Kilvert's Diary, 1870-79 (Penguin)

Product Information

It took either Kilvert or me a little while to get into it -- diaries can sound so self-conscious, and be rendered so much less interesting because of it. The diaries of Robert Francis Kilvert (1840–1879), kept from 1870 to 1879, are a unique treasury celebrating the Welsh and English countryside and the variety of characters inhabiting it, seen through the perspective of a sensitive, lyrical and witty young clergyman. After receiving this rejection Kilvert wrote in his diary that "The sun seemed to have gone out of the sky". One very fat man had constituted himself chiefest mourner of all and walked next the coffin before my Father and myself.

and later a one-volume selection Kilvert's Diary, 1870–1879 (Jonathan Cape, 1944—corrected in 1960, and with an abridged and illustrated version for children published as Ardizzone's Kilvert in 1976).Maybe I’m projecting my morbid anxieties onto the book, but I don’t think so; I think this sense of the heartbreaking ephemerality of things is woven into the text by Kilvert himself. There was a delicious feeling of freedom in stripping in the open air and running down naked to the sea where the waves were curling white with foam and the red morning sunshine glowing upon the naked limbs of the bathers". It came silently, suddenly, and it went as it came, but it left a long lingering glow and glory behind as it faded slowly like a gorgeous sunset, and I shall ever remember the place and the time in which such great happiness fell upon me. Once or twice I thought the whole mass of men must have been down together with the coffin atop of them and some one killed or maimed at least. Out of print since 1970, the three-volume indexed edition was reprinted in 2006 by O'Donoghue Books.

The sense of a human chain stretching all the way back, though all but a short section of the preceding chain in lost to sight. I especially enjoyed his accounts of dining and drunkeness, and the carefree way people of leisure spent their free time.This was a book I’d been planning to read for several years as some of my relatives are mentioned in it- my great grandfather was born in and grew up at Bridge House, Bredwardine and his mother was in service at Moccas Park. This had occurred during a clear out of various personal papers, prior to moving into a residential care home. This edition is not especially annotated, and the diary wasn't written for public consumption, so parts may be pretty obscure to a 21st Century reader. Many people were openly stripping on the sands a little further on and running down into the sea and I would have done the same but I had brought down no towels of my own".

As I came down from the hill into the valley across the golden meadows and along the flower-scented hedges a great wave of emotion and happiness stirred and rose up within me. An amateur, sub-Wordsworthian poet, he’s always going into raptures over the landscapes he crosses on his long walks around the countryside. It didn’t help that googling for articles about Kilvert I found myself on a blog that I suddenly realised was attempting to normalise sex between adults and children. The coffin went out immediately and the pall bearers filed out in pairs after it, taking their places and holding each his pall tassel on either side.It's fun to look up all the history Kilvert is living through, but the best parts come when he describes his 11 mile hikes to farms and hermits and villages. The mice scurry rattling along the wainscot and Toby darts off in great excitement to listen and watch for them. This new edition of William Plomer’s original selection contains new archival material as well as a fascinating introduction illuminating Kilvert’s world and the history of the diaries. The bearers, blinded by the sweeping pall, could not see where they were going and nearly missed the Cloister arch, but at length we got safe into the narrow dark passage and into the Cloisters. The diary format, working as a mosaic composed of random little slivers of colour, creates a curious, sometimes jarring effect -- one minute Kilvert is in a cottage hearing some gruesome gossip of death and disaster and madness, the next he's sauntering off down the lane noticing poetic things and about wildflowers.

You get the sense he was quite the charmer, but even so it couldn’t have been easy for an upright, single clergyman to get laid back then. You know that weird, poignant vibe you get from old photos—all those smiling people, so interesting and life-like, and all so dead, dead, dead? FK seems to be a fascinating person, one that you would like to meet until you realise that he died 139 years ago.

Also, even making allowances for how people wrote about children in the Victorian era, Kilvet may well have been a pedophile, whether he acted on these impulses or not. It is hard to judge his partly paedophile proclivities from a current perspective - the dubious sentiments of older men for younger girls seem to have been more accepted then - if not acted on - though his belief that those subjected to his attentions always adored and felt comfortable with him, was not necessarily right.