Kilvert's Diary

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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. Robert Francis Kilvert started his famous Diary on 1 January 1870. The first entry in the published version starts on 18 January, so we do not know if he gave a reason for starting to keep a diary on that particular date. Fortunately he does say on 3 November 1874: ‘Why do I keep this voluminous journal? I can hardly tell. Partly because life appears to me such a curious and wonderful thing that it seems a pity that even such a humble and uneventful life as mine should pass altogether away without some such record as this, and partly too because I think the record may amuse and interest some who come after me’. Kilvert was probably thinking of family, not that his diary would eventually be read world-wide. When we read Kilvert today, we can imagine ourselves restored to a vanished Arcadia, to a world of beauty and peace, where only the threshing machine and steam engine puncture the countryside’s silence, to a society where the ties of community are still interdependent and strong.’

The Kilvert Society

Published in three volumes in 1938, 1939 and 1940, Kilvert's Diary was immediately acclaimed. As a piece of social history, it was considered to be as significant as the novels of Thomas Hardy - an exact contemporary of Kilvert's, and linked tenuously to him through their mutual friends, the Moule family - in documenting the vanishing rural life of 19th-century England; while, in certain respects, the diary appeared to run counter to perceived notions of the Victorian age. Where, for instance, was its prudery when a country parson was able to bathe naked on a public beach without suffering from any apparent inhibitions? Or when the subject of venereal disease formed part of a discussion at a ruridecanal conference? Not surprisingly, too, Kilvert's enchanting portrait of the country parish was seen as an emblem of a way of life under threat from the prospect of a Nazi invasion (Peter Alexander, Plomer's biographer, has described Plomer himself in flight from the Blitz at a house in Worthing, ensconced in the conservatory, contentedly eating mulberries with his aged father while correcting the proofs of the third volume).Howells, Anita (13 June 2001). "Kilvert and a sad love affair". Hereford Times . Retrieved 24 October 2017. The complete text, from the first entry in January 1870, written when Kilvert was curate at Clyro in Radnorshire, to the final one in March 1879, by which time he was the incumbent of Bredwardine in Herefordshire, came to well over a million words. Plomer decided to winnow it by about two thirds. "It simply creates that really unknown and remote period," he enthused to Elizabeth Bowen as he began work, drawing lines in red crayon beside paragraphs which were to be omitted. "I showed a bit of it to Virginia [Woolf]: she was most excited. I have insisted on editing it for myself . . . But it's going to be a great deal of work, especially for some poor typist, who will probably be driven blind and mad." In particular, Woolf applauded the comic perfection of the scene at Kilvert's cousin Maria's funeral in Worcester cathedral where, in a sequence of brilliant descriptive strokes, the pallbearers are depicted staggering under the weight of the "crushingly heavy" coffin, which threatens at times to topple over and kill or maim them. The diary runs from January 1870 until just before his death on 23 September 1879. We believe the diary filled about twenty-nine notebooks. Mrs Kilvert removed all the notebooks from 9 September 1875 to 1 March 1876 and 27 June 1876 to 31 December 1877, we believe for personal reasons. She removed all mention of herself. On Mrs Kilvert’s death in 1911 the remaining twenty-two notebooks were passed to Kilvert’s sister Dora Pitcairn who in turn left them to her niece Frances Essex Hope, n ée Smith.

Life on the wing | Books | The Guardian Life on the wing | Books | The Guardian

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. Forgotten the title or the author of a book? Our BookSleuth is specially designed for you. Visit BookSleuth

Of all noxious animals,’ Kilvert continues, ‘…the most noxious is a tourist. And of all tourists the most vulgar, ill-bred, offensive and loathsome is the British tourist.’ Plomer, William (1947). Kilvert's Diary 1870-1879 - Selections from the Diary of the Rev. Francis Kilvert. New York: MacMillan. From the Roundabout, I head north downhill, leaving the Begwyns behind in favour of lusher ground below. At Pentre farm, I cut across two hedge-lined fields to Bachawy brook. I find no evidence of the ford marked on the map, so make do with a hop, skip and jump. Even today, though, the sparsely populated nature of the region means that one is still more likely to encounter sheep than people. And the countryside, quiet hamlets and remote churches of a low, squat design that Kilvert knew have changed so little and retain much of their former character. Kilvert's lyrical nature writing was recognised for its Wordsworthian sensibility. Kilvert had relished his connection to Wordsworth through his friendship with the Dew family of Whitney Court, overlooking the Wye. Mary Dew was related to Wordsworth's wife, Mary Hutchinson, and the subject of the Wordsworth sonnet "To the Infant M.M.". Kilvert's art in capturing life on the wing - that uncanny ability, as VS Pritchett noted, of his eye and ear seeming always "to be roving over the scene and to hit upon some sight or word which is all the more decisive for having the air of accident" - also provoked comparisons to Hopkins and Proust. "For some time," Kilvert remarked in 1874, with self-conscious artistry, "I have been trying to find the right word for the shimmering, glancing, tumbling movement of the poplar leaves in the sun and wind. It was 'dazzle'. The dazzle of the poplars."

Francis Kilvert - Wikipedia

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. Smith, Alison (1996). The Victorian Nude: Sexuality, Morality, and Art. Manchester University Press. ISBN 978-0-7190-4403-8. Hope did preserve three of the notebooks. She presented one to Plomer himself, another to Jeremy Sandford, who had written a radio play about Kilvert, and the final one to Charles Harvey, a Kilvert enthusiast. The survival of these originals today in the National Library of Wales and Durham University Library gives one a taste of the sad, irretrievable loss caused by this wanton destruction. The appeal of several episodes in these manuscripts, absent from the edited diary, suggest furthermore that Plomer's insistence that he had published the best of the diary in his three volumes was much too confident. Francis Kilvert also published pleasant but conventional poetry, republished by the Kilvert Society in Collected verse: 3rd December 1840 - 23rd September 1879 by the Reverend Francis Kilvert in 1968.But a fortnight after his return from honeymoon, Kilvert was taken ill and died on 23 September, from peritonitis. He was 38. 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.