Parson Woodforde's diary

I love reading diaries and travel books in bed. I'm tucked up warm and safe while the writer describes winters so bitter the milk freezes indoors right up till April. Or - in the case of Mary Kingsley, whom I read a few moths ago - waking in the night in a house in west Africa to realise that the shape hanging on the wall is a man's head in a bag, so perhaps she won't go for a walk after all.

I've just finished reading a book that's been on my shelves for years - a battered second-hand copy of The Diary of a Country Parson, 1758-1802 by James Woodforde. It's a perfect bedtime read - nothing much happens but the small details are a joy.

Parson Woodforde never left England. He starts the diary as a young man in Somerset, spends some time in Oxford, then lives the rest of his life in rural Norfolk. He doesn't marry - the woman he shows an interest in chooses someone else - but lives with his niece and a household of servants, among a community of farmers and gentlemen who spend a prodigious amount of time visiting each other and eating mountains of food. Here's one meal for seven people in April 1796, eaten at his neighbour Mr Custance's:

"We had for dinner, a fine Cod's Head and Shoulders, boiled, and Oyster Sauce, Peas-Soup, Ham and 2 boiled Chicken, and a fine Saddle of Mutton rosted, Potatoes, Colli-Flower-Brocoli, and Cucumber. 2nd Course, a rost Duck, Maccaroni, a sweet batter Pudding & Currant Jelly, Blamange, and Rasberry Puffs. Desert, Oranges, Almonds & Raisins, Nutts, & dried Apples, Beefans. Port & Sherry Wines, Porter, strong Beer & small. After Coffee & Tea, we got to cards ..."

Food and drink seem to be the answer to many ailments. I never did work out what was wrong with Woodforde's niece Nancy, but was glad to read on 22 March 1797 that she "continues still to get better by drinking plentifully of port Wine, at least 1 Pint in a day..."

The cow was less lucky, "she having a Disorder which I never heard of before or any of our Somersett Friends. It is called Tail-shot, that is, a separation of some of the Joints of the Tail about a foot from the tip of the Tail, or rather a slipping of one Joint from another. It also makes all her teeth quite loose in her head. The Cure, is to open that part of the Tail so slipt lengthways and put in an Onion boiled and some Salt, and bind it up with some coarse Tape."

From http://eighteenthcenturylit.pbworks.com/w/page/70483856/Banknotes

Though most of the diary describes day-to-day rural life, this is a time of wars and revolutions and everywhere people are afraid of Napoleon invading. Wars are expensive too, so they find their taxes and food prices rocketing, and at times their local bank notes are refused as currency.


I always thought the welfare state only began in the 20th century, but already here the wealthier people, including the Parson on his £400 a year, pay into a poor relief fund, and he regularly gives money and food to people who've fallen on hard times - though only if he feels they deserve it. And mind you, I wouldn't want to be owed money by the Parson. Here he is, in December 1794:

"Mr Symonds of Reepham, cleaned both my eight day clocks to day, almost the whole day after them, he breakfasted & dined with our folks. When he went away, which was in the Evening I paid him a Bill for cleaning Clocks & Watch from October 1789 to Dec. 1794 1.0.6 cleaning my Clocks today included in it. I did not take any change of him out of a Guinea."

The diary ends a few months before Parson Woodforde dies, aged 63. He has been ill for quite a while and I was almost glad he didn't have to cope with another bitter winter in his frailty. I've loved reading his diary - his care in setting down the mundane details of his life and his pleasure in them gave me great pleasure too, as well as reminding me that unless I write something just as wonderful, nothing will remain of me in a couple of hundred years.

Pepys

 Old St Pauls, destroyed by the Fire of London, by Thomas Wyck c 1673

I've been reading The Shorter Pepys for years - it sits beside my bed and I read it a month at at time, with gaps where something else takes my fancy. The diaries begin in 1660, just as Charles II comes to the throne after Cromwell's rule - frightening times, where anyone in public life would have good reason to tread carefully. Yet Pepys rarely alludes to the underlying tensions directly, instead describing the daily life of a hard working public servant whose main task is to provision the navy as it fights the Dutch. He never seems secure, and his life is a non-stop circuit of meetings and machinations in Whitehall, at his office, in Greenwich and Deptford, in people's houses and in coaches between the meetings: I long ago forgot who is who and have no idea whom he trusts and whom he doesn't.

Not that it matters - I love him for his unabashed desire to make money - you never know what might be round the corner - and to be well-regarded at court, and for his constant pleasure in friends, good food, music, books and the theatre.

Anyway, I've finally reached 1666. The plague has been running through London for months, ebbing and flowing, sometimes worrying Pepys, sometimes going unmentioned. So I knew the Great Fire must be on its way, but when? Finally, this week:

September

2 Lords Day. Some of our maids sitting up late last night to get things ready against our feast today. Jane called up, about 3 in the morning, to tell us of a great fire they saw in the City...

It's here! And Pepys gives a wonderful first hand account of the disorder, the fear, the speed of the spread of the flames:

... walked along Watling Street as well I could, every creature coming away laden with goods to save - and here and there sick people carried away in beds. Extraordinary good goods carried in carts and on backs. At last met my Lord Mayor in Canning Streete, like a man spent, with a handkerchief about his neck. To the King's message, he cried like a fainting woman, "Lord. what can I do? I am spent! People will not obey me. I have been pulling down  houses. But the fire overtakes us faster then we can do it."

He goes out in a boat on the Thames to see the fire better, and notes that among the boats carrying people's possessions, one in three has a virginall or two in it. He believes at first that his house - which he is the the middle of doing up, thoroughly modern man that he is - is safe, but then realises how far and fast the fire is spreading. So he moves most of his furniture to a friend's house away from the fire, and then - best touch of all, returns to bury in the garden his wine, his papers, and his parmesan.

Wonderful stuff!

For a quick daily Pepys fix try http://www.pepysdiary.com/