taking two historically-significant figures whose autobiographies had titles which clearly indicated that their life was a quest, then looking for similarities and differences in the way their writing described how and why they set off on their quest and the results of it. Two titles which sprang to my mind were Nelson Mandela's Long Walk to Freedom and Adolf Hitler's Mein Kampf. The juxtaposition of two such towering figures, with such radically different quests, would I felt make a most interesting study.

This seemed like a good idea until I actually looked into Mein Kampf. Of course I had been aware that a large part of it was about his views which became the doctrine of his Nazi party, but I had thought that there would be sufficient about himself and how and why these views developed to make a vivid contrast to those of Mandela. I was wrong. The first chapter, In the House of My Parents, is astonishingly unrevealing. Thus he sums up his relationship with his parents by saying "I honoured my father: I loved my mother". Even what he does say about some things such as his performance at school turns out, it appears, to be false. So this idea rapidly shows itself to be a non-starter.

So, what about somebody else in South African history? Cecil Rhodes, perhaps? Alas, nothing: no diaries, few personal papers. What about Jan Smuts? A brief memoir about part of the Boer War, and nothing else. So, what about Mandela's white contemporaries? Google rapidly reveals that F W de Clerk, the country's last white president, wrote an autobiography, The Last Trek – a New Beginning. That's it! Another title clearly indicating a quest; an author who was Mandela's adversary-cum-partner during those five crucial years in South African history; each obviously says a great deal about the other in their books.

I finished Mandela's book last week and I now need to complete de Clerk's, which is much less gripping. This should give me enough to write an essay which I provisionally entitle How the protagonists of the dismantling of apartheid regarded each other. The main question I am beginning to wrestle with is, how much of the background to apartheid (and indeed to the story of South Africa before its imposition) do I need to give? Allied to this is, what should be its structure and tone? I think I will start by trying the Wall Street Journal approach, and change it if it doesn't seem to work.

Online autobiographies: 1

Can you use a blog for publishing your autobiography?

It's an attractive idea, because you can set up a blog at no cost and start blogging within five minutes. You can then write bits and pieces about your life story and post them online whenever you will.

The snag, though, is that each piece is displayed in chronological order of posting online, with the latest displayed first. This means that at the outset you would need to plan your life story and write it at a series of posts to be uploaded in a carefully-ordered sequence. If you are going to go to this trouble, then a better policy would be to set up your own personal website on which you would be able to arrange what you write in any manner you wished.

Planning your autobiography at the outset, then writing it and building a website on which to publish it is, however, a major undertaking. Is there not a way in which the simplicity and spontaneity of a blog could be used to kick-start the whole process? I believe there is, and I am beginning to use my blog in this way. These are the steps that I intend to take.

1. When something happens in my day-to-day life which has a link to something in my past life, I can write two posts, one being my as it were diary entry and the other my autobiography entry. Thus reading as part of my course Edmund Gosse's Father and Son naturally enabled me to write about what we discussed in the tutorial about that and similar books, then to write another about my relationship with my father. Episodes, such as attending a Gaudy Dinner at my old college or reading in Neville Shute's autobiography about an aircraft, the Airspeed Oxford, which his company built and on which I trained, naturally spark off memories about which I shortly want to write.
   
2. I will now start create two separate folders within my blog folder for the original wordprocessed files which are then uploaded as posts to my blog:
   1    Chronological by date of posting to the blog
   2    Autobiographical only: chronological by date of event
   
3. Files in the autobiographical folder can eventually be merged into one master file which could be printed out to serve as a quick'n'dirty personal memoir for grandchildren or, perhaps, as the basis for a much fuller account of my life for printing out or, conceivably, dividing into pages and chapters for publication on a personal website.
   

So, my current answer to the question at the start of this post (can you use a blog for publishing your autobiography?) is, not easily and not very well.

Nonetheless this term I am, as part of my course project (examining the impact of new technology on the creation of biographies) continuing to search for websites, whether blogs or not, which can reasonably be considered to be autobiographies rather than diaries or journals. It would be excellent if this post stimulated any reader of it to add a comment below suggesting sites that it would be worth my while to visit: it would be greatly appreciated.

 

Fifth tutorial: from Whores to Virgins

The title of this post is also that of the hand-out given to us at the colloquium we had yesterday with Frances Wilson, subtitled Writing the Lives of Harriette Wilson and Dorothy Wordsworth.

