Dawn Chorus

Saturday, 7 May 1870

At 3 a.m. we began to see the dawn through the stable window and Richard who had been out in the stable yard came in saying, ‘The cuckoos be at their work again.’ I went out. It was not cold but a fresh morning, cloudless, and there was a broad suspicion of light in the East. I listened for some time. Then I heard a cuckoo near Peter’s Pool, then another near Cilblythe. They had only just begun singing. It was just cock crowing, and the cocks joined in. The cuckoos began to call thicker and faster, and now and then might be heard from the woods the hooting of the owls. Presently the cocks ceased for a while; then the owls gradually stopped altogether and the cuckoos had it all their own way.

At 3.15 the birds woke and burst into song, full chorus almost simultaneously. I never heard birds sing like that before. I did not know they could sing so. No one who has not heard the first marvellous rush of song when the birds awake and begin to sing on a fine warm May morning can have any conception what it is like, or how birds can sing. No idea can be formed from the singing of birds in the day time of what they can do in the early spring morning. It was wonderful, ravishing, passing anything I could have imagined. Round Cae Mawr and in the great pear orchard behind the school, the whole air was in a chorus of song and the air shook thick with rapture and melody. The air was so full of sound that there was scarcely room for another bird to get a note in. From every tree and bush the music poured and swelled and every bird was singing his loudest and sweetest. The morning air was crowded with singing, and the matins, lauds and prime went up altogether like a cloud of melodious incense. Morning hymns sung in full choir. Truly, the time of the singing of birds is come.

So it was very curious to see and hear the night shading into morning and the birds of dark and light recognising the limits of their domain. The cocks at midnight; then the cocks becoming silent. The owls keeping up the cry of the night like watchmen. The cocks again at dawn cock crowing. The cocks ceasing again. The owls gradually becoming silent and giving way to the cuckoos who took up the watch, relieved guard and introduced the morning, heralding the dawn. Then the cuckoos suddenly drowned in the full burst of melody when their cuckooing had awaked the singing birds. For the cuckoos seemed to be tolling the chapel bell and calling all the other birds to their orisons. The owls mourned for the departing night. The cuckoos and the singing birds rejoiced in the morning. Thus God never leaves Himself without witness and some bird always keeps vigil and praises Him. I went for a walk by the pear orchard along the road as far as the mouth of the Old Forest lane, an ivy arch. The light broadened in the East, and I had the morning all to myself with the birds.

The Rise and Fall of the Journal

Icarus always seemed to be a story about vaulting ambition and its inevitable end. But at least Icarus could not be called a quitter. Crackpot, maybe. Quitter, no.

The Kilvert Society has always published material about Kilvert. They began as foolscap letters, stapled, as you can see, at top left, and carried information about the Society and its latest doings as well as research and commentary on Kilvert.

Over the years the letters morphed into something much more professional, shaped and developed by two successive editors who took the opportunity to improve both content and presentation.

1977 (left) - 2008 (right)

The Journals now

There had always been a mixed bag of content, from indefatigable research of unimpeachable quality, to speculative musings about whether someone's friend's auntie's accountant might have met Kilvert because they had both been in Wales at roughly the same period. There have been far fewer auntie pieces in recent years. (Not that I am in any way against aunties, you understand.)

The Journal used to come out three times each year, then twice a year, and now the Society has decided that Issue 44 (March 2017) will be the last. Here's what Journal 44 has to say about it:

Since, from among the membership no one seems (yet?!) to be itching to become the new editor, it seems likely that, regrettably, The Journal of the Kilvert Society will cease to exist. It appears that, at best, we shall have to revert to a Newsletter which it was before becoming the Journal in February 2000.

It adds a note that:

For reasons of space a number of articles destined for this Journal have had to be held over. It is hoped that these can be published, perhaps one at a time, attached to the Newsletters (if such is the remedy) which will otherwise be confined to reporting the day-to-day activities of the Society. 

So, sadly, the Journal has hit the buffers (or the other way round ?) and is coming to an end. If the new Newsletters don't sound to you like much of an exciting vehicle for cutting-edge research on Kilvert, you'd be forgiven. The promise of blow-by-blow accounts of day-to-day activities doesn't have me teetering expectantly on the edge of my seat, either.

