So the clergy and choir came to meet us at the door, then turned and moved up the Cathedral nave chanting in solemn procession, `I am the Resurrection and the Life saith the Lord'. That is the inescapable fact that comes to mind as you read the diaries of a man who died over a 130 years ago.

Robert Kilvert, rector of Langley Burrell, Wiltshire, and Thermuthis, daughter of Walter Coleman and Thermuthis Ashe. Two days later he and a friend are earnestly discussing whether or not he should marry her and getting all excited about what a good idea it all is. I especially enjoyed his accounts of dining and drunkeness, and the carefree way people of leisure spent their free time.I had no idea the late Victorians played such wild games of croquet (up to six games taking place on one lawn at once), and also I am a bit aggrieved that archery is never offered to me as a standard party activity. The nature writing is very strong, as are the descriptions of rural life and the memories of the elderly parishioners he visits, some of whom remember back into the previous century. He fondly talks of rural life of the time and he is particularly fond of underage girls which as a father of a daughter was difficult to read, however he didn't seem to act on this and indeed tried to marry once or twice. One of the bearers on the right side was very short, so short that he could not properly support the coffin level. In the 1950s, whilst Plomer was contemplating further publication of the remaining journals, it was found that the majority of the surviving diaries had been destroyed by their then owner, an elderly niece of Kilvert's, who claimed to have done so to protect "private family matters.

He was rather shy and constrained and sat for a long time still with the tumbler of beer in his hand and looking at nothing.It didn’t help that googling for articles about Kilvert I found myself on a blog that I suddenly realised was attempting to normalise sex between adults and children. The Reverend Francis Kilvert kept a diary from January 1870 for nine years until his premature death. Kilvert was born on 3 December 1840 at The Rectory, Hardenhuish Lane, near Chippenham, Wiltshire, to the Rev.

Initially, from 1863 to 1864, he was curate to his father at Langley Burrell, and in 1865 he became curate of Clyro, Radnorshire. The church is very much integrated in the community - Kilvert, though a solid Anglican, is generally fair to Catholics and nonconformists, though I suspect wouldn't be very accommodating to sceptics or atheist, and he shows the Church world as varied in character and virtue as any other. Francis Kilvert is so full of foibles and so matter-of-factly recounts even the most gruesome scenes that the writing seems surprisingly modern.He was born at Hardenhuish, or Harnish, near Chippenham in Wiltshire, on the 3rd December, 1840, the second child of the Rev. Francis Kilvert spent his early years at Hardenhuish, was educated privately, went in due course to Wadham College, Oxford, and entered the Church. The great bell boomed high overhead and the deep thrilling vibration hung trembling in the air long after the stroke of the bell. There was a stamping and a scuffling, a mass of struggling men swaying to and fro, pushing and writhing and wrestling while the coffin sank and rose and sank again. She had therefore cleared out a lot of papers and had destroyed the notebooks as they contained private family matters.