Handwriting

From 'Kilvert's Cornish Diary', ed Maber and Tregoning, 1989

'Kilvert's Cornish Diary' is a little gem.

I don't think there is any work on the manuscript which is more carefully researched, clearer, and more insightful.

The pages seen here come from Kilvert's original notebook of his holiday with the Hockins in Cornwall in 1870. 

Most useful is the glimpse of Kilvert's technique which the pages reveal. He left gaps which were to be filled in at some time after the initial entry. Some of the gaps are not completely filled, leaving smaller gaps, and sometimes he had more information than could be squeezed into the space he had allowed.

Perhaps most vainly hopeful is the thought that he clearly carried with him a small notebook which contained jottings for the day, from which he wrote up the diary notebooks at home later. There might just be a cache of these unregarded notebooks gathering dust in a loft somewhere.

If you wanted to get hold of just one Kilvert book, 'Kilvert's Cornish Diary' would be the one. It is a rich delight.

The urge to research my family history led me into using the computer to help, and I was struck by the awesome power of modern technology to search records at a rate which would have been unthinkable even five years ago. Census information, records of births, marriages and deaths, and now even phone books - all are available online. Searching has never been easier, cheaper, or quicker – and it is getting better all the time.

Barry Smith’s 1992 piece ‘A Walk to Britford’, reprinted in the Kilvert Society Journal  mentions the Morres brothers, ‘soldier and priest’ who married the Hills sisters of Britford Vicarage. Looking in the Journals, I couldn’t find anything on the Morres brothers, and my Kilvert Who’s Who was silent, so I thought I might use the computer to see what I could find.

This family was much troubled by spelling – other people’s. Morris or Morres ? Francis or Frances ? Elliot or Eliot ? Enumerators were often inaccurate in recording information, and across the years the family appear with either spelling, as Frances ducks in and out of sight in both male and female forms, and Eliots are allotted different numbers of consonants. Even Kilvert – or was it William Plomer ? – does it. On 27^th August 1875, Kilvert began his memorable walk to Stonehenge with ‘Morris’ and later that day Major Fisher invited ‘Morres and myself to come to his hawking lodge’.

This slight confusion makes searching tricky but exciting. Here goes.

The Morres brothers

The two Morres brothers were Arthur Phillip and Elliot J Morres, sons of Beatrice and Eliot Morres, who appears is the census with one ‘L’, while his son has two. Eliot senior was born around 1795, and enjoyed a military career. He is described in the 1871 census as a Commander in the Royal Navy.

Born in Reading in 1832, Elliot J was the soldier. Elliot J was an Oxford graduate, and was, like his father, a military man. The rather blurred page of the 1881 census notes that he had formerly been a Lieutenant of the 47^th Regiment.

Arthur Phillip was born in 1836 in Wokingham. He was the priest and Morres minor. In 1861, aged 25, he was boarding with the schoolmaster in Bishops Lydeard where he himself was curate.  More of him later.

The Hills sisters of Britford Vicarage

Richard Hill was born in 1801, and appears in the first census (1841) as ‘Clerk Curate’ of Britford. Richard had married Mary Barton (born 1811) and by 1841 their family was already growing. Mary’s mother, also called Mary Barton (born 1786), lived with the family.

The Hill family was large by today’s standards, and eventually 11 children are recorded in the census records. The first child, John, was born in 1828. The second was Susan P Hill, born in 1830, followed by her sister Mary Ann in 1835. They were followed by Robert (1837), Walter (1839), Jane B (1841), William (1843), Frances J (1845), Geoffrey (1847), Alfred (1849), and Arthur (1851). The regularity of the dates between the children’s births suggests that there may have been an additional child somewhere between Susan’s birth in 1830, and Mary Ann’s in 1835, and that this child died in infancy.

By 1851, Richard Hill was Vicar of Britford. His mother-in-law was still a member of the household, but, with his youngest son aged just 10 months, there is no sign of his wife, though his marital status was recorded as ‘married’, rather than ‘widower’. Where was his wife ? Had she fallen ill following the birth of their latest child ? Or had she perhaps already died, and for some reason Richard’s marital status on the census was inaccurate ? None of the above.

Mary Ann Hill, described as ‘Clergyman’s wife’, is living with her three daughters in Bournemouth. Both she and her husband each employed two servants one of whom, Eliza Bugg, remained with the family for at least the twenty years between 1841 and 1861.

By 1861 Richard is described as a widower and the family was reunited at Britford. His daughter Mary Ann, aged 26, is described as ‘B.A.: Oxford’. By 1871, Richard disappears from the census, and his son-in-law, Arthur Phillip Morres, had succeeded him as vicar of Britford.

