Having briefly gone down that particular Google rabbit hole, I can safely say – I don’t know. Plenty of others purport to know, however, if you need to fill a vacant hour or three.
I think diaries are to a finished text the way preliminary sketches are to a finished oil painting. Beautiful, sure, and interesting, definitely, but a not necessarily a work of art in their own right.
But all that probably doesn’t matter.
The diaries that get published are polished, are shaped and – in a sense – created to become a satisfactory narrative. Unlike the diaries you might find in an archive, or in a bedside drawer, published diaries often include biographical context, explanations, footnotes. They’ve been published precisely because they are interesting, rather than your Uncle Bob’s pocket diary with its endless lists of meals eaten and trains spotted. Such information might be useful for the specialist researcher, but is less interesting for the general reader.
It’s also crucial to point out that published diaries have, almost always, been edited. Which means some entries have been left out. But which? And why? What decisions have made been that the reader doesn’t necessarily know about?
Similarly, reading cursive writing can be tricky (depending on idiosyncrasies the writer, of course). So, for researchers, having a published “transcript” is often a blessed relief. Yet even where entries are included in the published document, it’s possible that words and even whole sentences have been mis-transcribed. In the past I’ve certainly found this to be the case with published letters.
The wise researcher, therefore, always attempts to return to the source, to the original documents.
Even then, though, understanding what the diarist is referring to, out of context, can also be hard.
Patricia Clarke, in her A Colonial Woman: The life and times of Mary Braidwood Mowle 1827-1857 (Allen & Unwin, 1987) points out that Mowle’s daily diary entries usually include the single word ‘worked’, by which Mowle means that she spent at least part of the day working – sewing, and making clothes for her family. Knowing this, it becomes confronting to see how much of Mowle’s time this takes up.
First Fleet colonist Lieutenant Watkin Tench, in his much-lauded 1793 publication A Complete Account of the Settlement at Port Jackson off-handedly describes one of the Second Fleet vessels, arriving in New South Wales after traversing the Southern Ocean in winter, as ‘jury-rigged’. He then never mentions it again. Because he didn’t have to. He knew, and he knew that all his contemporary readers would know, what it meant for a vessel to be jury-rigged.
As it happens, I know too, but only because I’ve read all twenty of Patrick O’Brian’s brilliant Master and Commander novels, which are mainly set on British naval vessels during the Napoleonic wars.
A jury-rigged vessel is one using temporary, makeshift rigging in order to bring a disabled vessel into harbour. Tench’s short phrase ‘jury-rigged’ actually evokes a life-and-death scene of rigging failing during a storm, and crew members risking their lives to repair it as best they could, with whatever they had to hand, until their ship could limp to safety. It is a phrase easily missed by any modern reader not conversant with sailing ships (and if that’s you, do try those Patrick O’Brian novels. You won’t be sorry).
Many published diaries also include a contextual narrative provided by the editor. I often find these historical and biographical insights incredibly helpful and interesting. They place the diarist in her own time and space, and fill us in on the bigger picture. As readers, we receive the advantage of the editor/researcher’s insights and expertise as well as being granted easy access to the primary source. Having that context also makes reading the actual diary entries much easier.
Melbourne-based Bev Roberts, a self-described writer, poet, historian, gardener, cook and proud virago, did something similar, and similarly helpful, in Miss D and Miss N: an extraordinary partnership, the diary of Anne Drysdale (published in 2009 by Australian Scholarly Publishing in association with State Library of Victoria).
Anne Drysdale (1792-1853), a Scottish farmer, emigrated to Australia in 1840. Within months of her arrival, she met Caroline Newcombe, another émigré who was 20 years Drysdale’s junior. The two women formed a passionate friendship and began a shared life as pastoralists and farmers near Geelong, in Victoria.
Drysdale’s diaries begin in 1839, as she boards the ship that will take her to the other side of the world, and follow through to her death, at which point a grieving Newcombe took up the pen for another year or so.
The entries provide useful, fascinating and often detailed insights into the women’s daily farming life. Editor Bev Roberts offers a solid introduction, and then at the beginning of each chapter provides more useful context.
The following entry, which I’ve chosen more or less at random, is typical:
Thursday 7th March 1844
Fine. Armstrong lounged horses, etc. Robert threshed, Hyland jobbed about, put the bees into another scape. Caroline, Miss Clow, Mr Jeffreys & I breakfasted early & went to call upon Mrs Latrobe and Miss Fenwick. Caroline & I in the new chaise, the others on horseback. We returned at sunset. Mr & Miss Roadknight called.
It’s not fine literature, it’s a farmer’s diary and at that level it provides fascinating insights for historians and general readers alike.
‘Lounging’ a horse, by the way, would today be described as ‘lungeing’ it – exercising and training a horse that moves in a circle around the handler, who holds a long line about 8 metres long, attached to the horse’s bridle. The diary is full of these little horsey moments, which as a horsey person myself, I found delightful. Drysdale’s horses play up, run off, they buck, they rear, they die and they only occasionally seem to do some of the work for which they were purchased.
Equally interesting, to me at least, were Drysdale’s detailed descriptions of washing the sheep prior to shearing, which I drew on for my biography of Elizabeth Macarthur (another woman colonist who had a bit to do with sheep).
I imagine that writers of historical fiction also draw on diaries like these, to capture the telling details that lend authenticity to a work.
The diary also serves as an important reminder – if such is necessary – of the ongoing British project of invasion and colonisation. Melbourne was formally established in 1835, and the colony of Port Phillip was still in its infancy when Drysdale arrived.
