November 8th

1874

Nov. 8, — Walking with Wm. Splaine we saw a vast multitude of starlings making an unspeakable jangle. They would settle in a row of trees; then, one tree after another, rising at a signal they looked like a cloud of specks of black snuff or powder struck up from a brush or broom or shaken from a wig; then they would sweep round in whirlwinds—you could see the nearer and farther bow of the rings by the size and blackness; many would be in one phase at once, all narrow black flakes hurling round, then in another; then they would fall upon a field and so on. Splaine wanted a gun: then 'there it would rain meat' he said. I thought they must be full of enthusiasm and delight hearing their cries and stirring and cheering one another...

Gerard Manley Hopkins
(Gerard Manley Hopkins, (28 July 1844 – 8 June 1889) was an English poet and Jesuit priest whose 20th-century fame established him posthumously among the leading Victorian poets.)

September 30th

1769 - Appleby, Westmorland

30 Sept. 1769
WIND at N.W. Clouds & sunshine. A mile & Vz from Brough on a hill lay a great army encamp'd. To the left open'd a fine valley with green meadows & hedge-rows, a Gentleman's house peeping forth from a grove of old trees. On a nearer approach appeared myriads of horses & cattle in the road itself & in all the fields round me, a brisk stream hurrying cross the way, thousands of clean healthy People in their best party-color'd apparel, Farmers & their families, Esquires & their daughters, hastening up from the dales & down the fells on every side, glittering in the sun & pressing forward to join the throng: while the dark hills, on many of whose tops the mists were yet hanging, served as a contrast to this gay & moving scene, which continued for near two miles more along the road, and the crowd (coming towards it) reach'd on as far as Appleby.

On the ascent of the hill above Appleby the thick hanging wood & the long reaches of the Eden (rapid, clear, & full as ever) winding below with views of the Castle & Town gave much employment to the mirror: but the sun was wanting & the sky overcast. Oats & barley cut every where, but not carried in.

Thomas Gray
(Thomas Gray (26 December 1716 – 30 July 1771) was an English poet, classical scholar and professor at Cambridge University. He is best known for his 'Elegy written in a Country Churchyard' and his 'Journal of a Tour through the English Lakes'.)

September 24th

1870 - (Stoneyhurst College, Lancashire?)

Sept. 24 — First saw the Northern Lights. My eye was caught by beams of light and dark very like the crown of horny rays the sun makes behind a cloud. At first I thought of silvery cloud until I saw that these were more luminous and did not dim the clearness of the stars in the Bear. They rose slightly radiating thrown out from the earthline. Then I saw soft pulses of light one after another rise and pass upwards arched in shape but waveringly and with the arch broken. Th^y seemed to float, not following the warp of the sphere as falling stars look to do but free though concentrical with it. This busy working of nature wholly independent of the earth and seeming to go on in a strain of time not reckoned by our reckoning of days and years but simpler and as if correcting the preoccupation of the world by being preoccupied with and appealing to and dated to the day of judgment was like a new witness to God and filled me with delightful fear.

Gerard Manley Hopkins
(Gerard Manley Hopkins, (28 July 1844 – 8 June 1889) was an English poet and Jesuit priest whose 20th-century fame established him posthumously among the leading Victorian poets.)

September 12th

1826 - Stroud, Gloucestershire

Stroud, Tuesday Forenoon, 12th Sept., 1826
I set off from Malmsbury this morning at 6 o'clock, in as sweet and bright a morning, as ever came out of the heavens, and leaving behind me as pleasant a house and as kind hosts as I ever met with in the whole course of my life, either in England or America; and that is saying a great deal indeed. This circumstance was the more pleasant, as I had never before either seen or heard of, these kind, unaffected, sensible, sans-façons, and most agreeable friends. From Malmsbury I first came, at the end of five miles, to Tutbury, which is in Gloucestershire, there being here, a sort of dell, or ravine, which, in this place, is the boundary line of the two counties, and over which you go on a bridge, one-half of which belongs to each county. And now, before I take my leave of Wiltshire, I must observe, that, in the whole course of my life (days of courtship excepted, of course), I never passed seventeen pleasanter days than those which I have just spent in Wiltshire. It is, especially in the Southern half, just the sort of country that I like; the weather has been pleasant; I have been in good houses and amongst good and beautiful gardens; and, in every case, I have not only been most kindly entertained, but my entertainers have been of just the stamp that I like.

I saw again, this morning, large flocks of goldfinches, feeding on the thistle-seed, on the roadside. The French call this bird by a name derived from the thistle, so notorious has it always been, that they live upon this seed. Thistle is, in French, Chardon; and the French call this beautiful little bird Chardonaret. I never could have supposed, that-such flocks of these birds would ever be seen in England. But, it is a great year for all the feathered race, whether wild or tame: naturally so, indeed; for every one knows, that it is the wet and not the cold, that is injurious to the breeding of birds of all sorts, whether land-birds or water-birds.

William Cobbett
(William Cobbett (9 March 1763 – 18 June 1835) was an English pamphleteer, farmer and journalist, who was born in Farnham, Surrey.)

September 2nd

1774 - Selborne, Hampshire

Red-breasts sing all through the spring, summer, and autumn. The reason that they are called autumn songsters is, because in the two first seasons their voices are drowned and lost in the general chorus; in the latter their song becomes distinguishable. Many songsters of the autumn seem to be the young cock red-breasts of that year: notwithstanding the prejudices in their favour, they do much mischief in gardens to the summer-fruits.

Gilbert White
(Gilbert White (18 July 1720 – 26 June 1793) - letter to Daines Barrington. White was a pioneering naturalist and ornithologist, born in his grandfather's vicarage at Selborne in Hampshire. He is best known for his The Natural History and Antiquities of Selborne (1789). )

August 27th

1826 - Tangley, Hampshire

East Everley (Wiltshire), Sunday, 27th August, Evening
We set off from Uphusband on Friday, about ten o'clock, the morning having been wet....
In the midst of this, I got, at one time, a little out of my road, in, or near, a place called Tangley. I rode up to the garden-wicket of a cottage, and asked the woman, who had two children, and who seemed to be about thirty years old, which was the way to Ludgershall, which I knew could not be more than about four miles off. She did not know! A very neat, smart, and pretty woman; but, she did not know the way to this rotten-borough, which was, I was sure, only about four miles off!
"Well, my dear good woman," said I, "but you have been at LUDGERSHALL?"
— "No."
—"Nor at Andover?" (six miles another way)—"No."
—"Nor at Marlborough?" (nine miles another way) —"No."
—"Pray, were you born in this house?"
—"Yes."
—"And, how far have you ever been from this house?"
—"Oh! I have been up in the parish and over to Chute."
That is to say, the utmost extent of her voyages had been about two and a half miles! Let no one laugh at her, and, above all others, let not me, who am convinced, that the facilities, which now exist, of moving human bodies from place to place, are amongst the curses of the country, the destroyers of industry, of morals, and, of course, of happiness. It is a great error to suppose, that people are rendered stupid by remaining always in the same place. This was a very acute Woman, and as well behaved as need to be. There was, in July last (last month) a Preston-man, who had never been further from home than Chorley (about eight or ten miles), and who started off, on foot, and went, alone, to Rouen, in France, and back again to London, in the space of about ten days; and that, too, without being able to speak, or to understand, a word of French. N.B. Those gentlemen, who, at Green-street, in Kent, were so kind to this man, upon finding that he had voted for me, will be pleased to accept of my best thanks. Wilding (that is the man's name) was full of expressions of gratitude towards these gentlemen. He spoke of others who were good to him on his way; and even at Calais he found friends on my account; but he was particularly loud in his praises of the gentlemen in Kent, who had been so good and so kind to him, that he seemed quite in an extacy when he talked of their conduct.

