Kilvert's Diary, 1870-79 (Penguin)

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Kilvert's hopes that his personal record might be made public may have been distant - he was disappointed in his lifetime by his failure to publish his somewhat conventional poetry - but he harboured them all the same. He showed passages from the diary to his Oxford friend Anthony Lawson Mayhew, and perhaps, additionally, to his future wife, Elizabeth Rowland, and observed that the diary might interest and amuse "some who come after me". He does accept rejection by his beloveds' parents rather easily, however. His sense of honour and propriety was evidently acute, but perhaps he should have fought his corner more persistently; after all, as he pointed out himself, his own father had overcome initial rejection. He did however eventually marry, which I'll come to a little later. A mile or so out of Clyro, I reach Lower Lloyney farm, a solid square-jawed place with a muddy yard. The workhorse building reminds me that this is hill farming country, as short on luxury as it is rich in weather. Neighbouring Herefordshire, with its rich fertile plains, is awash with grand farmhouses. Not so here. People build as they live: simply, without frills.

Additionally, members benefit from a twice-yearly journal and mid-year newsletter. These are full of articles that expand on diary entries with information about the people, places, and events that Kilvert recorded. But the diary is not just a mine of social history and folklore: what comes across is Kilvert’s human heart, deeply concerned for the well-being of his poorer parishioners and doing what he could to relieve the loneliness, squalor, and hunger that he witnessed. Kilvert’s attempts to write poetry are self-consciously artistic. His diaries, by contrast, often achieve poetic resonance artlessly in their descriptions of people, events, and the landscapes he loved. Quite apart from his dismal love life, there is a strain of melancholy running through the diary. He records mysterious illnesses –‘face ache’ features quite often, for example – and has some terrifying dreams, which might be indicative of depression or worse. For example, on October 14 th 1872 he records ‘a strange and horrible dream’, or more exactly a dream within a dream, in which the Reverend Venables (the vicar with whom Kilvert lodged and who was effectively his boss) tried to murder him, and he in return tried to murder Venables: Yet I see no one until I crest the hill and reach the edge of the Begwyns. Stretching over 1,200 acres, this glorious upland moor is a favourite with local dog walkers and horse riders. Several cars are parked at the cattle-grid entrance; their owners dot the cloudless skyline. In the diary as a whole he writes with such precise observation. There are what we might think of as big set-piece passages, where he pulls out all the stops (and which are perhaps rather overwritten for some21st century tastes), as on April 20th 1876 (the day his relationship with Etty came to an end):

About Me

It was during this period that he began courting Elizabeth Rowland. Unlike Ettie, with her "true gypsy beauty", the future Mrs Kilvert was rather plain, but her charitable interests made her perfect for a vicar's wife. She remained devoted to Kilvert's memory, and never remarried. On her death in 1911, she was buried in Bredwardine churchyard at some distance from her late husband. Separated in life, the couple were not even destined to lie together in death. The plot next to Kilvert, intended for her, was taken by a pair of spinster sisters. This year marks the 70th anniversary of the first publication of one of the most enchanting portraits of English rural life ever written. In 1937, the poet and novelist William Plomer made a momentous discovery in a pile of manuscripts at the offices of Jonathan Cape in Bedford Square, where he worked as a reader. His attention was seized as soon as he started to read the contents of two bound Victorian notebooks, filled with a spiky sloping script that was difficult to decipher. On August 11th 1874 (a mere month after he’d last mooned over Daisy) he met Katharine Heanley at a wedding. He was 33, she ten years younger, the daughter of a well-to-do Lincolnshire farmer. Oh, as I watched them there came over me such a longing, such a hungry yearning to have one of those children for my own. Oh that I too had a child to love and to love me, a daughter with such fair limbs and blue eyes archly dancing, and bright clustering curls blown wild and golden in the sunshine and sea air. It came over me like a storm and I turned away hungry at heart and half envying the parents as they sat upon the sand watching their children at play.

You may also notice the curious prescience of the words, from the Book of Hebrews, engraved on Kilvert’s white tombstone: ‘He being dead yet speaketh’. Every diary has its longueurs, and Kilvert’s is no exception. An amateur, sub-Wordsworthian poet, he’s always going into raptures over the landscapes he crosses on his long walks around the countryside. These are fine in small doses, but as a dedicated urbanite, I find beautiful scenery kind of blah. Give me a nice, flat parking lot to look at, a strip mall— anything but some boring old mountain. The diary is full of moments like this, tiny, luminous moments that are just...there. When he’s at his best, his eye for the stray, telling detail is almost Tolstoyan: The Reverend Francis Kilvert (1840-1879), whose steps I am following, knew the value of a contemplative rest. Reading his diary entry for February 1870, I imagine him gazing at this very view: “Beautiful Clyro rising from the valley ... dotted with white houses and shining with gleams of green on hills and dingle sides.”I've already written at perhaps too great length about some of the unhappinesses in Kilvert's life, but I'm sorry to say that I can't give you a happy ending. There are indeed two desperately unhappy finales to this story. The Cornish Diary: Journal No.4, 1870—From 19 July to 6 August, Cornwall was published by Alison Hodge in 1989. [a] The National Library of Wales, which holds two of the three surviving volumes, published The Diary of Francis Kilvert: April–June 1870 in 1982 and The Diary of Francis Kilvert: June–July 1870 in 1989. Several modern writers have commented on passages in the diaries describing interactions with young girls which these days might raise suspicions of paedophilia. [7] [8] [9] However, poet John Betjeman was among those who have since defended Kilvert, saying, "If there had been anything sinister in his attentions to them, he would hardly have written so candidly in his diary about his feelings". [ citation needed] Modern adaptations [ edit ]