Drysdale describes mounted police setting out to “find some of the blacks who committed [a] murder” of a white shepherd and goes on to note that the “government certainly ought to do something for the protection of the white population.” The protection of the Black population does not seem to occur to her.
A few months later, this entry sums up Drysdale’s paternalistic approach.
December 9th, 1840
Yesterday a tribe of natives, all men, came marching past the house about 60 in number, they walked in regular order each carrying his spear & a cockatoo’s feather in his head. The women & children followed & made their miam miams close to the house. They are quite tame & seldom do any mischief here.
Those cockatoo feathers – what a telling detail. I can see them in my mind’s eye. It is sadly true, however, that sometimes the only records available to First Nations communities about their forebears are diaries like these, magnifying their documentary importance and value.
The relationship between Drysdale and Newcomb is, in a low key way, occasionally celebrated by the queer community. But the diary provides few insights into the women’s emotional lives and anyone looking for details of a sexual relationship between the pair won’t find it. They loved each other, though, that’s clear.
In her will, Drysdale left everything to Newcomb, much to the horror of her brothers back in Scotland, and Newcomb continued running their property ‘Coriyule’ after Drysdale’s death. In 1861 Newcomb married the local reverend, a man twelve years her junior. I know, right? People are endlessly fascinating. Perhaps tellingly, when Newcomb died in 1874 she was buried beside Drysdale at Coriyule.
So – what do you think? Are diaries literature? Let me know in the comments!
For further information about Anne Drysdale and Caroline Newcomb:
- The four volumes that comprise Drysdale’s diary (a fifth volume, the second to last, is missing) are held at the State Library of Victoria. Click through to see Drysdale’s beautiful cursive script
- Historical Ragbag – a long, useful and highly recommended blog post about Anne Drysdale and Caroline Newcomb, including lots of relevant photos and images.
- The Australian Dictionary of Biography, Anne Drysdale
- The township of Drysdale, then near Geelong and now a suburb, was named in honour of Anne Drysdale. The Geelong suburb of Newcomb, originally known as West Maloop, had its name was changed at the request of the West Maloop Progress Association in 1956.
For further information about Watkin Tench (and an absolute cracker of a read) I can recommend 1788, by Watkin Tench. Edited and introduced by Tim Flannery. Text Publishing, 2009.
This post is an extended version of a guest post I provided to the Australian Women Writers Challenge Blog.
I’ve kept a diary, of the Uncle Bob kind, since the 1980s. Looking back I quite often can’t understand what I meant, so good luck researchers! The one constant, over the last 20 years anyway, is where I pulled the truck up for the night.
I own two or three published diaries (and Watkin Tench) but I don’t read them, just look up stuff when I want to what a writer was doing/thinking at a particular time.
Perhaps that what most diaries are best for – the occasional reference.
Oh, I dunno!
It was when I read the Macquarie PEN Anthology of Aboriginal Literature that I was introduced to the idea that everything and anything can be literature, in contrast to the idea I grew up with, which is that literature can be poetry or novels or short stories but not NF (which would include not diaries, not letters and not memoirs along with other kinds of NF writing.) Literature, as I studied it at school and university, also had to satisfy some criteria of literary merit though of course what that is, is hard to define. (Pride and Prejudice is, The Dry isn’t. LOL What I review on my blog mostly is, though I call it literary fiction now, and what I ignore mostly isn’t. In my opinion, of course, and that’s all it is.)
The kids at school came up with a workable definition: literature is stories that you remember all your life, and the rest is fun but you soon forget it. So Sir Gawain and the Green Knight is literature, and The 100-storey Treehouse isn’t (but they still want it for their birthdays.)
But that idea was upended by that anthology, which by its title is an anthology of *literature*. The very early examples of Aboriginal writing were transactional. Letters to colonial administrators asking for something, for example, and Bennelong’s famous letter. First Nations writing later came to include poetry and plays, and ?round about the 1980s, a lot of memoir. FN fiction as we know it now and that qualifies as literature in my previous understanding of the word, is comparatively recent*. If the anthology only included ‘my’ kind of literature it would be a much thinner volume than it is. And would give a misleading impression of FN people’s use of writing from the earliest days of settlement.
BTW while I haven’t followed much of what goes on in schools, I think that film is now included as ‘literature’.
Anyway, diaries? If you could see the difference between my travel diaries and what I publish on my travel blog, you’d be entitled to ask, am I editing? or self-censoring? I think the diaries give a warped impression: I tend to vent on the page rather than argue, and when I read these entries afterwards, I can barely remember what I was so cross about, or I’ve gained a sense of perspective. But would someone reading them 50 years from now think that irritable person is the real me? (Well no, they won’t, because they are destined for the shredder).
Gosh, I’ve rambled enough now!
*I’ve written about this on my blog, see https://anzlitlovers.com/2022/07/08/decolonising-a-blog-a-work-in-progress-2-learning-about-the-emergence-of-indigenous-life-writing/
I’m all for an all-encompassing notion of literature. As you say, it’s an arbitrary categorisation at the best of times! Interesting too, that you raise the issue of whether diaries provide an accurate impression of the writer. I guess some can provide insights into what the writer thought at that moment but again as you say, it might not reflect their longer term views. As a biographer, I’m constantly battling to know what my subjects ‘thought’ about anything. Usually the best I can do is guess, via the evidence of their actions. Perhaps that’s why fiction is so beguiling – we can categorically know what the characters think!