Poverty Bay Herald PUBLISHED EVERY EVENING GISBORNE, SATURDAY, APRIL 5, 1930. THE DIARIST

Poverty Bay Herald, Volume LV, Issue 17227, 5 April 1930, Page 4

Poverty Bay Herald PUBLISHED EVERY EVENING GISBORNE, SATURDAY, APRIL 5, 1930. THE DIARIST

The sale of diaries for private, professional, and business use appears to increase. The output is very great. The diary is postal guide and ready reckoner; it records appointments, and so jogs a bad memory; it supersedes a set of books for the householder; it notes the seasons, the feasts, the holidays, the taxes and duties. The diary purports to instruct the fanner and even impinges upon the realm, in mysstery, of the astronomer. The modem diary is a great and successful development to meet a modern necessity. A diary upon modern lines was unknown in the early portion of the nineteenth century. The diarist of those days had not been discovered as a source of profit by the printer and book-maker. He had to file his own papers or fall back upon scrap books or roughly bound folios that camo in h'is way. The diarist of to-day is a master of memoranda. He uses his diary in his daily work or business. If he has a hobby his diary records his experiments, results and failures. Another takes pleasure in noting down each day the movements of the barometer. To the old time diarist his diary was his confidant and his friend. The diary was the secret of youth and the impression plate of the mind of the mature. It contained the dreams and affections of the young; it enshrined the observations and experiences of the old. In some cases, so precious were its contents that they were protected by lock and key. No one keeps such diaries now. Possibly the rush of modern life has cut out the time that used to be given, and was required, to put down day by day intelligent notes of episodes, thoughts or table talk. There will be no more Grevilles or Boswells. These men were not mere recorders of club gossip or of scandal in high places. They were such recorders, and so gained the public ear of their day. But their fame is based rather on the accuracy of their record than the causticity of its contents. From their diaries, despised and condemned even by those who enjoyed them, history has been reconstructed and mistaken judgments of notable persons have been reversed. The diarist and the old fashioned letter-writer founded and made possible great biographies. The art of letter writing has declined contemporaneously with that of the diarist. Correspondence has increased in volume, so as to make cheap postage profitable, but the old letter, crossed and sometimes re-crossed, on fhin paper to save weight, is unknown. What can be sent for one penny or on a card for a halfpenny is not sent for value of the contents, but for scrappy talk, convention, or inquiry. The revival of the day of the diarist is unlikely. The conditions of modern society and the ordinary modern life of the people of all classes, is against it. The spare time in the daily life of everyone, and particularly of the young is rather fully taken up by games, sports of all kinds, the cinema, and the attractions of the modern novel of mystery or imagination. There has been since 1918 one of the most remarkable changes in the habits of the peoples of all nations that has ever occurred in ancient or modem history. This is having a notable effect upon national character and physique. The diaristic habit in itself had personal value. It cultivated the faculties of observation and memory. Neither (Ireville nor Boswoll were stenographers. They had to memorise the dialogues that they took part in. The quality of 1 their records of the wit and humor of greater men than themselves, vouches for their accuracy. The vast extension of educational subjects and coming in of the cyclopaedic era, has rather weakened than strengthened memory. What is superficial and crammed for a pass, a certificate, or other special purpose is not as a rule remembered. Most professional men will toll you that they study to forget. They cannot carry in their minds all that they are supposed to know. It serves their purpose if they can find, when the occasion arises, the particular information required. .Specialisation has become a compulsory necessity. A greater personal loss is in the decline of the power of accurate observation. It is so easy to see and yet not to see. A common game is .to suddenly expose a number of common articles for a short time and then to require those

who compete at once to write down the articles that they can remember tu have seen. It is hardly credible what poor results are usual. We have referred to Grcville —the bete noire of Queen Victoria. The Times reviewer lately paid tribute to the value of his journals to history. He says that Grevillo "lived in a transitional age and was a transitional man." Like our own day political and social questions were then much in the melting pot. Grevillo was alive to all the defects in the public men and in the gilt-edged society in which he had been brought up, while he was keenly aware of, and sympathised with, .the shadow of something better. In public life the age of political privilege was passing. "Mere rank was no longer decisive and great qualities were rightly demanded from the bearers of great names." So Grevillo flayed the politicians of his day with ruthless severity. Even King George IV was not spared. In 1829 Grevillo wrote of him: "A more contemptible cowardly, selfish, unfeeling dog does not exist than this king on whom such flattery is constantly lavished." Of the Duke of Wellington, who is admired as a soldier, he wrote: "He is a great man in little things, but a liftlo man in great matters —I mean, civil affairs." Peel and Palmerston hardly fared better. It is a loss to New Zealand to have had no Grevilles or Boswells in the earlier days of the young colony. In our own district how valuable it would have been to have had the first hand notes from a diary of Edward Harris in his relations with the, native chiefs he knew in his early days; or a journal kept by Samuel Locke when in the employment of Sir Donald McLean;; or a first-hand picture drawn by Dr. Nesbit or Colonel Gudgeon. An amanuensis for Mr. G. E. Read might easily have gained immortality. In a wider sphere a journal kept by Sir George Grey recording his interviews with the men who he had to deal with in the final acceptance of a first Constitution and from whom he had to select his advisers, would have corrected many hasty judgments that yet stand as history. Such a record carried on through the days when the occupier of the vice-regal chair became Superintendent for Auckland, and later, when, an old man solitary, he sat in tin' House at Wellington, his influence and political friends gone, he was hardly spared from insult from those who knew nothing of his Imperial services, and indeed were hardly worthy to sit at his feet. Again what a loss it has been that Richard Seddon had no Boswell to wait upon his undoubted greatness, and to put down in literary form his terse expressions and wide views. New Zealand, at that time, entered into a transition period of a free democracy. Beyond the inflated pages of Hansard we have no reliable foundations for the historian. We can learn nothing of .the me*, their characters and habits, to whom we are so much indebted for the liberties that we enjoy. There has helm no diarist who had time, inclination, or ability, to keep a journal. A great plea could be made for the revival of the diarist. Such a revival is impossible. The diarist is as dead as the dodo.