Marriages

When such research was more arduous than it is now, the indefatigable Teresa Williams discovered the 1862 marriage of Mary Ann Hill and Arthur Phillip Morres.

Elliot J Morres had already married her sister, Susan P Hill, and in 1881 they were living at Raglan Villas in Bath, with daughters Mary Ann (aged 22) and Susan E (aged 20). Also living with them was Frances Hill, who is described as ‘wife’s sister’.

The two families were united exactly as Kilvert describes: two bothers marrying two sisters. 

Francis Hill

On 26^th May 1875 (Vol 3 p192) Kilvert finds ‘the Morreses at dinner and Francis Hill with them.’  Francis was Frances J Hill, the younger sister of Susan and Mary Ann. Alone of her siblings, she was born at Coombe Bissett in 1845. Dogged by her final syllable, Frances wanders through the census records, appearing in 1851, living with her mother and sisters In Bournemouth. Ten years later, she is still at home, as might be expected at age 16. By 1871, she is living with Arthur Phillip and his wife, and in 1881 changes teams, living this time with Elliot and Susan Morres, with whom she remained until at least 1991, when, aged 46 and unmarried, she is described as ‘living on own means’. In 1901 she is living with her brother Walter in Oxfordshire, where he was a ‘Clergyman of the Church of England’.

Soldiers and priests

It seems likely that Elliot and Arthur Morres were not the first brothers in the family to be soldier and priest. Eliot Morres senior had been born in Isleworth. A Thomas Morres was also born in Isleworth in 1796. They may well have been brothers. Thomas was Chaplain of Lucas’ Hospital and Perpetual Curate of Wokingham in 1851, and by 1871 is described as Rector of Wokingham and Master of Lucas’ Hospital.

Missing link

Let’s go back to Kilvert’s Stonehenge expedition with ‘Morris’. It is 1875, and Kilvert is staying at Britford with ‘the Morreses’. The Morreses in this case were not the brothers, but Arthur Phillip and Mary Ann Morres. Arthur Phillip had been vicar at Britford since at least 1871. As they walked through the meadows towards Salisbury, Arthur Phillip told stories of Edward Hill hunting grizzly bears. Rev Edward Hill was Rector of Ashurst in Sussex between at least 1871 and 1891. In 1871 he is living at the Rectory with his brother, Alfred Briscoe Hill. Born in 1833, Edward fills the gap between his sisters Susan (1830) and Mary (1835) that the census information threw up. So why was he missing in 1851 ? A quick check shows him at Magdalen College, Oxford, aged 19.

The army, the navy, the church and the stage. The Morres family had links with the first three. If any of them were actors, I have not tracked them down yet. And I have no clue as to when Edward was shooting grizzly bears. Even computer technology has its limits.

There are no words ...

Mrs Frances Essex Theodora Hope (1879 - 1964) was Frank Kilvert's niece.

I wish she hadn't been.

After Kilvert's death his widow took scissors to the pages to remove material she clearly did not wish to preserve for posterity. We can only guess what was on her mind.

22 notebooks then passed, after his widow's death, to Percival Smith, Kilvert's nephew.

It is these 22 notebooks which William Plomer edited in the late 1930s, removing two thirds of the content. The three-volume diary we now have is what Plomer shaped from the 22 notebooks.

He wrote:

If it had been published as it stood it would have filled nine stoutish volumes, running to well over a million words

William Plomer managed to lose the typescript copy of the whole of the contents of the 22 notebooks, and Mrs Hope received the originals after Plomer had done with them.

In the 1950s Mrs Hope set about disposing of the materials passed to her. She destroyed 19 of the original 22 notebooks, and distributed three to people she knew, against Plomer's advice.

These three notebooks are all we have of the unedited originals.

The silver lining, as paltry as it is, is that these volumes can be compared with Plomer's edited version in the three-volume diary. We get to see the original, which is a treat, but we also get to see something on Plomer's editing technique. Lastly we get a tantalising picture of the sheer quality which he chose to omit from his three-volume edition.

The three surviving notebooks have all been published. They are:

April to June 1870 ed Kathleen Hughes and Dafydd Ifans; The National Library of Wales 1982

June to July 1870 ed Dafydd Ifans; The National Library of Wales 1989

July to August 1870 (Kilvert's Cornish Diary) ed Richard Maber and Angela Tregoning; Penzance: Alison Hodge, 1989

 They are well worth tracking down.