William Cobbett
(William Cobbett (9 March 1763 – 18 June 1835) was an English pamphleteer, farmer and journalist, who was born in Farnham, Surrey.)

August 7th

1778 - Selborne, Hampshire

A good ornithologist should be able to distinguish birds by their air as well as by their colours and shape; on the ground as well as on the wing, and in the bush as well as in the hand.. For, though it must not be said that every species of birds has a manner peculiar to itself, yet there is somewhat in most genera at least, that at first sight discriminates them, and enables a judicious observer to pronounce upon them with some certainty.

Gilbert White
(Gilbert White (18 July 1720 – 26 June 1793) - letter to Daines Barrington. White was a pioneering naturalist and ornithologist, born in his grandfather's vicarage at Selborne in Hampshire. He is best known for his The Natural History and Antiquities of Selborne (1789). )

August 4th

1802 - Wasdale, Cumberland

Wed. Afternoon ½ past 3, Augt. 4th. 1802 —
Wastdale, a mile & half below the Foot of the Lake, at an Alehouse without a Sign, 20 strides from the Door, under the Shade of a huge Sycamore Tree, without my coat — but that I will now put on, in prudence—yes here I am and have been for something more than an hour, & have enjoyed a good Dish of Tea (I carried my Tea & sugar with me) under this delightful Tree. In the House there are only an old feeble Woman, and a 'Tallyeur' Lad upon the Table — all the rest of the Wastdale World is a haymaking, rejoicing and thanking God for this first downright summer Day that we have had since the beginning of May. — And now I must go & see the Lake for immediately at the Foot of the Lake runs a low Ridge so that you can see nothing of the Water till you are at it's very Edge.

Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Samuel Taylor Coleridge (21 October 1772 – 25 July 1834) was an English poet, Romantic, literary critic and philosopher who, with his friend William Wordsworth, was one of the founders of the Romantic Movement in England and one of the Lake Poets.

August 1st

1802 - Keswick, Cumberland

On Sunday Augt. 1st — VQ after 12 I had a Shirt, cravat, 2 pair of Stockings, a little paper & half a dozen Pens, a German Book (Voss's Poems) & a little Tea & Sugar, with my Night Cap, packed up in my natty green oil-skin, neatly squared, and put into my net Knapsack and the Knap-sack on my back & the Besom stick in my hand, which for want of a better, and in spite of Mrs C. & Mary, who both raised their voices against it, especially as I left the Besom scattered on the Kitchen Floor, off I sallied — over the Bridge, thro' the Hop-Field, thro' the Prospect Bridge at Portinscale, so on by the tall birch that grows out of the center of the huge Oak, along into Newlands — Newlands is indeed a lovely Place — the houses, each in it's little Shelter of Ashes & Sycamores, just under the Road, so that in some places you might leap down on the Roof, seemingly at least — the exceeding greenness & pastoral beauty of the Vale itself, with the savage wildness of the Mountains, their Coves, and long arm-shaped & elbow-shaped Ridges — yet this wildness softened down into a congruity with the Vale by the semicircular Lines of the Crags, & of the bason-like Concavities. The Cataract between Newlands & Kescadale had but little water in it of course, was of no particular Interest...

Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Samuel Taylor Coleridge (21 October 1772 – 25 July 1834) was an English poet, Romantic, literary critic and philosopher who, with his friend William Wordsworth, was one of the founders of the Romantic Movement in England and one of the Lake Poets.

July 13th

1866 - Midhurst, West Sussex

...I know now too what a tinkling brook is.

Gerard Manley Hopkins
(Gerard Manley Hopkins, (28 July 1844 – 8 June 1889) was an English poet and Jesuit priest whose 20th-century fame established him posthumously among the leading Victorian poets.)

July 8th

1773 - Selborne, Hampshire

Selborne,July 8,1773
Some young men went down lately to a pond on the verge of Wolmer-forest to hunt flappers, or young wild-ducks, many of which they caught, and, among the rest, some very minute yet well-fledged wild-fowls alive, which upon examination I found to be teals. I did not know till then that teals ever bred in the south of England, and was much pleased with the discovery: this I look upon as a great stroke in natural history.

Gilbert White
(Gilbert White (18 July 1720 – 26 June 1793) - letter to Daines Barrington. White was a pioneering naturalist and ornithologist, born in his grandfather's vicarage at Selborne in Hampshire. He is best known for his The Natural History and Antiquities of Selborne (1789). )

July 7th

1866 - Oxfordshire

July 7. Fine.—Passing cloud-shadows soaking the woods. Pleasant precision of hay-cocks and swathes with shadow on one side. Bleached look of uncut fields. Those ox-eye-like flowers in grain fields smell deliciously. Strange pretty scatter-droop of barley ears, their beards part outside like the fine crispings of smooth running water on piers etc. Holding one up to the sky so that the top hairs should be about horizontal (the rest following their radiation down to the ear itself, which would hang down) noticed the instant after removing it a tiny needle-like sort of rain in the air at right angles of course to the line of the spikes. Whiteness of the pine-buds. Lombardy poplars built high and with dice-like leaves. Soar of the poplar.

Gerard Manley Hopkins
(Gerard Manley Hopkins, (28 July 1844 – 8 June 1889) was an English poet and Jesuit priest whose 20th-century fame established him posthumously among the leading Victorian poets.)

July 6th

1866 - Oxfordshire

July 6. Hard thunder-showers, fine between, passing clouds. Sun coming out after one of these showers in morning hotly made ground smoke, gravel as well as lawn, some time. Lawn shews half-circle curves of the scythe in parallel ranks. Beeches seen from behind the house scatter their tops in charming tufted sheep-hooks drooping towards each other and every way. Layers or shelves of the middle cedar not level but in waved lips like silver plate. Soft vermilion leather just-budded leaves on the purple beech, and the upper sprays ruddy in the sunlight: whole effect rich, the leaves too being crisply pinched like little fingered papers....

Gerard Manley Hopkins
(Gerard Manley Hopkins, (28 July 1844 – 8 June 1889) was an English poet and Jesuit priest whose 20th-century fame established him posthumously among the leading Victorian poets.)

June 24th

1822 - Hempstead, Kent, & Chesham, Buckinghamshire.

