This year marks the centennial of the death of a writer who combined literary excellence with Christian convictions: English clergyman Francis Kilvert (1840–1879). Critics have acclaimed his Diary, published in three volumes from 1938–1940, as one of the six best in the English language. In 1978 BBC television devoted a series of 18 15-minute programs to episodes from Kilvert’s journal.
Kilvert’s Diary, which covers the years 1870–1879, is most distinguished by its fine but unpretentious prose. A graduate of Wadham College, Oxford, Kilvert served only Anglican churches—in Wiltshire, Radnorshire in Eastern Wales, and Herefordshire. He delighted in the Wye valley around Clyro where he was a curate for seven years. His observant eye registered every detail of nature and of human idiosyncrasy. Each night his pen recorded what his eye saw. Look at one example:
“I fear those grey old men of Moccas, those grey, gnarled, low-browed, knock kneed, bowed, bent, huge, strange, long-armed, deformed, hunchbacked, misshapen men that stand waiting and watching century after century, biding God’s time with both feet in the grave and yet tiring down and seeing out generation after generation, with such tales to tell, as when they whisper them to each other in the midsummer nights, make the silver birches weep and the poplars and aspens shiver and the long ears of the hares and rabbits stand on end. No human hand set those oaks. They are ‘the trees which the Lord hath planted.’ ” That shows an understanding of trees which rivals Tolkien’s.
Remarkable also are his portraits of interesting individuals. With the art of a skilled novelist he could bring to life squire and cottage or such eccentrics as William Barnes; Dorset clergyman-poet, J. K. Lyne, who as “Father Ignatius” founded an Anglican monastery at Llanthony; and John Price, Vicar of Llandbedr Painscastle, chaplain to tramps.
Readers of Kilvert’s Diary will find the theology more implicit than explicit. Although he mentioned sermon topics and texts, he recorded none of his sermons. His faith was simple and childlike. Raised in a rectory, and possessing no seminary training, Kilvert approached theology intuitively rather than logically. Evangelicals may fault him for being insufficiently strong on the authority of Scripture or justification by faith. The doctrines that most aroused his enthusiasm were the fatherly character of God the Creator and the certainty of heaven. Yet in the teeth of what he termed “the prevailing scepticism of the day” he declared, “If I had children I should teach them to believe all the dear old Bible stories.” Moreover, on catching sight of pure white snowdrops in January, he thought immediately of Christ: “Oh that all our sins might thus be washed away and we be presented spotless through the Savior’s atoning blood.”
Kilvert’s piety found typical expression in this artless prayer: “Lord! Lead me as Thy child both night and day, And help me for Thy face to watch and pray.”
Kilvert adored children, and they him. His most appealing characteristic was his tender sympathy for ordinary people. He proved himself a devoted pastor whose heart went out to the lowly, the poor, and the bereaved. He once turned down the offer of a chaplaincy on the French Riviera to remain with the common folk of Herefordshire. Seventy years after his death, a one-time parishioner still cherished his photograph and recalled that whenever he had a chicken for dinner he would cut off a generous helping before he ate and then take it to a sick member of the parish.
After what he himself called “a humble and uneventful life,” Kilvert died unexpectedly of peritonitis on September 23, 1879, at the age of 38, less than five weeks after his marriage. “Some day,” he wrote, “will come the last illness from which there will be no convalescence.… May I then be prepared to enter into the everlasting Spring and to walk among the birds and flowers of Paradise.”
DAVID R. KING
David R. King is rector of St. John’s Church, Elisabeth, New Jersey.
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