Ashcombe Journal · AB/LAJ/1909–1913 (Private) · Transcript
Ashcombe Journal
Cloth bound · Spine label: “1909–” · No end date
14 October 1909 — A new book begun. The last volume (1907–09) is full and shelved with the others. Money low. Work none. Rain all day.
16 October 1909 — Answered two advertisements: copying work; clerks wanted. Nothing likely.
20 October 1909 — Walked to the registry office. My boots leak. The clerk took my particulars and said there is little call for men like me “at present.”
27 October 1909 — Sold the good umbrella. Kept the pen.
31 October 1909 — Quiet streets. I wrote to her — kept it short.
2 November 1909 — Still no work. Funds running low. If nothing turns, I may have to leave these lodgings.
9 November 1909 — Wrote to three firms. The landlord allows a week's grace.
18 November 1909 — Saw an advertisement in the Morning Post: “Assistant required for confidential literary work.” Applied at once. Perhaps fortune turns.
1 December 1909 — Application accepted. To Windsor next week. They say the gentleman is Lord Esher. I wonder if this will be the making of me.
8 December 1909 — Moved to smaller rooms near Victoria Station. Damp walls, but cheap. I miss the old place. Wrote to her — no reply.
15 December 1909 — First impressions: Esher is all polish and command. Speaks as if the world were his committee. I fetch proofs, log letters, keep the fire stoked.
6 January 1910 — Kensington papers in; Windsor packets out. They call them “the girlhood journals.” I carried a parcel as if it were glass.
10 January 1910 — I glimpsed a sheet — her hand neat as pins. They say she began at thirteen and kept it daily. Better than I could ever do.
21 January 1910 — Workmanlike morning. Afternoon of sorting. Many fair copies carry small pencil strokes in the margin — economies for “space.”
5 February 1910 — Wet and wind. A clerk chuckled over a line about shoes pinching. The pencil beside it reads: OMIT — space / trifles Odd to strike out such harmlessness.
14 February 1910 — Rain again. Walked to the station for a parcel and thought of her. I wonder if she kept the little book I gave her. Foolish. More “space” cuts today: ribbons, a dog in the garden, a remark about prints.
1 March 1910 — A note circulated: “Maintain tone.” Another: “Domestic detail to be judicious.” The pile of struck leaves grows.
9 March 1910 — Changed lodgings — closer to the office. The landlady is kind enough. I miss the quiet of Croydon. London presses in like a tide.
31 March 1910 — Heard Esher say, lightly: “We shape memory.” As if truth were clay.
23 April 1910 — A margin reads: OMIT — criticism of ceremony I only saw the tail of it — something about a herald swallowing her style and titles. Why cut that?
7 May 1910 — Edward VII is dead. Streets hushed like a church. I remember Victoria’s Diamond Jubilee bonfires in ’97 — how the sky in Croydon burned red and we cheered ourselves hoarse.
15 June 1910 — More pencil: OMIT — quotation / space Scruple over space, or something else?
21 July 1910 — A sharper hand now appears in the margins: OMIT — ministerial dependence / compromises Crown Not trifles. I turn the leaf back the moment footsteps sound.
27 July 1910 — Waste bundle for pulping — loose leaves, typescripts, a wrapper split. A few sheets slid free. I tucked them into my waistcoat and moved on.

In my room, I laid them out: twelve leaves covering twenty-four days after the accession — 20 June to 13 July 1837. The days are ordinary, which is why they matter.

The pencil speaks plainly:

  • OMIT — party management via Household; compromises Crown; assent.
  • OMIT — ministerial dependence / compromises Crown.
  • OMIT — whole entry; space / domestic particulars.
  • OMIT — from ‘I sometimes think’ to end; morbid reflection / decorum.

And at the end, a working note mapping a chapter break: Household now constituted; complexion conforms to Melbourne’s Ministry. Melbourne, in effect, acts as Private Secretary and Tutor; political schooling begun; public voice proved. Divide for phases.

Most arresting of all is a line in the Queen’s own hand about her Household: thanking Lord Melbourne for helping set it in order; knowing it is dangerous to him; promising no word shall be let out. The pencil beside it is unequivocal: OMIT — avowal of minister’s role in Household; compromises Crown; pledge of secrecy

Very interesting. I feel I have stumbled into a room where history whispers behind closed doors.

14 August 1910 — I have read the twelve leaves three times. What seemed harmless — ribbons, shoes, the dog — was a screen. The real cutting is elsewhere: the Household made to match the Whigs, the reliance on Melbourne named, the pledge of silence.
If this were known, the beginning would read differently. And later — when Peel made the Bedchamber a condition of office in 1839, and Melbourne stood behind the Queen — how sharp the irony would bite.
7 September 1910 — I sleep poorly. I keep the leaves wrapped in brown paper under the board in the hearth.
22 October 1910 — Wrote to her — no reply. I am not attending as I should at work. Twice today I mislaid a docket.
6 January 1911 — Snow on the sill. I copied names till my fingers cramped. A clerk joked that I court penance. The joke landed.
22 June 1911 — Coronation of George V. Flags everywhere. I watched the procession at the edge of the crowd and thought of her. And of the girl in the leaves who walked from Kensington into office and men.
6 July 1911 — Esher in high spirits; chapter plans marching. I kept my head down.
12 July 1911 — Dismissed. “Reduction.” Perhaps they guessed my curiosity. Perhaps not. I wrapped the leaves tighter and went out into the heat.
6 October 1911 — I wish things had worked out as we planned… but she is gone now. I cannot write more of it here.
16 April 1912 — News of a great ship lost — Titanic sunk. London murmurs in doorways. By the river I thought of the Queen’s steady hand on those summer days, and of the cost of neatness.
5 September 1912 — New post at Berry Bros. & Rudd. Cellars like catacombs; ledgers older than I am. A small room off St James’s — colder, but paid.
14 October 1912 — Bought The Girlhood of Queen Victoria on credit. Turned the pages with a pounding heart. As expected, what the pencil forbade is absent. The pledge of silence is nowhere. What made it into the book is clean. The rest — what I hold — would strike like a hammer.
3 November 1912 — I cannot keep these papers. If found, I should be ruined. Yet to burn them feels like murder.
22 November 1912 — Down in the cellars I slipped the twelve leaves into an archive marked Miscellaneous Correspondence. Between a sheaf of invoices and a letter about rum. No one will look there. I felt a pang, as if burying a friend.
19 December 1912 — Berry Bros. have let me go. “Not a fit.” How shall I get through the winter? The streets are iron with frost.
15 February 1913 — Single room above a cobbler’s store. Draught under the door; smell of leather everywhere. Sold two books to pay the rent. The streets are grey and endless.
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