Kensington, June 24,1822

Set out at four this morning for Redbourn, and then turned off to the Westward to go to High Wycombe, through Hempstead and Chesham. The wheat is good all the way. The barley and oats good enough till I came to Hempstead. But the land along here is very fine: a red tenacious flinty loam upon a bed of chalk at a yard or two beneath, which, in my opinion, is the very best corn land that we have in England. The fields here, like those in the rich parts of Devonshire, will bear perpetual grass. Any of them will become upland meadows. The land is, in short, excellent, and it is a real corn-country. The trees from Redbourn to Hempstead are very fine; oaks, ashes, and beeches. Some of the finest of each sort, and the very finest ashes I ever saw in my life. They are in great numbers, and make the fields look most beautiful. No villanous things of the fir-tribe offend the eye here...

Chesham is a nice little town, lying in a deep and narrow valley, with a stream of water running through it. All along the country that I have come, the labourers' dwellings are good. They are made of what they call brick-nog (that is to say, a frame of wood, and a single brick thick, filling up the vacancies between the timber. They are generally covered with tile. Not pretty by any means; but they are good; and you see here, as in Kent, Sussex, Surrey and Hampshire, and, indeed, in almost every part of England, that most interesting of all objects, that which is such an honour to England, and that which distinguishes it from all the rest of the world, namely, those neatly kept and productive little gardens round the labourers'1 houses, which are seldom unornamented with more or less of flowers. We have only to look at these to know what sort of people English labourers are....

William Cobbett
(William Cobbett (9 March 1763 – 18 June 1835) was an English pamphleteer, farmer and journalist, who was born in Farnham, Surrey.)

May 20th

1799 - Nether Stowey, Somerset

The nightingales in a cluster or little wood of blossomed trees, and a bat wheeling incessantly round and round! The noise of the frogs was not unpleasant, like the humming of spinning wheels in a large manufactory,—now and then a distinct sound, sometimes like a duck, and sometimes like the shrill notes of sea-fowl.

Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Samuel Taylor Coleridge (21 October 1772 – 25 July 1834) was an English poet, Romantic, literary critic and philosopher who, with his friend William Wordsworth, was one of the founders of the Romantic Movement in England and one of the Lake Poets.

May 18th

1872

Saturday, 18 May
Hay Fair still going on. To get out of the sight and sound of it I went up the unfrequented path from Penllan to the Wern below Gwernfydden to look for bog beans to give to Mrs. Venables on Whitsun Day. The marshy ground was thick with the trefoil bean leaves, but not a blossom had yet opened. I found a gate beside a sheltered hedge, in a sunny nook convenient for reading, and returning to the village I climbed Penllan again with that charming book Lettice Lisle* and established myself in my sunny corner on the gate sheltered from the East wind by the high green hedge and secure from intrusion on a path that led to nowhere and therefore sacred from the folks returning from the fair. It was a quiet peaceful beautiful place. There was no sound to be heard but the singing of the birds, and nothing to be seen but the blue mountains rising over the sunny golden green oaks of Penllan Wood and the blue sky above all. No living thing seemed to be moving except a rising lark and a small blue butterfly which fluttered along the sunny side of the hedge. Presently as I sat perfectly still upon the gate reading I heard a sharp little rustling in the hedge close by me as if some small fourfooted animal were bustling busily about. In a minute or two afterwards came out of the bank on to the open path before the gate a beautiful little creature coloured a deep rich chestnut red except its throat and belly which were pure white. It carried in its mouth a mouse or a young rat. Apparently it did not see me. At all events he took no notice and was not the least startled. He passed under the gate carrying the mouse and went into the hedge on the opposite side of the path. But he did not seem to know what to do with the mouse and soon came out again, still carrying it in his mouth. I made a slight noise on purpose and the weasel dropped his prey on the path and retreated into the hedge. I got down off the gate, picked up the mouse and placed it a few feet further off in front of the gate and then resumed my seat to watch the result. The weasel was not at all abashed. He came to the mouth of the hole in the hedge, rested his little forepaws upon a bit of stick, stood up, and looked round him with his quick brilliant watchful eyes to see what had become of his mouse. Then the beautiful slender creature came out upon the path and began darting about like lightning trying to discover his prey by scent. I never saw any living thing move with such extraordinary swiftness.
The mouse was only 3 or 4 feet from him, but the weasel could not see it, and as I had lifted the mouse from the ground he could not follow it along the earth by scent. So he was completely at fault. He must have been extraordinarily blind or shortsighted. After darting about on the path close by the gate for a few minutes the weasel gave up the search and went back into the original hedge to hunt another mouse and I heard him rustling and bustling about in the bank for some time after.

Rev. Francis Kilvert
Robert Francis Kilvert (3 December 1840–23 September 1879), diarist and Rcetor, was born near Chippenham, Wiltshire, His diaries, reflecting rural life in the 1870s, were first published over fifty years after his death.

May 14th

1802

May 14th, Friday. A very cold morning—hail and snow showers all day. We went to Brother's wood, intending to get plants, and to go along the shore of the lake to the foot. We did go a part of the way, but there was no pleasure in stepping along that difficult sauntering road in this ungenial weather. We turned again, and walked backwards and forwards in Brother's wood. William teased himself with seeking an epithet for the cuckow. I sate a while upon my last summer seat, the mossy stone. William's, unemployed, beside me, and the space between, where Coleridge has so often lain. The oak trees are just putting forth yellow knots of leaves. The ashes with their flowers passing away, and leaves coming out. The blue hyacinth is not quite full blown; gow-ans are coming out, marsh marigolds in full glory; the little star plant, a star without a flower. We took home a great load of go wans, and planted them in the cold about the orchard. After dinner, I worked bread, then came and mended stockings beside William; he fell asleep. After tea I walked to Rydale for letters. It was a strange night. The hills were covered over with a slight covering of hail or snow, just so as to give them a hoary winter look with the black rocks. The woods looked miserable, the coppices green as grass, which looked quite unnatural, and they seemed half shrivelled up, as if they shrank from the air. O, thought I! what a beautiful thing God has made winter to be, by stripping the trees, and letting us see their shapes and forms. What a freedom does it seem to give to the storms! . . .

Dorothy Wordsworth - Grasmere
(Dorothy Wordsworth (25 December 1771 – 25 January 1855) was an English author, poet and diarist. She was the sister of the Romantic poet William Wordsworth, and the two were close for all of their lives.)

May 10th

1866 - Oxfordshire

May 10. Ascension Day. Walked alone to Fyfield or rather to a step beyond the great elm (perhaps the greatyest I have ever seen) and made a sketch at the turning point....
...Children with white rods beating bounds of St. Michael's parish.

Gerard Manley Hopkins
(Gerard Manley Hopkins, (28 July 1844 – 8 June 1889) was an English poet and Jesuit priest whose 20th-century fame established him posthumously among the leading Victorian poets.)

