The most relaxing and yet mentally stimulating reading is without doubt that of diaries or correspondence. Diaries rather than full autobiography, because then it comes to you in small bursts. And the same way with letters, even when one-sided correspondence only. High on the lists among moderns come Evelyn Waugh and Nancy Mitford. William Allingham from Ballyshannon lived a sparkling social life in England and left us nice, shortish bouts of observation. Harold Nicolson wrote always with wit and grace. And in quite another world we have Kilvert's Diary, the record of country life in England in the latter part of the 19th century. We may start with William Allingham and his diaries (1824-89). In the introduction John Julius Norwich, a wonderful anthologiser as we know from his annual Christmas Cracker, gives his viewpoint: that while Allingham is no poet, he is a superb diarist. Short, on-the-nail observations and what we might today call one-liners. Norwich picks out this short word-picture. Sunday 28 June, 1863: "In the evening walked sadly along the shore of the Solent eastwards by Pylewell - returning, brought home a glow-worm and put it in a white lily, through which it shone."
He soon had a dozen gems and said he knew of no volume of comparable size that yielded to so compulsive a collector "so rich and copious a harvest." 9th January, 1866. "Ride to Brockenhurst - sudden snowstorm, careering between the trees and across the road like a charge of wild cavalry; wraps us in winter; clears off. Rossetti appears in a remarkable portrait. He walks, we are told, with a peculiar lounging gait trailing the point of his umbrella on the ground, humming, not a tune but what sounds like a sotto voce note of defiance to the Universe. Then suddenly he will fling himself down somewhere and refuse to stir an inch further. His favourite attitude - on his back, one knee raised, hands behind his head .. ." But Ouida, the novelist: "In green silk, sinister, clever face, hair down, small hands and feet, voice like a carving knife."
He got to know many of the most famous literary and political figures of English life. Tennyson, the poet told a story of a Bastille prisoner who had a lark with him in the prison. Once free, he took the cage out into the fields, opened the cage and the lark flew up into the air singing - suddenly stopped and fell dead at the man's feet. The good diarist took down many such anecdotes. Y