Bright clustering curls blown wild and golden

In early July 1875 Frank Kilvert was at the seaside. He had hoped to meet his mother, brother and sister at Shanklin station, but 'to my disappointment they did not come'.

When he went to the beach, 20 minutes after they had failed to arrive, he had family much on his mind.

He threw himself into building sandcastles and trenches, enjoying the tide , and watching the children playing at the fringes of the sea.

And then the tone changes:

Oh, as I watched watched them there came over me such a longing, such a hungry yearning to have one of those children as my own. Oh that I too had a child to love and to love me, a daughter with such fair limbs and blue eyes archly dancing, and bright clustering curls blown wild and golden in the sunshine and sea air. It came over me like a storm and I turned away hungry at heart and half envying the parents as they sat upon the sand watching their children at play.

Remembering that he did not actually write this entry on the beach, but wrote it up at some later point, the two exclamatory 'Oh's are interesting.  He wanted to record something of the depth of his feeling, and set it next to the vivid memories of what he had seen at the beach. His description of the daughter he longs for isn't some Platonic  and theoretical ideal, nor a simple amalgam of the children he had seen at the beach. Rather he selects the almost cinematographic images from the beach which appealed to him and uses them to frame the daughter he never had.

His imagined child was not those we see in studio photographs of the era, starchily dressed, posed formally, and holding a smile-less expression for the long exposure to catch the image. (A smile was so much harder to hold successfully, and early photographers avoided smiling shots.)

There is, instead, fun here. There is archness in the eyes, and a hint of the uninhibited in 'curls blown wild and golden'. This is an outdoor child, enjoying life unconstrained by the conventions of school or the dining table.

It is hard not to wonder if Kilvert wanted to be that child himself, if he wanted greater freedom that his calling and social status allowed him. Perhaps he was regretting his own lost childhood, a sheep remembering gambolling lambhood. There is such powerful vicarious pleasure in the children's happy exuberance.

He was 35, still single, and, one feels, unfulfilled.

No blind eye

In 1832, eight years before Francis Kilvert's birth, Charles Lutwidge Dodgson was born in Daresbury. His rather forbidding and Germanic middle name was inherited from his mother, whose maiden name it was. Charles was rather awkward socially, and had a pronounced stammer, but was a precociously talented child, and showed real potential in mathematics.

As an adult his stammer was noticeable and it bothered him. Interestingly, it was not at all evident in conversation with children.

Charles went to Oxford and graduated ahead of all his contemporaries in mathematics. He stayed on at Christ Church to undertake further studies and to teach. He took holy orders and became Rev Charles Dodgson. He seems to have found social relationships more complex and challenging that maths, and felt more comfortable in the company of children. He never married.

One of Charles' Oxford colleagues was Henry Liddell, Dean of Chirst Church, who complied the Greek-English dictionary which carries his name and is still in use today: Liddell and Scott. Charles became enamoured of one of Henry Liddell's children, Alice, to whom he told the stories which became Alice's Adventures in Wonderland.

Charles Dodgson published his stories under the pseudonym Lewis Carroll which served to protect his professional work as a logician.

The much-loved stories, so brilliantly told, disguise what appears to be an unhealthy obsession with Alice, who was twenty years younger. Had they met as adults, marriage would have been a possibility. But Dodgson's obsession came when Alice was still very much a child.

Dodgson was an early and accomplished photographer, and some of his images of children now produce profound unease, however unremarkable they were at the time.

Kilvert, who was also educated at Oxford (Wadham) shared with Charles Dodgson an interest in children - particularly in girls - which we find uncomfortable today. There is no getting around this problem. Kilvert's interest in girls would not now be viewed as at all healthy. He was, of course, kind and avuncular: a man who genuinely cared. But there can be no doubt that part of his interest was sexual. His descriptions of young girls, and of his thoughts about them, are indisputable. (Check out, as an example, his description of Carrie Britton, aged 7, on 23 August 1871.) He was interested in spanking, and, indeed, offered to spank the daughter of a parishioner, or to watch her spanked naked, with the specious intention of adding to the girl's punishment of humiliation.

Kilvert had a sincere love of children, and huge sadness at the suffering he saw them undergo. His description of visiting Little Davie after his death is amongst the most humane and touching passages in the diaries. 

But his descriptions of 'Gypsy Lizzie' and his confession that he had walked ten miles for a kiss of a girl in school are unmistakably unhealthy.