May 3rd

1866 - Oxfordshire

MAY 3, Cold. Morning raw and wet, afternoon fine. Walked then with Addis, crossing Bablock Hythe, round by Skinner's Weir through many fields into the Witney road. Sky sleepy blue without liquidity. From Cumnor Hill saw St. Philip's and the other spires through blue haze rising pale in a pink light. On further side of the Witney road hills, just fleeced with grain or other green growth, by their dips and waves foreshortened here and there and so differenced in brightness and opacity the green on them, with delicate effect. On left, brow of the near hill glistening with very bright newly turned sods and a scarf of vivid green slanting away beyond the skyline, against which the clouds shewed the slightest tinge of rose or purple. Copses in grey-red or gray-yellow—the tinges immediately forerunning the opening of full leaf. Meadows skirting Seven-bridge road voluptuous green. Some oaks are out in small leaf. Ashes not out, only tufted with their fringy blooms. Hedges springing richly. Elms in small leaf, with more or less opacity. White poplars most beautiful in small grey crisp spray-like leaf. Cowslips capriciously colouring meadows in creamy drifts. Bluebells, purple orchis. Over the green water of the river passing the slums of the town and under its bridges swallows shooting, blue and purple above and shewing their amber-tinged breasts reflected in the water, their flight unsteady with wagging wings and leaning first to one side then the other. Peewits flying.

Gerard Manley Hopkins
(Gerard Manley Hopkins, (28 July 1844 – 8 June 1889) was an English poet and Jesuit priest whose 20th-century fame established him posthumously among the leading Victorian poets.)

April 22nd

1876

Saturday 22 April
We came tumbling and plunging down the steep hillside of Moccas Park, slipping, tearing and sliding through oak and birch and fallow wood of which there seemed to be underfoot an accumulation of several feet, the gathering ruin and decay probably of centuries.

As we came down the lower slopes of the wooded hillside into the glades of the park the herds of deer were moving under the brown oaks and the billiant green hawthorns, and we came upon the tallest largest stateliest ash I ever saw and what seemed at first in the dusk to be a great ruined grey tower, but which proved to be the vast ruin of the king oak of Moccas Park, hollow and broken but still alive and vigorous in parts and actually pushing out new shoots and branches. That tree may be 2000 years old. It measured roughly 33 feet round by arm stretching.

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, biding God's time with both feet in the grave and yet tiring down ' and seeing out generation after generation, with such tales to tell, as when they whisper them to each other in the midsummer nights, make the silver birches weep and the poplars and aspens shiver and the long ears of the hares and rabbits stand on end. No human hand set those oaks. They are trees which the Lord hath planted'. They look as if they had
been at the beginning and making of the world, and they will probably see its end.

Rev. Francis Kilvert
Robert Francis Kilvert (3 December 1840–23 September 1879), diarist and Rcetor, was born near Chippenham, Wiltshire, His diaries, reflecting rural life in the 1870s, were first published over fifty years after his death.

April 21st

1825

... It has been often asserted that young frogs & fish will fall from the clouds in storms & it has often wrongly asserted when the phenomena has sprung from natural causes — I have seen thousands of young frogs crossing a common after a shower but I found that they had left their hiding places & pursued their journeys after the shower began early in the morning early risers may see swarms of young frogs leaving their birth places & emigrating as fast as they can hop to new colonys & as soon as the sun gets strong they hide in the grass as well as they are able to wait the approach of night to be able to start again but if in the course of the day showers happen to fall they instantly seize the chance & proceed on their journey till the sun looks out & puts a stop to their travelling again.

John Clare
(John Clare (13 July 1793 – 20 May 1864) was an English poet, born the son of a farm labourer who came to be known for his celebratory representations of the English countryside and his lamentation of its disruption.)

April 17th

1870

Easter Day, 17 April
The happiest, brightest, most beautiful Easter I have ever spent. I woke early and looked out. As I had hoped the day was cloudless, a glorious morning. My first thought was 'Christ is Risen'. It is not well to lie in bed on Easter morning, indeed it is thought very unlucky. I got up between five and six and was out soon after six. There had been a frost and the air was rimy with a heavy thick white dew on hedge, bank and turf, but the morning was not cold....

There was a heavy white dew with a touch of hoar frost on the meadows, and as I leaned over the wicket gate by the mill pond>}ooking to see if there were any primroses in the banks but not liking to venture into the dripping grass suddenly I heard the cuckoo for the first time this year. He was near Peter's Pool and he called three times quickly one after another. It is very well to hear the cuckoo for the first time on Easter Sunday morning. I loitered up the lane again gathering primroses where I could from among the thorn and bramble thickets and along the brook banks, not without a good many scratches. Some few grew by the mill pond edge and there was one plant growing on the trunk of a willow some way from the ground. The children have almost swept the lane clear of primroses for the same purpose for which I wanted them. However I got a good handful with plenty of green leaves and brought them home.

The village lay quiet and peaceful in the morning sunshine, but by the time I came back from primrosing there was some little stir and people were beginning to open their doors and look out into the fresh fragrant splendid morning. Hannah Whitney's door was open. I tied my primroses up in five bunches, borrowed an old knife etc. and a can of water from Mary and went to Mrs. Powell's for the primroses Annie had tied for me last night, but no one in the house was up and the door was locked. Anthony and Richard Brooks were standing in the road by the churchyard wall and I asked them if they could show me Mr. Chalmers' grave. Richard Brooks came along with me and showed me where he believed it to be, and it proved to be the right grave. So I made a simple cross upon it with my five primrose bunches. ....

I am glad to see that our primrose crosses seem to be having some effect for I think I notice this Easter some attempt to copy them and an advance towards the form of the cross in some of the decorations of the graves. I wish we could get the people to adopt some little design in the disposition of the flowers upon the graves instead of sticking sprigs into the turf aimlessly anywhere, anyhow and with no meaning at all. But one does not like to interfere too much with their artless, natural way of showing their respect and love for the dead. I am thankful to find this beautiful custom on the increase, and observed more and more every year. Some years ago it was on the decline and nearly discontinued. On Easter Day all the young people come out in something new and bright like butterflies. It is almost part of their religion to wear something new on this day.

Rev. Francis Kilvert
Robert Francis Kilvert (3 December 1840–23 September 1879), diarist and Rcetor, was born near Chippenham, Wiltshire, His diaries, reflecting rural life in the 1870s, were first published over fifty years after his death.

