Journals

While we were in France a couple of weeks ago, I started reading Dorothy Wordsworth's Grasmere journal in which she chronicles the life of her brother William and herself at Dove Cottage. I started with high hopes of learning something about how people lived in the early 19th century, and I suppose I have learnt something. However, the journal is so repetitive that I became bored after 60 or so pages of entries along the lines of, "A fine evening. Walked around the lakes." "Took tea with Miss Simpson." (This followed by a long explanatory note by the editor to tell the reader that Miss Simpson was the third daughter of Mr & Mrs Simpson. Does any reader really want to know that?)

Perhaps the trouble is that most diarists (except politicians, sportsmen etc who write their memoirs) are writing for themselves and don't give a thought to the fact that anybody reading their journals a hundred or more years later will want to know much more about things the writers took for granted: what their houses were like, how they were furnished, what food they ate, what their daily routine was, and so on. It would interesting as well to learn how national and international affairs impinged on their lives. As somebody who has become interested in my family history, that is what I would dearly love to know about my ancestors.

What would have made it difficult for any of my ancestors (on my father's side at least) to keep any sort of journal is that they were farm labourers in what was then a remote part of north-east Suffolk and that few of them, if any, could read or write. I have obtained facsimile birth, marriage and death certificates for many of my ancestors and even as late as the 1880s some were signing with a cross.

Perhaps I should take the trouble to write my own journal in which I would make sure that I include all the things I would like to know about my ancestors. I wonder if I can find the time - and the self-discipline?