Welsh Journals

The Archdeacon's Diaries By RALPH EDWARDS THOUGH it is nearly forty years since, I can still see the Archdeacon, as if it were yesterday, standing with legs apart and his hands beneath his coat-tails before the hideous marble fireplace in the ball-room of the hotel in which he was wont once a year to receive the guests for his children's party-" Dancing, 4 to 9.30 Supper at 7 and a mighty fine supper he always provided. In a variety of vehicles, from the wagonettes and broughams of the squires to the dog-carts and gigs of the parsons-there was a sharp dividing-line of admissibility among the parsons-we were driven in from all around the country-side, and climbing the dismal stairs to the scene of the festivities, passed the swing doors, and shepherded by our mothers, tripped self-consciously across the newly-polished boards to shake hands with the Archdeacon; while the band tuned up for polka or waltz. Standing there with the light from the gas jets falling on his silk apron and the buckles of his evening shoes, he was a figure to linger in the memory of a child and, unlike too many ecclesiastics encountered in early life, he must linger thus with associations wholly pleasurable, in the memories of quite a number of my contemporaries. He was not of the pompous, portly sort, but spare, active and quick in movement, with keen blue eyes, finely cut features, a tanned ruddy skin, and a carefully-trimmed, short, tawny beard. Of middle height, compact and well-set up, his bearing conveyed a high degree of self-assurance. It is in his image that I still like to picture Archdeacon Grantly. His memory has now faded even in the district that once knew him so well, but it was vividly revived for me on glancing through his diaries which, with much else that belonged to him, were rescued during the war from the ruins of a bombed house. It is truly astonishing what a mass of reading you will provide if you make short daily notes over half a century. Close on fifty small volumes were snatched from the debris, closely packed with the record of a long and useful life lived out against a background of prosperity and contentment, and enjoyed with unfailing zest almost to the end. It is a record severely factual and concrete there is not a subjective line in it, not a hint of introspection, misgiving or doubt. The Archdeacon was born in 1840, and spent the whole of his active life within the confines of that long stretch of woodland, heath and pasture,