April 16th

1802

Good Friday...When we came to the foot of Brothers Water, I left William sitting on the bridge, and went along the path on the right side of the Lake through the wood. I was delighted with what I saw. The water under the boughs of the bare old trees, the simplicity of the mountains, and the exquisite beauty of the path. There was one grey cottage. I repeated The Glow-worm, as I walked along. I hung over the gate, and thought I could have stayed forever. When I returned, I found William writing a poem descriptive of the sights and sounds we saw and heard. There was the gentle flowing of the stream, the glittering, lively lake, green fields without a living creature to be seen on them, behind us, a flat pasture with 42 cattle feeding; to our left, the road leading to the hamlet. No smoke there, the sun shone on the bare roofs. The people were at work ploughing, harrowing, and sowing; lasses spreading dung, a dog's barking now and then, cocks crowing, birds twittering, the snow in patches at the top of the highest hills, yellow palms, purple and green twigs on the birches, ashes with their glittering spikes quite bare. The hawthorn a bright green, with black stems under the oak. The moss of the oak glossy. We then went on, passed two sisters at work (they first passed us}, one with two pitchforks in her hand, the other had a spade. We had some talk with them. They laughed aloud after we were gone, perhaps half in wantonness, half boldness. William finished his poem before "we got to the foot of Kirkstone. There we ate our dinner. There were hundreds of cattle in the vale. The walk up Kirkstone was very interesting. The becks among the rocks were all alive. Wrn. showed me the little mossy streamlet which he had before loved when he saw its bright green track in the snow. The view above Amble-side very beautiful. There we sate and looked down on the green vale. We watched the crows at a little distance from us become white as silver as they flew in the sunshine, and when they went still further, they looked like shapes of water passing over the green fields. The whitening of Ambleside church is a great deduction from the beauty of it, seen from this point. We called at the Luffs, the Boddingtons there. Did not go in, and w^ent round by the fields. I pulled off my stockings, intending to wade the beck, but I was obliged to put them on, and we climbed over the wall at the bridge. The post passed us. No letters! Rydale Lake was in its own evening brightness: the Islands and Points distinct. Jane Ashburner came up to us when we were sitting upon the wall. We rode in her cart to Tom Dawson's. All well. The garden looked pretty in the half-moonlight, half-daylight. As we went up the vale of Brother's Water more and more cattle feeding, 100 of them.

Dorothy Wordsworth - Grasmere
(Dorothy Wordsworth (25 December 1771 – 25 January 1855) was an English author, poet and diarist. She was the sister of the Romantic poet William Wordsworth, and the two were close for all of their lives.)


1870

Saturday, Easter Eve, 16 April
At 11 I went to the school to see if the children were gathering flowers and found they were out in the fields and woods collecting moss, leaving the primroses to be gathered later in the day to give them a better chance of keeping fresh. Next I went to Cae Mawr. Mrs. Morrell had been very busy all the morning preparing decorations for the Font, a round dish full of flowers in water and just big enough to fit into the Font and upon this large dish a pot filled and covered with flowers all wild, primroses, violets, wood anemones, wood sorrel, periwinkles, oxlips and the first blue bells, rising in a gentle pyramid, ferns and larch sprays drooping over the brim, a wreath of simple ivy to go round the stem of the Font, and a bed of moss to encircle the foot of the Font in a narrow band pointed at the corners and angles of the stone with knots of primroses.

...When I started for Cefn y Blaen only two or three people were in the churchyard with flowers. Hetty Gore and Mrs. Morgan of Cold Blow etc. But now the customary beautiful Easter Eve Idyll had fairly begun and people kept arriving from all parts with flowers to dress the graves.

...It is her birthday to-day. I always tell her she and the cuckoos came together...

Rev. Francis Kilvert
Robert Francis Kilvert (3 December 1840–23 September 1879), diarist and Rcetor, was born near Chippenham, Wiltshire, His diaries, reflecting rural life in the 1870s, were first published over fifty years after his death.

April 15th

1802

15th, Thursday. It was a threatening, misty morning, but mild. We set off after dinner from Eusemere. Mrs. Clarkson went a short way with us, but turned back. The wind was furious, and we thought we mvist have returned. We first rested in the large boat-house, then under a furze bush opposite Mr. Clarkson's. Saw the plough going in the field. The wind seized our breath. The Lake was rough. There was a boat by itself floating in the middle of the bay below Water Millock. We rested again in the Water Millock Lane. The hawthorns are black and green, the birches here and there greenish, but there is yet more of purple to be seen on the twigs. We got over into a field to avoid some cows—people working. A few primroses by the roadside —woodsorrel flower, the anemone, scentless violets, strawberries, and that starry, yellow flower which Mrs. C. calls pile wort. When we were in the woods beyond Gowbar-row Park we saw a few daffodils close to the water-side. We fancied that the lake had floated the seeds ashore, and that the little colony had so sprung up. But as we went along there were more and yet more; and at last, under the boughs of the trees, we saw that there was a long belt of them along the shore, about the breadth of a country turnpike road. I never saw daffodils so beautiful. They grew among the mossy stones about and about them; some rested their heads upon these stones as on a pillow for weariness; and the rest tossed and reeled and danced, and seemed as if they verily laughed with the wind, that blew upon them over the lake; they looked so gay, ever glancing, ever changing. This wind blew directly over the lake to them. There was here and there a little knot, and a few stragglers a few yards higher up; but they were so few as not to disturb the simplicity, unity, and life of that one busy highway.

Dorothy Wordsworth - Grasmere
(Dorothy Wordsworth (25 December 1771 – 25 January 1855) was an English author, poet and diarist. She was the sister of the Romantic poet William Wordsworth, and the two were close for all of their lives.)

April 13th

1830

Horncastle, 13th April, morning
. . . There is one deficiency, and that, with me, a great one, throughout this country of corn and grass and oxen and sheep, that I have come over, during the last three weeks; namely, the want of singing birds. We are now just in that season when they sing most. Here, in all this country, I have seen and heard only about four sky-larks, and not one other singing bird of any description, and, of the small birds that do not sing, I have seen only one yellow-hammer, and it was perched on the rail of a pound between Boston and Sibsey. Oh! the thousands of linnets all singing together on one tree, in the sand-hills of Surrey! Oh! the carolling in the coppices and the dingles of Hampshire and Sussex and Kent!

William Cobbett
(William Cobbett (9 March 1763 – 18 June 1835) was an English pamphleteer, farmer and journalist, who was born in Farnham, Surrey.)

April 8th

1873

April 8 — The ashtree growing in the corner of the garden was felled. It was lopped first: I heard the sound and looking out and seeing it maimed there came at that moment a great pang and I wished to die and not to see the inscapes of the world destroyed any more.......

Gerard Manley Hopkins
(Gerard Manley Hopkins, (28 July 1844 – 8 June 1889) was an English poet and Jesuit priest whose 20th-century fame established him posthumously among the leading Victorian poets.)

