BOOK CLUB
Munkey Diaries
An email exchange between our editor-in-chief Annika Hein and online editor Rosie Dalton, in which they thumb through the highly personal Munkey Diaries that Jane Birkin kept between 1957 and 1982. Published in 2018, these intimate ‘notes to self’ offer a window into the soul of a true stalwart and feel particularly moving in the wake of the icon’s recent passing. In honour of her memory, we invite you to read along with us.
Dearest Annika,
I was gifted Munkey Diaries by my dad a few Christmases ago and first read the book over the summer of my first pregnancy. I was immediately entranced by this approach to the genre of memoir. Entranced by the intimate nature of Jane’s diary entries. And the way they seemed to lend colour to so many of the film photographs, anecdotes, and cinematic characters that we have come to identify Jane Birkin with.
Rereading it again now—in the depths of my second pregnancy—I am struck, in particular, by the passages she shares about her trip to Japan with Serge Gainsbourg whilst pregnant with Charlotte.
17 May { 1971 }
We arrived in Japan on Monday morning after stopping for fuel in Moscow where I bought a doll for Kate. We arrived at Tokyo airport and we hadn’t been able to sleep in the plane, so I look like a crumpled hanky over a melon. They weren’t expecting me in that state but they were very kind and didn’t openly curse it! A lot of photographers at the airport and a group of people bearing banners saying ‘Welcome Mr Gainsbourg and Miss Birkin’. When we came out of the airport, there was a big black car with lacy covers on the seats. We crammed into the car, Serge and my basket, weighed down after all the goodies I had swiped from the plane. I had pink eyes (no make-up because I wasn’t expecting such a turnout) and a crushed dress. We waved away, barely to be seen because of all the bouquets of flowers stuffed in my car on top of us.
…
We were free until the press conference at 1 o’clock, so we went shopping in the arcade under the hotel; everything was Sony this and Sony that, at half the price of Paris. I looked around for a little radio for my ma and gadgets of any kind for Serge! We went to a Japanese restaurant and ate raw fish, very clean cooking – or rather, no cooking. I swallowed a ton of saki. We were taken to the press conference, a little doorway down some dark stairs; it was a nightclub and had fluorescent lights on the stairs. Everyone grasped me, so I wouldn’t crash down the stairs and have to be rushed to Tokyo Gen Hospital. It was a club on two levels and a balcony. We were met by ‘Je T’aime … Moi Non Plus’ blaring out and downstairs they were projecting slides of scenes from Cannabis; it was all very organised.
So often have I come across the black and white images of Jane and Serge wandering the streets of Japan—her heavily pregnant and toting that signature basket bag. Her diary entries from this time now seem to bring those photographs to life—revealing how she bought a baby carriage for Charlotte in Kyoto and how her Polaroid pictures failed to turn out. But they also remind us that Jane is really not so different from you or I. Despite her fame and status she is, in Munkey Diaries, just a young woman navigating the world and trying to discover her own strange self in the process.
And I find myself pondering what it means when we return to the self through the art of journalling. Have you ever personally kept a diary?
x Rosie
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Dearest Rosie
You actually gifted me my copy of Munky Diaries probably around this time of year in 2021. Inside the cover it reads 'Dearest Annika, I hope you enjoy reading Jane's diaries as much as I have! With Love, x Rosie’.
I don't think I knew it yet, but I was in the very early days of my second pregnancy. We were living out of suitcases, travelling around the Northern Rivers post covid and I remember always wanting to keep it close, a little reminder of all my books that were packed in boxes elsewhere. But it wasn't actually until a long while later that I began reading. At the time, I was breastfeeding a lot and spending lots of time in dark rooms resettling an 18-month-old Vahla, so I had bought myself a Kindle so I could read more and scroll less. But I purposely didn't want to read Jane's diaries on my Kindle. Flicking through the pages, I just knew it needed a more tactile response.
Rereading it now, with you, and after the news of Jane's passing feels a little cosmic.
It's such an intimate thing to read someone's journals. And, as you say, the way she writes of such iconic moments—ones that we've built up through culture and the identity at large of Jane—makes them seem so normal. She really does ground those memories with such candour.
I have kept a journal, mostly when I was younger and I think it's why I'm so struck with the innocence of her earlier entries. The beautiful childlike way of looking at the world and the nature of how she responds to and contemplates things...
1960, Sunday
'I learnt today about God. I wonder about that subject, He must be such a strange person, is He a man? Has He a body? If not, is He a void? And if He's a void how can He grant our wishes?
