Because of the way the diaries were edited, it is not possible to see trends of adjectival use over time, as we have no way of knowing what the missing 60% contained. It is, maybe, possible to identify adjectives which endure over the 9-year period of the diary, and which may give an indication of the way he thought, or at least the themes of his thought.
He was often transported by the outward appearance of people he met, carried away by an outward something which he felt gave away the inner charcater of the person.
He did not expect his diaries to be read. They were personal, private reflections, and not written with literary determination or purpose. If he had gone back to edit them, he would surely have attempted to comb out his tousled adjectives. The fact that he did not edit them perhaps gives a raw unprocessed insight into his character, as well as into the poeple he describes.
I spent a little time (yes, I know: once a geek .... ) trawling through the diaries to pick out adjectives Kilvert used when describing faces and eyes, and they are listed below. I cannot guarantee that the list is definitive. It is at least curious that his focus on faces and eyes seems to increase over time, with the first volume of the published diaries having fewer references than the later work. Perhaps the longer period covered by each later volume is responsible for the variation.
One or two references mention the gender of the person he is describing, but the majority do not. In most cases it is fairly easy to feel confident about the gender from the adjectives he chooses.
Here are the examples I found. The page numbers refer to the 3 Volume diary published in 1961.
Volume 1 1870 - 1871
42 round, rosy, good-humoured face
45 Beautiful soft and pure eyes
56 Rather nice rosy black-haired
grey-eyed girls
83 Beautiful large soft dark eyes
83 Long dark silky lashes
90 Deep wonderful blue
102 Red sweet full lips
123 Mischievous beautiful grey eyes
130 Dark soft liquid grey
132 Bright full grave watchful eyes
136 Light brown very curly short
hair, brown dark bright eyes
137
beautiful bewitching
fascinating face
155 Dark large beautiful eyes
168 Pure white transparent brow
168 Pure straight delicate features
168 Clear unfathomable blue depth
173 Bright sweet morning face
213 Pretty rosy blue-eyed girl
217 Pretty dark eyed merry maid
220 Eyes
extremely beautiful, earnest and expressive, a soft dark brown (Father
Ignatius)
344 Stern long sweeping eyebrows
352 Blue eyes,
eyes most singularly lovely, the sweetest saddest most weary and most patient
eyes
366 Clear quiet deep grey eyes
375 Wild swarthy Italian-looking man,
young
390 Lovely little blue-eyed daughter
391 Venerable-looking
old man with silvery iron-grey hair and a ruddy weather-beaten face, honest and
homely
Volume 2 1871 - 1874
26 Tall pale yellow-faced woman
35 Bright pretty little thing
37 Bright and fresh and happy and
pretty
37 clear deep
loving grey eyes, so true and fearless and honest, those beautiful Welsh eyes
73 Sweet gentle patient face
80 Handsome dark-eyed rosy girl
113 Beautiful large soft (eyes)
115 Tall handsome and fair-haired
116 Broad massive earnest kindly face
116 Shaggy grey penthouse brows
130 Grim-looking woman, silent and
gloomy
132 Handsome dark wild-looking young
(gipsy)
142 Pale, ill and overworked
160 Merry arch rolling eye (girl)
160 Stout jolly red-faced
162 Dark brown fine (eyes) (male)
165 Sweet sky-blue (eyes) (female)
174 Pretty and sweet and kind
198 Quick brilliant watchful eyes
(animal – weasel)
202 Dark eyes
full and large with tears, mournful, beseeching, imploring, and sad with a
wistful despairing sadness too sad for words
208 beautiful
Irish eyes of dark grey which looked sometimes black and sometimes blue, with….
208 …long silky black lashes and
finely pencilled black eyebrows
210 Wistful sorrowful imploring look
210 (look) more wistful, beautiful, imploring
218 Four pretty girl archers
218 Her thin grey-bearded nutcracker
face
226
mild thoughtful melancholy
blue eye
231 Quiet melancholy blue eyes
252 sweet lovely little (girl)
253 Nice pretty little fair-haired
daughter
266 Dark swarthy foreign look
272 Heavy downcast oppressed look
285 Fine dark-complexioned black
haired boy
306 Bright and pretty she looked, so
merry, happy and full of fun
308 Grave, pure, sweet, lovely face
341 A large dark eye, beautiful,
soft, pensive (woman)
379 Poor pale thin girl
380 Sweet pure patient face
387 Tall handsome powerful man
397 Long grave mournful face and
melancholy dark Spanish eyes
411 Fine handsome young fellow
426 Bright rosy morning face
426 Quick bright blue eyes
427 Tall slight beautiful girl
427 Soft dark tender blue
427 Soft dark loving eyes
428 One long lingering loving look
429 Pale, wasted, shrunken,
hollow-eyed, and hollow-cheeked….