March 25th

1825

March 25th 1825
I took a walk to-day to botanize & found that the spring had taken up her dwelling in good earnest she has covered the woods with the white anemone which the children call Lady smocks & the harebells are just venturing to unfold their blue drooping bells the green is coverd with daiseys & the little Celandine the hedge bottoms are crowded with the green leaves of the arum were the boy is peeping for pootys with eager anticipations & delight—the sallows are cloathed in their golden palms were the bees are singing a busy welcome to spring they seem uncommonly fond of these flowers & gather round them in swarms—I have often wonderd how these little travellers found their way home agen from the woods & solitudes were they journey for wax & honey I have seen them to-day at least 3 miles from any village in Langley wood working at the palms & some of them with their little thighs so loaded with the yellow dust as to seem almost unable to flye it is curious to see how they collect their load they keep wiping their legs over their faces to gather the dust that settles there after creeping in the flowers till they have got a sufficient load & then they flye homewards to their hives—I have heard that a man curious to know how far his bees travelld in a summers day got up early one morning & stood by one of the hives to powder them as they came out with fine flour to know them agen & in the course of an hour afterwards he observd some of them at the extremity of the Lordship & having to go to the market that day he passd by a turnip field in full flower about 5 miles from home & to his supprise he found some of his own in their white powdered coats busily humming at their labour with the rest

John Clare
(John Clare (13 July 1793 – 20 May 1864) was an English poet, born the son of a farm labourer who came to be known for his celebratory representations of the English countryside and his lamentation of its disruption.)

March 23rd

1872

March 23— ... Saw a lad burning bundles of dry honeysuckle: the flame (though it is no longer freshly in my mind) was brown and gold, brighter and glossier than glass or silk or water and ran reeling up to the right in one long handkerchief and curling like a cartwhip...

Gerard Manley Hopkins
(Gerard Manley Hopkins, (28 July 1844 – 8 June 1889) was an English poet and Jesuit priest whose 20th-century fame established him posthumously among the leading Victorian poets.)

March 14th

1802

Sunday Morning. William had slept badly—he got up at nine o'clock, but before he rose he had finished The Beggar Boys, and while we were at breakfast that is (for I had breakfasted) he, with his basin of broth before him untouched, and a little plate of bread and butter he wrote the Poem to a Butterfly! He ate not a morsel, nor put on his stockings, but sate with his shirt neck unbuttoned, and his waistcoat open while he did it. The thought first came upon him as we were talking about the pleasure we both always feel at the sight of a butterfly. I told him that I used to chase them a little, but that I was afraid of brushing the dust off their wings, and did not catch them. He told me how they used to kill all the white ones when he went to school because they were Frenchmen. . . .

Dorothy Wordsworth - Grasmere
(Dorothy Wordsworth (25 December 1771 – 25 January 1855) was an English author, poet and diarist. She was the sister of the Romantic poet William Wordsworth, and the two were close for all of their lives.)

March 7th

1798

March 7th. William and I drank tea at Coleridge's. A cloudy sky. Observed nothing particularly interesting—the distant prospect obscured. One only leaf upon the top of a tree—the sole remaining leaf—danced round and round like a rag blown by the wind.

Dorothy Wordsworth - Alfoxden
(Dorothy Wordsworth (25 December 1771 – 25 January 1855) was an English author, poet and diarist. She was the sister of the Romantic poet William Wordsworth, and the two were close for all of their lives.)

March 6th

1825

The little Robin has begun his summer song in good earnest he was singing at my chamber window this morning almost before daylight as he has done all this week & at nightfall he comes regularly to his old plumb tree & starts again—there is a plaintive sweetness in the song of this bird that I am very fond of it may be calld an eternal song for it is heard at intervals all the year round & in the Autumn when the leaves are all fled from the trees there is a mellancholy sweetness in it that is very touching to my feelings—the Robin is one of the most familiar birds that a village landscape posseses & it is no less beloved for even children leave its nest unmolested but the Wren & the Martin are held in the like veneration with a many people who will not suffer their nests to be destroyed—the Robin seems to be fond of the company & haunts of men it builds its nest close to his cottage in the hovel or outhouse thatch or behind the woodbine or sweetbriar in the garden wall nor does it seem to make any secret of its dwelling were its only enemy is the cat to whom its confidence of saftey often falls a prey—& it seeks its food by his door on the dunghill or on the garden beds nay it will even settle on the gardeners spade while he is at work to watch the worm that he throws up & unbares & in winter it will venture into the house for food & become as tame as a chicken—we had one that usd to come in at a broken pane in the window three winters together I always knew it to be our old visitor by a white scar on one of the wings it grew so tame that it woud perch on ones finger & take the crumbs out of the hand it was very much startld at the cat at first but after a time it took little notice of her further than always contriving to keep out of her way.

John Clare
(John Clare (13 July 1793 – 20 May 1864) was an English poet, born the son of a farm labourer who came to be known for his celebratory representations of the English countryside and his lamentation of its disruption.)

February 23rd

1802

[February] 23rd, Tuesday. A misty rainy morning—the lake calm. I baked bread and pies. Before dinner worked a little at Wm.'s waistcoat—after dinner read German Grammar. Before tea we walked into Easedale. We turned aside in the Parson's field, a pretty field with 3 pretty prospects. Then we went to the first large field, but such a cold wind met us that we turned again. The wind seemed warm when we came out of our own door. That dear thrush was singing upon the topmost of the smooth branches of the ash tree at the top of the orchard. How long it had been perched on that same tree I cannot tell, but we had heard its dear voice in the orchard the day through, along with a chearful undersong made by our winter friends, the robins. We came home by Goan's. I picked up a few mosses by the roadside, which I left at home. We then went to John's Grove, there we sate a little while looking at the fading landscape. The lake, though the objects on the shore were fading, seemed brighter than when it is perfect day, and the Island pushed itself upwards, distinct and large. All the shores marked. There was a sweet, sea-like sound in the trees above our heads. We walked backwards and forwards some time for dear John's sake, then walked to look at Rydale. Darkish when we reached home, and we got tea immediately with candles. William now reading in Bishop Hall—I going to read German. We have a nice singing fire, with one piece of wood. Fletcher's carts are arrived but no papers from Mrs. Coleridge.

Dorothy Wordsworth - Grasmere
(Dorothy Wordsworth (25 December 1771 – 25 January 1855) was an English author, poet and diarist. She was the sister of the Romantic poet William Wordsworth, and the two were close for all of their lives.)

February 17th

1798

February 17th. A deep snow upon the ground. Wm. and Coleridge walked to Mr. Bartholemew's, and to Stowey. Wm. returned, and we walked through the wood into the Coombe to fetch some eggs. The sun shone bright and clear. A deep stillness in the thickest part of the wood, undisturbed except by the occasional dropping oftthe snow from the holly boughs; no other sound but that of the water, and the slender notes of a redbreast, which sang at intervals on the outskirts of the southern side of the wood. There the bright green moss was bare at the roots of the trees, and the little birds were upon it. The whole appearance of the wood was enchanting; and each tree, taken singly, was beautiful. The branches of the hollies pendent with their white burden, but still showing their bright red berries, and their glossy green leaves. The bare branches of the oaks thickened by the snow.

Dorothy Wordsworth - Alfoxden
(Dorothy Wordsworth (25 December 1771 – 25 January 1855) was an English author, poet and diarist. She was the sister of the Romantic poet William Wordsworth, and the two were close for all of their lives.)

