Church of England - A Wiltshire Diary

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Selections from the Diary of the Rev. Francis Kilvert was first published in three volumes:

Volume I: 18701871 in 1938

Volume II: 18711874 in 1939

Volume III: 18741879 in 1940

The material for this edition was taken from a onevolume selection published in 1941

Published in Penguin Books 2009

Copyright The William Plomer Trust
All rights reserved

Except in the United States of America, this book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publishers prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser

ISBN: 978-0-141-93277-4

A Wiltshire Diary

1. Voices of Akenfield Ronald Blythe

2. The Wood John Stewart Collis

3. From Dover to the Wen William Cobbett

4. The Pleasures of English Food Alan Davidson

5. Through England on a SideSaddle Celia Fiennes

6. Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard and Other Poems Various

7. A Shropshire Lad A. E. Housman

8. Cathedrals and Castles Henry James

9. Walks in the Wheatfields Richard Jefferies

10. The Beauties of a Cottage Garden Gertrude Jekyll

11. Country Churches Simon Jenkins

12. A Wiltshire Diary Francis Kilvert

13. Some Country Houses and their Owners James LeesMilne

14. The Clouded Mirror L. T. C. Rolt

15. Let Us Now Praise Famous Gardens Vita SackvilleWest

16. One Green Field Edward Thomas

17. English Folk Songs Ralph Vaughan Williams and A. L. Lloyd

18. Country Lore and Legends Jennifer Westwood and Jacqueline Simpson

19. Birds of Selborne Gilbert White

20. Life at Grasmere Dorothy and William Wordsworth

When I opened my window at Langley Burrell Rectory this morning the first sound I heard was the tapping of a nuthatch in an acacia. There had been a little rain in the night but the morning was fine. At 9.20 I left Chippenham to join the rest of the party, my mother, Dora, and the children Katie and Monk, at 1 Princes Buildings, Weston, leaving my Father and Fanny alone at Langley.

Bathing in the morning before breakfast from a machine. 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.

At 7 oclock this evening my Mother, Dora and I walked up to Trinity Church and heard Mr Hunt preach. During the service the lightning looked in at the windows and shamed the gas while from the town far below came up on the still sultry air the strains of the Italian band.

I was out early before breakfast this morning bathing from the sands. 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.

[Kilvert returns to Langley Burrell.]

At 6 oclock this evening a large balloon, striped red and blue, passed over this house very high in the air, almost a mile high it was said. It looked very small and we could not see the car. There was one man in it and he kept on sending down parachutes and emptying sandbags. The balloon was rapidly travelling eastwards in a straight line, but it had previously been veering about a good deal in various currents of air, passing over the Plough before it came to us. The balloon started from Bristol where there was a great Conservative demonstration and came down at Yatesbury.

The Yatesbury people were terrified when they saw the balloon descending and some ran away and some stared. But the aeronaut could get no one to help him or catch hold of the grappling ropes to steady the balloon, so it came down bump and bounced up again. At last it was secured and packed, and the aeronaut found board

and bed at the Parsonage. It was said that he had made 30 ascents before.

Maria told us the story of Anne Kilvert and the cat, and the Epiphany Star. It seems that when Aunt Sophia was dying Anna thought some mutton would do her good and went to fetch some. When she came back the nurse said, She cant eat mutton. Shes dying. Anna put the mutton down on the floor and rushed to the bed. At that moment Aunt Sophia died and Anna turned round to see the cat running away with the mutton and the Epiphany Star shining in through the window.

Mrs Haddrell showed me a brown linnet in her room and she said she had a lark but he makes no charm now.

Last night I had a strange and horrible dream. It was one of those curious things, a dream within a dream, like a picture within a picture. I dreamt that I dreamt that Mr and Mrs Venables tried to murder me. We were all together in a small room and they were both trying to poison me, but I was aware of their intention and baffled them repeatedly. At length, Mr Venables put me off my guard, came round fondling me, and suddenly clapping his hand on my neck behind said, Its of no use, Mr Kilvert. Youre done for. I felt the poison beginning to work and burn in my neck. I knew it was all over and started up in fury and despair. I flew at him savagely. The scene suddenly changed to the organ loft in Hardenhuish Church. Mr Venables, seeing me coming at him, burst out at the door. Close outside the door was standing the Holy Ghost. He knocked him from the top to the bottom of the stairs, rolling over head over heels, rushed downstairs himself, mounted his horse and fled away, I after him.

This dream within a dream excited me to such a state of fury, that in the outer dream I determined to murder Mr Venables. Accordingly I lay in wait for him with a pickaxe on the Vicarage lawn at Clyro, hewed an immense and hideous hole through his head, and kicked his face till it was so horribly mutilated, crushed and disfigured as to be past recognition. Then the spirit of the dream changed. Mrs Venables became her old natural self again. Wasnt it enough, she said, looking at me reproachfully, that you should have hewed that hole through his head, but you must go and kick his face so that I dont know him again? At this moment, Mr Bevan, the Vicar of Hay, came in. Well, he said to me, you