With luck, at least it won't be typed on foolscap, but it is a retrograde step, the loss of something with fragile promise.

Yes, sadly.

Great introduction

This is a really good introduction to Kilvert, and has A L Rowse's preface to the Diaries.

Reading matters

Three-volume diary and friends

My Kilvert shelf is not exactly bristling with books, but these are the ones I really like. Most were bought from the Kilvert Society, but the three-volume diary took some tracking down. Happily it is now pretty freely available again.

My three-volume diary might be unique in that volume 1 was bound without pages 92 - 109. The entire section is missing. I do not know whether this makes it collectable or just annoying.

The box ? It is stuffed with ancient Kilvert Society Journals. They were called newsletters then, I think, and came unevenly typed on foolscap paper. Ah, those were the days when men were men, Kilvert was Kilvert, custard was custard, and newsletters were, er, basic. They had all the presentational pizazz a poorly-serviced typewriter could offer.

The tallest book on the shelf is Tony O'Brien's 'Who's Who in Kilvert's Diary'. It is an invaluable and encyclopedic book whose slim size holds an epic lifetime of painstaking research. Perhaps that should be the other way around. Either way, it's a great book.

What's striking, though, is how small the body of Kilvert's work is. The original diaries were very much longer, but only a tiny proportion of the original remains, and an even smaller proportion remains in its unedited form.

The posthumous editing that befell Kilvert was, at best, injudicious. The worst of it was hostile, ferocious, and destructive. 

Significant chunks of the original diary were excised by his widow, whose reasons are easy to imagine, and easier to lament. The remaining '22 old notebooks' (Introduction to the Diaries) fell into the hands of William Plomer. Plomer edited with vigour, and did at least succeed in publishing what is now known as the Three-Volume Diary. I editing he tells us that he cut out 60% of the material, reducing 8 notebooks into the first of the tree eventual volumes. But then he managed to lose both the original, unedited manuscript and the only typescript copy of it. So goodbye diaries, and only one grudging cheer for William.

If William gets just the one cheer, little hope for Essex Hope who then proceeded to destroy the original notebooks. Who knows why ? But a large GRRR to her. You begin to feel that the universe was not keen on Kilvert's diaries seeing the light of day.

Only a fraction of the original dodged the bullets and made it to publication. They had not been written for publication - unlike, say, the letters of the Elder Pliny, who always wrote with a watchful eye on posterity and a deep need to side with the winners - and of course Kilvert's writing is uneven. But some of the writing is just scintillating, and soars above the ordinary. Virginia Woolf herself admired Kilvert's account of his aunt's funeral, which is beyond hilarious (Friday, 2 December 1870).

By happy chance, part of what Plomer discarded survived elsewhere and came to light long after the 3VD came out. It lets us see some of the brilliance that Plomer jettisoned, like the stunning Dawn Chorus passage of 7 May 1870. It makes you wonder what other stunning vignettes were cut away. 

We will never know.

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. 

Easter Tuesday 1875

As I walked up and down our drive within the white gate in the fresh mild evening shortly before 8 o'clock I saw through the trees a light from the Manor House nearly half a mile away. The light was obscured continually, apparently by figures passing before it, and it seemed to come from the dining-room where the Squire was at dinner and probably the constant darkening of the light was produced by the maids waiting at table and passing every moment almost between the window and the lights on the table.

Who was Francis Kilvert ?

There are not many extant photos of Rev Francis Kilvert. Another, similar to this one, has recently surfaced in Australia (cf Kilvert Society Journal Vol 44, Spring 2017).

He was a fascinating mixture of contradictions: socially conservative but in some ways startlingly contemporary; a moralist but infinitely kind; an indefatigable visitor of the poor and an eager guest at great houses; a prodigious walker who loved travelling by train.

He married for the first time at 38, and died within weeks of the marriage, shortly before the first successful operation for peritonitis, which was the condition that killed him.

He is best known for his diaries, and less well known for the mysterious disappearance of the majority of them, dramatically diminished by his wife after his death, and the remaining volumes quietly disappeared by someone whose motives we can only guess at.

