The Secret Language of Keppel Craven’s Journals.

The Honourable Richard Keppel Craven kept a journal from 1805 to 1850…or at least I think he did.

There might have been earlier and later volumes originally—because nothing about Keppel was ever exactly as it appeared. The journal for 1805 begins rather oddly in June.  From March 1806 to February 1809, there is no daily record, but he almost certainly kept one for these years, too. 1809 starts as he’s leaving Gibraltar on his way home to England. And in 1850, Keppel had written the events of that January into the end of his 1849 book; apparently the new one hadn’t arrived yet at Naples.  The 1850 volume is itself missing.  However, in that year, Keppel suffered a terrible loss.  Because he became lax in his secretiveness whenever emotions ran high, I imagine he recorded the events faithfully…and either he, or after his own death, his daughter-in-law, destroyed the journal because he’d deviated from his own policy.  The same fate probably befell the books for 1806-1808, as their contents were most likely rife with information that Keppel Craven didn’t wish society to know.

What was this policy, you ask?  In a world where reputation was everything, Keppel was very concerned about women.  Not every woman, mind you.  He records quite a few female conquests with abandon, but these ladies he felt no obligation to protect.  Mary Carter was quite different.  Everything about her was studiously hidden, but most especially her scandalous position as his mistress, for gossip of this sort, if spread about, could harm not only Mary, but her young daughter as well. 

Therefore, Mary is barely mentioned in the journals; the few occurrences of her name are vague or obfuscated.  Because she came back into Keppel’s life in 1808, and died in June of 1850, those are the years in which, one presumes, he couldn’t help but write about her, regardless of the harm it could do.  Those are the journals that are missing.  If they were deliberately removed, it cannot be proved. The pattern, however, is suggestive. The absent years coincide with periods in which Keppel was most likely to have written incautiously about the people he was most determined to protect, while Pauline de la Ferronnays’s handwriting throughout the surviving papers shows that she examined and organized the collection. I suspect that she—or Keppel himself—destroyed journals and letters that said too much about his love for Mary or his first heady days with Sir William Gell.

For Gell was also subject to this policy, although his situation was a bit different.  Only two letters survive that were exchanged between Keppel and Gell, and these discuss nothing more salacious than a tour.  All others were probably destroyed—and there were many, as tracked in the journals.  Indeed, everything about Gell was faithfully recorded…with the exception of anything that could harm Gell’s reputation.

There are few quarrels mentioned.  Only one of those that made it to the page was serious, and this concerned Keppel’s betrayal of Mary—so again, it was written at a time of high emotion.  The other serious fights between Keppel and Gell are not delineated, although they are discernible despite Keppel’s best efforts to conceal them.  One of his code words for such events was “unhappy.”  He only wrote it when at his absolute lowest: when he thought Gell was lost to him, or when he couldn’t marry Mary.  Disagreements over fidelity, over Mary, over Gell’s own independence are never mentioned, but they are visible in Keppel’s and Gell’s actions (for instance, Gell ditching Keppel at Lisbon); in the cryptic statements Keppel writes (“proposition rejected” when Gell announced he was leaving); in the lies he records on the calendar day, but then contradicts in the endpapers of the very same journal; and in the illnesses that always resulted from these fights, for like clockwork, Gell’s gout would flare 2-3 days after an altercation.

Sometimes Keppel recorded quarrels in code.  In late 1809, he drew cannons in the margins to represent his mother’s “blow-ups.”  Other drawings and doodles concealed names of lovers, plans of house buying, and sometimes events we simply can’t deduce—only Keppel knew the meaning of his daily symbols in the margins while at Lisbon.        

Then there was his sexual coding.  X meant sex, clearly.  He also used a unique symbol (which he explained with the word “trinity”) to refer to a threesome with both a man and woman.  The names of the participants of these acts—at least the men—are quite easy to deduce, so it seems likely that Keppel Craven had little shame about his nature.  Most of these code names were feminized, with -ella and -ina being added to monikers that Keppel must have thought clever at the time; for instance, “Sperina” for Luigi Albi of the Lancers’ regiment at Naples.  Sometimes he didn’t even bother to conceal identities.  Andrea Pasquini becomes “Andreina,” and once or twice, “Anacharsis” appears—the unfeminized nickname of Sir William Gell.

In writing these names, Keppel’s level of enthusiasm is often obvious.  When his infatuation was new, or he was feeling rather dependent or especially in love, he put great effort into penning them, like a teenager writing the name of a crush.  Because Gell often withheld his affection, this pattern becomes obvious, for after he’d finally relented, Keppel would write the letter G in his name with particular relish.

Keppel’s language in his journals also paints a picture of his feelings.  His use of the words delightful and delicious, for instance, and his frequent recording of temperatures, storms and hot days reveal an obsession for the weather, probably rooted in his anxieties about his health, and he was never happier than when he wrote, “sunny but cool air, just as it should be.”

With vocabulary, Keppel was very exact.  Infructuous, proscenium and pandarism are just a few of the words his journal has taught me.  He also employed some surprisingly modern phrases.  He was fond of using “-ish,” as in, “it is a fine-ish day.”  So-so was another favorite:  “Sleep but so-so,” or, “my mother is so-so” were things he wrote often.  Keppel’s medical knowledge—and the terminology this required—is another prominent feature of his journal.  One learns about fistulas, pleurisy, glisters, blue pill, emetics, bougies and strictures, all of which are faithfully recorded.

In the margins, Keppel tracked the calls of his physician, Dr. Roskilly, and recorded when and how much the gentleman was paid.  The letters of friends and acquaintances, both incoming and outgoing, were written down, one supposes to know who was owed, and what events had not yet been relayed—although this practice of Keppel’s stopped after his mother’s death.  Sometimes he blocked out (in pencil) the cities he expected to reach, day by day, in the planning of his travels. 

In the endpapers, he often recorded his travel costs.  He listed debts and payments—as I said, these often contradicted the official version written on the day.  Addresses typically filled up the first pages of each journal.  Sometimes he wrote a list of wages and advances for his servants, or things people had borrowed from him, or commissions he’d been given.

Once, he even drew a sketch of Andrea Pasquini, asleep in the carriage beside him.  One imagines Keppel’s journal was always in his pocket, whether at London, Naples or Greece.  Sometimes he skipped days due to illness or depression—and even wrote in the wrong day due to distraction or upset—but he never failed to go back and record at least something.  The record is complete from 1809 to January 1850, and it provides a detailed look into the daily life, views and anxieties of a bisexual Regency gentleman.

Thank goodness Pauline de la Ferronnays didn’t destroy the lot.