Adjectives on the loose

Kilvert used adjectives profligately, often in describing personal characteristics. Eyes and hair came in for particularly florid treatment.

Sometimes he seemed to be searching for the right adjective and compiling a list from which to choose.

This is my favourite string. It is the longest in the diary I think - though I am happy to be corrected.It came on Saturday 22nd April 1876. Kilvert had had a happy morning 'saunterng round the lawn at Monnington Rectory', reading poetry (Browning), and thinking of Ettie, one of his love-interests.

He was probably in a heightened emotional state when he walked up to the top of Moccas Park and looked down on the Golden Valley (the one which entranced C S Lewis, I think). 'Tumbling and plunging' down he came across what he called the king oak of Moccas Park, which he tells us was maybe 2000 years old and measured 33 feet in circumference.

And then comes the sudden burst:

I fear those grey old men of Moccas, those grey, gnarled, low-browed, knock-kneed, bowed, bent, huge, strange, long-armed, deformed, hunchbacked, misshapen oak men that stand waiting and watching century after century ...

If that's not just spectacular, what is ? The rest of the passage is resplendent with colours, shapes and laced shadows.

The dullest part of the day was a dinner-party in the evening which has a mere two sentences and one paltry adjectival noun: 'the two farmer families of Monnington'.

Easy to see where his heart lay.