Francis Kilvert (1840-1879) was a learned Victorian country curate who ministered to his flocks in the Anglo-Welsh border country, along the tranquil and lovely Wye valley (now best known for Hay-on-Wye, "the book town," Mecca or Vatican of the world's literary wheeler-dealers). Kilvert, who died young, poor man, of peritonitis, made voluminous diary entries on the nonevents of his day-to-day existence that have since, through the backward glance of Time, become defining events of a Victorian life. He had an evocative and graceful style, as in this description of a moment along the Wye Valley, best read against a soundtrack of Vaughan Williams (I prescribe "The Lark Ascending" or "On Wenlock Edge"):
"The wet village roads shone like silver
below, and the market folk thronged past the Vicarage and School. A railway
engine sent up a bright white jet of steam over the bank from Hay Station, the
oaks were still tawny green and glittering with diamond dews, Hay Church in a
tender haze beyond the gleaming of the broad river reach and rapids above the
Steeple pool. How indescribable, that lovely brilliant variegated scene. A rook
shot up out of the valley and towered above the silver mist into the bright
blue sky over the golden oaks, rising against the dark blue mountains still
patched and ribbed with snow."