Some of Kilvert's writing is awful. He was, for example, an indifferent poet, but satisfied enough with his work to publish it. And parts of the remaining diary are prosaic. What diary can escape that charge ? What made Kilvert's diary special was the ability to describe places, people and events memorably and in a way that puts the reader exactly into the situation he was describing. 

His writing was surprisingly candid. Perhaps that is what upset his wife who carefully excises chunks of it with a sharp blade.

His writing comes alive most powerfully when he is describing nature: he revelled in the natural world, the things he saw and heard while out walking. He was a man whose joy you can feel through what he wrote.

There are times when he is so entranced that his adjectives - already unruly - begin to riot. On one occasion he has a chain of 12 adjectives before a single noun, and even  when relatively calm he is a profligate user of adjectives.

I love his work because he brings to life a world that has gone. Brings it to life as no historian could, as no research could. He is there, in the moment, and he lets us see, hear, and sense exactly what he saw, heard, sensed. It was a world of privilege and poverty, of the vast contrast between the hovels and the grand houses, in both of which he was a frequent and much welcomed visitor.

He knew love and heartbreak, and his exploits were sometimes rather surprising for a Victorian cleric - and those are just the ones we know a little about.

If you haven't read any Kilvert, don't. Don't, that is, unless you are ready to be entranced, hypnotised, drawn in, addicted. Once into Kilvert, you can check out any time you like, but you can never leave.

Kilvert, immoral tenants, and the concubine made good

In May 1870, Kilvert was indignant.

He was much exercised about the “sad doings at Cwmpelved Green”.  On Sunday 12^th May he noted that he had spoken to Wall

about the desirability of trying to get James Allen to dislodge his immoral tenants at Cwmpelved Green.

What was going on ? Edward Morgan, who lived at Cwmpelved Green, was a young unmarried man whose domestic arrangements outraged Kilvert. The census of the following year records that Edward had a housekeeper. He was 26, she 17, and Kilvert was not fooled. He would have known that Wall was likely to be a good ally. When Wall was showing Kilvert round his new farm-house, Kilvert noted (28 June 1871)

Wall pointed out to me with satisfaction the door with a lock which separated the sleeping rooms of the servant boys and girls.

Wall was unlikely to be approving of Edward Morgan’s domestic arrangements at Cwmpelved Green.

And Edward Morgan had form.

In September 1870, there was an

unsuccessful attempt by Samuel Evans daughter of the Bird’s Nest to father the daughter’s base child upon Edward Morgan of Cwmpelved Green

On this occasion Kilvert reserved his indignation for Emily Evans’ mother, who had

been shameless enough to let the young man sit up at night with Emily after she and her husband had gone to bed.

He was clear in his own mind that

Such conduct ought to be strongly marked and disapproved.

Emily Evans’ illegitimate son, Henry Evans, was baptised at Clyro on 14^th August 1870. She was 20 years old, and if Edward Morgan was the father, the case against him was not proved.

But the story does not end here, and becomes one of the most charming vignettes in the diary. It says much about Kilvert and his attitudes, and leaves us with a strong impression of a man who was not afraid to rearrange his prejudices when the facts changed.

On 5^th July 1871

Edward Morgan of Cwmpelved Green brought his concubine to Church and married her. She was a girl of 19, rather nice looking and seemed quiet and modest. She had a pretty bridesmaid and they were both nicely prettily dressed in lilac and white.

Here you can sense a change of mood. The immoral tenants were trying to make things right, and Kilvert was mollified. Pretty faces tended to charm him easily. A fortnight later, Kilvert went to visit the newly married couple. What he found was quite different from what he had expected:

At Cwmpelved Green the low garden wall was flaming with nasturtiums which had clambered over it from the garden and which were now swinging their rude lusty arms and hands about feeling for some support to take hold of. Their luxuriant growth had almost smothered the gooseberry trees under the wall. Along the narrow garden border nodded a brilliant row of gigantic sweet wiliams.