434 sweet firm small mouth
439 His face was handsome and
striking, keen yet benevolent
Volume 3 1874 - 1879
19 Poor Frenchman, pale, thin and
lank
19 Sorrowful wistful suffering
look
29 Fair beautiful young girl
31 An arch espiegle eager little
face
31 Beautiful wild eyes, large and
grey
31 Beautiful wistful imploring
eyes
31 Quick happy grateful smile
34 Young handsome intelligent
gentlemanly farmer
63 Pleasant frank open face
64 Twelve fair curly-haired little
girls, real South Saxons, rosy and pretty
64 Beautiful bright grey eyes
64 Thin high aristocratic nose
64
sweet firm rosy mouth
91 Small
plain insignificant-looking old man, bald and with a whitish yellow complexion
92
fine handsome old man
100 Thin, worn, ill and pale
109 Fine handsome young dragoon
109 Beautiful large dark eyes
120 Grand,
noble face, very handsome and something much better than handsome
125 Proud haughty beautiful face
125
Poor wild beautiful girl
135 Curious and handsome, quite
perfect
136 Innocent rosy childlike face
162 Clear wild grey eyes
162 Tall old grey-moustached man
183 Fresh bright morning faces
211 Bright dear loving faces
218 Lovely soft dark eyes melting
with tenderness
229 Dark Spanish brunette complexion
229 Dark wild fine eyes
240 Bright earnest black eyes
248 Sweet kindly benevolent look
248 Strong comely pleasant-faced
carpenter
258 Two bright sweet fair young faces
268 Pale sweet lovely face
269 Shy sweet sorrowful smile
269 Pale sweet beautiful face
269 Shy soft blue eyes as beautiful
and innocent…
271 Fine handsome
distinguished-looking boy
271 So grown, so nice, so pretty
271
shy, confused and blushing
painfully
272
Tall beautiful stately girl
272
Most lovely delicate and
aristocratic features, gentle loving blue eyes
273 Sweet lovely beautiful Florence
274 Lovely innocent blue eyes
278 Tall fine handsome girl
278 Same frank sweet truthful look
278 Little rosy-faced dark-haired
niece
281 Pretty friendly little boy
285 Grave sweet look, wondering,
awe-struck or pitiful
286 Rapt far-away look,
self-forgetful, self-unconscious
288 Handsome pleasant-faced woman,
very stout
293 Tall handsome young farmer
299 Latest sorrowful imploring look
305 Round red weather-beaten
good-humoured face
305 Tall stout fine
looking man, black-haired with a smooth face and a quiet pleasant countenance,
very deaf and quiet and very fond of all his pets
317 Merry laughing mischievous way
321 Smiling, rosy and curly
333 Pretty bright-faced bright-haired
girl
345 Handsome grey-haired, grey-eyed
churchwarden
372 Two pretty little girls
376 Tall fair comely girl
376 Clear fresh open face
386 Kindly pleasant comely face
387 Thin, pale and ill
427 Lovely innocent trustful blue
eyes
450 Fair pink and white face
456 Dark young lady, vivacious and
pleasant
Single occurrence:
100 discrete adjectives, adjectival nouns, adjectival phrases
|
||||
Awe-struck
|
Bald
|
Beseeching
|
Bewitching
|
Blushing
|
Brilliant
|
Broad
|
Brunette
|
Childlike
|
Confused
|
Curious
|
Deaf
|
Dear
|
Despairing
|
Downcast
|
Eager
|
Espiegle
|
Expressive
|
Far-away
|
Fascinating
|
Fearless
|
Fond
|
Foreign
|
Full of fun
|
Gentlemanly
|
Gloomy
|
Grand
|
Grateful
|
Grown
|
Haughty
|
Heavy
|
High
|
Homely
|
Insignificant
|
Intelligent
|
Irish
|
Iron-grey
|
Jolly
|
Keen
|
Lank
|
Laughing
|
Light-brown
|
Lingering
|
Massive
|
Melting
|
Mild
|
Nutcracker
|
Oppressed
|
Overworked
|
Pensive
|
Penthouse
|
Perfect
|
Pink
|
Pitiful
|
Plain
|
Powerful
|
Proud
|
Rapt
|
Red-faced
