Private Chronicles: A Study of English Diaries by Robert A. Fothergill (review)

HUMANITIES 397 and the reason is, I suggest, that Ernest Buckler reveals himself here, as he has done so often in his novels, to be more poet than prose writer. His sensitive eye and ear are evident from the first section of this book, 'Amethysts and Dragonflies,' which is a superb prose poem. In an intoxicating buildup of detail by means of short sentences and ingenious word combinations, Buckler miraculously evokes the land, the people, the sea. The matching double-page spread is a black and white photograph of giant combers against sea-rock. The power is there in words and photograph . The text of this section of the book will hopefully find its way into future anthologies of Canadian poetry. The majority of the black and white and colour studies are of the countryside where sea, land, and people are involved. A few 'windows' open upon the ambitious construction undertakings in present-day Halifax . But in the ordering of words and photographs (unfortunately no locations are given) there is always the return to fence posts, ferns, gulls, children, spring flowers, men, and women in a landscape and in their seasons. This book is one of prose-poems with pictures about nature, about life in all its stark and delicate beauty and it is Nova Scotia. 'It is a dictionary where the seasons look up their own meanings and test them. It is a sea-son where men can man their own helms.' (DOUGLAS LOCHHEAD) Robert A. Fothergill, Private Chronicles: A Study of English Diaries. Oxford, 214, $1.3.25 Robert Fothergill's Private Chronicles: A Study of English Diaries has clearly been a labour of love, and, mirabile dictu, an exploration of a fertile field hitherto ignored by zealous literary scholars. As Professor Fothergill points out initially, the diary lies outside the scope of conventional literary scholarship since it is impossible to trace works of influential impact on the development of the genre. Consequently, Professor Fothergill has not attempted to write a history of diaries, but rather a study of various modes, motives, and self-projections in numerous British diaries which he has found interesting for different reasons. His book is enchanting because he shares with us his pleasure in a form of writing which, like all good literature, extends 'our realization of what being alive is like.' From Pepys to Anais Nin, he examines travel accounts, public records, introspective journals, and daily memoranda of things done, seen, and heard. Viewing the diary as the Book of the Self, Fothergill maintains that the diary captures the patterns and processes of experience, the actual passage of future into past. At the same time he argues that, contrary to general opinion, when a diary has grown to a certain length and substance, an idea of what it might ultimately become often impresses itself upon the mind of its creator. The case of 398 LEITERS IN CANADA AnaYs Nin is particularly interesting, since her numerous diaries have actually become her raison d'etre. 'Existing in an intermediate zone between living experience and the formal work of art, the diary threatens to encroach upon both, becoming a substitute for life and a deflection from art.' Tone - or attitude towards oneself and the world - counts for so much in a diary that the reader can indulge his personal feelings towards the subject. Sir Walter Scott elicits consistent admiration through the days of triumphant authorship to the dogged perseverance in the face of financial ruin. Byron, on the other hand, sounds petty and querulous. Some diaries are composed with a high degree of consciousness, but frequently the writer is unaware of the implications of what he is revealing about himself. So much has been written about Boswell that it would seem unlikely that anything fresh could be said, yet for me Professor Fothergill's analysis of Boswell as journal-writer is the most faScinating of an altogether absorbing book. Boswell's journals will be an eternal joy to all those who love a parade. The daily question posed by the role-player par excellence was, What kind of performance did I give? Boswell is the First Person as disproportionately Singular - 'I have one of the...