Kilvert and a trifle

Friday 19 March 1875

I was very much annoyed this evening by a note from Marion Vaughan saying that my last letter to Netta had been forwarded by Matilda to her at C.D.S. at Bristol, that Miss Winter had opened the letter, read it, refused to give it to Netta, and then laid it before the Committee, and that the Honorary Secretary had written to Mr. Vaughan saying that if Netta continued to receive letters from me he must withdraw her from the school.

This is the whole of the diary entry for 19th March, and Kilvert gives no explanation. It would be a help if we could see what the original unedited entry had to offer.

Kilvert was friendly with the extensive Vaughan family, four of whom appear in the entry above. 

The intended recipient of his letter was Janetta Vaughan who was 15 and studying at the Clergy Daughters' School in Bristol. The school was on Great George Street on St Brandon's Hill, and later became St Brandon's School.

Marion and Matilda were two of Netta's older sisters, Marion being 22 and Matilda 17.

And Mr Vaughan was their father, Rev David Vaughan of Newchurch. Kilvert called the Vaughans his 'kind friends' and felt close to the family. There are many diary entries which refer to them, and he wrote about them with great tenderness. Kilvert loved children, and felt keenly the death at the age of 13 of Emmeline Vaughan. She was perhaps his favourite in the family.

Whatever Kilvert wrote was clearly unacceptable to the school authorities, and Kilvert does not record what his friend David Vaughan thought about it. Perhaps the school had a blanket policy of not allowing girls to receive letters from men not in the family, even if they were clergymen.

Kilvert might himself have given us a vital clue to Miss Winter's reaction.

On 4 June 1874 he had visited Bristol with his mother, and while she had gone off to see a friend, he had visited Janet Vaughan at the CDS. He took her a 'nosegay of roses'. It was his first visit to the school and he was unsure how to find it. He asked if she was home, and while waiting he

heard a sweet voice singing along the passages and Janet Vaughan came in much grown and with her hair cut short over her forehead, but unchanged in other ways and as sweet and simple and affectionate as ever.

They gained permission to stroll in the gardens and

walked up and down talking of Clyro and Gilfa and Newchurch and old times

They came to the 'Poet's Retreat' which was a wooded area

fringed with young trees upon which some of the girls had carved their initials.

He seems to have recognised that his next move was not his smartest idea ever:

Upon the stem of a young beech whose bark was grimy black with Bristol smuts I carved Janet's initials J.V. and reluctantly at her earnest request my own R.F.K. above.

It is not hard to imagine that the staff of a Victorian school for daughters of the clergy would have had an eagle eye for who was carving what on the trees in the Poet's Retreat. JV would have narrowed the field of girls, even if it was not a unique set of initials. And RFK ? Who could that be ? Staff would have felt a duty of care to their charges, and might have nursed a strong curiosity about the identity of RFK and his/ her possible intentions. Perhaps the concern was so great that they kept a close watch on JV's movements and mail, and, fearing scandal, took action as soon as they knew RFK's identity.

If he was annoyed at Marion Vaughan's note, Kilvert would have been incandescent with the CDS committee report of 1 February 1875:

The secretary laid before the Committee a note from the Rev. Kilvert addressed to Jannetta (sic) Vaughan, one of the pupils. It appeared that Mr. Kilvert was a friend of the family, but had called at the school last half year, and had conducted himself in a trifling way in the presence of the school, which conduct he followed this half year by the letter produced in which he alluded to the circumstances in language calculated to lower the tone of the school. The Committee requested the Secretary to write to the Rev. J. Vaughan (sic) and inform that if any communication of the like nature either by letter or otherwise were repeated, it would be their duty to request him to remove his daughter from the school. 

What was Kilvert’s offence ?

He was 34 and unmarried at the time of his first visit to the school in June 1874, and Netta was 15. He seems to have been generally unconscious of any difficulty arising from his warm interest in girls much younger than himself,

He had visited Netta at the school, unwisely carved his initials with hers on a tree in Poet’s Corner, and followed up the visit with at least one letter, and probably a series (‘my last letter to Netta’ may mean his final letter, but more probably, his most recent letter). The school took its time in determining what to do. From their point of view the visit on 4th June 1874 must have been unnoticed at the time, and must have aroused no suspicion.

But something had made Miss Winter frosty, and she began to intercept mail. She must have become aware of the initials which had been seen, and caused puzzled consternation. The initials must have been the ‘trifling’ conduct which had caused such quiet outrage.

Kilvert’s later letter was sent to Netta at home, and was forwarded to her at the school by her sister some time before 1^st February 1875 when the committee met. The letter to Rev Vaughan would have followed quickly after that meeting, but it took about six weeks for Kilvert to hear of the trouble he had caused.

It is noteworthy that he did not hear from Rev Vaughan himself. His diary entry makes clear that Marion’s account was the first he heard of the scandal. Mr Vaughan, on receiving the letter from the committee, had talked to his daughter about it, and apparently been content for her to deal with it.

Indeed, whatever Kilvert's offence, it seems to have caused no rift with the family. Of course we do not know whether it was ever discussed with him at Newchurch, but Mr Vaughan’s response suggests that he saw the dodgy conduct as indeed trifling, but in a different sense.

What did KIlvert himself think ? On hearing from Marion, he was ‘annoyed’. Kilvert tended to flail around for the appropriate adjective, often chaining lots together in a scatter-gun approach. ‘Annoyed’ does not quite seem to fit the bill. ‘Embarrassed’ eluded him, though we might expect that emotion to be prominent. He knew he had been unwise, but now he was annoyed. Here, as elsewhere, Kilvert seems to have been oblivious to how his behaviour might look to a third party.

27th April 1876 finds Kilvert with the family at Newchurch once again, having tea with the 'good Vicar', his wife, and Marion and Arthur who were at home. 

Perhaps to Miss Winter’s great relief, there is no record of his ever visiting the school again. Perhaps after all, Kilvert’s annoyance had turned into the realisation of a faux pas.