Let's start, though, with the Virgin: Dorothy, younger sister of William Wordsworth, arch-Romantic, doyen of the Lakeland Poets and later Poet Laureate of Great Britain.

The Ballad of Dorothy Wordsworth has as its pivot the entry in her Grasmere journal for the day that her brother William marries Mary Hutchinson.

Flashing back from this point is the story of a young woman who was orphaned and impoverished early, then separated for a decade from her brothers. Living the life of a poor relation here and there, she craved familial security which she found when she set up house with William, a young man just back from Revolutionary France where he had fathered a child and who, unlike his three brothers, had no clear idea about what career to pursue.

Dorothy and William live in several houses, lent by friends or rented cheaply, settling at Dove Cottage in a picturesque vale in the Lake District. They walk much, they talk much, they read and write much: she records, at times in microscopic detail, what she sees in sun and rain, what flowers are blooming, what birds are flying. These entries in her journal act as the stimulus for her brother's developing poetical muse. This intimate relationship will change when her brother marries. He chooses as his wife not the pining mistress he abandoned in France but a sister in a family of similarly-orphaned siblings. Dorothy describes the dawn ceremony she and her brother performed on the wedding day.

I gave him the wedding ring – with how deep a blessing! I took it from my forefinger where I had worn it the whole of the night before – he slipped it again onto my finger and blessed me ???ly.

In the manuscript of the Grasmere journal these lines have been crossed out. Fifty years ago they were read with the aid of infra-red light and the adverb interpreted then as fervently. The whole passage, but especially the closing adverb, was for some scholars further if not final proof that the relationship between brother and sister had been incestuous. Frances had examined the journal herself when researching her book and agreed with the most recent editor of the journal that the word is softly.

After the wedding Dorothy, with her brother William and his bride Mary, returns to Grasmere where all three live contentedly together in Dove Cottage for years, until increased income and a growing family led to a move to a larger home nearby. Meanwhile nearby William's friend the poet Coleridge is falling out of love with his wife Sarah, the sister of the poet Southey, and falling in love with Mary's sister Sarah Hutchinson, thenceforward referred to as Sara. All this is the stuff of scandal.

Frances discussed the nature of the brother-sister bond as viewed at that time, being as strong if not stronger than the marital bond.

She explained to us that she had wanted to rebut those Wordsworth scholars who had sought to shield William's reputation from the slur of incest by making Dorothy a sexless and dull figure. On the contrary, young men such as the writer de Quincey fancied her as "All fire and ardour", while at the same time strong brother-sister attachments were then viewed as nothing abnormal or incestuous. Earlier biographers make much of the fact that her journals and letters report nothing of the conversations all these Romantics would have had and that they are banal and boring.

Banal and boring they indeed are, if perused as some of us did without a full awareness of all the circumstances. Banal the journals may seem until it is understood that Dorothy was writing her entries as a stimulus to William. "Dorothy had a better poetic ear", claimed Frances; two people, "Dorothy and William, make one poet." William himself said "She gave me ears, she gave me eyes".

The Ballad of Dorothy Wordsworth is as gripping as a novel but with the merit of being as close to what actually happened as it may be possible to get. Read the Spectator review of it by clicking here or the one in The Times by clicking here, then borrow it or buy it.

Let's conclude, briefly, with the Whore: Harriette Wilson, appropriately born in Shepherd Market, Mayfair, in 1786 and 15 years later mistress to the first of many an unbelted earl.

Time in our colloquium was too limited to do more than hear why Frances' first biography, The Courtesan's Revenge: The Life of Harriette Wilson, had such a radically different subject from her second one. She explained that the first was based on researching in archives and gave little scope for ruminations on the inner woman. At the end of her researches Frances had no more idea than she had had at the beginning about what Harriette dreamed about or was afraid of: indeed, she had not even been able to find out whether Harriette had ever born a child.

So her pendulum swung to the other end of its arc, to a place where relevant material has been published and is easily accessible in libraries so that it is reflection and not archival research which is needed. It may be that the topic of her next book, the chairman of the shipping line which built the SS Titanic, will swing the pendulum (who knows how briefly?) back to the vertical.

Fourth tutorial

New readers: see Warning at start of earlier tutorials

Instruction in online research resources

COPAC (http://copac.ac.uk/ )
Copac National, Academic, and Specialist Library Catalogue gives free access to the merged online catalogues of many major University, Specialist, and National Libraries in the UK and Ireland, including the British Library
Titles found hereon can be ordered via Univ. Buck.