1960, Friday
'Ma makes me a dress, she has been doing it for a day or two and she also bought me some white and silver shoes. A lovely dance at East Grinstead, I danced with very nice boys, all terribly sweet. None of them could dance which made the situation rather uncomfortable for me who couldn't either!
I mostly keep a notebook now—jotting down things to remember and the tail end of a good thought! I also keep a little memory book for the kids, letters I write them about their current stage of life.
Do you have a journal practice that you keep or another way of marking moments in time?
A x
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Dearest Annika,
I was so touched to hear about your adventures with this book and how you held it close for many months before actually turning its pages. As if Jane’s words were percolating around you, before the moment came for you to absorb them.
I, too, am very drawn to her childlike innocence throughout this book—not just during the years of her youth, but also throughout the entire time period covered in her Munkey Diaries. Even the very fact that she addresses these entries to her toy monkey—“Munkey”—betrays an eternally youthful spirit that I love.
It is something so palpable in her worldview throughout this book. And so is what her second daughter, Charlotte Gainsbourg, refers to as her “faith in life”. ‘The more I look at you, the more I love you’ Charlotte explains in the closing monologue of her directorial debut Jane by Charlotte. ‘I wish I were like you, for having faith in life seems to be your philosophy. To live without mistrust. To believe in humanity, in people. To be curious about everything, close to everything, to everyone, without any filters.’
These words are rendered even more special when reading about Jane’s experience raising her daughters.
20 July, Charlotte’s birth { 1971 }
I am sitting in the hospital, the cot is ready, now all I have to do is produce… I love my baby so much already. Girl or boy, I am so longing to see it and tell it how much I wanted it and love and treasure it because I already do. I have never wanted anything more. Sweet Serge was very nervous. What an angel! He is worried in case it hurts me too much. I told him it is not the case when you want something so much. He has taken a pill and I hope he will sleep well. Please God, let my baby be all right.
Sweet Charlotte was born 21 July at 10.15. She weighed 7 lb 10 oz and had a mass of silky black hair. It was the most beautiful sight I have ever seen. She was still attached to me by a grey-pink cord. I watched them cut the cord that had joined us for so long and they handed her to me. What a tiny, beautiful little thing she was!
I love the window this book provides into Jane’s family life. It sheds a whole new light on the images we see and stories we hear about Jane and Serge, or about Jane and her daughters. Like this excerpt from a quote that Jane’s third daughter, Lou Doillon, shared on Instagram after her mother’s passing.
‘Maman… There’s Jane B and my Bonnie lies over the Ocean in my head on repeat since Sunday, there’s Jacques’ love letters, surrounded by a red ribbon I found near your bed. There’s your word next to mine, “Ma Lou sentinelle” … Mom, thanks for all the adventures, thanks for not being ordinary, reasonable, and docile.’
You asked if I have ever personally kept a diary and the truth is not really. I have journalled on and off over the years, but not with any great rhythm or regularity. Instead, my way of marking moments in time tends to come in the form of notes or ideas that I jot down as they come to me—momentary musings that will often later find themselves woven throughout works of poetry or fiction. Storytelling has always been my own form of diarising and I learned early on just how personal our words can be on the page.
Handwritten letters like those that Lou describes finding by Jane’s bed have always been important to me as well. Since childhood, my way of marking birthdays, anniversaries, and other special moments has been in the form of lengthy, heartfelt letters. Or personal inscriptions scribbled on the inside of book covers—as you now know. My husband and I have written many love letters over the years and I write these for our children now as well.
I recently learned that this is actually a long-standing tradition in my family. Poppy Mac, my maternal grandfather, was a man of few words but a deeply romantic soul. And my mum recently discovered a love letter that he had written to my grandmother when they were courting in the fifties. It was so special to read his words, scrawled in such beautiful handwriting, and to discover this connection between us across the decades.
Are there any traditions that you uphold or that you hope to pass down to your children?
x R
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Dearest Rosie,
What a beautiful sentiment, to live without mistrust. And you're right this curiosity and Jane's childlike, unfiltered trains of thought continue through the pages—a portal into her inner landscape.
I also find the lack of embellishment quite interesting. It really is quite factual or matter of fact the way she wrote the entries and also what I would imagine quite a vulnerable thing to open up to the world to read. My notebook is my inner sanctum, it's a well of inspiration and thoughts and notes, but it's also never what I would consider my "best" work. To share anything I write in there I would usually tease it out and pull it apart, change it from its original childlike form, so I think to just publish these entries as they were is such a generous way to approach a biography.