Infantilised adult views of sexuality seem to have been common in the Victorian era. The previous century had enjoyed a far more earthy approach to sex, but the Victorian period had an up-tight ignorance of sexuality which it was simply too outre to discuss. Dodgson, Kilvert, Ruskin all shared unrealistic and slightly ill-educated views of women. Ruskin's six-year marriage was famously - perhaps notoriously - finally annulled on the grounds of non-consummation. Effie herself noted that her husband:

had imagined women were quite different to what he saw I was, and that the reason he did not make me his Wife was because he was disgusted with my person the first evening

That is, adult sexuality had been blocked by maladaptive ignorance. (And perhaps also by too profound a veneration of Greek sculpture which lacked pubic hair.)

Kilvert described a rural world which had survived in Wales long after industrialisation and the flight to the cities had destroyed it in England. It is a world which now feels light years away, even though it is a mere 150 years distant. Today it is hard to imagine daily life in Kilvert's world, hard to imagine the soft footfall of a non-mechanised society. Impossible to imagine the deference which was given unquestioningly to authority.

Similarly, it is difficult to feel confident that one has understood the then accepted propriety of adult views of children, especially when such views would be the focus of immediate, if not hostile, suspicion today.

Today, we do not know what the standards of fifty years in the future will be. We can be sure that they will be different, but we cannot begin to guess what they will be. And our lives now can be lived only by the standards of the past or present, not by those of the future.

It is a temptation to judge Kilvert's interest in children harshly, to apply to him accusations of paedophilia. The word itself was unknown in his era. Perhaps we should at least slow the pace of our rush to judgement. Like all of us, Kilvert was trying his best by the standards and expectations of the period in which he lived.

We should perhaps, acknowledge the uncomfortable truth of some of his more febrile and even over-heated passages: we should even have some sympathy with the sexual frustrations he clearly felt throughout most of his adult life. But we should not let the dark complexity overcome the light. We all live in subtle chiaroscuro, and too monochrome a judgement would deny us the pleasure and enrichment offered by the whole of the Kilvert picture.

Gipsy Lizzie

'Gipsy Lizzie' was Elizabeth Sarah Jones, the grand-daughter of John and Sarah Harris.
Fred Grice (Who’s Who p 14) noted that the census enumerator noted 'daughter' against Elizabeth S Jones’ name. He did not. E S Jones was clearly marked as grand-daughter of John Harris.

Her trajectory in the Diary is best told in Kilvert's own words, though it is uncomfortable and challenging reading.

The figures in red are refer to the volume of the diary (1, 2 or 3) followed by pages numbers after the dot. Thus the first entry 1.155 is page 155 of the first volume. Hope that makes sense!

Whitsun 7 June 1870                       1.155

At the school Gipsy Lizzie looking arch and mischievous with her dark large beautiful eyes, and a dazzling smile showed her little white teeth, as she tossed her dark curls back

Monday 4 July                                  1.168

Since the inspection the classes and standards at the school have been rearranged and Gipsy Lizzie has been put into my reading class. How is the indescribable beauty of that most lovely face to be described – the dark soft curls parting back from the pure white transparent brow, the exquisite little mouth and pearly tiny teeth, the pure straight delicate features, the long dark fringes and white eyelids that droop over and curtain her eyes, when they are cast down or bent upon her book, and when the eyes are raised, that clear unfathomable blue depth of wide wonder and enquiry and unsullied and unsuspecting innocence. Oh child, child, if you only did but know your own power. Oh Gipsy, if you only grow up as good as you are fair. Oh, that you might grow up good. May all God’s angels guard you, sweet. The Lord bless thee and keep thee. The Lord make His face to shine upon thee and be gracious unto thee. The Lord lift up His countenance upon thee peace, both now and evermore Amen.

Saturday 9 July                               1.172

Sometimes my darling child Gipsy comes down to school this way, but more often she comes down Sunny Bank when the days are fine, and then over the stile by little Wern y Pentre. Yet often and often must those tiny feet have trodden this stony narrow green-arched lane, and those sweet blue eyes have looked down this vista to the blue mountains and those little hands have gathered flowers along these banks. O my child if you did but know. If you only knew that this lane and this dingle and these fields are sweet to me and holy ground for your sweet sake. But you can never know, and if you should ever guess or read the secret, it will be but a misty suspicion of the truth. Ah, Gipsy.

