| Description | Diaries maintained by Charlotte Bagot, from the age of sixteen, when she was living in Ashlyns, Berkhampstead, until shortly before her death. In the early diaries the lack of space for recording Sunday details necessitates Charlotte separating her Sunday entries from the diary's weekly framework. Sunday details are therefore compiled at the front and rear of the diary until 1879. Even after this date, some entries are continued at the front and rear of the diary due to lack of space.
The diaries contain daily entries and record details of her daily routine. For the early years these entries are quite formulaic in character, beginning with a brief description of the weather, and then very brief accounts of daily activities. Prior to her marriage Charlotte's daily activities included reading and studying, paying visits to family and friends, and attending social engagements. Charlotte read daily, and enjoyed a range of material from 'The Times' to religious works. The latter included sermons and service books, and studies in spiritual matters. However, she also read more generally - she reads 'An Englishwoman in Russia', 1854, and mentions beginning 'Adam Bede' in 1859. She also read works not solely in English. As part of her daily study, she often read French, Italian and German. In addition she translated extracts from foreign works into English, and also made extracts from collections of sermons and pamphlets. Daily activities also included piano and singing practice, and there is even mention of her assisting her father with the [household] accounts, and sorting her mother's bills.
Family activities are also recorded. These include weekly attendance at Church and participation in the local hunts. At the front of several of the early volumes there are quite detailed descriptions of homilies, and at the rear of the diaries brief meditations upon Charlotte's spiritual development. Family celebrations such as birthdays and Christmas are also recorded, as are the deaths of friends and family members. The diaries for these early years also contain accounts of family vacations. These include holidays in Scotland and Wales, and also trips to Europe.
After her marriage in 1862 to Rev Frederic Bagot, Charlotte also appears as an active participant in Harpsden community life, on occasion teaching, distributing food and clothing during winter months, visiting and reading to various individuals. Not surprisingly, through her frequent attendance at luncheons and dinners the diaries chart a network of upper middle class society in Oxfordshire in the middle of the nineteenth century. Other details of her daily routine are included, and she records a substantial amount of information about the activities, education and development of her four children. For the periods when Charlotte is recovering from the birth of her children, and on other occasions when she is unwell, Fred continues the diary for her.
Family vacations are also a strong theme in these later diaries. The Bagots take an annual holiday in the summer, to various English and Welsh coastal resorts, and occasionally visit Boulogne. Charlotte continues to read daily, and the majority of works she mentions are sermons or other religious tracts. The front and rear pages of the diaries continue to contain Charlotte's reflections on her spiritual development.
After Fred's death in 1892, Charlotte leaves Harpsden for London, where she lives until her death. She and her daughter Mary are both active in charitable works, and Charlotte describes some of their activities. In later years she writes often of her increasing ill health and frailty which prevents her from spending much time outside the house, but she continues to give details of social engagements with family and friends. Holidays are also recorded, and she writes extensively about the progress of her children. In old age Charlotte's reading matter is dominated by travel and biographical works, although she also reads newspapers, and mentions reading sermons and other religious works more occasionally.
The diaries not only record the daily activities of Charlotte and her family, historical events also find a mention. Allusive in style and brief in treatment, such details nevertheless attest to the impingement of world affairs upon provincial consciousness. |