A COUNTRY CLERGYMAN
BOOKS OF THE DAY
By C. E. YuLLIANIY IN these jarring days, full of uncouth noise and of ugly preparations for a state of general insanity, many of us discover a melancholy joy in reading the quiet records of the past. Only seventy years ago Englishmen could think' of war as a thing professional and remote, very seldom bringing to their own comfortable existence any cause for anxiety. All the popular vehicles on the roads of England were gently drawn by horses, rarely attaining the speed of twelve miles an hour. Very bad music was heard occasionally, it is true, in the drawing-room ; but it was produced by untransmitted .voices and an immediate piano. Nobody could even imagine the braying, distorted inanities of the loud-speaker or the gramophone. The horrors of jazz, of psycho-analysis and of cocktail-parties were totally unknown. We lived, on the whole, in a world of decency and elegance. The taste of our people was not being systematically degraded by daily porno- graphics or the multiplied and elaborate vulgarities of the picture-house. Our recreations, croquet and archery, were graceful and unexhausting. To us the simple gaiety of a picnic was infinitely delightful, or the adventure of a country walk. For the middle classes, at any rate, England was a green and pleasant land. There were disadvantages, of course ; but man's appalling ingenuity had not altogether succeeded in destroying his peace and in filling his life with ugliness and alarms.
We are strongly reminded of all this by such a book as the Diary of Mr. Kilvert—the record of a quiet, sensitive and observant life, "a life revealing all the charms of a now remote and irrecoverable serenity. Kilvert was a happy curate in one of the loveliest of countries, the Radnorshire border of the Wye valley near the little town of Hay. He lived in the shadow of a wooded rise, through which he could walk up lane or dingle to the high and haunted moors where fairies dance and heroes are buried. He saw before him the wide pastoral valley, the long line of enchanted hills, and above them all the noble flowing rampart of the Black Mountain, sometimes of a golden colour, sometimes of darkest indigo, always changing and always lovely. Here he lived for seven years, from 1865 to 1872, helping Mr. Venables the Vicar of Clyro, and enjoying fully the simple pleasures and the simple duties of a rural clergyman.
The present volume contains the record of 1870 and a part of 1871. Mr. Kilvert, with his neat evangelical beard and his gentlemanly style, was a popular man, often going out to dinner and often invited to join a pleasant excursion. But he was not by any means ordinary. His Diary, now happily rescued from oblivion, shows that he was a man of a delicately exalted nature, responding to the magic and loveliness of the country, observant, and invariably sympathetic. He wrote simply, but - with a remarkable gift of self-revelation, and often in phrases of memorable charm. No literary person who reads this book can fail to be delighted by the bright and living quality of certain descriptive passages ; as, for example, where he observes how " peewits were sweeping, rolling and tumbling in the hot blue air . . with a strange deep mysterious hustling and quavering sound from their great wings " ; or where he " could have cried with excitement " as he saw the long line of mountain snow in the primrose light of a March evening ; or in the simple note : " An iron-grey horse was drinking at. a rill in the wa npy meadow near two dreary pollards." One line, indeed, is not likely to be forgotten by the reader, especially if he knows the Welsh borderland : " An angel satyr walks these hills."
Kilvert's Diary. Selections from the-Diary of the Rev."Francis Itilvert. Edited by .William Plomer. (Cape 32s, ed.)
ICilvert was often a visitor in those pleasant country houses from which you look over lawn or park across the valley. He was driven in Baskerville's brougham or in Mrs. P
yellow chariot. He bought in Hay a pair of golol,hes, so that he could walk in winter to take tea with the gay young Bevan ladies at the Castle. He played hilarious vames of croquet, sometimes continued in the twilight. How vividly he records a picnic in the Golden Valley, where potatoes were burnt or boiled unskilfully in a pot, where ladies adorned the dishes with wild roses or greenery, and where " cup of various kinds went round, claret and hock, champagne, cider and sherry; and people sprawled about in all attitudes and made a great noise." The local Volunteers appear not infre- quently in these amusing pages, their noisy music, their jocularity and intemperance ; and we are told of a Volunteer concert in Hay, where " the Rifle Corps band played ' Vital Spark' and a man named Clement skated round the platform upon wheel skates, and fell into the front row of ladies." But we are often reminded of Kilvert's mystical retiring nature, his delight in solitude. He had " a peculiar dislike to meeting people, and a peculiar liking for a deserted road." " It is a fine thing," he says, " to be out on the hills alone . . . one has a feeling and a love for them which one has for nothing else." In one of his most admirable passages he describes how the chattering noodles of the Woolhopc Club (a group of local antiquaries) invade the mountain and open a tumulus. He had been invited to join the assembly, but he could not bear the idea of " seeing the mountain desecrated by this particular herd " and (equally dreadful) of " stewing all the evening at the Rose and Crown in that company." Yet he is generous enough to regard as " a very unworthy practical joke " the hoaxing of the Club by a locally manufactured " Saxon coin " artfully placed in the tumulus, duly exhumed, photographed, and sent up to the British Museum.
Most of Kilvert's Diary is delightful reading. But we - read sometimes of the more forbidding aspect of country life, of cruelty or tragedy. We are told of drunken, fighting crowds, of incredibly brutal fathers, and of miserable suicide. One description of a suicide, in fact, is unforgettably horrible. We are reminded also that our peasantry were living in " filthy huts " and were still resorting to primitive magic. Mr. Plomer, who has edited this book so admirably, thinks " there has been more change in Clyro since 1870 than in several centuries before that date " ; but I can assure him that people are still living in cottages no better than hovels within four miles of Kilvert's parish, without water and without any pretence of sanitation. I could also tell him of much that is dreadful and obscure, the grim and often tragic residue of knavery and ignorance. But if these ugly things remain, the peace and enchantment of the country remain also, and will remain always.
Kilvert's Diary will take a high place, if I am not mistaken, among the true literary " discoveries " of the age. It is a book of remarkable quality ; perhaps a minor classic. In view of its general excellence it would be ungenerous to cavil at the frequent mis-spelling of Welsh place-names (and occa- sionally of personal names), for which Kilvert himself is probably responsible, or at a few inaccuracies of transcription. These will only be observed by those who happen to possess an intimate knowledge of the Clyro district, and they will not affect the pleasure—in this case I think we may justly say the delight—of the general reader. I hope this charming book, afterpassing through many editions, will appear presently in a cheaper form.
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