How do we care for people? This is a big challenge for every Christian and for every congregation. It is a particular challenge for clergy. Central to faith and ministry is the call to care. But how does one do it? And how do you handle the challenges that people, place, and circumstance present? The Anglican tradition has great wealth from which to draw; in this space I’ll draw especially on Francis Kilvert, a 19th-century cleric. Utterly obscure in his time, he has much to teach us in ours.[1]
Francis Kilvert (1840-79) served small rural parishes on the border between England and Wales; he ministered mostly as a curate. Moreover, he died fairly soon after marrying and obtaining his first incumbency. He would have remained unknown but for his detailed diary, a delight to read in itself. Kilvert sheds light not only on Anglicanism in the past, but also on how to do Anglican pastoral care today.
Although his diary reveals no sense of writing for an audience, Kilvert clearly had great powers of description. His small, rural parishes were backwaters in the time he wrote. Yet he carefully recorded the people he knew and his ministry among them.
Kilvert’s Love of People
Kilvert’s description of people and of the landscape go together. And there is a straightforward reason for this—he didn’t have a horse, let alone a carriage. So he walked prodigious distances to access his scattered parishes. And these huge walks spoke both of his love of the land and its people.
After preaching twice, walking six miles, and getting caught in heavy rain, he went out one autumn night to visit Katie Witney, a 9-year-old girl. “I saw the child was dying and knew she would not live to see the morning light of this world. I said to her, ‘Jesus loves the little children. He said to them, ‘Suffer the little children to come unto me and forbid them not for such is the kingdom of heaven.’ I repeated the verse ‘Gentle Jesus mild and meek.’ She said the Lord’s Prayer after me. She knew me perfectly, but her words came with difficulty.”
After visiting another family and being suddenly embraced by a deaf and mute child, Kilvert commented in his diary: “I have lived and I have been loved and no one can take this from me.”
Then there is the striking account of Kilvert’s support for a local gardener who was plagued for months with suicidal thoughts (who, thankfully, survived). Kilvert’s parishes were tough places. The diary contains many references to severe illness, death, suicide, and mental illness.
What comes over in Kilvert is the attention he gave to people. We see him ministering, but in order for that to happen, we see him listening. Kilvert had a deep heart for his people, most especially the humblest, and this is reflected in the detail he records in his diary. Indeed, there is a sense that he was shy about ministering to those of his own class.
Kilvert was forever out and about in the community—a welcome visitor and beloved friend. He often speaks of “villaging all afternoon,” meaning that he was out visiting. But these were not just social calls. His diary frequently refers to him reading his Bible on visits. He often prayed with people, especially the sick and the dying.
Kilvert was clear-eyed about tragedy, but his diary also has many wry and gently humorous incidents. He recalled a Communion service one New Year’s Day when a parishioner, taking the chalice, gave the unorthodox response of “Happy New Year.”
And whilst Kilvert was dedicated in his pastoral duties, there is also a lot of leisure in the diary. One highlight of the diary is a lengthy account of a vacation in Cornwall. Kilvert knew how to relax.
Kilvert and Nature
The diaries are full of detailed observations of the land he ministered in and walked across.
This afternoon had been stormy but it cleared towards sunset. Gradually the heavy rain clouds rolled across the valley to the foot of the opposite mountains and began climbing up their side wreathing in rolling masses of vapour. One solitary cloud still hung over the brilliant sunlit town, and that whole cloud was a rainbow. Gradually it lost its bright prismatic hues and moved away up the Cusop Dingle in the shape of a pillar and of the colour of dark smoke.
Kilvert was a prodigious walker, capable of enormous hikes both across his parish and elsewhere. He walked far more than most people do now, for the prosaic reason that it was often the only means of transport available to him. He never owned a horse and was rarely found on one. And his walks immersed him in the countryside, which he observed closely and loved deeply.
A devotee of Wordsworth (whose poetry had strong Christian resonances), Kilvert echoed Wordsworth’s sense of nature as revelatory, but in his case it was the border country between England and Wales, rather than the Lake District.
And time and again, there is a sense that he is at home with his parishioners and the landscape. A casual reference to his assisting a farmer getting in the hay harvest reflects the sense that he and they were part of a single community, in which humans and nature collaborated for fruitfulness in ways far less invasive than our lifestyles today.
Kilvert’s Faith
The diary’s accounts of the troubles of Kilvert’s parishioners can make it sound, at times, like a Thomas Hardy novel. And it is important to note how Kilvert’s faith imbued his diary with a hopefulness, in contrast to Hardy’s tales of Wessex.