February 7th

1825

I always think that this month the prophet of spring brings many beautys to the landscape tho a earless observer woud laugh at me for saying so who believes that it brings nothing because he does not give himself the trouble to seek them—I always admire the kindling freshness that the bark of the different sorts of trees & underwood asume in the forest-the foulroyce twigs kindle into a vivid color at their tops as red as woodpiegons claws the ash with its grey bark & black swelling buds the Birch with it 'paper rind' & the darker mottled sorts of hazle & black alder with the greener hues of sallow willows & the bramble that still wears its leaves with the privet of a purple hue while the straggling wood briar shines in a brighter & more beautiful green even then leaves can boast at this season too odd forward branches in the new laid hedges of whitethorn begin to freshen into green before the arum dare peep out of its hood or the primrose & violet shoot up a new leaf thro the warm moss & ivy that shelters their spring dwellings the furze too on the common wear a fairer green & ere & there an odd branch is coverd with golden flowers & the ling or heath nestling among the long grass below (coverd with the witherd flowers of last year) is sprouting up into fresh hopes of spring the fairey rings on the pastures are getting deeper dyes & the water weeds with long silver green blades of grass are mantling the stagnant ponds in their summer liverys I find more beautys in this month then I can find room to talk about in a letter . . .

John Clare
(John Clare (13 July 1793 – 20 May 1864) was an English poet, born the son of a farm labourer who came to be known for his celebratory representations of the English countryside and his lamentation of its disruption.)


1825

You ask me wether I have resumed my botanizing & naturalizing excursions & you will laugh at my comencement for I have been seriously & busily employd this last 3 weeks hunting Pooty shells & if you are not above them I must get you to assist me in the arangement or classification of them I have been making some drawings of them but they are so miserable that I must send the shells with them
There is a pleasing association attachd to these things they remind me & I think every one of happy hours who has not been a gatherer of them in his schoolboy days—how anxious I usd to creep among the black thorn thickets & down the hedge sides on my hands & knees seeking them as soon as the sun lookd warm on the hedges & banks & wakend the daisey to open its golden eye & the arum to throw up its fine green leaves I cannot forget such times as these we usd to gather them to string on thread as birds eggs are strung & sometimes to play with them at what we calld 'cock fighting' by pressing the knibbs hard against each other till one broke—I think there is one shell peculiar to our neighbourhood & almost to one spot in it it is a large one of a yellow green color with a black rim round the base there is another yellow one very common which we calld when boys 'painted Ladys' but the one I imagine as a scarce one is very different from this—they are found in low places by brook sides the snail is of a blackish yellow & appears to feed on a species of brooklime—there is another not very common I have stiled it the yellow one banded the others are common the red one banded the red self & the red many banded & small many banded with a mottld sort calld badgers by schoolboys—there is many others but they all seem variations of the same kinds the large mozzld garden snail is well known but I found many of them in a spot where it woud puzzle reason to know how they got there.

John Clare
(John Clare (13 July 1793 – 20 May 1864) was an English poet, born the son of a farm labourer who came to be known for his celebratory representations of the English countryside and his lamentation of its disruption.)

February 4th

1798

February 4th. Walked a great part of the way to Stowey with Coleridge. The morning warm and sunny. The young lasses seen on the hill-tops, in the villages and roads, in their summer holiday clothes—pink petticoats and blue. Mothers with their children in arms, and the little ones that could just walk, tottering by their side. Midges or small flies spinning in the sunshine; the songs of the lark and redbreast; daisies upon the turf; the hazels in blossom; honeysuckles budding. I saw one solitary strawberry flower under a hedge. The furze gay with blossom. The moss rubbed from the pailings by the sheep, that leave locks of wool, and the red marks with which they are spotted, upon the wood.

Dorothy Wordsworth - Alfoxden
(Dorothy Wordsworth (25 December 1771 – 25 January 1855) was an English author, poet and diarist. She was the sister of the Romantic poet William Wordsworth, and the two were close for all of their lives.)

January 31st

1798

January 31st. Set forward to Stowey at half-past five. A violent storm in the wood; sheltered under the hollies. When we left home the moon immensely large, the sky scattered over with clouds. These soon closed in, contracting the dimensions of the moon without concealing her. The sound of the pattering shower, and the gusts of wind, very grand. Left the wood when nothing remained of the storm but the driving wind, and a few scattering drops of rain. Presently all clear, Venus first showing herself between the struggling clouds; afterwards Jupiter appeared. The hawthorn hedges, black and pointed, glittering with millions of diamond drops; the hollies shining with broader patches of light. The road to the village of Holford glittered like another stream. On our return,the wind high—a violent storm of hail and rain at the Castle of Comfort. All the Heavens seemed in one perpetual motion when the rain ceased; the moon appearing, now half veiled, and now retired behind heavy clouds, the stars still moving, the roads very dirty.

Dorothy Wordsworth - Alfoxden
(Dorothy Wordsworth (25 December 1771 – 25 January 1855) was an English author, poet and diarist. She was the sister of the Romantic poet William Wordsworth, and the two were close for all of their lives.)


1802

[January] 31st, Sunday.
Wm. had slept very ill—he was tired and had a bad headache. We walked round the two lakes. Grasmere was very soft, and Rydale was extremely beautiful from the western side. Nab Scar was just topped by a cloud which, cutting it off as high as it could be cut off, made the mountain look uncommonly lofty. We sate down a long time in different places. I always love to walk that way, because it is the way I first came to Rydale and Grasmere, and because our dear Coleridge did also. When I came with Wm., 6½ years ago, it was just at sunset. There was a rich yellow light on the waters, and the Islands were reflected there. To-day it was grave and soft, but not perfectly calm. William says it was much such a day as when Coleridge came with him. The sun shone out before we reached Grasmere. We sate by the roadside at the foot of the Lake, close to Mary's dear name, which she had cut herself upon the stone. Wm. cut at it with his knife to make it plainer. We amused ourselves for a long time in watching the breezes, some as if they came from the bottom of the lake, spread in a circle, brushing along the surface of the water, and growing more delicate, as it were thinner, and of a paler colour till they died away. Others spread out like a peacock's tail, and some went right forward this way and that in all directions. The lake was still where these breezes were not, but they made it all alive. I found a strawberry blossom in a rock. The little slender flower had more courage than the green leaves, for they were but half expanded and half grown, but the blossom was spread full out. I uprooted it rashly, and I felt as if I had been committing an outrage, so I planted it again. It will have but a stormy life of it, but let it live if it can. . . .

Dorothy Wordsworth - Grasmere
(Dorothy Wordsworth (25 December 1771 – 25 January 1855) was an English author, poet and diarist. She was the sister of the Romantic poet William Wordsworth, and the two were close for all of their lives.)

January 29th

1774

Selborne,Jan.29,1774
THE house-swallow, or chimney-swallow, is undoubtedly the first comer of all the British hirundines; and appears in general on or about the thirteenth of April, as I have re-marked trom many years ooservauon. rsoi uut nuw anu. mv,n a straggler is seen much earlier: and, in particular, when I was a boy I observed a swallow for a whole day together on a sunny warm Shrove Tuesday; which day could not fall out later than the middle of March, and often happened early in February.

