DIARIES

DIARIES

I have been sorting out my somewhat sparse diary for 2020.   Things were so depressing, I did not want to think about them, let alone write about it.    And nothing was happening, we went nowhere so there was little to record..   But what there is of it is now in order, plus the blogs I wrote, and a small amount of correspondence.   I wrote five eulogies, which is 5 too many.

I have written diaries all my life, but periodically I would destroy them.   The present collection goes back to     1982, so I’ve kept it for almost 40 years.   The first few years are hand written in a hard-backed notebook; the later ones are printed out from my computer and placed in a hard backed file year by year.   I used to use it as the basis for letters to my mother, and now I send edited copies to my children.

I don’t know the habits of other diarists, but I almost NEVER read them once they are written.    Although I feel my judgement is sound and I rarely change my opinion, I find it depressing how unkind and intolerant I am of others; and how I seem to expect other people to think like me, which I now realise hardly anyone does.

John has no interest in my diaries and I would be surprised if he has ever read them.  I think if asked he would in truth prefer that I did not write them, although I always give him a good press.    This should not be thought of as him being unsupportive for he has always been generous and prompt in providing me with the tools, desk space and equipment I’ve needed to function.

I presume the collection has some value in being a 40 year record written by an articulate woman with the time to do so.   I have left my papers to Elisabeth, on the assumption that John would not wish to deal with them (and Elisabeth may be daunted by the size of what there is), and that she would act on behalf of her siblings and in consultation with them.

There are important things in my life that are never mentioned in the diaries.   Also world events appear to affect me very little.  Whereas John kept a scrapbook on articles about the Falklands war, it never appears in my diary until I am criticizing Margaret Thatcher for her unchristian attitude in not being prepared to pray for the Argentinian dead.

If anyone should read them and come across dates, disregard these completely: they are wholly unreliable.

So now I   have 40 volumes of diary to read and redact any comments which might  distress my relatives and were written in the heat of the moment.   

I can’t list this task as one of the joys of my life. 

ON WRITING DIARIES

ON READING DIARIES

I’ve just finished two volumes of SIR Roy Strong’s diaries covering his time as Director of the National Portrait Gallery and the V&A; his marriage to Julia Trelawney Oman and their joint creation of the garden ‘The Laskett’.

He was not a very good diary writer at the beginning as his entries consisted largely of lists of other dinner guests at events he attended, but he improved as he went along He was mildly eccentric, very camp although not homosexual, and he had a waspish tongue.

But I grew to like him. He came from very humble beginnings and his father was an uneducated brute, but as is often the case with people with difficult fathers, in the end he blames his mother more. He went to the same school as Norman Tebbit.

Reading diaries is an art in itself. You have to remember that you are looking at the world through someone else’s eyes. Roy Strong was interested in people; art; architecture; the theatre (because of his wife) and clothes. He himself dressed extravagantly in opera cloaks, velvet suits etc and he will often describe in its entirety a lady’s outfit whereas I am quite sure most of the men of my acquaintance could only describe an outfit even of a lady whom they admired in the most general of terms.

He is quite illuminating about the royal family though he describes the Duke of Edinburgh as stupid, which I am quite sure is not the case. No doubt the Duke had been bored by some event dear to Strong’s heart and had not bothered to conceal this sufficiently..

Cecil Beaton’s diaries are unintentionally amusing; he complains about everything and everybody. Virginia Woolf’s are worth reading for the metaphors. She never mentions what she is writing nor the process of writing (Mrs Woolf sits at her desk from 10 am to 6pm and produces xxx words of deathless prose…) She never writes about architecture or clothes, and hated shopping. You could also quite dislike her for her indifferent attitude to the first World War, (she seemed barely aware that it was taking place) and to her unreasonable dislike of the servants.

Alan Clark’s diaries are in unexpurgated mode and are amusing, and Ken Clark’s are down to earth, sensible and practical. He was central in various instances but plays this down. He was in my view one of the principal persons responsible for the removal of Mrs Thatcher – he devised the strategy; each MP would say that while he would personally support her, he did not think she would win, and they did not want her to be humiliated. But in reality they would not support her: he was there as each MP went in and came out – stiffening the resolve of any waverers. Treachery, she called it, but she was by that time deluded.

Some people write really boring diaries. John’s stepfather, who was married to his mother for the last three years of her life, laboriously kept a diary. He left it downstairs one day and I glanced through it. One memorable week he was having double glazing installed and he recorded every day what progress the workmen made; which window was being attended to etc. He wrote pages and pages about it, whereas I think it might have warranted an entry on the day the tradesmen left: We have had two tradesmen here installing new double glazed windows. They look good and the rooms are much warmer.

Reading a diary over many years can be slightly melancholic because generally speaking the diary fades away into fewer entries and those shorter, and you realise that the writer’s power is fading. But if it is a good body of work, they have left a document that their relatives will treasure down the generations.