ABSTRACT
From this time onwards, thanks to the details noted in his diary, much more is known about Arthur Sullivan’s inner thoughts and private activities. The diary has gaps—no entry—but its layout of three days to a page evidently challenged him to a brief daily reporting. Sullivan had much work for Walter Smythe as his secretary, one of whose tasks would be to deal with the composer’s correspondence during his absence abroad. The Duke had ensured congenial off-duty music-making by inviting both Sullivan and Frederic Clay to be his guests aboard. The intensity of the lovers’ reunion at Kassel is indicated in his diary not only by Arthur Sullivan’s customary numerical sign but by the recurrent expression ‘Himmelische Nacht’, meaning ‘heavenly night’, sometimes shortened to ‘Him. N.’ Already known as poet and oriental traveller, Sullivan was to show a passionate political radicalism which earned him two months in prison for exhorting Irish tenantry to resist eviction.