Kilvert was a student at Oxford, but did not otherwise attend any seminary. His faith was something absorbed rather than formally learned—being raised in a rectory and then schooled in Bath by a clerical uncle. But his convictions were strong. He preached one to three times on Sundays and the diary has many mentions of sermons and Bible references. When curate at Clyro Kilvert, he could be leading and preaching three times on a Sunday and, in addition, leading a Sunday school session. He was assiduous in his duties and, mostly, did them with good cheer. He pondered the controversies of the day and gradually adjusted himself to the theory of evolution, and achieved some sort of reconciliation between science and faith.
Kilvert wrote his sermons out and clearly took care over them. But this led to problems in some churches. Kilvert remarked of preaching at Newchurch that the pulpit was so low that “in order to read my sermon I was obliged to crouch down in it and lie on one side of the ledge and stick one leg out behind.” He did sometimes preach extempore and felt that was better for the less educated of his parishioners. He taught the Bible to children, did weekday lectures on Bible themes, and on many occasions the diary records Kilvert reading the Bible to people in their homes. It was not pleasant visiting old William Price, who was “grey like a wild beast.” Indeed, “He invited me to sit down. I was afraid to because of the lice. I read to him Psalms 121 and 130.”
At Old Weston, Little Davie’s mother took Kilvert to the bedroom upstairs, “into the room where the dead child was lying on the bed and turned down the sheet from the face.” He knelt with her there, “while I prayed for them all.”
Kilvert was deeply sensitive to natural beauty, but he spent little time describing church buildings. His warmest comments are reserved for the small, humble churches where he served—like at Colva, a “poor, humble, dear little white-washed church amongst the ancient yews.” Ornamentation of churches or liturgy was something that moved Kilvert not at all. The plain, unpretentious churches of Radnorshire were where Kilvert felt at home. But if contemporary Anglicans find him a little “low” for their taste, they should note that he was profoundly Anglican in his reliance on the prayer book and Scripture and in his deep commitment to specific people and places.
Kilvert had a deep reverence for creation, and in it he saw continually the hand of the Creator. For him, the skylark was God’s chief minstrel “to teach on earth the songs of heaven.”
Kilvert’s religion was mostly cheerful. He knew well the troubles of life, yet he declared “it was a positive luxury to be alive.” Kilvert was not, mostly, a tortured soul. You could argue that he was fortunate to live in an epoch without a major European war. And he was blessed to be part of a “golden age” when much of the English countryside survived, yet rail travel meant he could easily connect with wider worlds. Yet he knew the troubles of the world and retained a positive faith.
Kilvert had his vulnerabilities and flaws. He longed for marriage, but had several fruitless courtships before eventually marrying in his late 30s—tragically, only a few weeks before he died. There is a sense of a man so immersed in his landscape that he had little capacity for criticizing the evident injustices that ran through 19th-century society and its church. But our age is far too ready to cast the first stone at posterity, so I prefer to point out what Kilvert can teach us, rather than ways we might correct him.
Contemporary Lessons
Covenant readers who have not yet encountered Kilvert’s diary will find it gentle, enjoyable reading. It is a wonderful window onto the 19th century and a treat for those who enjoy nature writing.
But it is also instructive as we seek to learn to love our congregations—with all their hidden sparks of glory and grubby foolishness. Kilvert shows us a pastor at work—steadily, quietly, striding over the fields to tend his diverse and often troubled flock. Kilvert shows us a homely faith, in which the pastor made a point of being frequently at home with his congregation. This is not simple to replicate in our day, especially in large and pastorally complex congregations, but there remains a place for this work. Kilvert shows us an instinctive Anglican, steeped in the prayer book and Scripture and transmitting that across his little-known parishes.
Most of all, Kilvert shows us the hidden holiness of clergy who embrace obscurity. The genius of the diary is that it was never meant for a wide readership. By its focus on the small things and revelation of, at times, the smallness of Kilvert himself, it achieves a paradoxical greatness. The way down, as is often noted, turns out to be the way up.
[1] The best introduction to Kilvert is to read his diaries. Beyond this, the redoubtable Kilvert Society and its admirable newsletter are a mine of information on Kilvertiana.
The Rev. Dr. David Goodhew is vicar of St. Barnabas Church, Middlesbrough, England, and visiting fellow of St John’s College, Durham University.
