Kilvert's Diary

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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. 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 his diary entry for 2 January 1878, Kilvert records a visit from his parents. His father, the Reverend Robert Kilvert, rector of Langley Burrell (Wiltshire) and a keen antiquary, ‘especially admired the old Norman 12th- or 13th-century work in the Church and more particularly… the carving over the Devil’s Door’ (the north door, shown here).

The ultimate guide to country life - The Oldie The ultimate guide to country life - The Oldie

The notebooks were then returned to Essex Hope. Plomer called to see her some time in 1954 and she told him that she had to go into a home and leave her house. She had therefore cleared out a lot of papers and had destroyed the notebooks as they contained private family matters. He recalled he could have strangled her with his bare hands. But she later produced one of the notebooks and gave it to him. It was the Cornish Holiday. He was educated privately in Bath by his uncle, Francis Kilvert, before going up to Wadham College, Oxford. He then entered the Church of England and became a rural curate, working primarily in the Welsh Marches between Hereford and Hay on Wye. A John Betjeman documentary on Kilvert, Vicar of this Parish, was shown on BBC television in 1976. [10] This led to Kilvert's Diary being dramatised (eighteen 15-minute episodes) on British television between 1977 and 1978, with Timothy Davies in the title role. But a fortnight after his return from honeymoon, Kilvert was taken ill and died on 23 September, from peritonitis. He was 38. As his book, Kilvert’s Diary, attests, Clyro (or ‘Cleirwy’ in Welsh) is a fine starting point. Stroll a mile south and you hit the beautiful Wye river, William Wordsworth’s “wanderer through the woods”, whose gentle banks lead upstream along the Wye valley walk. Downstream, you’re on Offa’s Dyke, chasing the Mercian king on a crisscrossing journey through the Welsh Marches.In August 1879 he married Elizabeth Ann Rowland (1846–1911), whom he had met on a visit to Paris, but he died from peritonitis on 23 September, aged 38, a few days after returning from his honeymoon in Scotland. He was buried at Bredwardine. There is then a certain irony today, when walkers and ramblers – to adopt friendlier terms than ‘tourist’ – pursue a Kilvert Trail in search of places mentioned in the diary. 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.”

The Kilvert Society

Before her death, Elizabeth Kilvert removed all references to herself, and many to his ill-fated affair with Ettie, from her husband's diary. This amounted to the excision of two lengthy sequences, the first from September 1875 to March 1876, the second from June 1876 to the end of 1877; it is more than likely that she also destroyed a final part, dealing with the months leading up to their marriage in August 1879. The diary halts suddenly on March 13 1879, but since Kilvert was continuing to write poetry of a personal nature as late as the end of May (his final poem foretells that "his songs will soon be o'er") it is reasonable to assume that it possessed a concluding section which no longer exists. Toman, John (2013). Kilvert's World of Wonders: Growing up in Mid-Victorian England. Lutterworth Press. ISBN 978-0-7188-4178-2. Kilvert was born on 3 December 1840 at The Rectory, Hardenhuish Lane, near Chippenham, Wiltshire, to the Rev. Robert Kilvert, rector of Langley Burrell, Wiltshire, and Thermuthis, daughter of Walter Coleman and Thermuthis Ashe. Adlard, John (Spring 1974). "The Failure of Francis Kilvert". Michigan Quarterly Review. 13 (2): 133–135. ISSN 1558-7266 . Retrieved 10 December 2016. Robert Francis Kilvert (3 December 1840–23 September 1879), known as Francis or Frank, was an English clergyman whose diaries reflected rural life in the 1870s, and were published over fifty years after his death.At last, too, Kilvert had found a wife. He was married to Elizabeth Rowland, who he had met on a trip to Paris three years earlier, in August 1879. 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. The pub, which dates from medieval times, recently underwent major renovation after a serious fire. Now it offers flagstone floors, friendly locals, Butty Bach on tap, a well-worn dart board, and great cod and chips. Kilvert never made it across the threshold, though. After finding Painscastle’s mayor at the porch, he asked him for a guided tour of a nearby quarry instead.

Francis Kilvert - Wikipedia

Throughout the diary, Kilvert reveals his susceptibility to young female beauty. Should we find him posthumously guilty of paedophilia? Probably not. His prolonged celibacy and the strict propriety that governed his relationships with adult women, together with his romantic temperament, led him to find an outlet for his feelings in his fondness for pre-pubescent girls. Such impulses may have been erotic in origin, but were almost certainly innocent in fact. However, there was one type of individual, increasingly common with the spread of the railway network across Britain, who aroused his dismay and whom he treated with contempt - and that was the tourist.

Bennett, Alan (2007). The Uncommon Reader. London: Faber and Faber and Profile Books. ISBN 978-1-84668-049-6.