Francis Kilvert

... life appears to me such a curious and wonderful thing ...

Robert Francis Kilvert (3 December 1840 – 23 September 1879), known as Francis or Frank, was an English clergyman whose diaries reflected rural life in the 1870s, and were published over fifty years after his death.

Quotes

William Plomer (ed.) Selections from the Diary of the Rev. Francis Kilvert, 3 vols. (London: Jonathon Cape, 1938–40)

• Of all noxious animals, too, the most noxious is a tourist. And of all tourists the most vulgar, ill-bred, offensive and loathsome is the British tourist.
  • 5 April 1870

• The Vicar of St Ives says the smell of fish there is sometimes so terrific as to stop the church clock.
  • 21 July 1870

• It is a fine thing to be out on the hills alone. A man can hardly be a beast or a fool alone on a great mountain.
  • 29 May 1871

• An angel satyr walks these hills.
  • 20 June 1871

• Why do I keep this voluminous journal? I can hardly tell. Partly because life seems to me such a curious and wonderful thing that it seems a pity that even such a humble and uneventful life as mine should pass altogether away without some such record as this, and partly too because I think the record may amuse and interest some who come after me.
  • 4 November 1874