It is worth remarking that these birds are seen first about lakes and mill-ponds; and it is also very particular, that if these early visitors happen to find frost and snow, as was the case of the two dreadful springs of 1770 and 1771, they immediately withdraw for a time. A circumstance this much more in favour of hiding than migration; since it is much more probable that a bird should retire to it's hybernaculum just at hand, than return for a week or two only to warmer latitudes.

Gilbert White
(Gilbert White (18 July 1720 – 26 June 1793) - letter to Daines Barrington. White was a pioneering naturalist and ornithologist, born in his grandfather's vicarage at Selborne in Hampshire. He is best known for his The Natural History and Antiquities of Selborne (1789). )

January 26th

1798

January 26th. Walked upon the hill-tops; followed the sheep tracks till we overlooked the larger coombe. Sat in the sunshine. The distant sheep-bells, the sound of the stream; the woodman winding along the half-marked road with his laden pony; locks of wool still spangled with the dewdrops; the blue-grey sea, shaded with immense masses of cloud, not streaked; the sheep glittering in the sunshine. Returned through the wood. The trees skirting the wood, being ex-posed more directly to the action of the sea breeze, stripped of the net-work of their upper boughs, which are stiff and erect, like black skeletons; the ground strewed with the red berries of the holly. Set forward before two o'clock. Returned a little after four.

Dorothy Wordsworth - Alfoxden

(Dorothy Wordsworth (25 December 1771 – 25 January 1855) was an English author, poet and diarist. She was the sister of the Romantic poet William Wordsworth, and the two were close for all of their lives.)

January 8th

1776 - Selborne, Hampshire
Selborne, Jan. 8,1776

IT is the hardest thing in the world to shake off superstitious prejudices: they are sucked in as it were with our mother's milk; and, growing up with us at a time when they take the fastest hold and make the most lasting impressions, become so interwoven into our very constitutions, that the strongest good sense is required to disengage ourselves from them. No wonder therefore that the lower people retain them their whole lives through, since their minds are not invigorated by a liberal education, and therefore not enabled to make any efforts adequate to the occasion.
Such a preamble seems to be necessary before we enter on the superstitions of this district, lest we should be suspected of exaggeration in a recital of practices too gross for this enlightened age.

But the people of Tring, in Hertfordshire, would do well to remember, that no longer ago than the year 1751, and within twenty miles of the capital, they seized on two superannuated wretches, crazed with age, and overwhelmed with infirmities, on a suspicion of witchcraft; and, by trying experiments, drowned them in a horse-pond.

Gilbert White
(Gilbert White (18 July 1720 – 26 June 1793) - letter to Daines Barrington. White was a pioneering naturalist and ornithologist, born in his grandfather's vicarage at Selborne in Hampshire. He is best known for his The Natural History and Antiquities of Selborne (1789). )

January 4th

1822

Kensington, Friday, 4 Jan. 1822
... I cannot quit Battle without observing, that the country is very pretty all about it. All hill, or valley. A great deal of wood-land, in which the underwood is generally very fine, though the oaks are not very fine, and a good deal covered with moss. This shows, that the clay ends, before the tap-root of the oak gets as deep as it would go; for, when the clay goes the full depth, the oaks are always fine.—The woods are too large, and too near each other, for hare-hunting; and, as to coursing, it is out of the question here. But, it is a fine country for shooting, and for harbouring, game of all sorts.—It was rainy as I came home; but the woodmen were at work. A great many hop-poles are cut here, which makes the coppices more valuable than in many other parts. The women work in the coppices, shaving the bark of the hop-poles, and, indeed, at various other parts of the business. These poles are shaved to prevent maggots from breeding in the bark, and accelerating the destruction, of the pole.

William Cobbett
William Cobbett (9 March 1763 – 18 June 1835) was an English pamphleteer, farmer and journalist, who was born in Farnham, Surrey.


1869

Jan. 4, '69. We have had wind and rain, so that floods are out, but in temperature the weather mild to an unusual degree.—The other evening after a very bright day, the air rinsed quite clear, there was a slash of glowing yolk-coloured sunset.—On the 1st frost all day (which otherwise I do not remember for a long time), the air shining, but with vapour, the dead leaves frilled, the Park grass white with hoarfrost mixed with purple shadow.—Today—another clear afternoon with tender clouding after rain—one notices the crisp flat darkness of the woods against the sun and the smoky bloom they have opposite it. The trees budded and their sprays curled as if dressed for spring.

Gerard Manley Hopkins
(Gerard Manley Hopkins, (28 July 1844 – 8 June 1889) was an English poet and Jesuit priest whose 20th-century fame established him posthumously among the leading Victorian poets.)

January 2nd

1751

"2d. - I went to Hammond's, and drank - with him a bottle of beer and two drams. I invited him to the butcher's, an treated him with a mugg of beer. Master Dumbrell came in; we went to Gurrs, where I spent 1s., and I went home to bed. I was informed at Mast. Hammond's that Mast. Dumbrell, having been catched by Ditchers in his wife's chamber, was obliged to give a bond of £30 before he was permitted to leave the room. "

Walter Gale
{ Eighteenth century schoolmaster at Mayfield, Sussex, who supplemented his income by drawing and other artwork. }

1769

Selborne, Jan.2, 1769
The vast rains ceased with us much about the same time as with you, and since we have had delicate weather. Mr. Barker, who has measured the rain for more than thirty years, says, in a late letter, that more has fallen this year than in any he ever attended to; though, from July 1763 to January 1764, more fell than in any seven months of this year.

Gilbert White
(Gilbert White (18 July 1720 – 26 June 1793) - letter to Thomas Pennant. White was a pioneering naturalist and ornithologist, born in his grandfather's vicarage at Selborne in Hampshire. He is best known for his "The Natural History and Antiquities of Selborne" (1789).)

January 1st

1895

"The Chestnuts,
Guildford,
Jan. 1. '95

Yes, my dear Edith, you are quite correct in saying it is a long time since you heard from me: in fact I find that I have not written to you since the 13th of last November. But what of it? You have access to the daily papers. Surely you can find out, negatively, that I am all right? Go carefully through the list of Bankruptcies: then run your eye down the Police Cases: and if you fail to find my name anywhere, you can say to your mother, in a tone of calm satisfaction, "Mr Dodgson is going on well." I've brought with me here, as a sort of holiday-task, a bundle of 50 or more letters requiring answers - It needs great energy to begin on them...."
C.L.D.

The Rev. Charles Lutwidge Dodgson
{ The Rev. Charles Lutwidge Dodgson - pen-name Lewis Carroll - was the author of Alice in Wonderland and a great correspondent, especially with young girls. Edith ____ was one of the many children to whom Lewis Carroll wrote letters. }


1981

"1st Jan 1981 - The start of another year. Walking through Regent's Park this morning, past the barren trees, I reflected that I couldn't turn over a new leaf since there wasn't one to be seen."

Kenneth Williams
{ 1926-1988, London-born actor and camp comedian. }