Monday 11 July                              1.173/4

Often when I rise I look up to the white farm house at Penllan and think of the sweet grey eyes that have long been open and looking upon the pearly morning sky and the mists of the valley and the morning spread upon the mountains, and think of the young busy hands that have long been at work, milking or churning, with the sleeves rolled up the round arms as white and creamy as the milk itself, and the bright sweet morning face that the sunrise and the fresh early air have kissed into bloom and the sunny tresses ruffled by the mountain wind, and hope that the fatherless girl may ever be good, brave, pure and true. So help her God. The sun looks through her window which the great pear tree frames and lattices in green leaves and fruit, and the leaves move and flicker and throw a chequering shadow upon the white bedroom wall, and on the white curtains of the bed. And before the sun has touched the sleeping village in the shade below or has even struck the weathercock into a golden gleam, or has crept down the steep green slope of the lower or upper Bron, he has stolen into her bedroom and crept along the wall from chair to chair till he has reached the bed, and has kissed the fair hand and arm that lies upon the coverlet and the white bosom that heaves half uncovered after the restlessness of the sultry night, and has kissed her mouth whose scarlet lips, just parting in a smile and pouting like rosebuds to be kissed, show the pearly gleam of the white teeth, and has kissed the sweet  face and blue-veined silky lashed eyelids and the white brow and the soft bright tangled hair, till she has unclosed the sweetest eyes that ever opened to the dawn, and risen and unfastened the casement and stood awhile breathing the fresh fragrant mountain air as it blows cool upon her flushed cheek and her half veiled bosom, and lifts and ruffles her bright hair which still keeps the kiss of the sun. Then when she has dressed and prayed towards the east, she goes out to draw water from the holy spring St Mary’s Well. After which she goes about her honest holy work, all day long, with a light heart and pure conscience.

Tuesday 6 September                    1.225

Gipsy Lizzie was at school again this morning, lovely as ever.

Thursday 15 September                1.228

At the school the children were busy leasing out corn from a loose heap on the floor, sitting among the straw and tying up the wheat, barley and oats in small sheaves and bundles. Gipsy Lizzie was amongst them, up to her beautiful eyes in corn and straw.

Thursday 27 July 1871                  1.381

Gipsy Lizzie never looked more beautiful than this morning. I wish I could get a likeness of the child. If her picture were in the Academy it would be thronged, unapproachable.

Friday 28 July                                1.382

Gipsy Lizzie was at the school. Again I am under the influence of that child’s extraordinary beauty. When she is reading and her eyes are bent down upon her book her loveliness is indescribable.

Wednesday 30 August                   2.23/24

The school feast began at 4 o’clock…..The beauties were Eleanor and Florence Hill and Gipsy Lizzie and Esther and Pussy of New Barn.

Wednesday 11 October                 2.55/56

I wanted to send a note to the school this morning to say that I should not be there today. While we were at breakfast a troop of schoolchildren came down the road, and when I went out to the gate under the lilacs and laburnums Gipsy Lizzie was passing. With an arch shy smile and a toss of her brown curls and a merry glance from her blue eyes the lovely child took the note and promised to give it to the school master.

Thursday 11 July                           2.237

‘There is great mourning for you at Pen y cae’ said Mrs Harris. ‘Why, do the children really care so much ?’ ‘Ay, that day they gave you the pencil case the girl was crying and dazed all the evening. We could do nothing at all wit her, and the boy is worse than her. “There’ll be no one to come and teach us now,” he says, “Mr Kilvert do come and tell us about all parts.”’ I showed her the beautiful pencil case. But oh, Gipsy Lizzie dear, my own love, it doesn’t make up for losing you.

27 April 1876                                 3.268/269

As I went over Clyro I called at Pen y Cae. Old Harris the farmer had actually forgotten me and I was obliged to tell him my name. I asked for Lizzie and he went to look for her. I followed him into an inner room and there was my gipsy beauty as beautiful and shy as ever. Once more I kissed that pale sweet lovely face shadowed by the soft dark curling hair. ‘Do you remember me? Do you love me ?’ ‘Yes,’ she said with a shy sweet sorrowful smile. I sat awhile in the kitchen talking to Harris and another man as they sat eating their luncheon. Meantime the gipsy beauty had stolen out silently and when I rose to go she was nowhere to be seen. Her grandfather went out into the yard to seek her calling ’Lizzie, Lizzie !’. How familiar the old grey group of buildings looked with the ancient yew tree in the west. But there was anew slate roof on the old house. ’Lizzie, Lizzie !’ called her grandfather. ‘She is gone away by herself to cry, I doubt,’ he said. At length the girl came from one of the outhouses with a sad smile on her pale sweet beautiful face. ‘Goodbye, dear,’ said I, kissing her again. ‘Don’t forget me. Write to me sometimes’. We parted and she went away again to cry alone. Too fond, too faithful heart.