|
Rolling
|
Ruddy
|
Shaggy
|
Short
|
Shrunken
|
Silent
|
Silvery
|
Sky-blue
|
Slight
|
Smiling
|
Smooth
|
South-Saxon
|
Stately
|
Stern
|
Straight
|
Striking
|
Strong
|
Suffering
|
Sweeping
|
Thoughtful
|
Transparent
|
True
|
Truthful
|
Unfathomable
|
Vivacious
|
Wasted
|
Welsh
|
Whitish
|
Wonderful
|
Wondering
|
Worn
|
Dark-complexioned
|
Distinguished-looking
|
Finely-pencilled
|
Grey-bearded
|
Grey-moustached
|
Grim/grim-looking
|
Self-forgetful
|
Self-unconscious
|
Something much better than handsome
|
Venerable/venerable-looking
|
2 occurrences: 26 discrete
adjectives, adjectival phrases
|
||||
Aristocratic
|
Benevolent
|
Blue-eyed
|
Dark-eyed
|
Delicate
|
Fair-haired
|
Firm
|
Frank
|
Grey-eyed
|
Honest
|
Mischievous
|
Mournful
|
Noble
|
Open
|
Round
|
Silky
|
Small
|
Spanish
|
Swarthy
|
Tender
|
Watchful
|
White
|
Yellow
|
Good-humoured
|
Hollow(-/eyed;-/cheeked)
|
Weather-beaten
|
||||
3 occurrences:
19 discrete adjectives, adjectival nouns, adjectival phrases
|
||||
Arch
|
Black-haired
|
Brown
|
Comely
|
Curly
|
Deep
|
Earnest
|
Fresh
|
Gentle
|
Happy
|
Kindly
|
Melancholy
|
Morning
|
Nice
|
Patient
|
Poor
|
Quick
|
Shy
|
Stout
|
|
4 occurrences:
8 discrete adjectives
|
||||
Grave
|
Innocent
|
Kind
|
Merry
|
Old
|
Quiet
|
Sad
|
Sorrowful
|
||
5 occurrences:
8 discrete adjectives
|
||||
Clear
|
Full
|
Ill
|
Imploring
|
Long
|
Loving
|
Pure
|
Wistful
|
||
6 occurrences:
2 discrete adjectives, adjectival phrases
|
||||
Pleasant
|
Wild/wild-looking
|
|||
7 occurrences:
2 discrete adjectives
|
||||
Black
|
Large
|
|||
8 occurrences:
1 adjective
|
||||
Thin
|
||||
9 occurrences:
3 discrete adjectives
|
||||
Little
|
Pale
|
Young
|
||
10
occurrences: 5 discrete adjectives
|
||||
Fine
|
Lovely
|
Rosy
|
Soft
|
Tall
|
13
occurrences: 1 adjective
|
||||
Pretty
|
||||
14
occurrences: 1 adjective
|
||||
Red
|
||||
15
occurrences: 3 adjectives
|
||||
Blue
|
Bright
|
Grey
|
||
17
occurrences: 1 adjective
|
||||
Handsome
|
||||
19
occurrences: 1 adjective
|
||||
Sweet
|
||||
23
occurrences: 1 adjective
|
||||
Beautiful
|
||||
24
occurrences: 1 adjective
|
||||
Dark
|
||||
His most frequently used adjectives (dark, beautiful, sweet, handsome) might be regarded as the most lazy, and perhaps the most revealing. These most common descriptions were the most general, and least targeted. They are scatter-gun, cover-all generalisations of the things that tended to strike him first, his superficial response to appearances.
The single occurences, of which there are 100, might well be the cases when he was working hard to find the uniquely apposite description.
A criticism of Kilvert's writing has been that his lush use of adjectives betrayed a lack of command of the language, a literary failure. What is clear here is that the single-use adjectives are massively outnumbered by the frequently used adjectives.
The diary records Kilvert's own musings about trying to fnd the right word, in this case a description for the light on trees. The word he eventually settled upon was 'dazzle'. In decribing the appearance of people in terms of their faces and eyes, he seems to have been satisfied with generalisations and vague descriptions ('sweet') on most occasions, chaining adjectives rather than lighting upon one uniquely apposite description.
Even though the diaries were written without an eye to publication, perhaps we might have expected a more deft search for the right word.
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