Within the cottage sat old Richard Clark, and the pretty girl lately Edward Morgan’s concubine, now happily his wife. I had thought Edward Morgan had a comfortless, miserable home. I was never more mistaken or surprised. The cottage was exquisitely clean and neat, with a bright blue cheerful paper and almost prettily furnished. A vase of bright fresh flowers stood upon each table and I could have eaten my dinner off every stone on the floor. The girl said no one ever came near the house to see it, and she kept it as clean and neat and pretty as she could for her own satisfaction. The oven door was screened from view by a little curtain and everything was made to most and best of. I don’t wonder Edward Morgan married the girl. It was not her fault that they were not married before. She begged and prayed her lover to marry her before he seduced her and afterwards. She was very staunch and faithful to him when she was his mistress and I believe she will make him a good wife. She was ironing when I came in and when I began to read to old Clark she took her work and sat down quietly to sew. When I had done reading she had me into the garden and shewed me her flowers with which she had taken some pains for she was very fond of them. No one ever came to see her garden or her flowers she said. The only people she ever saw passing were people from the farm (the Upper Bettws where her husband works). They come on Market days along a footpath through the field before the house. The girl spoke quietly and rather mournfully and there was a shade of gentle melancholy in her voice and manner. I was deeply touched by all that I saw and heard. With a kind carefulness she put me on the footpath to the Upper Bettws farm……

Kilvert was so clearly deeply touched. The warmth of his detailed observation says it all. The burgeoning garden seems to be a symbol of the wholesome relationship which Kilvert hoped would blossom.

But who were the immoral tenants who do not appear elsewhere in the diary ? And how did their story end ?

Edward Morgan was born in Brilley in 1845, the second son of Jane Morgan who remained unmarried. His father is not easy to locate. Edward Morgan took his mother’s surname, and his father is invisible as far as the records are concerned. Or almost invisible.  The record of Edward’s marriage (I am very grateful to John Palmer who let me see it) shows that his father was Edward Watkins, a farmer.

For obvious reasons there can be no certainty here, but a likely candidate as Edward’s father is the Edward Watkins who was born in Clyro around 1815. Just a little older than Jane Morgan, he was around 30 when Edward Morgan was born. And in 1851 he and his wife were living with his mother who was farming 32 acres at Caenoyadd.

An irrelevant but irresistible aside here is that on 3^rd April 1872 Kilvert visited James Pitt “with the wooden leg. He had recently moved from Oxford to Caenoyadd. He flitted at Candlemas and on Good Friday his old house fell down.” The amusement here lies in the fact that moving from Oxford to Caenoyadd involved merely moving chattels from one house into next door. Caenoyadd and Oxford were adjacent.

By 1861 Edward Morgan was a carter for a farmer, and by 1871, when his behaviour was irritating Kilvert, he was employed as a farm labourer. His life was on the land.

Richard Clark who was boarding with him, died late in 1871, aged 83 or 84.

Edward Morgan’s housekeeper and future wife was Caroline Wright. She was born in 1854, the daughter of George Wright and Martha Harris. Her grandfather William Harris was a miller, whose son, also William, followed in his footsteps. William junior is easy to track through the census as he became deaf at the age of 30, and this is recorded on subsequent censuses.

Edward and Caroline had eight children, three of whom had died by 1911, whether in infancy or later we do not know. Their five surviving children were

Edward James Morgan   1871 – 1938

Martha Jane Morgan      1874 –

Sarah Ann Morgan         1877 –

Lewis Morgan                1879 –

Alfred Morgan               1883 -

In 1899, Edward the now aging Lothario died, leaving his wife and children to fend for themselves. In 1901 we find her in service at Yew Tree Cottage, Clifford. Ten years later, she is living at 15 Prospect Cottages, Hereford Road, Leominster where she kept boarders, and where her granddaughter lived with her. There cannot have been room for many boarders as the house had only four rooms, and in 1911, an elderly lady was the only resident boarder.

It is hard to be certain when Caroline died, but a likely date is 1935, when a Caroline Morgan died in Leominster in the 3^rd quarter of the year.

Kilvert thought that Caroline, staunchly loyal, clean, house-proud, modest and somewhat melancholy would make Edward Morgan a good wife. We do not know, and cannot tell. But the marriage certainly lasted until his death, enduring nearly thirty years. And five children grew to adulthood under her care.

Kilvert was ever the romantic, and in the domestic idyll he describes at Cwmpelved Green he clearly saw something that he liked, maybe something that he himself longed for. He sensed some magic, and put it down to Caroline. Whether his predictions were right we will never know.

(This piece was first published in the Journal of the Kilvert Society.)