Public Record Office, now National Archive
(http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/)
[Search the Archives] > [Access the Archives]
National Archive
The Catalogue: Search descriptions of 11 million documents from the UK central government, law courts and other national bodies.
9 other categories
Partner websites
Census records:
Search and download census records from 1841 to 1911. JR: 1861 v useful, with details of who lived there (c.f. ancestry.co.uk)
3 other categories
Find records in other archives
National register of archives (not explored: relates only to British material? What about foreign equivalents of DNB?)

Index to theses (http://www.theses.com/)
A comprehensive listing of theses with abstracts accepted for higher degrees by universities in Great Britain and Ireland since 1716. 542,369 theses in collection

Presentation

Presentation (first in series by each student) by JM-J on the relationship between Queen Victoria (V1) and her eldest daughter Vicky (V2). V2 brightest of 8 children – favourite of Prince Consort Albert (PC) – V1 jealous of time given and attention shown – V2's engagement aged 14 to 'Fritz' (Crown Prince of Prussia) and marriage at 17 (parents anxious not to lose this prime prospect) – unusually for royals, a love match, like her parents – with V2 now in Berlin, V1 begins voluminous correspondence, often 3 letters per week – "What are you doing?" – "This is what you should be doing!" (e.g. fresh air and temp. of 56 deg, c.f. German fug and temp of 80) – "You're not answering my letters" – little awareness of huge difficulties faced by V2 in seeking to change anything; young, naive, foreign, friendless – above all, malign influence of Bismarck.

Occasional displays of telling V1 to keep out of it – "I will breast-feed", "I won't postpone state occasion just because it's anniversary of death of PC". V2 expected to help in search for wife for V1's eldest son Bertie, later Edward 7 (PoW) – Alexandra of Denmark prettiest and brightest of Protestant princesses – Schleswig-Holstein question – Palmerston's "Only 3 people understood the SHQ: PC, and he's dead; Prof. X, and he's in the madhouse; and me, and I've forgotten".

Bungling of birth of V2's 1st-born, Willi (W: later "Kaiser Bill" and fomentor of WW1) – 99-day reign in 1888 of husband as Kaiser Frederick 3 – lingering death from throat cancer – her stiff-upper-lip smile castigated by court as indifference – W's anglophobia result of blaming on English doctors his withered arm, resulting from botched breach delivery– his increasing control of her movements and purse – her charitable activities, despite denial of pension – her last, excruciating illness – smuggling her papers, inc. letters, back to England to serve as basis for posthumous restoration of her well-intentioned but doomed life.

[Expressed in earlier session by JM-J: short reign of Fred 3 perhaps greatest "What if?" question; had he ruled longer (and effectively) no WW1, hence no WW2, &c]

Men's autobiographies

Conundrum by Jan Morris

Tortured autobiography of life of talented transsexual James Morris – aged 5 is aware that he should have been/be a girl – nothing effeminate in young manhood (officer in WW2 in British cavalry regiment; reporter for The Times in scooping 1st ascent of Everest) – married, with wife (apparently) aware of his predilection and begetting 4 children – counselling useless – start of sex-changing drug regime – support (?) of wife and understanding (?) of children goes under the knife in Casablanca – description of subsequent physical and mental changes in self.

Predictably vociferous discussion – all other participants female – nuanced viewpoints not well understood then, so inexpressible now – more

Pepys's Diaries

Restricted time to discuss this massive work – core questions about it raised (if not answered):
- Why did he start writing it?
- Why did he stop writing it?

Reference Hist. Journ. 43/2 Refiguring the Diary of Samuel Pepys Mark Dawson

Uncompleted because of presence of Number Three Daughter and her brood for part of half term: she is a very personable Person from Porlock, and won't mind being unjustly blamed for her father's failure to complete this self-imposed task by breakfast time the following day.

Changing the blog’s title

I started this blog a month ago when I was just about to formally enrol on a postgraduate course at our local university. At that moment I felt that the title should reflect the long gap between first going to a university and starting again at another one, so that Going back to college after 55 years seemed sensible. Under this title I could write a few posts which would outline to readers how it came about that we were living in Buckingham after so many years in Richmond and why now, after two years in our new home town, I was embarking on a course of study.

The posts that followed were increasingly about the course itself and – because the first term's study concentrates on autobiography – on episodes in my past life. Therefore the first title had served its purpose. If the early posts had been written to appear in a conventional book, they would have appeared in Chapter 1 under the title until yesterday applying to the whole blog.