Her experiences raising her daughters are what stand out to me also. I think because I so obsessively want to remember everything, make note of the way my children smell, how they place their hands, smile with their eyes. There are so many moments of beauty and brutality within motherhood as we watch our babies become bigger and so, to read another mother's experience of 'keeping track' creates this sense of camaraderie. As though all our hearts are breaking and bursting simultaneously with each birthday.
8 April, 1 a.m. [1980]
My little Kate is thirteen today. My baby Kate, my sweet and loved Kate. And here she is crying, my poor Kate. For fear of leaving being twelve behind. I went to her room to kiss her and to say goodnight and she clung onto me as if in a panic. I thought that it was because of the earrings she'd lost, but she said, 'Maman, I don't want to be thirteen, I want to stay your baby.'
…
Tomorrow won't be different from today. Each age is a beautiful age and new, not to be afraid. To forgive me is sometimes I haven't been the perfect mother, but for me too, it was a first. And that she could hold onto me whenever she wanted, that I love her. I rocked her in my arms like a baby, she who'd thrown herself against me like a frightened bird, and my sweet Kate fell asleep softly like when she was one year old.
Nothing ever changes.
I loved hearing of your love letters, what special heirlooms in their own right. Odin and I too have boxes and boxes of letters we wrote to each other during our first six months together, which we spent in different states and without the ability to call or text each other. This act and art of handwriting is something I place great value on in our home. I regularly sit down with Vahla to write or draw letters, both of us penning our thoughts to friends far and near. As you know too well I'm a deeply sentimental person, which I think you are too, so this act of writing or in fact just keeping a notebook, imparts an extra layer of nostalgia that I hope my children will find magic within. My own special way of keeping track of and recording our history.
Do you find since becoming a mother you've had the urge to preserve memories in a different way?
A xx
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Dearest Annika,
I do feel particularly called to preserve our memories since becoming a mother—not necessarily in a different way, but perhaps with more care and thoughtfulness now.
I have always held onto special letters and cards from friends and family, for instance; have kept them in shoe boxes or tucked away in secret drawers. These days, I write those letters for my children to keep, reading them out loud together and then storing them away in special boxes, along with other precious mementos for them to discover on another day.
I was very touched by the exchange you shared between Jane and Kate, especially by the fact that Jane originally thought her daughter’s upset had to do with ‘the earrings she’d lost’. Because talismans have always been very important and sentimental to me—as I think they were to Jane Birkin as well.
She speaks often throughout Munkey Diaries about the St Christopher medallion she inherited from her father, David Birkin, who was a lieutenant commander in the Royal Navy. Traditionally, St Christopher medals were worn as a symbol of protection during travel, but this particular talisman also forged a transgenerational connection between Jane and her father. So she writes of being devastated when she lost it.
Tuesday [1960]
I lost my father’s St Christopher medallion when I was with Serge. I had put it on a little chain round my ankle. God knows why my legs were sticking out of the taxi window on our way back from a nightclub. When I got home I saw that the St Christopher was no longer there. It was the medallion that my father had kept throughout the war – on one side it was written ‘Church of England’ so that one knew how to bury him – and I’d lost it on a whim, trying to look cute. I didn’t dare tell my father. During the filming of Death on the Nile, Pa and I shared the same duplex with Serge, and I wore fur moon boots in spite of the 42-degree heat so that he wouldn’t notice. When I saw him after in London I said, ‘I’ve got a terrible thing to own up to,’ and he said, ‘Of course, you’ve lost your St Christopher.’ So he knew all along!
My maternal grandmother always wore rose gold jewellery and this is a tradition that I have carried on. My rose gold wedding band is set with a diamond that belonged to her and, for my 31st birthday—my first as a mother—my husband had a rose gold signet ring made for me that is set with different stones in the constellation of our son’s birthday. I hope to pass this down to him one day and carry on the rose gold tradition for another generation.
There is something so alchemically magical about talismans like jewellery—the raw materials like gold and precious gems outlast so many other materials in our world. They can be melted down and repurposed, or worn in entirely different ways from person to person. Because of this, they can carry important memories with them through the generations. Which is why talismans represent another way that I personally like to honour our family history.
x R
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Dearest Reader,
How do you preserve memories or mark moments in time?
We hope that this Book Club exchange will help inspire you to pick up a copy of Jane Birkin’s Munkey Diaries. And, in it, discover the unique intimacy of her notes to self—an exercise in embracing vulnerability, with an open mind and open heart.
x JANE