Increasingly I want my blog to serve as a description of what I am doing to people who may be able to help me in the research that I will be doing towards my dissertation at the end of the course, provisionally entitled The Impact of New Technology upon the Creation of Biographies. I have already interviewed two leading biographers about this and I want to interview at least two dozen more. Other biographers will I hope glance at the blog and then consider favourably my request for an interview with them.

Therefore the new title of the blog should reflect what I am doing, the Biography Course, and where I am doing it, at the University of Buckingham. I also want the title to imply two things, firstly that I am actually following the course and secondly that the contents of the blog describe something about the nature of the course.

This want I hope is fulfilled with a little word right at the beginning, On, with its many meanings. Like being on a plane or a train, I am on a course, travelling not through space but through time from the start to the end of the course. It has also the meaning of Concerning or About which used to be expressed in theological and scientific works in Latin with the little word De, as in Augustine's De Civitate Dei (About the City of God) or Harvey's De Motu Cordis et Sanguinis (Concerning the Motion of the Heart and the Blood).

Welcome, then, to the first post written for my blog with this new and appropriate title.

The Tonks biography

Today the five of us went across to Wendy and Nicky's new home in the little town of Whitchurch for lunch. The others had all been there before: I hadn't. Nicky gave me a quick tour. At the bottom of the garden is a leat of the River Test, perhaps the most famous trout stream in the world, with waters "clear as gin and twice as expensive", so unlike the muddy leat of the Great Ouse leading to the long-demolished Castle Mill opposite our home in Buckingham. Beside it a vegetable garden with friable tilth, so unlike the heavy clays of Julia's allotment.

Returning through the kitchen I saw names on tiles above the work surfaces: VERMEER, CEZANNE, … TONKS. Tonks? Henry Tonks, it transpires, is a forebear of our hostess the watercolourist. Her great friend Sabina ffolkes is the author of a new biography of this neglected artist. Just as my tutor Jane Ridley enjoyed herself hugely visiting Surrey country houses when writing her biography of Lutyens, so the two of them enjoyed visiting grand houses viewing Tonks still hanging where they were placed when first bought.

Lunch was vastly convivial and, though more needs to be written about past and future associations with my hostess (cooking in sunny climes and meeting biographers), my frailty stops me writing more tonight. I post it to my blog now so that anything added later will still bear Sunday's date.

When is a biography not a biography?

Julia and I drove down to Hampshire yesterday morning to stay with our old Richmond friends, Annabel and Adam. At teatime Annabel told us about a book of great interest to her and which she was sure, because of my current studies, would interest me.

They have both been stalwart members of the London Bach Choir since the sixties and over the years became close friends with its longtime conductor. Oxford University Press has recently published a book about him, Sir David Willcocks: a Life in Music.

She and Adam were two of the many people that were interviewed for the book. She said that all the interviews had been transcribed verbatim and the scripts then sent to each interviewee to check for accuracy and to give the opportunity to delete any portion of it.

There was a lively discussion about all this. I told Annabel, from my limited experience of transcribing interviews, how much editing of the spoken word is needed to render the text coherent and readable. She assured me that her interview had been transcribed accurately, as she remembered it, but agreed that she had not compared the text with the tape. Priscilla, another Richmond friend also down for the weekend, suggested that the book was not a biography but a memoir. I did not agree, but couldn't really suggest what it was. Could it really be called a biography, if it did not have at least some editorial commentary linking all the interviews together and if we are not told the criteria for excluding all or parts of the many interviews made?

All of this took place without having a copy of the book to hand or an internet link. Now that I am at home, I see that the exact title is A Life in Music -- Conversations with Sir David Willcocks and friends and that the publishers in the blurb here describe it as "a portrait of a highly gifted musician". Yes, but it is a portrait painted by many brushes, particularly that of the sitter. Without having yet seen the book, I currently think that the term that best fits it is a collage, a picture created from pasting many fragments together. Furthermore I surmise that, insofar as it is a biography, it is likely to resemble more a fulsome and one-sided Victorian biography which bathes the subject in sunlight and brush out its dark shadows, rather than the more rounded picture of a person that we have come to expect today.

Whatever you may call the book, the way that it has been put together and then packaged with a CD containing many of Sir David's recordings, represents a fascinating example of yet another way in which New Technology is affecting the creation of biographies.